May 23, 2024 - 7:00am

Lee Cain, the mastermind alongside Dominic Cummings of Boris Johnson’s 2019 election victory, has predicted a “Carthaginian defeat” for the Conservatives — a reference to the complete destruction of Carthage by the Romans in 146 BC.

Speaking on an UnHerd emergency discussion yesterday afternoon after the announcement of 4 July as the date for the UK general election, he said: “Hope has long since left. It’s a Carthaginian defeat for the Conservatives.”

“In 1997 we had things can only get better,” Cain told Freddie Sayers and Tom McTague. “There might be a perception in Number 10 that things can only get worse.” He added: “We’ve got a difficult summer with more small boats likely to come at the tail end; NHS waiting lists are still very difficult and will probably get worse again — so with the good inflation news today they might be thinking this is a small landing zone where we might just be in the best space. But there are not a huge amount of positive options [sic].”

 

Asked if he blames voters for abandoning the Tories, Cain said that he understands their disappointment. “I was one of the strategists in 2019, and at that point the country was promised change — and significant change. And you have to look back and say, as a party, we have not delivered the change people wanted […] People have really lost faith in politicians’ ability to deliver for them.”

Pressed on whether his friend Dominic Cummings’s new “Startup Party” could emerge from the ruins of the mainstream parties, Cain said: “I would never count Dominic out. If anyone can do it he can. If Labour do not deliver in the first year or two, and the public are looking at what’s left [….] people will start looking elsewhere.” But, he went on, “there’s a big difference between getting 15-20% of the polls and shaping an election.”

The former Number 10 communications director, referred to as “Premier Lee” while effectively running the country during Boris Johnson’s incapacity with Covid-19 in 2020, now believes that the Conservatives and Labour are equivalent to a uniparty.

“There’s very little between the parties. Keir and Rishi are two sides of the same coin, in many ways,” he claimed. “They’re both good, decent, intelligent, hard-working men who aren’t naturally the most political. And that’s been a problem for both.”

Boris Johnson, meanwhile, lacked vision and purpose, according to Cain. “It comes fundamentally down to: do you want to do something? Do you have a project to deliver?” he said. “Whatever people think of Dominic, he had an ideology, he had a vision for the country. Boris didn’t have a very clear ideological view of what he wanted the country to look like in ten years time. I think he felt very much that it didn’t need a huge amount of change and we could move along.”