The Conservative Party has been in steady decline since the Second World War, as the graph below depicting the Conservative share of the vote since the turn of last century shows.
It may be a little early in the week for a graph but this one is particularly cheering.
There has been a lot of talk since the death of Margaret Thatcher last week about the state she left the Tory party in – divided over Europe, unable to adapt to multicultural Britain and, ultimately, unelectable.
In an example of one of the many articles on the topic, the Economist summed things up when it spoke of how “troublesome Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is to a party that has won only one thin majority since she was bounced from power in 1990”.
If only the Tories’ problems were this straightforward.
In reality the party has been in a long and steady decline since the Second World War, as the graph below depicting the Conservative share of the vote since the turn of last century shows.
Add to this the fact that, when in office the Conservative Party has only increased its share of the vote once since 1945 – from 48 per cent in 1951 to 49.7 per cent in 1955. The 2010 general election was also the fourth election in a row that the Conservative party has failed to win a parliamentary majority.
It’s clearly not the legacy of Maggie that’s the problem for the Tories.
23 Responses to “Thatcher didn’t destroy the Tories. They were already a party in decline”
micklikeariot
the more I read this the more it makes me angry. It has just randomly picked data to make its point sound credible. Shall we do the same? OK – plot a graph of the Labour share of the vote since, and including, ’97. That’s 43% down to 29% of the vote over 13 years and 4 elections. Terminal decline?? Who knows?
Without looking too much into all the figures (just like the author of this article) its hard to tell but my hypothesis would be that both of the main two parties are witnessing a decline since the mid last century. Looking at the graphs you would probably attribute this to the rise of the liberals. But that’s just an independent, un-biased, rational look at the figures. Who’d want to read that?
Paul Hilton
All the major parties are getting fewer votes. The number (or at least the percentage) of people bothering to vote has fallen vastly over the last few decades. If anyone from one of the major parties wants to know the reason for this decline, all they have to do is look in the mirror.
Cole
Both the Labour and Tory vote has broadly been in decline since 1951, the height of the two party system. This trend may go into reverse in 2015 if, as expected, the LibDem vote collapses from the 23% it got in 2010. The other wild card is the UKIP vote in a general election.
SadButMadLad
Either James Bloodworth is deliberately twisting the stats just like a down market tabloid to whip up a frenzy in Labour supporters, or he is just a stupid and doesn’t understand stats. Well in fact, he’s not even using anything related to statistical analysis. He’s just joining to arbitrary points in time with a straight line. What the comments are showing is that Labour supporters are not stupid, just James.
robertcp
I mostly agree but the fall in the Tory vote in 1997 was significant. The Tories have not had 40% of the vote or an overall majority since that General Election.