By Rob Woodward: We all know the Conservative party of Gt. Britain is electorally in big trouble. The latest polls all reach the same conclusion – it will be a wipeout. Many political commentators will remind you that politics is not that simple – ‘remember John Major, ‘ they will recount. Back in 1992, the Tories had been in power for 13 years – the same as they have been for the last 13 years. Margaret Thatcher was deeply unpopular and by 1990 was famously ousted by her own party, a party divided by the European Union. Ring a bell?

John Major arrived at No10 Downing Street and was more popular than the Tory party itself. Thatcher was still bitterly resentful, and Tory divisions over Europe still bubbled away under the surface. These issues would cause problems later. Ring another bell?

At that time, the Labour party had transformed itself and had reversed its position on key issues: it supported Europe and appeared far slicker than it had once looked. The party now had a red rose as its symbol and seemed much more united than it had once been. At the time, Labour was ahead in the polls, and Major was widely expected to lose the election. The bells of history are now clanging!

However, the shock was – Major didn’t lose. But in the next election, the Tories will lose, and they will lose bigtime.

It is not just that the Tory party is now just a scandal magnet. From the 2016 EU referendum, the Tories have been accused of:

• Unlawful campaigning in the 2016 EU referendum, including allegations of Russian interference in the Brexit campaign. This, along with the Cambridge Analytica and Leave.EU scandals involving the illegal use of private citizens’ data for propaganda targeting.

• Widespread sexual misconduct, bullying and intimidation

• Wrongly treating, detaining and deporting people in the Windrush scandal.

• Jeremy Hunt (now chancellor) breaching anti-money laundering legislation along with another Chancellor – Nadhim Zahawi – this time for his ‘tax affairs’.

• The egregious abuse of office by Boris Johnson, which is too long to list here – but not least lying to the Queen, parliament, the public and proroguing parliament.

• Cronyism, nepotism and corruption on a scale now calculated to be worse than at any time in the last 100 years.

• Multiple accounts of breaching ministerial misconduct codes

 

The above is a very small list of the most scandal-ridden ten-year period in British politics. It doesn’t include the 49-day period of ‘Trussonomics’ that turned into an economic suicide mission – which we are all paying for today.

And yet – it won’t be centre-left and floating voters who will see off the Tories next time around – it will be my mum who will see off the stench of failure.

My mum is a lifelong Tory supporter. At nearly 90 years of age, she has never wavered. She never doubted the Conservative party in all that time. Through thick and thin, the good and bad times – my mum has been right behind them. My mum has voted for the Conservative party since the days of Anthony Eden in 1955. Her heroes are Churchill and Thatcher. In her time, the Conservative party disastrously caused the Suez Canal crisis that ended with the global reserve currency transferring from the UK to America. Then there was the Profumo affair, the Westland affair, the arms to Iraq scandal and cash-for-questions to name a few scandals of the time. But my mum waved away those failures as if they weren’t important when taking a wider view of the world. She was a child of the war years. So she loyally stuck with the Conservative party.

But not now. I knew something was up when my mum announced she was cancelling the Daily Mail. Two weeks later, she declared that she likes Keir Starmer and will vote for him at the next election. It is clear my mum thinks the Conservative party are dreadful in everything they have done to the country. Deep down, I suspect that she now regrets voting for Brexit and because it has been repeatedly exposed as a lie – that she is having to admit she was wrong. I think she knows that in the fullness of time, Brexit will never bring any real benefits and will make matters continually and materially worse for not just the country – but for her own family, especially the grandchildren.

My mum hates reading about the immorality of people like Boris Johnson, who she voted for.

Boris Johnson has been accused of paying for sex with taxpayers’ money in the Jennifer Arcuri scandal. But this was nothing compared to what he subsequently brought to politics more widely. Every day, the scandal magnet that is now the Tory party embarrasses my mum, and she has decided enough is enough.

This is why the Tory party is all but finished. They will be defeated heavily for several reasons. At the next election, voter apathy will not help the Tories. Public anger has reached fever pitch, and they will want revenge. Evidenced and continual failure is a strong reason why floating voters (about half of the electorate) will look towards Keir Starmer, a former public prosecutor, to bring back economic and political stability. And then there’s the desertion of the huge numbers of loyal Tory voters, like my mum, who do not want to leave a legacy of devastation by voting for a party that has lost its way morally, ethically, politically and economically.

If I’m honest, I’m quite surprised that public anger over Britain’s declining economy (now not only expected to do worse than all of its peer nations but globally-sanctioned Russia as well) – and failing public health system has not yet caused mass street protests. In part, I suspect this is because the Tory party have all but outlawed it – and law-abiding citizens do not want to be caught up in anything deemed illegal.  But then again – isn’t that also part of the problem in our once great and much-admired country? The balance of power should sway heavily in favour of the people, not charlatans milking the country for every last drop before they are evicted from office like some third-world country on the brink of failure.

My mum and much of her demographic have seen the light on this version of Conservatism. It’s not something they recognise at all. They are appalled, and they are turning their backs on the stench being emitted from the corridors of power. They will, for the first time, hold their noses, go against their own ideological principles and vote either Labour or tactically. And with that, this version of Conservatism will implode – literally. It will be my Mum’s finest hour because she will have fought them in the polling booths to restore what is right and see off threats to our way of life. After all, they’ve done it before.