After 14 years in power, Britain's Conservatives are headed for a historic defeat as various general election projections show the opposition Labor Party led by Keir Starmer on the brink of a possible parliamentary supermajority.
If they win, Labor will face a series of challenges, the most pronounced of which are economic problems and an entrenched cost of living crisis, while, according to experts, business investment and trade in goods collapsed after Brexit, world media write.
The defeat of the "most successful" political party
By Friday, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will almost certainly be kicked out of Downing Street, and his ruling Conservative Party will face its deepest hole in more than a century, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Polls ahead of the July 4 election in Great Britain show that the opposition Labor Party and its leader Keir Starmer are on course for victory with a margin of around 20 percentage points, ending 14 years of Tory rule.
The question arises, as the New York newspaper points out, what will be the extent of the defeat of the oldest and most successful political party in the world, measured by the years in power in the past 150 years.
If the polls are correct, the Conservatives are on course to win only around 20 percent of the vote - their lowest share in modern British history and less than half the 43,5 percent of the vote they won at the last general election in 2019, when the party won a huge a parliamentary majority of 365 seats compared to just 203 for Labour.
For the Tories, according to the Wall Street Journal, the impending defeat ends more than a decade in power that has seen five prime ministers and dramatic moments such as Britain's 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Since then, the British economy has struggled, exacerbated by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
The conservative party has often been rocked by internal conflicts and scandals, the newspaper emphasizes, adding that the Tories are preparing for, at best, five years in the opposition, and at worst for internal divisions that could further damage it.
Sunak, a former Goldman Sachs banker, spent the last few days of the campaign urging voters to elect enough Tories to give Labor a real opposition. Sunak, the Wall Street Journal recalled, surprised almost everyone in May by calling early elections for this summer, despite being far behind in the polls.
One of the reasons why the Tories are suffering such a heavy defeat is simply that voters are ready for a change, the paper said, recalling that no British political party has ever won a fifth consecutive term in power.
British politics tends to work in cycles, with the two main parties usually elected between 10 and 15 years before the public votes for the opposition. The Tories ruled from 1980 to 1997, Labor from 1997 to 2010, and the Tories ever since.
"The Extinction of the Tories"
After 14 years in power, it seems that the British conservatives are on the way to a historic defeat, the Washington Post assesses in an analysis, adding that certain forecasts indicate that the conservatives may not even be the largest opposition party after the elections.
The paper points to a survey last month by the Telegraph, a newspaper known for its conservative leanings, which predicted a "Tory wipeout", with the former ruling party falling to just 53 seats from its current 365 in the House of Commons, with Labor securing a staggering 516 seats.
According to research reported by the Washington newspaper, Sunak would lose his seat, as well as two-thirds of his cabinet. Some liberal democrats could, in some scenarios, win more constituencies than them.
Some pundits and analysts have marked the election as a possible event that will lead to the "extinction of the Tories", who, the Washington Post pointed out, have presided over a stunning period of political and economic turbulence since taking power in 2010 under then-party leader David Cameron. Now Britain is dealing with falling productivity and an entrenched cost-of-living crisis, the paper points out.
"Real wages are stagnant, no more so than today when the Cameron-led coalition first came to power in 2010, while weak GDP growth since then is largely the result of high immigration - GDP per capita has barely increased," he said. is political economist William Davies, adding that business investment and trade in goods have collapsed as a result of Brexit.
Instead of campaigning on his party's legacy, Sunak - who came to power not through an election but an intra-party vote - spent the final days of the election campaign pleading with voters to defeat Labour's large majority.
However, the Washington Post points out, the Tories under his leadership are now likely to be fighting not only a losing battle against upstart Labour, but also against the insurgent far-right Reform Party of the United Kingdom. The party is led by Nigel Farage, who was one of the most influential British politicians during the past decade.
And Boris Johnson in the campaign
Putting aside his differences with Rishi Sunak, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined the election campaign at the eleventh hour, The Times reports.
On July 2, Johnson appeared at a campaign rally in central London in a last-ditch effort to win back disgruntled Conservative voters, the London paper said, adding that he warned Tory voters that Labor would "cut taxes" and "go after private businesses, education and health".
Johnson also directly criticized Farage for his claim that the West had provoked Putin to attack Ukraine, and highlighted the Tories' pledge to increase defense spending to 2,5 percent by 2030.
Johnson's intervention, according to the Times, comes after Sunak sent him a message last week asking him to do everything in his power to help the campaign entering its final stages.
It was one of the most delicate negotiations in the election campaign, the paper points out and points out that for weeks Johnson and Sunak's assistants have been trying behind the scenes to convince them to hold a joint event as a demonstration of unity to prevent the obvious existential destruction of the Tories.
With any ambition to win the election long gone, it is too late to reverse the Conservative Party's electoral fortunes, the Times concludes, adding that there is still hope "that the interventions of the great Tory beasts past and present will be enough to avert disaster".
Britain needs a fresh start
Voters seem to have decided that, after an often turbulent 14 years in office with five prime ministers, the Conservative Party's time is up, the editors of the Financial Times write in a commentary, stressing that Labour, on the other hand, must be given a chance to govern.
No party in power can avoid reckoning for so long, and at least since 1979, no government has left state affairs in such a desperate state, the paper assesses, stressing that economic growth and real wages have lagged significantly since 2010, that the tax burden is close record after 1945, while the national debt is the highest in relation to production in the last 60 years. Public services are crumbling and Britain's defenses are depleted.
Conservatives can point to external shocks: the aftermath of the financial crisis and the Great Recession; the global pandemic and Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. However, according to the editors of the Financial Times, much of the damage has been done from within, explaining that extended austerity measures have weakened the public sector, that Liz Truss as Prime Minister in 2022 carelessly caused a market crisis while Brexit proved to be an act of severe economic self-mutilation.
The paper adds that during the feverish process of withdrawing from the EU, Boris Johnson's government "played fast and loose with the rule of law", undermining public respect for politics and institutions, while Britain's position was diminished in the eyes of its allies.
Although Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has taken steps to improve the situation, he is not even now acting as the leader of a party mired in strife, writes the London newspaper, with the assessment that the Conservatives - too often since 2010 - have prioritized the management of their tumultuous party politics over healthy governance. Britain.
On the other hand, Keir Starmer's Labor Party is in a better position today to provide the leadership the country needs. Starmer has transformed what the Financial Times editors point out was a fractious group yearning for failed interventionism in the 1970s back into a credible party of government.
While the challenges specific to Britain are extremely difficult, the new government must face the same problems as other leading economies: combating climate change and mastering artificial intelligence, and dealing with a rising China, a revisionist Russia and, possibly, another Trump presidency in the US , the paper emphasized with the conclusion that a large part of the country is actually longing for a new beginning.
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