Seven moments over 14 years that destroyed the Conservative government
When Boris Johnson was elected in 2019 with a Conservative majority of more than 80 seats, smashing Labour’s stronghold on its northern ‘red wall’ heartlands, the path back to Labour victory looked long and winding.
But just four-and-a-half years later this majority was swept away in a historic landslide in Labour’s favour, handing Keir Starmer the keys to 10 Downing Street and condemning the Conservative Party to electoral oblivion.
Today, the party holds 121 seats - down from 365 in 2019. It has lost a host of high-profile MPs and is searching for a new leader after Rishi Sunak announced he was standing down.
We take a look at the seven moments that brought down the Tories.
Autumn 2020
Boris Johnson says he’d rather “let the bodies pile high” than call another lockdown
The accusations that the prime minister uttered this fateful phrase - which he denied, but multiple sources say they overheard - confirmed in voters’ minds what the UK’s sluggish response in the early days of the pandemic had already suggested.
When Covid-19 first swept Europe, Johnson was slow to act on scientists’ recommendation for a full lockdown, acting to shut the country down a week later than advisors had urged. As a result the UK had one of the highest death tolls in Europe from the first wave of the virus.
By the time Johnson made these memorable comments later that year, the mishandling of hospital discharges by the then health secretary Matt Hancock had led to a large number of deaths among elderly people as the virus spread from wards to vulnerable care home residents.
Meanwhile, a review of Rishi Sunak’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ initiative, designed to kickstart the hospitality economy once pubs and restaurants reopened, found that it had caused the second wave of the virus to spread more rapidly in the early autumn of 2020.
April 2021
The Queen sits alone at Prince Philip’s funeral
In April 2021, due to social distancing rules, a frail Queen Elizabeth II sat alone in an empty pew at the front of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle paying her final respects to her husband and companion of over seven decades, Prince Philip. The heartbreaking image captured the stoicism of our longest-reigning monarch at a time of national crisis.
But from November that year, when the partygate affair broke, the photograph came to represent something else too: the gulf between the monarch’s sense of national duty and a prime minister who had presided over a government that had both set the rules for others and then broken them behind closed doors.
Over a series of weeks, it emerged that at least 10 parties were held inside Downing Street or by Conservative Party staff during the months that London was under some form of restrictions. One was held on Boris Johnson’s birthday in June 2020, for which at least three attendees received a police fine.
Damningly, two parties were held by Downing Street staff on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral. The shot of Her Majesty alone at her husband’s funeral became a symbol of the hypocrisy that would ultimately bring down Boris Johnson.
Read more: Queen sits alone in chapel as Royal Family pays respects to Prince Philip (Yahoo News UK)
July 2022
Chris Pincher sexual misconduct scandal forces multiple ministers to resign
Chris Pincher, the former Tory deputy chief whip, was accused of assaulting two people at London’s exclusive Carlton Club in June that year. It was Johnson’s poor handling of the affair - during which it emerged that Pincher had already been investigated internally for his conduct three years earlier - that angered voters and his own ministers, many of whom resigned in protest.
An investigation into the case found that the prime minister had been made aware of this earlier allegation before he appointed Pincher to the government whip’s office. Downing Street first denied being aware of the earlier allegations, but Lord McDonald went public to confirm that Johnson had been briefed “in person” about a complaint dating back to 2019 leaving Johnson to claim he had forgotten about it.
It was the final straw for a prime minister whose government had been dogged by sleaze scandals. In 2022, Tory MP Neil Parish had been forced to quit his seat after admitting to watching pornography on his phone while sitting in the House of Commons.
In 2020, former Deal MP Charlie Elphicke was imprisoned after being found guilty of three counts of sexual assault against two women. A year later Rob Roberts, MP for Delyn, was found by a parliamentary panel to have made repeated inappropriate comments and sexual advances towards a member of staff. He was suspended for 12 weeks but then allowed to rejoin the party. Johnson’s failure to handle recurrent allegations of sexual misbehaviour in his party, culminating in the Chris Pincher affair, led directly to his resignation and appointment of Liz Truss as prime minister.
