Before the 19th Century, elections were a raucous affair. Supporters of each side would gather outside polling stations to sing, chant and intimidate their opponents. Voting was not anonymous, so voters would often get beaten up for backing the "wrong" candidate.

Today is much the same, but all the screaming and fighting takes place within the Conservative Party.

This morning the Conservatives are facing their worst local election result in 40 years, and have lost the Blackpool South by-election with a huge swing to Labour.

Ominously for their leader Rishi Sunak, Nigel Farage, who beat him in a poll of Conservative members this week, is poised to announce his return to politics, after hatching a plan to front Reform in the next general election.

The problem for the Conservatives is that they are caught in a pincer movement, not only shedding votes to Reform on their right, but to a surging Labour and the Liberal Democrats on their left.

Polls have suggested Reform could even supplant the Conservatives as the second-largest party in the House of CommonsThe democratically elected house of the UK Parliament. It consists of 650 Members of Parliament.  after the next election.²

MPs are divided on how to respond. Some want to tack right to appease Reform and others want to win back moderates from Labour.

That disagreement may be Sunak's only hope of staving off a challenge to his leadership. Right-wing MPs think if they oust him he might just be replaced with a moderate, and moderates worry about being lumped with a right-winger.

But can he turn things around? All the evidence suggests that the country is fed up with the Conservatives and want to give it a good electoral kicking.

A poll last year found 57% of people think the Tories cannot run the country competently.³

However, voters are more volatile than they used to be.⁴ It is not impossible that they could be coaxed back.

On the other hand, that also means still more of them could flee the Tories. In the past, while the Conservatives sometimes suffered big defeats, they still had a solid base, so they could always bounce back.

That may no longer be true. The party could just go extinct. If Reform wins more votes than the Tories at the next election they will crash out of the Commons.

It has happened before: in 1993, the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party went from governing to holding just two seats.

The same could happen here and condemn the world's oldest political party to the scrapheap.

The big hope for the Tories is that the man who would replace them, Keir StarmerThe leader of the UK Labour Party since 2020 and British prime minister since July 2024., is not popular either. Even as his party rides high in the polls, 47% of people say he is doing a bad job as Labour leader.⁵

Is the world's most successful political party facing extinction?

Yes: The only way is down the Conservatives. The country is in a mess and people want to punish them for it. And if they slip below Reform they will likely be flung out of the Commons forever.

No: The Conservative Party always finds a way of renewing itself. And Reform never does as well in elections as it does in polls, so there is little chance of them displacing the Tories.

Or... People hate the Conservatives but they dislike Labour too. Starmer may not win, and if he does, he will have to turn things around very quickly, or people may flock back to the Tories.