I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
Yes, there is a potential way out for them, there.
"If you're worried about higher immigration in the last few years, Nigel's Brexit is a large part of the cause." This also has the virtue of being true, because he's a charlatan.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
Too many of them still think ‘Get Brexit Done’ succeeded because people were desperate for Brexit, whereas the truth is that we were fed up with Brexit and wanted our politicians to turn their attention to all the other stuff. Which the lying tub of lard never did.
How could you call him that?
It's 'lying, drunken tub of lard.'
IIRC the PB standard terminology at the time was 'fat, lying sack of jizz' or FLSOJ, which I mention only in the interest of historical accuracy.
This week the Tories have adopted a strategy of warning that people who vote Reform could hand Labour a super-majority that would put Labour in power for a decade or more. Yet the poll highlighted the challenge facing Tory strategists in converting this sentiment into votes. Only 22 per cent of Reform voters thought Labour would win any kind of majority.
I think this lack of belief in a likely Labour majority is of a piece with other aspects of conspiracist thinking in Reform. I expect, whatever the result, Farage to claim that he was cheated in the election. If Labour do win the 400+ seats currently being forecast then Reform voters will be so surprised by that they will easily believe something funny was going on.
It's difficult to overstate the bubble effect of local Facebooks groups. I live in a hotbed of cycling, coffee and pro-Palestinian sentiment and even my FB group if full of people who are likely Reform voters, railing against net-zero, cyclists, gentrification and "Meghan".
If you point out that the Conservatives/Reform get barely any votes in these wards you get a kind of stunned silence - or lots of abuse. If it's like that in an area with Green/SNP/Labour councillors, I can't even imagine what it's like Lincolnshire, Essex etc.
My local Facebook group is just full of "anyone want these spare bricks?" and "lost cat, please check garages and outbuildings".
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
I am not sure Sunak can fall any further but it hardly matters as nobody is listening to him
Having said that when the 4th July arrives and the country expects a huge landslide do not be surprised if many conservatives hold their nose and vote for the party
Its definitely possible. Hold your nose happens an awful lot.
But, and its a big but.
The remaining people still prone to vote Tory appear to want Farage and not Sunak or any of the 3rd rate Farage wannabes who may survive the electoral cull.
If the current momentum continues - and its accelerating remember - then the stampede to back the Nigel will be similar to the GOP stampede to back Trump.
I think Farage-ism needs to be tested to destruction, like Corbynism was.
Let him be the LOTO for five years, stand as leader of RefCon in 2029, and get defeated on a hard right platform.
Perhaps the Conservatives will see sense and start rebuilding from there.
Elections in the UK are won from the centre.
I keep hearing this idea 'elections are won from the centre' from everyone. It just seems obvious to me, that if the centre stops being able to deliver, then people will look for a more radical alternative; and the more radical alternative will come from the right. Particularly if the failing centre is represented by a Labour government.
I am often characterised as 'right wing' but I am not. I am probably going to vote Labour. I just have a strong sense this is how things will work out.
Right now, the populist right is getting its ass kicked by Labour, who are campaigning from the centre.
Yeah but Labour is just representing the centrist blob. Their popularity is not deep. When in government they will have all the same problems as the current government and people will be rapidly dissatisfied. The idea that at this point a 'centrist, detoxified' conservative party offering the same managerial solutions would be welcomed as the answer is unlikely. People will want some more radical solutions and the right will have these. It is what I think will happen next. No one should take comfort in a massive labour victory if the 'far right' become the main opposition.
Votes for Farage will produce less than a handful of MPs, they will only diminish the number of Tory MPs, so who will be the main opposition? It will still be the Tory party or an outside chance the LibDems.
I'm not sure it is correct to look at things strictly in terms of the 'number of MP's'. It is as it was with UKIP - no parliamentary representation, then Brexit. But the point is that, if Reform don't get MP's, then the tories will become the opposition, and it is hard to see them doing anything other than purging the residual centrist element and move to the right, probably join with Reform - that will be their instinct.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's a good question how much the centre moves compared with how much the parties move. Or perhaps better, how much people's perceptions of the parties move. (2019 Corbyn was seen as more extreme than 2017 Corbyn, but I doubt he had changed much.)
only start in 2002, because the late 70s are the really interesting test case.
In a way, it's another version of the question "do parties win elections, or do their opponents lose them?" For which current events strongly imply the second. And if that's true, perhaps we should rethink what we mean by a democratic mandate and how much load it can bear. One of the problems the Conservatives currently face is their assumption that 2019 was about their triumph not Labour's disaster. And yes, Starmer faces the same temptation.
If you want to file something under 'what were we thinking' it is statements like this in a job description for a London Council:
"We especially encourage applications from a global majority background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments."
My sense is that things like this will fuel a right wing/populist backlash. Unsurprisingly this is a Labour Council. It will be used very cleverly by people like Nigel Farage.
Who is the “Global Majority”? I thought Women were the global majority but I don’t think that’s what they mean here.
I’m too lazy to investigate but do they mean skin colour in which case is this global majority south Asian or East Asian? Surely this discriminates against black people as they aren’t the global majority.
Unless of course they mean “anyone who isn’t white” which would just be a bit more honest if they wrote that.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
Voters can see that lots of things in the country aren't working and need both investment and change, yet both the main parties merely propose to tinker around the edges. The LibDem and Green and Reform programmes at least contain a few new ideas and key priorities to interest those voters looking for political change and actual policies - the Labour/Tory debate is a 'fail' as far as the election campaign being the stage for a 'great national debate'. So it isn't a surprise that the smaller parties are advancing while the sterile debate between Labour and Tory is now losing them both support.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
What is it that is bothering you exactly about Reform? They have policies that based on your posting history you would probably like, IE dealing severely with violent criminals. The BNP were never the second most popular party in an opinion poll, or anywhere near.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
The Tories don't need the red wall to win: they haven't had it before 2019 when they've won. It's useful, but not critical. But they do need the traditional Tory areas - e.g. the Home Counties - to come back to them. And repudiating the shitshow that was Brexit - and politically decapitating the Europhobes who have so damaged the party - might help with that. It also might help gain a little traction with the youngsters.
Brexit and Europhobia have been a disaster for the Conservative Party for over three decades. I fail to see how it will help them in the future.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
What is it that is bothering you exactly about Reform? They have policies that based on your posting history you would probably like, IE dealing severely with violent criminals. The BNP were never the second most popular party in an opinion poll, or anywhere near.
What on Earth would bother anyone about a limited company running the country? For the benefit of a pair of grifters like Farage and Tice?
