Tories Face Extinction: Can They Evolve to Survive?

There was a time when Conservatives boasted they were the world’s most successful political party. Today, such voices are a bit subdued.

The centre-right party that governed the U.K. for more than half of the last century is embracing Donald Trump-style policies, including mass deportations and cutting government spending, as it battles to remain a relevant contender for power.

The Tories are fighting not just the Labour government on the left but Reform UK to its right. Nigel Farage’s “hard-right” party (as the US media calls it) has topped the polls for months, trounced the Conservatives in recent local elections and continues to welcome defecting Tory members and officials.

In the wake of the 2024 general election, media headlines, public discourse, and Reform UK’s consistently favorable electoral and polling results have suggested the party poses an “existential threat” to the Conservatives.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch acknowledged that the party has “a mountain to climb” to win back voters. She just failed to mention that the mountain was “Everest.”

While the Conservatives have overcome major challenges in their long history, Reform UK is quite different. Its leader is a savvy politician who has sharpened his skills in today’s era of populist politics and seems at ease with the electorate. Today’s Conservative Party, in contrast, is a “deer caught in the headlights.”

The decline in popularity of the Conservative Party and the rising relevance of Reform UK was amplified recently by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. During his party conference speech, he placed primary importance on battling Farage while failing to even mention Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, by name.

But what seems comparatively different on the “right,” today, is Reform’s fairly rapid and successive electoral successes. The outcome of Brexit in 2016 and Reform’s rise in the UK reflects similar recent trends worldwide. Voters are turning from conventional, establishment, centrist politics towards more – dare I say — disruptive forces. That fellow conservative on the North American side of the Atlantic quickly comes to mind.

Yet, there have been times before in British history in which significant cultural, technological and social change produced a paradigm shift in politics. A comparable example would be the rise of the Labour party at the outset of the 20^th century; it came at a time when the “right” of the British political system was undergoing upheaval.

Around that period, what we now call the Conservative Party was a “parliamentary coalition” undergoing a process of evolution. Various political groupings, including older Whigs and Tories, and newer Liberal Unionists and National Liberals, joined with Conservatives to form what eventually became the Conservative and Unionist party.

Noted historian, Richard Cockett, argues that the Conservative Party is like a “Darwinian” organism. It has the ability to adapt and survive – and indeed has surmounted many crises. It survived the birth of Labour — having weathered a major split almost a century prior to that — under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel over the repeal of the corn laws.

Experts like Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London, specialising in British and European party politics, consider the Conservative Party, historically, to be the world’s most successful democratic political party. To describe Reform as an existential threat in this context is thus all the more remarkable.

Should Reform UK outperform the Tories at the next election, it would amount to, essentially, a realignment of the “right” in British politics. It would raise the possibility of something that goes against the typical academic view: that the Conservative Party always adapts to survive.

Adapt or perish

The Conservative Party of today seems a bit overwhelmed. It is far too labored in its thinking about how to “repackage” its identity in an era of rapid social, political and technological innovation.

Enter Kemi Badenoch, a low-tax advocate elected Conservative leader last year. She has manoeuvred the party to the right, announcing policies with a distinct “MAGA flavour.” Badenoch contends a Conservative government will jettison carbon emissions-reduction targets, significantly reduce legal immigration and deport unauthorised immigrants with a force similar to the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Moreover, it would withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and curb the power of judges to block the will of government. This sounds very Trumpian.

Are the Conservatives erring by not resisting the urge to mimic aspects of the Reform UK agenda, edging further to the right towards its rival? And in so doing, are the Tories sacrificing their most characteristic feature?

The modern Conservative Party has been at its best when it demonstrates both party unity and competent leadership (echoing a sense that it is the party of sound, prudent governance), all within a stable centrist offering. Doing otherwise plays into the hands of Reform UK – risking the loss of more moderate supporters and splitting the harder-right vote with Reform UK.

Barring the unforeseen, Keir Starmer’s term runs to 2029, whereas Badenoch’s poor poll ratings and lacklustre performance in Parliament have stirred speculation that her tenure may be much shorter lived.

It is also noteworthy, of course, that the Prime Minister faces like concerns within Labour, as Reform destabilises parties on both sides of the political divide.

The Thatcher Era

Facing an uncertain future, many Conservatives are mentally reverting to the Thatcher era of the 1980s, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (in conjunction with her friend, President Ronald Reagan) transformed British and American politics with their free-market views and policies. The most conspicuous personality at the last Conservative conference in Manchester wasn’t even present. Margaret Thatcher was the dominant persona at the gathering.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch compared her own lacklustre start as head of the party to Thatcher saying, that early on, she too was “written off.” But her legacy is something to build on – not hide behind, she warned. Thatcher was the “right answer” at that moment.

The question now before the Conservative Party — and the good people of Britain — is whether Kemi Badenoch is today’s “right answer” for the United Kingdom on the eastern shores of the Atlantic?

Dr. Wolf is director of The Fulcrum Institute (n.b. the website will be live late October 2025), a new organization of current and former scholars, which engages in research and commentary, focusing on political and cultural issues on both sides of the Atlantic. Our interest is in American foreign policy as it relates to the economic and foreign policies of the NATO countries, the SCO, the BRICS+ nation-states and the Middle East.

After service in the USAF (Lt.Col.-Intel) Dr. Wolf obtained a PhD-philosophy (University of Wales), MA-philosophy (University of S. Africa), MTh-philosophical theology (Texas Christian University-Brite Div.). He taught philosophy and humanities in the US and S. Africa before retiring from university.

If you enjoy The New Conservative and would like to support our work, please consider buying us a coffee or sharing this piece with your friends – it would really help to keep us going. Thank you!

(Photograph: Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, OGL 3 <http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Please follow and like us: