This Tory election campaign is all about the vibes

In 2024, even a general election can be more about signals than substance.

The U.K. Conservative Party launched its election manifesto Tuesday with a litany of eye-catching pledges designed to stir up support among its elderly base.

National service for teenagers, tax cuts for pensioners, and a clampdown on liberal gender rules were among the headline-grabbing announcements that had already been deployed in the first crucial weeks of the Tory campaign. 

It worked well — if the aim had been to make people angry online, and to give commentators a reason to bicker. 

The 80-page manifesto added an array of further tax cuts to keep the right wing of the Tory party happy, funded by promises of big cuts to welfare spending and civil service bureaucracy.

But beneath the surface, the pledges were more about sending signals than transforming a nation.

Analysts said that for many Brits, the headline-grabbing tax cuts would be offset by stealth rises in income tax thresholds. The welfare cuts sounded tough — but it was never specified where the ax would fall.

There were vague promises to ensure parents know what children are being taught in sex education classes — though critics say that’s already the case — and the eye-catching pledge of an overall cap on immigration … but with no hint of the level at which it would be set.

Sunak then used his launch speech to attack “eco-zealotry,” while maintaining the Tory commitment to reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. He also talked tough on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights — long hated by the right — without actually promising to do so.

The PM’s strategy is to hold his fracturing party together while trying to shore up support on his exposed right flank, now under attack from Nigel Farage and his upstart Reform UK party.

And so signals are sent, culture wars stoked, and TikToks made.

Bad vibes

Privately, few Tories seem convinced by the strategy. 

A former Cabinet minister, speaking anonymously like others in this article to allow them to be candid, told POLITICO: “This really confirms we are into shoring up our vote and staying in our comfort zone. This is not 2010 or 2015” — elections where the Tories gained new seats from their opponents.

Data suggests a reliance on cultural signaling will not flip the Tories’ extraordinary 20-plus point poll deficit. | Pool photo by Phil Noble via AFP/Getty Images

Right-wing Tories, meanwhile, complain that Sunak had not gone far enough — that mere signals are insufficient when Farage is making bold (if potentially undeliverable) promises about “net-zero immigration.” One prominent figure on the Tory right called the manifesto “meek and mild.”

Certainly, data suggests a reliance on cultural signaling will not flip the Tories’ extraordinary 20-plus point poll deficit.

Research by Savanta shared with POLITICO ranked the importance of various issues to voters, with respondents ranking culture war issues — such as gender identity, free speech and attitudes to Britain’s colonial past — at the very bottom of the pile.

Only 11 percent of people said these were top-five issues, while merely one percent ranked them as the most important issues informing their election choices.

The data found that people care most about the cost of living, followed by the environment and then foreign policy. 

Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s manifesto launch, Conservative Home’s Henry Hill said the party is hamstrung by its checkered record in power.

“The problem the government has now is that pretty much no matter what wing of the Conservative Party you’re on, the last 14 years have been a disappointment,” he said. 

“If you want low taxes, taxes are high. If you wanted to stay in the European Union, we left. If you wanted to leave the European Union, we haven’t really done anything yet with leaving the European Union. We haven’t struck all those trade deals and so on.

“The housing crisis has got worse. We haven’t reformed the tax system. We haven’t culled the quangocracy — you can pick almost anything on the kind of Tory bingo card, and the government hasn’t really made any progress.”

Broad church

But it’s not all angry tweets and whispered complaints.

Some Tory candidates pointed to clear pledges such as a cut in stamp duty for first-time buyers, a promise of 100,000 new apprenticeships, and a ban on the use of mobile phones in schools.

One supportive Conservative said it was “logical” and ” wise” for Sunak to “use this election to reaffirm the wider modern Conservative values with a manifesto that not only binds our broad church together, but appeals well beyond our base to the wider electorate.”

Others made the point that their Labour opponents’ policy platform is also paper-thin. 

Labour’s own manifesto launch, expected on Thursday, is unlikely to be stuffed with concrete proposals. Riding high in the polls, Labour Leader Keir Starmer has already told his party not to expect any big surprises.

Losing the war

The problem for Sunak is that it is he who must change the current narrative, with every opinion poll showing his party crashing to defeat.

Ironically, with few people having even tuned into the election campaign, it is Sunak who has delivered the one moment of cultural cut-through, with a disastrous unforced error last week.

The PM was roundly criticized — and eventually forced to apologize — after travelling to France for a D-Day commemoration, only to leave early to give a TV interview.

The gaffe infuriated the very voters he is trying to keep onside, and left journalists with a sharp knife with which to jab him at every subsequent interview. 

If this is the culture war campaign, Sunak may have already lost on his own terms.

Esther Webber and Emilio Casalicchio provided additional reporting.