Best Of

The problem for the Greens is that as they move left under Polanski they will lose ex Tory seats they won in Herefordshire and like Waveney and lose the chance of taking Isle of Wight East next time. Whereas originally the Greens were solely focused on the environment and mildly Eurosceptic, even Farage voted for them in the 1989 EU Parliament elections on that basis

Morning all.
On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave.
Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote.
Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.

Defecting to the LibDems would probably be the easiest way for him to keep his seat.

They lost their deposit in 2024. They wont be winning Waveney Valley any time soon

Because Ramsay hoovered up their potential vote. If Ramsay defects and brings some of the local party with him, I think they'd be well placed to hold the seat.

People criticise the BBC etc for giving Reform too much airtime, but here we are, twenty comments into a thread about the Green Party, and everyone’s talking about Reform. Why would the media be any different?

Actually a study published in yesterdays independent/i paper showed Farage wasn’t on mainstream tv more than other politicians. He wasn’t even the top Reformer

Nigel Farage is not given more airtime on TV than other politicians, an academic study has found

https://x.com/theipaper/status/1964723531616284787?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

The Green Party isn't going to run the country so the interest must be elsewhere. It fails to generate interest in two ways.

Some of its policies aren't going to happen anyway, they are both extreme and lack popular support, so it's only for anoraks.

And there is a complex, boring and long term green agenda going ahead about electricity, insulation, housing standards, farming, landscape transport, boilers. It is necessary, complicated and dull. The sense that some Greens want us to reurn to the good old days of the ninth century isn't needed or wanted.

There is also the fact that outside specifically 'Green' issues its politics is unrealistic leftism, attractive only to a few, and its seats and target seats are full of single issue fanatics who don't agree with each other let alone the rest of us. And I suspect a large proportion of activists believe in MMT economics.

On Zack Polanski, he is impressively well presented but becomes questionable once the surface is scratched. Imo he's less questionable than the Reformista bigwigs, because he at least has principles rather than nihilism.

On Hypnoboobs (which is a good quip) I not sure whether to look down for on him or his customers more. He was 30, and Harley Street is an epicentre of both quackery and the enablement of criminality - did not Mohammed Al Fayed have his victims pre-inspected there?

Perhaps he should have used blue pyramids?

I'm excited by the reference to blue pyramids, which I'm choosing to infer is a reference to the Great Pyramid of Stockport - which is where ZP went to school - but I don't fully understand it. So I expect my inference is wrong...?

I got onto the Stockport one last time.

This one is Sarah Ferguson in the early 1990s and a clairvoyant called Madame Vasso, where SF sat under a Blue Pyramid to be cleansed. Same sort of edgy stuff that highly intelligent or rich people swallow, to meet some sort of need.

A strange character, who betrayed Sarah Ferguson's confidences in a book - Isobel Oakeshott style.

My photo quota:



Short interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG0bIEX4qUI

Obit (may not be paywalled):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1493102/Madame-Vasso.html

People criticise the BBC etc for giving Reform too much airtime, but here we are, twenty comments into a thread about the Green Party, and everyone’s talking about Reform. Why would the media be any different?

Actually a study published in yesterdays independent/i paper showed Farage wasn’t on mainstream tv more than other politicians. He wasn’t even the top Reformer

Nigel Farage is not given more airtime on TV than other politicians, an academic study has found

https://x.com/theipaper/status/1964723531616284787?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

Paywalled. But what time does it cover? Pre-Reform or Reform? And does it weight for numbers of MP/MSP/MS/MLA or voters?

I can read it, and I am not a subscriber.

However analysis of party representation across flagship TV political programmes by Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture, found Farage appeared less frequently on flagship political shows last year, “contrary to long-standing claims that Nigel Farage is allocated more frequent appearances than other politicians on programmes such as Question Time”.

The study is here; it's political TV not news:
https://www.enhancingimpartiality.com/blog/interpreting-impartiality

We conducted an analysis of guests selected across five of the UK’s most prominent political discussion programmes, including Any Questions (BBC Radio 4), Peston (ITV), Question Time (BBC), Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg (BBC) and Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips (Sky News).

That doesn’t include news items, interviews on the news and print media so I think it’s missing a lot .

People criticise the BBC etc for giving Reform too much airtime, but here we are, twenty comments into a thread about the Green Party, and everyone’s talking about Reform. Why would the media be any different?

Actually a study published in yesterdays independent/i paper showed Farage wasn’t on mainstream tv more than other politicians. He wasn’t even the top Reformer

Nigel Farage is not given more airtime on TV than other politicians, an academic study has found

https://x.com/theipaper/status/1964723531616284787?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

Paywalled. But what time does it cover? Pre-Reform or Reform? And does it weight for numbers of MP/MSP/MS/MLA or voters?

