analysis
Tonight is the last big TV debate before the election in Great Britain. Polls show the Labour Party far ahead of the Tories. But it will not be an easy return to power.
The most interesting thing about the upcoming British elections is not the almost certain victory of the Labour Party and the resulting very likely return of the British to a post-populist era, but the impending, almost complete collapse of the Tories, once the most powerful and successful conservative party in Europe, which has dominated political events on the island for decades.
Depending on the poll, it could enter the House of Commons on July 4 with only 70 to 90 of 650 seats, meaning it will no longer even be the strongest opposition party. Tory MPs themselves are talking about downfall and “annihilation”; a record number of almost 80 MPs have already thrown in the towel in recent months and declared that they do not want to run again, including such prominent figures as Michael Gove.
The party that triumphantly took over Parliament single-handedly just five years ago with Johnson’s promise to “Get Brexit Done” is facing the most dramatic defeat in its 200-year history.
Even Sunak doesn’t like to talk about Brexit
How could this happen? The simple answer would be Brexit, the Tories’ central project since 2015, which is now so unpopular that even the British Prime Minister would prefer not to talk about it anymore.
But attributing the impending collapse of the Tories solely to the consequences of the referendum is too simplistic. Since Boris Johnson, Brexit was far more than just an exit from the EU; it was the first major outbreak of right-wing populism in a Western democracy.
In 2016, the Tories were the first traditional centre-right party to throw themselves at the extreme right parties, first UKIP and later the Brexit Party, in order to counter the perceived threat from the far right, and then became more and more radicalised.
They did not interpret their narrow victory in the referendum as a mandate to reunite the divided British society with a soft Brexit, but on the contrary: the “will of the people” soon became a free pass to aggressively denounce any critic of the planned Brexit revolution as a traitor.
In doing so, a classically conservative party adopted the authoritarian slogans of anti-democratic figures such as Nigel Farage on the ultra-right fringe of British society.
Farage makes comeback with Reform Party
The plan to neutralize right-wing agitators like Farage did not work. Quite the opposite. A few weeks ago he returned to the political stage as a candidate for the Reform Party he founded. As if nothing had happened, Farage has since declared that the Tories did not implement Brexit radically enough, and is once again driving the incumbent Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Tories ahead of him.
This means that, in addition to his own unpopularity, Sunak now also risks losing the last segment of voters he had actively courted: the far right. A very British Groundhog Day.
And Labour? Keir Starmer only has to look on from afar at the misery of a Tory party staring into the abyss, and that plays into his hands. According to current polls, he has a historic victory on July 4th as good as in the bag. And yet, when the conservative centre implodes in a democracy, it always has consequences for the social structure as a whole.
And so Keir Starmer should fear a Tory party that is becoming increasingly radical in opposition more than the old, strong opponent from the middle of the party landscape. If quite a few of the remaining Tories are now calling for Nigel Farage as the new Tory leader in their distress, then that is a fatal signal that the Tories are unlikely to come to their senses after an election defeat.
Empty state coffers
A Labour victory will therefore only at first glance appear to be an easy return to the old world of liberal democracy. As the USA and Poland have just shown more than clearly, there is no easy way back to the status quo ante for a country once poisoned by populism.
Labour leader Starmer canvasses for votes at a campaign event in the port of Southampton.
In addition, Starmer faces seemingly impossible tasks after his election victory. He must repair a country whose health system and public services are on the verge of collapse, while at the same time the state coffers are virtually empty due to years of mismanagement by the Tories.
This is a job that requires at least two legislative periods of quiet work. But a right-wing political centre imploding around Labour is likely to torpedo this from the start. And so it is hardly surprising that Starmer has often seemed strained and slightly tense in his public appearances: the next British Prime Minister knows exactly what to expect.