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So far the voters do not see Badenoch as a Prime Minister in waiting – politicalbetting.com
So far the voters do not see Badenoch as a Prime Minister in waiting – politicalbetting.com
New from @IpsosUK who would make the better PM?Keir Starmer 32%Kemi Badenoch 18%More https://t.co/ZKOsZsGfFq pic.twitter.com/H74hZd7ORx
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Yay. End the year on a high.
While she may grow into the role, will the Tories have the patience to give her the chance to do so?
At the moment, that's what I expect to happen.
There have been none.
"...but she really needs to needless spats.."
He was done in by his own supporters falling for Jenrick's nonsense.
The problem is the Tories have just had 14 years in Downing Street so it almost doesn't matter what Badenoch says/does right now, even if she says exactly the right thing the public wants to hear it is met with a thought of "well why didn't you do that in office then?"
Four years is a long-time to the next election though, so Badenoch needs to be seriously reflecting on what could be done better/differently and why the Tories should be back in Downing Street and what they would do. Not worrying about Twitter spats or soundbites.
Some reflection that perhaps Starmer should have done more of to be better prepared than he is today.
But I've no doubt he'd have been twice as effective day to day. He be on the airwaves all the time, contesting every issue and looking to set the agenda.
When did you last hear from Kemi on anything, except the odd petulant tweet?
Decentish chap, but he's served his purpose, and probably achieved as much as he's ever going to do. And will be 64 by the next election.
Make the most of having a reasonably sized pool of replacements while it still exists.
CCHQ wants to communicate that the "quietness" is down to the focus on this and internal Conservative party structures, whereas it's actually down to her passivity and lack of energy and drive.
She doesn't seem to understand the party is like a cornered rat at the moment and needs to fight for its life.
Forget the accuracy of the numbers as Reform have been perhaps a little "too eager" to evidence and prove that is pretty accurate.
The BIGGER and potentially MASSIVE problem for Reform and a saver for Kemi is that it would appear that anyone from anywhere in the World can register as a Member and more impactful, that anyone of any age can created an email address and join with no validation of where they are from, who they are, how old they are or even IF they exist.
Now a £10 a pop ....with Billioniares / Multi Millionaires FUNDING them, it's a very very convenient back door and efficient way of data farming to created "alleged" mass Membership.
It needs investigating for sure!
Potential GOLD-DUST for Kemi and Labour!
Yes I know Truss was also a Remainer, but she drank the Brexit kool-aid.
Yes, he'd probably be a 240 seats max candidate, but he could double the Tories seats in one election, easily deny Labour its majority, and ensure Conservative survival.
He'd probably have to lead a Tory-Reform coalition to take office but, actually, I think he'd be quite good at doing that.
Reform are (and this does not make me particularly happy) an existential threat to them.
The alternative is a merger largely on Farage's terms.
Same problem applies. And the MPs saw it.
Only serious candidate is Jenrick but with ethics (which sadly he doesn't have).
Corbyn had lots of members. He was also a polarising, dreadful leader who caused more voters to vote for the Tories than voted for Labour.
It doesn't matter what Reforms membership number is, its utterly irrelevant. There are serious concerns and issues that affect the voters and that is what the Leader of the Opposition should be thinking about, not third parties membership figures.
We've got to get beyond this shit. Jeremy Hunt is very far from a Remoaner, and can be (and was) hardline on lots of EU issues.
The guy even wobbled on the original issue.
Also of an age with Davey and Farage (all within a year of each other).
LotO mostly needs a certain kind of temperament- you have to fight, you have to pick fights, but you also need the inner steely calm to accept that you will regularly lose and keep on going anyway.
Whatever his failings, Starmer had that. Cameron had it. Blair didn't need it. Badenoch doesn't, but I'm unconvinced that Jenrick does either. Cleverly might- he seems to have the necessary sense of the absurd.
If they do ditch Badenoch, then perhaps there will be another chance for #Priti4Leader ?
Remarkably high rate of change. Two teams have entirely new lineups (Haas and Sauber).
That's not an option for Kemi.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=389485
(For questioning.)
