How To Destroy A Political Party (In 3 Easy Steps!)

Have you ever wanted to destroy a political party?  If so, you might anticipate an arduous journey, but fear not: toppling a national political party can be accomplished in three easy steps. To prove my case, let’s examine the fall of the British Conservative (Tory) Party, which was obliterated in the 2024 U.K. general election. The election ended 14 years of consecutive rule for the Tories in both 10 Downing Street and the House of Commons, where the Labor Party won 410 seats to the Tories’ 118. We base our three-step plan off of what went wrong: 

Now, it’s time to revisit the past. Specifically, 2010: when David Cameron moved into 10 Downing Street as the U.K.’s 53rd Prime Minister (PM). 

Hopes were high for Cameron when he took office. He was incredibly charismatic –so much so that he was widely compared to former PM Tony Blair—and quickly gained attraction as a leader for a new generation of Tories. However, his critics soon called for more decisive action on issues such as over-immigration and economic troubles, tainting his image as the golden child of the Tories. Things only became worse in 2014, when the relatively obscure U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) made history during the national election, threatening the Tories’ position of power. Cameron’s solution to silence his critics marked his legacy as a PM for the worse. So now we come to Step One, Cameron’s choice to hold an entirely unnecessary vote on the U.K.’s European Union (EU) membership, hoping to cater to his critics’ interests with a proposal that, he assumed, would fail to be passed. 

Yet Cameron miscalculated badly. On June 23, 2016, the referendum was held, with 48.1 percent of Britons voting to remain and 51.9 percent of the electorate voting to leave. 

The Tories had only themselves to blame— a doomed combination of inter-party division and the extremity of the referendum itself created a nightmare. As high-profile Tory leaders began to join the “leave” camp, Cameron’s anti-Brexit messaging became futile. Infamously, Boris Johnson’s economic advisor, the then-mayor of London, launched a pro-Brexit campaign advertising lower food prices. After resigning as PM, Cameron ironically became the “man who brought Brexit” despite his anti-Brexit views. His mistake was giving the Britons an ultimatum: they could either remain in the EU or leave completely. Instead,  he could’ve taken inspiration from Switzerland, whose ever-continuous loyalty to neutrality keeps it out of the EU while enjoying the economic benefits of a member-state due to its position in the EU’s single market. The results of Cameron’s ultimatum forced harsh Brexit conditions that were difficult to implement. 

Now we come to Step Two of our plan: leave the EU while causing the most harm possible to your citizens. The next Prime Minister Theresa May, quickly became overwhelmed by her duty to remove the British Isles from the EU. Over and over, May failed to win parliamentary support for Brexit legislation,  chiefly due to her own stubborn nature: hellbent on sticking to the removal terms she outlined in her first speech as Prime Minister, May refused to compromise, cementing her own political demise. After two years of fruitless negotiations ending in May’s resignation, the Tories began to lose serious credibility in the eyes of Britons, reduced to a laughingstock of politicians who were effectively bullied into calling a referendum that could not even be implemented. 

While May’s successor Boris Johnson was finally able to “get Brexit done” through dividing the UK itself by creating a customs zone that excluded Northern Ireland, it soon became apparent that the British exit from the EU was nothing but a messy, impractical mistake. While Brexit’s advocates claimed it would solve immigration issues and help the economy, both problems soon worsened. Immigration levels soared, and the economy soon became a nightmarish issue for the Party, with Goldman Sachs reporting that following Brexit, the U.K. economy shrunk 5 percent more than many other financially comparable countries, such as the U.S. and France.

 It’s no wonder that now nearly 60 percent of Britons regret leaving the EU; yet the fall of the Tories cannot be purely associated with its mistake of allowing Britain to leave the EU as well as its failure to help the U.K. transition smoothly from Brexit. 

That brings us to Step 3: allow only the most out-of-touch fraction of the country to elect incompetent leaders. Returning to Johnson, a series of scandals soon plagued his leadership: he was fined for breaking Covid-era lockdown rules (which became known as “Partygate”), accounts of one of his ministers committing sexual assault, the list went on and on, and eventually Johnson too found himself forced to resign. Yet somehow, after Johnson left 10 Downing Street, his successor Liz Truss managed to be even more incompetent. 

Truss, who is best remembered for being outlasted by a head of lettuce, took office on September 5 and resigned just 45 days later. Her attempts to lower taxes to spur economic growth caused turmoil in economic markets, and her approval ratings became the lowest in decades. Truss was then succeeded by Rishi Sunak, whose name brings forth images of comically delivering speeches in the pouring rain and attempting to relate to the lower classes through citing growing up without Sky TV as a source of extreme hardship. Ironically, the source of this string of completely unfit leaders—May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak—was of the Tories’ own doing. Specifically, the Party’s flawed leader nomination process, where 100 nominations from Tory MPs are required for candidate eligibility, and then the two finalists are put to a vote by the party membership, ensures that only a small, elite fraction of Tory supporters have a say in who will lead the Party. 

 While the devastation that Brexit caused the Party is irreversible, Tories must remember that it can fix other sources of weakness: such as moving to amend its leader nomination process so that all members of the Party—not just a handful of elites—have a say in who will lead the Party next.