Plummeting in the polls the Liz Truss’ premiership lasted only 45 days; a record short political life that involved the crashing of the Pound and a series of U-turns and was ultimately outlived by an iceberg lettuce. The Tory Party does not tolerate failure and thus Truss was swiftly replaced by Rishi Sunak following a ‘coronation’ by Tory MPs. With eyes turning to Labour in ways that could not have been predicted a few months ago, the key question is whether Sunak can miraculously resurrect the fortunes of the Conservatives. He has two years to do so.

Yet there still remains the need for a sober assessment of how the Conservatives have retained power for 12 years, having gone through no fewer than four iterations.

This report, the fourth in the Compass series on the Conservatives, affirms the need to carefully study the political adversary, even one that appears to be on its last legs. Following a critical review of ‘Trussism’ and ‘Trussonomics’, the report suggests that the Conservative economic project is already failing and their hegemonic grip on English politics is in sharp decline. But looming Conservative failure does not automatically mean Labour success. Hailed as the most successful political party in history, each time they have looked in a tight spot they’ve managed to spring free and inflict a defeat on Labour.

In Hegemony Lost: the decline of the Tory historical project, Ken Spours analyses successive Conservative political adaptations since 2005 and asks the question whether they can do it again under Sunak. Using key Gramscian political concepts, it analyses the basis of Conservative pragmatism, the deployment of combinational politics to broaden their appeal and the use of a reserve bloc of voters at critical moments. The report then asks whether the previous conditions and methods for reinvention still pertain today.

The report concludes with a critical set of questions aimed at Starmer’s Labour concerning their ability to replace the rapid decline of Conservative political hegemony with a more progressive version. Rather than ‘winning by default’, the question would be ‘winning to do what’?