Yesterday I wrote about Labour’s dilemma. Today, I turn my attention to the Conservatives. Any party which loses half its vote share in six months shouldn’t expect to have “target seats”, only defensive ones. I said that yesterday about Labour, and the same applies to the Conservatives. The combined vote share of Labour and the Conservatives was over eighty per cent in 2017. Today, it’s around forty per cent. Both parties should expect to lose a lot of seats.

Assumption: Things can change. A new Prime Minister, announced in the week commencing July 22nd, has a brief chance of a reset. Maybe there’s a wave of support coming on that basis. Maybe there’s a bounce in the polls. Maybe. If that happens, I’ll assess things again.

For Labour, their choice revolves around whether they support a second referendum and campaign to Remain. For the Conservatives, their choice appears to be either a) muscle a deal with the EU over the line between now and October 31st or b) advocate and implement No Deal. The Tory leadership campaign has effectively removed the prospect of a further extension after October 31st. Setting aside how realistic either prospect is, what do we know about the party’s current standing?

Firstly, as things stand (and they could change!) the party is on course to lose up to two hundred seats at the next general election. Today’s polling has the Brexit Party at twenty-three per cent; the Lib Dems at twenty-one; Labour and the Conservatives on twenty apiece. It should expect to lose around fifty seats to the Lib Dems, almost all of its seats in Scotland and well over a hundred seats to the Brexit Party. There aren’t any “gains”. This is what happens when you’re competing for fourth in the national polling. My own view is that the losses to the Lib Dems are more worrying, given that they effectively strengthen the Remain coalition in the next parliament. There isn’t any path to a majority when you’re on twenty per cent in the polls so that matters.

Secondly, like Labour, the party will need to re-define what constitutes a “marginal” seat. Seats which have majorities of below say 2,000, and which the party could ordinarily be expected to target, simply aren’t marginal any more if you’re fourth in the polling on twenty per cent. As with Labour, the Conservatives will need to move their strategy to one purely based on defence. It could all change of course, but as things stand the Conservatives will be losing seats with majorities of up to 10,000. It would be a peculiar investment decision to resource marginal target seats which the party knows it can’t win whilst losing seats with majorities of around 5,000.

Thirdly, the above calculations should demonstrate how unlikely it is for any party to win a majority at the next general election. We currently have four parties at around twenty per cent together with the SNP continuing to dominate in Scotland. I hesitate to use the term “four-party politics” as it effectively removes the likes of the SNP and Plaid from discussion, which I don’t like. But the point stands. No matter how one tunes the projections for the next general election, nobody ever gets a majority. The Conservatives lose more seats to the Brexit Party but many to the Lib Dems and SNP. The net effect doesn’t give the Leave coalition in parliament any advantage. In fact thing remain the same for both Remain and Leave coalitions. Nobody will be able to get anything through parliament.

All of which means the Conservatives face the same fate as Labour, only from a different perspective. At present (and things may change) they face losing a LOT of seats and the best hope they have is being the largest party in a coalition. However, there’s a problem; as things stand the Brexit Party would be a larger party than them after the next general election. The party knows this; the leadership campaign has shown us all how gravely they view such a prospect.

But here’s the rub. The more they appease the Brexit Party, the further losses they incur to Labour and the Lib Dems. Whatever they retain with one hand is taken from their other hand. Meaning the effective balance of the House changes little, but results in the party disappearing further down a No Deal vortex of its own making. Only half of the Conservative’s current voters , and a half of its 2017 vote, favour a No Deal scenario. So a half of a half favour No Deal. Around ninety per cent of Brexit Party supporters do.

Let’s assume they claw back some Brexit Party supporters with this approach. The worry is that in doing so the party straps itself to a strategic white whale, unable to loose itself. We know that Conservatives and Brexit Party supporters feel much more strongly about Brexit than supporters from the other parties. They won’t allow the party to move on to any other issue. Equally, the voters they have lost in the process will only hear the maniacal screams of Ahab. No Deal is the last thing we hear before the whale disappears with the party on its back.

I have written extensively about how the Conservatives are losing to the Lib Dems across the south of England. There are around two million Tory Remainers across the south. At the same time, a million people have left London in the last five years, many of which have settled in commuter towns across the south. Sixty per cent of those vote Lib Dem or Labour. London has effectively served as a clearing house for young people to be activated against the Conservatives; voters which then spill out across the south and take their votes with them. No Deal is a toxic emblem to those voters, a reminder of what’s under threat. Local, European and national elections reflect exactly how motivated they are to push back against this threat. That won’t change with Mr Johnson advocating a No Deal outcome.

Note: Look, a lot can change. It probably will. I’m working with current positions and projecting forward. Keep that in mind.