United Kingdom Election Analysis: The Electoral Disaster Created by the Conservative Party’s Statism

I want Reaganism/Thatcherism mostly because I support good policy, but I also think small-government conservatism is good politics (my 4th Theorem).

Especially compared to big-government conservatism, which suffered a landslide loss yesterday in the United Kingdom. All of which was very predictable, as shown by this segment from a discussion with a British commentator back in February.

For those of you who don’t follow British politics, all you need to know is that the Conservative Party won a landslide in 2019 and then got decimated yesterday.

Not every seat has been decided, but near-final results show that the Tories lost 250 seats while the Labour Party picked up 211 seats (out of 650 total seats in Parliament).

And it’s not because the Labour Party did well. It’s because the Tories did poorly, losing a huge share of the vote compared to the 2019 race.

So why did this happen?

At the risk of over-simplifying, there are three answers to that question

We’ll start with the clever maneuvering of Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader and new Prime Minister. He jettisoned the radical leftism of Jeremy Corbyn (the previous Labour leader) and presented a much more reasonable image to voters. He and his team have said no increase in income tax rates or payroll tax rates, that work is better than welfare, and courted businesses with pro-growth rhetoric.

Second, voters were tired of the Tories after 14 years in power, especially since there were a sufficient number of scandals to lower the party’s popularity (for instance, Boris Johnson and others displayed hypocrisy during the pandemic, just like many U.S. lawmakers).

Last (but definitely not least), I think Tories betrayed their voters. I’ve written many times about their misguided support for bigger government and higher taxes in the past few years. But let’s see what some others have said about their statism.

We’ll start with a few excerpts from an editorial earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal.

…why are the Tories facing a wipeout instead of a respectable loss? Much of the answer rests with the economy. …the Tories have focused on squeezing ever more revenue out of the economy to fund the government they refuse to reform. Revenue as a share of GDP increased during most of their term in office, and the tax code became more complex than it’s ever been. …The result is government revenue at the highest share of economic output since the immediate aftermath of World War II, and anemic growth. …living standards haven’t improved. Average weekly earnings, adjusted for inflation, have increased only £16 in 14 years. …Tory climate follies have been ruinous. Having legally committed the U.K. to achieving net-zero carbon emissions, the Tories later had to abandon a string of green mandates on everything from electric vehicles to home heating.

Next, let’s look to the British press and review some passages from David Frost’s just-published column in the Telegraph.

The strategy chosen by the outgoing Tory leadership – to ignore the 2019 electoral coalition and political realignment, to pretend Brexit never happened, and to tilt Left-wards away from actual conservatism – was…not one that engaged with the reality of the political situation. It was compounded by the inability to deliver anything important, the repeated failure to get to grips with illegal immigration, …and the obsession with second order issues like the smoking ban. …those directly responsible for tonight’s disaster – the leadership, the accommodationist grandees, the defeatist commentators around them – can’t be part of the reconstruction. They need to go and not be seen again. Then the Right of centre in British politics, those with actual conservative beliefs, whatever party they are in, can start to do what is necessary: unite behind a conservative vision with a coherent set of policies and the determination to deliver them.

Lastly, here are excerpts from a Wall Street Journal column back in May.

Conservatives have little to show for their 14 years in power. …They’ve kept Britain a heavily regulated welfare state and increased the tax burden to a level not seen since before Margaret Thatcher. Boris Johnson, who won the last election, ran himself out of Parliament with his personal lack of discipline. But he and his predecessor Theresa May also indulged the bad political advice that the only way to appeal to working-class Britons flirting with the Tories after Brexit was to spend more. They pandered to the green left on climate policy in a way that punished Britons with higher energy costs.

I’ll close with two comments.

First, immigration is a huge issue in both Europe and the United States. Given my libertarian sympathies, I generally applaud people seeking a better life. Especially since many of them are escaping statist countries and migrating to places with more economic liberty (my views on welfare-driven migration are obviously much different).

However, voters don’t like to see big changes in population demographics and rebel against parties that support or even tolerate high levels of immigration. That partly explains Trump’s success in 2016 (and maybe this year as well), and also played a significant role in both yesterday’s British election and last month’s elections for the European Parliament.

Second, my final point is to admit that pushing a Reagan-style, Thatcher-style economic agenda is not easy. People like getting freebies when they’re being financed by someone else.

But there’s no practical alternative for parties on the right. They must embrace and explain a growth agenda to have any hope of defeating a vote-buying agenda.

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Image credit: David Iliff | CC BY-SA 3.0.