While Americans will celebrate the Independence Day holiday on Thursday, Britons will go to the polls for that country’s first general election since December 2019. And the result seems all but a foregone conclusion: The ruling Conservative Party will get shellacked.
In one sense, the likely result doesn’t seem all that surprising. The Conservatives have been in office since David Cameron’s first election win in the spring of 2010. And governments in office a long time — the Conservatives after 18 years in power from 1979-97 and Labour at the end of their 13 years in power from 1997-2010 — tend to become exhausted: The best cabinet officials retire, the party’s policies become stale, voters tire of the status quo, and so forth.
But the scope and scale of the impending catastrophe appear far greater than prior electoral wipeouts and could suggest something far deeper in play. Consider this poll from early June, which found that only 42 percent of people who voted Conservative in 2019 would vote for the party again on Thursday:
Among 2019 Conservative voters:
Tied-lowest % since Sunak became PM.
Westminster VI, 2019 Conservatives (31 May – 2 June):
Conservative 42% (-4)
Labour 21% (+2)
Reform 19% (+1)
Other 6% (-1)
Don’t Know 11% (-1)
Changes +/- 25-27 Mayhttps://t.co/OXNaqzy6qY pic.twitter.com/c00Onrhby6
— Redfield & Wilton Strategies (@RedfieldWilton) June 3, 2024
As bad as Joe Biden’s debate performance was last Thursday, there’s no way that only 42 percent of his 2020 supporters will vote for him this November. So what’s going on with Britain’s Conservatives?
