Working nightshift on the Bittern field. Actually not working as the operation doesn't need me at present.
So had a play with the Survation MRP data just looking at those seats predicted to stay Tory.
A few observations.
If they are right then of the 72 seats the Tories retain, 1 is in Scotland. None in Wales. The Tories end up with no seats in either the North East or North West regions. They will keep only 2 seats in London
Of the former MPs mentioned this evening;
Robert Jenrick loses his seat in Newark Penny Mourdant loses her seat in Portsmouth North Johnny Mercer loses his seat in Plymouth Moor View Jacob Rees Mogg loses his seat in North East Somerset and Hanham
Patel, Badenoch and Braverman all retain their seats as does Sunak.
Some of the margins on these seats are incredibly tight. The North Cotswold seat has a nominal Tory win but there is less than 1% between the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems. In total there are 8 of the Tory holds where Labour are within 1% of them.
By the way, just looking at the header, there is an error. On this MRP poll, Liz Truss does not survive. Labour take the seat.
Thanks for your helpful, considered, posts on this Richard.
Ground noise seems to suggest Liz Truss has a big fight on her hands. She may be in trouble.
Back down in the South-west, Labour seem to be pretty confident of taking Plymouth Moor View. Interestingly, they are putting no effort into Newton Abbot, leaving that for the LibDems to try and take.
By the way, just looking at the header, there is an error. On this MRP poll, Liz Truss does not survive. Labour take the seat.
Thanks for your helpful, considered, posts on this Richard.
Ground noise seems to suggest Liz Truss has a big fight on her hands. She may be in trouble.
Back down in the South-west, Labour seem to be pretty confident of taking Plymouth Moor View. Interestingly, they are putting no effort into Newton Abbot, leaving that for the LibDems to try and take.
Cheers m'lady. I have done a bit more work on this and am hoping it might form the basis of a short thread header although it may well already be out of date if we get more polling today.
Other notable losses if this poll is correct are David Davis and Ian Duncan Smith.
By the way, just looking at the header, there is an error. On this MRP poll, Liz Truss does not survive. Labour take the seat.
Thanks for your helpful, considered, posts on this Richard.
Ground noise seems to suggest Liz Truss has a big fight on her hands. She may be in trouble.
Back down in the South-west, Labour seem to be pretty confident of taking Plymouth Moor View. Interestingly, they are putting no effort into Newton Abbot, leaving that for the LibDems to try and take.
Oh and surprised about Newton Abbot. On that MRP poll Labour are miles ahead and the Lib Dems in a poor 3rd quite a way behind the Tories.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
By the way, just looking at the header, there is an error. On this MRP poll, Liz Truss does not survive. Labour take the seat.
Thanks for your helpful, considered, posts on this Richard.
Ground noise seems to suggest Liz Truss has a big fight on her hands. She may be in trouble.
Back down in the South-west, Labour seem to be pretty confident of taking Plymouth Moor View. Interestingly, they are putting no effort into Newton Abbot, leaving that for the LibDems to try and take.
Oh and surprised about Newton Abbot. On that MRP poll Labour are miles ahead and the Lib Dems in a poor 3rd quite a way behind the Tories.
Well I’m surprised too. It’s quite strange. Not all of the tactical voting websites have given their verdict on Newton Abbot but I’m guessing it’s based on who came second last time under different boundaries (LibDems).
It may just be a case of Labour wanting to be sure of taking Plymouth Moor View, so unlike my Woking tip which was a constituency I knew better, I’d advise anyone not to follow my Newton Abbot comment. I really don’t know what will happen and three of the four tactical voting websites haven’t made up their minds on it yet. It could be a genuine 3-way marginal.
By the way, just looking at the header, there is an error. On this MRP poll, Liz Truss does not survive. Labour take the seat.
Thanks for your helpful, considered, posts on this Richard.
Ground noise seems to suggest Liz Truss has a big fight on her hands. She may be in trouble.
Back down in the South-west, Labour seem to be pretty confident of taking Plymouth Moor View. Interestingly, they are putting no effort into Newton Abbot, leaving that for the LibDems to try and take.
Oh and surprised about Newton Abbot. On that MRP poll Labour are miles ahead and the Lib Dems in a poor 3rd quite a way behind the Tories.
Well I’m surprised too. It’s quite strange. Not all of the tactical voting websites have given their verdict on Newton Abbot but I’m guessing it’s based on who came second last time under different boundaries (LibDems).
It may just be a case of Labour wanting to be sure of taking Plymouth Moor View, so unlike my Woking tip which was a constituency I knew better, I’d advise anyone not to follow my Newton Abbot comment. I really don’t know what will happen and three of the four tactical voting websites haven’t made up their minds on it yet. It could be a genuine 3-way marginal.
I think MRP struggles to incorporate Tactical Voting, and the corollary of that is that it is too optimistic for Con, and probably SNP too.
Chatting to a friend tonight who's been campaigning for Labour in Gillingham. She says people were a bit sceptical about Starmer but seemed pretty receptive to Labour's message overall.
That's quite funny, given that Labour's strategy seems to be pretty much presenting Starmer as a different kind of Labour leader who is reassuring to Conservatives.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
One thing I would observe is that there are political advantages (albeit possible diminishing) to be had by depicting something you don't like as 'fascist'. What is going on with Nigel Farage is exactly that. It is a repeat of the usual process, ah... he is a 'fascist/racist' and 'you are either with us or against us'. It gets really tiring, because of all the things Farage has said/done/suggested that are supposedly 'far right', I see as objectively as being little different to what the conservative party has done whilst in power over the last 14 years, albeit with a more respectable glaze. IE the deliberate banishing of ethnic minorities under the 'windrush' deportations.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
I’m currently headed to south of France for work, but I’ll be on the ground in London shortly to sniff out the “mood”.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
I’m currently headed to south of France for work, but I’ll be on the ground in London shortly to sniff out the “mood”.
Great, but that'd be a bit like heading to New York to test how well Trump is going down.