Majority of Koreans back changes to limit presidential powers
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=389472
..According to the poll conducted by Hankook Research at the request of The Korea Times, 56 percent of 1,000 respondents expressed support for amending the Constitution to reform the current single, five-year presidential term. Meanwhile, 39 percent of those surveyed opposed the idea, and the remaining 5 percent did not provide a response. The survey was carried out over two days, from Thursday to Friday.
The poll was conducted approximately three weeks after President Yoon Suk Yeol briefly imposed martial law, an action he defended as part of his executive authority to govern.
However, the poll indicates that most citizens disapprove of the current system, which grants such excessive power to the president, and instead support measures to limit executive authority.
These opinions were consistent across various groups, including gender, region, and political ideology. For example, 61 percent of respondents identifying as politically liberal supported the change. Similarly, 57 percent of those with centrist views and 51 percent of conservatives also agreed that such an amendment is necessary...
Tories. Can only do well if Labour fail and also Tories can present as absolutely united, principled, clear and outstanding and new WRT themselves, not as critics of Labour. We will remain utterly uninterested in their critiques of Labour. They had too long to do better.
chance: 10%
Labour. Can only do well if they communicate well, don't make unforced errors, have some luck, are seen to succeed reasonably well, don't fiscally crash and sort the politics of housing and migartion.
Chance: 15%
Reform: Do well if either of the above don't happen. Do very well if both don't happen.
Looks like about 70% chance.
I don't believe my own conclusion. But it still may be right. DYOR.
Yet she is pledged to reverse VAT on schools, restore the agricultural tax dodge and WFP, keep the Triple Lock, increase defence spending etc.
If she is serious about small government and tax cuts she needs to be setting out broad themes at least. She needs to let pensioners know that the featherbedding is over.
[Manchester] United are performing like an inverse trapeze artist - "Roll up, roll up, be dazzled at how low we can go!"
Or go for Cleverly who would have held the fort, waited things out while being plausibly prime ministerial.
The only thing to be said for Badenoch is she's better than Jenrick, but maybe she's already served that purpose.
Con 45%
NDP 21%
Lib 16%
BQ 11%
Grn 3%
PPC 1%
Oth 2%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2025_Canadian_federal_election#National_polls
Kemi is in an entirely different strategic situation.
Look, I feel for her. She's an intelligent and nice lady, and I like her, but she's got to sharpen up or she won't be able to succeed.
It's a mess, but it's the existing mess. And the Dictator Starmer stuff came from people still adjusting to being out of power themselves.
(Me? I'm fairly happy with the model- the bottom-up map of regions and powers seems a lot like the approach Spain took to decentralise after Franco.)
(For second place.)
There isn't much enthusiasm for Starmerism at present, though plenty of time for that to change, but having Farage as the alternative is a great motivator.
Britain is about 60% Remainer, it doesn't want the chief architect of Brexit as PM. Neither does it want a Trump kiss-arse.
BTW, Britain is 0% Remainer, as there's nothing to Remain in. Unless you mean NATO or the Commonwealth?
I agree that Jenrick was likely to be the most effective leader. He gave the impression of being the most shameless bastard, which is a positive attribute for an opposition leader. It's to the Tories credit that they didn't choose him, and I hope it was because of ethics issues.
I think Luckyguy made a lot of Badenoch being lazy, and he appears to have been proved very right in only two months. Leader of the Opposition is the hardest and most thankless job in British politics, and she isn't rising to the challenge.
"Electoral Calculus" https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html
So Kemi is clearly making progress even if not yet headed for Dowming Street. In fact on current polls Kemi will have the most gains for a Conservative Opposition Leader against a newly elected Labour government at
the next general election since Churchill in 1950. By
late 1951 Churchill was PM.
The only Opposition Leader to defeat a newly elected government after one term since WW2 was Wilson in February 1974 but even then Heath won the popular vote in a hung parliament
The moment that a convincing alternative to Starmer breaks through, he's in trouble. At the moment though, he's still seen as the best of a bad lot.
