Conservative party is losing a fight to death

Unlock Free

Roula Khalaf, publisher of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Is it the whole movement that liked to be described as the “most successful political party in the world”? The story warns against the writing of obituaries for conservatives, longevity is based on a strange talent for regeneration. But the party of Peel and Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher has desperate problems.

Is not alone in your situation. The results of this week’s local election show that work is also the support of hemorrhages, which alienate voters to their left, disappointed in many of their traditional working class base and losing a similar percentage of councilors.

This simultaneous collapse of support and disappointment with the two main parties has fueled the significant increase in the United Kingdom’s reform of Nigel Farage. Essentially, Britain has no populist problem. It has an unpopular problem.

But the labor force is at least in government and is four years old to establish the agenda and improve its fortunes. For conservatives, this moment is existential. The way from Farage to Downing Street demands that he first replace the Tories as the main opposition. While some Taries speak quietly about election covenant, a growing lighthouse has no incentive in Parley.

The United Kingdom has seen moments of third parties earlier and the conservatives will bring the SDP’s comfort of the political arch, which in the 1980’s briefly aspired to “break the mold” of British politics. It reached 700,000 votes to overcome a Labor party that had moved abruptly to the left. But the United Kingdom electoral system limited the new group to only 23 seats because the vote was inefficiently extended. In the following election, the work had begun to move towards the center and the time of the SDP passed.

And yet, there are good reasons why conservatives would be convenient to not assume that the reform can go in the same way.

The stars are well aligned by Farage. His assault on his strength comes when the conservative brand is desperately discredited. Is chasing almost all regions. Losing ground in the north is bad, but losing the base to the south is fatal. Voters seeking work opposition are not simply disinterested in conservatives. In a multiparty race, the reform needs a much lower part of the vote to establish the narrative that is the main alternative.

While the SDP struggled for central terrain, the reform threatens the Tories of the nationalist right. The instinct is now to move to claim that territory, but this will make it difficult for its southern voters to migrate to the Democrats liberals.

In the 1980’s, Labor also had the institutional advantages of union support, much higher party loyalty and a clear demographic base. None of these is true for current conservatives.

They need to look to rebuild their position, appearing that they offer answers to key issues about voters. So far they have failed. Kemi Badenoch, the new leader, does not seem to connect with the voters and is showing by Robert Jenrick, his most famous defeat rival, who is more energetic and effective. Its front bench fails to stroke the economic failures of Labor.

Part of his problem is the exhaustion of the talent he followed in the Brexit. The conservatives of caliber, intellectual and charisma were largely persecuted during the party. His leadership contest was a cavalcade of mediocrity.

In contrast, Farage is a generally endowed leader who has established the agenda in British politics for two decades and continues to do so. He chooses his causes and then a work to popularize them instead of the other way around. And this can be your time. To the west, the right is being performed around its mark of populist nationalism.

Farage is vacant some territory on the right, as the new center, which is culturally conservative, but economically. But the Taries seem to be insecure if fighting this space or modifying a more external liberal economic platform.

Their only hope is a different and inclusive approach that seems to offer a better alternative, later and inclusive for reform and prevents them from looking like half the country. In other words, they have to compete in the main current with the labor and recover the terrain seem like a viable alternative government instead of an alternative opposition to the fault.

It is no wonder that such a newly crushed party struggles to find its feet. But the rise of the reform means that it does not have the luxury of time.

Politics is too wild due to confidence on how things could be in the general election in four years. The reform will make mistakes. The work believes that voters can take advantage of FARAGE because of their proximity to Donald Trump and, more importantly, their attitude towards the NHS.

But conservatives can no longer doubt. The most successful party in the world is currently losing a struggle for death.

Robert.shrimsley@ft.com