If the United Kingdom’s general election on July 4 were a horse race, bookmakers would have closed the betting well before now. As the runners and riders round the final bend to line up for the home straight, the Labour stallion, Sir Keir Starmer in the saddle, looks miles ahead of the next beast, and it’s no safe bet that the Conservatives will even take second place.
Current Tory leader Rishi Sunak, whose electoral wager in calling for the summer election may lose him his whole stake, has led a disastrous campaign—failing, for example, to spot the resurgent Nigel Farage, buddy of ex-President Donald Trump, on his latest steed, the Reform U.K. Party, about to overtake him on his blind side. All Mr. Starmer needs to do now, it seems, is to avoid mistakes or sudden injury and canter past the winning post.
This year is hugely significant for electoral democracy worldwide and might take its place among other contemporary world historical moments, such as the collapse of the Berlin Wall and of the Soviet Union in 1989 and 1974’s oil crisis. It is estimated that around half of the world’s population, in over 60 countries and in the European Union, will go to the polls before the year is out. The United Kingdom arrived rather late for the party, as the embattled, sodden and umbrella-less Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, at a temporary podium set up in a downpour outside 10 Downing Street on May 22, announced the parliamentary general election to be held next week.
Under current rules, Mr. Sunak could have held on until January 2025 to ask our 46.5 million registered voters for a mandate. That would be his first, as he got the keys to No. 10 by being chosen by his party, not by the electorate. The Tories, dishevelled after 14 years in No. 10, have changed leader, and thus prime minister, several times since disposing of their July 2019 winner, Boris Johnson. In the U.K. system, voters do not chose the prime minister directly but vote, in their 650 local constituencies, for a candidate who can belong to any party (or, occasionally, is an independent); the leader of the party with the most seats, or the one most likely to be able to assemble a majority, is invited by the monarch to form a government.
Yet in today’s media-driven electoral politics, general elections look ever more presidential in the American sense. This time round, there has been a proliferation of televised debates between party leaders. Anecdotal wisdom, heard on the bus or in the pub, suggests that few voting intentions get changed by these tightly scripted and well-rehearsed shows. Attitudes and allegiances are more likely to be hardened than altered.
Seven concerns of bishops
Churches have rushed to put out statements and voter guides, as is now commonplace at our elections, but this time there is little evidence of any of their proposed policy positions getting adopted by any party’s official program. The Catholic Church of England and Wales reiterated that Gospel values must inform how Catholics vote, putting “the common good before self-interest.” A video message recorded by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster and leader of the Catholics of England and Wales, reinforced the encouragement to become engaged and informed—and to vote. Archbishop Nichols particularly encouraged younger people to vote.
The bishops proposed seven key areas of concern: criminal justice, domestic poverty, family life and taxation, education, the environment, international relations, human rights and peacebuilding, life issues and migration. Some of these issues have become prominent in the pre-election conversation, but the environment, human rights and peacebuilding are little more than also-rans. As is the case elsewhere in Europe and globally, the Catholic Church and many Christians call for a fairer migration system marked by charity, not exclusion. But some of the discourse of recent weeks has resembled a race to the bottom, as anti-immigrant populism and nativism have dominated, here and elsewhere across Europe.
Here in Scotland, our bishops’ conference similarly issued guidance to Catholic voters, including a pastoral letter. Human life, marriage and the family, poverty, immigration, the environment, freedom of religion and conscience, and nuclear weapons are policy areas about which the bishops encourage Catholics to grill their candidates. As in many places, the hierarchy is cautious about appearing to endorse specific candidates, preferring to form and inform consciences by encouraging the flock to question candidates on areas of concern.
The Farage factor
Decreasing voter engagement and gains by the populist far right has caused concern among the bishops. In Britain, voter turnout dropped significantly after the 1997 general election and has not completely recovered. Over in the European Union, there are similar worries, as the June 10 election for the European Parliament drew a turnout of around 50 percent. The Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union warned of “a persistent indifference and lack of commitment among EU citizens,” according to a story in the London-based Catholic journal The Tablet.
At the same time, startling numbers emerged in La Croix from a poll conducted among practicing Catholics in France, revealing that 42 percent voted for far-right candidates in the E.U. election. Center-right parties made some inroads too, but the gains of the far right in France were enough to cause President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the National Assembly and call a risky general election to take place on June 30 and July 7, just weeks before the Paris Olympics. In some European nations, the appeal to young adults to engage and vote appears to have been harnessed by the far right, keen to cash in on that generation’s perceived distrust of traditional politics.
Back in Britain, the bet that hapless Prime Minister Sunak wagered has led only to his tripping over his own feet. The size of the impending Tory defeat is demonstrated by how, with just over a week to go, Labour is widely treated as if it had already won. The Tories have been reduced to switching their key message to “don’t let them win too big!” What breath is left in their campaign is no longer expended toward victory but toward damage limitation, as Labour’s polling lead remains around 20 percentage points.
The Conservatives did not foresee the late entry into the race, on June 3, by Mr. Farage as leader of the Reform U.K. Party. The party is unlikely, on account of Britain’s “first past the post” system, to gain many seats in the House of Commons, but it will be interesting to see how much damage it will inflict on the Tories. Its proposals include radical responses to immigration policy, far beyond those of any other party, and in their 14 years in power, the Conservatives have presented a disarrayed response to emerging issues of multiculturalism and identity.
It is not beyond imagination that Mr. Farage might gain, at the expense of the Tories, a rising vote share for the Reform Party—and thus lay the groundwork for further advances, and parliamentary seats, in the future. There is even talk, which Mr. Farage himself has teasingly not contradicted, of his becoming the Tory leader within a few years. More immediately, in constituencies where the Conservatives still have a chance, Reform might split the vote, allowing Labour in. Mr. Farage has not made it to the winners’ circle even once in seven parliamentary attempts; in 2021, he stood down from the Reform U.K. Party, diverting his energies toward right-leaning radio stations, which have proliferated in Britain in recent years.
To make things even worse for Mr. Sunak the election gambler, in recent days potentially damaging stories have emerged of possible gambling infractions by well-placed Tory insiders, who are alleged to have had insider information when betting on what would be the date of the surprise election. When these stories broke, Mr. Sunak had only just recovered from widespread criticism after a misstep in Normandy, where he left D-Day 80th anniversary commemorations early, leaving other leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, so he could conduct a political interview back home.
His election gamble has clearly failed, with the rest of the pack still in the race. It is hard to see anything other than a catastrophic defeat for the Conservative administration of 14 years, with some polls going as far to predict that Mr. Sunak himself might lose his own seat; he would be the first-ever incumbent Conservative prime minister to suffer such a humiliation. Then the jockeying for position on the right will recommence even more intensely, as issues such as immigration and identity hobble the traditional political consensus and we find ourselves in another chase, one that might not resemble any race that we’ve spectated before.
[Also in America: “Defense, cost of living and migration: What top election issues reveal about the state of the E.U.”]
