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The Tories are heading into the abyss of apathy and irrelevance – politicalbetting.com
The Tories are heading into the abyss of apathy and irrelevance – politicalbetting.com
Probably the most brutal polling for the Conservatives I’ve seen from us.6 in 10 tell @IpsosUK they don’t care who the next Tory leader is https://t.co/i2QZoYzIlA pic.twitter.com/nIraYa12bo
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Perhaps the Conservative Party needs to embrace Nigel to survive.
They won't get my vote, but then they were never likely too. They would however regain Johnson's coalition from 2019.
Although, to an extent, all they would be saving is the name.
EDIT: On recount, second like Stride.
After 1924 the Liberals were reunited but had only 40 seats and were clearly the third party. They also suffered from continuing to have a dual leadership - the superannuated and discredited Asquith in the Lords, and the energetic but distrusted and slippery Lloyd George in the Commons.
None of those currently apply to the Tories. Of course, it may happen - a grouping led by a complete loon like Jenrick or Braverman may split off and form a new party, or defections to Reform and the Liberal Democrats may erode their limited parliamentary party. But at this moment they are still clearly the second party and will be the Opposition by right not by default.
The key trick is to rebuild to seem credible again. For that, Cleverly would be the best candidate. Unfortunately, it looks like they're going for an idiot who can't stop banging on about nonsense policies like Rwanda that are as credible as Donald Trump's tax returns.
https://x.com/bristol247/status/1824323956993822822?s=61
I think the Tories being eclipsed by the Liberal Democrats in terms of seats at the next election is more likely than the Tories being the largest party in a hung parliament after the next election.
This is not trivial because I think I'm right in saying he is the only current member of the current LD parliamentary party to have served in cabinet.
Good for her on this.
https://x.com/cafedujord/status/1824523780775088202?s=61
He was Malleus ScotNatorum during the Indyref.
They remain the default opposition.
The only realistic alternative to replace the Tories anyway as the main party of the right is Reform not the LDs. If they didn't do it last month hard to see them ever doing it. If the LDs became a centre right party they would of course split in half with their social democratic wing defecting en masse to Labour as much of it did anyway after the 2010 LD coalition government with the Tories. Hence even on 4th July the LDs got just 12% or only half the Tories 24% and behind Reform on 14% too and far behind Labour on 33%.
On a net basis Tugendhat does best with voters followed by Stride and Jenrick. That is about right with Tugendhat and Stride more likely to appeal to Tory voters in 2019 who went Labour and LD this time and Jenrick more likely to appeal to voters who went Reform
Mind you, at risk of a literal No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think it makes much difference to my point.
#Priti4Leader
Angus Robertson met with the Israeli deputy ambassador and that led to a backlash including Humza Yousaf's wife having a go at Angus Robertson.
Then John Mason MSP went full Barty defending the meeting.
If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they would have killed ten times as many.
https://x.com/JohnMasonMSP/status/1824560329352941820
Although you have a point, should Labour fail as you predict we have a shiny new fash-lite populist snake oil salesman to lead us to the promised land and if he does prevail it is not to the advantage of the Conservative Party.
Be interesting to see if the SNP end up suspending the whip from John Mason but not from Angus Robertson.
Centrist Dads is just something the former say to make themselves look moderate and normal.
Those who served in a Cabinet after 2015 just learned about back-stabbing and jockeying for position, so they are not very relevant for a new clean Conservative government.
I suspect the current group of Lib Dem MPs have the advantage.
As for the Conservative leadership, part of me thinks that they have to get "if only we embrace Reform, everything will be fine" out of their system. As with Foot, IDS, Corbyn (and arguably Swinson), something about modern political parties means that they have to utterly indulge themselves and see the electoral conseqences of that before they remember that they are there to please the public. Except, from this starting point, that really could kill the party.
"Doomsday for Republicans" - Senate race polling is very encouraging for Democrats.
Plus, Trump's lead in Florida is down to 3% (from 6%)
As she well knows, housing in America is a state and local matter, especially in places where people actually want to live.
A few months ago, that would have seemed crazy, but if the Lib Dems can properly lean into their new status as the party of Nice Britain, kind of like the Aussie Teals, who knows? The Conservatives have got to do something about those seats, because 70 Lib Dems are already a pretty effective block on a Conservative majority.
Maybe they ought to bring back the lettuce, or find an old stuffed Andy Pandy doll?
Apart from the Boris years, Hunt served in the cabinet for eleven out of the fourteen years the Tories were in government.
He was the longest ever serving Health Secretary (six years), had stints as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor, plus two years at DCMS at the height of the phone hacking scandal.
I know some people who know Jeremy quite well, they think he'd want to be the Keith Joseph to the new Tory leader.
From the Tories' own perspective the job of the next leader is to try and recover 100 seats or so so that the party is in a position to be in contention the election after next. They also need to find some new talent in the somewhat shallow pool available and start thinking about what a Conservative party led country would actually look like. The details won't matter but the direction of travel will.
