Where does the British right go after Truss?

Only way Starmer could lose is if he's revealed as a sex criminal.

The self destruction of the British Conservative party may warm the heart of the left.  It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.  But it does pose a serious problem for our political culture:  What comes next?

The Truss debacle is so profound that the Tories are liable to equal the collapse of the Canadian Conservative party in 1993.  It went from having an overall majority to having only 2 seats.  The First Past The Post electoral system is supposed to prevent total party collapse, though Canada also uses version of it.

At any rate, the Conservative party, the most successful party in UK history, if not the world, is about to go down to its most serious election defeat after 13 years in office. The question is, who will pick up the pieces.

Now, clearly Labour is going to win the next election, whenever it happens, and Sir Keir Starmer will probably make a reasonably competent, if uncharismatic Prime Minister. He was after all a Director of Public Prosecutions and he knows the law.  He has already moved to take back the Red Wall electoral alliance forged by Boris Johnson.  Getting Labour to sing the national anthem at their conference last month, and wrapping himself in the flag, is designed to win back small ‘c’ conservative Labour voters who were alienated from Labour in the Corbyn years.

Removing the whip from the former Labour leader, for whom he had campaigned as recently as 2019,  was an extraordinarily ruthless act.  Arguably a breach of natural justice since no one seriously thinks Jeremy Corbyn hates Jewish people.  Nevertheless it was the most striking way to demonstrate that Labour had changed.

Starmer has also moderated Labour’s economic policies, trimming on nationalisation and taxation, to the extent that left wing Momentum supporters believe he has betrayed the party.  Sir Keir, or Keith as they call him,  has largely ditched the socialist-sounding “ten pledges” he made during his campaign for the Labour leadership in 2019. He has not only said he will make Brexit work, but refused to contemplate rejoining the single market or restoring free movement.

But again, the optics are precisely what the Labour leader wants entering an election campaign where he needs to hoover up disillusioned Conservative voters.  And he assuredly will.  With the Labour Party it is always risky to predict a victory, but the only way Starmer could fail to enter Number Ten is if he is revealed as a sex criminal.

So much for Labour.  The important question though is what happens to the Conservatives. Where does the party of the British right go after this defeat?  None of the failed leadership candidates looks likely to do much better than Truss.  Penny Mordaunt was all over the place in her campaign.  Jeremy Hunt is a two time loser.  Rishi Sunak is too rich.  Boris Johnson is a busted flush.  It might be that someone completely left field, like the trade secretary , Kemi Badenoch inherits the battered crown.  She would certainly appeal to the party membership because of her opposition to the doctrine of “white privilege” and her distaste for trans gender legislation. But speculation about the next leadership is pretty futile at this stage.

It might be the UK is now ready for a fully fledged party of the nationalist far right, like Italy, Sweden and France. A pro-family pro-flag party that is opposed to immigration, LBGT and woke ideologies. Yes, Liz Truss was supposed to be opposed to these things also, but she made the mistake of linking them to right-wing, libertarian economic policies.   Nationalist populist parties do best when they are right on culture but left on the economy.

Our electoral system is supposed to prevent populist parties, getting to parliament.  Indeed, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party won its greatest victory, 30% of the vote,  in the European Elections of 2019 because of PR.  The Brexit Party was destroyed by Boris Johnson in the general election later that year.

Farage has largely departed from active politics, but he is still around.  He recently started a campaign for a referendum on Net Zero.  This has not had much traction, but during this winter’s energy crisis, with families unable to heat their homes, his anti-Green populism might well stand a chance.

At any rate, we are facing the greatest disruption to British electoral politics in modern history. The implosion of the UK Conservative party will keep the centre right out of contention for at least the next two general elections.  What happens thereafter is anyone’s guess.  But the extraordinary ability of the Tories to reinvent themselves, and capture the souls of British voters generation after generation, may finally have come to an end.

……