The elections that Rishi Sunak has now called will almost certainly have a decisive result, but will not represent a real change in British politics. Rather, it is the last stand of an order that is disappearing, under increasing attacks from both sides of the new political spectrum.
Unless a miracle occurs, the Conservative Party will suffer a catastrophic and crushing defeat. The betting market is currently buzzing on whether they will do worse than their previous low of 156 seats (out of 670) in 1906. Serious money is being bet that they will get fewer than 100 seats.
The reason for this sentiment is not only Labour’s huge lead in the polls, but also the suggestion that tactical voting will also be widespread, leaving many apparently safe seats vulnerable to both the Liberal Democrats and Labour. This outcome does not reflect any enthusiasm for Labor or for the agenda of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.
In this there is a clear contrast with 1997 and 1945. The dominant sentiment among voters (which is likely to lead to a low turnout) is fatigue and contempt for the entire political and media class, but with deep-seated hostility and fed-up with the Tories. In many ways this makes it look more like 1906, something Keir Starmer and the Labor Party should keep in mind.
This will therefore be a decisive election, one that will deliver a clear and crushing verdict on fourteen years of the Conservatives in power, but with no real enthusiasm for the alternative. What it won’t be is election rescheduling – an election that reveals a new and transformed political landscape and voting pattern.
But we only had such an election five years ago, in 2019. So what happened? In the years leading up to 2019, there was a realignment of voters, with the older issue of economics losing its relevance and being replaced by the new one of nationalism versus cosmopolitan globalism.
In 2019, the Tory Party leaned on that realignment and won over many new voters in parts of the country they had previously not reached. This was achieved through promises to get Brexit done, level up the North and Midlands while moving away from free markets, and control and reduce immigration.
At the same time, they clung to voters who combined cosmopolitanism (Remain voters) with support for the free market, because they had the bonus of facing Jeremy Corbyn.
If the Conservatives had done that, the new alignment unveiled in 2019 would have been consolidated this time. The Conservatives are said to have made further gains in the north and Midlands, but lost seats in the south-east and south-west suburbs to both Labor and the Liberal Democrats. The result would have been much closer and the new alignment and divisions would have become even more apparent, with the Tories as a moderate national populist party.
This obviously did not happen. The political and media classes refused to accept the new stance and the promises of the 2019 manifesto were simply ignored, while Starmer abandoned both the popular parts of Corbyn’s agenda (the left-wing economy) and the unpopular part (the radical anti-Western foreign policy) . ). Hence the deep disillusionment of many voters.
In the case of the Conservative Party, media figures, politicians and donors all refused to follow the logic of the 2019 election, seeing it as a one-off event arising from Brexit and not a reshuffle.
This took two forms. Some rejected nationalism and cultural conservatism, while continuing to promote a kind of technocratic liberalism in economics. Others accepted nationalism but rejected the idea of things like leveling up and immigration controls in favor of a revived free-market radicalism.
This combination, personified by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, alienated two-thirds of the 2019 voting coalition and left them with a Thatcher behind. By refusing to accept the inevitable loss of a third of the 2019 electoral coalition while seeking to expand the other third, they have lost both.
That, plus the exhaustion after fourteen years in office and the refusal to accept or even address the accelerating collapse and general uselessness of most of the British state, means they are doomed.
On July 5, there will be many people claiming that normal services have resumed after the episode of populist chaos caused by David Cameron’s decision to hold a Brexit referendum. This will be a huge and (for those who do this) disastrous error of judgment.
The 1906 election may offer a foretaste of things to come. The huge liberal majority turned out to be the last great stand of the old Gladstonian liberalism. They won by a landslide mainly because the Tories (Unionists) were completely divided over tariff reform and deeply unpopular after a long time in office.
Just four years later, in 1910, they lost their majority to a resurgent and now united Conservative Party (the tariff reformers had meanwhile triumphed) and became dependent on the Irish Parliamentary Party. Something similar will happen in the next Parliament.
Keir Starmer will almost certainly win a landslide majority, but he will discover, like the Liberals after 1906, that his support is broad but shallow and driven more by dislike of the Tories than by any real commitment. Concerns about issues such as immigration, national sovereignty in a world of globalized rules and the various imbalances in the British economy, which led to voter realignment before 2019, will not go away.
Because of that realignment and the refusal of most of our political class to accept and address it (on both sides), there is now a huge hole or void in British politics. That is for a party that is nationalist and anti-globalist, traditionally patriotic, anti-immigration, culturally traditionalist and left-wing in economics.
This is the kind of party that is on the rise across Europe, but here there is no party that offers this, apart from the SDP (still a fringe party) and George Galloway’s Labor Party (in his case hampered by the radical anti-Western foreign policy positions).
There is also room for a party to offer a plausible version of the opposing position, but that space is currently overcrowded.
Currently, approximately 35 percent of voters are effectively unrepresented. Many of them will abstain on July 4. This situation will not last.
After the defeat, the Conservative Party will either finally accept the new position, become resolutely nationalist and distance itself from free markets, or split or be replaced by a new political force of the populist right.
This may take some time, but the politics of the 1980s are now a dead end for the right in Britain. Meanwhile, a large-majority Labor government will soon become deeply unpopular because it disappoints its supporters (inevitably, given the difficulties it will face) and fails to address the kinds of issues driving the realignment.
Like the liberals after 1906, they will come under pressure from both sides, from a more coherent nationalist right on the one hand and from radicals of different stripes plus more effective and consistent liberals on the other.
The elections in July and the parliament after them represent the final stand of the political era created by the combination of Thatcher and Blair. The alternatives will emerge in the next Parliament.