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His and the LDs lumbering oafishness is one of the untold great political stories.

Clegg is partly to blame, having crashed the car and run off from the scene, but the main blame is on the UK public. Talk about a bad break up!

You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your analysis too seriously. As a Conservative, it must still annoy you lost 250 seats in July 2024 and the result for your party in terms of seats and vote share was the worst since 1832.

Even now you’re in a statistical tie with the LDs for third place with YouGov having lost a quarter or more of those who did vote Conservative in 2024.

In the local by elections in the once solid heartland of Surrey last week, the Conservatives lost seats to both Reform and the “lumbering oafishness” of the Liberal Democrats with vote shares down a third to a half from 2021.

It does annoy, you're quite right.

I am, or more accurately was, a lifelong Tory.

I think you can judge my political views most accurately if I say that I'd have voted coalition rather than Tory in 2015.

As such I would really quite like to have a possible vote that was an alternative to my longstanding Tory one. There should be a degree of comfort for that with the LDs. There's not though, and it's been a while since that was true.

I sympathise to an extent.

The brief philosophical convergence of Cameron’s “liberal conservatism” and the Orange Bookers made the Coalition possible but the political cost of the arrangement killed off the Liberal Democrats as William Hague correctly surmised in the aftermath of the 2010 GE.

There are many in both parties who enjoyed the old adversarial relationship and preferred that to what could have been a political realignment. The emergence of “Europe” as an issue further fractured a relationship which had become strained by 2012-13. It didn’t help Conservative activists started working Liberal Democrats seats hard and that work paid dividends for the Conservatives in 2015 though that victory turned out to be the epitome of a poisoned chalice.

Could Cameron and Clegg have sold Coalition 2.0 to their parties and on what basis? Running as Coalition candidates would have smacked of the 1918 Coupon election - had the two leaders tried, would one or both parties have split?

It’s easy for me to see 2024 as revenge for 2015 but the party won seats last year it never got close to between 1997 and 2010 - Chichester being a good example, Surrey Heath another. Such gains would not have been possible but for thousands of disillusioned Conservatives feeling comfortable enough to vote Liberal Democrat or staying home relaxed about a possible Liberal Democrat win.

Perhaps the relevant question for you is where has your old Conservative Party gone and why did it choose to abandon ground on which it had enjoyed electoral success over decades to chase a populist chimera?

Oh for the flap of white coats...


Acyn
@Acyn
Trump: Foreign nations are paying hundreds of billions of dollars straight into our treasury. Numbers nobody has seen before. Many of those countries, just to sit at the table, are paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. Trillions of dollars is coming into our country. Trillions.

https://x.com/Acyn/status/1960379305583931586

You have to understand, though: 43% of people in the US will believe this. They also believe that the US deficit is being eliminated. And that they will get a special multithousand dollar cheque later this year as a result of all the massive savings Elon and co found.

The fact it's not true at all is of absolutely no relevence.

Will there come a point when they no longer believe it? And if so, what will happen?

Why would they cease to believe it?

Well, if they don't get this cheque...

People who get scammed by Nigerian conmen still believe.

There is this kind of amusing myth that the scales will fall from peoples' eyes and they will say "oh, I was conned".

No one ever says "I was conned". It's emotionally much easier to double down.

With the Conservatives exhausted & lacking credibility after years in government, and Labour apparently much the same after one year in government & years in Opposition, it's very likely indeed that vast numbers of voters will be looking towards parties on the fringe.

The next GE may be a spoiled ballot for me.

The only thing that can save Labour is a change of leadership, losing Starmer. Then declare an amnesty for Corbyn and Sultana and get them back in the party. People didn't vote Labour for this Starmer/Reeves bland Toryism.

There’s a lot of this I do grudgingly agree with here.

I in fact did vote Labour because I expected, not necessarily bland politics but certainly a government with a general sense of renewal and restructuring that would likely do quite a few important things “under the bonnet” to help fix some of the more egregious problems. I am not a left wing voter, and I wouldn’t vote for a Corbyn led party or a Labour Party that moved measurably further to the left. But, now that it feels that Labour have failed to rise to the challenge on most measures and now seem to offer bland managed decline, I just don’t think the public are in the mood for a centrist party claiming it has the solutions at the moment. It wants the solutions to be driven by those with more solidly left/right views.

I've been a Labour member since I was 21, and I'm currently Chair (and acting Sec) of my CLP. I was an MP for 13 years. I'm not particularly left-wing, but I'm considering joining the new party, when its profile becomes clearer, since I disagree with the centrist and anti-left policies being pursued by Labour - in general, the party seems to me to have become predominantly negative, and if the new party offers a positive strategy I'll seriously consider it. I'm not especially motivated by polling, which can change rapidly, but would be put off if the new party adopted a predominantly negative approach.

