Tory Wipe Out

The UK election results are in and they are ‘interesting’. It was a disaster for the conservatives, with Rishi Sunak’s party spectacularly losing. The Conservatives were wiped out. At the time of recording, labor has won 409 seats, the conservatives 120, and the liberal democrats 71. Nigel Farage’s reform party won 4 seats, with Nigel Farage winning in his seat of Clacton.

The new Prime Minister will be Kier Starmer. He ran a small target campaign, much like Anthony Albanese. Like Anthony Albanese, he seemed to campaign as much on not being Rishi Sunak as on his policies. My inference is that the government change will mark a sharp left turn. Kier Starmer is an old school socialist. So, we can expect higher taxes and more government control. The Labor party website states that they will not increase income tax or VAT (i.e., GST). However, they have been silent on capital gains tax. There are reports that the Labor party has looked to increase CGT to fund more spending.

It has been reported that there will be some tax increases. The most noticeable of these is with inheritance tax. Inheritance tax is reprehensible. The UK should not have introduced it. Labor will expand it to also fully cover family businesses and farm land. They also seek to stop people using offshore trusts to circumvent inheritance tax. Labor, using its natural penchant for double-speak, classifies this as ‘closing a loophole’.

Kier Starmer also has flirted with progressive social causes. This was most clear from his definition of what a woman is. This was a concern for some womens’ rights advocates. However, it evidently was not a concern for the majority of the population.

Kier Starmer looks to be rather like Anthony Albanese. I do not believe a word he says. I do not buy the small target policy platform that they presented. I suspect that now that there is a large majority, the Labor party will simply steamroll people.

The question, however, is really want went wrong. The answer is Rishi Sunak. He lost touch with what conservatives need to be. Conservatives need to be the party of freedom. They must be the party of both individual liberty and of letting people keep more of their own hard earned money. Rishi Sunak came across like Malcolm Turnbull in Australia: A socially progressive, wealthy, individual that people viewed as hypocritical. For example, Rishi Sunak increased taxes while his wife had legally claimed non-domicle status in the UK so as to save on taxes. To be clear, Rishi Suank is not his wife. Furthermore, I do not begrudge her for being clever.. However, it looked bad.

Rishi Sunak also floated unpopular policies and did so in a haphazard way. This includes the floated return of national service, which is deeply unpopular and wins no votes.

Liz Truss, to give her credit, at least had good – if chaotic – policies. These include her tax cuts, which were not well received due to their timing. But, which otherwise would have been consistent with the conservative and libertarian ideology. One cannot help but wonder whether Liz Truss might have led to a better outcome.

Nigel Farage’s reform party likely gained significantly from the conservative weakness. This included disquiet over lingering relations with Europe and over immigration. Indeed, this was rather controversial for Reform. Some unwelcome comments from some representatives likely harmed Reform’s vote somewhat. Nevertheless he will certainly have an impact.

For the conservatives to have any hope of turning this around, they must find a reason for existing. Perhaps they can go back to their routes of being the party of small government and individual autonomy. One wonders whether it is already too late for the UK at this point, however.