The Conservative Party received a sound drubbing in yesterday’s British election. The Tories won just 121 seats, losing 244 seats from the 2019 result.

One big reason for the voter rejection of the Tories was they increasingly embraced big government.

The Adam Smith Institute report on Tax Freedom Day (when people start working for themselves instead of the government), shows it has been pushed further back under the last five British Prime Ministers (all Conservatives, not including, of course, Lady Thatcher). It is a dismal record and no wonder voters shouted: ENOUGH.

The Techne UK poll for the Independent newspaper, found that while 36 percent of voters trusted Labour leader Keir Starmer on the tax issue, only 16 percent trusted Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

There’s a warning in this for some of our friends here at home who want the GOP to embrace National Conservatism (which is a euphemism for Big Government Conservatism). Abandon your free-market principles and voters will abandon you!

In 180 of the seats, the Reform vote exceeded the margin of defeat. If Reform had not run and those votes had gone to the Conservatives, they would have won over 300 seats. A majority is only 326 seats so the Tories would almost have won with the Reform votes. There would have been a hung parliament with no party having an overall majority.

This is a particularly important warning because in Britain turnout fell to 58% (the second lowest since the 1880s), because a lot to Tory voters stayed home.