In this world, nothing has been certain except death, taxes — and the resilience of Britain’s Conservative party. Now, however, the most successful democratic political outfit in the West is facing the threat of irrelevance, if not the extinction predicted by doomsayers. Riding high in the opinion polls, Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party is sucking the life out of traditional center-right politics.
At last week’s annual conference, Labour’s Keir Starmer shored up his floundering leadership with a crowd-pleasing, full-frontal attack on Farage — his migration policy denounced as “racist” — while virtually ignoring the traditional Tory enemy. Starmer is adopting the playbook of French President Emmanuel Macron: By building up the threat from the populists, he hopes to rally a broad alliance of liberals and progressives to his standard.