The BBC reporting on sewage discharge and the latest shocking figures will be a gift to the opposition especially the Lib Dems who have made this a big part of their campaign .
If you want to file something under 'what were we thinking' it is statements like this in a job description for a London Council:
"We especially encourage applications from a global majority background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments."
My sense is that things like this will fuel a right wing/populist backlash. Unsurprisingly this is a Labour Council. It will be used very cleverly by people like Nigel Farage.
Who is the “Global Majority”? I thought Women were the global majority but I don’t think that’s what they mean here.
I’m too lazy to investigate but do they mean skin colour in which case is this global majority south Asian or East Asian? Surely this discriminates against black people as they aren’t the global majority.
Unless of course they mean “anyone who isn’t white” which would just be a bit more honest if they wrote that.
It is code for non-white. Every previous code for non-white has fallen out of favour for the same reasons that people avoid using non-white. No one wants to be identified on the basis of what they aren't.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
Which is *exactly* what has happened to the Republican Party. The surviving moderates know the extremists and the activist base are both barking mad, but dumping them means joining the Democrats or instant career death.
You can see something similar happening here, in which case the best we can hope for is that the ceiling of support for the mentalists remains too low for them to achieve a Parliamentary majority. One thing we have in our favour is that there aren't vast legions of gun and Bible waving fascists, who regard The Handmaid's Tale as a prospectus for a better future, stalking the land, which is a start.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
It might be the only way to bring back some more middle-ground voters, not Leavers. At this point the Tories are failing apart, so anything might be useful.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
It might be the only way to bring back some more middle-ground voters, not Leavers. At this point the Tories are failing apart, so anything might be useful.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
Exactly. Attack him and his charlatanry. Stop indulging it.
The BBC reporting on sewage discharge and the latest shocking figures will be a gift to the opposition especially the Lib Dems who have made this a big part of their campaign .
Tuesday: zero growth
Thursday: record NHS waiting lists
Friday: more sewage discharges
Sunak can't catch a break, and Farage blames it all on immigration, the only subject that he wants to talk about.
Scouting round for constituency betting opportunities, my eyes have alighted on the LDs in Torbay and the Tories in Stratford. Anyone have some news from these fronts?
I see the LDs had a strong result in a Torbay council election last night, but I'm not see if you can read across from it to the GE.
LDs put a lot of effort into the by-election (last week, not last night) - and still lost. Previously a solid Tory area, but not sure it says much about their chances of retaking it. Kevin Foster, the Tory MP as was and candidate, has been very visible, is a leading figure in church groups - and has basically learnt that if you want to hold a former LibDem seat, you have to work it like a LibDem. So, for example, he put his Parliamentary pay-rises into charitable awards in the constituency. And the councillor who won the by-election is his wife, Hazel.
In a Tory meltdown he could lose, but it depends how much Reform eats into the pensioner vote - of which there is a lot. The seat was previously lost to the LibDems because a former MP wrote novels and did damn all to work it. You can't accuse Kevin of that.
I can only imagine what it is like day to day inside the White House. There is no way he is making any decisions.
Indeed
That’s one of the saddest of all the videos I’ve seen. He’s just pitiable now, it cannot be fun, his wife needs to do the right thing. Imagine him trying to last til 2028??
The way Macron then Meloni have to rescue him, Jeez. This is the President of the USA!
There could have been people out of shot he was giving the thumbs up too, though to be honest he could be a brain dead corpse with no pulse and still get 45-50% against Trump
I think there some army men packing up the gear just in shot that he was walking towards. I suspect he was a bit bored, and as President he can what he damn well likes,
One of the funniest things on YouTube imo is Jonathan Meades' reaction to journalist Mark Lawson's mentioning of the fact he'd just visited the Edward Heath Museum in Salisbury.
Good morning. You haven’t done yourself any favours here.
Why is that even remotely funny? Arundells is a lovely house with views of the Cathedral. The museum is a fascinating collection. There are some wonderful photos and memorabilia, including of Heath’s time serving in WWII.
I imagine I’m a lot younger than you but I try to learn about the past. People complain about the lack of education in this country and then you post something as stupid as this.
As a fan of Meades, I don't see why you are so cross. The idea of Mark Lawson going to Salisbury simply for the opening of the Edward Heath museum is a moment of, shall we say bathos. Heath was, at best, a mediocre politician, and arguably his failure was what brought about the end of the post war consensus. A snort of derision seems a fairly appropriate response from anyone vaguely sentient. Any review of Heath's career will surely find more a terrible warning than a path to follow.
If you want to file something under 'what were we thinking' it is statements like this in a job description for a London Council:
"We especially encourage applications from a global majority background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments."
My sense is that things like this will fuel a right wing/populist backlash. Unsurprisingly this is a Labour Council. It will be used very cleverly by people like Nigel Farage.
Who is the “Global Majority”? I thought Women were the global majority but I don’t think that’s what they mean here.
I’m too lazy to investigate but do they mean skin colour in which case is this global majority south Asian or East Asian? Surely this discriminates against black people as they aren’t the global majority.
Unless of course they mean “anyone who isn’t white” which would just be a bit more honest if they wrote that.
Well exactly. The term 'global majority' is an interesting case study in the hubris of the 'woke left'. It is what happens when you curtail free speech and debate because of fear: ideas emerge that are not properly criticised or analysed; to the detriment of what you are trying to achieve.
Why not just say that you want the workforce to represent the people they serve in terms of ethnicity and leave it at that?
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
Which is *exactly* what has happened to the Republican Party. The surviving moderates know the extremists and the activist base are both barking mad, but dumping them means joining the Democrats or instant career death.
You can see something similar happening here, in which case the best we can hope for is that the ceiling of support for the mentalists remains too low for them to achieve a Parliamentary majority. One thing we have in our favour is that there aren't vast legions of gun and Bible waving fascists, who regard The Handmaid's Tale as a prospectus for a better future, stalking the land, which is a start.
It all started when Cameron decided on a Referendum to unite his party and destroy UKIP.
You don't defeat the nutters by pandering to them.
When will Farage be called out for his support of Putin . The media have been woeful in this regard .
That's probably a better line of attack than going full-frontal on Brexit.
But attacking Farage requires the Conservatives to recognise that a) he is an enemy, not a potential ally and b) his actions and policies are beyond the pale. And a significant chunk of the party don't believe either of those.
