Party conference time is when British politics goes berserk. Leaders soar and crash in a morass of cliches. Polls go mad and cataclysm always delivers the best copy.
Thus, back in 1981, Margaret Thatcher was at her Blackpool conference, two years into office. Brixton was rioting, inflation was 11% and the Tories were polling at 23%. The Labour opposition was faring as badly, also at 23%. Meanwhile, a third force, the Social Democratic party (SDP), in alliance with the Liberals, was running at more than 50% and dominating the news.
Conference talk that year was unanimous. Thatcher would be gone by Christmas. Her conference speech was awful, receiving the “shortest standing ovation” any leader had received for years, according to Charles Moore’s biography. Rivals roamed fringe meetings, publicly manoeuvring for her job. The Guardian’s Peter Jenkins wrote that “a brief political obituary of Thatcherism [was] now in order”. All bets were on the SDP leader Roy Jenkins becoming prime minister – and soon.
Whenever I recall 1981, I wonder how commentators got it so wrong. The answer: hysteria. Conferences are when the Westminster club steps down to flirt with the mob and usually loses its way. That year, Blackpool’s vipers’ nest was so vicious it seemed as if Thatcher could not dare return to Downing Street. Yet, she not only returned, but by the time of the Falklands war the following spring, she was on her way to total command of her party and to two more election victories.
The chief difference between today and 1981 is the relative weakness of Reform. Its poll share of 27% in the most recent YouGov poll is only half that of the SDP in 1981. The peculiarities of first past the post can be shown to give Reform a majority, but the slightest shift in other party support could put its majority far out of reach.
What matters in both cases is the performance of a divided opposition. In 1981, Thatcher felt she could relax electorally as long as Labour was split down the middle. The SDP went briefly wild but, like Reform, it did not establish a substantive hierarchy or presence. It dwindled in the polls before a general election could test its electoral strength. All it did was stop Labour under Michael Foot from making headway. Thatcher’s Tories were also split, but the division was internal, between “wets” and “dries”. Thatcher shrewdly kept them in balance.
So long as the Tory party does not shut up shop, and so long as Reform sticks around, there is no reason why Keir Starmer should not recover to win again in 2029. His relentless bigging up of Reform and its leader, Nigel Farage, is tactically astute. What he has to do over the next two years is ensure that Reform’s support stays more of a threat to the Tories than to Labour. But it must not so devastate the Tories as to lead them to get rid of Kemi Badenoch. She is Keir Starmer’s Michael Foot, and he needs her badly to stay in place.
If history is any guide, Reform is a classic third party. It is internally chaotic and shows no sign of maturing into a lasting electoral force. But it is unlikely to fade sufficiently to allow the Tory party a repaired Commons majority. The Tories’ best hope is that the Greens under Zack Polanski do well enough to seriously split the left-of-centre vote – at which point all bets on a winner are off.
Every pundit with whom I discuss 1981 dismisses it as “past history” and says that “things are now different”. The day of populism is at hand. Voters are fluid. Reform is the new politics. I can only conclude that Armageddon has the best tunes, and never more so than at conference time.
Starmer’s past year has seemed like one long Downing Street apprenticeship. Every past prime minister reflects on how they wish they could have their first year over again. Starmer had everything going for him, not least one of the biggest Commons majorities in modern times. At least for two years, he could be doing almost anything.
Instead, Starmer has been panicking, to his left, right and centre. He reshuffles his cabinet. He changes his mind on winter fuel payments, benefits, Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson. He infuriates small businesses, farmers and non-doms for trivial sums of money. He claims to want more houses, yet he leaves it to the property market to choose where to put them.
Meanwhile, Britain is stuck in the mire of “small boats”, to which there is only one remotely plausible answer – win French collaboration. That involves Britain seeking to join the EU initiative to stem the migrant flow out of Asia and Africa. It means embarking on a serious reversal of Brexit. The bravest thing Starmer could do to curb migration and boost his growth agenda is to read the polls telling him that is what people want. Yet he does not dare.
As for Reform, I stick to 1981. It will be polling below 25% by the end of next year and Starmer will be in Downing Street for the duration. And conference time will still be pandemonium.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
