Rollercoaster of dismal Conservative rule drags UK through a grumpy goodbye

Once the natural party of government and promoter of effective leaders on the world stage, it is now in lockstep to defeat

David Cameron, the new Prime Minister, and his wife Samantha enter No 10 Downing Street after his meeting with Queen Elizabeth II in May 2010. All photos: Getty Images unless otherwise stated

Theresa May speaks outside No 10 in July 2016 after assuming office as Prime Minister

New PM Boris Johnson is welcomed by staff at Downing Street on July 24, 2019

Liz Truss poses with her husband Hugh O'Leary at Downing Street on September 6, 2022 after becoming Prime Minister

Rishi Sunak speaks at Downing after taking office on October 25, 2022

Mr Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats hold their first joint press conference in the Downing Street garden in May 2010. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats agreed to lead the country in a coalition government

Barack Obama and Mr Cameron play table tennis at the Globe Academy in south London during the US President's state visit to Britain in May 2011

Mr Cameron talks to British soldiers during a visit to the Camp Price forward operating base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in December 2012

Mr Cameron attends a meeting of G7 leaders in March 2014 in The Hague, Netherlands

Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani and Mr Cameron speak to the media during the London Conference on Afghanistan in December 2014

Mr Cameron and his wife Samantha are applauded by staff upon entering 10 Downing Street as he begins his second term as Prime Minister in May 2015

Mr Cameron travels on his campaign bus on the final day of campaigning in June 2016 as the country prepares to go to the polls to decide whether Britain should remain or leave the European Union

Mr Cameron resigns on the steps of 10 Downing Street on June 24, 2016, after the UK voted to leave the European Union in the national referendum

Queen Elizabeth welcomes Ms May to an audience where she invited the former home secretary to become Prime Minister and form a new government in July 2016

Ms May signs the official letter to European Council President Donald Tusk invoking Article 50 and the United Kingdom's intention to leave the EU, in March 2017

Ms May delivers a speech during an election campaign visit to Stoke-on-Trent in June 2017, before Britain went to the polls to vote in a general election

Ms May delivers a statement at Downing Street in November 2018, after the cabinet approved the wording of the draft Brexit agreement for UK withdrawal from the European Union on March 29, 2019

Ms May announces that she will resign as Prime Minister on June 7, 2019

Mr Johnson waves from the door of 10 Downing Street on July 24, 2019

Mr Johnson poses for a photo wearing boxing gloves emblazoned with 'Get Brexit Done' during a stop in his general election campaign trail in November 2019

Pro Brexit supporters celebrate at Parliament Square as the United Kingdom exits the EU on January 31, 2020

Mr Johnson speaks during a news conference on the Covid-19 pandemic in December 2020

Chief Advisor to Mr Johnson, Dominic Cummings, makes a statement at 10 Downing Street in May 2020 after travelling to Durham during the coronavirus lockdown

A handout photo released as the Sue Gray Report into lockdown parties in Downing Street was published, shows Mr Johnson at a gathering there in November 2020

Mr Johnson poses in a group photo during the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, in June 2021

British armed forces work with the US military to evacuate eligible civilians and their families out of Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2021, after the Taliban took control of the country

Russian military vehicles crossing a Crimea border checkpoint into Ukraine in February 2022 as the Russian invasion of Ukraine begins. AFP

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Mr Johnson look at a plaque dedicated to Johnson in Kyiv in August 2022

A man stands on the steps of the grounded Rwanda deportation flight EC-LZO Boeing 767 at Boscombe Down Air Base, in June 2022. The flight taking asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda was grounded at the last minute after the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights

Mr Johnson addresses the nation as he announces his resignation outside 10 Downing Street in July 2022

Mr Sunak and Ms Truss take part in a leadership debate in Stoke-on-Trent in July 2022

Queen Elizabeth greets the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party Ms Truss at Balmoral Castle for an audience where she was invited to become Prime Minister in September 2022

Ms Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng visit Northfleet in September 2022, as the Chancellor released his 'mini-budget' that included tax cuts and sent sterling to a 37-year low

Ms Truss delivers her resignation speech at Downing Street in October 2022, after just 44 days in office

New Conservative Party leader and incoming Prime Minister Mr Sunak is greeted by colleagues at party headquarters in London in October 2022

Mr Sunak on board Border Agency cutter HMC Seeker during a visit to Dover in June 2023, as he gave an update six months after he introduced the Illegal Migration Bill under his plans to "stop the boats" crossing the English Channel

Mr Sunak makes a statement in the pouring rain, as he called a general election, in May this year

If Alan Duncan were an archetypal Conservative when the party came to power in 2010, what he and the Tory manifesto embodied was a “one world Conservatism”.

