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Badenoch is absolutely right on a potential Tory and Reform alliance – politicalbetting.com
Badenoch is absolutely right on a potential Tory and Reform alliance – politicalbetting.com
This is quite an important point from Badenoch. More Conservative voters would (just) have picked parties of the left as their second choice than Reform UK, but as far as I can tell no one on the left is proposing a pact with the Lib Dems. https://t.co/TRczTkh4lN pic.twitter.com/7WLIZ0Rtms
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Edit: and first, like Kemi
https://x.com/ragipsoylu/status/1868342706189246535
Though a pact not to stand against each other might just be OK. Tories get a clear run at the Shires, Reform at the Red Wall.
The Argentinian regime buried them under a funfair.
@POTUS do right by American workers, save U.S. Steel and do the deal.
https://x.com/CNLiberalism/status/1868344396883906965
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/16/tories-only-spent-a-quarter-of-money-allocated-to-levelling-up?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
No wonder they lost the Red Wall.
The Conservatives had to spend it on Covid and support for lecky bills instead.
Events.
The west-east shift, with areas around Glasgow depopulating and massive growth around Edinburgh, is demand driven. That demand exists because there is a critical mass of businesses and young people, and a thriving economy. It starts to snowball, so we now have even high house prices here than we did before.
England desperately needs 1) a plan for towns and 2) a plan for the NE to stop London soaking up all the growth.
Worst Electoral result for 200 years for the Tories.
Events.
I don't recall PB Tories excusing "events" as a justification for the failure/demise of the Brown Government.
Hence there is zero difference between a pact and merger if you don't want reform in power.
South Koreans blame president’s ‘Lady Macbeth’ for martial law
Critics suggest Yoon Suk-yeol made his disastrous decision in part to protect his wife Kim Keon-hee from investigation and potential prosecution
For her Machiavellian politicking, she has been called “Korea’s Lady Macbeth”; for her obvious love of luxury she has been compared to Marie Antoinette; and for her extensive cosmetic surgery to Michael Jackson.
As President Yoon of South Korea fights an increasingly desperate battle for political survival, angry attention is focusing on the part played in his embattled presidency by his wife, Kim Keon-hee.
On Saturday the national assembly voted to impeach Yoon, 11 days after his sudden and abortive attempt to impose martial law. The motives for this disastrous move are not completely clear but many South Koreans suspect that, at least in part, it was a means of protecting his wife from investigation and potential prosecution.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/south-koreans-blame-presidents-lady-macbeth-for-martial-law-jt9fzqfgf
The Tory and Reform coalitions overlap, but much of that overlap has already migrated, and there's a significant portion of both parties outside of that overlap.
Those that haven't yet made the jump, but might (eg Casino or Leon, to pick a couple of random examples) might well be enough to win a majority under FPTP - though very probably not a majority of the vote.
De facto merger via defection to Reform is perhaps more likely than an actual merger ?
And might actually work to Reform's advantage as the rump Tories waste their vote on an emasculated party, rather than lending it to Reform's actual competition.
Though making a cabinet thereafter will be the challenge.
I wouldn't vote Tory in those circumstances even if David Cameron was my the Tory candidate in my constituency.
If the incumbent government continues to disappoint I might vote Conservative next time if they're lacklustre (although not if they're actviely bad). If they allied with Reform or united with them that would not be the case.
That would have played better how, exactly?
Of course Northerners are a lazy and greedy bunch, who will always vote for the party that promises them the biggest handouts, so you can see how they'd have lapped it up. But it was a socialist policy, and so would have been wasteful, counterproductive, probably corrupt and definitely ineffective.
Much better to save public money and lower taxes and debt lower than otherwise instead.
Root and Brook just need to repeat their 454 run partnership against Pakistan in October and England are home and hosed because Root and Brook are that awesome.
I am one of the few that voted Tory in 2024, so if the Tories start losing significant chunks of their 2024 base.....
The bigger worry for me is that they simply might now be too far gone on relying on elderly voters to ever break out of that box.
If Reform continue to rise in the polls the pact will happen, never mind policy or suitability for government. There will be enough Tory Von Papens to make it so, just as their were enough in the GOP to facilitate Trump.
Meanwhile deportations are at a 5 year high under Labour.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/15/deportations-reach-five-year-high-despite-concerns-of-rights-groups?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
I mean, it's open, it's undeveloped, it's got lots of road and rail links...
(This may sound like me being slightly daft. But one major problem in England is that there has been far too much development on flood plain land.)
Anyway I suspect when it comes to immigration, "events" may, over four and a half years be Starmer's friend.
It's quite likely that the Tory membership will want a pact/merger with Reform, thereby putting off the voters, while the Tory MPs oppose Reform, thereby the party falls between stools.
There is a copy of File on Four on the Archbishop of York, here. I recommend listening.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00260xs
If it were the case that he did everything he could for reasons of law, and had done everything he could to keep the offender from anything that looked like preferment, then I would reluctantly support him remaining in post.
But I don't believe - listening to the programme - that that is the case. He had the moral authority and responsibility to intervene, for example by withdrawing the offender's permission to officiate (PTO) in his Diocese. He did not take action.
