Are the Tories broke?

Perhaps the least surprising fact in British politics at the moment is that Conservative candidates and staffers are unhappy. They are dismayed at the timing of the election, by the fact Rishi Sunak seemed to catch Conservative HQ (known as CCHQ) more off-guard than the Labour party, by Sunak’s series of campaign gaffes, and more. The list of grievances is very very long.

But in recent days a new and more urgent concern has been doing the rounds in various Conservative WhatsApp groups – candidates and local campaigns are increasingly asking whether CCHQ is running out of money, with the most crucial two weeks of the campaign still to come.

People fighting in seats formerly considered safe but which are now crucial marginal battlegrounds are saying they are starved of resources, while there is little in the way of either physical billboards or other obvious spending.

The most obvious sign of a campaign starved of funds came earlier in the week, when instead of a slick and polished party political broadcast – one of a small number of TV broadcasts allocated to parties, which are particularly important for the Conservatives given the demographics of TV viewers – the Conservatives released a lightly-edited clip from a television debate. Was that really the best they could do?

This could all just be the rumour mill going into overdrive, and being stoked by a disastrous election campaign: everyone expected an election in 2024, so there was ample time to build up a war chest, while it remains possible the party is saving funds so as to unleash vast amounts of spending in the last few weeks.

But there is evidence to suggest there might be something to the rumours. Crucially, this is the week that postal votes are sent to voters, and research shows most postal voters tend to return their ballots quicky – meaning their votes are locked in.

Around one in five people vote by post, but this is higher among pensioners (the Tory party’s last remaining voting base) and among people in marginal seats. In other words, the last chance to win over a huge and important group of voters is this week.

Online spending data suggests that if the Conservatives are trying to do that, they are being hopelessly outgunned. The most recent figures collected by WhoTargetsMe shows that between the 9th and 15th June, Labour spent £303,315 on Facebook, the social media network most used by older adults. In contrast, the Conservatives spent just £150,165.

On Google, the gap was even more stark: Labour spent £144,137 on Google adverts, while the Conservatives spent just £2,142. Multiple campaign veterans failed to offer an explanation as to why you would spend so little on online adverts at this stage of the election if you could afford to do so. One called the figures “baffling”.

The Conservatives are certainly losing donors in droves: key figures that financed the 2017 and 2019 elections counted themselves out before the campaign was called. On Tuesday, two different billionaires publicly switched their allegiance from Tory to Labour.

Rishi Sunak’s decision to skip the Conservatives’ fundraising ball this week might be less an ill-advised snub to funders as a face-saving measure, because almost no funders would be there.

The evidence isn’t conclusive, but it’s certainly persuasive: can the Tories afford to get their message, whatever it is, out for the rest of the election campaign? And what does it say about their party finances in the next parliament if they can’t?