Still think that it is interesting/relevant that no-one has become PM for over 100 years without first being LotO, CofE, HomeSec or ForSec.
Yes. This implies that parties in government don't choose inexperienced outsiders to become PM, and that plausible candidates have enough support to be given a major Cabinet role before a contest arises.
The only caveat is that a lot of this history was at a time when the wider party membership was not so involved in making the final decision. If a candidate without Great Office tenure makes it to the final two then I think the membership will give more weight to ideology than experience.
That said, I think it follows from this that Javid is good value at current odds.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Raab, Patel, McVey, Rees Mogg, Truss, even Redwood again potentially could all be future Thatcherite Tory leadership candidates
Redwood? I thought his ship had sailed long since!
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
Farage is as busted a flush as Boris.
Farage is even far more busted than Boris and that is saying something
Farage and RefUK, whoever they are, are only in the mind of far right obsessives
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
Farage is as busted a flush as Boris.
Farage is even far more busted than Boris and that is saying something
Farage and RefUK, whoever they are, are only in the mind of far right obsessives
Especially as some of their voters have had the pleasure of long queues at Spanish airports.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
Farage is as busted a flush as Boris.
Farage is even far more busted than Boris and that is saying something
Farage and RefUK, whoever they are, are only in the mind of far right obsessives
If Hunt became PM and as is likely shifted back to May's Deal, Farage would return to lead RefUK within 5 minutes
In the style of XKCD "no ... has ever ..." I strongly suspect Boris will be the end of the "no Prime Minister has gone after four but before five years" 'rule'.
Are you predicting that he will be removed before the next election or that he will call one and lose it?
I am predicting he will resign next year and allow a leadership election to determine who will take the Tories into the next election.
Losing a May 2024 election and being replaced before his fifth anniversary in office could also achieve that, but I'm more expecting him to resign.
The fact is that polling is largely useless. The challenges of getting a representative sample in an age of mobile phones, self selecting panels of people with way more than the average interest and differential responses between age groups (who in turn have differential turnout) are all well known and of course the companies do their best to compensate for each of these.
What they cannot do is really compensate for a vote that actually matters as opposed to the answer to a hypothetical question. So, right now, huge numbers of natural Tories are disgusted by having a liar for a PM and the fall in public standards. Hypothetically, many or most will want to vote for someone else and in irrelevant bye elections they may well do so. But choosing a government is a different matter. At that point many, not all by any means, will swallow that irritation or disgust and vote for them.
It is a measure of the skills of pollsters, built on many, many past errors that they get as close as they do but I can fully understand the temptation to tweak the raw data towards the government of the day, whether that is Conservative or Labour. Their best guess at general elections is where the validity of their prognostications the rest of the time are tested, hence the "gold standard" that ICM had for many years, now probably held by Yougov. This matters to their business and could seriously undermine the confidence of clients asking more mundane questions. Given their uncertainties there is no guarantee that the raw data will give a better result.
Opinion pollsters also take a lot of respondents' time. Half an hour of ploughing through question after question on what sort of cheese Dominic Raab would be, and that is after wading through an even longer poll on crisp flavours for the pollster's paying customer.
And polls try to make up for bad sampling with heavy weighting.
I'd like to see the raw result of a simple one question poll with a huge response, perhaps by tacking it on to a popular web site such as the BBC or Google. And even that would automatically exclude voters with no web access.
I don't think any methodology can correct for the problems of self selecting (ie voodoo) polls.
These days it is easier than you'd think to detect multiple responses from the same source, and if you can get a response of over a million, who cares if some herbert has voted a hundred times.
And it is not just voodoo polls that suffer from self-selection. It is not as if people can be compelled to answer polls. Phone polls (and face to face polls although I think these are no longer used) suffer from response bias, and panels are made up of volunteers, often political activists and even PBers!
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Raab, Patel, McVey, Rees Mogg, Truss, even Redwood again potentially could all be future Thatcherite Tory leadership candidates
Isn't that a bit like saying that SKS is (say) a Butskellite? A completely anachronistic comparison. Unless one is going on blonde hair and stern expression for the tame photographer retained full time.*
*which, on reflection, was perhaps not something Mrs T would do, at least for herself personally as opposed to No 10 as a whole, let alone a cabinet post
Now harder to do as Thatcher dead admittedly but most Tory leadership candidates try and claim to be her heir as much as most GOP presidential candidates claim to be Reagan's heir.
In her lifetime however Major, Redwood, Portillo, Hague and IDS, Davis and Fox all at one time or another were Thatcher's heir. Major, Hague and IDS of course even got The Lady's public endorsement
I'd originally dismissed Curtis' tweet as nonsense, but his subsequent retraction obviously written at lawyerpoint makes me think his now deleted tweet had more than a scintilla of truth to it.
Really? Would you expect YouGov to say/do nothing?
It's like ducking witches.
- If they float, they are witches. Burn them. - if they sink, they are innocent. Shame really.
Well Curtis clearly had pressure applied to make such a statement. The whiff of lawyers threatening to bankrupt him was very very easy to spot. Their remit is certainly not unalloyed truth.
If you don't want lawyers involved, its a good idea not to publicly libel your former employer.
If he could defend what he said, he'd not have backed down, the fact that he has so rapidly and unequivocally suggests he knows full well that he can't.
LOL - for a more generous take to YouGov, see @Malmesbury. It suggests he doesn't want to get into a ruinously expensive libel suit over it.
If he has libelled YouGov then what are they supposed to do? If they don't send the lawyers letter and get an apology then people say it must be true, they're not even challenging it. If they do, then you say lawyers are involved so it must be true.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't it seems.
He could well have left that lot up if we had the USA's more sensible views on freedom of speech. It's the fact the UK is the world capital of libel actions that meant he had to remove it.
Amber Heard might not be quite in agreement.
I followed the US election results closely. The view amongst US lawyers was that the voting machine manufacturers would have a tough time with libel against Giuliani and a couple of other bonkers Trumpers (Can't remember the mad woman's name) - it'd have been trivial in UK courts. Depp's team had to prove malice against Heard in court, it's a much much tougher job than in the UK courts. That's the legal fact - that the US jury came to conclude he'd gone over that very very high bar and the UK judge reckoned he'd failed to clear the much lower one is simply evidence that the US jury was wildly more pro-Depp than the UK judge (Or the UK judge much more pro Heard). The US bar for libel is way higher than the UK.