Shocked at how ill King Charles looked at the Trooping of the Colour.
I really do wonder now if Sunak was briefed on his condition - and decided he had no choice but to go for an earlier election than one later in the year that might have had a period of official mourning in the middle of it. It would explain much, particularly why the Cabinet weren't party to that decision.
I've always had a suspicion the King's condition is very serious, so you may be right.
The way they don't really say what cancer etc is a bit suss to me. That suggests to me if it was revealed what it was, people might do a google and find outcomes not being great.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
One thing I would observe is that there are political advantages (albeit possible diminishing) to be had by depicting something you don't like as 'fascist'. What is going on with Nigel Farage is exactly that. It is a repeat of the usual process, ah... he is a 'fascist/racist' and 'you are either with us or against us'. It gets really tiring, because of all the things Farage has said/done/suggested that are supposedly 'far right', I see as objectively as being little different to what the conservative party has done whilst in power over the last 14 years, albeit with a more respectable glaze. IE the deliberate banishing of ethnic minorities under the 'windrush' deportations.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
I see the terms "racist" and "fascist" as extensions to the already used labels of "leftie", "woke" and "liberal" in the US as terms of abuse trotted out at the drop of a hat. They are culture war labels, and we know who started to use them widely - Maga and Brexiteers.
@Leon I’m on TikTok and Farage is not “all over it”
Yes, Reform are doing a better job than the tories on most social media but Labour are way ahead of both in terms of output and followers.
What you just can’t accept is that Farage is marmite. A lot of people on the right loathe him. He is not the answer.
Your description of him as a right wing Corbyn is - I think - spot on.
While he'd do a terrific job of uniting (much of) the Conservative vote and (all of) the Reform vote, he'd also supercharge tactical voting against the Conservative-Reform Party.
Which is a big problem in FPTP, unless you're getting 45% of the vote. And I don't believe that a Conservative-Reform Party led by Farage would be getting 45% of the vote.
Corbyn never clocked that for every vote he won he lost two. Farage is worse.
I disagree. This analysis is totally wrong. Farage is a vastly more significant figure and a much more powerful politician
Corbyn is just a standard dim lefty fringe crank who got lucky when Labour nominated him for the lols. Farage single handedly turned UKIP into a major force, forced a referendum, and we brexited. Farage changed history, Corbyn is a footnote
And here is Farage again, transforming an election and threatening to destroy “the natural party of government”
The only similarity is that they are both polarising. That’s it
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
By the way, just looking at the header, there is an error. On this MRP poll, Liz Truss does not survive. Labour take the seat.
South West Norfolk should be extremely safe but I see Labour came close in 1997.
It's probably one where a big Reform vote locally lets them through.
Norfolk SW and Norfolk NW both go Labour under the Electoral Calculus model, with small majorities and Reform in a credible third place. I'm far from convinced in either case, but if they can't hold either of those then there'll be very little left of the Parliamentary Conservative Party come July 5th.
Chatting to a friend tonight who's been campaigning for Labour in Gillingham. She says people were a bit sceptical about Starmer but seemed pretty receptive to Labour's message overall.
That's quite funny, given that Labour's strategy seems to be pretty much presenting Starmer as a different kind of Labour leader who is reassuring to Conservatives.
Yes, although I think it's quite typical for voters to like Labour as a party more than they like the leader, Blair being the obvious exception. Plus, the manoeuvres than Starmer had to go through to be in a position to succeed Corbyn, then win the leadership, then make Labour electable, are always going to make some people question what he believes in. It doesn't bother me much because I understand that that's how politics works, but I get it that some people don't like it. The fact that people are again receptive to the party's message is in part down to him, anyway, even if in the process he tarnished his own standing.
By the way, just looking at the header, there is an error. On this MRP poll, Liz Truss does not survive. Labour take the seat.
Thanks for your helpful, considered, posts on this Richard.
Ground noise seems to suggest Liz Truss has a big fight on her hands. She may be in trouble.
Back down in the South-west, Labour seem to be pretty confident of taking Plymouth Moor View. Interestingly, they are putting no effort into Newton Abbot, leaving that for the LibDems to try and take.
Oh and surprised about Newton Abbot. On that MRP poll Labour are miles ahead and the Lib Dems in a poor 3rd quite a way behind the Tories.
Honiton and Sidmouth, Yeovil & Dorset West (Less so in truth) are all Lib Dem targets judging by signage I saw on holiday. There was a solitary Labour poster up next to the Swanage beach which is in Dorset South. Which all matches Electoral Calculus MRP.
Scotland and Outer London are clearly going to be the best relative areas for the Tories. All the By-elections, London mayoral and weakness of the SNP/different considerations in Scotland point to it.
For those who are objecting to labels like “far right” for Reform UK, I note that the second paragraph of their manifesto says:
“The small boats crisis threatens our security. Brexit has been betrayed. Multiculturalism has imported separate communities that reject our way of life. ‘Woke’ ideology has captured our public institutions.”
The emphasis there on the threat of other ethnicities and the use of language like “betrayed” and “captured” certainly echoes common fascist themes.
Their manifesto also has plenty of conspiracy theory talk. It talks of an “Excess Deaths and Vaccine Harms Public Inquiry”. It denies anthropogenic climate change. They want to “Ban Critical Race Theory in Primary” schools, despite critical race theory never having been taught in primary schools. They want to “Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum”.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
I’m currently headed to south of France for work, but I’ll be on the ground in London shortly to sniff out the “mood”.
If you're anywhere near Nice you'll see it buzzing like you haven't seen before. The Tour de France is starting in Florence and finishing in Nice this year and there's bike stuff everywhere. Nice is a great city always but just at the moment it's heaving. I even caught a Gaza demo there yesterday
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
For example — Battersea is forecast to be a Labour win by 20%, compared to 11% last time, which is a swing of only 4.5%. Why such a low swing in a London seat?
I believe the pollsters say Labours vote has become very efficient, i.e. no piling up of votes in their core cities, and bugger swings to them in the red wall. This makes sense since he is losing support amongst Muslims, and the far left (those that are unhappy with how he has treated Corbyn).