Therefore imo ++York needs to stand down.
There is the interesting question of would Reform actually want to merge with the Tories, some Tory members may want it but I suspect a lot of Reform voters are very establishment and the Tories are part of that..
Good morning everyone.
This is often uncomfortable. A lot of people in the Tory party winced for years at the open racism of some of their number but bit their tongues. In Labour, the pretense that the upper middle class pseudo intellectuals who run the show had anything in common with where the bulk of their support came from is stretched to breaking point. In the US, for the Dems, it has actually broken.
I agree with @TSE and indeed Kemi that I am not interested in a coalition with Reform nor am I interested in voting for such a coalition. But there is a price to pay for that attitude. And it may be opposition, just as Labour endured in the 80s and early 90s when the SDP took away an element of their "natural" support.
Surreal.
I see SEPA have now helpfully provided flood maps of future prospects as a new layer on their fllod risk maps: for those who are interested the button is at the botton of this page: https://map.sepa.org.uk/floodmaps/FloodRisk/PostCode
Chuckeberries work for jam. Now to make some more for last minute Christmas Hampers.
Have a good day, everyone.
On MattW's note, surely chuckleberries come from the Roald Dahl universe?
https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/m13/
Promise "Levelling Up" and to crack down on immigration, then doing the complete opposite is why the Tories are no longer trusted.
Reform don't want to be tainted by association.
But over time, as we have seen with the Republicans in the US, voters can come round to positions they themselves would have seen as absurd, and not "them", a decade earlier.
Taiwan has received its first batch of 38 x M1A2T Abrams tanks from the U.S., part of a total order of 108
This marks Taiwan’s first new tank delivery since the M60A3 tanks in 1994.
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1868568437401804836
Fash or commie? If handing power to Farage keeps the Marxists out what is your choice?
The Ukrainians took a very similar vessel - a Volgobalt bulk carrier - into the Black Sea a few years ago and it folded in half on YouTube.
I did a long passage (smuggling diamonds, lol) on a merchant vessel from Cape Town to Rotterdam on a sanctions busting British owned, Liberian flagged vessel in my 20s. It didn't seem that bad to me. The crew definitely had superior accommodation and working conditions to your average junior rate in the RN.
Amongst the solid tips (Laying Farage not to be PM) I can sense the general direction of the broad right of UK politics heading toward Reform/changing the Tories to a more Reform like direction which seems to be being dismissed (tepid analysis pace Dura-Ace) here..
So the money that doesn't exist was promised to fix potholes in Peckham (and elsewhere) but the money was never actually budgeted (see the NI cuts) so the potholes won't be filled.
What are the proposals of Reform that are bad policies that should be opposed by good Conservatives? Until they can come up with a few examples, the battle on the right is going to continue to be rather one-sided.
Trying to box Reform in as a bargain basement version of the Conservatives for bargain basement places isn't going to work.
The recent judgment of the Tribunal (a public document), useful for some chronology and facts is here:
https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2024-10/determination-on-penalty-the-revd-david-tudor-29-october-2024-4130-4263-1764-v.1.pdf
Levelling up was never given the amount of resources needed to really shift the economic balance between north and south.
And that was very definitely implied in the politicians' promises.
And Europe's reaction is a mere shoulder-shrug and "meh!"
(And yes, I think 'invasion' is the correct word, given the reported number of troops, and the fact they're officially sanctioned by the NK government.)
KB needs to come up with a basis on which the tories can attack the Fukkers because at the moment she has zero.
But now we have no idea. Because the 'standard model' is in trouble; by which I mean we appear not to be able to manage and pay for the universal post war settlement of the social democratic welfare state. There is neither the money nor the competence. So far both Tories and Labour have exactly the same difficulties.
The fear must be that the parties will stick to the old solution of obtaining power by attacking those in power and other parties too, but without a seriously explained programme of their own WRT tax, spend, borrowing, competence, and so on.
Farage and Anderson are not ideologically aligned except for immigration.
You can maybe unite the coalition once but long term how does that coalition not fall apart? This is exactly what happened with Johnson.
People like Matthew Goodwin called it a great realignment, it turns out it was just a fluke one off election. Why is this time different?
27% of all voters satisfied.
Ruh roh
Admittedly that twat MacArthur then got a bit carried away.
The oldest PM to assume office for the first time was Palmerston who was aged 70, but who had been a key figure in Parliament and government for several decades before. The oldest PM ever was Gladstone who was 84 when he retired at the end of his fourth term.
So, if you decide to back Farage becoming PM "sometime", you need to ask yourself a) how long Farage will live in health and strength and b) how long it would take RefUk to become a party of government that would allow Farage to be PM. While obviously "Farage next PM" is a clear lay, I think "Farage PM sometime" is also probably a lay, just at much lower prices. Father Time may be a bigger enemy than Kemi here.
Reform currently have 5 seats in the House of Commons.
Labour will need to get very ruthless, very quickly, if they want to hold on to power.
https://x.com/otto_english/status/1868429763213480367?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q