Rishi Sunak's trans comments are a big part of Tory election strategy

This is not a column about the rights of transgender people or women. Of course, I have views, but I am neither transgender nor a woman, nor an expert in the law or any other field of relevance beyond the pure politics involved. So, mine is not necessarily the voice best placed to be making these arguments in a column.

But it is a discussion I’ve had, in person, with friends across the divide and one I know we can have in a respectful and dignified manner. The reduction of this societal discourse to partisan politicking, something we saw in Scotland throughout the debate over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill and have increasingly seen UK-wide in recent years, should be deeply concerning to all of us regardless of our opinions on the substantive issues. It poisons public debate and drives wedges between us.

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And so, we should all be worried that this kind of divisive, culture war politicking will not just continue but intensify as the general election approaches. Firstly, figures the Prime Minister elevated to the upper echelon of his party, like the former Conservative Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson, have explicitly stated that their party should and would fight the general election on trans rights and other culture war issues.

Secondly, the political terrain on which the Conservatives can win an election or deprive Labour of a majority has narrowed to the point of mandating a divisive, negative, and likely very dirty campaign.

In the 1990s, a group of Republican political managers gathered in Leesburg, Virginia to workshop more effective methods of providing strategic messaging advice to their candidates. They developed the Leesburg Grid, a simple two-by-two grid that contains the full combinations of issues each side in a campaign wants to focus on and the positions each side wants their campaigns (and by extension the media and the public) to take on those issues.

The key to the Conservatives at least depriving Labour of a majority in the general election, viewed through the prism of the Leesburg Grid, is to keep the campaign in the box labelled ‘Conservative issues and Conservative positions’ for as much of the campaign as possible, particularly in its final weeks.

Stray too far into the rest of the grid for too long, and the campaign will be increasingly defined by issues that Labour is relatively strong on and has comparatively convincing arguments on.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Image: free)

The problem for the Conservatives in this election cycle is that the number of issues that fit into their box in the Leesburg Grid is extremely limited. There is not a single traditional issue on which the Conservatives outperform Labour in the polls. Even on immigration, Labour has constantly led the Conservatives since October 2022 in YouGov’s tracker.

In an election defined by any of the issues identified as key drivers of voting intention in Ipsos’ latest Political Monitor – inflation, the NHS, the economy, immigration – the campaign will likely spend a great deal of time in the ‘Labour issues and Labour positions’ box of the Leesburg Grid, and the Conservatives will suffer a heavy defeat.

But two issues do potentially fit into the Conservative’s box: the lack of enthusiasm for Labour and Sir Keir’s weaknesses as a leader, and culture war issues like trans rights.

The former is straightforwardly about making the general election a referendum on Labour and Sir Keir, rather than on the Conservatives’ record in government and the multitude of policy issues they have failed on.

The latter is a populist attack, painting Labour and Sir Keir as establishment elites undermining Britain and British values by ‘siding’ with marginalised groups, from asylum seekers to the trans community.

The Prime Minister’s jibe at Sir Keir on Wednesday blended both into a toxic political message dripping with cynicism and divisiveness, tying perceived uncertainty about Labour’s political positions to the culture wars.

Will this work? I doubt it. As much as the public has reservations about Labour and Sir Keir, they are done with this Conservative government. The same Ipsos poll that put Sir Keir’s net satisfaction rating at -18 last month also found that 69% of Britons want a change in government.

And in the latest Ipsos poll on the most important issues facing the country, culture war issues failed to register even 1% among the public. Hardly fertile ground on which to build a winning campaign.

But the Conservatives have little left to campaign on and if such a campaign is to succeed it will only be by using the enormous share of voice given over to the Prime Minister to centre such issues in the public debate – the most effective way to do that is by generating outrage.

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So, expect more outrage bait, more toxic, divisive, cynical politicking that debases the greatest office of the British state and dehumanises minorities to win an election. We can have respectful debates about how we balance and secure the rights, safety, and dignity of everyone in the UK, but the place for that debate is not this election, certainly not conducted in this manner.

It is incumbent on all of us – observers, activists, politicians – to keep that in mind and not take the bait. The pressing issues that should define this election are multifarious: homes that go unheated, illness that goes untreated, and children who go unfed. Poverty, destitution, the collapse of public services and the vandalism of the public realm for which this government is responsible, not that government’s inevitable, desperate, clawing political death spasms.