The British election is becoming an episode of mob justice 

The Conservative Party is deeply unpopular. That is a simple point, but one still often missed. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, enjoys an approval rating that matches Sir John Major’s at his mid-1990s nadir, when the party was on the cusp of a historic defeat at the hands of Sir Tony Blair. The Conservatives enjoy an average poll rating of 23—about 20 points behind the Labour Party. It is a decent score for a third party; it is a cataclysmically awful one for a party of government. Polls may narrow, say pathologically nervous Labour advisers and desperate Conservative ones. Equally, they may widen.

Every so often politics is more about punishment than policy. Sir Tony recognised as much when recalling his 1997 election victory. “Once the mood had turned from the government and embraced us, the mood was merciless in its pursuit, indifferent to anything other than satisfying itself.” Sometimes voters are judicious electors seeking a government. Sometimes they are nothing more than a mob seeking revenge.

In 2024 every genre of voter has a reason to be angry. Liberal voters are livid that their world has crumbled. The rise of centrist reactionaries has been perhaps the most consequential political trend of the past decade, with Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016 being the moment of radicalisation. Being proved right about Brexit—that it was a pointless, painful blunder—is not enough for these voters. Dragging Britain back into the European club is a long-term project. Battering the party that was responsible is a necessary first step.

Politics now has a visceral edge. The Liberal Democrats have put sewage at the heart of their campaign. Incomprehensibly large numbers are bandied about. Did you know that 14bn litres of sewage were dumped in the Thames last year? But stripped down, the argument is simple. Vile Conservatives are pumping sewage into Britain’s rivers and seas. That Britain’s waterways are, if anything, cleaner than they were in the 1990s is irrelevant. In the political imagination, there is shit in the water and the Conservatives are to blame. Electoral disgust is the only option in such a world.

Anger among one-time Conservative voters comes in two forms. One is the rage of first-time voters who feel like schmucks for being taken in by Boris Johnson’s pledge in 2019 to lavish attention and cash on forgotten corners of England. Those with more pungent right-wing views are furious that rather than cut taxes and cut immigration, the Conservatives have increased taxes and overseen gigantic inflows of people. “Zero seats” is their cry. If both these types of voters stay at home on July 4th, the party truly is toast. Being a bystander to a beating is akin to joining it.

Even Labour, usually so ineffectual, has become ruthless. The Conservatives have been in power so long because Labour spent years arguing with itself rather than preparing for office. Internecine conflict trumped the constitutional duty of providing a viable alternative government. Today Labourites have fallen in behind Sir Keir Starmer even though the only clear purpose is the hollow one of gaining power. Better ensure it is a hammering to make the moral compromise worthwhile.

Younger voters have good reason to grab their pitchforks, too. However badly Labour is thought to treat young people, such as by reducing its green spending plans, the Conservatives treat them worse. If a Tory government is re-elected, pensioners will receive tax breaks to ensure their un-means-tested benefits are free from tax; younger voters will be offered the prospect of national service. The Tories are operating a “Get The Vote Out” strategy that is aimed squarely at incentivising their opponent’s voters, who face compulsory unpaid work on a weekend or bayoneting sandbags unless they join in the beating.

Mr Sunak is a perfect victim for an electoral mob on the hunt for political catharsis. The prime minister is unimaginably rich and has succeeded at every point in his life. At times he has the air of someone for whom two years of being prime minister are simply another achievement to put on a LinkedIn profile. If Mr Sunak does lead his party to historic defeat, nip into a helicopter and emerge in a well-paid job in California, contempt will follow. It will be a case of exile rather than sunny retirement.

Faced with a punishment beating, the Conservatives are doing the political equivalent of crawling into a ball. National service is just one of a glut of measures designed to please their base. The revival of grammar schools, selective state schools that are another perpetual Tory pipedream, is surely next. This is politics at its most desperate, no more a programme for the government than posting a picture of some Spitfires on Facebook with the caption: “The clocks go back this weekend so I’m setting mine to 1940 when this country had some bollocks!”

Mob justice may not be pleasant but it is a vital, even healthy, part of British electoral politics. A party must be pummelled until it is reshaped into a more acceptable form. If need be, a party can sit broken and useless on the sidelines for a decade. As the Conservatives found in the late 1990s and 2000s, and Labour discovered in the decade after 2010, electoral beatings continue until the voters’ rage is properly spent.

In truth, voters are seeking redemption as much as revenge. Everything that voters now abhor, they once asked for. Whether it was cutting public services sharply, or leaving the eu, or the spectacle of Mr Johnson leading a country through a national crisis, some sense of shared guilt is justified. In 2024 the punishment beating that the Conservatives face from the electorate can also be explained by projection. If voters are angry at anyone, they should first be angry at themselves. ■