A British Conservative prime minister set a date for the long-awaited vote in early summer, and the United States followed with a pivotal presidential election a few months later. It happened in 2016, when Britons voted for Brexit and Americans elected Donald J. Trump, and now it’s happening again.
Political soothsayers may want to study the results of Britain’s July 4 general election for clues as to how the United States might vote on November 5. After all, in The country’s shock 2016 vote to leave the European Union was seen as a canary in the coal mine because of Mr. Trump’s surprise victory later that year.
This time, however, the past may not be the prologue. British voters appear ready to elect the opposition Labor Party, possibly by a landslide, over the beleaguered Conservatives, while in the United States the Democratic president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., is in a gunfight with Mr. Trump and his Republican party. supporters.
“We are in a very different position politically from the US right now,” said Robert Ford, a politics professor at the University of Manchester. He noted that the Conservatives have been in power for 14 years, Brexit has faded as a political issue and there is no British equivalent to Mr. Trump.
To the extent there is a common theme on both sides of the Atlantic, “being an incumbent really sucks,” said Ben Ansell, a professor of comparative democratic institutions at Oxford University.
Overall, Mr Sunak decided to call an election several months early because he did not expect UK economic news to get any better between now and the autumn. Analysts say Mr Sunak is leading Labor by more than 20 percentage points in most polls and is betting that the Conservatives can cut their losses by facing voters now.
While there is little evidence that the US political calendar influenced Mr Sunak’s decision, holding the election on July 4 has the side benefit of avoiding any overlap. If he waits until November 17, as political planners have predicted, he will risk being swept away by the consequences of the US election results.
Political analysts have debated whether Mr Trump’s victory would benefit the Conservatives or Labour. Some think Mr Sunak could use the disruption to Trump’s recovery as a case to stick with the Conservatives, if only because they might get along better with Mr Trump than the Labor leader movement, Keir Starmer.
Now that’s no longer relevant: Britain will have a new Congress and, quite possibly, a new prime minister before the Republicans and Democrats hold their conventions.
However, analysts say the shape and scale of Britain’s election results could hold lessons for the United States. The two countries still have political consensus on many issues, from worries about immigration, anger about inflation to conflicts over social and cultural issues.
“Imagine there was a collapse of the Conservative Party, like in Canada in 1993,” said Professor Ansell, referring to a federal election in which the incumbent Progressive Conservative Party was ousted. all but wiped out by the Liberal Party and even pushed aside by the Reform Party as Canada’s major right-wing party.
Britain’s Conservative Party faces a milder version of that threat from Reform UK, a party co-founded by populist Nigel Farage, which is campaigning on an anti-immigration message. inside YouGov’s latest poll, a market research firm, founded shortly before Mr Sunak called the election, the Reform Party was at 12%, while the Conservatives were at 21% and Labor at 46%. Other polls since the announcement show little movement.
The UK’s strong reform drive “could be a sign that populism is rising again in the UK and could be a harbinger that something similar could happen,” Professor Ansell said. in the fall in America.
On the contrary, he said, the big wins by Britain’s centre-left parties – Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens – could reassure Democrats in the US that the results were better than expected. them in the midterm and special elections is not a fluke but a change. a sign of the resilience of progressive politics globally.
Some right-wing critics of the Conservative Party blame the party’s decline on its move away from the economic nationalism that fueled the 2016 Brexit vote and its landslide victory. this year in 2019 under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. They say the Conservative Party’s support for liberal free-market policies has put the party out of step with Mr. Trump’s MAGA army, as well as right-wing movements in Italy, the Netherlands and France.
“Whatever you think about Trump — he’s unstable, he’s a danger to democracy — if you look at how he votes, he “He’s doing a lot better than the Conservative Party.” Kent.
Of course, part of the difference is that Mr. Trump has been out of office for nearly four years, which means he, unlike the Conservative Party, is not to blame for the cost of living crisis. He is also not at fault for not being able to control the border, like Mr. Biden is in the US and Mr. Sunak is in the UK.
In an effort to mobilize the Conservative Party’s base, Mr Sunak is making notes echoing the anti-immigrant themes of Brexit campaigners in 2016. To stem the flow of small boats crossing the English Channel, he spent much of his time as prime minister promoting a plan to put asylum seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda. Expensive, widely criticized and unrealized, it has much in common with Mr. Trump’s border wall.
“This is like our Trump moment,” said Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to Washington. “But given the legacy that Keir Starmer will inherit, you cannot rule out the possibility that someone on the right wing of the Conservative Party will take advantage of a weak Labor government to regain power in four or five years.”
However, Brexit, which was decided in a 2016 referendum but has dominated British politics for years afterward, is unlikely to happen in 2024. Analysts say that reflects voter exhaustion, the Conservative Party’s admission that leaving the European Union would harm the British economy and acceptance of Britain. Won’t be joining again anytime soon.
“You’re not allowed to talk about Brexit because both parties fear what will happen if you let the dogs loose,” said Chris Patten, the former Hong Kong governor and Conservative politician who led the party in 1992. off the leash.” overcame a polling deficit to claim a surprise victory over Labour.
Mr Patten said he doubted whether the Conservatives could pull it off this time, given voters’ fatigue with the party and the differences between Mr Sunak and John Major, the prime minister in 1992.
Frank Luntz, an American political strategist who has lived and worked in Britain, said elections in the UK and US are being driven less by ideological battles than by widespread frustration with with the status quo.
“We are in a completely different world than we were in 2016,” Mr. Luntz said. “But one thing both sides of the Atlantic have in common is a feeling that can be summed up in one word: enough.”
