For decades, conservatives around the world looked to the British Conservative Party as a model. The party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher was the inspiration for generations of right-wing politicians.
But this glorious era seems to be coming to an end. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak – the fourth Conservative leader in less than eight years – called a general election on Wednesday for July 4. Which surprised everyone a little, the Conservatives being 20 points behind the Labor opposition in the polls. Nothing obliged him to call the elections before the end of the year. By all predictions, the Conservatives are heading for a defeat of historic proportions: they currently have 344 seats (out of 650) and could lose half of them, while Labor could reach 400 seats.
What happened to make British voters so keen to change government after 14 years of Conservative rule? It can be summed up in one word: Brexit. The referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union.
Then-Conservative leader David Cameron promised during the 2015 election that brought him to power to hold a referendum on Brexit even though he was personally opposed to the idea. It was the price to pay to maintain the unity of his party, many of whose members hated the European Union.
Cameron campaigned for the “Remain” option while a small group of MPs led by Boris Johnson campaigned for the “Leave” option. To everyone’s surprise, the British voted for leaving the EU by 51.9%. Cameron resigned as Prime Minister the next day.
And that’s where things started to go wrong.
As a journalist from theEconomist, a rather conservative publication: “Bad ideas, in an ideal world, most often sink into insignificance. Among the British Conservatives, they have a good chance of finding their way into the party program. »
The first of these bad ideas was Brexit itself. Its supporters campaigned on the grounds that cutting ties with its main economic partners would save billions of pounds which could then be reinvested in health.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, there was a recession and disruptions in supply chains that greatly damaged the UK economy, particularly that of London, which was the financial center of Europe.
Prime Minister Theresa May, who succeeded David Cameron, had great difficulty getting her government’s strategy accepted in the complex negotiations surrounding Brexit. She was in the difficult position of having to deliver withdrawal from the European Union even though she was against it. She was bound by the result of the referendum.
Defeated three times in votes in the House of Commons and in front of a party deeply divided on this issue, she ended up resigning without having managed to complete her mandate.
His successor was quickly found: Boris Johnson, who had been the informal leader of the “Leave” campaign in the Brexit referendum. Popular, but with a reputation for being less than serious, he received two-thirds of the vote from Conservative Party members. He then won a resounding victory in the December 2019 elections. A few months later, the government entered “pandemic” mode, which marked his three years in power. But the prime minister was forced to resign after a series of scandals, large and small, that undermined his authority, and because of a sort of ongoing indecision in his handling of the pandemic.
He was replaced by Liz Truss, who was in office for only 44 days, the shortest term in modern history. Time to make an ultraconservative budget which reduced taxes for the richest, but above all caused the markets and the pound to fall!
Then came Rishi Sunak, whose great contribution was to pass a law allowing people who applied for refugee status in the United Kingdom to be sent to Rwanda – for a fee. The law was challenged, in part because it was impossible to consider Rwanda a safe country, as the British Supreme Court upheld.
Regardless, Mr. Sunak passed a law declaring Rwanda safe, forcing officials to make transfers without regard to the advice of the courts.
For Canadians, the British elections will be especially interesting because Mr. Sunak, like Justin Trudeau, is 20 points behind his opponents. He hasn’t been in power for a decade, but he carries the heavy baggage of blunders accumulated during 14 years of conservative rule, a faltering economy and an opposition leader more popular than him.
Is it possible to win such a bet? Response July 4.
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