Reform seem a media made paper tiger who may not show up in the real polls as shown up in the recent local elections where they didn`t even win more than a handful of council seats. Especially with someone as washed up as Farage leading them. They seem to be polling high in the online polls but not the phone poll. Probably some right-wingers who will never vote for someone of Indian origin or hate Rishi for another reason may end up plumping for Reform. I reckon 38/25-28/12/10
If you want to file something under 'what were we thinking' it is statements like this in a job description for a London Council:
"We especially encourage applications from a global majority background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments."
My sense is that things like this will fuel a right wing/populist backlash. Unsurprisingly this is a Labour Council. It will be used very cleverly by people like Nigel Farage.
Who is the “Global Majority”? I thought Women were the global majority but I don’t think that’s what they mean here.
I’m too lazy to investigate but do they mean skin colour in which case is this global majority south Asian or East Asian? Surely this discriminates against black people as they aren’t the global majority.
Unless of course they mean “anyone who isn’t white” which would just be a bit more honest if they wrote that.
Soon be a work plus to have arrived in the UK as a "marine adventurer...."
When will Farage be called out for his support of Putin . The media have been woeful in this regard .
That's probably a better line of attack than going full-frontal on Brexit.
But attacking Farage requires the Conservatives to recognise that a) he is an enemy, not a potential ally and b) his actions and policies are beyond the pale. And a significant chunk of the party don't believe either of those.
It’s all a little like Trump. Eventually I think the Conservatives will embrace Farage as one of their own.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
Which is *exactly* what has happened to the Republican Party. The surviving moderates know the extremists and the activist base are both barking mad, but dumping them means joining the Democrats or instant career death.
You can see something similar happening here, in which case the best we can hope for is that the ceiling of support for the mentalists remains too low for them to achieve a Parliamentary majority. One thing we have in our favour is that there aren't vast legions of gun and Bible waving fascists, who regard The Handmaid's Tale as a prospectus for a better future, stalking the land, which is a start.
So, in one respect the situation in Britain is better - I agree that there are fewer people inclined to support Farage in Britain than Trump in the US.
But in other respects the situation is worse. A party in Britain can win a comfortable majority with little more than a third of the vote, if the rest of the vote is sufficiently split between other parties, whereas the rigid duopoly in the US means the Trumpists need to get much closer to half the vote.
The two effects probably cancel.
Based on the current polling a lot of current Tory voters and 2019 Tory voters would be willing to support Farage. So I could envision a 2029GE with vote shares of: CON 5% LAB 30% LDM 20% GRN 5% RFM 35% Which, per electoral calculus (basically guesswork with these shares, but someone else's guesswork) would give seat totals of: CON 8 seats LAB 175 LDM 61 GRN 2 RFM 367
If you want to file something under 'what were we thinking' it is statements like this in a job description for a London Council:
"We especially encourage applications from a global majority background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments."
My sense is that things like this will fuel a right wing/populist backlash. Unsurprisingly this is a Labour Council. It will be used very cleverly by people like Nigel Farage.
Who is the “Global Majority”? I thought Women were the global majority but I don’t think that’s what they mean here.
I’m too lazy to investigate but do they mean skin colour in which case is this global majority south Asian or East Asian? Surely this discriminates against black people as they aren’t the global majority.
Unless of course they mean “anyone who isn’t white” which would just be a bit more honest if they wrote that.
Soon be a work plus to have arrived in the UK as a "marine adventurer...."
That’s the traditional way people from the UK arrived in those global majority places in the 19th century. It tended to be a work plus for them.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
It might be the only way to bring back some more middle-ground voters, not Leavers. At this point the Tories are failing apart, so anything might be useful.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
Except of course that is utter bullshit. The big boys made me do it then ran away. Brexit gave the Tories complete control of immigration and they have made an active decision to allow a very large increase in the numbers of people legally coming into this country. It wasn't Brexit or boats or lefty lawyers, it was entirely the Tory Government's active decision in favour if more migration.
Now I happen to favour that decision but for the Tories and their desperate supporters to join with the Remoaners and try and blame it on Brexit when it has been entirely down to their post Brexit policies is dishonest in the extreme.
The BBC reporting on sewage discharge and the latest shocking figures will be a gift to the opposition especially the Lib Dems who have made this a big part of their campaign .
Tuesday: zero growth
Thursday: record NHS waiting lists
Friday: more sewage discharges
Sunak can't catch a break, and Farage blames it all on immigration, the only subject that he wants to talk about.
Oh that's brilliant - can I nick it and adapt it for up here?
Farage: everything is the fault of immigration SNP: everything is the fault of the union
Sunak would be in a stronger position to call out Farage over Putin and Ukraine if he was able to tap into the recent surge in national pride at helping overthrow tyranny in Europe, as expressed over the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
If you want to file something under 'what were we thinking' it is statements like this in a job description for a London Council:
"We especially encourage applications from a global majority background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments."
My sense is that things like this will fuel a right wing/populist backlash. Unsurprisingly this is a Labour Council. It will be used very cleverly by people like Nigel Farage.
Who is the “Global Majority”? I thought Women were the global majority but I don’t think that’s what they mean here.
I’m too lazy to investigate but do they mean skin colour in which case is this global majority south Asian or East Asian? Surely this discriminates against black people as they aren’t the global majority.
Unless of course they mean “anyone who isn’t white” which would just be a bit more honest if they wrote that.
Soon be a work plus to have arrived in the UK as a "marine adventurer...."
That’s the traditional way people from the UK arrived in those global majority places in the 19th century. It tended to be a work plus for them.
Sunak would be in a stronger position to call out Farage over Putin and Ukraine if he was able to tap into the recent surge in national pride at helping overthrow tyranny in Europe, as expressed over the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Instead...
The two are utterly unrelated. And Sunak did attend the event in Portsmouth the day before, and the British part of the event in France. Listening to some people, you'd think he'd undone his fly and pi**ed on the graves of the dead.
Whereas Farage is absolutely uninterested in what is best for Britain - and shills for Russia.
But I guess he's still a hero to the Europhobes. For some odd reason.
Morning all, 3 local by elections last night, 2 scottish ones counting today but the London one in Greenwich, (Eltham and Chiselhurst constit) was a Con hold with a reasonable swing to them from Labour. Turnout 27%
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
Which is *exactly* what has happened to the Republican Party. The surviving moderates know the extremists and the activist base are both barking mad, but dumping them means joining the Democrats or instant career death.
You can see something similar happening here, in which case the best we can hope for is that the ceiling of support for the mentalists remains too low for them to achieve a Parliamentary majority. One thing we have in our favour is that there aren't vast legions of gun and Bible waving fascists, who regard The Handmaid's Tale as a prospectus for a better future, stalking the land, which is a start.