I see the Mail going moderately big on the large number of spooks, creeps and weirdos standing for Reform. I think we will see RefUK momentum in reverse, especially as Tories have their backs to the wall and come out fighting. Nevertheless some long held Tory strongholds will be lost and many will have tiny majorities. It will be a Tory disaster, but may fall short of catastrophe.
By the way, just looking at the header, there is an error. On this MRP poll, Liz Truss does not survive. Labour take the seat.
South West Norfolk should be extremely safe but I see Labour came close in 1997.
It's probably one where a big Reform vote locally lets them through.
Norfolk SW and Norfolk NW both go Labour under the Electoral Calculus model, with small majorities and Reform in a credible third place. I'm far from convinced in either case, but if they can't hold either of those then there'll be very little left of the Parliamentary Conservative Party come July 5th.
Also Norfolk SW could have the opposite of an normally positive incumbency factor........
I see the Mail going moderately big on the large number of spooks, creeps and weirdos standing for Reform. I think we will see RefUK momentum in reverse, especially as Tories have their backs to the wall and come out fighting. Nevertheless some long held Tory strongholds will be lost and many will have tiny majorities. It will be a Tory disaster, but may fall short of catastrophe.
It's been very noticeable to date how reluctant the Tories are to attack Reform directly. If they have any sense (OK, OK...) that needs to stop.
For those who are objecting to labels like “far right” for Reform UK, I note that the second paragraph of their manifesto says:
“The small boats crisis threatens our security. Brexit has been betrayed. Multiculturalism has imported separate communities that reject our way of life. ‘Woke’ ideology has captured our public institutions.”
The emphasis there on the threat of other ethnicities and the use of language like “betrayed” and “captured” certainly echoes common fascist themes.
Their manifesto also has plenty of conspiracy theory talk. It talks of an “Excess Deaths and Vaccine Harms Public Inquiry”. It denies anthropogenic climate change. They want to “Ban Critical Race Theory in Primary” schools, despite critical race theory never having been taught in primary schools. They want to “Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum”.
Do you have a link to it. I could not find it earlier. Their web page doesn’t seem to be that good.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
The problem is not being nasty. To tackle deep-rooted problems, and cope with sudden emergencies, you have to be pretty nasty, at times. Being nice is not a virtue, in government.
As one poster put it yesterday, we lack decent people who will do undecent things.
The problem is being nasty, combined with incompetent and corrupt.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
The problem is not being nasty. To tackle deep-rooted problems, and cope with sudden emergencies, you have to be pretty nasty, at times. Being nice is not a virtue, in government.
As one poster put it yesterday, we lack decent people who will do undecent things.
The problem is being nasty, combined with incompetent and corrupt.
Though given Starmer's approach to deCorbynising the Labour party, he's at least capable of that.
I see the Mail going moderately big on the large number of spooks, creeps and weirdos standing for Reform. I think we will see RefUK momentum in reverse, especially as Tories have their backs to the wall and come out fighting. Nevertheless some long held Tory strongholds will be lost and many will have tiny majorities. It will be a Tory disaster, but may fall short of catastrophe.
It's been very noticeable to date how reluctant the Tories are to attack Reform directly. If they have any sense (OK, OK...) that needs to stop.
Indeed.
The trouble is, Sunak and prior to him Johnson, sidelined or chased out many of the moderates. So Sunak pandered to people like Braverman who is basically Reform. So if some in the Party attack Reform, others are not going to like it (Braverman, Andrea Jenkyns, Esther McVey etc. etc.)
By the way, I can just remember the build up to 1997 and this is all very similar. John Major lurched to the right with his Back to Basics nonsense, which was meant to be a restoration of ‘family values’ backed up by then ministers like John Redwood and Peter Lilley, attacking single parent mothers and ‘benefit scroungers.’ We were supposed to return to ‘core values’ based around the traditional family - this from the party which at the time still opposed teaching about homosexuality in schools because it was a ‘Pretend Family Relationship’ (Section 28). All from the good ol' ‘anti-woke’ Bible.
And on the 2nd May 1997 Britain woke up, breathed a sigh of relief, and told the Nasty Party to fuck off.
For those who are objecting to labels like “far right” for Reform UK, I note that the second paragraph of their manifesto says:
“The small boats crisis threatens our security. Brexit has been betrayed. Multiculturalism has imported separate communities that reject our way of life. ‘Woke’ ideology has captured our public institutions.”
The emphasis there on the threat of other ethnicities and the use of language like “betrayed” and “captured” certainly echoes common fascist themes.
Their manifesto also has plenty of conspiracy theory talk. It talks of an “Excess Deaths and Vaccine Harms Public Inquiry”. It denies anthropogenic climate change. They want to “Ban Critical Race Theory in Primary” schools, despite critical race theory never having been taught in primary schools. They want to “Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum”.
There are tens, or even hundreds of thousands of BigGs out there. People who will say all sorts of things to pollsters, but who, in the quiet of the polling booth or discussing a postal vote with their wives over the kitchen table, will come home to the Tories.
There are no loyal Faragists. He’s a fling. A bit of rough. In the end they come back. Not the erstwhile Labour voters, they’re going back to that home, but the habitual Conservative voters.
That’s why the conservatives will end up with a vote share beginning with 3, and about 200 seats.
Do you fancy a bet on this?
Not a huge one, but let’s say £100. If Tories are 28% or above you pay me, if they are 24% or below I pay you, if 24-28 we call it quits.
That’s a bit boring
Let’s make it below 26% I win; above 26% you win
But just £50. Enough for a pleasant solo lunch
Deal
🥂👍
That’s a nice bet. We both have a decent chance, but we are betting what we sincerely believe
Yes, much better than that ludicrous £10 to £10,000 with sandpit.
Approved.
