Why Brits are so tired of the Conservative Party

This episode delves into the reasons behind the growing disillusionment with the Conservative Party in the UK, particularly in the context of the upcoming general election.

1. The Conservative Party's gamble on an early election may backfire, revealing deep-seated public frustration.
2. Rishi Sunak's leadership and campaign strategies have been widely criticized, impacting his and the party's popularity.
3. There is a significant possibility of a change in government, with the Labour Party poised to take power for the first time since the Tony Blair era.
4. The election's timing and the issues at stake reflect broader concerns about leadership, economic policy, and national identity post-Brexit.
5. Voter disillusionment is pervasive, with many unsure of their voting choices amidst the political turmoil.

1: Introduction

Cheryl Sutherland introduces the episode's focus on British politics and the upcoming general election, highlighting the stakes and the public's exhaustion with the Conservative Party.

• Paul Waldy: "It's a gamble for the ruling Conservative Party, a gamble that might not pay off."

2: The Election Call

Discussion on why PM Rishi Sunak called the election unexpectedly and its implications for his party.

• Paul Waldy: "He surprised everybody by announcing towards the end of May that the election would be on July 4."

3: Campaign Challenges

Exploration of the missteps and controversies surrounding Sunak's campaign efforts.

• Paul Waldy: "It's been a disaster and it's been self-inflicted."

4: Voter Sentiment

Analysis of how conservative voters and others across the UK feel about the election and the choices available.

• Paul Waldy: "They are feeling confused, lost, disillusioned."

5: Political Consequences

Speculation on the future of the Conservative Party and the broader implications of the election results.

• Paul Waldy: "They're going to have an awful, awful battle about who they are and identifying what they are going forward."

1. Stay Informed: Regularly follow reliable news sources to stay updated on political developments.
2. Engage in Discussions: Talk with peers to understand different political perspectives and form a more rounded view.
3. Participate in Elections: Ensure to vote in all elections to have a say in your government's formation and policies.
4. Educate Yourself on Policies: Research party platforms and histories to make informed decisions at the polls.
5. Advocate for Change: If dissatisfied, engage in or support movements that align with your views on improving governance.

The U.K.’s Conservative Party is in deep trouble. Britons are heading for a general election on July 4 and polls indicate the ruling Tories are headed for electoral disaster. From Brexit, to COVID and betting scandals, financial panic, and a nation-wide joke involving a head of lettuce – voters appear ready to oust the deeply unpopular party led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Paul Waldie, The Globe’s Europe correspondent, explains the stakes of the U.K. election and why a seismic change is looking likely in British politics.

People

Rishi Sunak, Nigel Farage, Keir Stammer

Content Warnings:

None

Peter Attia
It's better over here.

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Peter Attia
Earlier today, I spoke with his Majesty the king to request the dissolution of parliament.

The king has granted this request and we will have a general election on the 4 July.

Cheryl Sutherland
At the end of May, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that the country was heading into a general election.

Peter Attia
Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future, to decide whether we want to build on the progress we have made or risk going back to square one. With no plan and no certainty, this.

Paul Waldy
Election got off to a bizarre start. Rishi Sunak announced it outside of Downing street, as per tradition.

Cheryl Sutherland
Paul Waldy is the Globe's Europe correspondent.

Paul Waldy
There was a pouring rainstorm when he did that, and there was a protester screaming and playing loud music, so he was drowned out. So while he was trying to hold tradition, it ended up being probably the worst launch to a campaign we've ever seen.

Cheryl Sutherland
The timing of this election came as a surprise to a lot of people because its a gamble for the ruling conservative party, a gamble that might not pay off.

Paul Waldy
I dont think theres a campaign in world history thats gotten worse for a political party than this one has for them.

Cheryl Sutherland
Today, Paul is on the show to explain why so many in the UK are tired of the Tories and how this election could be a seismic shift for british politics.

Im Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail.

Paul, thanks so much for being here today.

Paul Waldy
Glad to.

Cheryl Sutherland
So, Paul, why did Prime Minister Rishi Sunak call this election in the first place? Like, what happened?

