Conservatives in Crisis: Why the Tories lost in Tamworth and Mid-Bedfordshire, and the reasons behind results that will almost certainly be replicated nationally

“What's past is prologue." 

- The Tempest

In my last piece I alluded to this sense of feeling the risk of being desensitised to the ongoing deluge of 'Broken Britain' stories centred around near 14 years of bad government policy making.

RAAC and the issue of collapsing public sector buildings was the ‘crisis that could end it all’ for the government - that was nearly 2 months ago when Gillian Keegan opened a pandora’s box relating capital investment [or lack thereof] that revealed the government had completely neglected the public sector. 

The problems inherent in the education system - beyond RAAC - continue to evolve, too; National Funding Formula (NFF) allocations for 2024-25 vanished as a result of a Department for Education “technical error”. When discovered, despite planning their budgets around the allocation, it meant that schools will now have £370 million less than promised. 

Earlier this week, I spoke of the evolving crisis in the justice system, too. It, like education and most other public services, is falling apart; same problems, staff retention, system on the precipice of collapse, lack of desirability in the profession, pay disputes, rundown facilities and general sense of ignorance from those in the highest. This was once again the ‘crisis that could end it all’ for the government.

Next week or the week after, it may be a different crisis that could result in some other services’ collapse that ‘ends it all’ for the government. 

It could be the NHS, for example.

Despite Sunak’s ‘emergency’ plan for the NHS at the beginning of the year where he announced 5,000 beds by next winter, it turns out that according to analysis of NHS England data by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, bed numbers in major acute hospitals fell by about almost 3,000 between January and September. 

I spoke about the government’s NHS strategy [and the problems with it] in a bit more depth a couple of months ago: 

The point is this, however: