Whatever happened to the British Conservative Party at the general election at the start of this month?

Its members have been left, in the words of the BBC's chief political correspondent, “dazed and confused, even grief-stricken”.

As Rishi Sunak said in the moments before he visited Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation, the UK public had clearly demonstrated their anger and disappointment at his government.

Some Tories – such as the former immigration minister (and anti-immigration enthusiast) Robert Jenrick – said it was because they hadn’t delivered on their more extreme promises, such as the madcap plan to deport asylum-seekers to central Africa, an initiative which had immediately been junked by the incoming Labour government, the moment that they swept into power with their massive landslide.

Others, such as the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman (so bad they fired her twice), felt it was because the Conservatives simply hadn’t been insanely right-wing enough, and had therefore lost votes to the properly unhinged extremes of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

That was certainly the argument of the shortest-serving premier in British history, who spectacularly lost her parliamentary seat this month when she faced the judgment of an electorate unlikely ever to forgive her disastrous gamble with the UK’s economy.

It was a sentiment which has also repeatedly been raised by that Victorian vampire, aristocratic stick insect and arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg – who was similarly booted out of parliament in early July by the good people of his constituency.

His party’s shift to the right since Brexit doesn’t currently appear to have helped their long-term electoral prospects any more than their sleazy conduct or their economic incompetence.

Yet the verdicts of voters on Ms. Truss and Mr. Rees-Mogg seem to have left them and their supporters unmoved – and unable to countenance the possibility that the nation didn’t appreciate the massive damage their dogmatic interventions have caused.

In fact, it's now possible to travel the entire length of mainland Britain only passing through one Conservative seat. This autumn, there’ll be only one club in the entire English football league still based in a constituency held by the Tories. Labour won 412 seats in parliament. The Conservatives took just 121.

So, is this the end of the British Conservative Party?

Perhaps not. It should be noted that Labour only earned 33.7 per cent of the popular vote. The Conservatives took 23.7 per cent and Reform UK 14.3 per cent. With the Liberal Democrats on 12.2 per cent and the Greens on 6.7 per cent, a system of proportional representation would doubtless still have launched Keir Starmer into Downing Street, leading a progressive coalition government, but one which would have had to suffer those right-wing parties constantly snapping at its heels.

There are those on the right of the Conservative Party already calling for a deal to be done to join forces with Nigel Farage and his four-and-a-bit other Reform MPs. Some Conservatives would even like Mr. Farage to take over as their new leader.

But there are other Tories who believe that those parties which prove themselves able to form governments in the UK are almost always those which have occupied the center ground of politics – and who suspect that Mr. Farage’s claim to be the rightful heir to the “right of center” is rather like Reykjavik purporting to be only very slightly to the north of Rio.

Related News

News from Nowhere: 'Seeing Red'

News from Nowhere: And the loser Is…

Indeed, there are those on the moderate wing of the Conservatives who might feel more ideologically aligned with Keir Starmer’s centrist Labour Party than with those they view as nasty Nigel’s crew – his cadre of gammon-faced likely lads posing for the cameras down their local pubs, mouthing off about migrants, the purveyors of nostalgic fantasies which remorselessly invoke an imagined history of national glory, all garnished with lashings of real ale and lardy chips.

Those Tories would certainly dread the idea of consigning the country’s future to such a bunch of viciously capricious old white men, a club of crusty curmudgeons with nothing to look forward to but the past.

They see in Nigel Farage the UK’s version of his friend and ally Donald Trump, an apparently duplicitous populist with no discernible moral compass beyond his own hate-fueled ego, an unscrupulously manipulative narcissist and a political sociopath who would transform their movement into his own image, a tool for his own personal crusade of rabid self-aggrandizement.

Former Home Secretary James Cleverly has appealed to his colleagues to promote a “broad church” of Conservatism to attract voters on either side of the political spectrum. But such voices within his party, if not exactly lonely, are rarely as loud as those of its extremists and ideologues.

We might however suppose that Mr. Cleverly’s rivals on the right of his party may see in Mr. Farage pretty much the same thing as the moderates do – an embodiment of uncompromising demagoguery – but that’s something they think they could come to like and might want one day to be able to emulate.

Mr. Cleverly’s allies meanwhile point out that the Tories lost votes not only to Reform UK but also to the Liberal Democrats and even to Labour. Yet there are many within their ranks who are seeking to exploit their defeat as an excuse to lurch their party even further to the right.

The struggle for the soul of the Conservative Party will be fought over the coming months, and it will most probably be a ruthless and bitter one. Both sides sincerely believe it will be a battle for its survival, and they look like they’re willing to fight to the death for it.

But the recent attempt to assassinate Donald Trump has reminded us all how dangerous such zealotry can be – and how fragile is the veneer of peace enjoyed by western democracies.

Two British politicians have tragically been assassinated in the last few years. We should be thankful that the violence provoked by the UK’s last general election was for the most part milkshake-based – and we should remain mindful of the ways in which aggressive rhetoric can quickly spin into real-world atrocities.

Joe Biden was last week forced to admit that it had been wrong for him to suggest, just days before the lethal shooting at his rival's rally, that it was time for the Democrats to target Mr. Trump as the “bullseye” for campaign attacks.

Mr. Biden hadn’t of course intended to incite murderous violence, but one may recall in this context the dire consequences of Donald Trump’s own rabble-rousing words in January 2021, words which provoked his supporters’ assault upon the heart of American democracy, Washington’s Capitol.

The need to embrace diverse perspectives and to promote constructive dialogues has perhaps never seemed more urgent.

Two months ago, three of the leaders of the UK’s four nations were people of color. Today, all three have gone.

They each represented different political parties and departed for very different reasons, reasons unrelated to their ethnicities.

Yet, their loss may – symbolically at least – warn of the dangers or a return to the kind of ethnic majority politics apparently favored some of the radical Right’s more vocal supporters.

For those in the United States reeling from the shock of recent events, and for British Conservatives traumatized by the scale of their electoral defeat, it would be useful to recall the value of diversity, tolerance, civil debate, mutual respect and ideological compromise, as they consider sets of choices whose impacts may eventually prove to be monumental or catastrophic.