It is a sick conservative party which is gathering on Sunday in Manchester. The Tories are going through a complicated period, marked in particular by polls at half mast in view of the next elections.
The Conservative Party, in power in the United Kingdom, must govern a country in crisis and prepare for elections in which it is set to lose: it is in this context that the Conservatives are organizing their annual conference, in Manchester, on Sunday October 1st.
The general elections scheduled for next year are looking bad, polls have been indicating for several months. The Tories are credited with 27% of voting intentions, far behind the Labor rival, who received 45%. The difference is significant, even more so when we remember the overwhelming victory of the Conservatives in 2019: a majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons. Since then, there has been Covid, Brexit, the war in Ukraine… with inflation exploding, just like the cost of energy, and the British seeing their purchasing power collapse.
Some MPs will throw in the towel
Add to this, Boris Johnson’s lies, the Liz Truss fiasco, the broken promises on leaving the European Union and the fight against illegal immigration: in four years, the party’s incredible capital has been squandered.
The Conservatives have been in power for 13 years and have never seemed closer to defeat. Moreover, several deputies from the current majority have already announced that they will not run again. Some have already resigned from their post: this is the case of Boris Johnson.
Immigration and the economy to try to convince
The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is trying to remobilize. To do this, he relies on the fundamentals of his party. Thus, he wants to win back the electorate with campaign themes well known in his camp, such as the fight against illegal immigration and small boatsthese small boats which cross the Channel.
This week, it was the Minister of the Interior who put the subject back on the table. From the United States, Suella Braverman criticized the Global Refugee Convention, deeming it obsolete. She says that you just need to be a woman or a homosexual to ask for asylum, which is too easy, she believes. Supported by Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman is still raising the possibility of leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, in order to implement a tougher policy on immigration.
New licenses to operate in the North Sea
The other axis of the Conservatives’ campaign is summed up in this sentence: “The environment is good, but a healthy economy is better“. They thus opposed the taxation of the most polluting vehicles in Greater London. Furthermore, more than a hundred new oil and gas exploitation licenses were granted in the North Sea, and the government rejected ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars for five years. The reduction in the number of gas boilers has also been postponed until 2035.
These markers are supposed to appeal to the conservative electorate, to try to catch up in the polls.