What Republicans Can Learn From the Tories' Impending Disaster | Opinion

Britain's Conservative Party is on the brink of what might well be its extinction. The U.K.'s oldest political party is currently trailing Labour by more than 20 points with less than three weeks to go before voters elect a new parliament on July 4. And though one should always be cautious about analogizing events in different political systems, there's a lesson in this for Republicans in the U.S.

The contrast in the prospects of the two parties couldn't be starker.

In the United States, right now the GOP is on track to regain the White House with a good chance to control at least one if not both Houses of Congress in January. Despite being the object of a formidable lawfare campaign to both bankrupt and imprison him, former president Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in national polls as well as in battleground states. Though anything can happen between now and November, the party's conservative base appears to be more committed than ever to Trump and, given Biden's perceived weaknesses, that could be enough to give the Republicans their best result in 20 years.

Things are different on the other side of the pond.

It's likely that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a snap election because he thought that doing so would catch the upstart Reform Party, led by Brexit leader Nigel Farage, unprepared. Sunak assumed that, at worst, the Conservatives would retain a significant portion of their seats even if Labour was probably going to coast to victory with its leader, Sir Keir Starmer, replacing him as prime minister.

But Sunak miscalculated. Despite a ragtag slate of candidates and little time to make up for its enormous disadvantage in organization, Reform is on the rise. Polls show it nipping at the Tories' heels for second place in an election where the identity of the winner is no longer in doubt. Reform is trending up at 15 percent and the Conservatives are heading down at 22 percent. With Sunak's campaign looking dull and pointless compared with that of the brash Farage, the notion of Reform catching the Tories, something that would have previously been inconceivable, is now possible.

Why are the Tories on the verge of collapse?

Over the last 14 years, during which Britain's Conservatives have governed, they've not merely failed to fulfill their promises about limiting the uncontrolled immigration that is transforming the country. They've actually presided over an unprecedented increase in it.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a historic victory in 2019 largely on the strength of working-class former Labour voters who wanted not only their country out of the European Union but limits imposed on immigration. That gave Johnson the chance to achieve a genuine realignment of British politics. Instead, the Tory establishment, under both Johnson and his disastrous successors Liz Truss and Sunak, were always more interested in appealing to the interests of the City of London, the U.K.'s Wall Street. Ignoring their voters' demands, they pursued policies on immigration and social issues indistinguishable from those of their Labour rivals.

If American politicians behaved in this manner, they would have been beaten in primaries. And there's no way the GOP could head to a national election being led by someone who disagreed with its voters on most key issues. But Britain's political system allows the leadership of its major parties to ignore the wishes of grassroots voters. The only way for the people to make their voices heard is by abandoning their party altogether, and that's what's happening to the Conservatives. As a result, the Tories may well go from the 80-seat majority they won less than four years ago to holding 80 seats or less in the next parliament, their lowest total in their two centuries of existence.

The Republican Party has been more accountable to its voters. Much to everyone's surprise, the GOP electorate embraced Trump in 2016 specifically because he wasn't a typical Republican politician interested only in tax cuts and hawkish foreign policy. They loved the fact that he trolled the Washington establishment on immigration, pursued trade policies that would protect American jobs, and said what they were thinking about the disastrous wars started by the last GOP president. Most of all, he understood that American politics was changing and that working-class voters were no longer represented by a Democratic Party that was solely concerned with the interests of credentialed elites, Wall Street, and woke cultural policies.

It hasn't been all smooth sailing for Trump's GOP. The COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 election and the subsequent Jan. 6 Capitol riot hurt it badly. And though Republicans won the House in the 2022 midterms, it was by a far smaller margin than expected.

It's also true that the congressional leadership of the GOP has often been as determined to ignore conservative voters as their counterparts in London. But by renominating Trump, Republican voters have a chance to change that. And that is why, rather than their base abandoning them, as happened to the Tories, the GOP could find itself back on top in Washington next year.

Republicans might be in the same position as the Tories right now if people like 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney or his running mate, former House speaker Paul Ryan, were at the head of their 2024 ticket. But in Britain, the moral equivalents of these Never Trumpers are still in charge. While Britain's Conservative voters told their leaders what they wanted in the 2016 Brexit vote and the 2019 general election, the Tory establishment refused to go along.

Given the first-past-the-post system, even if Reform ties or beats the Conservatives in the national vote, it may just mean hundreds of second-place finishes. Those few Tories who keep their seats will probably be on the party's Left flank, further sinking the chances of changing and thereby saving the party. It also remains to be seen whether Farage can begin the process of political realignment that will see the Conservatives replaced as the main opposition to Labour.

But the lesson here for Republicans, including those who remain members in good standing of the D.C. establishment, is that conservative political parties that ignore their voters are headed for the scrap heap of history. If they want to avoid the fate of Britain's Tories, they must follow Trump's lead and listen to their working-class voters rather than to Wall Street or Never Trumpers who have long since abandoned them for the Democrats.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him @jonathans_tobin.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.