Do you think he will get a single cent from her? Surely she's broke now.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
She's a Thatcherite. That's what you said, "no Thatcherite style" - she's not Thatcher, of course she's not, but she's Thatcherite style even if you may think she's a pale imitation of her, that is very much her style.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
That would be the same Liz Truss that during the John Major era was chair of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats?
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
Farage is as busted a flush as Boris.
Farage is even far more busted than Boris and that is saying something
Farage and RefUK, whoever they are, are only in the mind of far right obsessives
If Hunt became PM and as is likely shifted back to May's Deal, Farage would return to lead RefUK within 5 minutes
Who cares about an irrelevance that is Farage other than yourself and some Little Englanders
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Raab, Patel, McVey, Rees Mogg, Truss, even Redwood again potentially could all be future Thatcherite Tory leadership candidates
Really? What a motley crew. Redwood again? Patel is the most likely, but she's more a Boris-a-like, in so far as her ego is her ideology. None of those, with the possible exception of Redwood has quite the same principles as Thatcher.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Raab, Patel, McVey, Rees Mogg, Truss, even Redwood again potentially could all be future Thatcherite Tory leadership candidates
Redwood? I thought his ship had sailed long since!
Nearly 27 years since he stood against Major.
I think that ship has sailed and circumnavigated the globe umpteen times since!
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
Farage is as busted a flush as Boris.
Farage is even far more busted than Boris and that is saying something
Farage and RefUK, whoever they are, are only in the mind of far right obsessives
If Hunt became PM and as is likely shifted back to May's Deal, Farage would return to lead RefUK within 5 minutes
You may be overestimating the British public's tolerance for endless bickering, especially when they're far more preoccupied with paying the bills. Besides which, Farage belongs to a select group of Putin admirers (see also Salmond) of whom we have heard nothing for some time, and will be pleased to hear nothing from ever again.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
That would be the same Liz Truss that during the John Major era was chair of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats?
No Thatcherite she.
She wasn't a Thatcherite when she was in university, no, but that is very much her 'style' now.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
That would be the same Liz Truss that during the John Major era was chair of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats?
No Thatcherite she.
She wasn't a Thatcherite when she was in university, no, but that is very much her 'style' now.
Sitting on a tank and doing your hair like Thatcher, does not a Thatcherite make. I fear the lady would be turning in her grave.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
Still alive?
On reflection Shakin Stevens is far too popular and far too little obsessed about Cheese to be Truss. Quite unfair to him.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
That would be the same Liz Truss that during the John Major era was chair of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats?
No Thatcherite she.
She wasn't a Thatcherite when she was in university, no, but that is very much her 'style' now.
Sitting on a tank and doing your hair like Thatcher, does not a Thatcherite make. I fear the lady would be turning in her grave.
Her principles when she speaks about them are very Thatcherite, and quite consistently are. I have a lot of respect for her.
Still think that it is interesting/relevant that no-one has become PM for over 100 years without first being LotO, CofE, HomeSec or ForSec.
Yes. This implies that parties in government don't choose inexperienced outsiders to become PM, and that plausible candidates have enough support to be given a major Cabinet role before a contest arises.
The only caveat is that a lot of this history was at a time when the wider party membership was not so involved in making the final decision. If a candidate without Great Office tenure makes it to the final two then I think the membership will give more weight to ideology than experience.
That said, I think it follows from this that Javid is good value at current odds.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
That would be the same Liz Truss that during the John Major era was chair of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats?
No Thatcherite she.
She wasn't a Thatcherite when she was in university, no, but that is very much her 'style' now.
Sitting on a tank and doing your hair like Thatcher, does not a Thatcherite make. I fear the lady would be turning in her grave.
Her principles when she speaks about them are very Thatcherite, and quite consistently are. I have a lot of respect for her.
Lots of respect for Liz Truss? That is not something you hear every day. Was it the cheese rant?
O/t but someone on th BBC Test Match site is complaining about the price of gin at Trent Bridge; £8.50 for double.
Reckon that's pretty reasonable, myself.
I was paying twelve quid for one just last night.
A pint of IPA has now passed the £5 mark around these parts, and I understand that this is still a bargain compared to London prices. See also the three bedroom bungalow I just saw advertised in one of the local estate agents windows for £725,000.
Also seen on the streets of this self-same unremarkable small rural town: two derelict beggars. So much for the idea that COVID interventionism might lead to a marginally more caring approach to the destitute. Things are actually getting worse not better.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
Farage is as busted a flush as Boris.
Farage is even far more busted than Boris and that is saying something
Farage and RefUK, whoever they are, are only in the mind of far right obsessives
If Hunt became PM and as is likely shifted back to May's Deal, Farage would return to lead RefUK within 5 minutes
Who cares about an irrelevance that is Farage other than yourself and some Little Englanders
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
Still alive?
On reflection Shakin Stevens is far too popular and far too little obsessed about Cheese to be Truss. Quite unfair to him.
Most prominent Cabinet Ministers end up with a plethora of reasons why people dislike them.
The fact that Truss after almost a decade in the Cabinet, holding multiple big offices, is only mocked for an awkward moment of a speech she gave as DEFRA Secretary nearly a decade ago in her first Conference Speech as a Cabinet Minister is quite remarkable really.
Truss has very consistently held libertarian economic views. I think she could make a very good PM if given the opportunity, much better than the current office holder.
O/t but someone on th BBC Test Match site is complaining about the price of gin at Trent Bridge; £8.50 for double.
Reckon that's pretty reasonable, myself.
I was paying twelve quid for one just last night.
A pint of IPA has now passed the £5 mark around these parts, and I understand that this is still a bargain compared to London prices. See also the three bedroom bungalow I just saw advertised in one of the local estate agents windows for £725,000.
Also seen on the streets of this self-same unremarkable small rural town: two derelict beggars. So much for the idea that COVID interventionism might lead to a marginally more caring approach to the destitute. Things are actually getting worse not better.
Think it's still in the low fours round here. The Con Club is a bit cheaper, I think, but I don't go there! Mind, physical health is such ATM that I haven't been in any pubs for three weeks.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
That would be the same Liz Truss that during the John Major era was chair of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats?
No Thatcherite she.
She wasn't a Thatcherite when she was in university, no, but that is very much her 'style' now.
Sitting on a tank and doing your hair like Thatcher, does not a Thatcherite make. I fear the lady would be turning in her grave.
Her principles when she speaks about them are very Thatcherite, and quite consistently are. I have a lot of respect for her.
Lots of respect for Liz Truss? That is not something you hear every day. Was it the cheese rant?
