Tories - Unpopular Populists
Out of power and out of answers, the UK opposition struggles for direction.
First, the good news for the next leader of the UK’s benighted Conservative party — the popularity of the new Labour government is tanking.
The bad news is that few people are listening to any of the five rivals for the Tory crown. That’s as it should be.
The party has only been mostly talking to itself for more than a decade and has been riven by feuding for most of that time.
In further bad news, the only performer on the right who gets a hearing isn’t a Conservative in the traditional sense, but Nigel Farage, leader of the populist Reform party.
Farage, Donald Trump’s buddy, has greater name recognition than all five Tory candidates combined.
The Conservative predicament is hardly unique.
Across Europe, center-right parties have been trying and failing to solve the same electoral puzzle. Mass migration, “woke” social issues and the “green socialism” of net zero fuel the fires of discontent everywhere.
All these conventional conservative parties have tried to outbid the populists for the anti-immigrant vote and all too often their intended audience has preferred the real thing, not the pale imitation.
The voters demand “trust, relatability, and competence.”
This analysis rings true — in recent years the Conservatives have been fractious, incompetent and, to borrow Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz’s charge against his Republican opponents, a bit “weird.”
Martin Ivens Bloomberg 7 september 2024
Martin Ivens is the editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Previously, he was editor of the Sunday Times of London and its chief political commentator.
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