Tory negativity will not win the election – but it might close the gap

All the Conservative Party will offer in this campaign is a remorseless diet of brutal negativity for six weeks. It will make for a depressing spectacle but there is no alternative.

They are trailing by 20 points, their party brand is worthless and their leader has been widely written off as a lightweight with no leadership abilities.

Meanwhile, on their watch, many find it impossible to get a GP appointment, people have been battered for months by high inflation, legal immigration has rocketed and small boats arrive endlessly.

They have no record and selling a positive vision for a happy future will not work. They will surely just pile into Sir Keir Starmer.

Sir Keir is a mainstream politician and an obviously decent man. But politics is a rough old business and he will be ready for the onslaught. Where will the Conservatives start?

Outlandish claims about Sir Keir’s record as director of Public Prosecutions will look absurdly political and fall flat. The Party will see better targets.

Most importantly, they will claim Sir Keir lacks substance. This is what swing voters themselves have been saying for years in focus groups. Since the earliest days of Covid, people have accused Sir Keir of just moaning, never offering alternative policies.

Such an attack could pay off in two ways. Firstly, showing voters will be taking a giant leap in the dark; they cannot know what Sir Keir’s Labour will do in Government if he has not been clear about his plans in advance.

Secondly, by allowing them to claim personal weakness. If a prospective prime minister does not have a plan it must be, the Conservatives will argue, because he is weak; it is because he does not actually know his own mind. Against a backdrop of looming threats, this carries weight.

This is a low-risk/high-reward option for the Conservatives. The chances are, whatever Sir Keir announces, the Conservatives will claim things are not clear enough. If Sir Keir lays out more details, Tories will have more options to pick them apart.

The next big likely Conservative target will be those issues they know motivate their recent voters and where Labour have historically struggled – namely, immigration, taxes and crime.

On these, the Tories have a lamentable record. But given they are heading out of power, they can make huge commitments on all three areas knowing Labour will not be able to match them – either because they know they will be on the hook for imminent delivery, or because their Left-wing base will not tolerate similar policies.

Rishi Sunak will be looking – in these areas above all – to argue the “same old Labour Party” cannot be trusted.

Finally, the Conservatives will be looking to hit Sir Keir on “values”. Immigration, crime and taxes are part of this to a point; they will be wanting to argue that Sir Keir is emphatically not “on your side”.

We should not be surprised if the Conservatives inch into “culture war” territory. This has barely troubled voters at all to date, but the objective will not necessarily be to light the public up on issues of common interest; rather, it will be to suggest Labour’s values are way out of line with ordinary British people’s values.

This will all likely form the Tories’ visible attacks on Labour through the media. Below the radar, direct to voters online, their attacks will likely be more brutal and more targeted.

Their data on what specific voter groups care about will allow them to create online ads designed perfectly to irritate, anger and scare those thinking about voting Labour. These could change a hundred times during the campaign, as they take no time to put together.

Negativity will not be enough to win, far from it; but it might help close the gap. Given the Tories are now purely in damage limitation territory, there is still a lot to play for.

James Frayne is a founding partner of Public First, the policy research agency