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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   1862 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 23, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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And they're off. Rishi Sunak has called a (technically early) General Election in the UK, Polling Day is 4th July. Effortpost to follow. Feel free to post questions you want me to cover.

Is this because they know something we don't and are trying to limit their losses by holding the election before an anticipated October surprise?

A couple of factors off the top of my head:

  • the national mood tends to peak in the spring / summer so a good time for the incumbent to call an election
  • inflation data came out just before the announcement which allows the government to declare victory on bringing it under control

Definitely possible, but not the most likely theory. There is a section in the draft effortpost called "Why did Sunak do it?"

My top questions are:

  • what is the outlook for net migration? Are we likely to see a return to the high pre-pandemic level of ~600,000 per year
  • is migration the “Irish question” of our times in that it will destroy the Conservative Party as the Irish question destroyed the Liberal Party?
  • is the Conservative Party ideological or even conservative at all?
  • what is are the long-run chances of the Reform party? It looks a lot like the Peoples Party of Canada which has basically collapsed as COVID ended.

It seems unlikely that it's specifically migration that's destroying the UK Tories. It probably plays a part, but the poll support has for the most part not gone to Reform but to also pro-migration Labour.

The clearest reason would still seem to be increasing dissatisfaction with the Brexit, combined with an extra helping of loss of trust after the "Truss shock". Labour might have promised to not reverse Brexit, at least for now, but they're stll associated with, well, not doing it. Corbyn was what allowed Tories to avoid the post-Brexit dissatisfaction for some time; after Labour got rid of Corbyn and made an extra effort to clear away Corbynism in general, that's no longer there.

Of course the migrant situation is also arguably connected to Brexit, since Brexit seems extra hollow after the promises to cut down immigration just meant that EU immigration was replaced with non-EU migration, with dividends.

It looks to me like about 50-50 in terms of where lost conservative support has flowed to. Reform was ~0 and is now 10% and the total loss of Conservative vote share is about 20pts.

I suspect a lot of voters are cross pressured working class whites outside of London: they are culturally conservative, but like the Labour welfare state and are generally low information. So depending on the issues, their support is a toss up. It sounds like in the UK the narrative is the conservatives are just lurching from failure to failure (like the Liberals in Canada) so that motivates defection. To have half of those defect to the “far right” seems material. And with Brexit no longer the animating issue, for those switchers it has to be migration.

Maybe it’s true that migration is only the issue for a small share of the population, but it’s a pretty big share of the conservative base.

What does a Labour government mean for Britain? Genuinely curious.

Under the current Conservative government, the UK has had:

  1. Unprecedented mass immigration from MENA countries
  2. Orwellinian speech restrictions
  3. Covid tyranny

And it's not like the economy of Britain has been swimming along either, as the regulation state continues to choke whatever entrepreneurial spirit might be left.

What does being a "Conservative" in Britain even mean? And what does Labour offer the people that they are not already getting force fed with two hands by the Tories? Even more rainbow flags and mass immigration? Sometimes, I really am glad to live in America.

That is precisely why so many former Conservative voters are voting Reform. Conservatism just meant Blairism with right-wing rhetoric.

Labour will win, of course. My hope is that the Tories will see how many of their voters went to reform and will choose an actual conservative as their leader.

As for what Labour will do, Keir Starmer has been very careful to not reveal anything of what he actually believes. He'll mock the government for tripling immigration after promising to reduce it, but he won't say that reducing it is actually a good thing to do. He'll criticise the government for being unpatriotic, and then give a job to a woman who is most well known for mocking the national flag.

My hope is that he's a Lee Kwan Yew-style pragmatist. Hell, I'd settle for rainbow flags on every town hall if he makes it possible to actually build houses.

And what does Labour offer the people that they are not already getting force fed with two hands by the Tories?

Things did start moving there on the trans issue (to a far greater extent than in the US), and Labour could reverse course on that.

So if the Tories are toast, and therefore Labour has the inside lane, how will this affect the Rwanda plan, and what do you expect to happen concerning migration in Britain? More open borders? Harsher deportation? Favoring one country over another, or one race over another?

