It is nearly twenty years since I published Smell the Coffee: A Wake-Up Call for the Conservative Party. Eight years after the 1997 landslide, my first foray into political polling aimed to show why the Tories kept losing elections. One of the most important findings was that the they had still not learned the lessons that should have followed their ejection from office.
The party now finds itself in the same – in fact, a considerably worse – position. Having lost half its vote and two thirds of its MPs, and facing not only a huge Labour majority but an insurgent competitor on what should be its own territory, it has nothing like another eight years to get to grips with what happened on 4 July. To approach any kind of recovery, Conservatives will need to understand and accept why they lost not just the election but the reputation for competent government that was once the fundamental basis of their appeal.
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