Britain: The Coming Conservative Catastrophe

The bad news keeps coming for the Tories. The latest ill-tidings were twin electoral defeats at Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, two erstwhile Conservative ridings. This adds to the growing sense that the party of Disraeli is in free fall and that it has failed to find its footing after booting Prime Minister Johnson from 10 Downing Street. One analyst tells the New York Times that “it is beginning to look terminal for the Tories now.” Prime Minister Sunak is obliged to hold an election by January of 2025. A poll of 11,000 voters commissioned by the 38 Degrees campaign group predicts a 190-seat Labor majority, on par with Prime Minister Blair’s victory in 1997. It also predicts that every one of the so-called “Red Wall” seats taken by the Conservatives in 2019 will revert to Labor. Another poll has Labor holding a 16-point national advantage. Anyway you slice it, the Tories are in trouble. While news of the Conservatives’ demise could be premature months before an election, it is difficult to refrain from reflecting that just four years ago Mr. Johnson, running on a promise to “Get Brexit Done,” won a victory the likes of which England has rarely seen. The story since then is a sorry one, marked by Partygate bacchanals while Britons were sequestered. The Tories squandered a chance that comes only rarely, even in venerable democracies.The more significant failure at 10 Downing Street, though, was not the booze, but how Mr. Johnson governed. The Economist in 2021 noted his “plan to create a bigger, busier state.” In early 2022, the Wall Street Journal reckoned that Mr. Johnson’s “big government agenda is a political flop.” Our Brexit Diarist discerned a “bloated budget” and “financial tribute to the reigning orthodoxies on climate change.” Mr. Johnson’s plans were anti-conservative.Yet it occurs to us that Mr. Johnson could yet be the best option for those who treasure Britain and Brexit alike. Mr. Sunak can be credited with a kind of return to order, but who cares about symmetrical deck chairs when the Titanic is sinking? The former premier, Elizabeth Truss, was warmly received at a recent party conference, but we can’t imagine that many are hankering a return to her 44-day tenure as prime minister. Then there is Labor. Its leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has worked to erase the taint of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. We admire the stands he has taken for the Jews and the Jewish state. A return of his party to power, though, would install at Westminster a faction utterly hostile to Israel. This is not to mention its commitment to the kind of ruinous leftist economic orthodoxy. Much rides on whether the heirs of Churchill and Thatcher can mount a comeback.One thing to bear in mind is that Britain is far from the only democracy trying to find its footing. Poland has just made a move for the center, moving aside the Law and Justice Party. Italy’s new right-wing premier is being undermined by the equivalent of the deep state. France may yet see gains — or even victory — as Marine LePen and her National Rally, Politico reports, court the country’s Jewish community as the French left sides with Hamas.No political drama in Europe, though, is a match for the tragedy being signaled in Britain. No opportunity has been proffered as the one the voters gave to Britain with the Brexit referendum of June 2016. If Labour wins, Mr. Starmer is already vowing to “rebuild relations with the EU.” A defeat for the Tories could mean not only a shut-out for Conservatives from parliament for generations, but the reversal of Britain’s hard-won independence.

Britain: The Coming Conservative Catastrophe

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