For me, and I accept this might simply be my own prejudices, this means rejecting, mocking and attacking the siren voices of Reform and trying to win back a few million votes from them. It means a clear vision of a prosperous country with smaller government, lower taxes, less debt, more home grown businesses, with equality of opportunity and mutual respect for all of our citizens of whatever colour, creed or orientation. Maybe then the next leadership campaign will be of more interest.
Or alternatively, it's coming up on Tuesday.
On the 9th August 1999 Putin was nominated as Prime Minister of Russia, replacing Sergey Stapashin.
Confirmed and formally took office on the 19th.
Which means he's been in power (allowing that Yeltsin was very ill and mostly drunk by then) for 25 years.
That would, depending on how you count Stalin (and December 1928 is the favoured start date for considering him the leader) make him the longest serving leader of Russia since 1881.
Given another year, since 1855.
But it's a heavy price you're asking of me.
Their LinkedIn profiles show the usual predictable path.
Will she deliver price controls. A sure fire winner.
https://x.com/marionawfal/status/1824515100167766018?s=61
Lots of the people that will feel the pain from this Government will be natural centre-right voters, with a plenty good number of them in LD seats and LD target seats.
Shits and giggles. We'd have the giggles.
Although the shits wouldn't help with that pollution problem.
There's huge poential for buyers' remorse from those who voted LibDem and feel they are being shafted by this Government. LibDems are going to be on defence, not offence, next time out.
But to do that in peacetime would be a very good way to collapse a presidency. Pretty much unthinkable.
Meanwhile there are some very serious new MPs on the Lib Dem benches (a surprising number of ex military, incidentally) and they have hit the ground running with perma-campaigns in held seats and plans to increase the national vote share and take the fight to the next tier of seats. I don´t think I have ever seen the party so fired up.
Meanwhile every day another more Tory members shuffle off this mortal coil and are not replaced. The leadership election should be the perfect time to recruit, but if anyone is doing that, it is not having much impact. If the Tories lose only another 25 seats to the Lib Dems, then Sir Edward Davey is the Leader of His Majesty´s Loyal Opposition and the Tories are done. At this point one can even wonder if the Tories are up for the fight. Europe doing to the Conservative and Unionist Party what Ireland and Asquithian High mindedness did to the Liberal Party.
Maybe wait to hear the details before dismissing it in so cavalier a manner ?
The Today programme this morning was covering the issue of Tories dying off rather than people moving Conservative as they get older. Didn't seem clear what that was based upon however.
Re the quality of the new MPs I only know a few, but the ones I know are quite impressive. Keep an eye on Chris Coghlan, a young Paddy Ashdown clone.
Donald Trump has a table full of groceries next to him with before and after prices to illustrate inflation.
He then starts rambling wistfully about how nice some of them look, especially 'the Cheerios. I haven't seen Cheerios in a long time, I'm going to take them back to my cottage and have a lot of fun with them.'
What the actual fuckety fuck? I mean, sharks were bad enough, but - for real? He makes campaign speeches on the economy and says he hasn't seen cheerios in ages?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-cheerios-news-conference-b2597484.html
Get to a situation where they have to be junior partners in a coalition and the game changes, as it did in 2015. But until then, those new Lib Dem MPs are going to be as hard to shift as Japanese Knotweed.
1) If he has to spend time and money shoring up Florida, that's time and money he can't spend on trying to actually win Arizona and Pennsylvania. Matters with scarce resources.
2) Remember there is also a Senate seat up for grabs in Florida.
And Florida has abortion on the ballot in November. I still think once we are beyond Labor Day, Florida comes into play.
@FrankLuntz
:
“I’m trying to do a focus group tonight with undecided voters under the age of 27 for a major news outlet. And I can’t recruit young women to this, because they don’t exist as undecided voters,” he said.
https://x.com/Ritholtz/status/1824555443374391567
On the other hand I could also Lib Dems winning more seats off the Conservatives as that party wins seats off Labour if Labour goes into decline. The Lib Dems will become challengers at Labour's expense in some Tory seats.
Only voting Ripley-Tory can stop it.
Some people have taken leave of their senses.
This new government is doing even worse on the core issues of concern to these voters than the previous administration.
I don't think that's how most British people are wired. They're open to a little more tax on public services if it delivers better outcomes, a bit like paying more for good service, but it ends there.
The only reason for anyone significantly younger than that to vote for them is if they're worried that Labour might raise IHT and other taxes on residential housing, i.e. do them out of a chunk of the windfall they're expecting when Mum and Dad join the choir celestial. The Tories are neither use nor ornament to anybody else.
The Government in Westminster and wider British opinion is viewed as pretty irrelevant, also.
We're fundamentally blamed for Balfour, the mandate period and how it came to an end. Just about the only thing all sides can agree on is that our opinions don't matter.