Pheu Thai Party’s Identity Crisis: A Brand in Peril?

Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra stated on Instagram that the Pheu Thai Party (PT) had been “robbed of justice, again and again” on 22 May (the same day a court ruled on the rice pledge scheme and coincidentally, the date of the coup that ousted her aunt Yingluck in 2014). Yet, Paetongtarn’s condemnation sits awkwardly alongside the coalition she now leads. To form a government, PT had partnered with the conservatives who endorsed the coup. The result is the “grand compromise coalition” — strong enough to pass bills and budgets, yet so brittle that it imperils PT’s identity, which is grounded in redistributive policies, institutional reforms, democratic credibility, and the Shinawatras’ charisma. Whether PT can reconcile its legacy with today’s alliances will determine its viability heading into the 2027 General Election.

Since Thaksin Shinawatra launched Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT) in 1998, the party — and its most recent iteration, PT — has rested on four pillars.

First is an unequivocal commitment to income redistribution, from Thaksin’s universal healthcare scheme to Yingluck’s rice subsidy, which attracted voters in both the north and northeast as well as urban enclaves.

Second are reformist agendas, including bureaucratic efficiency, transparency, and constitutional and military reform.

Third are its democratic credentials, with repeated landslides and two coups transforming PT into the perennial “aggrieved winner” and positioning the Shinawatras as victims.

Fourth is the charisma of the Shinawatras, depicted as a pragmatic, business-savvy clan who contested the establishment while providing tangible benefits to ordinary Thais.

All four pillars once underwrote Thaksin-aligned landslides. Yet, each now shows cracks.

Most visibly strained is material redistribution. By mid-2025, Thailand’s economy will lag behind the region’s modest baseline. The Bank of Thailand has twice trimmed its 2025 growth forecast since January, now pegging expansion at barely 2 per cent, amid rising US trade frictions. Household debt hovers above 104 per cent of GDP, the highest in ASEAN. Yet, PT has struggled to roll out the programmes that once defined its brand. Its flagship policy — a one-off 10,000-baht (US$305) “digital wallet,” touted as a demand-side stimulus rather than lasting welfare — has also been shelved due to budget constraints and a volatile global economy. With no successor to hallmark welfare schemes in sight, PT’s redistributive trademark risks fading like sun-bleached paint on an ageing billboard.

Second, the reformist agenda has hit a cul-de-sac. PT trumpeted two key reforms during campaigning: a citizen-drafted Constitution and ending obligatory military conscription. Twenty months later, the charter commission has produced no draft, no conscription-abolition bill has cleared the committee, and the 2026 defence budget, larger than those proposed for the health and agriculture ministries, signals generals have little to fear. With no progress on structural reform, the cabinet has shifted its focus to flashier projects that breed controversy and deepen rifts with coalition partner Bhumjaithai Party. A prime example is the proposed Entertainment Complex, a casino-anchored resort billed as a fiscal bonanza but criticised for courting the Chinese grey-capital networks it vows to expel. Pivoting from charter surgery to casino bills marks PT’s slide from substance to spectacle.

All four pillars once underwrote Thaksin-aligned landslides. Yet, each now shows cracks.

Third, PT’s democratic credentials are vanishing, even when considering the limits imposed by its conservative-royalist coalition. Since PT returned to power in 2023, the coercive machinery that the party once denounced continues unabated. By 2024, prosecutions under the lèse-majesté law exceeded 270 active cases, with activist Netiporn Sanesangkhom’s death in May after months of hunger strikes. In April 2025, police also arrested US scholar Paul Chambers for allegedly insulting the monarchy in an online seminar he participated in. The PT-led government’s human rights record abroad is no less troubling. In February, Bangkok quietly deported 40 Uighur asylum-seekers to China. Although PT brandishes its runner-up mandate from 2023 as democratic legitimacy, such episodes strip away its claim as Thailand’s foremost democracy champion.

Fourth, the Shinawatras’ charisma still anchors PT’s brand, yet its reach is narrowing. Thaksin’s homecoming in 2023 drew thousands of supporters, and Paetongtarn’s nationwide campaigning while pregnant cemented her role as a solid party leader. An NIDA poll earlier this year confirmed Paetongtarn remains popular as a leader, yet PT as a party trails behind the opposition People’s Party. While the “Shinawatra charisma” remains potent within its core bastions, it may no longer provide an automatic nationwide tailwind.

What, then, is left to salvage? When PT sealed its grand compromise in 2023, it effectively surrendered three pillars. Big-ticket redistribution and stimulus are throttled by domestic vetoes and external headwinds. Institutional reform is vetoed by royalist-conservative partners. Democratic credibility bleeds with every new lèse-majesté indictment. What survives is the “Shinawatra charisma”, but even that now depends on the party’s ability to deliver something tangible.

PT’s only realistic terrain is targeted cost-of-living relief for the countryside and city. On the household side, the cabinet has already trimmed electricity tariffs for May-August 2025 and is disbursing a 1,000-baht-per-rai (1,600 sq m) cash grant to roughly four million rice farmers. Similarly, the finance ministry has launched a 50-billion-baht loan-guarantee window to ease liquidity for almost 50,000 small and medium-sized enterprises affected by the recession. None of these micro-measures recreates the transformative aura of the early 2000s, yet together they show that PT may still “bring something home”, even inside the straitjacket of coalition politics.

Should these schemes falter, PT has only two fallback resources. One is to lean harder on cash-on-election-eve tactics and the patronage networks that predate Thaksin. The other is devotion from loyalists who will back a PT ticket almost regardless of policy.

But money politics risks alienating urban and swing constituencies, while unconditional loyalty cannot offset the loss of two growing blocs: reform-minded voters disenchanted by the grand compromise, and bread-and-butter voters who judge parties by what’s left in their wallets. If neither tangible welfare nor democratic credibility is restored — and charisma must shoulder the load alone — PT may discover in 2027 that its core still loves it, while the rest of the country has moved on.

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