Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is already reshaping conservatism in the English-speaking world.
In the past month alone, Poilievre has been held up as an example for British Conservatives to follow in articles published in the Times and the Telegraph, two influential right-leaning British newspapers.
In an interview with the Times, British Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick called Poilievre the “most apt lodestar” for his party in 2024.
Jenrick waxed about how Poilievre is a champion of conservative values, such as “controlling borders, being tough on crime, a more realistic approach to net zero, building homes for young people.”
The 42-year-old leadership candidate also wants to make the British Tories into the “trade union of working people,” with the Times noting that Poilievre is surprisingly pro-union.
This is mostly true, at least in the case of private-sector unions. Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government helped get the ball rolling on centre-right outreach to private-sector unions through the hard work of his former labour minister, Monte McNaughton.
Many unionized workers evidently appreciated the government’s moves, such as mandating that businesses allow delivery drivers to use their bathrooms and investing $1 billion into training and retraining programs. Ford’s Progressive Conservatives were rewarded with the votes of many unionized workers, who helped deliver the party a second majority government in 2022.
Poilievre has wisely swam with the tide. In an address to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade in March, Poilieve announced that, “When I’m prime minister, my obsession — my daily obsession — will be about what is best for the working-class people of this country.”
In the Hub, Sean Speer pointed out that Poilievre’s words reflected a broader trend of middle- and working-class people warming to conservative parties. Polling suggests that a plurality of unionized workers now favour Poilievre’s Conservatives, indicating that his style is working.
The British Tories did manage to achieve that briefly in the 2019 election under Boris Johnson’s leadership, when they bagged Labour’s working-class base in the north of England. But it did not last long, as COVID mishandling, post-Brexit growing pains and the comically catastrophic premiership of Liz Truss shattered that fledgling coalition.
The Labour government that mercifully replaced the Tories after the election in July has seen its own popularity nosedive after a long, hot summer of sectarian riots and what appears to be a nanny-state campaign against pubs, while the Tories’ numbers have largely recovered. But a lot can change before the next election in 2029.
The challenge for the next U.K. Tory leader will be convincing working-class Brits to return to the fold, to say nothing of attracting more younger voters. The Tories’ base has been boiled down to people old enough to have voted for Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher, of whom there are less every year.
Just eight per cent of British voters aged 18 to 24 chose the Tories in the July election, compared to the 41 per cent who cast their votes for Labour. The numbers are equally grim in the 25-29 age bracket.
The United Kingdom’s youth face a housing crisis of a similar magnitude to Canada’s, but the problem for the Conservatives is that they presided over the growth of that crisis, and voters who grew up with that will not soon forget.
In Canada, it was Poilievre who aggressively championed a policy of incentivizing housing starts to alleviate the affordability crisis, and it was the Liberals who had to chase him on it. There are few issues in the U.K. that cannot be blamed on the Tory cabinets that governed the country from 2010 to 2024.
Furthermore, the reason why nearly40 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 plan on voting Conservative is not because they all suddenly started reading Edmund Burke. They are dissatisfied and rightfully feel alienated due to a lack of affordability and scarce job prospects, and the Liberals have not yet found a meaningful way to address those generational problems.
A similarly dreary reality is faced by youth in Australia, which is due for its own federal election next year. The centre-right Liberal-National Coalition has caught up to the progressive Labor government, but has not yet managed pull ahead in the polls.
An August op-ed in the Australian, a conservative-leaning newspaper, urged Peter Dutton, leader of the right-wing Coalition, to take some cues from Poilievre, as well. Dutton will face a similar problem as his British counterparts, however, as the Coalition was in power until 2022, meaning that it presided over many of the country’s current problems.
Canada is one of the few remaining countries in the Anglosphere whose last centre-right government held power before the world changed due to COVID, the war in Ukraine and the deterioration of relations with China.
Poilievre may offend many with his brash, populist style, but he feels fresh compared to our exhausted, mutinous, embittered Liberal government. Unless the British Tories or the Coalition can say the same, taking inspiration from Poilievre will only take them so far.
National Post
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