Boris Johnson is set to launch a two-year election campaign from May, the Conservative Party chairman has announced.
Speaking at the Tory spring conference in Blackpool, Oliver Dowden said the party will be placed on election footing in a bid to draw a line under the prime ministers troubles over alleged lockdown-breaking parties.
Dowden said the Tories would open the candidate list for the next election and declared: “The challenge starts this May.”
He said the election would look a lot more like 2015, when David Cameron fought against Ed Miliband, than 2019, when Johnson took on Corbyn.
“We are going to have to fight this one seat by seat, promise delivered by promise delivered, doorstep by doorstep,” he said. “And from May, we will begin our two-year election campaign with the launch of our target seat strategy, building on the experience of the 40:40 campaign in 2015, building capacity, developing profile and framing the choice.”
In a sign that the Conservatives are still concerned about the threat of Nigel Farage taking voters on the right, Dowden hit out at “net zero dogma” in comments that will dismay many concerned that the Tories are prepared to water down their commitments to tackling the climate emergency.
“I really think the British people want to see a bit of conservative pragmatism, not net zero dogma,” he said. “We are Conservatives. We exist to conserve. We will get to net zero. Of course we will save the planet. We just don’t want Vladimir Putin taking it over while we are doing it.”
He also made clear how the Tories are planning to portray Starmer at the next election, as “dull … uninspiring … and bereft of ideas”. Dowden also sought to claim that “the Corbynistas are still there”, reviving the idea of Labour as a danger that was used in the 2019 campaign.
“Let’s not be complacent about the threat that Starmer’s party still poses,” he said. “Starmer can’t resist kowtowing to the cancel culture brigade because his base are the cancel culture brigade.”
The Conservatives had been widely thought to be planning an election for May 2024 but the imminent repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act means it could more easily be called sooner.
The latest polls show they have gained ground on Labour after set backs at the start of the year.
Related: Dowden signals an end to ‘net zero dogma’ – less than 6 months on from Cop26
