Based
on current polls, the general election that will be held in the coming
months — the date has not yet been set — looks likely to restore a
reinvigorated Labour Party to power after 14 years in the minority.
Those same polls suggest that Labour could emerge with a majority in the
House of Commons that rivals or eclipses its strength after the 1997
election that brought former prime minister Tony Blair to power.
The
decline and fall of the Conservatives is the story of a political party
that has become exhausted and inward-looking after more than a decade
in power. Not unlike the Republican Party in the United States, it is
riven by factionalism, stained by scandal and judged by many voters as
incapable of dealing with the country’s problems — all amplified by a
whipsawing series of leadership changes.
Since
2010, Britain has had five Conservative prime ministers, including
three in 2022 alone. One of them, Liz Truss, lasted just seven weeks.
That record tops by one the number of U.S. House speakers Republicans
have run through in the same period.
That
both the British Conservative Party and the U.S. Republican Party are
experiencing division and infighting suggests some parallelism between
the two parties. What they share is that both are engaged in debates
about the future of conservatism. But there are limits to the
similarities. Though both are in turmoil, the two parties are not
exactly alike.
The
Republican Party has congealed around former president Donald Trump.
The Conservatives, also known as the Tories, have more or less come
apart. As one former British government official put it, the Republican
Party has become a Trumpian cult while the Tories still operate under
more “small d” democratic principles — at least for now. That, however,
does not mitigate the trouble the Tories are in.
The
question that will come to the fore if the Conservatives lose as badly
as some polls predict is whether they will be captured by fringe
elements, who some analysts fear would make the party far more
right-wing and hard-line on issues such as immigration, and ever more
anti-Europe; potentially, more Trumpian.
There
are almost certain to be forces of resistance to such moves, with party
members and others calling for a rejection of the extremes and pushing
to move the Tories back to something closer to traditional conservatism.
Right now, the only consensus is that a bracing internal war for the
party’s future is looming.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks to the media following talks in Berlin on Wednesday. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
British
politics have been through a whirlwind over the past decade: a failed
referendum on independence for Scotland in 2014, a general election in
2015, the Brexit referendum in 2016 that took Britain out of the
European Union, another general election in 2017, then the election in
2019, followed by two years of the pandemic and then the rapid
succession of leaders in 2022.
The
turmoil has left voters exhausted — sick of politics, as one strategist
put it — yet another parallel to the United States. They are
disillusioned with the current government and more than ready to make a
change, according to strategists in both major parties.
In some ways, the Conservatives have never recovered from the Brexit vote,
which was never intended to play out the way it did. The decision to
leave the E.U. forced David Cameron, who had called the referendum
expecting voters to say they wanted to stay in Europe, to resign as
prime minister. His successor, Theresa May, struggled to implement the
terms of the breakup as the leader of a badly divided party. She stepped
down at a low point in the party’s fortunes in the spring of 2019.
May was succeeded in 2019 by Boris Johnson,
the bluff former mayor of London, whose combination of charisma,
bluster, enthusiasm and big-government conservatism worked for his party
at least briefly, most notably by helping to produce a big victory
months after he claimed the top post.
In
that election, the Conservatives made significant inroads in areas of
northern England that once had been Labour Party strongholds. The Tory
victories were not unlike gains by Republicans under Trump among White
working-class voters in northern industrial states. These were British
districts that had seen their economies crumble, areas where the issue
of immigration resonated and resentment toward elites had risen. They
were districts that had supported the Brexit referendum in 2016.
Labour
inadvertently contributed to the Tories’ success in 2019. The party was
led by Jeremy Corbyn, a far-left politician whose history and views
proved anathema to many voters, not only in those working-class areas
but also among moderates in the suburban areas around the big cities. As
in the United States, those suburban voters, particularly
college-educated women, have been shifting allegiance. But they would
not go for Corbyn’s politics.
British
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, left, meets with President Donald Trump
at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 24, 2019.
(Evan Vucci/AP)
Johnson
was neither disciplined nor serious enough as prime minister to be an
effective leader for the long term. He was finally brought down by the
scandal that became known as “Partygate.” He and his staff were found to
have partied inside No. 10 Downing Street in violation of the lockdown
imposed on the British public during the pandemic. A 2023 inquiry
concluded that Johnson had repeatedly misled Parliament about breaking
the covid rules.
After
Johnson was forced from power, the Conservatives turned to Truss, who
put forth an aggressive and politically misguided economic program that
called for significant tax cuts. The plan triggered a backlash in the
markets and put the country’s weak economy into an even more tenuous
position. Truss was out almost before she could unpack.
At
that point, the Conservatives selected as prime minister Rishi Sunak, a
wealthy technocratic politician who came with no public mandate, having
never faced the voters in a general election. Over time, he has failed
to persuade voters that he has the strength or vision to turn the
country around.
The
result of these years of chaos and leadership turnover is that the
Tories could now suffer a double reversal from 2019: They could lose
many of those newly won working-class districts while shedding suburban
voters who could not stomach Corbyn but are not particularly alarmed by
the Labour Party’s current leader, Keir Starmer.
The
London-based newspaper Evening Standard announces the resignation of
Prime Minister Liz Truss on Oct. 20, 2022. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Starmer
has rebuilt the Labour Party, working to purge it of Corbynism and its
corners of antisemitism. He has tried to put his focus on the broader
electorate rather than the narrower segment of official party members.
He came to politics late, after a career as a public prosecutor. His
roots are humble, his politics more left-leaning than, say, Blair’s of a
quarter-century ago. But in the time as leader, he has cautiously moved
his party toward the center. Still, the question of how he would govern
remains.
On
Thursday, there will be local elections in Britain. Conservatives are
expected to suffer significant losses, perhaps as many as half of the
seats they hold that are up for reelection. Most closely watched,
however, will be two races for mayoralties currently in Tory hands.
Losses in those races will be taken as an indicator of a shellacking in
the general election and time to press the panic button.
Current
thinking is that Sunak will call the general election for late in the
year, perhaps around the time of the election in the United States. But
his team has been urged to move up that timetable to a summer election,
depending on the outcome of the local elections.
The
Tories have been the most durable political institution in Britain’s
long history, skilled especially at winning elections. That could keep
Labor strategists from becoming complacent in the face of favorable
polls. It also gives Tory strategists some hope that the anticipated
losses will not be on the scale that some are suggesting. But after more
than a decade in power, the Tories face what could be a long period out
of government — and with it an existential crisis about their future.
Across
the Atlantic, Republicans will await the results of the November
elections — and Trump’s fate — to know the timing and the contours of an
internal battle they know is coming.