It all started when Cameron decided on a Referendum to unite his party and destroy UKIP.
You don't defeat the nutters by pandering to them.
It was too late by then. There was already majority support within the Conservative Party/voters for leaving the EU. The argument for EU membership had been lost.
There were two options. One, they could have won the argument for the EU at an earlier stage. Or they could have provided a non-nutty leadership to leaving the EU.
I floated the possibility of Cameron campaigning for Leave before the referendum. If he'd done so, and won, and took Britain out in a calm way, then I think we'd be in a very different place.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
Which is *exactly* what has happened to the Republican Party. The surviving moderates know the extremists and the activist base are both barking mad, but dumping them means joining the Democrats or instant career death.
You can see something similar happening here, in which case the best we can hope for is that the ceiling of support for the mentalists remains too low for them to achieve a Parliamentary majority. One thing we have in our favour is that there aren't vast legions of gun and Bible waving fascists, who regard The Handmaid's Tale as a prospectus for a better future, stalking the land, which is a start.
It all started when Cameron decided on a Referendum to unite his party and destroy UKIP.
You don't defeat the nutters by pandering to them.
Problem is that someone would have eventually have to lance the boil of Brexit. When Cameron went for it “Remain” should have won but they fucked up the campaign, went super negative with project fear, didn’t bother even pretending to understand people’s concerns and then “Leave” ran a good guerilla campaign. So it shouldn’t have been a problem except for complacency and arrogance at the top, across all political wings.
If Cameron hadn’t done it, and it’s easy to say he did it to stop the Tories splitting so that Labourites etc can claim some sort of moral high ground, then someone would have had to. It could have been Starmer holding together a Labour government right now against UKIP who had replaced the Tories and threatening to sweep to power off the back of anger at establishment parties ignoring them for decades over EU concerns.
So leave the whole bs that it only happened because Cameron wanted to save the Tories, it was coming for everyone and was a “when” not “if”.
If politicians had the balls earlier then they could have mitigated EU concerns by changing to contributory benefits policies, they could have copied the rest of the EU on a brake on free movement but they didn’t give a shit about what they saw as an irritating bunch of xenophobes.
Brexit is the fault of generations of politicians left and right. Much the way that the Tories’ current hell is the result of decades of stupidity, arrogance, bad decisions and “events.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
It might be the only way to bring back some more middle-ground voters, not Leavers. At this point the Tories are failing apart, so anything might be useful.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
Exactly. Attack him and his charlatanry. Stop indulging it.
That would be attack line makes no sense at all. Prior to Brexit, there was a large amount of immigration from Europe, which has largely stopped and been replaced by immigration from the rest of the world. The rise in immigration is entirely down to choices that the Tories made.
Sunak would be in a stronger position to call out Farage over Putin and Ukraine if he was able to tap into the recent surge in national pride at helping overthrow tyranny in Europe, as expressed over the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Instead...
The two are utterly unrelated. And Sunak did attend the event in Portsmouth the day before, and the British part of the event in France. Listening to some people, you'd think he'd undone his fly and pi**ed on the graves of the dead.
Whereas Farage is absolutely uninterested in what is best for Britain - and shills for Russia.
But I guess he's still a hero to the Europhobes. For some odd reason.
The most effective political poster of the past 25 years was Ed Miliband peering out of Alex Salmond's top pocket.
The Tories need to do one of Farage peering out of Putin's top pocket.
Then one of him peering out of Trump's top pocket.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
That's quite a brave prediction considering that Reform are still trending upwards, Con and Lab are still trending downwards, and there are still 3 weeks to go. If Reform could get up to 25% seat then they would start to win a significant number of seats and maybe become the main opposition.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
It might be the only way to bring back some more middle-ground voters, not Leavers. At this point the Tories are failing apart, so anything might be useful.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
Exactly. Attack him and his charlatanry. Stop indulging it.
That would be attack line makes no sense at all. Prior to Brexit, there was a large amount of immigration from Europe, which has largely stopped and been replaced by immigration from the rest of the world. The rise in immigration is entirely down to choices that the Tories made.
I don't think the massive increase in people crossing the Channel in boats is down to any UK government policy: which is why they're so hard to stop.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
It might be the only way to bring back some more middle-ground voters, not Leavers. At this point the Tories are failing apart, so anything might be useful.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
Exactly. Attack him and his charlatanry. Stop indulging it.
That would be attack line makes no sense at all. Prior to Brexit, there was a large amount of immigration from Europe, which has largely stopped and been replaced by immigration from the rest of the world. The rise in immigration is entirely down to choices that the Tories made.
I don't think the massive increase in people crossing the Channel in boats is down to any UK government policy: which is why they're so hard to stop.
What is the ratio of legal immigration with visas issued by the Home Office to illegal immigration by small boat crossings of the Channel?
The BBC reporting on sewage discharge and the latest shocking figures will be a gift to the opposition especially the Lib Dems who have made this a big part of their campaign .
Tuesday: zero growth
Thursday: record NHS waiting lists
Friday: more sewage discharges
Sunak can't catch a break, and Farage blames it all on immigration, the only subject that he wants to talk about.
Oh that's brilliant - can I nick it and adapt it for up here?
Farage: everything is the fault of immigration SNP: everything is the fault of the union
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
Yes, there is a potential way out for them, there.
"If you're worried about higher immigration in the last few years, Nigel's Brexit is a large part of the cause." This also has the virtue of being true, because he's a charlatan.
My biggest surprise is how long it took for people to realise the obvious; that Sunak was terrible at politics and would likely fall further during an election campaign.
Wet centrists will own this coming defeat for a long time.
Sunak isn't a "wet centrist" though. He's a weird combination of the things centrists can't stand about the Tory right, and the things the Tory right don't like about their party's self-described pragmatists.
So pleases and understands no one.
If the Tories do have a real disaster it's because they'll be a rare example of a party that managed to totally alienate both the moderate end of its voter coalition and its extreme end at the same time. Even Corbyn only managed one of those.
The odd thing is that Maggie got away with it, and the wet end of the party extended quite a bit further left in those days. Her talent as a politician? Different sort of threat from Socialists? Or has the old centre of the Conservative Party simply ceased to hold? Are the things that (say) Tugendhat and Braverman want incompatible in a way that wasn't true for (say) Patten and Ridley?
Thatcher got away with vacating the centre ground mainly thanks to a divided opposition, but she set up the conditions for a long Tory wilderness when Blair claimed that centre ground.
Cameron had to move his party back to the centre to make them electable again.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
It might be the only way to bring back some more middle-ground voters, not Leavers. At this point the Tories are failing apart, so anything might be useful.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
Exactly. Attack him and his charlatanry. Stop indulging it.