Read more: Chris Pincher: a timeline of allegations and investigations (Guardian)
October 2022
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng performs an abrupt U-turn on his plan to axe the 45p upper tax rate
After Liz Truss was elected Conservative leader by party members and took the keys to 10 Downing Street she appointed long-term friend and confidante Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor. The pair drew up a disastrous budget which involved making huge tax cuts without finding alternative support for public services.
The drastic move spooked the money markets and destabilised the British economy, with immediate effects for voters, including a sudden and rapid rise in mortgage borrowing costs. It also exposed how divorced Truss apparently was from her own party.
As Truss attempted to restore economic stability, Kwarteng reversed his plan to axe the upper rate of tax, which sits at 45p in the pound for anyone earning over £150,000 a year. It wasn’t enough to repair either the economy or Truss’s administration. She held the post of prime minister for just 46 days, before being replaced with Rishi Sunak by party members.
Nothing encapsulated the brevity of her tenure than the comparisons made to her time in office with a lettuce by the Daily Star. The tabloid did a livestream of an iceberg lettuce next to a framed photograph of the prime minister. This followed an opinion piece in The Economist which compared her expected tenure to a lettuce.
Read more: Liz Truss, lettuce and the Deep State: Seven car crash moments from former PM’s book tour (The Independent)
September 2023:
NHS junior doctors and consultants stage an unprecedented joint walk out over two days
Tensions between Conservative ministers and public sector unions have raged since the pandemic, with workers struggling to cope on wages that have been suppressed since 2010 when David Cameron and George Osborne launched the first Tory austerity drive.
Strikes hit multiple industries causing delays and frustration, as teachers, paramedics, midwives, nurses, train drivers, tube staff, civil servants, academics and staff in the passport office all staged walk outs over pay and conditions. By January 2024, strikes in the NHS alone had cost the country £1.5bn, according to The King’s Fund.
In September last year, junior doctors and consultants walked out over two consecutive days. It was the first time that consultants had staged a strike and represented a new low in the relationship between government, public services and their staff, and the nation’s voters. At the time of writing, the dispute with junior doctors was still ongoing.
Read more: What we know about longest ever NHS doctors strike this week (Yahoo News UK)
December 2023
Rents rise by 7 per cent in just one year in London as the cost of living crisis bites
In 2023 voters began to see how failure to address a number of social issues were affecting their lives. It was not only homeowners who found their housing costs rise under the Conservatives after Liz Truss’s disastrous budget; those in private rented accommodation are facing unprecedented rises too due to intense demand for a shrinking number of properties.
The situation is worsening since landlords with mortgages are finding their business costs increasing too - which they are either passing on to tenants, or forcing their hand to sell up.
Meanwhile energy costs have remained high despite an end to government support for households in meeting high bills, and food prices have also rocketed in the last five years. Although inflation - which hit highs of 9 per cent in 2022 - has now come down to under 3 per cent, the cost of living based on the consumer prices index is still climbing.
Wages are now slowly growing but voters are still feeling the pinch.
Read more: The cost-of-living crisis has broken the stigma of financial difficulty (SWNS)
June 2024
Rishi Sunak leaves D-Day celebrations early to take part in a TV interview
After announcing the surprise election date of 4 July in the rain without an umbrella, the prime minister then went on to suffer an appalling first three weeks of campaigning. One of the first events he attended was a visit to Belfast’s Titanic Quarter - which for a prime minister about to be sunk by a surging opposition with a 20 point poll lead, demonstrated an embarrassing lack of foresight and opened the door for endless jokes on social media.
He made a more grave error, miscalculating the public mood in choosing to leave the international celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings early in order to record a television interview as part of his election campaign efforts.
Although he apologised, the move appeared to highlight elements of his personality that voters felt were unsuited to the role of prime minister. It also contrasted with the actions of both Keir Starmer and former prime minister, now foreign secretary, David Cameron who took part in the full ceremony.
Read more: Rishi Sunak’s premiership is fourth shortest since 1900 (PA)