Oh, don’t be a drip. @sandpit is going to win the bet which means a charity for disabled Ukrainian soldiers got a nice donation
Tho I WILL be collecting in the million-to-1 chance I win
I see the Mail going moderately big on the large number of spooks, creeps and weirdos standing for Reform. I think we will see RefUK momentum in reverse, especially as Tories have their backs to the wall and come out fighting. Nevertheless some long held Tory strongholds will be lost and many will have tiny majorities. It will be a Tory disaster, but may fall short of catastrophe.
It's been very noticeable to date how reluctant the Tories are to attack Reform directly. If they have any sense (OK, OK...) that needs to stop.
Indeed.
The trouble is, Sunak and prior to him Johnson, sidelined or chased out many of the moderates. So Sunak pandered to people like Braverman who is basically Reform. So if some in the Party attack Reform, others are not going to like it (Braverman, Andrea Jenkyns, Esther McVey etc. etc.)
By the way, I can just remember the build up to 1997 and this is all very similar. John Major lurched to the right with his Back to Basics nonsense, which was meant to be a restoration of ‘family values’ backed up by then ministers like John Redwood and Peter Lilley, attacking single parent mothers and ‘benefit scroungers.’ We were supposed to return to ‘core values’ based around the traditional family - this from the party which at the time still opposed teaching about homosexuality in schools because it was a ‘Pretend Family Relationship’ (Section 28). All from the good ol' ‘anti-woke’ Bible.
And on the 2nd May 1997 Britain woke up, breathed a sigh of relief, and told the Nasty Party to fuck off.
Which is what’s about to happen again.
And post 1997, Britain discovered it had a different Nasty Party in charge.
I see the Mail going moderately big on the large number of spooks, creeps and weirdos standing for Reform. I think we will see RefUK momentum in reverse, especially as Tories have their backs to the wall and come out fighting. Nevertheless some long held Tory strongholds will be lost and many will have tiny majorities. It will be a Tory disaster, but may fall short of catastrophe.
It's been very noticeable to date how reluctant the Tories are to attack Reform directly. If they have any sense (OK, OK...) that needs to stop.
Indeed.
The trouble is, Sunak and prior to him Johnson, sidelined or chased out many of the moderates. So Sunak pandered to people like Braverman who is basically Reform. So if some in the Party attack Reform, others are not going to like it (Braverman, Andrea Jenkyns, Esther McVey etc. etc.)
By the way, I can just remember the build up to 1997 and this is all very similar. John Major lurched to the right with his Back to Basics nonsense, which was meant to be a restoration of ‘family values’ backed up by then ministers like John Redwood and Peter Lilley, attacking single parent mothers and ‘benefit scroungers.’ We were supposed to return to ‘core values’ based around the traditional family - this from the party which at the time still opposed teaching about homosexuality in schools because it was a ‘Pretend Family Relationship’ (Section 28). All from the good ol' ‘anti-woke’ Bible.
And on the 2nd May 1997 Britain woke up, breathed a sigh of relief, and told the Nasty Party to fuck off.
Which is what’s about to happen again.
And post 1997, Britain discovered it had a different Nasty Party in charge.
Which is why the horrified nation turned to William Hague to be saved.
One thing I suspect we’re not very good at, none of us, is detecting the feel. CR criticised me for introducing ‘emotion’ into an argument yesterday morning, which is of course a classic put down of women.
But I remember the feel of the country on May 2nd 1997. The euphoria for some, the sheer relief for many.
I predict there will be something similar on July 5th 2024. An emergence from a long, dark, tunnel. Labour may not right now feel like saviours, and they are bound to fail on several fronts, but the sheer bloody relief will be palpable.
Britain has always been a remarkably outward-facing nation with the capacity to renew itself. We are not the US. Neither are we mainland Europe. A once seafaring nation, globalist, with a sense of humour and an innate sense of fair play. We will move forward, socially as well as politically.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
The problem is not being nasty. To tackle deep-rooted problems, and cope with sudden emergencies, you have to be pretty nasty, at times. Being nice is not a virtue, in government.
As one poster put it yesterday, we lack decent people who will do undecent things.
The problem is being nasty, combined with incompetent and corrupt.
Though given Starmer's approach to deCorbynising the Labour party, he's at least capable of that.
And to be fair, New Labour was better on justice, immigration, and (notwithstanding Iraq), defence than the current shambles. The “nasty” areas of government.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
The problem is not being nasty. To tackle deep-rooted problems, and cope with sudden emergencies, you have to be pretty nasty, at times. Being nice is not a virtue, in government.
As one poster put it yesterday, we lack decent people who will do undecent things.
The problem is being nasty, combined with incompetent and corrupt.
Though given Starmer's approach to deCorbynising the Labour party, he's at least capable of that.
A friend who knows him better then I do tells me he is pretty ruthless, which is a good thing, because when he is PM, he won't need ruth.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
The problem is not being nasty. To tackle deep-rooted problems, and cope with sudden emergencies, you have to be pretty nasty, at times. Being nice is not a virtue, in government.
As one poster put it yesterday, we lack decent people who will do undecent things.
The problem is being nasty, combined with incompetent and corrupt.
Though given Starmer's approach to deCorbynising the Labour party, he's at least capable of that.
And to be fair, New Labour was better on justice, immigration, and (notwithstanding Iraq), defence than the current shambles. The “nasty” areas of government.
Yep. e.g. 2003 they repealed the hateful, spiteful, Section 28 which was pure ‘anti-woke’ culture wars.
And love him or loathe him, the early years of Blair saw ‘Cool Britannia’.
It was a good time in this country. Very little nastiness around, at least compared to the latter years of the Conservatives.
For those who are objecting to labels like “far right” for Reform UK, I note that the second paragraph of their manifesto says:
“The small boats crisis threatens our security. Brexit has been betrayed. Multiculturalism has imported separate communities that reject our way of life. ‘Woke’ ideology has captured our public institutions.”
The emphasis there on the threat of other ethnicities and the use of language like “betrayed” and “captured” certainly echoes common fascist themes.
Their manifesto also has plenty of conspiracy theory talk. It talks of an “Excess Deaths and Vaccine Harms Public Inquiry”. It denies anthropogenic climate change. They want to “Ban Critical Race Theory in Primary” schools, despite critical race theory never having been taught in primary schools. They want to “Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum”.