That would be attack line makes no sense at all. Prior to Brexit, there was a large amount of immigration from Europe, which has largely stopped and been replaced by immigration from the rest of the world. The rise in immigration is entirely down to choices that the Tories made.
I don't think the massive increase in people crossing the Channel in boats is down to any UK government policy: which is why they're so hard to stop.
It is a drop in the ocean. 40,000 boat people out of 1.2 million immigrants last year. That's just over 3%. So 96.7% of the immigrants coming to Britain we're the result of the Government's legal migration policies.
Sunak would be in a stronger position to call out Farage over Putin and Ukraine if he was able to tap into the recent surge in national pride at helping overthrow tyranny in Europe, as expressed over the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Instead...
The two are utterly unrelated. And Sunak did attend the event in Portsmouth the day before, and the British part of the event in France. Listening to some people, you'd think he'd undone his fly and pi**ed on the graves of the dead.
Whereas Farage is absolutely uninterested in what is best for Britain - and shills for Russia.
But I guess he's still a hero to the Europhobes. For some odd reason.
The most effective political poster of the past 25 years was Ed Miliband peering out of Alex Salmond's top pocket.
The Tories need to do one of Farage peering out of Putin's top pocket.
Then one of him peering out of Trump's top pocket.
"By their friends do you know them."
Or remake that Angela and Kier one they did with Vlad and Nigel.
The trouble is that the Conservatives (and many individual conservatives) rather like Nigel and all he stands for. They have forgotten the old adage about the difference between the opposition and the enemy.
Morning all, 3 local by elections last night, 2 scottish ones counting today but the London one in Greenwich, (Eltham and Chiselhurst constit) was a Con hold with a reasonable swing to them from Labour. Turnout 27%
The BBC reporting on sewage discharge and the latest shocking figures will be a gift to the opposition especially the Lib Dems who have made this a big part of their campaign .
Tuesday: zero growth
Thursday: record NHS waiting lists
Friday: more sewage discharges
Sunak can't catch a break, and Farage blames it all on immigration, the only subject that he wants to talk about.
Oh that's brilliant - can I nick it and adapt it for up here?
Farage: everything is the fault of immigration SNP: everything is the fault of the union
Ldems : everything is the fault of the Tories
It's a simple old world we live in
The Tory government is responsible for immigration and, indeed, for the union, so that’s the best explanation of the three.
The BBC reporting on sewage discharge and the latest shocking figures will be a gift to the opposition especially the Lib Dems who have made this a big part of their campaign .
Tuesday: zero growth
Thursday: record NHS waiting lists
Friday: more sewage discharges
Sunak can't catch a break, and Farage blames it all on immigration, the only subject that he wants to talk about.
Oh that's brilliant - can I nick it and adapt it for up here?
Farage: everything is the fault of immigration SNP: everything is the fault of the union
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
It might be the only way to bring back some more middle-ground voters, not Leavers. At this point the Tories are failing apart, so anything might be useful.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
Exactly. Attack him and his charlatanry. Stop indulging it.
That would be attack line makes no sense at all. Prior to Brexit, there was a large amount of immigration from Europe, which has largely stopped and been replaced by immigration from the rest of the world. The rise in immigration is entirely down to choices that the Tories made.
It’s time to start telling the public that immigration is needed to drive growth. To compensate for emigration, low birth rate and to drive growth. Now I preferred it when that immigration came from central Europe, not least as much of it was transitory. But the people voted for immigration from India and Nigeria. So be it.
Instead, pushing meaningless, unachievable slogans like Stop the Boats, performative, eye wateringly expensive solutions like Rwanda and compounding the error by seeing foreign aid as a bad, to be eradicated, just plays into Farage’s hands.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
Which is *exactly* what has happened to the Republican Party. The surviving moderates know the extremists and the activist base are both barking mad, but dumping them means joining the Democrats or instant career death.
You can see something similar happening here, in which case the best we can hope for is that the ceiling of support for the mentalists remains too low for them to achieve a Parliamentary majority. One thing we have in our favour is that there aren't vast legions of gun and Bible waving fascists, who regard The Handmaid's Tale as a prospectus for a better future, stalking the land, which is a start.
So, in one respect the situation in Britain is better - I agree that there are fewer people inclined to support Farage in Britain than Trump in the US.
But in other respects the situation is worse. A party in Britain can win a comfortable majority with little more than a third of the vote, if the rest of the vote is sufficiently split between other parties, whereas the rigid duopoly in the US means the Trumpists need to get much closer to half the vote.
The two effects probably cancel.
Based on the current polling a lot of current Tory voters and 2019 Tory voters would be willing to support Farage. So I could envision a 2029GE with vote shares of: CON 5% LAB 30% LDM 20% GRN 5% RFM 35% Which, per electoral calculus (basically guesswork with these shares, but someone else's guesswork) would give seat totals of: CON 8 seats LAB 175 LDM 61 GRN 2 RFM 367
You need both vote share and vote efficiency. 35% is pretty heroic for a hard right outfit at a GE to start with, and on top of that they're going to need to win an awful lot of seats in Southern England to cross the winning line, absent support from the major cities which they aren't going to get. I'm not convinced that the commuter belt is that into them.
The English hard right appeals to angry poor white people. An angry poor white people party has the potential to rack up supermajorities in angry poor white places, whilst being repulsed everywhere else. It doesn't mean we're safe - if they get hold of the corpse of the Conservative Party and are able to use its branding as a Trojan horse with the well-to-do rural elderly then we may still be in trouble - but this offers some cause for optimism that it can be contained.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
Which is *exactly* what has happened to the Republican Party. The surviving moderates know the extremists and the activist base are both barking mad, but dumping them means joining the Democrats or instant career death.
You can see something similar happening here, in which case the best we can hope for is that the ceiling of support for the mentalists remains too low for them to achieve a Parliamentary majority. One thing we have in our favour is that there aren't vast legions of gun and Bible waving fascists, who regard The Handmaid's Tale as a prospectus for a better future, stalking the land, which is a start.
It all started when Cameron decided on a Referendum to unite his party and destroy UKIP.
You don't defeat the nutters by pandering to them.
It was too late by then. There was already majority support within the Conservative Party/voters for leaving the EU. The argument for EU membership had been lost.
There were two options. One, they could have won the argument for the EU at an earlier stage. Or they could have provided a non-nutty leadership to leaving the EU.
I floated the possibility of Cameron campaigning for Leave before the referendum. If he'd done so, and won, and took Britain out in a calm way, then I think we'd be in a very different place.