But most Reform voters are “none of the above” voters - and they aren’t going to be voting Tory for a while because the Tories failed to deliver in 2019
Now that’s not to say they will vote Reform in 2028/9. What it does mean is that they are going to continue to say that they will vote reform for a while yet and that does mean if you are judging Kemi via Reform/Tory vote share she’s already lost.
There would be a visceral reaction to Farage in the cities but Labour could lose dozens of seats in the red wall. The Conservatives would get squeezed out of almost all their seats. You could just about envisage a Farage premiership in that event, but you'd still need a significant overall swing to the Right for Labour + Lib Dem to be overtaken.
are gaining redwall and ex industrial hard leave Labour seats Kemi can't reach while
she was wins back rural seats and soft Leave town and suburban seats the Tories lost to Labour in July
It's possible that the same "Fun Dad" campaign may look a bit tired by 2029, but it's clear that he has rebuilt the LD election machine.
He gets to lead at the next GE. Indeed I would say that he is the most likely to be leading his party then, with Farage a close second. I think it quite likely that both Starmer and Badenoch will be replaced before the GE, particularly if Labour are not leading the polling.
It's simplistic to talk about him "uniting the right", but there's still potential for him to get to 30%. And if the rest of the votes are split five ways - Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, Greens and Nationalists - then that is plenty.
This year the vote split many ways because Starmer who was presumptive next PM with his Ming 'vase strategy' was not a polarising figure so people felt safe to split in every other direction, but you only need to look at the prior couple of elections to see what happens when a polarising campaign is run.
The Boomers are sliding into their coffins and taking Brexit with them (like everything else they could get their grasping hands on)
Add in his laziness, Trumpism, and rum crew, as well as policies like ending the NHS, it will not be an appealing prospect for government.
Reform are a party for people who complain loudly about everything but have never attempted to do anything constructive in their lives. They are a protest vote, not a party fit for government.
It’s about funding bots, useful idiots and fake members. After all to do so is just recycling money. I still feel they have a ceiling.
https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/663324-jeju-737-800-crash-muan-airport-south-korea-35.html
To the question does anyone support Kemi, I most certainly am and frankly the critics of her are, as I said yesterday, not her immediate audience
I do not often agree with @Dura_Ace but he is correct in saying her approach should be to take on Farage and questions on Reforms membership numbers are fair, as are his predominant appearances on Question Time and GBNews
It is less than 6 months since she became leader and in that time Starmer and Reeves have cratered in spectacular style, and as the government of the day they dominate the media attention leaving little left for the opposition to grab headlines, and that also includes Ed Davey
The membership and mps seem content with her presently, and she has plenty of time to develop a policy platform and to be fair Mel Stride has already questioned the affordability of the triple lock
I expect her to lead into the next GE, unless someone is elected in a by election who could be perceived a better choice as I do not see anyone in the current conservative mps
Never mind, mark me down as a conservative satisfied with Kemi
I've changed my tune on this quite a bit after looking at all the seats in the north. Labour are vulnerable and kinda need Badenoch to keep splitting the vote.
Though when Trudeau took over the Liberals were third remember with the NDP official opposition. Most polls still have Trudeau's Liberals second still even if he likely loses power after a decade as PM
Because you really couldn’t pick a worse manager than Rooney - hopefully his career as a manager has ended
For those reasons, and simply that Davey far outperformed expectations in 2024, Lib Dems won't be in any hurry at all to replace. In any event, as others have mentioned, 64 would be older end of the normal range but hardly elderly for a party leader.
Leave and Remain aren't a thing anymore, its over and there's no point crying over spilt milk.
There may be some who think its an idea to rejoin, but that's a completely different question and there's no credible movement for it and so there's no serious measurements on the support of that, or what it would mean with compromises that would have to be made.
When will owners realise that just because a person was a good player, it doesn't make them a good manager? It's a completely different skill set.
Badenoch doesn’t want to accept anything was done wrong and instead wants to retreat to her comfort zone of attacking woke. May be appealing to Leon nd other obsessive, but most people just want things fixed. Starmer isn’t making any friends, but people won’t forget what the Tories did to them.
Tories expect voters to bear electoral grudges like the cut to WFP but forget the fiasco of Brexit? Not likely!