Arguably she introduced some mini Thatcherite free-marketeering with her trade deals. That it might well destroy British agriculture is neither here nor there.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
That would be the same Liz Truss that during the John Major era was chair of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats?
No Thatcherite she.
She wasn't a Thatcherite when she was in university, no, but that is very much her 'style' now.
Sitting on a tank and doing your hair like Thatcher, does not a Thatcherite make. I fear the lady would be turning in her grave.
Her principles when she speaks about them are very Thatcherite, and quite consistently are. I have a lot of respect for her.
Lots of respect for Liz Truss? That is not something you hear every day. Was it the cheese rant?
No of course not. But I was in the audience for that speech and I met Truss at Conference either that year or the year after as part of a very interesting discussion on the UK's productivity problems. She very much knows what she is talking about. 👍
Ironically, during the EU Referendum when I was torn which way to vote, she was one of the few politicians I saw to make positive cases for Remain that I agreed with. There was far too much negativity, but she actually made positive arguments which was refreshing.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
I can actually picture her working "ain't got time to fix the floor" into a speech.
I'd originally dismissed Curtis' tweet as nonsense, but his subsequent retraction obviously written at lawyerpoint makes me think his now deleted tweet had more than a scintilla of truth to it.
Really? Would you expect YouGov to say/do nothing?
It's like ducking witches.
- If they float, they are witches. Burn them. - if they sink, they are innocent. Shame really.
Well Curtis clearly had pressure applied to make such a statement. The whiff of lawyers threatening to bankrupt him was very very easy to spot. Their remit is certainly not unalloyed truth.
If you don't want lawyers involved, its a good idea not to publicly libel your former employer.
If he could defend what he said, he'd not have backed down, the fact that he has so rapidly and unequivocally suggests he knows full well that he can't.
LOL - for a more generous take to YouGov, see @Malmesbury. It suggests he doesn't want to get into a ruinously expensive libel suit over it.
If he has libelled YouGov then what are they supposed to do? If they don't send the lawyers letter and get an apology then people say it must be true, they're not even challenging it. If they do, then you say lawyers are involved so it must be true.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't it seems.
He could well have left that lot up if we had the USA's more sensible views on freedom of speech. It's the fact the UK is the world capital of libel actions that meant he had to remove it.
Amber Heard might not be quite in agreement.
I followed the US election results closely. The view amongst US lawyers was that the voting machine manufacturers would have a tough time with libel against Giuliani and a couple of other bonkers Trumpers (Can't remember the mad woman's name) - it'd have been trivial in UK courts. Depp's team had to prove malice against Heard in court, it's a much much tougher job than in the UK courts. That's the legal fact - that the US jury came to conclude he'd gone over that very very high bar and the UK judge reckoned he'd failed to clear the much lower one is simply evidence that the US jury was wildly more pro-Depp than the UK judge (Or the UK judge much more pro Heard). The US bar for libel is way higher than the UK.
You don't think it is just that the US Jury actually got to hear a proper cross examination of the Heard claims whilst the UK judge dismissed many of the challenges without their being heard in court?
Not sure that can be described as being 'pro-Depp'.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
Still alive?
On reflection Shakin Stevens is far too popular and far too little obsessed about Cheese to be Truss. Quite unfair to him.
Most prominent Cabinet Ministers end up with a plethora of reasons why people dislike them.
The fact that Truss after almost a decade in the Cabinet, holding multiple big offices, is only mocked for an awkward moment of a speech she gave as DEFRA Secretary nearly a decade ago in her first Conference Speech as a Cabinet Minister is quite remarkable really.
Truss has very consistently held libertarian economic views. I think she could make a very good PM if given the opportunity, much better than the current office holder.
Well I will look at her in a new light. Whilst "much better than the current office holder" is the lowest conceivable bar, if I had to pick someone to deliver the Tories safely into opposition it would be Truss. But I could well be wrong. I will dig up some of her non-cheese related stuff.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The fact is that polling is largely useless. The challenges of getting a representative sample in an age of mobile phones, self selecting panels of people with way more than the average interest and differential responses between age groups (who in turn have differential turnout) are all well known and of course the companies do their best to compensate for each of these.
What they cannot do is really compensate for a vote that actually matters as opposed to the answer to a hypothetical question. So, right now, huge numbers of natural Tories are disgusted by having a liar for a PM and the fall in public standards. Hypothetically, many or most will want to vote for someone else and in irrelevant bye elections they may well do so. But choosing a government is a different matter. At that point many, not all by any means, will swallow that irritation or disgust and vote for them.
It is a measure of the skills of pollsters, built on many, many past errors that they get as close as they do but I can fully understand the temptation to tweak the raw data towards the government of the day, whether that is Conservative or Labour. Their best guess at general elections is where the validity of their prognostications the rest of the time are tested, hence the "gold standard" that ICM had for many years, now probably held by Yougov. This matters to their business and could seriously undermine the confidence of clients asking more mundane questions. Given their uncertainties there is no guarantee that the raw data will give a better result.
Opinion pollsters also take a lot of respondents' time. Half an hour of ploughing through question after question on what sort of cheese Dominic Raab would be, and that is after wading through an even longer poll on crisp flavours for the pollster's paying customer.
And polls try to make up for bad sampling with heavy weighting.
I'd like to see the raw result of a simple one question poll with a huge response, perhaps by tacking it on to a popular web site such as the BBC or Google. And even that would automatically exclude voters with no web access.
I don't think any methodology can correct for the problems of self selecting (ie voodoo) polls.
These days it is easier than you'd think to detect multiple responses from the same source, and if you can get a response of over a million, who cares if some herbert has voted a hundred times.
And it is not just voodoo polls that suffer from self-selection. It is not as if people can be compelled to answer polls. Phone polls (and face to face polls although I think these are no longer used) suffer from response bias, and panels are made up of volunteers, often political activists and even PBers!
Wasn’t one of the polling companies specifically doing surveys of MPs a year or two ago?
Quite possibly although Ipsos Mori and Yougov are both there, maybe others. I'd have thought polling MPs would be useful but doubt many would be politically neutral.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
Taking into consideration the gender balance on here I’m opening a mind bleach store if anyone wants to buy
I was about to say that some of us find the thought of scantily clad young gentlemen (most definitely not in bikinis, mind you) rather inviting. I then thought about the likely age profile of PB as well...
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats. The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
Never is a strong word to use in current British politics. I cite Labour in Scotland. If the Tories continue to screw it up, the blue wall could fall. Goodness knows we could do with a few fresh faces in the South. It is taken for granted by the Tories.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
I can actually picture her working "ain't got time to fix the floor" into a speech.
