Edward Luce: There’s a Battle Within the Conservative British Party on Which Group Could Be the ‘Trumpian Conservative Party’

EXCERPT:

LUCE: "Yes. I mean, he's a big fan of far-right parties, not just in Britain, but in Germany. As you know, the Alternative for Deutschland, the far-right German party, he's saying is the only possible savior of Germany. And Nigel Farage's Reform Party in the U.K. similarly, he believes, will be the savior of Britain. The context is the conservatives were defeated last summer by the Keir Starmer's Labour Party, and the conservatives are competing with reform for the far-right vote. They're moving to the right and Nigel Farage's Reform is moving to the left to make it a bit more electable, and they're roughly neck-and-neck in the polls. So there is this sort of battle as to who can be more right-wing and who can claim the mantle of sort of being a Trumpian British Conservative Party. And Musk's interventions in favor of reform should be seen in that context. The reality is that Musk is not popular in Britain. The approval ratings, I think a few years ago for him, when he was seen principally as a space guy and an EV guy, were very high. There are now fewer than 1 in 5 British people approve of Musk. So, I think there are diminishing returns to this kind of really unprecedented intervention in another democracy."