My own position doesn't matter much as I'm 75, but it's fairly widely shared among members. We didn't join in order NOT to be something else.

@Leon

Birthrates are falling in Africa. They're just starting at a much higher level than elsewhere. Tunisia has already dipped below replacement. Morocco and South Africa are only just above. Places like Kenya were at 4.5 not that long ago, and are now at a smidgen over 3.

Which is still well above replacement level

Yes.

But if we'd been having this conversation in 2010, you'd have said* "every country in Africa has birthrates well above replacement". Now, in 2025, it's "most countries in Africa has birth rates well above replacement".

The trend is not your friend here.

* And maybe did say

I think technology is a big reason for falling birthrates. People worldwide have things to do outside of the bedroom.

So if VPNs are banned, that's two ways it might raise the birthrate?

Just realised the England flag - following Musk’s intervention - is now likely to become the international symbol of alt.right populism and western nativism

Making it extremely problematic for left wingers and a shame for Gareth Southgate

I won't be able to fly my flag of St George anymore? That's a real blow.

What we gonna do when alt-right populism fails utterly to deliver on its snake oil promises and falls into utter contempt?

The 600,000 adults scheduled for deportation will become 6,000,000. And when that doesn't stop the rapes and crime (mostly committed by people like us...) it'll be anyone who are, or look, different.

Yes once removing migrants doesn’t do the job of cheering up the public they’ll move onto the next scapegoats . The Trumpification of the UK will go into warp drive with Reform in power .

Course they will. Have a lie down pet. You’re stressing yourself.

I’m not stressing myself thanks . If I want to escape at the time I will .

Good, fuck off.

How lovely . I tend not to tell other posters to fxck off but clearly we’ve touched a nerve and have dared criticise your “ working class hero Farage “ !

Mister @Taz votes Labour, I believe

A lot of people on here are hyperventilating at the prospect of a populist right party gaining power. They should ask themselves why that is now a very real prospect - because of decades of grotesque errors by the Tories AND Labour, especially on immigration, but other things too

Anyway it’s now time for us all to support Big Nigel and pray that he succeeds. Coz after him - if he fails - it might be something much worse (of left OR right)

Coincidentally I’ve just read a guide to Austria and it claims Arnold Schwarzenegger is “probably the most famous Austrian in history”

Er….

They won’t want to publicise the other famous Austrian.

Max Perutz. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Off the top of my head.

Off the top of my head. Just randomly -

1. Adolf Hitler – born in Braunau am Inn, Austria; Führer of Nazi Germany.
2. Arthur Seyss-Inquart – Austrian Chancellor at the Anschluss; Reichskommissar for the Netherlands.
3. Ernst Kaltenbrunner – born in Ried, Upper Austria; head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) after Heydrich.
4. Baldur von Schirach – Gauleiter of Vienna; Reich Youth Leader (Hitlerjugend).
5. Odilo Globocnik – Gauleiter of Vienna, later SS & Police Leader in Lublin; a key organizer of Aktion Reinhard (extermination of Polish Jews).
6. Alois Brunner – Adolf Eichmann’s deputy; responsible for deportations of Jews from France, Slovakia, and Greece.
7. Franz Stangl – Commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps.
8. Franz Novak – Eichmann’s transport officer, organized deportation trains.
9. Karl Silberbauer – SS officer who arrested Anne Frank in Amsterdam.
10. Amon Göth – commandant of the Plaszów concentration camp, depicted in Schindler’s List
11. Adolf Eichmann – born in Solingen, Germany, but raised in Linz; chief architect of the Holocaust transports.
12. August Eigruber – Gauleiter of Upper Danube (Oberdonau); executed for Mauthausen crimes.
13. Franz Josef Huber – SS and Gestapo leader in Vienna; oversaw deportations.
14. Wilhelm Höttl – RSHA officer; testified at Nuremberg about Nazi crimes.
15. Herbert Andorfer – commandant of Sajmište concentration camp (Serbia)
16. Sepp Dietrich – Waffen-SS general
17. Hubert Klausner – Gauleiter of Carinthia after the Anschluss.
18. Tobias Portschy – Gauleiter of Burgenland; antisemitic zealot.
19. Josef Leopold – early Austrian Nazi Party leader before the Anschluss.
20. Anton Reinthaller – SS officer, agricultural minister, and later first leader of Austria’s postwar Freedom Party (FPÖ).
21. That family off of the Sound of Music

Bit heavy on the Nazis.

Jochen Rindt.
And half the Red Bull crew.

Hayek

Klimt

Strauss, Mahler

Porsche

Gödel, Schrödinger, Mach, Boltzmann, Doppler

Freud

No list of Austrians is complete with Godel.