Do you have a link to it. I could not find it earlier. Their web page doesn’t seem to be that good.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
I sometimes think you're right but at others that there are massive parts of the UK about which I know nothing. I personally knew no one who voted Brexit. Not so surprising as 97% of advertisers according to polls at the time were Remainers.
I saw a program early in the campaign where a reporter was at a bingo hall in Preston and she asked for a show of hands who were going to vote Leave. It appeared to be unanimous. "Why?' She asked. "Immigrants" they answered almost in unison.
Apart from the few obvious Powellites who post here I don't know anyone who has a problem with immigrants. They are part of the rich tapestry that brings colour and vitality particularly to towns and cities
@Leon I’m on TikTok and Farage is not “all over it”
Yes, Reform are doing a better job than the tories on most social media but Labour are way ahead of both in terms of output and followers.
What you just can’t accept is that Farage is marmite. A lot of people on the right loathe him. He is not the answer.
Your description of him as a right wing Corbyn is - I think - spot on.
While he'd do a terrific job of uniting (much of) the Conservative vote and (all of) the Reform vote, he'd also supercharge tactical voting against the Conservative-Reform Party.
Which is a big problem in FPTP, unless you're getting 45% of the vote. And I don't believe that a Conservative-Reform Party led by Farage would be getting 45% of the vote.
Corbyn never clocked that for every vote he won he lost two. Farage is worse.
I disagree. This analysis is totally wrong. Farage is a vastly more significant figure and a much more powerful politician
Corbyn is just a standard dim lefty fringe crank who got lucky when Labour nominated him for the lols. Farage single handedly turned UKIP into a major force, forced a referendum, and we brexited. Farage changed history, Corbyn is a footnote
And here is Farage again, transforming an election and threatening to destroy “the natural party of government”
The only similarity is that they are both polarising. That’s it
Corbyn got 40% of the vote in 2017. I doubt Farage will get that. Corbyns crowds were bigger.
Corbyn fluked it. Farage is the real deal
FWIW I reckon both would be TERRIBLE prime ministers, for very different reasons
Leon, you’re so hot for MAGA type nonsense that you lose all sense of perspective. Farage has been an agent provocateur for 30 odd years. He’s not got anywhere near a position of real responsibility and frankly I don’t think he wants to. He’s happy to be a lightning rod for the angry, people we used to refer to when canvassing as antis. Far happier lighting matches than putting fires out. I’m not saying there isn’t a latent vote for his prospectus, but it has a ceiling. The tragedy is that the Tory party has allowed itself to be infiltrated, it’s cowered before the far right rather than dealing with it and exposing its contradictions. We need a strong conservative party, but one founded in conservative values, not nativist proto-fascism.
Your descent into this rabbit hole of personality cults really does remind me of Plato. She started watching Fox 24h, only read stuff that confirmed her biases. And it didn’t end up well for her.
One thing I suspect we’re not very good at, none of us, is detecting the feel. CR criticised me for introducing ‘emotion’ into an argument yesterday morning, which is of course a classic put down of women.
But I remember the feel of the country on May 2nd 1997. The euphoria for some, the sheer relief for many.
I predict there will be something similar on July 5th 2024. An emergence from a long, dark, tunnel. Labour may not right now feel like saviours, and they are bound to fail on several fronts, but the sheer bloody relief will be palpable.
Britain has always been a remarkably outward-facing nation with the capacity to renew itself. We are not the US. Neither are we mainland Europe. A once seafaring nation, globalist, with a sense of humour and an innate sense of fair play. We will move forward, socially as well as politically.
It will be 1997 for the next generation.
It was a joyous occasion. A burden lifted. The anguish of 1992 forgotten.
One thing I suspect we’re not very good at, none of us, is detecting the feel. CR criticised me for introducing ‘emotion’ into an argument yesterday morning, which is of course a classic put down of women.
But I remember the feel of the country on May 2nd 1997. The euphoria for some, the sheer relief for many.
I predict there will be something similar on July 5th 2024. An emergence from a long, dark, tunnel. Labour may not right now feel like saviours, and they are bound to fail on several fronts, but the sheer bloody relief will be palpable.
Britain has always been a remarkably outward-facing nation with the capacity to renew itself. We are not the US. Neither are we mainland Europe. A once seafaring nation, globalist, with a sense of humour and an innate sense of fair play. We will move forward, socially as well as politically.
What is your recollection of the feel of the country after the election in 2010, or after the Coalition was subsequently agreed?
You have no sense of, and exhibit very little interest in, the feelings and thoughts of those in Britain who don't think like you. Even if, as I hope, Tory government is, at least temporarily, banished from Britain at this election, somewhere in the region of a third of voters will vote Tory or Reform. What of their feelings? One imagines that many voters who put their X against a Green or Liberal Democrat candidate will feel a bit wary about the prospect of finding that Starmer's Labour government is simply tweedledee to the Tory tweedledum.
This is why Casino Royale's posts over recent weeks and months have often been so interesting to me. They represent the thoughts and emotions of a segment of the British population that I don't otherwise come into contact with.
For those who are objecting to labels like “far right” for Reform UK, I note that the second paragraph of their manifesto says:
“The small boats crisis threatens our security. Brexit has been betrayed. Multiculturalism has imported separate communities that reject our way of life. ‘Woke’ ideology has captured our public institutions.”
The emphasis there on the threat of other ethnicities and the use of language like “betrayed” and “captured” certainly echoes common fascist themes.
Their manifesto also has plenty of conspiracy theory talk. It talks of an “Excess Deaths and Vaccine Harms Public Inquiry”. It denies anthropogenic climate change. They want to “Ban Critical Race Theory in Primary” schools, despite critical race theory never having been taught in primary schools. They want to “Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum”.
Do you have a link to it. I could not find it earlier. Their web page doesn’t seem to be that good.
AIUI the Reform manifesto is published tomorrow, 17th June. I can't find it either.