Looks like Cheese n Crackers is now running the show. It must be that Boris senses that she is the most likely to resign from the Cabinet and do a Geoffrey. Nervous times for Boris.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
That would be the same Liz Truss that during the John Major era was chair of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats?
No Thatcherite she.
She wasn't a Thatcherite when she was in university, no, but that is very much her 'style' now.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
There was a point in the early pandemic when I thought one likely outcome was a pure Johnsonian populist and centre party replacing Labour in most seats outside core cities and facing a more right-wing Conservative party. It no longer looks likely but interesting what seemed possible back then.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
No party led by Farage is ever going to overtake either the Tories or Labour - and probably not even the Lib Dems - in a GE. The best they can do is steal votes from them but even they they won't translate into seats. The dynamic simply isn't there.
Good. About time to blow the bloody doors off. Hopefully the Bill invokes Article 16 so its legal.
She's going to drive us over a cliff edge?
I hope so.
This is risky for the Tories. In 2020, if the EU responded harshly, and the economic situation worsened then I think the Tories could have gotten away with it by blaming the EU and banging a red, white and blue drum. I think now the electorate are much less forgiving of Boris's, and by extension the Government's, pissing around. If they take action that can be pointed to as worsening the economic situation then they are going to be fucked harder and angrier than a step-Turkish conscript looking to dodge the draft. On PornHub.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
Still alive?
On reflection Shakin Stevens is far too popular and far too little obsessed about Cheese to be Truss. Quite unfair to him.
Most prominent Cabinet Ministers end up with a plethora of reasons why people dislike them.
The fact that Truss after almost a decade in the Cabinet, holding multiple big offices, is only mocked for an awkward moment of a speech she gave as DEFRA Secretary nearly a decade ago in her first Conference Speech as a Cabinet Minister is quite remarkable really.
She's not only mocked for the I Have a Cheese speech. There is plenty of other material.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
No party led by Farage is ever going to overtake either the Tories or Labour - and probably not even the Lib Dems - in a GE. The best they can do is steal votes from them but even they they won't translate into seats. The dynamic simply isn't there.
If the Tories went for a policy to rejoin the EU or return to the single market and full free movement they might.
Before May went in Spring 2019 the Brexit Party were near neck and neck with the Tories in some polls. Until Johnson was elected Tory leader the Brexit Party even overtook the Tories in a few polls.
At the 2015 General Election UKIP got more votes than the LDs if not more seats
How is it going round the world? Is it really over out there like it is here, if not why not?
When’s the next time us 20 year olds will get vaccine?
Could a bad variant come back to UK meaning some restrictions to save lives and protect the NHS?
Covid will never be over. There's no sign of most people being offered jabs again. We're not going back to rules and regulations because most people have long since had enough of them, the Government has zero credibility to demand their acceptance, and the Treasury can't afford to clobber businesses again. Besides which, trying to suppress Omicron is a fool's errand, as amply demonstrated by the Chinese Communist Party.
Looks like Cheese n Crackers is now running the show. It must be that Boris senses that she is the most likely to resign from the Cabinet and do a Geoffrey. Nervous times for Boris.
These politicians on a journey are a dangerous bunch. Truss an ex-Lib Dem and previous remainer, Lord Frost a grey bureaucrat with mainstream views, both on a trajectory rightwards and it seems like once people get the momentum there is a danger they keep going. Whereas the more stable right or leftwingers are a little less likely to go bonkers.
That said Redwood seems also to have gone on a journey recently, towards Schumacher-esque autarchy.
I checked the stats from the last published Census. While the class and ethnic profile of Tiverton and Honiton is very similar to North Shropshire, I hadn't realised that the Devon constituency is four years higher in average age, making it one of the oldest constituencies in the UK. There must be a large incomer retired demographic, probably with more wealth from housing equity or sales than the average local.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
Still alive?
On reflection Shakin Stevens is far too popular and far too little obsessed about Cheese to be Truss. Quite unfair to him.
Most prominent Cabinet Ministers end up with a plethora of reasons why people dislike them.
The fact that Truss after almost a decade in the Cabinet, holding multiple big offices, is only mocked for an awkward moment of a speech she gave as DEFRA Secretary nearly a decade ago in her first Conference Speech as a Cabinet Minister is quite remarkable really.
Truss has very consistently held libertarian economic views. I think she could make a very good PM if given the opportunity, much better than the current office holder.
I know it's possible to go off people but I am puzzled what Boris has managed to do to you in such a short space of time that he's gone from being one of the trully great Prime Ministers of the modern age to being significantly less impressive than Liz Truss.
Good. About time to blow the bloody doors off. Hopefully the Bill invokes Article 16 so its legal.
She's going to drive us over a cliff edge?
I hope so.
This is risky for the Tories. In 2020, if the EU responded harshly, and the economic situation worsened then I think the Tories could have gotten away with it by blaming the EU and banging a red, white and blue drum. I think now the electorate are much less forgiving of Boris's, and by extension the Government's, pissing around. If they take action that can be pointed to as worsening the economic situation then they are going to be fucked harder and angrier than a step-Turkish conscript looking to dodge the draft. On PornHub.
The EU are an empty suit bluffing, they aren't going to erect a hard border in Ireland and neither are we, so Invoke A16, unilaterally fix the problems, and then the issue is resolved and over. There'll be no need or requirement for any more actions to "preserve the Good Friday Agreement" then because it will have been preserved as there'll be no hard border anywhere.
But if you wanted co-ordinated cynical politics if it were me I'd have Truss push her hard bill for Northern Ireland, and in a completely unrelated move have Sunak suspend fuel duty for the duration of the war until fuel prices come down, ending the worst of inflation and thus meaning that the triple lock doesn't raise pensions by too much etc
See how much voters are bothered by the EU's threats when fuel is £1.20 a litre.
Good. About time to blow the bloody doors off. Hopefully the Bill invokes Article 16 so its legal.
She's going to drive us over a cliff edge?
I hope so.
This is risky for the Tories. In 2020, if the EU responded harshly, and the economic situation worsened then I think the Tories could have gotten away with it by blaming the EU and banging a red, white and blue drum. I think now the electorate are much less forgiving of Boris's, and by extension the Government's, pissing around. If they take action that can be pointed to as worsening the economic situation then they are going to be fucked harder and angrier than a step-Turkish conscript looking to dodge the draft. On PornHub.