It was a credo forged despite an era of austerity and a pillar of it was the two pages devoted to foreign aid, promising to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on overseas development, alongside reformist leader David Cameron's trip to the Arctic to acknowledge climate change and a modernised crime policy with the tagline "hug a hoodie".

The point the final nail was driven into the modernisers' coffin was probably when Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak as his chancellor dropped the aid commitment, enshrined by then in law, in 2021 due to what Mr Johnson called the “economic hurricane” of Covid-19. Three years later the party goes into election week lagging in the polls by more than 20 percentage points.

A former International Development and Foreign Office minister, Mr Duncan sees a UK that has forfeited British leadership in the world – although the UK’s support for Ukraine is sometimes held up as a counter-example.

The turning point was the Brexit vote in 2016, after which the Cameron government stood down and Theresa May took over. Weeks later Mr Duncan gave a speech in the US saying Britain would remain a respected and “outward-facing” diplomatic power, but he now admits that prediction was wrong.

“We were doing a lot, which was interesting, when we had a big budget for international development,” the former minister said, giving aid for Yemen as an example.

But Brexit has “made us look insular” and the development budget has been cut “in a very underhand manner”, he said.

Labour says it will try to “make Brexit work” with new UK-EU agreements on security, trade and jobs, while the Tories promise to “seize the benefits” with new trade deals and deregulation.

Both major parties say they will restore the 0.7 per cent aid target only when fiscal conditions allow, with the Conservative manifesto promising that every penny will be subject to a “strict national interest test”.

“They’ve always uttered the words, but never turned it into action, and in the latest manifesto there are hardly even any words,” Mr Duncan said.

World of wars

Mr Duncan is less critical of some of the Cameron government’s policies, including the often-criticised Nato intervention in Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya in 2011. It was launched at a time when a “disgusting massacre” was feared in the rebel-held city of Misurata – and “frankly, Qaddafi was going to collapse anyway”.

The decisions around engagement with Iran was a sensible approach compared to the “megaphone criticism” that was the only available alternative. Mr Cameron was in power when Tehran signed a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015.

However, Mr Duncan – who had a spell as a special envoy to Oman and Yemen – believes Britain could have been more effective where it had influence. It could have done more to prevent Yemen’s slide into war and famine after the fall of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Concerns over Britain’s ledger for its performance in foreign affairs over the past 14 years of Conservative government mostly centre on fears there is more red than the black.

The recent positives have been its unrelenting support for Ukraine providing the leadership that gave the country resilience to prevent Russia conquering the entire country. Enduring factors have centred on Britain’s status as a nuclear power and permanent member of the UN Security Council. London has considerable diplomatic prowess in hosting Nato summits, G7 (and indeed the last G8 summit in 2013 before Russia’s expulsion) and the Cop 26 climate summit.

“We've been pretty consistent in playing a role on the stage despite all the tribulations of Brexit,” said Tobias Ellwood, another former minister who is standing for re-election.

These successes are blighted, in the eyes of many in the Global South, by the Tories’ strong support for Israel, while Gaza has been laid waste. Now back in politics as Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron has rebuffed calls to stop arms sales to Israel, even as human rights concerns bombard the party.

In Africa, the Sahel region has now been largely ignored, and Britain’s Afghanistan debacle now appears buried in a bin of unwanted memories.

Britain shared America’s loss of credibility when it too was forced to evacuate from Kabul after two decades, billions of dollars spent and hundreds of lives lost.

“We lost in Afghanistan but there remains a condition of acute denial in the British establishment and the idea of proper public inquiry has been given a stiff ignoring,” said Brig Ben Barry, of the IISS think tank.

David Jones, who has just retired as a Tory MP, said everyone recognised the Afghan failure and there were “huge lessons that are still to be learnt” in government.

Syria, Iraq and Iran have, to a large extent, been less than successful for Britain, especially with Tehran’s increased influence and the failure to curb its nuclear ambitions.

Furthermore, London’s inability to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terror group was “inexplicable” as Tehran’s conduct “is so egregiously bad”, said Mr Jones.

“I very much hope that the next government puts that right and does something to respond to Iranian aggression,” he added.

Less than a year after the Afghan evacuation, the UK's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine was quite different. It was to Boris Johnson’s “huge credit” that Britain was “first out of the traps” in getting significant military aid to Ukraine when Russia invaded, said Mr Jones, a former Welsh secretary.

“Stiffening the sinews of the international community in defence of Ukraine and in opposition to Russian adventurism was a huge achievement.”

That initial British military aid, mostly NLAW anti-tank weapons and air defence missiles, was crucial in the opening weeks in keeping the Russians out of Kyiv.

On the home front

The mood among British voters in the election has been mainly focused on the state of the country after 14 years of Conservative-led rule rather than the country's international impact. Here, too, things are in such a miserable state it has been observed the “Grumpy Party” should or would “romp home” in the UK general election.

