The rumor mill of the UK Conservative Party has been evoking a fear for several weeks now, 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 at the hands of the Liberal Party in that year, which almost led them to disappear from the political map. They 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 own, it was the emergence of a party to their right, the Reform Party, that finally sank the Canadian Tories. Comparisons are never perfect, but this one has the British right terrified.
The last-minute entry into the electoral scene of Nigel Farage, the politician who spearheaded Brexit, with a popularity similar to that of Boris Johnson, leading the Reform UK party, is seen by many analysts and many Conservative MPs as the final nail in the coffin of a party that is experiencing 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 start a revolution that benefits British citizens,” declared Farage once again on Friday night at the debate of seven parties organized by the BBC — ignored by the two main candidates. His battle, as he has made clear, is for the remains of the wreckage of the right, which is already taken 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,” explained former minister David Gauke, who left the party due to his opposition to Brexit, in The New Statesman magazine. “It could be a center-right organization capable of defending the interests of entrepreneurs 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 see any of these options in their party’s electoral offering.
Sunak’s many faces
Sunak has unsuccessfully tried all Tory personalities, and each one has blown up in his face. He wanted to present himself as the statesman capable of facing the security and defense challenges of the 21st century, and his absence 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.
He wanted to be the rigorous and responsible technocrat who straightened out the economy and has not pleased anyone: the UK remains in a deep cost of living crisis, with public services in an agonizing state. Budgetary rules prevent the prime minister from pleasing the MPs in his ranks who demand a greater tax cut. In return, a large group of businessmen have decided to support the Labour 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 taken off to that African country yet, and the number of people arriving on British soil after crossing the English Channel is again this year at record levels (over 11,000, 46% above the 2023 figure at this time). Farage’s party has made a banner out of this issue, and of the Conservatives’ failure to address it.
The threat of third place
The latest poll by the YouGov company, which uses data from almost 60,000 respondents and allows for assigning seats to parties, anticipates a resounding Labour victory on July 4th, with up to 422 seats, 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 them as the second force in dozens of constituencies. Against a 19% support for the Tories attributed by the average of the polls, the new formation, barely known since the populist politician’s decision to run again, is already approaching 16%.
For the past 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 virtually sealed two-party system, even in the most difficult times for the Tories — the long period of Blair’s New Labour government — it was simply a matter of patience and waiting for the tables to turn.
However, Brexit was an early indicator that showed that the UK was not immune to the rise of far-right populism that would eventually spread throughout Europe. Boris Johnson managed to disguise the threat in 2019, by taking on Farage’s rhetoric, raising the anti-European banner — “Get Brexit Done” was his campaign slogan — and feeding off the frustration and anguish of the so-called Red Wall, the north of England that traditionally voted Labour.
Sunak does not have the charisma, popularity, or cynicism of Johnson. “You can’t reason with a tiger when your head is inside its mouth. The only way the Conservatives have of not ending up at Farage’s mercy after July 4th is to win as many seats as possible. If they come third — because they get fewer votes than Reform UK, even if they surpass them in seats — all the doors of madness will be opened,” anticipates William Atkinson, number two at the ConservativeHome website, the obligatory forum to understand the mood of the Tories at any given time.
In Canada, conservatives and reformers needed to suffer several more defeats over a decade to realize that they had to merge to survive, as they eventually did. Many argue these days that the British Tories will have to embrace Farage and his followers in order to rise from their ashes. After all, the politician began his career 30 years ago in the Conservative Party. If he were to return, however, it would be to a very different formation than the one he left at the end of the last century.