From dominance to decline: can the Tory Party survive?

The UK Conservative Party (Tory Party) suffered its worst-ever defeat in 2025. The Tory Party has been around since 1681, and this was its worst result both in terms of share of the vote and number of Members of Parliament. Can the party survive?

The Conservatives came back from a disastrous defeat in 1997. That was 31% of the vote and 165 seats. That seems almost rosy compared to the 2025 result, where the party won 24% of the vote and 121 seats. Just because the Conservative Party revived after a heavy reverse in the 1990s does not guarantee that it will do so again. The party is not immortal. Every party has a beginning and an end. The Tory Party may well be approaching its end.

Opinion polls consistently show that Reform United Kingdom is the most popular party in the country. Reform UK hovers around 30% in the opinion polls. There are 650 seats in the House of Commons. Therefore, the magic number is 326 – with that many seats, a party has a majority. The most optimistic scenario for Reform UK shows the party winning significantly below 326 MPs. Reform UK could be a minority government or possibly seek a coalition with the Conservatives. The Conservatives say they would never coalesce with Reform UK.

There will be some Conservatives who say that they should form a coalition government with Reform UK or at least offer them confidence and supply. That would keep out a leftist coalition. But it is likely that the party’s high command would consider assisting Reform UK to be their death knell.

Labour is second in the opinion polls. It is the ruling party in the United Kingdom. Labour’s honeymoon was very short and not so sweet. Labour has wrecked things for itself in record time.

Worryingly for the Conservative Party, it is third in the opinion polls. The projections are for it to be reduced to well under 100 MPs. The party dominated British politics for over 200 years. Never before has the party persistently come third in the opinion polls. There are crumbs of comfort. The Conservative Party is not far behind Labour.

Why has the Tory Party declined so vertiginously? There are several reasons for this. Here they are in no particular order.

Tory chaos – that was Labour’s mantra in the 2025 election. There were five Conservative Prime Ministers in 14 years. It was all fairly stable until 2016, after which the party began changing leaders every 18 months on average. Liz Truss lasted a record 49 days.

Liz Truss introduced a too-clever-by-half economic plan. She would slash taxes, and this would cause the economy to grow so fast that it would mean the government gained more revenue and this would pay for the tax cuts. It was an ingenious plan – except that it was a catastrophe. Within 28 days, the economy had suffered so badly that she was obliged to perform a volte-face. The pound had lost value, thousands of pounds were wiped off people’s pensions, inflation had increased, the markets were spooked, the cost of borrowing had gone up, the consumer feel-good factor had evaporated, and business confidence had fallen. The United Kingdom is still paying the price for her premiership three years later.

The Conservative Party has always been reliant on older people. Being small “c” conservative is being old-fashioned, traditional and circumspect. Older people tend to be like this. As people age, they usually become more conservative in both the political and non-political senses. But the Tory Party is now geriatric. In 2019, the Tories won because the age at which one becomes more likely to vote Tory than Labour was 47. That age is now 60. Of course, there are far more people below 60 than there are over 60. Among voters in the 18–24 cohort, only 8% voted Tory in 2025.

Ethnic minorities are less inclined to vote Conservative than white Britons. Non-whites are 20% of the population, and non-white communities are growing. Their anti-Conservatism is partly because non-whites are disproportionately young and urban. Youngsters and urbanites tend to be anti-Conservative voters. The left’s constant refrain is “Tory racist”, and this has duped some people.

There were many failures in the Conservative Government 2010–25. Economic growth was slow, and there was 10% inflation at one point. The COVID lockdowns were too long and too severe. National debt as a percentage of GDP was 20% in 2000. It is now 95%. The National Health Service has gotten much worse with very long waiting lists. Public sector workers’ pay is such that, in real terms, it is seriously below what it was before the 2008 credit crunch. There were strikes by doctors, nurses, teachers, civil servants and others.

Train fares are among the highest in the world, and the service is mediocre. There is atrocious behaviour in schools. Many teachers leave the profession. There are British schools in almost every country in the world. British teachers can very easily find more remunerative work overseas. The government has hugely increased the size of the civil service, and yet productivity is down. The Tories are supposed to be the party of small government. Yet it was this party that increased the size of the state.

The conduct of some Conservative Party figures was disgraceful. Boris Johnson was Prime Minister during 2019–22 and was notorious for his pathological lying. He also attended a party while in the strictest lockdown. Johnson was an incompetent oaf. He was expelled from the House of Commons for unethical conduct. He is said to harbour ambitions to come back.

The Conservatives are seen as only caring about the affluent. It taxed the super-rich as little as possible. Austerity fell on the shoulders of the less wealthy. Fees for home students at university rose from £3,000 to £9,000 under the Tories. There was no commensurate rise in the quality of the education provided.

The Conservatives began espousing a leftist ideology. Even the current leader of the party says the party “talked right and acted left”. Under the party, schools started to indoctrinate children in anti-patriotic beliefs. Children in a London school protested that the British flag was flown at their school. It was taken down. It is unimaginable that this would happen in any other country. The party attacked civil liberty with its ‘Prevent’ strategy, whereby teachers were obliged to report children to the police if the children expressed anti-establishment views. Teachers could be banned from teaching for professing so-called ‘extremist’ views, such as wanting to defend children in the womb.

Johnson famously “got Brexit done”. The United Kingdom left the European Union in 2020, three and a half years after a ballot box decision to do so. The benefits have been slight, and the disbenefits have been noticeable. The trade deals that the UK has signed since leaving the EU have not been manifestly more advantageous than those that went before.

The party long said it favoured controlled immigration. David Cameron infamously vowed to get it down to under 100,000 a year. Yet under the party, immigration rose to net 800,000 per annum – in a country of 70 million souls. Legal immigration was excessive, but illegal immigration soared. Rishi Sunak said he would “stop the boats” – people crossing the English Channel illegally. The Rwanda plan to send illegals to Rwanda never got off the ground despite costing hundreds of millions of pounds.

In summary, the Conservative Party failed to deliver on its promises. It grossly underperformed.

The future

Reform UK has now stolen the Conservatives’ clothes. It stands for the most successful Conservative policies but does not endorse the failed ones. Reform UK is anti-elite, anti-intellectual and espouses economic populism. It is unburdened by the prejudices held against the Tory Party. The Tories are seen as rich, white, southern English, rural, selfish and out of touch. Former Tory MPs have defected to Reform UK.

The Conservatives will come second at best in the next election, expected in 2028. More likely, the Tories will come third and win about 90 seats. The party always exceeds opinion poll expectations.

Reform UK has won some local councils and mayoralties in 2025. The party is already struggling to implement its programme. It has a lot of inexperienced and hotheaded politicians. People are falling out with its egotistical leader, Nigel Farage. Farage is the British Trump. If he becomes Prime Minister in 2028, his party will probably form a minority and quickly implode. All that does not mean that the Conservative Party will come back as a governing party soon. The Tories will have to wait for 10 years – and probably more like 20 years – before they will win an election.