However badly Boris Johnson’s government performs, it will continue to benefit from older voters’ desire for certainty
As Conservatives return home from their annual conference, they have good reasons to feel cheerful. Their national insurance increase on workers, empty shelves and involuntary conga lines at garage forecourts have barely dented their polling. The latest YouGov survey, reporting on Thursday morning, put them on 39% against Labour’s 31%. Clearly, something remarkable is going on.
No matter what is thrown at the Tories and what they throw at us, their lead remains constant. It’s almost the new normal. So how are we to understand their seemingly permanent polling leads? Is it because they match up with the interests of the majority of voters? Have millions of people – mainly former Labour voters – embraced the Conservative party’s war on woke, its authoritarianism and its gutting of welfare provision?
Dr Phil Burton-Cartledge is course director for Law and Social Sciences at the University of Derby and author of Falling Down: The Conservative Party and the Decline of Tory Britain.