LONDON — Where Donald Trump’s policies are concerned, the Conservatives have mastered the art of the steal.

While the Republicans and Conservatives have long been sister parties, the U.K.’s main center-right force has usually followed a more classically liberal path than its American counterpart — until now. 

Britain’s largest opposition party used its conference in Manchester to announce a flurry of initiatives that bear an uncanny similarity to the U.S. president’s MAGA agenda across the Atlantic. 

Anxious about the existential threat from the populist Reform UK, Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch appears to have decided that channeling the Donald is the best chance they’ve got of luring voters away from Nigel Farage’s outfit — despite Trump’s significant unpopularity among the British public.

POLITICO runs through seven copycat policies Trump could almost certainly give the double thumbs up.

ICE-style deportations 

Why bother inventing a new acronym when America has already made one? The Conservatives pledged to create a “Removals Force” modeled on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that’s become responsible for handling large-scale deportations under Trump — which Badenoch called a “successful approach.” 

The unit would ship 150,000 irregular migrants out of Britain every year, though information about where they would be sent was less clear. 

But even Badenoch’s frontbench couldn’t quite agree about how closely their proposal followed the Trump playbook, which has generated opposition in the U.S. Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel told POLITICO “the two are different. America’s model is very different,” and Britain’s would be “different because our laws are different.” That’s clear then! 

Junk international agreements 

The Conservatives implemented the Brexit referendum that took Britain out of the European Union in 2020. Now they want to Brexit from the European Convention on Human Rights (joining Russia and Belarus) so Britain can control its borders.

Though it was Winston Churchill — a Tory prime minister and Trump favorite — who backed collective European human rights after World War II, the Conservatives argue the convention was for a different age before the mass movement of people in the 21st century.

Trump has been partial to withdrawing from various multinational bodies. He’s said he will leave the World Health Organization, the U.N. Human Rights Council and UNESCO because he believes they don’t serve U.S. interests. Despite remaining in NATO, his deeply skeptical attitude toward the multilateral alliance has reshaped global defense policy. 

Scrap climate protections 

The Conservative Party’s logo might be a blue tree, but it’s come a long way from former PM David Cameron hanging out with huskies.

Badenoch said a future Tory administration would repeal the Climate Change Act, which committed the U.K. to cutting carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Though slammed by other Conservatives, the party pledged a “cheap and reliable” strategy, which involved junking a carbon tax on electricity generators and payments to wind developers. 

However, they’re not (yet) climate change deniers. Trump has called climate change a hoax, waving goodbye to the landmark Paris climate agreement and wanting the U.S. to “drill, baby, drill.” He’s also so far unsuccessfully told Labour to better utilize North Sea oil and gas just off the coast of his mother’s native Scotland. There’s still time for another U-turn! 

Politicize the civil service 

Every government gets wound up by the politically neutral civil service — often dubbed “the Blob.” The Conservatives have decided running Whitehall might be that bit easier if their own allies walked the corridors of power. 

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp called for increasing the number of political appointees inside the Home Office to push through their deportation plans, telling POLITICO “a few dozen” ideologically agreed leaders in various departments could make a “big difference to ministers’ abilities to get things done.”

Their Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith concurred, writing that business leaders should be the U.K.’s ambassadors rather than career civil servants. Who’s Washington’s man in London? Investment banker Warren Stephens. 

Operation DOGE 

Elon Musk left D.C. long ago, but the DOGE founder’s aspiration to rip up government inefficiencies travels across the globe. The Conservatives would make £47 billion in spending cuts on the grounds of “fiscal responsibility,” including £23 billion from welfare. 

The party has also opposed Reform’s economic promises as reckless — which include reversing the two-child benefit cap and nationalizing half of the water industry.

Of course, it’s debatable how much cash, if any, the Department of Government Efficiency saved taxpayers. And the Conservatives’ effort to regain economic credibility is stifled by their brief Prime Minister (and diehard MAGA supporter) Liz Truss’ mini-budget in 2022, which sparked market turmoil. 

War with the law 

Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has eagerly broken the separation between the government and courts created by New Labour moving Britain’s highest judges from the House of Lords to the Supreme Court. 

The former (and likely future) Tory leadership contender said he’d sack “activist” judges with a “pro-migration bias,” echoing Trump’s frequent complaints about the courts, and compiled a list of more than 30 judicial figures who’d provided help or legal services to organizations with a liberal migration stance.

Jenrick also wants to abolish the Sentencing Council, the body that develops guidelines for English and Welsh judges, and put elected ministers in charge instead.

Slash international aid 

The Conservatives once backed spending 0.7 percent of gross national income on international development, even during austerity after the 2008 financial crash.

That’s ancient history. 

After abolishing the Department for International Development, reducing aid spending to 0.5 percent during Covid-19 and backing the Labour government’s further cut to 0.3 percent earlier this year, the party promised just 0.1 percent of GNI for aid to save £7 billion.

Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride said they “cannot justify higher taxes at home to pay for more spending abroad” — which was central to Trump’s dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development. Oxfam America said the U.S. president’s actions meant 23 million children could lose access to education and up to 95 million people would lose basic health care.