One thing to look for is the detail on their £50 billion per year cuts. It's not easy to cut £10,000 from 5 million people, £5000 from 10 million etc when there are no areas of public services not demanding massive rises. They will probably do it by centralising the ordering of paper clips.
For those who are objecting to labels like “far right” for Reform UK, I note that the second paragraph of their manifesto says:
“The small boats crisis threatens our security. Brexit has been betrayed. Multiculturalism has imported separate communities that reject our way of life. ‘Woke’ ideology has captured our public institutions.”
The emphasis there on the threat of other ethnicities and the use of language like “betrayed” and “captured” certainly echoes common fascist themes.
Their manifesto also has plenty of conspiracy theory talk. It talks of an “Excess Deaths and Vaccine Harms Public Inquiry”. It denies anthropogenic climate change. They want to “Ban Critical Race Theory in Primary” schools, despite critical race theory never having been taught in primary schools. They want to “Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum”.
Do you have a link to it. I could not find it earlier. Their web page doesn’t seem to be that good.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
The problem is not being nasty. To tackle deep-rooted problems, and cope with sudden emergencies, you have to be pretty nasty, at times. Being nice is not a virtue, in government.
As one poster put it yesterday, we lack decent people who will do undecent things.
The problem is being nasty, combined with incompetent and corrupt.
Though given Starmer's approach to deCorbynising the Labour party, he's at least capable of that.
And to be fair, New Labour was better on justice, immigration, and (notwithstanding Iraq), defence than the current shambles. The “nasty” areas of government.
Yep. e.g. 2003 they repealed the hateful, spiteful, Section 28 which was pure ‘anti-woke’ culture wars.
And love him or loathe him, the early years of Blair saw ‘Cool Britannia’.
It was a good time in this country. Very little nastiness around, at least compared to the latter years of the Conservatives.
There was plenty of nastiness. Just directed against different targets.
It was, for a start, overwhelmingly directed at Tories and their supporters.
As for Cool Britannia, you're not seriously suggesting that was a good thing, are you? It was so silly it was genuinely farcical. Who could forget that ghastly jazz version of the National Anthem he came up with? It's a terrible piece of music anyway but at least the original has some dignity.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
I sometimes think you're right but at others that there are massive parts of the UK about which I know nothing. I personally knew no one who voted Brexit. Not so surprising as 97% of advertisers according to polls at the time were Remainers.
I saw a program early in the campaign where a reporter was at a bingo hall in Preston and she asked for a show of hands who were going to vote Leave. It appeared to be unanimous. "Why?' She asked. "Immigrants" they answered almost in unison.
Apart from the few obvious Powellites who post here I don't know anyone who has a problem with immigrants. They are part of the rich tapestry that brings colour and vitality particularly to towns and cities
You need to get out more! It is much more complex than your puzzled description, and very much about the lives of the powerless and left behind and ignored. (And I am voting Labour, as are most of the Tories I know).
One thing I suspect we’re not very good at, none of us, is detecting the feel. CR criticised me for introducing ‘emotion’ into an argument yesterday morning, which is of course a classic put down of women.
But I remember the feel of the country on May 2nd 1997. The euphoria for some, the sheer relief for many.
I predict there will be something similar on July 5th 2024. An emergence from a long, dark, tunnel. Labour may not right now feel like saviours, and they are bound to fail on several fronts, but the sheer bloody relief will be palpable.
Britain has always been a remarkably outward-facing nation with the capacity to renew itself. We are not the US. Neither are we mainland Europe. A once seafaring nation, globalist, with a sense of humour and an innate sense of fair play. We will move forward, socially as well as politically.
You seem to have it spot on and certainly this is very 1997 though not with quite the expectations that Blair received
The reality of 24/7 scrutiny that Starmer is about to experience will be a challenge as will the decisions he is facing
I read that France is currently suffering its own 'Truss' moment with interest rates on government borrowing rocketing and fighting between right and left in the streets
Europe is not in a good place nor is the ROW and looking at the photograph of the G7 leaders every one had negative ratings
I hope that we can defeat the Farage right and enjoy a period of less anger and division
On a personal note our youngest son, who joined the RNLI just under 3 years ago, is about to qualify as a helm on the Inshore Lifeboat being his first command position
We have a family tradition of seafaring going back generations and he is continuing that tradition
The crews are not interested in politics, but in saving lives at sea whilst devoting many hours both in the classroom and at sea and entirely without any payment
I know many on here donate to the RNLI and I just want to say it is very much appreciated as it is essential for the service to continue
For those who are objecting to labels like “far right” for Reform UK, I note that the second paragraph of their manifesto says:
“The small boats crisis threatens our security. Brexit has been betrayed. Multiculturalism has imported separate communities that reject our way of life. ‘Woke’ ideology has captured our public institutions.”
The emphasis there on the threat of other ethnicities and the use of language like “betrayed” and “captured” certainly echoes common fascist themes.
Their manifesto also has plenty of conspiracy theory talk. It talks of an “Excess Deaths and Vaccine Harms Public Inquiry”. It denies anthropogenic climate change. They want to “Ban Critical Race Theory in Primary” schools, despite critical race theory never having been taught in primary schools. They want to “Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum”.
Do you have a link to it. I could not find it earlier. Their web page doesn’t seem to be that good.
AIUI the Reform manifesto is published tomorrow, 17th June. I can't find it either.
One thing to look for is the detail on their £50 billion per year cuts. It's not easy to cut £10,000 from 5 million people, £5000 from 10 million etc when there are no areas of public services not demanding massive rises. They will probably do it by centralising the ordering of paper clips.
Yeah, what Bondezgou linked was a draft contract which I t expect to be the manifesto in all but name with a few tweaks.
I can say there is some good stuff in there but anti vax and WEF conspiracy stuff leaves me cold.
For those who are objecting to labels like “far right” for Reform UK, I note that the second paragraph of their manifesto says:
“The small boats crisis threatens our security. Brexit has been betrayed. Multiculturalism has imported separate communities that reject our way of life. ‘Woke’ ideology has captured our public institutions.”