My expectation is that the illegal immigration situation will continue to be as dysfunctional as it has been under the Conservatives. I think Labour's plan was to swap our boat people for France's boat people, though it isn't clear what the purpose of this is exactly.

As for legal migration, probably we'll see a more liberal visa regime, followed by public opposition, followed by tightening up, followed by party revolts in favour of looser rules, and so on in a circle. Basically what we've had for the last decade.

Polling looks incredibly dire for the conservatives. Could this spell an end to the current conservative party and it being replaced by a new party in the UK's two party system?

Labour survived the leadership of Corbyn and the disastrous 2019 election, I see not reason why the Conservatives can't do the same.

Labour still had 202 seats after 2019, which would be an excellent result for the Tories at this point.

If Canada is any guide they will probably regroup and hang in there -- it's not like the people who were Conservatives are going anywhere, they are just pissed at the current leadership.

(and if the English Left turns out to be even 10% as unserious as what we've got going on in the colonies, everyone will be twice as pissed at them before the year is out)

The institutional Progressive Conservative Party of never recovered from the 1993 electoral disaster when they were reduced to 2 seats. The rump PCs eventually joined the Canadian Alliance - technically it was a merger of equals and the new party was called "Conservative Party of Canada" but what actually happened was more like a takeover of a failing company with a valuable brand.

But yes, British Conservatism isn't going anywhere. There is a possibility of of 10+ years of left-wing dominance if the right is split between a dead institutional Conservative party that refuses to go away and a successor conservative party.

The consensus among British politics-watchers is that if the Conservatives win enough seats to staff a full opposition operation in Parliament (this requires about 60 MPs who are able and willing to do moderately demanding unpaid opposition frontbench jobs on top of their work as a constituency MP, so probably 100-odd MPs in total) then the institutional Conservative and Unionist Party should be able to recover. Per polls and spread betting markets, this is significantly more likely than not. Dominic Cummings, of course, thinks otherwise.

The institutional Progressive Conservative Party of never recovered from the 1993 electoral disaster when they were reduced to 2 seats. The rump PCs eventually joined the Canadian Alliance - technically it was a merger of equals and the new party was called "Conservative Party of Canada" but what actually happened was more like a takeover of a failing company with a valuable brand.

That is what the Liberals say when they are trying to scare people into voting for them on the basis of abortion rights, yes -- it's not really true though. I was there, man -- and the members of the PC party did not disappear, they just found themselves homeless for a bit. I imagine it's even more like this in the UK.

Do they think it's only going to get worse for them the longer they delay it?

I think its more like a gamble. They are betting that the economy will improve and that would carry them over. Since the inflation eased off a bit I think they have a fair chance, but the odds are still not in their favor.

Does Labour have a chance?

That is an easy one - Labour are going to win in a landslide. A 1997-scale landslide (Tony Blair's Labour got 43% of the vote and 418 seats out of 659, with John Major's Tories on 31% and 165 seats) would be a good result for the Tories relative to polling or public/media expectations. A Canada-style wipeout with the Conservatives not winning enough seats to fully staff the opposition front bench is definitely a possibility, though not a likely one.

Labour are 20-25% ahead in opinion polls vs. 15-20% at this stage in the 1997 campaign, and arguably that difference is bigger than it looks because the pollsters changed their methodology after favouring Labour in 1992 and 1997.

The "shy right-wing populist" vote that allowed Brexit and Trump to dramatically outperform polls isn't going to save the Tories:

  • There were never enough of them to overcome a 20+ point poll lead
  • In the UK (less true in America) it isn't clear how many of them are still alive - age is the big demographic gap in UK politics (whereas race and education are in America), but for various reasons British Millenials are not moving right in middle age the way previous generations did.
  • The government has pissed off right-populist voters through general incompetence, public sector austerity, and talking tough on immigration while not doing anything about it. If these voters exist, they are going to vote Reform or stay home in disgust, not vote Conservative.

Thanks, I haven't been following British politics recently.

Surely not, being only some 20+ points ahead.

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