UK’s 200-Year-Old Conservative Party Confronts Existential Risk

Kemi Badenoch entered the Conservative Party conference last year competing with three of her Tory rivals for the leadership. As winner of that contest, this time around she confronts a more formidable foe: irrelevance.

Since losing two-thirds of its seats in last year’s general election, dire poll ratings and defections have humbled the once-dominant party of UK government. If a vote were held today, a recent opinion survey showed, they’d collapse to fourth, trailing Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party, the governing Labour Party, and the Liberal Democrats.