Lack of political alternatives ought to frighten Brits

Editor's note: Thomas O. Falk is a London-based political analyst and commentator. He holds a Master of Arts in international relations from the University of Birmingham and specializes in U.S. affairs. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The UK's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has so far failed to turn things around in the country. As a result, his Conservative Party has its back against the wall in a country that seems to have no political alternatives.

If there was still any doubt that the Conservative Party was in the midst of a major crisis, last Friday's three by-elections for the British House of Commons added certainty: two seats in traditionally Conservative strongholds were lost to Labor and the Liberal Democrats. Only one seat was defended — barely. 

It is a trend that has continued steadily since Boris Johnson's landslide victory in 2019. Contrary to all of Sunak's promises to stabilize the country and thus strengthen the party again, there is simply no plan for how the Conservatives plan to stop certain defeats from happening in the next general election, which must take place in 2025 at the latest. Thus, after 13 years in government and five prime ministers, the party is not only on the path to becoming the opposition but destined for it.

Worse yet, neither Sunak nor the party can complain about these developments. In recent years Conservatives had focused on creating headlines for national politics with all sorts of distractions: Boris Johnson's missteps, bitter culture wars, the fight against illegal immigration, Europhile nostalgics, or entirely unnecessary attacks against China. 

Meanwhile, the party failed to focus on the most important area. As Bill Clinton showed the world in 1992, it was and always has been "the economy, stupid." And the latter has been languishing in Britain since the financial crisis in 2008. 

By now, the country has lost touch with leading nations inside and outside Europe, and the prosperity of its citizens is shrinking, recently accelerated by the highest inflation of all large Western industrialised countries. Anyone walking through London these days can see the consequences first-hand. In one of the richest cities on the planet, the number of homeless has risen sharply. Many people simply can no longer afford to live in the city, they lose their homes and end up on the streets. This is perhaps where the government failed most, because the promise after Brexit was more prosperity, not more poverty.

In fairness, one has to add that the Conservative Party inherited a fiscal mess from Labor in 2010. David Cameron had no choice but to stabilize public finances by ushering in a frustrating decade of austerity. 

Ironically, these highly unpopular measures were one of the secrets for Johnson's win in 2019 when he tried to siphon off voters with state spending programs, careless debt management and all sorts of social and regional political promises — initially with considerable success. But Johnson's frivolous promises didn't deliver any growth either, although the pandemic, Brexit and the Ukraine war have not helped one must add.

However, the bottom line is that the UK is faced with devastating economic data these days. Inflation is still almost 8 percent, more than twice as high as in the U.S. According to estimates by the Growth Commission gross domestic product per capita has fallen by 0.6 percent in the last four years. Today it is almost a third below that of the U.S. The UK is therefore one of the bottom of the big industrial nations and is falling further behind. 

Sunak, a former banker, promised a more coherent financial and economic policy but has simply failed to deliver and with significantly less money in their pockets, voters have not only noticed but started to search for political alternatives. 

Keir Starmer, who's the current Labor leader, has reestablished his party as such when he purged it from the undesirable elements former leader Jeremy Corbyn had introduced. But Starmer is cognisant that this alone does not guarantee election victory. His party needs to be convincing on an economic and fiscal policy if it is to win voters' trust. 

The current shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and economist Rachel Reeves tries hard to avoid the impression of dubious financial policies. Just a few weeks ago, for example, she postponed a program in the party's manifesto for investing billions in green technologies into the distant future. After all, stabilizing prices and purchasing power must be a priority right now. 

However, Labor, too, has to face the question of how the country is to find its way back to new economic momentum. Thus far, it has failed to deliver a convincing answer. 

Moreover, the overburdened National Health Service needs deep reforms and partial privatization, which is far from easy. The waste of government infrastructure projects such as the absurdly overpriced construction of the HS2 high-speed rail network — designed to connect London to the rest of the country better and faster — must be stopped, something no government has yet managed to sell. 

The opportunities presented by Brexit have also remained unused so far and the workers who have left the employment market en masse since the pandemic must be brought back into jobs, to only name a few more issues that plague Britain these days. 

Where is the party that would credibly push such reform programs forward? It simply doesn't exist, neither on the left nor the right and it will culminate in frustrated British voters, who will bear the brunt of soon to be two decades of political failure in the country. 

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