Unite the Right? Look how that worked out for the Republicans

IF the polls are right, the Conservatives are heading for a historic drubbing.

- Sarah Baxter

The in-fighting has already begun over who should lead the rump of the party. Nigel Farage has spied an opportunity to "unite the Right" by merging his own Reform party with the Tories and becoming leader. Plenty of Tory bigwigs are also interested in an alliance, but with Farage inside the tent as carnival barker rather than lead player.

A word of warning. This has not worked out well in the United States for the old guard of the Republican party. The novelist Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises about going bankrupt "gradually and then suddenly. Donald Trump has had a similar impact on the Grand Old Party (GOP), which he has very nearly swallowed up whole. Trump has the pipsqueak speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, in his pocket; every would-be contender for vice president has embraced the lie that the 2020 election was stolen; and the most straightlaced Republican congressmen have decided to pretend they are happy being led by a convicted felon.

Although he turned 78 last Friday and sounds increasingly unhinged, Trump has also regained his lock on Republican voters. In the latest Marist/ NPR poll, which shows Trump and Joe Biden neck-and-neck on 49 per cent, 93 per cent of Republican voters say they will back Trump, with only five per cent backing Biden. In 2020, 94 per cent of GOP voters supported Trump, with six per cent supporting Biden. So despite the January 6 riot at the Capitol, the Supreme Court's reversal of abortion rights and everything the Democrats have claimed about Trump's threat to democracy, nothing has changed.