Embers of Populism Shrivel May's Lead as U.K. Vote Nears

(Bloomberg View) -- The U.K. election was supposed to be ho-hum. A popular prime minister at the head of a ruthless party machine was expected to crush an unloved and unelectable opposition leader.

But with one week remaining before the June 8 balloting, talk of a landslide is starting to recede. The pound tumbled to a five-week low on Wednesday after YouGov projected (using controversial methodology) that Prime Minister Theresa May could actually lose her Conservative Party parliamentary majority. A poll commissioned by The Times found the Conservative lead is now within the margin of error. A song about her called “Liar Liar GE2017” (for general election) is number two on the iTunes U.K. download chart this week, just after a Justin Bieber track.

It may still be a stretch to say that Britain is getting ready to defeat May, the reluctant Brexiteer. But her troubles speak both about the weakness of her leadership and more broadly about what happens when a populist revolution doesn't result in tangible policy change.

Brexit

Whatever the polls say, it's foolish to underestimate the Tories. In local elections in May, the Conservatives gained over 550 seats, a resounding victory; it's hard to imagine that level of support just evaporating. The party has one of the most effective election machines anywhere. As Labour MP Dan Jarvis put it after the 2015 election, “It was a ruthless Tory machine that outfought us, outgamed us, outplayed us, outspent us at the general election.”

Even so, the Conservative's 20-point lead in earlier polls this year was probably unsustainable. British voters want a contest. They like longshots, much as Wimbledon tennis crowds will back an underdog against a big name if there's a chance of a third set (or a fifth, for the men). Theresa May's failure to show up for last night's debate smacked of a refusal to fight her corner.

But none of that can quite account for the dramatic change in recent polls. Those suggest that something bigger is happening here. The first rebellion against an established order is the most difficult; but after that each successive rebellion becomes easier to bring about. Political change that's not followed by new policies will be punished.

Wobbles dented May's carefully crafted (and now often mocked) image as the “strong and stable” leader. One was a budgetary U-turn that involved a broken pledge not to raise taxes; another came over May's proposal in the Conservative “manifesto” to shift costs of social care onto taxpayers; a third was her retreat from a pledge not to hold another election before this parliamentary term.

Even more damaging than the policy flip-flops was May's stubborn insistence in a television interview that “nothing has changed.” Taken together, May began to look a little less like a principled decision-maker and a bit more like the kind of finger-to-the-wind politician her party has produced for decades. For voters who wanted change, this is starting to look too familiar.

Her Labour Party opponent, Jeremy Corbyn, has committed more than his own share of howlers, but Labour has played a bad hand decently. It accepted the vote last June to leave the European Union and simply promised to push for a softer exit. It rolled out a typically left-wing manifesto, but with more attempt at balance and cost-accounting than in the past. Labour has focused on local issues and those close to voters; local Labour volunteers in my district hardly mention the unpopular Corbyn at all. And at a time when smaller parties such as the U.K. Independence Party have lost support, the Labour Party, divided and hapless with an eccentric leader, has become a convenient receptacle for protest votes.

May's big mistake was not realizing that while the mood of protest that produced Brexit lingers, its target has changed. Once a Remainer in David Cameron's cabinet, May has lost sight of the fact that people have moved on already. She called this the Brexit election and claimed that a big victory would give her a mandate to negotiate more successfully with the EU.

But while there will be battles over the Brexit terms, for most people those matters amount to technocratic details. More politically compelling are jobs, healthcare, education and security, issues people deal with daily.

When she called the election, May suggested disingenuously that a clear mandate would “remove the risk of uncertainty and instability.” That was unwise, if not ridiculous. Uncertainty about how well the U.K. will handle its exit from Europe is going to be here for a while. It's visible in the depreciated pound, rising food prices, a softening housing market and creeping corporate job moves. May has no choice but to focus a huge part of the government's resources and energies on the Brexit negotiations. Whatever she does, she can't make a success of Brexit overnight. She's tied to a long and arduous timetable and, as she keeps repeating, there may not be a deal at the end of it.

The challenge for May -- assuming she still wins -- is to figure out how to stop talking only about the Brexit negotiations, an obsession for the political class that is boring the rest of the nation, and start delivering policies that people feel will make a difference in their lives. The danger is that May doesn't have a plan.

Writing in Prospect magazine, the journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft recounted the Tories' long history of adaptability and electoral triumph but said that the problem for May is that it's no longer clear what the Conservatives stand for:

The truth is that the Tories enjoy their present success not because of their merits, or even their traditional ability to change course, but by default: there is no credible opposition, and no one is offering an alternative that appeals to a cynical, disillusioned electorate. It's not so much that today's Tories are an empty vessel into which anything can be poured -- that was New Labour. They are themselves filling a vacuum.

May's honeymoon, which arrived before she was even elected, is certainly over, even if the marriage is not.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Therese Raphael writes editorials on European politics and economics for Bloomberg View. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.

To contact the author of this story: Therese Raphael at traphael4@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.net.

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