After Boris Johnson resigned as an MP, there was jubilation among Britain’s pro-EU establishment that the political career of one of Brexit’s chief godfathers had finally been destroyed. ‘Rejoiners’ have also been buoyed by polls suggesting Britons may be regretting Brexit. Labour, likely to form government around the end of next year, could even be tempted if the polls back them to hold a referendum to rejoin the EU.

Britain’s pro-EU establishment cherishes an image of Europe as liberal and ‘progressive’. But European voters are moving steadily rightwards, with objections to out-of-control immigration and climate change measures the overwhelming reasons. Last year, elections saw the anti-immigration right take power in Italy and Sweden, retain government in Hungary and achieve their highest-ever vote in France, with Marine Le Pen scoring 41 per cent in the second-round presidential run-off against Emmanuel Macron. With polls suggesting she would now win up to 55 per cent of the vote in another run-off, Macron is hyper-nervous on immigration issues likely to upset voters, especially in light of the current mayhem.

Germany, since its nominally Christian-Democrat but in fact soft-left chancellor Angela Merkel left the scene in 2021, has also moved to the right, especially on the environment, despite the coalition government which succeeded her being led by the Social Democrats and including the Greens. That’s because the coalition also includes the assertive pro-business Free Democrats, on many issues to the right of the Christian Democrats.

This year, Europe’s conservative momentum has continued. They’ve been victorious in Finland and Greece, and there’s a good chance Spain will follow their example later this month, with Poland and Slovakia following in the autumn. Meanwhile in Germany, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) has for the first time won control of a district. It’s now Germany’s second-most popular party, with around 21 per cent support, one to two points ahead of the Social Democrats.

The shift to the right is feeding growing hostility among member-states to the EU’s renewed attempt to share asylum-seekers around the bloc. Eight states – Denmark, Austria, Greece, the Netherlands, Italy, Hungary and Poland – are instead pushing for offshore processing modelled on Britain’s Rwanda plan and Australia’s Pacific solution.

Scepticism about the EU’s net zero 2050 agenda is also growing. Germany’s Free Democrats have moved on from their recent victory over internal combustion engine vehicles (see The Spectator Australia, 1 April 2023) to oppose, with the AfD, their Green coalition partners’ push to ban gas boilers from the beginning of next year. Meanwhile, Macron has pleaded with Brussels for an end to new Green regulations. And the new conservative coalition government in Greta Thunberg’s homeland has replaced its promise of ‘100 per cent renewable’ energy with one of ‘fossil-free’ energy, reversing Sweden’s 40-year-old ban on new reactors.  Germany’s Green-Left remains obstinately anti-nuclear but is startlingly relaxed about dismantling wind farms if they’re in the way of new coal mines.

Yet, while Europe’s rightward shift gathers momentum, there’s one big outlier, the nation whose governing party misleadingly calls itself ‘conservative’. Over their thirteen years in office, the soft-left Tories have delivered the highest tax burden since Clement Attlee and have presided over mass legal immigration which has increased the population by 5 million to 67 million (while promising to get the annual numbers down to the ‘tens of thousands’) – fraudulently wringing their hands as 135,000 illegal immigrants have arrived. The Tories have become captives of extreme climate change ideology and have responded passively to the left’s increasing dominance of the nation’s institutions, including with hard-left gender and race ideology.

The government’s Covid lockdowns are increasingly seen as having been a massive error, leading to more lives lost than saved, an error compounded by the Tory elite’s hypocrisy over the draconian rules it imposed, as revealed by Partygate. Add soaring inflation due to lockdowns causing soaring interest rates and mortgages, the reimposition of Green levies on utility bills from July, NHS waiting lists up again to 7.4 million (compared to 4 million at the 2019 election) and it’s hard to see how any voters would bother to vote Tory again.

The Conservatives’ latest disaster, the Court of Appeal’s ruling that the Rwanda solution is illegal – which threatens Rishi Sunak’s endlessly repeated promise to stop the boats – reinforces the sense that his ship is sinking. The government will take the issue to the Supreme Court, but a resolution is unlikely before November. Even if the judges eventually rule in the government’s favour, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) could again overrule them. Meanwhile the Channel boats will keep coming, with the Home Office expecting 80,000 illegal immigrants this year, compared to the record 45,000 who arrived in 2022. There are already 170,000 asylum-seekers being accommodated at taxpayer expense, at a cost of £6 million a day just for the hotel bills.

Opinion polls show the Tories at around a catastrophic 28 per cent support, to Labour’s 46 per cent. There’s no shortage of suggestions from influential Tory figures and the Daily Telegraph on sensible measures which could bring back support from the party base: cut taxes including by abolishing inheritance tax, stop the boats (by withdrawing from the ECHR if necessary), recommit to limiting net immigration to the tens of thousands – and mean it this time, defer the Net Zero 2050 target, abolish deadlines for banning gas boilers and non-electric cars, lift the ban on fracking and stop discouraging the development of North Sea oil and gas fields with punitive taxation (which would reduce expensive gas and oil imports) and launch a war on woke government institutions. All these proposals would create real differences with Labour. But Sunak and the other bloodless technocrats around him don’t seem that interested.

When pre-election panic sets in, that might change. Alternatively, the chances could increase of a Farage-led political insurrection. The Tories’ last desperate sotto voce appeal to voters – Labour would be worse than us – has probably run out of puff.

A Labour win would of course be even more of a disaster for Britain than the hopeless Tories. Still, amidst the gloom, it would be grimly fascinating to watch the next Labour prime minister reflexively deferring to an EU top-heavy with Christian right-wing nationalists and ‘climate deniers’.