Paul Waldy
That's a big question. You know, everybody had been expecting him to wait until the fall to call an election. Now he had to call a vote by January 2025. So in some sense, he was running out of time. But what he had been telling people for months was he envisioned an election in the second half of 2024, and everybody took that to meet in the fall. That would give the economy some time to recover, that would give inflation more time to start falling, which are the two things that he really wanted to campaign on. So he surprised everybody by announcing towards the end of May that the election would be on July 4. He claimed he did this because the economy was showing signs of turning around and he wanted to go to the people and show them that his government could continue that recovery.

Boy, a lot of people were totally caught off guard and including in his own party.

Cheryl Sutherland
Yeah, you mentioned the word surprise there, and maybe partly because the economy is the reason why they called this election. But can you give me a sense, do we know about the thinking behind this decision, given that it was so surprising?

Paul Waldy
We don't. And in fact, clearly he caught even his cabinet off guard. He only announced it to them hours before calling the election. There were no leaks. And Westminster is notorious for leaking everything. None of this ever came out beforehand.

Must have been his decision. There had been some suggestion months ago that maybe he would try and catch, particularly the Reform party off guard by calling an early election, maybe catch the opposition off guard, but it was a huge roll of the dice.

Cheryl Sutherland
Okay. And you mentioned that this election will be held July 4, which is right around the corner, broadly here, what's at stake in this election? Like, how significant is it for the UK and beyond?

Paul Waldy
Well, I think for the UK it's real significant. More to the fact that the Conservatives have been in power for 14 years. They've gone through three leaders in the last couple of years, so time has really run out on them. So I think all the polls are showing there's going to be a change in government. That's going to be significant because the Labour party, which is almost certain to win this election, has not been in power since the Tony Blair era and in fact, has only been in power a handful of times in the last century. So they're not accustomed to winning elections at all. So it's going to mark a pretty significant, significant change from a party that has been in power for quite a while to a fairly new crew of ministers and a whole bunch of people that really don't have a lot of experience in government. So I think that's going to be a big change. I don't think, from a policy angle, there's an awful lot to separate the Conservatives from the Labour party. Keir Stammer has really tried to bring his party into more middle ground, but there's going to be new people in charge and that's going to be significant.

Cheryl Sutherland
And as you mentioned, Tony Blair was PM from the late nineties until 2007. Just to give us an idea of how long that's been, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has only been in power since October 2022. Could you just remind us who he is and how people perceive him as a leader?

Paul Waldy
Well, yeah, Rishi Sunak is. He's been in the conservative party for a little while, not a long time. He's not one of these sort of longtime veterans. He was a leave supporter during the referendum on Brexit, which sort of sat him well with a big sort of the right wing faction of the party. He was chancellor the exchequer during the pandemic. He ran for the leadership after basically helping to out force John.

Peter Attia
And I want you to know how.

T Mobile
Sad I am to be giving up.

Peter Attia
The best job in the world, but.

T Mobile
Them'S the breaks I want to.

Paul Waldy
He was one of the orchestrators for Boris Johnson being kicked out as leader. Then he ran for the leadership in the summer of 2022. He lost to Liz Truss. Liz Truss was only prime minister for about 45 days before the party got rid of her, after her many budget caused chaos in the financial markets. And then they just turned to Richie Sunak and put him in place, even though he'd come second and they had no leadership vote, nothing. So he came into office in October 2022. He's tried to present himself as a new chapter in the conservative party, but after the Liz Truss debacle and saddled with 14 years of government, it has been very, very difficult for him to get out from under that. And then when you see the way he's conducted this campaign, it really makes you question his political smarts at all, period. He may be a fine administrator, an operator, but he's been a hopeless campaigner. And that could be a reflection also of his background. Before entering politics, he was in wealth management. He worked at Goldman Sachs. He's very wealthy, richer than the king. I hear he's very, very, very wealthy. He's the wealthiest prime minister in british history.

But he does try and come across as an ordinary man. He doesn't hide away from the fact that he did attend elite schools and he did go to Stanford and he did work for Goldman Sachs. He tries to turn that around and say, look, me and my parents worked hard and were successful and other people can do the same. In a sense, he's embraced it as best he can. I don't think he's. He's not exactly the most personable person in the world, but he is earnest and tries hard and again is a good administrator, but he is a hopeless politician.

