Aping Trump Won’t Win The Tories This Election
But it could lose them the next one...
The Conservative Party has caught America-brain. Across the pond, Donald Trump has cultivated a loyal following through culture war rhetoric, divisive tactics, and shameless pandering to the party base. Now, the Tories are following suit.
Last week, the party launched a conspiratorial, US-style attack ad against Sadiq Khan, appointed arch-culture warrior Jonathan Gullis as Deputy Chairman, and reaffirmed its unwavering commitment to the triple lock. But Britain isn’t America. This imported playbook risks toxifying the Tory brand amongst younger voters so much that it loses all political credibility.
The generational divide in Conservative support is stark and growing. While the party remains the preferred choice of the over-65s, a mere one in ten voters under 50 plans to back them in the next election. This is hardly surprising, given that the Tories have spent their time in government boosting spending on older voters while cutting support for families and failing to address the housing crisis.
Demographic shifts have transformed retirees into a formidable voting bloc, but no party can win an election solely on the backs of the elderly. Unless they broaden their appeal, the Conservatives risk not only losing the next election but poisoning their brand so much they never recover.
Desperate for a solution, the Tories are casting their gaze across the Atlantic. Attack ads portray London (ironically using footage of New York) as a corrupt police state with Sadiq Khan as lord and master. Tory MPs take to their TV shows to bemoan the scourge of wokeness in Britain. The Prime Minister seeks to drive wedges into debates on social issues, demonising the opposition in the process.
The truth, however, is that the Tories are emulating a strategy that simply doesn't translate to Britain. In the US, Republican culture war rhetoric has successfully united baby boomers disgruntled by rapid social change with younger non-college educated voters of all ages. But America also has a much smaller age divide. Whilst the age gap in income, wealth, and home ownership has widened in the US, it’s become a chasm in the UK. People don’t care as much about flags when they can’t afford a home.
The Tories have utterly failed to bridge the gap between their older base and new or disaffected voters. They've been far more preoccupied with funnelling money to wealthy pensioners than investing in housing or economic growth, leaving vast swathes of the electorate disillusioned. Anti-elite posturing rings hollow from a party that has controlled the country for so long.
Trump has managed to maintain his outsider image largely because the Republicans have only occupied the White House for four of the past sixteen years. The Tories, in contrast, have been in power for fourteen straight. The media landscape is different too, with TV much less dominant role in Britain compared to the US, where cable news commands massive audiences. GB News has confounded its critics, but it still vies for a comparatively tiny viewership.
The Conservative record in government has alienated so many younger voters that victory in the next election is already beyond reach. However, they now risk putting future elections out of play as well, or worse, facing such a catastrophic defeat that recovery becomes impossible. Yet, there is a potential path forward for the Tories that doesn’t look so bleak.
Ironically, younger Britons are more inclined to support traditional conservative policies such as lower taxes and limited government – hardly shocking, considering they're now footing the bill. And Labour has made planning reform a central plank of its pitch for power. The Tories' ageing voter base has made it politically difficult to get Britain building the homes and infrastructure it so badly needs.
Why could this be good for the Conservatives? When we give people capital, they tend to stop voting for parties that are unsympathetic to capitalism. If the Tories play their cards right, they could allow Labour to shoulder the burden of politically fraught planning reforms before swooping back into power with the backing of young, newly minted homeowners more interested in tax cuts than social democracy.
Of course, all of this hinges on the Tories charting a new course. There comes a point when voter perceptions become too resistant to change. The Conservatives are in the last chance saloon. They must abandon the culture war theatrics, stop looking to America for inspiration, and embrace more of the pragmatism we saw in the last budget – the first to do more for workers than retirees. Failure to do so will not only seal the party’s fate but consign the British right to the control of crackpots and ensure lasting left-wing dominance.
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