How public perceptions haunt Tories and Labour

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Good morning. Labour’s difficult start to life in office has rightly taken the headlines, as the government’s actions a) have real world consequences and b) will have a bigger impact on the next election in four to five years than anything the Conservative party does.

But it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that despite Labour’s difficulties, no poll has yet shown a significant shift in the balance of political forces. Some thoughts about how voters see both Labour and the Tories ahead of the latter’s first conference in opposition since 2009.

Inside Politics is edited by Georgina Quach. Read the previous edition of the newsletter here. Please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to [email protected]

Slipping away

Here are the overall scores on the door from the latest Ipsos poll.

Now, some of these matter rather more than others. Some have tended to be more predictive since Ipsos first started polling the UK.

Here’s one that, throughout the time Ipsos has asked it, has been incredibly predictive: which party is seen as more “extreme”. This has been true regardless of whether the winning party was seen as moderate or not. People were not telling Ipsos (or RSL as it then was) that Margaret Thatcher was “moderate”. They did, however, consistently find her to be less extreme than Michael Foot or Neil Kinnock.

We can see a couple of things here. The first is how much harm that Liz Truss’s 49 day premiership and the “Let Rishi be Rishi” strategy (the ill-fated plan at last year’s party conference to pitch the former prime minister as a break with consensus) did to the Conservative party. The last election was not particularly hard to understand: the Conservatives moved away from the ground they fought and won the 2019 election on, Labour moved towards it. As a result, we now have a Labour government.

It should also worry Labour that it is slipping and cheer Conservatives that the Tory party shows signs of recovery on this metric. This stuff does really matter — look, for instance, at the Ipsos “out of date” tracker, usually a pretty good sign of whether people think that a government is getting tired.

As I said, my theory of elections is pretty basic: they are a contest between whether or not the government of the day has managed to make itself seem worth re-electing and if people feel the opposition isn’t a scary prospect. The story of the 2017 to 2020 period is that people often felt like a change, but they looked at the opposition and went, “hmm, not so sure about that change”.

So it matters a lot that in spite of Labour’s recent difficulties, the Conservatives still trail badly on “fit to govern”.

So, that’s the challenge facing the Conservatives as they meet for the next stage of their protracted leadership election: to find a leader who can turn around perceptions that the party is not fit to govern, is not clapped out and behind the times. At the same time, the candidate must not undo the party’s recent progress when it comes to not being seen as more “extreme” than Labour. Oh, and it would be a good idea if they picked someone capable of putting this usually predictive finding into reverse, too:

A tall order for all four candidates as the party gathers in Birmingham for its annual conference.

Now try this

I’m indebted to the Centre of European Reform’s Charles Grant for the suggestion that I give the music of composer Michael Tippett a go and have spent much of my time since the Labour party conference devouring whatever recordings of his I can find. I particularly enjoyed this recording of the Corelli Fantasia, in part because it is very good, but also because it follows three of my favourite pieces by some of Tippett’s contemporaries — Edward Elgar, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Unfortunately I cannot seem to find it on Spotify, in part because that website continues to be pretty dreadful at finding classical music and jazz. (Far and away the best value streaming service for me is Apple Classical.) However, this very good recording of A Child of Our Time is on Spotify. I will be listening to a great deal more Tippett as I board the train to the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.

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However you spend it, have a wonderful weekend!