Quite right. They're potentially also handing a considerable weapon to Sir Keir. He can't blame any economic damage on Brexit without sounding like he's against Brexit. However, if Boris starts a trade war then Sir Keir can have a field day blaming the Tories for ensuing mayhem without sounding like a Remainer traitor. Boris would be horribly exposed.
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
Still alive?
On reflection Shakin Stevens is far too popular and far too little obsessed about Cheese to be Truss. Quite unfair to him.
Most prominent Cabinet Ministers end up with a plethora of reasons why people dislike them.
The fact that Truss after almost a decade in the Cabinet, holding multiple big offices, is only mocked for an awkward moment of a speech she gave as DEFRA Secretary nearly a decade ago in her first Conference Speech as a Cabinet Minister is quite remarkable really.
Truss has very consistently held libertarian economic views. I think she could make a very good PM if given the opportunity, much better than the current office holder.
I know it's possible to go off people but I am puzzled what Boris has managed to do to you in such a short space of time that he's gone from being one of the trully great Prime Ministers of the modern age to being significantly less impressive than Liz Truss.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
No party led by Farage is ever going to overtake either the Tories or Labour - and probably not even the Lib Dems - in a GE. The best they can do is steal votes from them but even they they won't translate into seats. The dynamic simply isn't there.
If the Tories went for a policy to rejoin the EU or return to the single market and full free movement they might.
Before May went in Spring 2019 the Brexit Party were neck and neck with the Tories in some polls.
At the 2015 General Election UKIP got more votes than the LDs if not more seats
I worry the Tories have got themselves caught up with some stereotypes about the mythical redwall and are forgetting that it's demographically and politically really not that different from the rest of the country. This image of salt of the earth English patriots flying their England flags and longing for a return to imperial weights and measures is a simplification to say the least and if it's true anywhere then it's more true of the estuarine regions of Essex and Kent than much of the North.
Yes identity and culture are important but I fear Tory thinking has started to fetishise it to the exclusion of other things like decent pay, cost of living and public services.
Good. About time to blow the bloody doors off. Hopefully the Bill invokes Article 16 so its legal.
She's going to drive us over a cliff edge?
I hope so.
This is risky for the Tories. In 2020, if the EU responded harshly, and the economic situation worsened then I think the Tories could have gotten away with it by blaming the EU and banging a red, white and blue drum. I think now the electorate are much less forgiving of Boris's, and by extension the Government's, pissing around. If they take action that can be pointed to as worsening the economic situation then they are going to be fucked harder and angrier than a step-Turkish conscript looking to dodge the draft. On PornHub.
Quite right. They're potentially also handing a considerable weapon to Sir Keir. He can't blame any economic damage on Brexit without sounding like he's against Brexit. However, if Boris starts a trade war then Sir Keir can have a field day blaming the Tories for ensuing mayhem without sounding like a Remainer traitor. Boris would be horribly exposed.
No, that's the trap Remainers fell into during negotiations, of appearing to side with the EU against the UK. Brexit is still weak ground for Labour.
"NASA Is Finally Ready to ‘Science’ UFOs The world’s top space agency has decided to lean into the discussion."
Hmm
Final para:
"The modern UAP story has been populated by quite an ensemble: lawmakers, defense officials, UFO activists, the Blink-182 rock star Tom DeLonge. Now the cast includes the world’s top space agency and its arsenal of sophisticated telescopes and space probes. NASA officials said they would make all of their findings available for anyone to see. No secrets! But that doesn’t mean that NASA will be able to control the public narrative surrounding this effort, or any discoveries. Once NASA starts talking about UFOs—well, like it or not, it’s a whole different conversation."
If you've heard of Keir Starmer 36% say would do a good job, 32% otherwise but they haven't all heard of him.
Wallace does better too, indeed I'd support him for PM
Wallace and other pb fav Penny Mordaunt have huge don't knows. Rishi is second on positives but also quite high on negatives. Interesting that Dominic Raab is quite high on positive ratings; does he fancy the top job?
I expect John Major would have been very high up the list of don't knows in 1990, too. Sometimes being a relatively blank slate, and coming from slightly left-field, helps a lot.
Curiously, Major marketed himself as the carrier of Thatcherite flame at the time.
Which he was against Heseltine and Hurd in November 1990 once Maggie resigned and Tebbit declined to run.
By 1995 however Redwood ran against Major as the true Thatcher heir as would Portillo had he not bottled it
How quaint. The Thatcherites are long gone now. No Thatcherite style Conservative within a sniff of a chance of becoming PM.
Liz Truss would beg to differ.
Truss is to Thatcher what Shakin Stevens is to Elvis.
Quite. Someone should tell her it requires more than wandering around Moscow in a furry hat.
Good. About time to blow the bloody doors off. Hopefully the Bill invokes Article 16 so its legal.
She's going to drive us over a cliff edge?
I hope so.
This is risky for the Tories. In 2020, if the EU responded harshly, and the economic situation worsened then I think the Tories could have gotten away with it by blaming the EU and banging a red, white and blue drum. I think now the electorate are much less forgiving of Boris's, and by extension the Government's, pissing around. If they take action that can be pointed to as worsening the economic situation then they are going to be fucked harder and angrier than a step-Turkish conscript looking to dodge the draft. On PornHub.
Quite right. They're potentially also handing a considerable weapon to Sir Keir. He can't blame any economic damage on Brexit without sounding like he's against Brexit. However, if Boris starts a trade war then Sir Keir can have a field day blaming the Tories for ensuing mayhem without sounding like a Remainer traitor. Boris would be horribly exposed.
Keir can afford to be much less timid on this without sounding like a traitor I think. Lines like "Boris has cocked up Brexit", "Brexit needs fixing", "this isn't the Brexit you voted for" etc are fairly low risk, whereas staying silent risks letting them get away with a huge amount.
Looks like Cheese n Crackers is now running the show. It must be that Boris senses that she is the most likely to resign from the Cabinet and do a Geoffrey. Nervous times for Boris.
These politicians on a journey are a dangerous bunch. Truss an ex-Lib Dem and previous remainer, Lord Frost a grey bureaucrat with mainstream views, both on a trajectory rightwards and it seems like once people get the momentum there is a danger they keep going. Whereas the more stable right or leftwingers are a little less likely to go bonkers.
That said Redwood seems also to have gone on a journey recently, towards Schumacher-esque autarchy.
The simpler explanation is that Truss and Frost are preparing for a leadership election.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
No party led by Farage is ever going to overtake either the Tories or Labour - and probably not even the Lib Dems - in a GE. The best they can do is steal votes from them but even they they won't translate into seats. The dynamic simply isn't there.