With the Conservative Party split down the middle over the "betrayal" of Brexit ?
You don't think Boris wouldn't have still seen his opportunity ?
Brexit was about leaving "in a calm way" for a very small portion of those who voted for it, I think.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
It might be the only way to bring back some more middle-ground voters, not Leavers. At this point the Tories are failing apart, so anything might be useful.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
Except of course that is utter bullshit. The big boys made me do it then ran away. Brexit gave the Tories complete control of immigration and they have made an active decision to allow a very large increase in the numbers of people legally coming into this country. It wasn't Brexit or boats or lefty lawyers, it was entirely the Tory Government's active decision in favour if more migration.
Now I happen to favour that decision but for the Tories and their desperate supporters to join with the Remoaners and try and blame it on Brexit when it has been entirely down to their post Brexit policies is dishonest in the extreme.
Well, in theory the Tories had complete control of immigration, but in practice they had huge numbers of vacancies, and an economy that would have gone into a huge recession had they not belatedlly and hastily, gone all-out to bring in more people in the last three years. Retraining people here takes years and years.
There are some variations on the theme, that might actually be one of their only options to survive. They could also move to admittiing something else, also very close to the reality ; "Nigel left us s Hard Brexit, and that left us in a desperate state, short of the people we needed in all areas of the economy" That would lose them the ideologi Leavers for good, but most have them have already moved over to Reform, and are dwindling group anyway. The generally immigration-sceptical, and the centre-right who might occasionally vote for the hard right, are a much bigger group.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
Which is *exactly* what has happened to the Republican Party. The surviving moderates know the extremists and the activist base are both barking mad, but dumping them means joining the Democrats or instant career death.
You can see something similar happening here, in which case the best we can hope for is that the ceiling of support for the mentalists remains too low for them to achieve a Parliamentary majority. One thing we have in our favour is that there aren't vast legions of gun and Bible waving fascists, who regard The Handmaid's Tale as a prospectus for a better future, stalking the land, which is a start.
It all started when Cameron decided on a Referendum to unite his party and destroy UKIP.
You don't defeat the nutters by pandering to them.
It was too late by then. There was already majority support within the Conservative Party/voters for leaving the EU. The argument for EU membership had been lost.
There were two options. One, they could have won the argument for the EU at an earlier stage. Or they could have provided a non-nutty leadership to leaving the EU.
I floated the possibility of Cameron campaigning for Leave before the referendum. If he'd done so, and won, and took Britain out in a calm way, then I think we'd be in a very different place.
With the Conservative Party split down the middle over the "betrayal" of Brexit ?
You don't think Boris wouldn't have still seen his opportunity ?
Brexit was about leaving "in a calm way" for a very small portion of those who voted for it, I think.
It's possible my counterfactual would have only seen the same psychodrama played out in a different way and pace, but I am wary of thinking that certain events were inevitable, and I think it was at least a plausible alternative for how things might have been different.
Sunak would be in a stronger position to call out Farage over Putin and Ukraine if he was able to tap into the recent surge in national pride at helping overthrow tyranny in Europe, as expressed over the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Instead...
I can't imagine a more counter intuitive post. What you forget is that in the eyes of the public the Tories ARE the UKIP Party. Farage is just another branch. What most people saw in the DDay celebrations was a continent who had joined together for the common good.
The UKIPers like Sunak and Farage to most watching were just an embarrassment if they were anything at all. Certainly not symbols of national pride
Sunak would be in a stronger position to call out Farage over Putin and Ukraine if he was able to tap into the recent surge in national pride at helping overthrow tyranny in Europe, as expressed over the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Instead...
The two are utterly unrelated. And Sunak did attend the event in Portsmouth the day before, and the British part of the event in France. Listening to some people, you'd think he'd undone his fly and pi**ed on the graves of the dead.
Whereas Farage is absolutely uninterested in what is best for Britain - and shills for Russia.
But I guess he's still a hero to the Europhobes. For some odd reason.
The most effective political poster of the past 25 years was Ed Miliband peering out of Alex Salmond's top pocket.
The Tories need to do one of Farage peering out of Putin's top pocket.
Then one of him peering out of Trump's top pocket.
"By their friends do you know them."
The vast majority of the British public loathe Putin . The Tories and Labour should go after him on this . At the moment it seems the Tories and Labour are busy fighting amongst themselves . The former seem to not want to piss off Tory to Reform voters in the hope they’ll come back . Labour seem to want say very little as even though a strong Reform vote hurts them it’s catastrophic for the Tories . I don’t wan’t to see the UK go down the USA route with the country so polarized beyond repair .
Even though I want a Labour win I don’t want to see the Tories destroyed and can live with a much smaller Labour majority than the current polls imply .
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
Yes, there is a potential way out for them, there.
"If you're worried about higher immigration in the last few years, Nigel's Brexit is a large part of the cause." This also has the virtue of being true, because he's a charlatan.
When we left, immigration ceased to be an EU-controlled issue and became a Westminster-controlled issue. Of course Sunak can't blame Brexit for immigration rising because it's HIS GOVERNMENT that the power returned to when we left. How do avowedly intelligent people not get this?
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
My professional work environment would have been substantially Tory a decade ago, now few of my colleagues are. They aren't going "Brexit, Brexit, Brexit" but that's when they stopped supporting the Party. To move on it needs to accept it screwed up on Brexit. This doesn't necessarily mean rejoining. People mostly accept a fait accompli, but they aren't happy about it.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
Yes, there is a potential way out for them, there.
"If you're worried about higher immigration in the last few years, Nigel's Brexit is a large part of the cause." This also has the virtue of being true, because he's a charlatan.
When we left, immigration ceased to be an EU-controlled issue and became a Westminster-controlled issue. Of course Sunak can't blame Brexit for immigration rising because it's HIS GOVERNMENT that the power returned to when we left. How do avowedly intelligent people not get this?
Non EU immigration was a Westminster controlled issue when we were in the EU and that's the bit that has expanded hugely since Brexit.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
Yes, there is a potential way out for them, there.
"If you're worried about higher immigration in the last few years, Nigel's Brexit is a large part of the cause." This also has the virtue of being true, because he's a charlatan.
When we left, immigration ceased to be an EU-controlled issue and became a Westminster-controlled issue. Of course Sunak can't blame Brexit for immigration rising because it's HIS GOVERNMENT that the power returned to when we left. How do avowedly intelligent people not get this?
Non EU immigration was a Westminster controlled issue when we were in the EU and that's the bit that has expanded hugely since Brexit.
