The party of current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is set to lose the country’s election for the first time in 14 years.
The Conservative Party, led by current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is set to lose power in the United Kingdom for the first time since 2010. The worst defeat in decades, if confirmed this Thursday (4 July 2024), is mainly due to the party’s internal instability in recent years.
After 14 years of government and 5 changes in leadership, polls indicate that the party will lose to the center-left Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer.
The election on Thursday (July 4) was brought forward by Sunak in May, in a desperate attempt to save the direct majority in Parliament. At the time, the prime minister said he had sped up the vote to see whether the British wanted to encourage his plans for economic progress or trust a new government.
The strategy is unlikely to work. A YouGov poll released on Wednesday (3 July) shows that Labour has 39% of voting intentions, against 22% for the Conservatives. Reform UK (formerly the Brexit Party), further to the right, has 15% and is also expected to take seats from the tories (as members of the Conservative Party are known).
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For Kai Enno Lehmann, professor of international relations at USP, Sunak understood that the party’s chances were low, and for this reason he chose to bring forward the election before the situation worsened.
“Sunak is not going to change his personality. He would be losing regardless of the election date, the question is how big the defeat is“, Lehmann said in an interview with Poder360.
The Conservative Party’s era in power began with a coalition government led by David Cameron, who remained in office until 2016. There have been four more prime ministers since then: Theresa May (2016-2019), Boris Johnson (2019-2022), Liz Truss (2022) and Sunak. The party, now weakened, has been losing popular support since 2021 due to instability, disagreements and controversies.
The Partygate Case
Lehmann describes Partygate as a turning point in the Conservatives’ decline in popularity, when government officials, including then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, were caught violating lockdown rules during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Johnson and some members of the government held parties and meetings from November 2020 to January 2021, when the country was in lockdown due to the second wave of the virus. Sunak, who was chancellor of the exchequer at the time, also attended the meetings.
“The Conservatives lost their lead in the polls after Partygate. After that, Liz Truss only lasted 50 days in government. Rishi Sunak took office in a difficult situation, but he sold himself as a trustworthy leader who would play by the rules. But he failed to do that.“, explains Lehmann.
Crisis in the Conservative Party
Despite Rishi Sunak’s government’s attempts to win over voters, Lehmann says Britons are unhappy because nothing in the country is better than it was 14 years ago. The blame for this is often placed on the Conservative Party as a whole, as the constant turnover of prime ministers reflects internal instability.
The Conservatives have also been competing for space with the emerging Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, the main figure behind the Brexit campaign.
In 2016, then Prime Minister David Cameron called a Brexit referendum with the intention of suffocating the party. Regardless of the outcome, Conservative leaders understood that once the issue was decided, the party would lose strength.
However, with the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, Farage’s party began to grow among right-wing voters.
Recently, Sunak has been proposing measures to win over right-wing voters, who often vote for Reform UK. In April, the prime minister proposed deporting all immigrants who entered the country illegally to Rwanda. The British judiciary considered that asylum seekers would be at risk of death if they were sent to the African country, violating the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights).
Lehmann explains that the strategy to win over more voters has not been successful. While most conservative voters, who are from the center or center-right, consider the proposal excessive, anti-immigration voters will vote to elect Nigel Farage.
A “radicalization” Sunak’s proposal does not attract new voters and scares away more moderate voters. It is likely that the Conservatives, by coming second in the election, will secure their position as official leaders of the opposition, but they will have to share the role with Reform UK.
“These elections are being called a ‘punishment election’ for the Conservative Party“, defines Professor Kai Enno Lehmann.
This report was produced by journalism intern Ana Sanches Mião under the supervision of assistant editor Ighor Nóbrega.
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