Polling this week from YouGov represents a new low for the Tories. Their 16% level of support is humiliating enough, but perhaps the greater shame is that this puts them behind the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservatives have fallen to fourth place before, but that was in June 2019 — right at the end of Theresa May’s Brexit-doomed leadership. She was soon gone, and by the end of the year Boris Johnson had led the Tories to a thumping victory in the general election. There’s therefore little in the way of useful comparison between the situation then and what is happening now, not least because six years ago Conservative MPs still cared enough to rip each other apart and switch leaders.

There have been plenty of causes for Tory alarm over the last year, yet on each occasion the party has failed to respond sufficiently seriously. For instance, the Conservatives were completely oblivious to early indications of Lib Dem progress. With the blues and yellows converging in the polls, there are now four main parties in British politics rather than three.

Nick Clegg, after his lucrative years of Californian exile, this week popped up to say that “the Lib Dems are in rude health once again”. He went on to urge his old party colleagues to consider a coalition government, even if it risks their newfound popularity. However, that dilemma might not arise if Reform UK wins a majority at the next election, as Nigel Farage’s party is currently close to achieving.

It’s as if populist voters have noticed that splitting their votes between Reform and the Tories is self-defeating, which is why it makes sense for them to rally around the party leader with the greatest oomph — Farage, obviously. That logic has driven polling trends ever since last year’s general election, with this month’s local results providing proof that the consolidation of the Right-of-centre vote has yet to hit a hard limit.

Despite the accumulating evidence, the Tories just aren’t reacting. Their leadership contest last year was essentially content-free; the Shadow Cabinet is full of continuity Sunakites; the policy renewal process is proceeding at a snail’s pace; and there’s been a blank refusal to engage with Reform.

However, this doesn’t mean the Tories should immediately dump Badenoch as leader. While she isn’t the answer to the party’s deepest problems, she’s not the main cause either. The real issue is chronic institutional failure, which most Conservative MPs refuse to contend with or even acknowledge. It would be nice to blame this on mere complacency, but the truth is far more concerning. Senior Tories, one imagines, are capable of reading opinion polls — they know just how bad things are.

If one were being generous, one could characterise this mystifying lack of panic as sangfroid or even stoicism. But when an animal shows so little reaction to extreme and imminent danger, there’s usually another interpretation: they’re simply waiting for the end. At this rate, it won’t be long now.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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