Cheryl Sutherland
There was also this interview that Sunak did on ITV News where he was asked about his wealth and how he relates to voters, what happened there?

Paul Waldy
Well, I mean, he's been asked in the past and he's kind of. There's been all kinds of clips of him saying he doesn't really have any working class friends. And when I've talked to voters here in different ridings, I've gone to, you know, they do say it's very hard for them to feel that he really appreciates what people are feeling here because, like Canada, the UK is going through a cost of living crisis. People are seeing their price of everything they buy go up, even though inflation's gone down. That just means that the price rises aren't as fast as they were before, but everything is still expensive. People are finding it really difficult to make ends meet and they look at him and go, well, can you really relate to us? And I think that's been a big hurdle for him, but really there's been so many other factors that he just has been unable, a, to control, or b, has just made a mess of that have just made things worse for him.

Cheryl Sutherland
I think in the interview also, he kind of mentioned that he also had things that he didn't have in childhood, like he didn't have Sky TV.

Paul Waldy
He was basically asked, had he ever gone without anything in his childhood? And of course he said, oh, yes, I have. I didn't have Sky TV, which is satellite television.

Peter Attia
So what sort of things had to be sacrificed? Lots of things, right?

All sorts of things. Like lots of people. There'll be all sorts of things that I would have wanted as a kid that I couldn't have. Right. Famously Sky TV.

That was something that we never had.

Paul Waldy
Growing up, actually, which caused an awful lot of mocking. I mean, again, I think some of that criticism has been a little bit unfair because, yes, his parents were.

His mother was a nurse, his father was a doctor, and he did really well. Let's face it. He went to Stanford, he got himself a postgraduate degree, he got into the financial world, and he did well for himself. And I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's made it difficult for him to present himself as kind of a common man, which he has tried to do. And it looks pretty awkward.

Cheryl Sutherland
How would you describe what his campaign has been like?

Paul Waldy
Horrendous. It's been a disaster and it's been self inflicted. You know, so he calls the election in a rainstorm, which was bad enough. And of course, all of the images were, you know, Rishi Sunak in a drenched suit calling the election, which is not the way you want to start an election campaign. Then on D Day, he skipped out of the D day ceremonies in Normandy early to go back for a television interview. And that caused a huge uproar because D Day in the UK is a very, very special, sacred event, and you don't walk out here. Stammer stayed and Sunak left when all of the world leaders were gathering. It was a massive screw up. He had to apologize, and that lingered for days in the press. Then he went to Wales and he said he was at a factory, and he asked the workers if they're really excited about the Euro cup in Germany. And of course, Wales didn't qualify. So nobody was very thrilled to hear him say that then. Now the party is embroiled in a huge betting scandal. Two conservative candidates, two senior party officials are being investigated for placing bets on when the election would be called. The allegation is that they knew a couple of days before Richie Sunak made the surprise announcement that it would be July 4. They put some bets on that. And, of course, at that time, you would have won a lot of money because nobody would have bet the election being called for July 4. So he has distanced himself from the two candidates and said that the party will no longer support them.

But it has just been a disaster, one disaster after another. And these two scandals, D Day and the Benning scandal, have just gone on for days and days and days.

Cheryl Sutherland
Sunik has also made some controversial campaign promises. Can you tell me about those?

Paul Waldy
Well, I mean, one of the promises he's made was this national service thing that's gone over like a lead balloon. What he kind of announced very early in the campaign was this idea that teenagers, 18 year olds, would have to either spend a year in the military or do weekends of volunteer work. And he thought this would be a way of sort of showing that they're being tough on these woke kids that aren't working or just kind of lazy. But in fact, it's been turned around against him by many people who said, look, our children need to work. They need to do other things. They can't really be spending a lot of time doing this. The military said it won't work. They don't have the resources to handle a whole bunch of 18 year olds coming in for military service for a year. And then, of course, he got into this whole issue of, well, what happens if they don't show up? What are you going to do? And then he started talking about revoking driving licenses and revoking student loans, and that caused a whole other kerfuffle. So it wasn't really thought out very carefully. Maybe it was a good idea on paper, but it hasn't been the best sort of campaign kickoff policy announcement.

