HASfter eight long weeks of Tory campaigning, meetings and infighting, Liz Truss is now the 56e Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. During her campaign, she promised tax cuts to stimulate economic growth. This central promise in his program enabled him to win the votes of the members of the Conservative Party. However, it contrasts sharply with the policy of his predecessor, Boris Johnson, who had focused on increasing public aid to disadvantaged regions of the country.
So Liz Truss’ strategy is not without risk. It could, in particular, repel voters who position themselves on the right culturally, but on the left economically. However, it is in particular thanks to them that the tories won a majority of eighty seats in the House of Commons in the legislative elections of 2019.
Traditionally, British elections are decided on economic issues; the electorate on the left votes for the Labor Party and that on the right for the Conservative Party. But Brexit and its promise to “take back control” of the country’s borders and laws have largely appealed to Britons, who are culturally on the right. Among them, many defend left-wing economic values and usually vote Labour.
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After Brexit, pundits spoke of a realignment of British politics: instead of clashing over economic issues, the two major parties now did so over cultural values. The Labor Party has become the party of the cosmopolitan and progressive city dwellers, the Conservative Party that of the inhabitants of small towns and rural areas, also more patriotic.
In 2014 again, a Briton who defended right-wing economic positions was three times more likely to support the Conservative Party than a Briton who had right-wing cultural positions. Then, with Brexit in 2019, the trend reversed: right-wing cultural values became more strongly predictive of the Conservative vote than right-wing economic values.
Although Boris Johnson has delivered on his promise to get Brexit done, his record is disappointing. Per capita income growth is less than half the average growth in the European Union (EU) and business investment has fallen. The evolution of migration policy has had little, if any, effect on the labor shortage, which is weakening several sectors, such as health. It is also significant that two of Brexit’s most famous successes are purely symbolic: the reintroduction of blue British passports and the removal of metric measurements on pints of beer.
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