If the Tories went for a policy to rejoin the EU or return to the single market and full free movement they might.
Before May went in Spring 2019 the Brexit Party were neck and neck with the Tories in some polls.
At the 2015 General Election UKIP got more votes than the LDs if not more seats
I worry the Tories have got themselves caught up with some stereotypes about the mythical redwall and are forgetting that it's demographically and politically really not that different from the rest of the country. This image of salt of the earth English patriots flying their England flags and longing for a return to imperial weights and measures is a simplification to say the least and if it's true anywhere then it's more true of the estuarine regions of Essex and Kent than much of the North.
Yes identity and culture are important but I fear Tory thinking has started to fetishise it to the exclusion of other things like decent pay, cost of living and public services.
You could well be right, Mr S. I suspect too that the flag-flyers are significantly often older people and by definition they're not going to be around all that long.
"NASA Is Finally Ready to ‘Science’ UFOs The world’s top space agency has decided to lean into the discussion."
Hmm
Final para:
"The modern UAP story has been populated by quite an ensemble: lawmakers, defense officials, UFO activists, the Blink-182 rock star Tom DeLonge. Now the cast includes the world’s top space agency and its arsenal of sophisticated telescopes and space probes. NASA officials said they would make all of their findings available for anyone to see. No secrets! But that doesn’t mean that NASA will be able to control the public narrative surrounding this effort, or any discoveries. Once NASA starts talking about UFOs—well, like it or not, it’s a whole different conversation."
"NASA Is Finally Ready to ‘Science’ UFOs The world’s top space agency has decided to lean into the discussion."
Hmm
Final para:
"The modern UAP story has been populated by quite an ensemble: lawmakers, defense officials, UFO activists, the Blink-182 rock star Tom DeLonge. Now the cast includes the world’s top space agency and its arsenal of sophisticated telescopes and space probes. NASA officials said they would make all of their findings available for anyone to see. No secrets! But that doesn’t mean that NASA will be able to control the public narrative surrounding this effort, or any discoveries. Once NASA starts talking about UFOs—well, like it or not, it’s a whole different conversation."
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
No party led by Farage is ever going to overtake either the Tories or Labour - and probably not even the Lib Dems - in a GE. The best they can do is steal votes from them but even they they won't translate into seats. The dynamic simply isn't there.
If the Tories went for a policy to rejoin the EU or return to the single market and full free movement they might.
Before May went in Spring 2019 the Brexit Party were neck and neck with the Tories in some polls.
At the 2015 General Election UKIP got more votes than the LDs if not more seats
I worry the Tories have got themselves caught up with some stereotypes about the mythical redwall and are forgetting that it's demographically and politically really not that different from the rest of the country. This image of salt of the earth English patriots flying their England flags and longing for a return to imperial weights and measures is a simplification to say the least and if it's true anywhere then it's more true of the estuarine regions of Essex and Kent than much of the North.
Yes identity and culture are important but I fear Tory thinking has started to fetishise it to the exclusion of other things like decent pay, cost of living and public services.
I agree with all of that, apart from the first two words.
Looks like Cheese n Crackers is now running the show. It must be that Boris senses that she is the most likely to resign from the Cabinet and do a Geoffrey. Nervous times for Boris.
These politicians on a journey are a dangerous bunch. Truss an ex-Lib Dem and previous remainer, Lord Frost a grey bureaucrat with mainstream views, both on a trajectory rightwards and it seems like once people get the momentum there is a danger they keep going. Whereas the more stable right or leftwingers are a little less likely to go bonkers.
That said Redwood seems also to have gone on a journey recently, towards Schumacher-esque autarchy.
The simpler explanation is that Truss and Frost are preparing for a leadership election.
Frost? Surely that would mean him resigning his peerage. And once resigned, he surely wouldn't get it back after a leadership challenge. Although I suppose Lord Home (of the Hirsel) did, back in the 60's.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
No party led by Farage is ever going to overtake either the Tories or Labour - and probably not even the Lib Dems - in a GE. The best they can do is steal votes from them but even they they won't translate into seats. The dynamic simply isn't there.
If the Tories went for a policy to rejoin the EU or return to the single market and full free movement they might.
Before May went in Spring 2019 the Brexit Party were near neck and neck with the Tories in some polls. Until Johnson was elected Tory leader the Brexit Party even overtook the Tories in a few polls.
At the 2015 General Election UKIP got more votes than the LDs if not more seats
Can I just gently say to you that you seem to live a life that fails to recognise change, have a tendency to put labels on people, which frankly is silly as everyone is different, and cannot see how quickly the political scene is changing
You can be blind to the consequences and firm your opinions by looking backwards, but change requires a mindset to accept change, move on to adopt it as well as improving it.
Your way ends exactly as the dinosaurs who could not change, extinction
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
No party led by Farage is ever going to overtake either the Tories or Labour - and probably not even the Lib Dems - in a GE. The best they can do is steal votes from them but even they they won't translate into seats. The dynamic simply isn't there.
If the Tories went for a policy to rejoin the EU or return to the single market and full free movement they might.
Before May went in Spring 2019 the Brexit Party were near neck and neck with the Tories in some polls. Until Johnson was elected Tory leader the Brexit Party even overtook the Tories in a few polls.
At the 2015 General Election UKIP got more votes than the LDs if not more seats
Can I just gently say to you that you seem to live a life that fails to recognise change, have a tendency to put labels on people, which frankly is silly as everyone is different, and cannot see how quickly the political scene is changing
You can be blind to the consequences and firm your opinions by looking backwards, but change requires a mindset to accept change, move on to adopt it as well as improving it.
Your way ends exactly as the dinosaurs who could not change, extinction
Any organisation which ignores its core customers and supporters also faces extinction
Good. About time to blow the bloody doors off. Hopefully the Bill invokes Article 16 so its legal.
She's going to drive us over a cliff edge?
I hope so.
This is risky for the Tories. In 2020, if the EU responded harshly, and the economic situation worsened then I think the Tories could have gotten away with it by blaming the EU and banging a red, white and blue drum. I think now the electorate are much less forgiving of Boris's, and by extension the Government's, pissing around. If they take action that can be pointed to as worsening the economic situation then they are going to be fucked harder and angrier than a step-Turkish conscript looking to dodge the draft. On PornHub.