Cheryl Sutherland
So things are not looking good for the conservative party overall. They have 365 seats right now.

Do we have any sense of what the seats will be after this election? Are there any predictions here?

Paul Waldy
Oh, yeah, there's lots. They do a lot of modeling here, and some of the models have been pretty bleak. A couple of them, they call them MRP models, what they do is they take a whole bunch of polling data, thousands and thousands and thousands of voters, and then they map out what that would translate to into seats. And some of them project the Conservatives falling to something in the order of 50 seats, maybe 100 seats max. Labor getting 400 plus seats, maybe even 500 seats. It'll be, could be one of the biggest majorities ever in british history. The Reform party probably is not going to win more than one or two or three or four seats simply because their vote is spread too thin. But nonetheless, the Conservatives could be vying with the Liberal Democrats for second place. They are expected to get about 50 odd seats, which, again, are going to come directly out of some of these conservative ridings in southern England. So, yeah, the Conservatives are looking at almost a 1993 Canada style debacle with Kim Campbell. Not quite as bad, but certainly in british terms, almost as bad.

Cheryl Sutherland
What about the voters here, especially the ones in conservative writings, how are they feeling about all of this?

Paul Waldy
They are feeling confused, lost, disillusioned. I mean, as much as labor is ahead in the polls, it's a tenuous lead. Because if, when you talk to a lot of voters, and I've been out here talking to voters and Liz Truss is riding and some other strong conservative ridings, the conservatives will tell you they don't want to vote conservative this time, but they don't know who to vote for. And even people who are not that sold on the conservatives anyway aren't that sure who to vote for. And there's kind of an overall disillusionment with all political parties and certainly the two established parties. So it's not necessarily a given that labor is going to get all this support. Some people are going to reform because they just want to protest. Some people are looking at green, looking at independents, looking at other candidates. So there is a huge amount of discontent out there. And I not sure labor has tapped into all of it, but the conservatives are feeling the brunt of it by far.

Cheryl Sutherland
We'll be right back.

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Cheryl Sutherland
There have been four conservative prime ministers in the last five years. And of course, there have been also a ton of scandals. Can you just kind of give us a bit of a recap of what happened in that time?

Paul Waldy
Oh, wow. Where do you start? Right, so you go back to David Cameron, 2016 and the Brexit referendum. So he rolled the dice and called the referendum on Brexit and lost. And then he quit.

Peter Attia
I expect to go to the palace and offer my resignation. So we'll have a new prime minister in that building behind me by Wednesday evening.

Paul Waldy
Then Theresa May came in and could not manage Brexit. How to get it done, how to get it finished. And she had an election in 2017 and barely won a minority government, so they got rid of her.

Peter Attia
I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the.

Paul Waldy
Country I love brought in Boris Johnson. He tried to ram Brexit through parliament in a deal and it turned into a total fiasco. But he called a snap election in 2019 and won a huge majority, basically by telling people, look, we've had enough of this, we're going to get it done, we're going to get a deal with the EU and we're going to get out of the EU. And that actually happened in 2020. So, to Johnson's credit, he got the country out of the EU. He got a deal of some sort. That's still not working great, but he got a deal, he got the country out, he got the celebration. But then Covid hit, and he was the wrong prime minister to have, during the COVID pandemic, lots of scandals about parties at Downing street. He was getting fines, party gate, partygate scandals. This was, of course, as everyone remembers in the pandemic, there were all kinds of restrictions and no social gatherings and these kinds of things. And what happened was Downing street, that the prime minister's office was having all kinds of parties and Boris Johnson was attending a bunch of them. And of course, this all came out and he received fines from the, you know, tickets from the police. So that didn't go well. They got rid of Boris Johnson and then the members turned to Liz Truss because the conservative party membership is much more right wing than the conservative party caucus, and they voted in Liz Truss, and that turned into a huge disaster.

