Conservatives Faced Defeat in U.K. Elections

The story

The United Kingdom held national elections on July 4, and the results were definitive. The Conservative, or Tory, Party — which had ruled the country for the previous 14 years — was thrown out of office in the worst defeat in the party’s history. The left-wing Labour Party won in an electoral landslide and will enter parliament with 410 out of 650 seats.

One of the major reasons the Tories lost was because of the relatively new Reform U.K. party led by the famous Brexiteer Nigel Farage.

Farage made a name for himself as an opponent of Britain’s membership in the European Union, campaigning on Euroskepticism for 25 years before Brexit was finally achieved in 2016’s referendum. He did so with help from a series of parties, including the U.K. Independence Party.

Reform U.K. is the latest iteration of another party, the Brexit Party. Farage was originally not even going to run for a seat this year but said he reconsidered after feeling a “terrible sense of guilt” and that “nothing works” in his country after 14 years of Tory rule.

Reform U.K.’s populist-right platform was similar to that of other populist-right parties rising around Europe: it lambastes “mass immigration” for damaging the country, attacks multiculturalism, and critiques a mix of “woke ideology” and “nanny state regulations.”

The politics

Even before Farage energized his party by announcing his run, the Tories were concerned about Reform U.K.’s potential to take their votes. Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak portrayed voting for Reform as a vote for the Labour Party and ruled out any sort of electoral pact with the party.

Labour leader Keir Starmer stayed mostly mum about Farage, and for a good reason: though Starmer is a center-leftist and Farage is a right-populist, the latter’s success against the Tories is helping the former. However, before Farage joined the election as a candidate, Starmer did not rule out allowing Farage to join the Labour Party.

The election

The United Kingdom uses a so-called “First past the post” voting system, similar to the United States — the candidate who gets the most votes wins. When you have only two parties, this often means that results are relatively evenly distributed around the country; but strange things can happen when you have more than two.

Take last week’s election results, for example. The Labour Party came in first place with around 33 percent of the vote, 10 percent ahead of the Tories. Farage’s Reform Party came in third, with 14 percent, and the centrist Liberal Democrats came in fourth, with about 12 percent.

Labour's percentage was not significantly better than in 2019, when they faced a major defeat against the Tories; in fact, once all the votes are counted, their percentage might be almost the same.

But the seating results were immensely different. Though Labour won one-third of the votes, they gained two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. And although Reform came in third, they only won four seats - while the Liberal Democrats, who came fourth, won 60.

Why so many Tory voters left their party for Farage is clear, as it’s the same thing happening elsewhere in Europe: a center-right party was weak on immigration and failed to address significant economic issues.

When they first came into office, the party promised to keep net migration to “the tens of thousands.” Now, it’s nearly 700,000. As a result, people who traditionally voted for that party are abandoning it for more populist alternatives.

In America, though it uses a two-party system, this same battle played out within the GOP. During the 2010s, the party's more moderate wing was eclipsed by a populist movement that ultimately culminated with Donald Trump's election in 2016.

Why it matters

Labour’s massive majority means they are likely to be in power for at least a decade. Even if Reform and the Conservatives somehow mend fences, Conservatives would need to almost triple their current seats to win a majority.

The rise of Nigel Farage and Reform U.K. signifies a shift towards populism, replacing a party that was conservative in name only. In the recent past, the Tories have implemented left-wing climate policies, been unabashed in their promotion of LGBT policies, and have been weak on immigration, including allowing tens of thousands of Middle Eastern migrants to arrive by boat in southern England.

Now that Labour has gained so much power in the British government, it is likely to dramatically change the country: re-nationalizing rail and energy is at the top of their to-do list — but so too is getting a handle on migration. If Labour successfully achieves its policy goals, including addressing the immigration issues that the Tories failed to resolve, it could set a precedent for other left-wing parties in the West.