Which of the Tory leadership hopefuls should Labour fear?

Labour’s polling leads now exceed those recorded during the high noon of Tony Blair and New Labour in the 1990s but that doesn’t mean they are permanent and invulnerable, writes Sean O’Grady

Starmer, for all his virtues and achievements, sometimes goes down badly with the focus groups (PA)

Who should Labour fear? The glib answer, and the official party response, is that Labour and Keir Starmer have nothing to fear from any of those likely to run for leader of the Conservative Party – to be specific, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt. While it is understandable given the current circumstances, this approach may be complacent, and in his recent public remarks, Starmer has targeted Johnson for criticism.

With Labour on polling leads of 30 points plus (at least in recent days), it certainly seems unlikely that the Conservatives can rapidly re-establish the kind of lead they enjoyed until about the spring of last year, which delivered for them the remarkable general election victory in December 2019, their best in decades. The latest polling, covering the final days of Liz Truss’s brief and dismal time in office, has put the party on 14 per cent, with Labour commanding well over half of the sample. This represents something of a nadir. So there is, as they say, a mountain to climb.

But such was the strange, chaotic and unusually incompetent period under Truss that any new leader would be bound to deliver some sort of fillip in public opinion for the governing party. That matters, because it would at least stop the slide, reverse the trajectory, and give the Conservatives some hope as they press on to an eventual general election (around 18 months away) and some crucial local elections next spring.

A word of caution, too: opinion poll leads, being the difference between two volatile numbers, can also exaggerate movements in public sentiment. If, say, a new leader boosted the Tory vote share by three percentage points, and reduced Labour’s by the same amount, then the Labour lead would swing by a more dramatic-looking six points. In reality, the nominal three-point shifts are within the average poll’s margin of error. In other words, very little might have altered in the real world.

Still, Labour’s poll leads now exceed those recorded during the high noon of Tony Blair and New Labour in the 1990s, though that doesn’t mean they are permanent and invulnerable. They can change. For some Conservatives, looking at this personality-driven leadership contest, it is the personal ratings and public perceptions of Starmer that are a weak point for Labour, appearing to offer the opportunity to leverage the appeal of their own more charismatic alternative.

Truss was so poor a leader that she actually polled lower than either Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn at their lowest points, and again, any change would certainly bring an improvement. Starmer, for all his virtues and achievements, sometimes goes down badly with the focus groups, and he scores surprisingly poorly on personal qualities given where his party is in the polls. The Labour Party needs to worry that, in contrast with Blair in the 1990s, Starmer can’t close the deal and turn 2019 Tory voters into committed Labour voters rather than transient ones or just non-voters.

The contrast between Starmer and the flamboyant, risk-taking, defiant Johnson is much stronger than it is between Starmer and Sunak or Mordaunt. On the other hand, the voters may not be in the mood for that sort of thing.

Mordaunt is certainly strong at the despatch box, has a confident, competent air about her, can think on her feet, and might also prove a more formidable foe than her mediocre ratings suggest at the moment – she’s still relatively unknown. That is also true of Kemi Badenoch, who has less chance of making it to the final stage, but not so much of Suella Braverman, who probably sounds more populist.

Which leaves Sunak still the favourite. Out of government these last few weeks, Sunak is innocent of the sins of the Truss administration – and he can, so far as it matters to Labour voters, claim that he helped to bring Johnson down (or “backstab” the then prime minister, as his critics call it). Sunak would also put up more of a fight than Truss, but he, like Starmer, has a sort of technocratic, globalist, centrist vibe about him, which seems to have its limits in terms of voter appeal.

Johnson is a renowned campaigner, which Starmer is not, but he comes with a lot of baggage Labour can constantly rummage in for embarrassments – and his own party did reject him after all. Many of the 60 or so ministers who quit to force Johnson out wrote embittered and lethal letters of resignation. If Johnson makes his comeback, a lot of words will have to be eaten.

Labour does seem to become mesmerised by Johnson, unsure as to whether he is Labour’s greatest asset – based on the scandals, polling, and disastrous Tory performances in local and by-elections – or the most successful election winner of recent times, based on the 2016 referendum and 2019. He is quite the enigma.

Ultimately, though, it will be how the next prime minister behaves in the coming 18 months to two years that will determine the outcome of the next election, and issues such as Partygate and the sleaze allegations will probably fade. Johnson’s boosterism might help his party through the next recession, but it might also sound increasingly out of touch and patronising. The public might prefer to go for a pint with him than with Starmer, Sunak or Mordaunt, but that doesn’t mean they trust him to get things right in difficult times.

His past triumphs have been all about Brexit, but he “got Brexit done”, and Corbyn, the gift Labour gave him, has disappeared. Johnson is not to be underestimated, and oozes confidence, but that won’t pay the mortgage. His best days are surely behind him, and the honest but austere Sunak-Hunt message might find a more ready audience in difficult times.