Quite right. They're potentially also handing a considerable weapon to Sir Keir. He can't blame any economic damage on Brexit without sounding like he's against Brexit. However, if Boris starts a trade war then Sir Keir can have a field day blaming the Tories for ensuing mayhem without sounding like a Remainer traitor. Boris would be horribly exposed.
No, that's the trap Remainers fell into during negotiations, of appearing to side with the EU against the UK. Brexit is still weak ground for Labour.
I think you are correct. Labour cannot capitulate over Brexit. Sensible Tories can, so long as they stick to an EEA including FOM agreement but nothing more controversial. According to the Daily Mail that would be pragmatism from sensible Tories but treason from anyone else.
Good. About time to blow the bloody doors off. Hopefully the Bill invokes Article 16 so its legal.
She's going to drive us over a cliff edge?
I hope so.
This is risky for the Tories. In 2020, if the EU responded harshly, and the economic situation worsened then I think the Tories could have gotten away with it by blaming the EU and banging a red, white and blue drum. I think now the electorate are much less forgiving of Boris's, and by extension the Government's, pissing around. If they take action that can be pointed to as worsening the economic situation then they are going to be fucked harder and angrier than a step-Turkish conscript looking to dodge the draft. On PornHub.
Quite right. They're potentially also handing a considerable weapon to Sir Keir. He can't blame any economic damage on Brexit without sounding like he's against Brexit. However, if Boris starts a trade war then Sir Keir can have a field day blaming the Tories for ensuing mayhem without sounding like a Remainer traitor. Boris would be horribly exposed.
No, that's the trap Remainers fell into during negotiations, of appearing to side with the EU against the UK. Brexit is still weak ground for Labour.
Yes, Sir Keir has to be careful. Phrase it something like this: 'Whilst I utterly deplore and condemn the retaliatory action the EU has taken, there can be no doubt that a huge part of the responsibility for these catastrophic events lies with the prime minister.' That should do it.
Looks like Cheese n Crackers is now running the show. It must be that Boris senses that she is the most likely to resign from the Cabinet and do a Geoffrey. Nervous times for Boris.
These politicians on a journey are a dangerous bunch. Truss an ex-Lib Dem and previous remainer, Lord Frost a grey bureaucrat with mainstream views, both on a trajectory rightwards and it seems like once people get the momentum there is a danger they keep going. Whereas the more stable right or leftwingers are a little less likely to go bonkers.
That said Redwood seems also to have gone on a journey recently, towards Schumacher-esque autarchy.
The simpler explanation is that Truss and Frost are preparing for a leadership election.
Frost? Surely that would mean him resigning his peerage. And once resigned, he surely wouldn't get it back after a leadership challenge. Although I suppose Lord Home (of the Hirsel) did, back in the 60's.
And for Truss it's not just leadership ambitions. Sunak, Javid, Mordaunt (even leaving aside Hunt) likely all have leadership ambitions but have not gone off on the same pugnacious trip as Truss or Frost.
Looks like Cheese n Crackers is now running the show. It must be that Boris senses that she is the most likely to resign from the Cabinet and do a Geoffrey. Nervous times for Boris.
These politicians on a journey are a dangerous bunch. Truss an ex-Lib Dem and previous remainer, Lord Frost a grey bureaucrat with mainstream views, both on a trajectory rightwards and it seems like once people get the momentum there is a danger they keep going. Whereas the more stable right or leftwingers are a little less likely to go bonkers.
That said Redwood seems also to have gone on a journey recently, towards Schumacher-esque autarchy.
The simpler explanation is that Truss and Frost are preparing for a leadership election.
Frost? Surely that would mean him resigning his peerage. And once resigned, he surely wouldn't get it back after a leadership challenge. Although I suppose Lord Home (of the Hirsel) did, back in the 60's.
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
No party led by Farage is ever going to overtake either the Tories or Labour - and probably not even the Lib Dems - in a GE. The best they can do is steal votes from them but even they they won't translate into seats. The dynamic simply isn't there.
If the Tories went for a policy to rejoin the EU or return to the single market and full free movement they might.
Before May went in Spring 2019 the Brexit Party were near neck and neck with the Tories in some polls. Until Johnson was elected Tory leader the Brexit Party even overtook the Tories in a few polls.
At the 2015 General Election UKIP got more votes than the LDs if not more seats
Can I just gently say to you that you seem to live a life that fails to recognise change, have a tendency to put labels on people, which frankly is silly as everyone is different, and cannot see how quickly the political scene is changing
You can be blind to the consequences and firm your opinions by looking backwards, but change requires a mindset to accept change, move on to adopt it as well as improving it.
Your way ends exactly as the dinosaurs who could not change, extinction
Any organisation which ignores its core customers and supporters also faces extinction
You really are not getting it
Core supporters do not into government make
I am a conservative that you insult and dismiss because I, along with many others even on here, do not accept Boris should lead the party and with the 148 will move heaven and earth to change the leadership and see the conservative party on a more collegiate and electable path
You have the 'Corbyn mindset' and see where that has got him, purity (except voting Plaid) comes at a price
The more I think about it, it feels to me like the tories are in existential crisis. They could well be on the cusp of a "collapse of the liberal party" wipeout in the next general election. It is early 2019 revisited. Johnson's reinvention of the conservative party looks at the moment like it has completely failed. So, someone has to repeat what Johnson did in 2019, but with the first priority being to fix market credibility. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Time is short.
Maybe Penny can reinvent them as the caring but discliplined party. Attractive matron.
The main alternative, and favourite for the moment, is Hunt - comparatively a focus on pure professionalism. I'm not sure how far that would go, or how long it would necessarily last, though.
Risk with Hunt is not only do the Tories fail to win back any voters lost to Labour or the LDs but they also leak Leavers back to RefUK and end up on the 20 to 25% they were on before May resigned and even worse than the 33% they are on now
Farage would likely return to lead RefUK if Hunt replaced Boris as Tory leader and PM
No he wouldn't. Why are you worrying about Leavers? We've left!
Hunt/Mordaunt/Wallace need to calm the Blue wall without frightening the RedWall. It's a tough balance to achieve, but at present Johnson has pissed off both sets of voters.
Hunt would likely try and return to May's Brexit Deal again, that would inevitably see some Tory Leavers leak to Farage and RefUK
No he wouldn't.
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Reopen free movement which return to the single market requires and the redwall is lost to the Tories for good.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Farage and the Tories would split what was left of the Tory vote after Johnson between them. Canada's Conservatives in 1993 would beckon.
The Tories are never going to get less than about 165 seats (as they won in 1997 and 2001). The Canadian Conservatives were reduced to 2 seats in 1993. Not much of a comparison.
