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Wednesday, July 3, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION

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Edited and managed by students at 
the University of Michigan since 1890.

 ERIN WHITE
Editorial Page Editor

Zack Blumberg
Emma Chang
Emily Considine
Joel Danilewitz
Emily Huhman

Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Timothy Spurlin
Nicholas Tomaino
Erin White 
Ashley Zhang

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. 
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

CASSANDRA MANSUETTI
Editor in Chief

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

ZACK BLUMBERG | COLUMN
B

ack in January, I published 
my first ever column for 
The Daily, in which I 
derided Brexit as an unrealizable 
fantasy which could never be pulled 
off. Unfortunately, it seems I was 
only half right: Brexit remains an 
unrealizable fantasy, but Britain 
appears determined to go through 
with it anyway. Coinciding with 
the Conservative Party’s members-
only vote for the country’s next 
prime minister, YouGov polled 
Conservative Party members about 
Brexit — the results were terrifying 
and confirmed that Conservative 
Party members are willing to 
sacrifice just about anything for 
Brexit (important note: Unlike in the 
United States, members of British 
parties are only a small cohort of 
paying, registered party members 
who vote on internal party decisions, 
not simply all people who vote for 
the party in national elections). 
However, the survey results don’t 
only demonstrate ineptitude, but 
a shortsightedness which could 
ultimately mean the end of the 
Conservative Party. 
Fundamentally, 
two 
specific 
questions in the YouGov survey 
explain the entire mindset of the 
Conservative 
Party 
regarding 
Brexit. First, Conservative Party 
members seem far more worried 
about the Brexit Party than the 
Labour Party. When asked which 
parties they thought posed a serious 
problem for the Conservatives, 
members listed the Brexit Party 
nearly twice as often as the Labour 
Party — 67 percent said the Brexit 
Party was a major threat, while only 

34 percent said the Labour Party 
was. Second, Conservative Party 
members overwhelmingly believe 
that failing to deliver Brexit would 
damage the party going forward. 
An astonishingly large 51 percent of 
Conservative Party members said 
that if the U.K. remained in the EU, 
this would hurt the Conservative 
Party so much the party would never 
lead the government again. 
Though many of the survey 
results appear confusing, the two 
aforementioned questions provide 
some valuable context. Essentially, 
Conservative Party members believe 
they must push Brexit through or else 
their party will be ruined, and their 
voters, feeling betrayed, will migrate 
to the Brexit Party. With this in 
mind, some of the other poll answers 
make slightly more sense. In a 63-29 
percent split, party members said 
they would be O.K. with Scotland 
leaving the U.K. if it meant Brexit 
happened, and in a 61-29 percent 
split, members said it was O.K. if the 
U.K. suffered significant economic 
damage from Brexit. Within the 
party, many members probably see 
those consequences as sacrifices 
they might have to make in order to 
avoid being usurped by the Brexit 
Party. 54 percent of party members 
even said they would support Brexit 
if it meant the Conservative Party 
was destroyed, likely because they 
believe the alternative is the party 
being destroyed after failing to 
deliver Brexit. 
In the short term, Conservative 
Party members’ paranoia over Brexit 
is 
actually 
somewhat 
justified. 
Since former Conservative Prime 

Minister Theresa May first initiated 
the U.K.’s withdrawal by invoking 
Article 50 of the European Union 
Treaty in 2017, the Conservative 
Party’s Brexit paralysis has cost 
the party greatly. Discord among 
Conservative MPs over how Brexit 
should be carried out led Parliament 
to reject May’s proposed exit deal 
three times, which ultimately forced 
her to resign earlier this month. 
Throughout 
this 
bureaucratic 
slog, Brexit voters have grown 
continually more exasperated. As 
a result of the Conservative Party’s 
inability to carry out Brexit, Nigel 
Farage’s newly founded Brexit Party 
— which promised to get the U.K. 
out of the EU at any cost — won 
a plurality in the 2019 European 
elections, while the Conservatives 
finished fifth. With the defeat fresh 
in their minds, it is understandable 
that Conservative Party members 
see delivering Brexit as the Party’s 
only way forward. 
With that said, there are several 
key problems which could decimate 
the Conservative Party. In some 
ways, it may already be too late. 
Though the party now firmly 
supports Brexit, several years of 
dithering have hurt the party’s 
credibility among Brexiteers. The 
Conservative Party’s likely pick 
for prime minister, Boris Johnson, 
said recently the U.K. would leave 
the EU on Oct. 31 (the current 
deadline for Brexit), regardless of 
the consequences. This is the strong 
stance frustrated Brexit voters want. 
However, like the rest of his party, 
Johnson has been quite inconsistent 
on this issue. In the lead up to the 

actual Brexit vote back in 2016, he 
was unusually quiet, and although 
he eventually supported Brexit, he 
said the decision was “agonizingly 
difficult” — hardly the outspoken 
response one would expect from 
him. 
Unlike Johnson, Farage has been 
an outspoken critic of the EU for 
decades: After the U.K. signed a 
treaty which furthered European 
integration in 1992, he left the 
Conservative Party to form the 
U.K. Independence Party; he then 
founded the Brexit Party in January. 
Since founding UKIP, Farage has 
been the face of the Eurosceptic 
movement. For the Conservative 
Party, this poses a fundamental 
problem: If people are really as 
concerned about Brexit as party 
members believe, why would they 
pick the slow-moving, flip-flopping 
Boris Johnson over the ever-
consistent Nigel Farage? 
Furthermore, the Conservative 
Party’s biggest problem is how 
their approach sets the party up 
for the future. With the Brexit 
Party pushing the Conservatives 
to the right, the party now feels 
it must deliver Brexit at all costs 
to maintain power. However, this 
approach, combined with Britain’s 
changing 
demographics, 
could 
destroy the party. Although the 
U.K. did narrowly vote to leave 
the EU, three key groups voted 
overwhelmingly to remain: urban 
voters, young voters and university-
educated voters. The results were 
particularly 
one-sided 
among 
voters under the age of 25 (71 
percent voted remain) and voters 

with a university degree (68 percent 
voted remain). For the Conservative 
Party, this will be disastrous going 
forward. As older voters die off, 
Britain’s younger generation, which 
is consistently more progressive, 
will make up a larger and larger 
share of the electorate. Additionally, 
the British population is continually 
becoming more educated and more 
urbanized, which further threatens 
the Conservative Party. 
A decade from now, with all 
signs pointing towards the British 
populace being more pro-EU than 
today, 
the 
Conservative 
Party 
would be remembered as the party 
that decided to leave the EU, at 
the expense of the UK’s unity and 
economic prosperity. 
Ultimately, 
the 
Conservative 
Party is stuck in a corner right now. 
If the party is too weak on Brexit, 
it will face attacks from the Brexit 
Party. However, succumbing to 
the Brexit Party’s pressures, as the 
vast majority of party members 
seem prepared to do, would be a 
terrible mistake. Though it would 
likely retain slightly more power 
in the short term, the long-term 
consequences of a poorly planned 
Brexit would be catastrophic for 
both the party itself and the U.K. as 
a whole. Unfortunately, it appears 
the Conservative Party has taken 
this shortsighted approach and 
decided to hedge the party’s future, 
along with the economic health of 
the entire U.K., for small gains in 
the present.

Zack Blumberg can be reached at 

zblumber@umich.edu.

The Conservative Party’s grave mistake

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