‘Britain Must Never Become A Multicultural Country’: Tory Collapse Offers Chilling Warning For American Politics

The Conservative Party conference in Manchester this week showed a political party in serious trouble. The Tories are struggling to compete with the growing wave of right-wing populism that has changed British politics. The party ran Britain for 14 years until their big loss last year. Now they are falling to fourth place in some polls as Nigel Farage’s Reform party wins over voters who are fed up with traditional politics.

According to Politico, the conference felt stuck in the past. Pictures and even cardboard cutouts of Margaret Thatcher filled the venue beneath Manchester’s old train station. But behind this love for the old days, the party is trying hard to match the tough talk on immigration. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch criticized identity politics from both the left and right. “I am more than Black, female, and even Conservative,” she told the mostly white audience. 

“I am British, conference, I am British, as we all are.” But she quickly moved to harder ground, saying that “Britain is a multiracial country” but “it must never become a multicultural country where shared values dissolve, loyalty fragments and we foment the home-grown terrorism we saw on the streets of Manchester this week.”

Conservatives Caught Between Two Bad Choices

The Conservatives are trapped in Britain’s multi-party system. As they move right to compete with Reform on immigration, they lose moderate voters to the centrist Liberal Democrats. They want to copy ICE-style deportation and remove 150,000 migrants every year. This helps explain why the party that ran the country for over a decade now struggles to even get third place.

Former minister Michael Gove said he hopes Farage does not have “the team or the ability necessary given the scale of the challenge” of actually running a government. Jillian Mortimer, who lost her seat when the Tories got crushed, said Reform’s mix of left-wing economic ideas and far-right immigration views would fall apart.

But these hopeful words sound empty to anyone who has watched American politics for the past ten years. The similarities between Reform’s rise and Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party are clear. This offers a warning to both American parties. 

Shadow minister James Cleverly pointed out that across Western countries there is “this real desire for simple answers to complicated questions.” The traditional parties ask how populists will actually do what they promise. The answer, he said, is “by wanting it harder. But wanting it harder, mate, is not a policy.”

The lesson for America is clear. Traditional parties ignore what voters care about on identity and immigration at their own risk. But giving in to extreme views may be just as dangerous. Even as Pope Leo XIV challenges U.S. Catholics to be more forceful in defending immigrant rights, the political mood across Western countries keeps moving right on migration issues.