Why Sunak’s Conservatives are talking about the 1993 Canadian election

A week of Tory rebellions and cataclysmic polls has left members of U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s governing party plumbing new depths of despair over their prospects of staying in power at a general election in the next year.

The Conservatives have trailed far behind the opposition Labour Party in polling for more than a year, leading to internal debates about whether they are headed for defeat on the scale of the 1997 landslide, or a comeback on par with 1992. Foreign Secretary David Cameron this week likened the position to 2015, when he squeaked out a majority as prime minister.

But recent events have some looking at a darker portent from Canada three decades ago. In 1993, the center-right Progressive Conservatives were pincered between the center-left and populist right, suffering the worst ever result by a governing party in the Western world, losing almost all their seats.