Rishi Sunak has doomed the Conservative party. He must own his failure

When Rishi Sunak called this election three weeks ago, his logic appeared to be that he could bring the one in ten voters that intended to vote Reform across to the Tories. Boris Johnson did it in 2019, pushing the Brexit Party down from around 13 per cent before the election was called to just 2 per cent. Theresa May did it in 2017, when Paul Nuttall’s UKIP went from 10 per cent in the polls to 2 per cent come election day.

Sunak has comprehensively failed to repeat the trick. The return of Farage, more popular off the back of his stint in the Australian jungle, has locked Reform voters in and brought more on board. Though they are some way off catching the Conservatives in the latest J.L. Partners poll, they are on 18 per cent, up six points in two weeks and their best performance yet. They are cannibalising the Tory vote, with one in four voters who backed Boris Johnson in 2019 now voting Reform.

Farage was key in locking these voters in: he is twice as popular than Sunak with 2019 Conservative voters, is seen as the most charismatic leader in British politics and the politician most likely to tell it how it is. He beats Sunak on every metric bar “gets things done” and “competent”. The most cited reason voters gave for changing their mind in the last week is Reform and Nigel Farage, well ahead of the manifestos or live TV debates.

That should not lift the blame from Sunak. His approval ratings are now at their lowest ever level. The two most salient stories from the last week – continued fallout over D-Day and Rishi Sunak’s revelation that he had to give up Sky TV as a child – are personal failures of the prime minister.

None of this was inevitable: in the early days there was genuine goodwill towards Sunak from the public. But from day one of his premiership, he has dithered when he should have been decisive. He has lurched from one strategy to another with petulant impatience, failing to see anything through.

Bold policies have died at his door, engulfed in detail and deliberation. He has thrown himself in front of voters with the grinning confidence of a political icon when he is the most unpopular man in the country. He has wrestled campaign strategy away from experts to insist on his own tin-eared instincts. He has failed to understand and address the pressure the Tories faced on the electoral Right.

For the many Conservatives who trusted he would have the dynamism to rehabilitate the Tories, he has been a miserable disappointment. It is a personal failure he must and will own.

Between now and July 4, Reform could either continue to grow or its vote could tick down. The case for the former path is that one in three current Tories, and one in four current Labour voters say they could yet vote for Farage’s party. The case for the latter is that the Tory line about the risks of a Labour landslide could move some Reform voters back to their fold.

My instinct is we are more likely to see the Reform vote closer to 10 per cent than 20 per cent. But whatever route, I see no chance of the Conservatives squeezing Reform down to anything like the levels that Boris Johnson and Theresa May managed.

After the election the Conservatives are on course to face a problem worse than Labour did in the wake of 2019: massive alienation between their party and the working-class, socially conservative people who make up the bulk of voters in the country. They are too electorally significant to be dismissed. A tack to the centre to try and pursue the Liberal Democrats will be dead on arrival.

The least understood thing in British politics is that the seats won through Cameroon triangulation, like Battersea and Brighton Kemptown, were lost to Labour seven years ago and are not coming back. The Tory future lies with small-c conservative voters. Whatever happens with Farage himself, the Conservative Party will need leaders who think more like him than think like Rishi Sunak or David Cameron.

For now, the Tories are staring down the barrel. Their best hope for the next two weeks is to focus fire on the prospect of a landslide and the consequences of a “Labour unleashed”.

It will not be enough to avert disaster. Nigel Farage ate the Tory lunch after Rishi Sunak handed it to him on a plate. The man who will feast on the consequences is Keir Starmer.