The lies of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom have been fearfully evoking, for several weeks, a ghost they call “Canada 93.” In that country, with a parliamentary system very similar to the British one, the Progressive Conservative Party suffered a defeat that year at the hands of the Liberal Party that led it to almost disappear from the political map. It went from 167 seats to retaining just two. Apart from a decade of wear and tear in power and a candidate, Kim Campbell, as insubstantial to her critics as the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is to his, was the emergence of a party to her right, the Reform Party, which definitively sank the tories Canadians. Comparisons are never perfect, but this one has the British right in fear.
The last minute appearance on the electoral scene of Nigel Farage, the politician who promoted Brexit, with a popularity similar to that of Boris Johnson, at the head of the Reform UK party, represents for many analysts and for many conservative deputies the final nail in the coffin of a party that is suffering from a serious existential crisis.
“We need to end the current model and bring a new way of doing politics to the UK. We are, perhaps, on the verge of achieving real change. “We want to launch a revolution that benefits British citizens,” Farage proclaimed again this Friday night in the seven-party debate organized by the BBC – ignored by the two main candidates – who does not miss any opportunity to occupy space. of screen. His battle, as he has made clear, is for the wreck of the right, which he already takes for granted.
“The Conservative Party suffers from a fundamental identity problem. For most of its history it has managed to be two parties in one,” former minister David Gauke, who left the party due to his opposition to Brexit, recently explained in the magazine The New Statesman. “It could have been a center-right organization capable of defending the interests of businessmen and the middle class, and at the same time a populist and patriotic party that garnered the support of the working classes with a deep nationalist sentiment,” he distinguished. Gauke admits that many conservative voters no longer perceive any of these options in his party’s electoral offer.
Sunak of a thousand faces
Sunak has tried all the personalities without success tories, and each one of them has ended up exploding in his face. He has wanted to present himself as the statesman capable of facing the security and defense challenges of the 21st century, and his scare last Thursday from the commemorative events of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings to campaign has managed to irritate the British military establishment, veterans and the conservative middle class.
Join Morning Express to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
He wanted to be the rigorous and responsible technocrat who straightened the economy and he has not pleased anyone: the United Kingdom is still immersed in a deep crisis in the cost of living, with public services in a dying state. And the budget rules prevent the prime minister from pleasing the deputies in his ranks who demand greater tax cuts. In return, a large group of businessmen has decided to support the Labor opposition and its leader, Keir Starmer.
Finally, the prime minister has presented his most populist face with a plan to deport immigrants to Rwanda that has deflated like a soufflé: not a single flight has yet taken off to that African country and the number of people who have arrived on British soil After crossing the English Channel, it is again at record levels this year (more than 11,000, 46% above the figure for 2023 at this time). Farage’s party has made a flag of this issue, and of the conservatives’ failure to tackle it.
The threat of third place
The latest survey by the YouGov company, which uses data from almost 60,000 respondents and allows seats to be assigned to parties, anticipates an overwhelming Labor victory for the July 4 elections, even greater than that of Tony Blair in 1997. Starmer’s party It would obtain up to 422 deputies, compared to 140 for the conservatives (the figures in the elections five years ago were 202 and 365, respectively). Although the survey does not attribute any representatives to Reform UK, Farage’s party, it places it as the second force in dozens of constituencies. Compared to 19% support for the tories that attributes the average of the surveys, The new formation, barely aware of the populist politician’s decision to be a candidate again, is now close to 16%.
For the last two centuries, the British Conservative Party has been defined as the “perfect electoral machine”, and its prime ministers have occupied Downing Street for most of that period. In a practically armored two-party system, even in the darkest times for the tories ―Blair’s long period of New Labor Government― was simply a matter of patience and waiting for the tables to turn.
Brexit, however, was a leading indicator that showed that the United Kingdom was not immune to the rise of far-right populism that would eventually spread throughout Europe. Boris Johnson managed to camouflage the threat in 2019, by appropriating Farage’s speech, raising the flag of anti-Europeanism – “Get Brexit Done” was his campaign slogan – and feeding off the frustration and anguish of the call red wallthe north of England that traditionally voted Labour.
Sunak does not have Johnson’s charisma, popularity or cynicism.
“You can’t reason with a tiger when you have your head inside its mouth. The only way for the Conservatives to avoid ending up at the mercy of Farage after July 4 is to win as many seats as possible. If they remain third – because they obtain fewer votes than Reform UK, although they surpass it in seats – all the doors of madness will open,” anticipates William Atkinson, number two from the website ConservativeHomethe obligatory forum to understand the mood of the tories in every moment.
In Canada, conservatives and reformers needed to suffer several more defeats, over a decade, to understand that they had to merge to survive, as they finally did. There are many who maintain these days that tories The British will have to embrace Farage and his forces in order to rise from the ashes. After all, the politician already began his career, 30 years ago, in the Conservative Party. If he did end up returning, however, it would be to a very different formation than the one he abandoned at the end of the last century.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
.
.
_