If Farage's party overtook them, like Reform overtook the Canadian Tories in 1993 they would.
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
No party led by Farage is ever going to overtake either the Tories or Labour - and probably not even the Lib Dems - in a GE. The best they can do is steal votes from them but even they they won't translate into seats. The dynamic simply isn't there.
If the Tories went for a policy to rejoin the EU or return to the single market and full free movement they might.
Before May went in Spring 2019 the Brexit Party were near neck and neck with the Tories in some polls. Until Johnson was elected Tory leader the Brexit Party even overtook the Tories in a few polls.
At the 2015 General Election UKIP got more votes than the LDs if not more seats
Can I just gently say to you that you seem to live a life that fails to recognise change, have a tendency to put labels on people, which frankly is silly as everyone is different, and cannot see how quickly the political scene is changing
You can be blind to the consequences and firm your opinions by looking backwards, but change requires a mindset to accept change, move on to adopt it as well as improving it.
Your way ends exactly as the dinosaurs who could not change, extinction
Any organisation which ignores its core customers and supporters also faces extinction
Which is precisely why the Tories stand on the brink of losing the blue wall. Their long term core customers.
Comments
The only caveat is that a lot of this history was at a time when the wider party membership was not so involved in making the final decision. If a candidate without Great Office tenure makes it to the final two then I think the membership will give more weight to ideology than experience.
That said, I think it follows from this that Javid is good value at current odds.
Farage and RefUK, whoever they are, are only in the mind of far right obsessives
Losing a May 2024 election and being replaced before his fifth anniversary in office could also achieve that, but I'm more expecting him to resign.
Reckon that's pretty reasonable, myself.
In her lifetime however Major, Redwood, Portillo, Hague and IDS, Davis and Fox all at one time or another were Thatcher's heir. Major, Hague and IDS of course even got The Lady's public endorsement
No Thatcherite she.
"The media is run by trolls
Desperate journalists are manufacturing news
BY KAT ROSENFIELD"
https://unherd.com/2022/06/the-media-is-run-by-trolls/
I think that ship has sailed and circumnavigated the globe umpteen times since!
1992 is 30 years ago now!
You primarily need to steady the nerves of Surrey voters and their ilk. They would prefer a softer redial of Brexit. Hunt does that for you.
Your RedWall are currently concerned with the economy. You sell the Single Market to them as a means of improving the economy whilst retaining their newly minted sovereignty. You say selected Europeans can then come in to do the jobs they don't want to do, but explain it wouldn't be the free for all that Labour would allow (even if that is a white lie). Hunt could do that for you.
You tell Farage and the ERG to **** off! Nobody likes them any more.
Personally I'd like to see the back of the Conservatives for a decade. The longer Johnson remains, the more likely I suspect that becomes a reality.
Also seen on the streets of this self-same unremarkable small rural town: two derelict beggars. So much for the idea that COVID interventionism might lead to a marginally more caring approach to the destitute. Things are actually getting worse not better.
The fact that Truss after almost a decade in the Cabinet, holding multiple big offices, is only mocked for an awkward moment of a speech she gave as DEFRA Secretary nearly a decade ago in her first Conference Speech as a Cabinet Minister is quite remarkable really.
Truss has very consistently held libertarian economic views. I think she could make a very good PM if given the opportunity, much better than the current office holder.
Mind, physical health is such ATM that I haven't been in any pubs for three weeks.
Farage also would be even more certain to return than with a return to May's Deal
Ironically, during the EU Referendum when I was torn which way to vote, she was one of the few politicians I saw to make positive cases for Remain that I agreed with. There was far too much negativity, but she actually made positive arguments which was refreshing.
Not sure that can be described as being 'pro-Depp'.
Staying alive?
How much exactly does the mind bleach retail for?
We'd all be at the next pb gathering to se that!
See also the Les Republicains collapse in France as it has lost support to Le Pen and Zemmour as well as Macron
How is it going round the world? Is it really over out there like it is here, if not why not?
When’s the next time us 20 year olds will get vaccine?
Could a bad variant come back to UK meaning some restrictions to save lives and protect the NHS?
Before May went in Spring 2019 the Brexit Party were near neck and neck with the Tories in some polls. Until Johnson was elected Tory leader the Brexit Party even overtook the Tories in a few polls.
At the 2015 General Election UKIP got more votes than the LDs if not more seats
That said Redwood seems also to have gone on a journey recently, towards Schumacher-esque autarchy.
But if you wanted co-ordinated cynical politics if it were me I'd have Truss push her hard bill for Northern Ireland, and in a completely unrelated move have Sunak suspend fuel duty for the duration of the war until fuel prices come down, ending the worst of inflation and thus meaning that the triple lock doesn't raise pensions by too much etc
See how much voters are bothered by the EU's threats when fuel is £1.20 a litre.
Yes identity and culture are important but I fear Tory thinking has started to fetishise it to the exclusion of other things like decent pay, cost of living and public services.
"NASA Is Finally Ready to ‘Science’ UFOs
The world’s top space agency has decided to lean into the discussion."
Hmm
Final para:
"The modern UAP story has been populated by quite an ensemble: lawmakers, defense officials, UFO activists, the Blink-182 rock star Tom DeLonge. Now the cast includes the world’s top space agency and its arsenal of sophisticated telescopes and space probes. NASA officials said they would make all of their findings available for anyone to see. No secrets! But that doesn’t mean that NASA will be able to control the public narrative surrounding this effort, or any discoveries. Once NASA starts talking about UFOs—well, like it or not, it’s a whole different conversation."
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/06/nasa-ufo-uap-research-team/661229/
https://www.roastandpost.com/shop/gold-collection/Kopi-Luwak/?source=&gclid=CjwKCAjw14uVBhBEEiwAaufYx6yXwNweqZEUvwTP-tqCHVb_N56Ew-FosM_hvY309iPj0JPW7F_JrBoC2sEQAvD_BwE
Although I suppose Lord Home (of the Hirsel) did, back in the 60's.
You can be blind to the consequences and firm your opinions by looking backwards, but change requires a mindset to accept change, move on to adopt it as well as improving it.
Your way ends exactly as the dinosaurs who could not change, extinction
Core supporters do not into government make
I am a conservative that you insult and dismiss because I, along with many others even on here, do not accept Boris should lead the party and with the 148 will move heaven and earth to change the leadership and see the conservative party on a more collegiate and electable path
You have the 'Corbyn mindset' and see where that has got him, purity (except voting Plaid) comes at a price