Liz Truss’s resignation as British Prime Minister, just 44 days after taking office, left the Conservative Party with an unclear future, with Nigel Farage declaring the party “dead” while others argue that the party must evolve to survive. to the challenge of new “movements”. . ”
“The British Conservative Party is gone, it’s dead,” Farage told Fox News Digital. “After 200 years of existence, now it is useless. The space is opening up for a new center-right political movement.”
Truss announced his resignation just a day after declaring she was “a fighter and not a quitter”, giving in to party pressure and setting in motion a leadership election that will take place “within the next week”. She backed down on a series of planned tax cuts outlined in her “mini-budget”, which provoked a strong reaction from markets that saw the value of the pound drop to historic lows, forcing Truss to sack the Chancellor of the United States. Kwasi Kwarteng Chessboard.
Some believe the problem goes beyond Truss and the party has gone astray: Lance Forman, a former Conservative Party MEP and Brexit Party MEP in the European Parliament, told Fox News Digital that the Conservative party “seems to have moved a lot more. towards the center or even to the left “.
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“You know, you almost have a situation now where you have, you know, the old job fighting the new job while the new real conservatives are gone,” Forman said, adding that “it’s a situation that changes very quickly” and ” all a bit crazy right now. “
Farage, creator of the “Reform UK” Brexit Party in the European Parliament, on Thursday posted a video on Twitter urging “big guns” from the party to join him in helping to “replace” the Conservative Party, saying he “can’t do it” alone.
LONDON, ENGLAND – FEBRUARY 02: Brexit party leader and former MEP Nigel Farage arrives to appear on the Andrew Marr Show at the BBC Television Center on February 2, 2020 in London, England.
(Hollie Adams / Getty Images)
Forman said starting a new party was “so difficult” and “almost impossible” in the current system, but admitted that the Conservative party does not have a clear path to take due to “so much disaffection” with the party.
“Many people blamed … what happened [with] the budget, certainly with our economy, but just look at the world and interest rates are going up, and there is a lot to do right now, “continued Forman.” Is there room for a new party? Will the Conservative Party split? It’s difficult.”
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Some analysts have rejected the idea that the best way forward is to kill the “most successful political party in the Western Hemisphere”.
Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital that the Conservative Party can survive, as it has previously, “by constantly reinventing itself.”
A Daily Star livestream of a head of lettuce survived Liz Truss as UK Prime Minister. Truss announced her resignation on Thursday, October 20, 2022.
(AP Photo / Alberto Pezzali | Daily Star)
“The Conservative Party may be going through a period of reinvention and sometimes those periods of reinvention can lead to defeat for the party as well, but I don’t think for a moment that the Conservative Party will be replaced,” Mendoza said.
He pointed to other moments of weakness in the party, such as in the 1990s after a “catastrophic defeat” of Tony Blair’s “new Labor” movement, arguing that the party was “able to get back together.” According to Mendoza, the real problem is that of the government, not the party.
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“I think the party right now obviously had a shock to the system in the form of Truss-onomics and what Liz Truss was trying to do before … although, if you remember, Boris Johnson in 2019 got a solid majority. of 80 seats or so in terms of the British parliament, and that was a very large majority, “he said.
“It was obviously that the ability to govern was controlled by already having to reinvent itself as a party addressing both northern and southern issues within the UK,” concluded Mendoza. “It seems strange to think that only three years later the Conservative Party is over.”
Outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks outside Downing Street in London on Tuesday 6 September 2022 before heading to Balmoral in Scotland, where he will announce his resignation from Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. Later on Tuesday Liz Truss will formally become the new British Prime Minister after an audience with the Queen. (AP Photo / Kirsty Wigglesworth)
(The Associated Press)
Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, agrees with Mendoza’s assessment, saying the British government is “in a terrible state of crisis and turmoil.”
“The Conservative Party will remain the greatest or greatest force on the right and maintain a huge parliamentary majority,” Gardiner told Fox News Digital. “At the moment, [they] they have more than 70 MPs, so even if a new party on the right emerges… it could split the vote on the right and a new party on the right would undermine the conservative party, but it would not replace the conservative party as the dominant force among the right. ”
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As for the future, Gardiner noted that Jeremy Hunt, recently appointed as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, is “arguably the most powerful politician” in the UK, dictating politics in recent days, but it is unclear who will end up replacing Truss directly.
But whoever takes over will face a challenge to reunify the party and put together a government that seems “on the verge of collapse”.
