Republicans must look to the British Conservative populism for future success.
Take what happened in last Thursday’s special election in Hartlepool, England. The Conservatives, or Tories, claimed a working-class district that had voted for the left-wing Labour Party for decades. But this was just the latest in a series of victories for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. Thanks to this success, what was once known as Labour’s “red wall” is now political rubble.
Working-class union voters have left liberals in Britain scratching their heads with the question, “What’s the matter with Hartlepool?”
The answer: It’s the culture wars, and it’s the latest sign that the populist realignment in the West is only just beginning. Political scientist Matthew Goodwin attributes this dynamic to the Conservatives’ success in taking economically left-wing and culturally right-wing positions. “Labour’s disconnection from the wider country is being amplified by a new fault line separating ‘cosmopolitans’ and ‘traditionalists,’ which has little to do with class and much more to do with people’s age, level of education and also their geography: it is values that are now doing the heavy lifting,” wrote Goodwin in the Times.
That said, it’s clear the Labour Party has two albatrosses tied around its necks.
In 2015, Labour’s powerful union bloc of members made the disastrous decision to pick Jeremy Corbyn, a proud socialist and apparent antisemite as party leader. And like the Democrats, Labour abandoned its working-class roots for the priorities of university-educated “cosmopolitans.” Activists on the Left supported Black Lives Matter, favored mass immigration for political gain and to “rub the Right’s noses in diversity,” demanded historical figures be canceled, and decried their country’s history as shameful.
They favored globalism and integration with the European Union, even after the vote to Brexit. This led patriotic Labour voters to a realm of disenchanted anger. They didn’t share the elites’ attitude of Britain as something to be ashamed of. They remain proud of it.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has masterfully navigated these shifting currents. Johnson campaigned for Brexit, abandoned Theresa May’s government when it failed to leave the EU, took popular stances on immigration, and has delivered a highly successful coronavirus vaccine rollout. More importantly, Johnson delivered his message well and held many voters in the English south while courting Labour voters in the working-class bastions of northern England.
According to a Redfield & Wilton Strategies voter intention poll released on Monday, Johnson’s approval rating climbed for the 14th week in a row to 48%. Conservatives also received a 45% approval rating, up 5 points since last week alone.
Republican candidates can learn from Johnson’s strategy in 2022 and 2024. While America is a much more demographically diverse country than Britain, we share many commonalities. We also have the 2016 and 2020 examples of traditionally Democratic voters leaving their party to vote for an engaging, bombastic blonde who liked campaigning on populist issues.
Trump owed his success in 2016 to the backs of the white working class and lost in 2020 because of his narrow loss with those voters. Despite seeing large gains among Latinos and a slight bump with black voters, his decline in support from white voters became his downfall. Growing a diverse party is important for the future of the GOP. Winning over working-class Latinos was crucial for Trump in Texas and Florida. But without a large number of white voters, the GOP cannot win the White House. It may seem like Republicans hit their ceiling with the working white class under Trump and that college-educated white voters have moved too far left to be within reach. However, when you examine the numbers closely, this isn’t the case.
A third of Biden’s voters, about 26 million people, were noncollege-educated white voters, and another 30 million to 35 million noncollege-educated white voters didn’t cast a ballot in 2020. Had the GOP won just 2 percent of these people in 2020, it would have been enough to secure a second term for Trump. It’s also noteworthy that there was a significant amount of suburban support for the GOP in 2020, just not for the top of the ticket. The right candidate with the right populist message can marry suburban and untapped working-class rural voters as Johnson has managed to do in Britain.
What matters to voters is not a party that is focused on stargazing philosophizing but one that prioritizes tangible victories and conveys a love of country. With crime increasingly out of control in major cities, inflation and a possible recession on the horizon, and a Democratic Party moving closer toward embracing all aspects of wokeism, the opportunity is ripe for a U.S. politician to mimic Johnson’s strategy.
Ryan Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) is the author of They’re Not Listening, How the Elites Created the National Populist Revolution.
