Elected Conservatives have become obsessed with the weirdness of US politics
More In Common conducted 10 focus groups around the country on the Tory party and its leadership contest
– and one of its headline findings is the party needs to seem more in line with regular voters, and to be a bit less “weird”.America is much more steeped in the culture wars than Britain. Right-wing Americans and left-wing Americans get their news from completely different sources, and so hear completely different narratives. The country is far more polarised on social issues like LGBT rights and abortion. Trust is far lower.
It shouldn’t need saying, but Britain is not America. We still agree on much more than we disagree on. The UK public is: cost of living, the NHS, and the state of the economy – even if they disagree on how much of a priority immigration is. The messaging from the public couldn’t be much clearer: they want politicians who will get on with the boring stuff. They want public services to work better, they want better wages, and they’d like to be confident their children will be able to afford homes.
. Some of this may be self-serving: there is a lot of money to be earned on theBut some of it is simply the UK obsession with America and our “special relationship”, which leads politicians astray into thinking our politics are more similar than they are. This leads them in to assuming hot-button American political issues will play well here, when they go down like cold sick., a wildly unpopular man with UK voters. Most in the UK public barely watch the news, let alone follow politics closely.
Unless they start listening to the voters actually living in the country, rather than looking to the US, they are set for a long time in opposition indeed.
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