Rishi Sunak, UK prime minister, greets Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa's president, during his state visit to 10 Downing Street in London, UK, on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2022. Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In most ways, the UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa couldn’t be more different.
While Sunak’s rise up the ranks of the Conservative Party was a swift one — the fastest in modern history — Ramaphosa bided his time. There is also a large generational gap between the leaders.
But the two men do have some things in common.
Both represent a sort of unattainable wealth, which ought to be far more politically damaging than it actually has been. They also both lead political parties that look to suffer election losses as voters punish them for presiding over economies in decline.
A truly devastating Conservative Party defeat might be more of a foregone conclusion than an ANC knockout. And so South Africa’s governing party probably still has the benefit of learning from the Tories what not to do if it wants to hold on to its last bit of power.
According to the Financial Times’s UK poll tracker, if the country’s general election had been held on 10 May 2024, the Conservative Party would have won only 23.5% of the vote. This would be a sharp decline from the 43.6% the party managed to muster in 2019.
Some might attribute the Conservative Party’s fall from grace to the effects of Boris Johnson’s short, but damaging, time in power and the internal ructions he inspired. But it is more likely that the outcome of the upcoming elections will be the culmination of something a lot more structural.
In 2022, Phil Burton-Cartledge — the author of Falling Down: The Conservative Party and the Decline of Tory Britain — had this to say about the UK’s prime minister: “He has a reputation for being smooth and relatively charismatic, but he is politically flat footed and his rise to the top quite sudden. If a master of bullshit and skulduggery like Johnson could not bring the Tory party to heel, the chances of Sunak doing so must range from slim to nonexistent.”
But what has precipitated the decline of a party considered the most successful in the history of Western democracy — and why can’t Sunak stop it?
Burton-Cartledge links Tory failures to the fact that fewer people are benefiting from the party’s policies, as well as its growing reliance on the fears of older voters for support.
In an earlier article for Jacobin, titled The Tories Are Literally Dying Off, he wrote that relying on older voters is a good enough strategy, provided that the party has created a like-minded cohort of younger old people.
“The problem for the Tories is that in Britain, the conservatising effects of old age are breaking down,” Burton-Cartledge adds.
He goes on to note that, under Margaret Thatcher, home ownership became a central philosophy of the Conservative Party government.
During Thatcher’s time as prime minister from 1979 to 1990, home ownership grew from 55% to 67% of the population, thanks to the so-called “right to buy” scheme, which allowed social housing tenants to purchase those properties at a discount.
But the properties lost through this scheme were never replaced and, instead, government investment in social housing was consistently slashed, contributing to the UK’s housing crisis.
According to a 2023 analysis by asset manager Schroders, UK house prices have risen from about four times average earnings in the mid-1990s to more than eight times in the 2020s, locking first-time buyers out of the market.
In a much more recent article, published last week, European studies lecturer Alexander Clarkson writes that with the dogged implementation of Thatcherist policies — which have shrunk the state and unleashed markets — the Tories have created profound economic instability. Clarkson accuses the party of “a dogmatic unwillingness to adapt its methods of governance to a changing world”.
In the lead-up to South Africa’s general elections later this month, the ANC has, rather predictably, relied on celebrating its early wins, while brushing over its less-than-stellar overall track record.
This comes as older voters, who are seemingly more loyal to the ANC, are replaced by a younger crowd for whom these victories are dwarfed by what feels like an insurmountable economic crisis.
Thirty years into democracy, members of this latter cohort — even if they have managed to make it into the middle class — will struggle to start a new business, buy a home or save for their retirement. And now, if they want it, they can find a political home in the Economic Freedom Fighters or newcomer Rise Mzansi.
All the while the government has doubled down on policies that erode the state and buoy private capital, despite their consequences for socio-economic stability — which the Thatcherist Growth, Employment and Redistribution plan was supposed to deliver.
If, as some assume, the ANC will continue to lead in a coalition government, the party will have to do everything it can to avoid a deeper loss in 2029. Because, if the ANC does end up losing its majority, it might never regain its political foothold.