Peter Attia
I have therefore spoken to his Majesty the king to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the conservative party.

Paul Waldy
Then they installed Richard Sunak, but by then the damage was done. So once you had scandals and a financial meltdown under Liz Truss, it was very hard for Sunak to dig himself out of that hole.

Cheryl Sutherland
My memory of Liz Truss was the head of lettuce. That was the big thing, that she didn't last longer than the head of lettuce.

Paul Waldy
This was. Yeah, this was a tabloid paper put ahead of lettuce on a web camera and said, who lasts longer than lettuce and trust? And the lettuce lasted longer.

Cheryl Sutherland
Scandals aside, though, how do people feel the conservatives have done with things like healthcare, infrastructure, cost of living?

Paul Waldy
Bad. Bad. I mean, you know, the healthcare in particular the NHS. And now I'm not sure anyone in power could have done much better, but waiting lists here are very long. The healthcare system is coming out of the pandemic. Obviously, the healthcare system was going to be in crisis and it's really gotten worse. So that's a big issue. Immigration is a huge issue here as well. The small boat crossings with asylum seekers from France is a big, big issue. Sunak has tried to take a tough stance on that by announcing kind of a strange policy to send them off to Rwanda. Those two issues have kind of been front and center. And then, of course, you have the cost of living crisis and interest rates and everything else, which the government only has limited control over. But again, Sunak has to wear all of that and none of it has gone well. So he really can't point to anything other than inflation going down, which is great, but it doesn't really do a lot for you politically. He can't really point to a lot of successes.

Cheryl Sutherland
You talked about how the conservative party was responsible for Brexit. David Cameron held the referendum. Boris Johnson got the deal through for the UK to leave the EU back in 2020.

So four years out, though, has Brexit delivered what people in the UK hoped it would?

Paul Waldy
You know, it's hard to say. I think economists are. You know, the jury's out on that simply because the pandemic warped everything. It's very hard to get a handle on what is caused by that pandemic, what is caused by Brexit or what, you know, what's happened as a result, because the pandemic sort of skewed things so much. I think, though, if you ask people who voted leave, they don't think Brexit is being delivered at all. For them, it's one of the big challenges Rishi Sunak faces. A lot of people thought that Britain would get control over its borders and immigration would stop, and, in fact, immigration levels have gone up. I think people on the remain side view Brexit as a disaster because it's been harder to trade with Europe. Certainly Northern Ireland still has issues in terms of trading with Ireland. So I think, I'm not so sure that if you ran the referendum again, the result would be astoundingly different, but maybe a slight change.

Cheryl Sutherland
That's interesting.

And, of course, one of the key figures behind Brexit is Nigel Farage, and he's back in this election. So can you remind us who he is and what his policies are? Because he is quite a controversial figure.

Paul Waldy
He's a controversial, colorful figure who has certainly livened up this campaign. I give him that. Yeah, he's been around for 30 years. The charge against the EU for decades. I mean, he was 30 years ago championing to get Britain out of the EU. He got himself elected to the european parliament, where he joined the kind of far right group there and really agitated to get Britain out of the EU. So when Britain did vote in 2016 to leave, it was largely credited to Farage and the efforts he'd made over the years to bring this debate to the forefront. He kind of stepped away from active politics in 2020, after Britain formerly did leave the EU, went into broadcasting, became a big pal of Donald Trump, but he did still kind of dab a little bit. He helped create this new party called the Reform Party, which is patterned after the Reform Party of Canada. He draws a lot of inspiration from the Reform Party of Canada and Preston Manning and how it took over the conservative party back in the 1990s. He wants to do the same thing here when the election was called. Interestingly enough, he was not going to run. He said he didn't have time. He couldn't get his campaign organized, and he was half interested in working on Donald Trump's campaign in the US. However, he changed his mind after a few days, and he's now running and causing no kinds of problems for the conservatives because since he announced his decision to run and to campaign for reform across the country, their support has gone up sharply, and they are now closing in on the conservatives.