You can read it if you accept ads

I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).

But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.

There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.

Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.

The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.

The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.

In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.

Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.

The overall fate for the Tories, no they are a little adrift on the sea, but certainly there's a lot they can look at influencing - particularly firewalls. They can identify councils and seats to quietly fortify and work now to try and insure against apocalypse and what they can target where Reform are less rampant and wont be exhausting resources (Wycombe is an example)
Thats what they should do if the long term survival and recovery of the Tories is the aim, if they are chasing a quick fix breakback in 2029 they are sunk.

The backstop metric for the Cons as they seek to navigate this existential crisis has to be to stay ahead of the Lib Dems.

Yeah, that's true. I don't see them falling behind them outside the odd outlier poll at the moment though, the problem might be councils and councillors being the metric narrative (and Holyrood next year, i tbink theyre sade from Lib overtaking them in the Senedd)

I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).

But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.

There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.

Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.

The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.

The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.

In all honesty, the Tories aren’t much in charge of their own destiny right now. They’ll either recover or decline based on the relative performance of Reform, in all likelihood, and there’s not a tremendous amount they can do up until that point other than reminding people they exist and trying to talk some vague sense.

Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.

Thanks. Yes. Centrism comes in flavours and is more than consensus but has a common core. Trump, Corbyn, Farage (probably), Putin, Xi, Polanski, Galloway are not centrists. Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx, is fiscally responsible.

Within those constraints any amount of radicalism is possible. As Attlee, Thatcher and Blair illustrate.

Online the term has simply come to mean 'interested in politics but not hard left and not voting for Farage'.

I should think the great majority of 'centrists' under that definition are 'centrists' under my description too.

I think there is a tipping point with Reform where if enough people become aware of the crazy, it will hit support. Despite all the comparisons the UK is not quite the states yet where everything is excused dependant on one’s overall worldview (though it is skating perilously close to the edge).

But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.

There multiple ways in which Reform don't form/lead the next government. The 60-65% who really don't want this need to work on them.

Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.

The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.

The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.

But they wouldn't, would they?
Really? Deep down?
And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support.
Leaving them in single figures.

That all depends on what sort of Tory party they want to be. Of course they would lose support of they went 'we are not Reform, we are One Nation Tories, we are not unpleasant English nationalists'. But that's because they have already lost their centrist One Nation heartland voters. Look at 2024, look at the polls.

No-one wants to vote Tory at the moment because they are useless, unprincipled, incoherent and Reformlite.

The way back is not populism, Farage will always beat them there, but articulating in principle and policy what Toryism stands for and how it works, here and now.

The Tories could try saying...

We want to do something about immigration, but we're not racists
We want to reform healthcare, but we're not vaccine deniers
We're conservative, but Donald Trump isn't our hero

But the problem is their brand is too damaged by their last period in government. They need time for people to forget.

They also need to have some plans to solve those issues that would survive contact with reality to start to get some credibility back.

Morning all

Mrs Stodge (of the Kiwi persuasion) has been following the Tom Phillips story for some time. As she told me, it's probably how many thought it would end though there were fears the children wouldn't survive.

That part of the western Waikato is well off the tourist trail and the beaten track - it's not far from the back of beyond. Phillips had friends and supporters in the local community, at least initially, and was able to use them to evade the authorities but with time he became mosre brazen and desperate and in the end a confrontation with the Police was inevitable but as Mrs Stodge has told me, it's a complex and sad tale of family break down.

In East London, the normal occasional passage of underground trains, visible and occasionally audible (if the wind is in the right direction) from Stodge Towers is both invisible and inevitably muted this morning. The RMT dispute has had the effect desired or expected with almost no underground service in the capital. With home working now a largely accepted (except on parts of PB it seems) part of working life, the effects are not what they would have been though I suspect tomorrow will be more difficult with the DLR taken out by a separate dispute.

On topic, the Greens are a political force in my part of East London though the coming of the pro-Palestine Newham Independents has reduced their influence especailly in the more Muslim areas. Two councillors on Newham are entrenched in Stratford & New Town and the third (gained by defection from Labour) is in a Ward where the Greens have done well in the past.

Nonetheless, in a crowded anti-Labour field, it will be interesting to see if any kind of electoral pact (informal or otherwise) is in place next year so for example the Newham Independents will only stand in the Muslim Wards, the Greens in others and perhaps candidates from the Corbyn/Sultana grouping will fill the gaps. Labour will prevail and easily if the forces against them are fragmented but a single slate of anti-Labour candidates from the "left" could do very well as could a single Mayoral candidate.