Best Of

I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.

Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...

Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.

Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979?
Why don't we live in a Paradise?

And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.

Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago?
Really?

Of course.

Conservatives not close to recognising ‘how badly placed they are’, says Gauke

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/12/uk-conservatives-badly-placed-next-election-david-gauke
...The party was ignoring heartland voters in the home counties who had turned in droves to the Liberal Democrats and was spending too much time fighting on Reform UK’s turf, he added.

“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..

A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.

People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.

Yes, it's total shit

Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration

He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"

Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...

Isn't that his point?

He was a mainstream Tory just a few years ago, now there is no place for him.

That's why the LDs triumphed across the South and Southwest. Reform are winning in the old coalfields and the saxon shore.

So there is no future for the Conservatives.

He's always been a Lib Dem, should never have joined the Tories.

No, he is a fiscal conservative and centre right, at most on the dryest of Orange Book wings of the LDs

I'm hearing these strange echoes of a distant time, and Corbynistas saying "why don't you go away and join the Conservatives?" Or something like that, anyway.

Conservatives not close to recognising ‘how badly placed they are’, says Gauke

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/12/uk-conservatives-badly-placed-next-election-david-gauke
...The party was ignoring heartland voters in the home counties who had turned in droves to the Liberal Democrats and was spending too much time fighting on Reform UK’s turf, he added.

“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..

A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.

People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.

Yes, it's total shit

Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration

He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"

Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...

Isn't that his point?

He was a mainstream Tory just a few years ago, now there is no place for him.

That's why the LDs triumphed across the South and Southwest. Reform are winning in the old coalfields and the saxon shore.

So there is no future for the Conservatives.

He's always been a Lib Dem, should never have joined the Tories.

No, he is a fiscal conservative and centre right, at most on the dryest of Orange Book wings of the LDs

Lib Dems endured about a decade of being called Tories by Labour supporters. Both wings believe that their more partisan and ideological voters are the ones that really matter, and those floating wishywashy swing voters aren’t worth so much.

I don’t fully agree with Gauke’s argument that the core Conservative vote is the Blue Wall professional though. The genius of the party’s former election winning strategy pre 2016 was that they managed to appeal to both that cautious demographic, and the Daily Mail reading social conservatives. That magic trick is gone for now, ever since the Brexit vote. Maybe it’ll return at some stage.

Conservatives not close to recognising ‘how badly placed they are’, says Gauke

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/12/uk-conservatives-badly-placed-next-election-david-gauke
...The party was ignoring heartland voters in the home counties who had turned in droves to the Liberal Democrats and was spending too much time fighting on Reform UK’s turf, he added.

“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..

A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.

People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.

Yes, it's total shit

Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration

He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"

Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...

Isn't that his point?

He was a mainstream Tory just a few years ago, now there is no place for him.

That's why the LDs triumphed across the South and Southwest. Reform are winning in the old coalfields and the saxon shore.

So there is no future for the Conservatives.

Brexit killed the Tory Party. They were hollowed out. Who in their right mind would think in their present incarnation they're better than Labour who at least have all their options open. They're an irrelevance. If you want full racist why not go Reform? I can't see the Conservatives with a single USP that at least one of the other Parties doesn't have in more concentrated form. They are the real dead parrot..