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