Like Republicans today, the British Conservative movement had its own reckoning with ideological confusion and despair. In 2005, after Tony Blair of the Labor Party won his third general election in a row, a postmortem for the Conservatives revealed that the top reasons for not voting Tory were a perception that the party was “for the rich,” and that it was “old-fashioned.” By old-fashioned, the British voters meant that Conservative politicians were out of touch with—and indeed seemed to disapprove of—modern life as it is lived: hostile toward working women, ethnic minorities, gay people and young people.
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