What Kevin McCarthy and Rishi Sunak have in common: unruly partying

On Wednesday evening, a hardline Conservative minister, Robert Jenrick, resigned from the British government to protest the new immigration policy. Hours later, in Washington, Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who was ousted as speaker of the House of Representatives by his right-wing colleagues in October, announced that he would resign from Congress.

A pair of bitter political exits, on either side of the Atlantic, that once again highlighted how Britain and the United States have been lashed together in the populist storms unleashed by Brexit and Donald J. Trump. The two major right-wing parties, the Conservatives and the Republicans, have become almost mirror images: deeply divided, radicalized and virtually unmanageable for their controversial leaders.

There are differences, of course: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak remains in power as Tory leader, partly because lawmakers can’t stomach the idea of ​​throwing out another prime minister after Liz Truss and Boris Johnson.

Republicans, on the other hand, appear firmly in the thrall of Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican Party nomination, who many in the party believe is the best choice to retake the White House next year. And the vitriolic nature of the debate on Capitol Hill continues to make proceedings in the House look relatively civil.

At times, however, Mr Sunak resembles no one so much as Mr McCarthy during his fateful nine months as speaker, struggling to rally the moderate and far-right factions of his party as it faces the looming election.

The revised asylum bill that Mr Sunak introduced on Wednesday – which would overrule Britain’s Supreme Court and ignore a number of human rights laws to put asylum seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda – managed to disappoint both the party’s rule of law centrists and its political parties. go-for-broke right winger.

Mr. McCarthy has never been able to close the loop on Republicans in the House of Representatives on controversial issues such as preventing a government shutdown. He was replaced as speaker by an even more conservative figure, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, before announcing Wednesday that he would leave Congress a year before the end of his term.

The similarities between the Tories and the Republican Party have struck political analysts in Britain, who have been alert to these parallels since 2016, when the shock vote to leave the European Union foreshadowed Mr. Trump’s election that fall . In his gleeful disregard for rules and norms, Mr. Trump was often compared to Mr. Johnson, under whom the Rwandan asylum policy was devised.

“We are confronted with the fact that this party may have left its position as a center-right party and become a party of populist radical right,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “Just like, if you look at the US, the Republican Party can’t really claim to be a mainstream conservative party anymore.”

“The Conservative Party in Britain,” said Professor Bale, “is in danger of heading in the same direction.”

While Brexit is in the rear-view mirror, the issues that electrified that debate – immigration and British sovereignty – continue to resonate. Just as Mr Trump has used fears of migrants crossing the southern US border to mobilize his base, Mr Sunak has made stopping the flow of small boats across the English Channel an article of faith among Conservative voters, especially in the north of England and the Midlands.

Immigration is the No. 1 issue among Republican voters according to some polls, which was evident in Senate Republicans’ unanimous vote Wednesday to reject a bill that included aid to Ukraine and Israel unless President Biden agreed to negotiate provisions to tighten borders. security.

“There is some similarity between images of our border and that of Calais that hardens voter sentiment,” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist and former aide to Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the former House majority leader. who was deposed by a ruling party in 2014. far-right challenger.

In Britain, Conservatives fear they will be outflanked on their right by Reform UK, a fringe party and successor to the Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage, which made immigration an emotional issue in the years before the referendum on leaving the European Union. These days, Mr Farage likes to post pictures of people landing on the beaches of Kent in inflatable dinghies.

Conservatives are also using immigration to create sharp differences with the opposition Labor party, which has a double-digit lead in the polls. But analysts say Mr Sunak’s attempts to exploit border security during the general election, which he is due to call in January 2025, have backfired as a faction of his party is now framing the issue ideologically, rather than pragmatically. terms seems to look at.

“Every Conservative leader since David Cameron has discovered the same thing,” Professor Bale said, referring to the former prime minister and current foreign secretary, who resigned after the British electorate voted for Brexit, a policy he had campaigned against. “They believe they can use this issue as a way to create divisions with Labor, but ultimately they are turning the gun on themselves.”

For Mr Sunak, that journey was particularly abrupt. After his government’s Rwanda plan was rejected by the High Court as breaching British and international law, Mr Sunak vowed to review it. The new legislation declares Rwanda a “safe country” for asylum seekers, contradicting the court and evidence it received from the United Nations refugee agency, and stipulates that no court has the power to block transfers.

“This is a very extreme act,” said Jonathan Sumption, a historian and former Supreme Court judge. “It effectively sidelines the courts, with very limited exceptions. I didn’t expect them to go this far.”

And yet it did not go far enough for Mr Jenrick, the immigration minister who resigned. He had insisted that Britain would be willing to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, which the country helped draw up in the aftermath of the Second World War. Centrist lawmakers fear Britain’s policy would make a mockery.

The legislation will be voted on on Tuesday, and if Mr Sunak loses the support of 29 Tory rebels he could face not only a sharp rejection of a flagship policy but also a crippling blow to his authority.

On Thursday, Mr Sunak said of his critics: “The difference between them and me is just an inch,” calling the upcoming vote an opportunity for “Parliament to demonstrate that it is fueling the frustration of the British people.”

The disarray within the Conservative Party has even revived rumors of a challenge to Mr Sunak’s leadership similar to that faced by McCarthy.

After changing leaders twice last year and four times since 2016, the Tories have proven ruthless in getting rid of prime ministers who appear destined to lead them to electoral defeat. But if this were to happen again it would seriously test the patience of the British public and fuel calls for a snap general election.

The fact that there is even talk of a challenge reflects the pervasive gloom in Tory ranks after a year in which Mr Sunak has made a series of policy and personnel changes, none of which have improved his party’s poor polling.

“Voters in Britain are more civil and respectful of people they disagree with, but the same ideological divide and political poison within and among the electorate is visible on both sides of the Atlantic,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who has studied the political situation. British political system.