From Hope to Disarray: The Parliamentary Conservative Party’s Road to Defeat in the 2024 General Election

Compared to previous UK legislatures, the 2019-2024 Parliament started as a promisingly stable environment for the governing Conservative Party. It had a large majority with opposition parties sitting in reduced numbers, its parliamentary party was relatively united and it was led by the charismatic Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Five years later, the situation looked much less stable. The Conservative Party saw three successive Leaders and Prime Ministers, weathered a series of scandals and experienced a crushing defeat in the 2024 General Election. This switch from a promising future to a more sobering present especially impacted Conservative MPs with a fifth of the 2019 cohort not standing for election again in 2024. This article analyses the intra-party dynamics of the parliamentary Conservative Party during the 2019-2024 Parliament. It draws on first-hand interviews conducted with a representative sample of 31 sitting Conservative MPs to illustrate internal perspectives on the state of the party. The article sheds light on the evolution of the Conservative Party throughout the 2019-2024 Parliament and attempts to provide explanations about the 2024 General election defeat.