Andrew Griffith, the country's science minister, conceded as much when he spoke during the campaign to his local Conservative constituents. The shadow of the year of the three prime ministers has haunted the UK election, the legacy of the torrid second half of 2022 when Mr Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak all occupied Downing St.

The former businessman representing Arundel and South Downs has such a comfortable majority of 22,000 that he should remain its MP.

Yet the anxiety and discomfort of loss was evident among the party stalwarts gathered on a summer’s evening in the well-heeled town of Steyning.

“I think you are all very brave,” the first questioner beamed. “But how are people reacting to you, a Conservative, on the doorstep?”

Dressed in a smart jacket and tie, albeit wearing a sturdy pair of new walking boots, Mr Griffith, 53, gave his response.

“The truth is that people are a bit grumpy and if there was the Grumpy Party standing at this election, or possibly the Grumpy and Potholes Party, they would probably romp home.”

A tyranny of potholes, largely caused by a year of record rainfall, have become a rumbling issue in the West Sussex and in fact most of Britain.

The words landed amid a few raised grey eyebrows. “They’re not grumpy per se with me,” Mr Griffith quickly went on. “Or with Rishi Sunak or the government, understandably we have been through a period of great adversity.”

The global Covid-19 pandemic had “left us with a very difficult set of economic decisions”, he said without mentioning the ethical ones his former boss, Mr Johnson, failed to abide, initiating the Tory electoral descent.

Into the void

As an MP who had tramped across many Sussex doorsteps, Mr Griffith was well polished in articulately addressing a range of questions. But perhaps not the complaint from a pensioner demanding “why aren’t there more people here?”

The gentleman had a point. Just 22 constituents, all of pensionable age, had gathered at the Steyning Centre, 24 if you counted the two affable security guards.

Given the at times apocalyptic view from his audience - and this before a weekend poll that the party could end up with a mere 72 MPs (from 345) and Labour with a massive 456 – it was not hard not see why.

“We are going to have a Labour government,” one constituent insisted. “Is there anything we can do to stop that being inevitable.”

Stiffening his back, Mr Griffith refused to accept that inevitability but the audience doubts kept coming.

“I’m properly worried about super majority,” another man stated. There was a “real danger of giving a party a very, very large majority,” Mr Griffith, a former TV executive, responded, if you believe the polls “which I don’t”. No one knew what Labour would do with such power, that would be “a huge blank cheque”.

Mr Griffith did at least have the opportunity to bat away the more parochial complaints in his 90-minute cross-examination. He tackled questions on hydrogen cars; Europe “swinging violently” right-wing; the Rwanda deportation system being “a novel solution” to the immigration problem; and Mr Sunak’s national service proposals for 18-year-olds “getting ridiculed”.

The latter, he argued, would build “pride and self-reliance” particularly among teenagers who could “learn what discipline is about … getting out of bed”.

Salvaging the ruins

The trailblazing UK role in Ukraine also opened the door for greater British co-operation with Europe following the bitter ructions of Brexit.

That will be an area that a future Labour government will capitalise on, especially with the looming possibility of another Donald Trump presidency, said Olivia O’Sullivan, world programme director at Chatham House think tank.

“The big difficult question for the next government will be formalising the current ad hoc security co-operation with Europe into a more structured security pact with the EU,” she added.

With Mr Trump likely to provide less military aid to Ukraine and be lukewarm in his support for Nato this would “counterbalance what might be a very unpredictable US”.

Brexit resilience

It's not all one way negativity. For good or ill, Brexit has had a major foreign affairs impact since the 2016 referendum, with some believing it “great” and many others disagreeing. Labour is not going to reverse the move, at least in this parliament, so what is left to build on?

A hard Brexiteer, Mr Jones contests that getting the legislation through parliament “showed the British political system in a very good light” in lawmaking that “would have defeated other countries”.

Others cite that Brexit has diminished the UK’s global standing. “Britain's reputation and influence in the world has if anything, diminished and furthermore our values and Britain's influence within the EU has gone,” said Brig Barry.

Mr Ellwood, a former foreign and defence minister, tries to look past Brexit where “we can establish what our role in the world is”.

Britain, he argued, “still retained a desire to move with the big hitters to shape international policy and remain strong with United States”.

Despite Britain’s domestic turbulence Mr Ellwood said its foreign policy had remained consistent and the country had “probably pushed the envelope as bad as much possible” with the increased 2.5 per cent of GDP spent on defence likely to become a Nato benchmark.

The coming argument will be how Britain views itself as a “power in the world” and the “big question” for the next government will be how to demonstrate this, Ms O’Sullivan said.

“But acting as a consistent, stable actor in the world in the international system is a bigger priority,” she added.