Conservative Vote Resurrection

All the guests at King Charles 111’s Coronation vote Tory, like their parents and grandparents. True or false?

Times have changed. The assumption that people who vote conservative in the U.K. look like those guests, live in places with the tail ‘….shire’ and send their children to private schools - ironically called public schools - is no longer valid.

Rishi Sunak, leader of the Conservative Party and current U.K. Prime Minister is one example. His parents have roots in India but were born in British colonies in Africa. They later moved to Britain, the so-called mother country, where their son was born.

Times have changed, so has money and power. We cannot assume that people who live in certain leafy neighborhoods in Toronto and spend the summer in rented or own cottages in Muskoka, will vote for the Conservative Party of Canada. Equally, what is known as the labor vote is no longer guaranteed, because circumstances that gave rise to the need to organize, march and form workers' coalitions are ebbing away. Therefore, the New Democratic Party (NDP) can no longer assume it has labor vote locked in.

Since times have changed, immediate issues have also changed, except the abortion vote in the U.S. as we saw in the 2022 Mid Term Election. Republicans paid a high price for what the Supreme Court did to Roe v Wade. Conservative parties across the world will rise again because immediate issues know no race, color, class or investment holdings. One of them is children, whose parents vote for what they think is right for them. Democrats must re-think and re-package their stand on what some voters regard as emasculation i.e. they can no longer decide what is good for their kids.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.