The British Conservative Party failed to win an outright majority in last week’s parliamentary election, leaving open the possibility that the ruling Labour Party will be able to cobble together a governing coalition.
Fred Barnes says in a new Washington Examiner op-ed that Republicans can learn some lessons from the failures of their counterparts across the pond:
First, they put too much faith in the staggering unpopularity of Labor, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. There seemed to be no bottom to his decline in support. And the party had been in power since 1997, when Tony Blair led what he called “New Labor” to a massive victory over the ruling Conservatives. In 2010, people had grown weary of Labor.
But simply being the opposition party, and nothing more, often minimizes the size of a party’s victory. It’s the easy we’re-not-them approach. Relying on it — and a bad economy, in the British case — a party is prone to neglect the importance of making a strong case for itself.
In the British election, this was one reason Labor was able to turn out its core vote and keep Conservatives from winning a majority. The lesson for Republican, facing an unpopular Democratic Party, is obvious: Don’t expect circumstances to win for you. You need to run an aggressive campaign.
Second, Conservatives took a softer tack as the election neared. They emphasized their vow to protect spending for the National Health Service. In the three presidential-style debates, Conservative leader David Cameron talked about serious “differences” between his party and Labor and the third-party Liberal Democrats, but the differences didn’t sound dramatic.
Third, Conservatives “failed to make a compelling case how to restore an environment of growth and opportunity capable of bringing Britain out of its profound economic doldrums,” wrote Ryan Streeter of the London-based Legatum Institute. That they were “vague on economic fundamentals is particularly astounding.”