The emphasis there on the threat of other ethnicities and the use of language like “betrayed” and “captured” certainly echoes common fascist themes.
Their manifesto also has plenty of conspiracy theory talk. It talks of an “Excess Deaths and Vaccine Harms Public Inquiry”. It denies anthropogenic climate change. They want to “Ban Critical Race Theory in Primary” schools, despite critical race theory never having been taught in primary schools. They want to “Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum”.
Surprised that there is not a single mention of cyclists or cycle lanes. I suppose some credit is due for that.
However, the total ban on LTNs is going to cost billions. Every dead end and cul de sac torn up. Hundreds of houses demolished to make way for A-roads.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
The problem is not being nasty. To tackle deep-rooted problems, and cope with sudden emergencies, you have to be pretty nasty, at times. Being nice is not a virtue, in government.
As one poster put it yesterday, we lack decent people who will do undecent things.
The problem is being nasty, combined with incompetent and corrupt.
Though given Starmer's approach to deCorbynising the Labour party, he's at least capable of that.
And to be fair, New Labour was better on justice, immigration, and (notwithstanding Iraq), defence than the current shambles. The “nasty” areas of government.
Yep. e.g. 2003 they repealed the hateful, spiteful, Section 28 which was pure ‘anti-woke’ culture wars.
And love him or loathe him, the early years of Blair saw ‘Cool Britannia’.
It was a good time in this country. Very little nastiness around, at least compared to the latter years of the Conservatives.
There was plenty of nastiness. Just directed against different targets.
It was, for a start, overwhelmingly directed at Tories and their supporters.
As for Cool Britannia, you're not seriously suggesting that was a good thing, are you? It was so silly it was genuinely farcical. Who could forget that ghastly jazz version of the National Anthem he came up with? It's a terrible piece of music anyway but at least the original has some dignity.
Cool Britannia was utterly embarrassing. Hey kids, look at us, we’re cool.
One thing I suspect we’re not very good at, none of us, is detecting the feel. CR criticised me for introducing ‘emotion’ into an argument yesterday morning, which is of course a classic put down of women.
But I remember the feel of the country on May 2nd 1997. The euphoria for some, the sheer relief for many.
I predict there will be something similar on July 5th 2024. An emergence from a long, dark, tunnel. Labour may not right now feel like saviours, and they are bound to fail on several fronts, but the sheer bloody relief will be palpable.
Britain has always been a remarkably outward-facing nation with the capacity to renew itself. We are not the US. Neither are we mainland Europe. A once seafaring nation, globalist, with a sense of humour and an innate sense of fair play. We will move forward, socially as well as politically.
You seem to have it spot on and certainly this is very 1997 though not with quite the expectations that Blair received
The reality of 24/7 scrutiny that Starmer is about to experience will be a challenge as will the decisions he is facing
I read that France is currently suffering its own 'Truss' moment with interest rates on government borrowing rocketing and fighting between right and left in the streets
Europe is not in a good place nor is the ROW and looking at the photograph of the G7 leaders every one had negative ratings
I hope that we can defeat the Farage right and enjoy a period of less anger and division
On a personal note our youngest son, who joined the RNLI just under 3 years ago, is about to qualify as a helm on the Inshore Lifeboat being his first command position
We have a family tradition of seafaring going back generations and he is continuing that tradition
The crews are not interested in politics, but in saving lives at sea whilst devoting many hours both in the classroom and at sea and entirely without any payment
I know many on here donate to the RNLI and I just want to say it is very much appreciated as it is essential for the service to continue
A friend of mine recently went to a garden party at the Palace and got an award for fundraising for the RNLI for 30 years.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
I’m currently headed to south of France for work, but I’ll be on the ground in London shortly to sniff out the “mood”.
If you're anywhere near Nice you'll see it buzzing like you haven't seen before. The Tour de France is starting in Florence and finishing in Nice this year and there's bike stuff everywhere. Nice is a great city always but just at the moment it's heaving. I even caught a Gaza demo there yesterday
Thanks Rog. I’m heading to the Festival. Not sure if you’re going, but maybe I’ll see you on the Croisette.
One thing I suspect we’re not very good at, none of us, is detecting the feel. CR criticised me for introducing ‘emotion’ into an argument yesterday morning, which is of course a classic put down of women.
But I remember the feel of the country on May 2nd 1997. The euphoria for some, the sheer relief for many.
I predict there will be something similar on July 5th 2024. An emergence from a long, dark, tunnel. Labour may not right now feel like saviours, and they are bound to fail on several fronts, but the sheer bloody relief will be palpable.
Britain has always been a remarkably outward-facing nation with the capacity to renew itself. We are not the US. Neither are we mainland Europe. A once seafaring nation, globalist, with a sense of humour and an innate sense of fair play. We will move forward, socially as well as politically.
You seem to have it spot on and certainly this is very 1997 though not with quite the expectations that Blair received
The reality of 24/7 scrutiny that Starmer is about to experience will be a challenge as will the decisions he is facing
I read that France is currently suffering its own 'Truss' moment with interest rates on government borrowing rocketing and fighting between right and left in the streets
Europe is not in a good place nor is the ROW and looking at the photograph of the G7 leaders every one had negative ratings
I hope that we can defeat the Farage right and enjoy a period of less anger and division
On a personal note our youngest son, who joined the RNLI just under 3 years ago, is about to qualify as a helm on the Inshore Lifeboat being his first command position
We have a family tradition of seafaring going back generations and he is continuing that tradition
The crews are not interested in politics, but in saving lives at sea whilst devoting many hours both in the classroom and at sea and entirely without any payment
I know many on here donate to the RNLI and I just want to say it is very much appreciated as it is essential for the service to continue
Congratulations to your son. A really worthwhile cause.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
The problem is not being nasty. To tackle deep-rooted problems, and cope with sudden emergencies, you have to be pretty nasty, at times. Being nice is not a virtue, in government.
