William Prescott is a researcher at Bright Blue.
Amidst the smouldering electoral wreckage of the 14-year-old Conservative Government, shell-shocked survivors could be forgiven for thinking that all is lost. Yet, as the Tory recovery between 1945 and 1951 shows, there is a way back – and it could happen faster than expected.
As with this election’s result, the Tories’ electoral reversal in 1945 was deeply painful. From 432 seats at the 1935 general election, the Conservatives and their allies crashed to just 213 seats in 1945 (a cross-party agreement that it was too difficult to conduct an election during wartime had resulted in an unusually long parliamentary term).
Reflecting the depressed mood Henry Channon, diarist and backbench MP, emerged from a 1922 Committee meeting shortly after the poll “fearing that the Tory party was definitely dead”.
Like today’s Conservative Party, the Conservatives in 1945, whose time in office spanned the Great Depression, appeasement and the Second World War, were – not always fairly – blamed for all that had gone wrong. A poor election campaign only made things worse.
During its time in power, the Attlee Government that replaced the Tories in 1945 implemented significant economic and social changes. These included the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) and implementing the Beveridge Report’s recommendations on universal sickness, unemployment and pension benefits, which laid the foundations for the UK’s social security system for decades to come.
Further, Labour’s nationalisation programme brought around a fifth of the British economy under central government control.
The 1945-51 Labour Government is still regarded as one of the most consequential administrations in British political history. Despite all this, within just six years of their electoral humiliation the Conservatives returned to power at the 1951 general election, with a modest but workable 17-seat majority. They would remain in office until 1964.
There were three reasons behind the Conservative turnaround.
First, by emphasising their moderate credentials, the Conservatives managed to de-toxify a brand tarnished by popular memories of the Great Depression, appeasement and outbreak of war. In policy documents like the famous Industrial Charter, the Conservatives demonstrated to voters that they could be trusted to manage the newly expanded welfare state.
Such rhetorical accommodation did not mean that the Conservatives had to abandon core beliefs – indeed, the Conservative Party of 1951 was ideologically much closer to the Conservative Party of 1945 than would have been politically sensible to admit. Much of the preparatory work for the Attlee Government’s social security legislation, for example, had already been carried out by the wartime Conservative/Labour coalition government.
Second, the Conservatives were pragmatic about picking their battles. For example, they consistently opposed the Attlee Government’s nationalisation programme. However, while continuously opposing what Labour had done, and pledging to stop further nationalisation measures, Conservatives also pledged to leave most Labour nationalisation measures intact upon taking power.
This was not out of cowardice, but because widespread denationalisation would have been politically costly and made the Tories seem reactionary.
The one notable occasion where Conservatives let ideology cloud their political judgment – the decision to oppose the legislation establishing the NHS – the damage was considerable.
Unhappy with the nationalisation of the voluntary hospitals and encouraged by the British Medical Association’s implacable opposition to the new health service, the Conservatives found themselves in the muddled position where they claimed to support the principles behind the NHS but not the way Labour was going about it. Arguably, the Conservatives have paid the price for this political miscalculation ever since.
Third, the Conservatives shrewdly exploited voter weariness around key cost-of-living concerns. Like Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Government today, Attlee’s came into a difficult economic inheritance, plagued by post-war shortages, currency crises, and a growing welfare bill.
As voters became increasingly frustrated with Labour’s reluctance to end rationing and wartime controls, as well as its inability to build enough houses, the Tories seized the chance to make a positive case for change.
Pledges to improve voter living standards were key to reconnecting with voters. For example, the pledge to build 300,000 new homes per year, recycled in the 2019 Conservative manifesto, first emerged at the 1950 Conservative Party Conference and featured in the 1951 manifesto.
Combined with promises to abolish rationing while committing to maintain the new social services, this brought the Conservatives to within a whisker of power at the 1950 general election, and nudged them over the line the following year.
At this painful moment for the Conservative Party, it is critical to place last night’s defeat in its historical perspective. By recognising that the Party has been here before, and by taking sensible policy positions, it can potentially avoid the long spell in opposition that some now fear.
