In an 'increasingly socially liberal' UK, are Tories headed for the political wilderness?

FRANCE 24 English

Visit our website: http://www.france24.com  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/France24_en

Transcript

00:00With just days to go before snap parliamentary elections here in France,

00:04President Emmanuel Macron has warned that the policies of his far-right and

00:08hard-left rivals could lead to civil war.

00:11Polls published over the weekend suggest that Macron's centrist will finish in third place

00:16behind both Marine Le Pen's National Rally Party and a hastily assembled left-wing alliance.

00:21Macron called the election after the far-right secured a landslide in European elections,

00:26a shock move that's increasingly likely to see him forced to share power

00:30with a Prime Minister from an opposing party.

00:37The UK is heading to the polls in just nine days' time,

00:40an election that looks poised to deliver the opposition Labour Party out of power for 15 years,

00:45the second-largest majority in Parliament since the end of World War II.

00:50To discuss those UK elections, we can bring in Tim Bale,

00:53Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University, London.

00:56Thank you very much indeed for being with us here on France 24 today.

00:59Now, the latest polls suggest that the ruling Conservatives are polling at just 20%,

01:03with Labour at around 40%.

01:06Are we looking at a decimation of the Tory party as we know it?

01:11Decimation might not be a bad word.

01:13Certainly, if we look at the balance of the polls,

01:16it looks as if the Conservatives will end up with nearer to 100 seats than 200 seats,

01:21and even 200 seats would be a bad defeat.

01:23So, yes, it's looking very, very dark for them.

01:27Now, a number of the polls we saw this week suggest that the Conservatives

01:30are now in a close battle with Reform UK, headed up by Nigel Farage, for second place.

01:38To what extent has Reform stolen support from the Conservatives here?

01:43Well, inasmuch as Reform has really risen in the polls,

01:47since Nigel Farage declared that he was coming back to lead it,

01:50that rise does seem to be accounted for mainly by people who voted Conservative back in 2019.

01:57So, I'm absolutely sure that, but for Reform,

02:01the Conservatives would probably be nearer, perhaps, 25% than 20%,

02:05but even 25% would be a pretty terrible result.

02:09It's important, of course, that people remember that Reform may win a fairly large vote share.

02:15Who knows? It may even beat the Conservatives, although I doubt that.

02:18But it won't win many seats. Because of our first-past-the-post system,

02:21it's likely only to win a handful of seats, even if it touches near to 20% on election day.

02:28And do we have any idea about the extent to which Reform has stolen votes from Labour?

02:33Yes, we do. Inasmuch as you can poll that,

02:37it looks as if it's maybe nibbled at the Labour vote at the edges,

02:41but any decline in the Labour vote has actually not been due to Reform,

02:45but has been due to the Liberal Democrats, this third party, the more centrist party.

02:50But that actually isn't that much of a problem for Labour,

02:53because it suggests that there's going to be a lot of tactical anti-Tory voting.

02:57So, where Labour supporters live in places that Labour can't hope to win in,

03:02they're switching across to the Liberal Democrats in order to get rid of the Conservatives.

03:06So, that's no comfort for the Conservatives either.

03:09Now, a poll published in the Financial Times, I think it's today or yesterday,

03:14indicated that the Conservatives have lost or may have lost up to a third of voters

03:18who'd planned to go back to the party just four months ago.

03:22What went so wrong in just four months?

03:25Well, this is the campaign in which everything that could go wrong

03:28has gone wrong, really, for Rishi Sunak.

03:31He's made all sorts of gaffes.

03:33He's obviously coping at the moment with this scandal

03:35about people betting on the announcement of the election.

03:39It's also, to be honest, a problem of the fundamentals.

03:43The economy has not recovered in the way that he promised it would.

03:47Growth is there, but it's not very impressive.

03:50The National Health Service is still in crisis.

03:53Small boats are still coming across the Channel.

03:56So, all the pledges that he made when he first became Prime Minister

04:00really haven't been fulfilled.

04:01So, although the campaign has obviously got something to do with it,

04:04it's actually those long-term problems, I think, that have done for the government.

04:08You touched on it just there, this betting scandal,

04:11whereby several party officials and candidates, even,

04:13are being investigated for allegedly betting on the date

04:16of the UK general election before it was announced.

04:19Just how damaging is that particular scandal?

04:22Well, very.

04:23There's been some very interesting polling, actually, on that,

04:25and it shows that it really has cut through to people.

04:29There are three things in this campaign that do seem to have cut through

04:32that have hurt the government.

04:33The first was Rishi Sunak leaving the D-Day commemorations early.