So that's another kind of big miscalculation that Sunak made. A lot of people are saying had Sunak waited until the fall, Farage would have been off helping Trump with his election, wouldn't have been here leading the Reform party, and wouldn't have been causing the kind of problems that he's causing the conservatives now. But he is here, he is running and he's on tv every single night. And he really has added a lot of color and a lot of life to this campaign.

Cheryl Sutherland
What about the other parties, Paul? Like, what are we seeing from them in the run up to this election?

Paul Waldy
Yeah, I mean, you know, that's a good point. The liberal Democrats, of course, they're kind of this middle of the road party really got wiped out in 2019. I think they went down to about eight seats or something. They have run a very shrewd, smart campaign. They concentrate their resources in a select number of ridings in southern England. Now, these also are riding sold by the Conservatives, but these are riding sort of in wealthier areas where the threat isn't on the left. These people aren't going to vote labor and they're probably not going to vote reform, but they see the Liberal Democrats as a huge option. So modeling is showing them picking up something like 50, 54 seats, which would be a massive breakthrough for them. They haven't really done that well since 2010 when they formed a coalition with David Cameron. And then, of course, it all imploded for them because they got blamed for everything that went wrong and really never recovered from that until now. So now they've been very smart, very shrewd. They don't waste their resources campaigning parts of the country they have no hope in. They're very concentrated, and it could prove to be very effective.

Cheryl Sutherland
And what about labor? Because you mentioned that they're having a quiet campaign, extremely quiet campaign.

Paul Waldy
They're not saying anything. And their party platform has been very short on specifics, fact, nothing new. It's only stuff that they've already announced. They're playing an extraordinarily safe. Keir Stommer does maybe one or two events a day, and they're very scripted, very programmed.

And, you know, beyond the sort of television debates, which there are plenty here, he's been kept on a very tight leash, and they're just crossing their fingers to get to the finish line to.

Cheryl Sutherland
Bring it back where we started this conversation. It does seem like the Conservatives are in for a very tough election.

So what does that mean for the party if that does end up happening.

Paul Waldy
Well, that's going to be the huge question. First of all, it'll be down to how many sort of potential leadership candidates are left, because clearly Rishi Sunak won't be able to stick around. There's questions about whether he'll even win his own seat.

So they're going to descend into another leadership battle. But they do have big figures in the party, Sula Braverman, Kemi Badenak, who are on the right of the party, and they want to push the party more to the right. They want to almost merge with reform. Sulla Braveman has talked about bringing Nigel Farage into the conservative party. Nigel Farage has talked about taking over the conservative party, but he wants to see it more as the Conservatives becoming the Reform party. So they're going to be a huge fight. There's also a large section of the conservative party is what they call one Nation, what we would call red Tories that have want nothing to do with Farage and want nothing to do with Sola Braverman. So they're going to be in a real fight over their soul and what they are and how they go forward. And I think a lot of this is going to depend on how many sort of right wingers win on July 4 and how many one Nation Conservatives win on July 4. But yeah, they're going to have an awful, awful battle about who they are and identifying what they are going forward.

Cheryl Sutherland
Just lastly, Paul, is there a broader takeaway here if the Conservatives do end up losing so badly?

Paul Waldy
I think there is. And I think there's real lessons here for Canada and for the liberal party. They need to look seriously at that by election in Toronto because that's exactly what happened to Sunak here in the UK. He started losing by elections in rioties that they'd held forever. And it was just a sure sign that the party's fortunes were really tanking. Now, unlike the liberal party in Canada, the Conservatives here tend to get rid of their leaders very quickly if they don't think they're going to win elections. So who knows what will happen there. But the parallels are very similar. Sunak began losing by elections and is now facing potentially losing the whole thing.

Cheryl Sutherland
Paul, thank you so much for being here. This has been really interesting.

Paul Waldy
Glad to.

Cheryl Sutherland
That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our intern is Kelsey Arnot. Our producers are Madeline White and Rachel Levy McLaughlin.

David Crosby edits a show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Matt Fraynor is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening.

Peter Attia
It's better over here.

T Mobile
After investing billions to light up our network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus, right now you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan versus Verizon and at and T at t mobile.com acrossAmerica, up to four.

Across America
Lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlocked device credit service ported 90 plus days with device ineligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months.