If one does not follow British politics closely, it may be difficult to understand the near-total collapse of the Conservative Party. The oldest and most electorally successful political party in history is now facing possible extinction and near total irrelevance as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party looms ever larger. Let me explain why.

Rewind to the General Election of 2019. Back then, Boris Johnson was supposed to be “our Trump”—he even had the silly blond hair. He was still riding on populist energy from the Brexit result of 2016, which expressed itself at that time as “Boriswave”—fun online memes set to 1980s synth tracks. “Boriswave” now refers to the unprecedented increase in immigration that took place during the Johnson ministry. The Tories won an 80-seat majority. Then they did practically nothing with it, unless you count locking-in left-wing progressive gains from the preceding Labour government.

Parliament does not work like the American system with its checks and balances: the sitting government has practically unlimited executive power to do almost anything it wants, assuming it can achieve a majority of MPs. Herbert Spencer once called this the “Divine Right of Parliament.” Thus, Boris Johnson could have ripped out the infrastructure the Dark Lord, Tony Blair, had built during his time in power. Not only did Johnson not do this, he actually bolstered that infrastructure while putting the entire nation under COVID house arrest and importing record numbers of migrants in the dead of night.

Granted, Johnson cannot be blamed for the COVID pandemic, which ate up practically all his political capital, but nonetheless he left British voters with a raw and palpable sense of betrayal. It is possible that this was one betrayal too many, even from a party whose very DNA is built on treachery and broken promises, and that voters will not forgive the Tories in our lifetimes.

From 1997 until 2010, the New Labour government enacted a soft coup and something like the Chinese Cultural Revolution by establishing dozens of “independent” regulatory bodies—naturally stuffed with Blairite cronies—to “oversee” the running of practically everything. One of the most pernicious of these was Ofcom, which regulates the media and handles any complaints. After a dance troupe called “Diversity” obnoxiously signaled its support for Black Lives Matter in a 2020 Britain’s Got Talent performance, Ofcom received a record 15,000 public complaints. Instead of listening to public concerns that the group was overtly political, racist toward whites, and overly critical of police, Ofcom threw its support behind “Diversity.”

On the flip side, it takes only a handful of leftists to complain about “racism” and Ofcom will come down punitively on any broadcaster. Every quasi-governmental Blairite institution works that way: built by leftist elites for their own benefit and therefore responsive only to their own concerns. These institutions are for the permanent managerial state, its ideology, and its values, not “for you.”

The cherry on top for New Labour was the establishment of the exceptionally un-British “Supreme Court,” another extra-governmental body, the effect of which is to cement the permanent Blairite Reich, built to ensure the country remains stranded forever in the neo-liberal settlement of 2010. Just to make sure, New Labour’s parting gift to the nation was the Equality Act 2010, which bundled together dozens of preexisting anti-discrimination laws to set Britain permanently on the path to woke tyranny—which the Tories dutifully traversed. 

The Tories had 14 years in power to undo all of this, but they simply refused. In fact, they strengthened Ofcom by bringing internet regulation under its remit. They cowered in fear of the Equality Act 2010 in the most abject and supine manner imaginable and mouthed woke mantras. They so completely internalized the Blairite value system that, by the end of their time in power, Tony Blair himself appeared as a figure to their right. For all these reasons, millions of voters can only see the Tories now as a pathetic leftist party. 

All this is confused, of course, by the fact that many parts of the British media repeatedly called the Tories “far right” during this entire period. That is because, even as the Tories acted like beaten dogs, they also, somewhat schizophrenically, threw red meat to their starving base by claiming, despite all evidence, that they opposed wokery and wished to reduce immigration. 

Many times during its long period of rule, the Tory government acted as if they were in opposition. They used the permanent Blairite bureaucracy as an excuse for the fact they had been so toothless, without once acknowledging that they could have completely abolished that bureaucracy any time they wished. Rather than taking an axe to the heart of the beast, they instead passed symbolic votes on measures they knew would be struck down by activist lawyers. 

In other words, rather than taking effective action, they took symbolic action that was designed to fail. The net effect of this is that many normal voters have simply concluded that the only differences between Labour and Tory are cosmetic, that they are, as Peter Hitchens once put it, two zombies propping each other up. The Tories’ muddled approach is embodied in their disastrous decision to elect Kemi Badenoch as the first black woman leader of the party. 

To most Britons, the Tories are simply incapable of learning any lessons. Reform UK and Farage should present themselves as the logical “plague on both your houses” vote; if they play their cards right, the Tories will no longer have a reason to exist. ◆