04:39The second was his admission in an interview that he'd had

04:46a deprived childhood by not being able to get digital or cable TV.

04:50And the third one is this, what people are calling betting gate,

04:55or gamble gate.

04:57It really does seem to have cut through to the public.

04:59I think it's one of those stories that's actually quite easy to understand.

05:02It plays into this narrative that, for the government anyway,

05:06and for the Conservatives, it's one rule for them

05:08and one rule for the rest of us.

05:10And, of course, that was what hurt them during party gate as well.

05:13Nigel Farage, the leader, of course, of Britain's anti-immigration reform party,

05:17over the weekend faced very strong criticism in the press

05:21and also from his political rivals for saying that the West

05:24had provoked Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

05:27Any sign that those comments have dented his popularity?

05:32Well, it might be too early for polling to pick that up.

05:35We might see that in the next few days.

05:37But certainly it's something that the Conservatives are really pressing him on,

05:40quite understandably.

05:42And he's not just getting pressure, actually, from Conservative sources.

05:46It's also military sources and, if you like, the foreign policy

05:49and security establishment in the UK,

05:52who have absolutely no doubt that those remarks are, in some ways,

05:56ridiculous and perhaps give comfort to Vladimir Putin.

05:59And you'd have to say that, of course, Nigel Farage has got form on this.

06:04He's long been an admirer, as he says, of Putin as an operator,

06:09even if he says, and I find it quite hard not to laugh here,

06:12he doesn't think much of him personally.

06:15So I do think that those remarks may put some voters off

06:20because there is a very, very strong support in the UK

06:25for Ukraine's battle against Russia.

06:28And Putin is certainly not someone who many Brits admire.

06:32Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party,

06:35does very much look poised to become the country's next prime minister.

06:38The electorate seemingly getting over Starmer's somewhat detached demeanour,

06:43or has that rather cool exterior possibly worked in his favour here?

06:48I think it may have done.

06:50I mean, we have to remember that certainly since 2016

06:53we've been through a lot of political turmoil in this country.

06:58We've been through so many prime ministers.

07:012016 has been a real rollercoaster,

07:03and there may be an appetite for a rather calmer

07:06and some would even say slightly more boring regime under Keir Starmer,

07:10who is definitely, as you say, more of a kind of safe pair of hands politician

07:14than he is an inspiring or charismatic one.

07:17So it could be that cometh the hour, cometh the man.

07:20Now we are, of course, just days away from the UK's general election.

07:24What do you think it would have to take for the Tories

07:27to secure more than one in five votes,

07:31as is currently the picture on the ground?

07:36To be honest, I think we would have to see Keir Starmer

07:40being indicted for a criminal offence at this stage.

07:43I mean, I think really it's probably all over for the Conservatives now.

07:48I think we're talking really about the extent of their defeat

07:51rather than whether there will be a defeat.

07:54So I think it's unlikely, given the fundamentals,

07:58given how people regard Rishi Sunak,

08:00and given, as we've already talked about,

08:03reform eating into the Conservatives' vote,

08:06that actually the Conservatives are really heading for a pretty bad defeat.

08:10And if indeed we do see, as you term it, a pretty bad defeat,

08:14which I think is possibly putting it lightly,

08:17when you take into consideration what we're seeing in the polls,

08:20what does the future look like for the Conservative Party?

08:25Well, this is the question that everybody is debating now.

08:28I mean, if you look back at 1997,

08:31which was also a bad defeat for the Conservatives,

08:34what they tend to do is go into denial mode and go into double down mode.

08:39So instead of really stepping back and taking a good, hard, long look

08:43at what went wrong for them,

08:45they will almost certainly go straight into a leadership election.

08:49They will almost certainly, given the character of the membership,

08:52which has the final say on that leadership selection,

08:56pick someone who is similarly, if you like, Thatcherite to Rishi Sunak,

09:00but even more of a culture warrior, and go down that route.

09:04And I'm afraid in part because they worry about Nigel Farage

09:08and the impact that he's had on their vote.

09:11I'm just not sure whether that is the right route for a Conservative Party

09:14in a country that is becoming increasingly socially liberal over time.

09:18And to be honest, now feels that perhaps the state needs to be doing

09:22a little bit more rather than a little bit less for people.

09:25Of course, it depends partly on the performance of the Labour government

09:29and whether the Labour government can deliver to some of the expectations

09:33that it's created.

09:35But if 1997 to 2005 is anything to go by,

09:39the Conservatives are out of power perhaps for quite some time.

09:43Tim Bale, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us

09:46here on France 24 today.

09:48Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London.

09:51Thank you.

Category

Transcript

Recommended