That supports my argument, not Whispering Oracles.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
It might be the only way to bring back some more middle-ground voters, not Leavers. At this point the Tories are failing apart, so anything might be useful.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
Exactly. Attack him and his charlatanry. Stop indulging it.
That would be attack line makes no sense at all. Prior to Brexit, there was a large amount of immigration from Europe, which has largely stopped and been replaced by immigration from the rest of the world. The rise in immigration is entirely down to choices that the Tories made.
I don't think the massive increase in people crossing the Channel in boats is down to any UK government policy: which is why they're so hard to stop.
Not hard to stop if you wanted to , just drive the boats back into French waters or burst one or two and it will soon stop. Providing taxis for them by RN and RNLB is just encouraging it as is not immediately chucking them back out.
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
You think the Tories regain the red wall and see off the Farage challenge by repudiating Brexit? Unhinged.
My professional work environment would have been substantially Tory a decade ago, now few of my colleagues are. They aren't going "Brexit, Brexit, Brexit" but that's when they stopped supporting the Party. To move on it needs to accept it screwed up on Brexit. This doesn't necessarily mean rejoining. People mostly accept a fait accompli, but they aren't happy about it.
Indeed, and start working on practical solutions to the parts of Brexit which visibly demonstrate to people they were sold a pup.
For instance, a simple example. From where I am now in Horšovsky Týn, Czech Rep it costs me 70p a minute to phone home and 30p per text. This was previously regulated by EU law and cost a fraction of what it does now. It gives the impression our Government is happy to featherbed big business at our expense.
Also catching up on various news titbits and polling, broadcasts, and debates.
I’m not sure how anyone interested in politics can describe this is as a dull election? It’s the most interesting, and exciting, campaign of my life. I guess for different reasons 2019 and 2017 were also fun to watch, and I appreciate that if you are a Conservative party worker this must be hell on earth right now, but for neutrals it’s absolutely fascinating.
There are still so many permutations, from truly landscape altering to something more nuanced. Can anyone really say they are sure which way this is going from here?
It is evidence that politics is subject to the same disruption as many areas of life. The conservative collapse though was foreshadowed in the 2019 Euro elections (why does this never get discussed) where they had a similar collapse/ 'extinction level event'. There was then a miraculous political reinvention which didn't last. What I find quite amusing is that, against this backdrop, people still cling to the idea that there are 'political norms' that still apply ie 'elections are won in the centre'. I think anything can happen, the arrival of 'reform' is just the beginning.
Every British election in my lifetime has been won by the party in the centre.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
It's possible that Reform are in the position of the Tea Party in the US, during the late years of Bush II's presidency. A harbinger of the takeover of the Right of politics by a defiantly reality-denying ideology.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
Which is *exactly* what has happened to the Republican Party. The surviving moderates know the extremists and the activist base are both barking mad, but dumping them means joining the Democrats or instant career death.
You can see something similar happening here, in which case the best we can hope for is that the ceiling of support for the mentalists remains too low for them to achieve a Parliamentary majority. One thing we have in our favour is that there aren't vast legions of gun and Bible waving fascists, who regard The Handmaid's Tale as a prospectus for a better future, stalking the land, which is a start.
It all started when Cameron decided on a Referendum to unite his party and destroy UKIP.
You don't defeat the nutters by pandering to them.
It was too late by then. There was already majority support within the Conservative Party/voters for leaving the EU. The argument for EU membership had been lost.
There were two options. One, they could have won the argument for the EU at an earlier stage. Or they could have provided a non-nutty leadership to leaving the EU.
I floated the possibility of Cameron campaigning for Leave before the referendum. If he'd done so, and won, and took Britain out in a calm way, then I think we'd be in a very different place.
With the Conservative Party split down the middle over the "betrayal" of Brexit ?
You don't think Boris wouldn't have still seen his opportunity ?
Brexit was about leaving "in a calm way" for a very small portion of those who voted for it, I think.
It's possible my counterfactual would have only seen the same psychodrama played out in a different way and pace, but I am wary of thinking that certain events were inevitable, and I think it was at least a plausible alternative for how things might have been different.
Brexit played out broadly as I expected it to because it was based on false assumptions. I find it difficult to believe a counterfactual where those assumptions turn out to be true
I very much hope the Tories don’t throw in their lot with populist nationalism, as it ends as it always does in destruction and ashes.
The country desperately needs a one nation Conservative party, founded on conservative principles and with competence at its core. I would consider voting for a prospectus led by a Rory Stewart type but never ever any of these ideologues. You need to rebuild around a pragmatic, achievable, positive offer.
It starts with the B word.
If the Tories want to defeat Nigel Fucking Farage they have to admit the project he championed is a shitshow
Yes, there is a potential way out for them, there.
"If you're worried about higher immigration in the last few years, Nigel's Brexit is a large part of the cause." This also has the virtue of being true, because he's a charlatan.
When we left, immigration ceased to be an EU-controlled issue and became a Westminster-controlled issue. Of course Sunak can't blame Brexit for immigration rising because it's HIS GOVERNMENT that the power returned to when we left. How do avowedly intelligent people not get this?
Non EU immigration was a Westminster controlled issue when we were in the EU and that's the bit that has expanded hugely since Brexit.
That supports my argument, not Whispering Oracles.
Not if Brexit was sold as a solution to immigration and was a reason why many people voted for it.
Comments
Yes, there is a potential way out for them, there.
"If you're worried about higher immigration in the last few years, Nigel's Brexit is a large part of the cause." This also has the virtue of being true, because he's a charlatan.
It's just the centre moves over time. And calling yourself centrist doesn't make you so.
In 2017-19 the centrist position was to get Brexit done, but we had self-proclaimed "centrists" who wouldn't accept the will of the voters in the Referendum. So the party that pitched to the centre won nearly 50% of the vote while the parties that did not lost.
Today the centrist position is that things are broken that need fixing and that it's time for a change.
The arrival of Reform is no more meaningful than the arrival of their predecessors like the BNP. They're nobodies who will get either zero or next to zero MPs and will never win an election.
The lack of a common ground of accepted reality makes any political debate impossible.
If Farage steals the Tory party from those on the right who do accept reality it leaves those right-wingers in a very difficult spot. They'll obviously want to oppose a Labour government and its deeds, but the only means of doing so would be to support a Farage party.
It's a shame that the graphs here:
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48322-tories-now-seen-as-being-as-right-wing-as-2014-16-era-ukip
only start in 2002, because the late 70s are the really interesting test case.
