Note: An at least vague sense of British politics may be necessary to understand this story.
I plan on doing two pieces on the upcoming British election. One concerns its winners that I’ll do by the weekend. The other is about the losers before all attention in the United Kingdom turns to the Labour Party and Keir Starmer.
Because there’s very little suspense. The Conservatives will be hospitalized. Perhaps not quite on the scale of dropping to double digit MPs as it’s still beyond reasonable doubt that Labour has rebuilt its ties to the Red Wall, Scotland, and resurged in the Blue Wall. And under first past the post, like the Electoral College, where you get votes matters as much as how many you get. But imagining the Tories doing remotely well tomorrow seems hard to imagine. They are now an average of 18 or 19 points down with one day to go.
So how can pundits on the right not be upset by this? Actually, not all of them are. In fact, they seem almost split. Look up the articles in The Telegraph or British righties on social media if you doubt me. Some are saying that while the Tories are nothing to write home about, a vote for a Reform UK whose vote is too inefficiently distributed to win more than a few seats is a vote for Labour. Others say that the Tories have gone so far left that for small “c” conservatives of Britain, teaching the Tories a lesson if not beginning the gradual replacement of them by Reform is the only logical course of action. If elevating a Nazi sympathizing party to the top two can be considered logical in any sense.
The only thing they seem to be in agreement on is that the Tories have indeed lost their way.
In a very limited sense, they have a point. The Tory governments over the last fourteen years have indeed been well to the left of the Thatcher ministries. Tax increases, gay marriage, and infrastructure spending don’t seem like things The Iron Lady would have done in my opinion. On the other hand, the people responsible for austerity and Brexit are hardly who I’d call Labour lite.
But the bigger issue is why David Cameron moderated the Conservative Party. Reform and disenchanted Tories may prefer to believe otherwise, but the Brexit referendum is not the only time since 1987 that the right wing was offered as a choice. William Hague and Michael Howard both led the Tories in the direction of preachy law and order, old school regression, and reversing the pro-immigration policies of Tony Blair. These resulted in Labour’s hottest run in its history. So, Cameron fixed the glitch and upset his base in doing so.
Furthermore, these hand-wringing right-wing British pundits appear to have a curious “unawareness” of the fact that American style conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss trailed Labour by much more in the polls than the Conservatives do now under Rishi Sunak.
But fine. Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say Britain gets only a normal level of minor party voting. Instead of 17% of the popular vote, Reform gets only 3%. I’ll assume these lost votes break 70% for Reform, 20% for Labour, and 10% for other minor parties. Similarly, let’s assume that the Greens don’t swell to 7% like polls indicate (another thing the British right would prefer to remain unknown) but only get 3%. Labour, of course, gets the big piece of those leftover votes.
Have you done the math? Labour gets an incredible (for the multi-party system) 45% or so. Conservatives rocket to 32% while the Liberal Democrats, already expected to gain dozens of additional seats, jump up two or three more points in the popular vote. In other words, while an unfathomable Tory collapse would be off the table, it would still be one of if not their worst year ever!
In other words, the moral victory they’re preparing to claim is but a delusion of grandeur. The British right, like its American counterpart, cannot, will not, accept that the 1980’s were a uniquely conservative decade and that the world has since then been to the left of where they’d like it to be.
But while it’s very easy to make fun of them for their self-deception — what do you think I’ve been doing throughout this story — the results of the Brexit referendum, 2016 (and maybe 2020) U.S. presidential election, and the impending parliamentary success France’s National Front stand as reminders that the penalty for extremism and fanaticism are exaggerated. Stuff like the economy and scandal are what count the most. At the moment, they strongly favor Labour. But in time that could change.
Even as is, Reform believing that Britain should have left Britain open during the pandemic and now fields Hitler lovers are not enough to convince the British people that it doesn’t deserve the third most votes in the land. I predict that by the election after tomorrow, the Conservatives will either have placated the supporters they’ve lost to Reform or — long shot — Reform will become the prime opposition to Labour.
As Keir Starmer prepares to enter no. 10, he would do well to understand that he must succeed. If the British economy is still bad, I’m afraid opportunity for a movement that is not much less grave a threat to Britain’s democracy than Donald Trump is to ours will knock.