In a way, it's another version of the question "do parties win elections, or do their opponents lose them?" For which current events strongly imply the second. And if that's true, perhaps we should rethink what we mean by a democratic mandate and how much load it can bear. One of the problems the Conservatives currently face is their assumption that 2019 was about their triumph not Labour's disaster. And yes, Starmer faces the same temptation.
Still, less than 500 hours to go.
I’m too lazy to investigate but do they mean skin colour in which case is this global majority south Asian or East Asian? Surely this discriminates against black people as they aren’t the global majority.
Unless of course they mean “anyone who isn’t white” which would just be a bit more honest if they wrote that.
Brexit and Europhobia have been a disaster for the Conservative Party for over three decades. I fail to see how it will help them in the future.
You can see something similar happening here, in which case the best we can hope for is that the ceiling of support for the mentalists remains too low for them to achieve a Parliamentary majority. One thing we have in our favour is that there aren't vast legions of gun and Bible waving fascists, who regard The Handmaid's Tale as a prospectus for a better future, stalking the land, which is a start.
"Nigel was the one that left our government with no choice but to Brexit, and we have to level with you that has had a significant bearing on the rise in immigration. We won't let him get away with lying to the British people about his role in this, and even seeking to gain their votes on the back of it."
Thursday: record NHS waiting lists
Friday: more sewage discharges
Sunak can't catch a break, and Farage blames it all on immigration, the only subject that he wants to talk about.
In a Tory meltdown he could lose, but it depends how much Reform eats into the pensioner vote - of which there is a lot. The seat was previously lost to the LibDems because a former MP wrote novels and did damn all to work it. You can't accuse Kevin of that.
Hope that helps!
Why not just say that you want the workforce to represent the people they serve in terms of ethnicity and leave it at that?
You don't defeat the nutters by pandering to them.
But attacking Farage requires the Conservatives to recognise that a) he is an enemy, not a potential ally and b) his actions and policies are beyond the pale. And a significant chunk of the party don't believe either of those.
But in other respects the situation is worse. A party in Britain can win a comfortable majority with little more than a third of the vote, if the rest of the vote is sufficiently split between other parties, whereas the rigid duopoly in the US means the Trumpists need to get much closer to half the vote.
The two effects probably cancel.
Based on the current polling a lot of current Tory voters and 2019 Tory voters would be willing to support Farage. So I could envision a 2029GE with vote shares of:
CON 5%
LAB 30%
LDM 20%
GRN 5%
RFM 35%
Which, per electoral calculus (basically guesswork with these shares, but someone else's guesswork) would give seat totals of:
CON 8 seats
LAB 175
LDM 61
GRN 2
RFM 367
Now I happen to favour that decision but for the Tories and their desperate supporters to join with the Remoaners and try and blame it on Brexit when it has been entirely down to their post Brexit policies is dishonest in the extreme.
Farage: everything is the fault of immigration
SNP: everything is the fault of the union
Instead...
Whereas Farage is absolutely uninterested in what is best for Britain - and shills for Russia.
But I guess he's still a hero to the Europhobes. For some odd reason.
👉Ulysse Abbate, Liberal Democrat: 90
👉Mark Simpson, Reform: 232
👉Matt Stratford, Green: 101
👉Roger Tester, Local Conservative: 1,359
👉Nikki Thurlow, Labour: 1,101
Despite a very very bleak national outlook, i think London may be far less catastrophic for them.
There were two options. One, they could have won the argument for the EU at an earlier stage. Or they could have provided a non-nutty leadership to leaving the EU.
I floated the possibility of Cameron campaigning for Leave before the referendum. If he'd done so, and won, and took Britain out in a calm way, then I think we'd be in a very different place.
If Cameron hadn’t done it, and it’s easy to say he did it to stop the Tories splitting so that Labourites etc can claim some sort of moral high ground, then someone would have had to. It could have been Starmer holding together a Labour government right now against UKIP who had replaced the Tories and threatening to sweep to power off the back of anger at establishment parties ignoring them for decades over EU concerns.
So leave the whole bs that it only happened because Cameron wanted to save the Tories, it was coming for everyone and was a “when” not “if”.
If politicians had the balls earlier then they could have mitigated EU concerns by changing to contributory benefits policies, they could have copied the rest of the EU on a brake on free movement but they didn’t give a shit about what they saw as an irritating bunch of xenophobes.
Brexit is the fault of generations of politicians left and right. Much the way that the Tories’ current hell is the result of decades of stupidity, arrogance, bad decisions and “events.
The Tories need to do one of Farage peering out of Putin's top pocket.
Then one of him peering out of Trump's top pocket.
"By their friends do you know them."
It's a simple old world we live in
As young Boomer @Luckyguy1983 correctly notes.
Cameron had to move his party back to the centre to make them electable again.
The trouble is that the Conservatives (and many individual conservatives) rather like Nigel and all he stands for. They have forgotten the old adage about the difference between the opposition and the enemy.
I know the area well. It’s classic outer London metroland, ULEZ extension, white van and cabbie country.
NEW THREAD
Instead, pushing meaningless, unachievable slogans like Stop the Boats, performative, eye wateringly expensive solutions like Rwanda and compounding the error by seeing foreign aid as a bad, to be eradicated, just plays into Farage’s hands.
The English hard right appeals to angry poor white people. An angry poor white people party has the potential to rack up supermajorities in angry poor white places, whilst being repulsed everywhere else. It doesn't mean we're safe - if they get hold of the corpse of the Conservative Party and are able to use its branding as a Trojan horse with the well-to-do rural elderly then we may still be in trouble - but this offers some cause for optimism that it can be contained.
You don't think Boris wouldn't have still seen his opportunity ?
Brexit was about leaving "in a calm way" for a very small portion of those who voted for it, I think.
There are some variations on the theme, that might actually be one of their only options to survive. They could also move to admittiing something else, also very close to the reality ; "Nigel left us s Hard Brexit, and that left us in a desperate state, short of the people we needed in all areas of the economy" That would lose them the ideologi Leavers for good, but most have them have already moved over to Reform, and are dwindling group anyway. The generally immigration-sceptical, and the centre-right who might occasionally vote for the hard right, are a much bigger group.
The UKIPers like Sunak and Farage to most watching were just an embarrassment if they were anything at all. Certainly not symbols of national pride
Even though I want a Labour win I don’t want to see the Tories destroyed and can live with a much smaller Labour majority than the current polls imply .
For instance, a simple example. From where I am now in Horšovsky Týn, Czech Rep it costs me 70p a minute to phone home and 30p per text. This was previously regulated by EU law and cost a fraction of what it does now. It gives the impression our Government is happy to featherbed big business at our expense.