As one poster put it yesterday, we lack decent people who will do undecent things.
The problem is being nasty, combined with incompetent and corrupt.
Though given Starmer's approach to deCorbynising the Labour party, he's at least capable of that.
And to be fair, New Labour was better on justice, immigration, and (notwithstanding Iraq), defence than the current shambles. The “nasty” areas of government.
Yep. e.g. 2003 they repealed the hateful, spiteful, Section 28 which was pure ‘anti-woke’ culture wars.
And love him or loathe him, the early years of Blair saw ‘Cool Britannia’.
It was a good time in this country. Very little nastiness around, at least compared to the latter years of the Conservatives.
There was plenty of nastiness. Just directed against different targets.
It was, for a start, overwhelmingly directed at Tories and their supporters.
As for Cool Britannia, you're not seriously suggesting that was a good thing, are you? It was so silly it was genuinely farcical. Who could forget that ghastly jazz version of the National Anthem he came up with? It's a terrible piece of music anyway but at least the original has some dignity.
I had quite a few issues with New Labour, including their dismissive tone toward non-New Labour voters.
But it seem weird to pick on a rearrangement of the national anthem. I’d take that over, say, Al Campbell’s dodgy dossier.
For those who are objecting to labels like “far right” for Reform UK, I note that the second paragraph of their manifesto says:
“The small boats crisis threatens our security. Brexit has been betrayed. Multiculturalism has imported separate communities that reject our way of life. ‘Woke’ ideology has captured our public institutions.”
The emphasis there on the threat of other ethnicities and the use of language like “betrayed” and “captured” certainly echoes common fascist themes.
Their manifesto also has plenty of conspiracy theory talk. It talks of an “Excess Deaths and Vaccine Harms Public Inquiry”. It denies anthropogenic climate change. They want to “Ban Critical Race Theory in Primary” schools, despite critical race theory never having been taught in primary schools. They want to “Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum”.
They are far right, and the sooner they are labelled as such in the media, the better. We have a peculiar attitude that involves denial of how fascism can happen here. Call it out.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
I’m currently headed to south of France for work, but I’ll be on the ground in London shortly to sniff out the “mood”.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
I’m currently headed to south of France for work, but I’ll be on the ground in London shortly to sniff out the “mood”.
Great, but that'd be a bit like heading to New York to test how well Trump is going down.
By the way, just looking at the header, there is an error. On this MRP poll, Liz Truss does not survive. Labour take the seat.
Thanks for your helpful, considered, posts on this Richard.
Ground noise seems to suggest Liz Truss has a big fight on her hands. She may be in trouble.
Back down in the South-west, Labour seem to be pretty confident of taking Plymouth Moor View. Interestingly, they are putting no effort into Newton Abbot, leaving that for the LibDems to try and take.
Oh and surprised about Newton Abbot. On that MRP poll Labour are miles ahead and the Lib Dems in a poor 3rd quite a way behind the Tories.
Well I’m surprised too. It’s quite strange. Not all of the tactical voting websites have given their verdict on Newton Abbot but I’m guessing it’s based on who came second last time under different boundaries (LibDems).
It may just be a case of Labour wanting to be sure of taking Plymouth Moor View, so unlike my Woking tip which was a constituency I knew better, I’d advise anyone not to follow my Newton Abbot comment. I really don’t know what will happen and three of the four tactical voting websites haven’t made up their minds on it yet. It could be a genuine 3-way marginal.
I think MRP struggles to incorporate Tactical Voting, and the corollary of that is that it is too optimistic for Con, and probably SNP too.
IIUC MRP uses a variety of socio-economic / non-political survey factors to work out how people are changing their votes? (eg Mondeo Man is universally swinging heavily from Con->Lab, this constituency contains many Mondeo Men, so bigger swing here?).
If so, I'd love to see an MRP which gives two readings: One where one of the input factors used is "which party is the tactical vote recipient for the seat" and one where it does not use that factor.
So we can see if the swing to LD/LAB/SNP is bigger in seats where LD/LAB/SD is the TV recipient and by how much?
I see the Mail going moderately big on the large number of spooks, creeps and weirdos standing for Reform. I think we will see RefUK momentum in reverse, especially as Tories have their backs to the wall and come out fighting. Nevertheless some long held Tory strongholds will be lost and many will have tiny majorities. It will be a Tory disaster, but may fall short of catastrophe.
It's been very noticeable to date how reluctant the Tories are to attack Reform directly. If they have any sense (OK, OK...) that needs to stop.
Indeed.
The trouble is, Sunak and prior to him Johnson, sidelined or chased out many of the moderates. So Sunak pandered to people like Braverman who is basically Reform. So if some in the Party attack Reform, others are not going to like it (Braverman, Andrea Jenkyns, Esther McVey etc. etc.)
By the way, I can just remember the build up to 1997 and this is all very similar. John Major lurched to the right with his Back to Basics nonsense, which was meant to be a restoration of ‘familfor years. y values’ backed up by then ministers like John Redwood and Peter Lilley, attacking single parent mothers and ‘benefit scroungers.’ We were supposed to return to ‘core values’ based around the traditional family - this from the party which at the time still opposed teaching about homosexuality in schools because it was a ‘Pretend Family Relationship’ (Section 28). All from the good ol' ‘anti-woke’ Bible.
And on the 2nd May 1997 Britain woke up, breathed a sigh of relief, and told the Nasty Party to fuck off.
Which is what’s about to happen again.
And post 1997, Britain discovered it had a different Nasty Party in charge.
Do you have any examples? I thought the first Blair government was the best we'd had and it was genuinely progressive.
Today's Sunday Rawnsley, from a trying-to-be-sunny island after yesterday's windswept yacht race...
From the off, this election has been Labour’s to lose – and boy does it know it. I say...this as a compliment to the professionalism of the Labour campaign, not least because I’ve witnessed so many past contests in which the party lacked the ferocious focus and the steely will to prevail in the brutal contact sport of electoral politics.
As we puff past the halfway mark, journalists pronounce themselves bored with Labour. Meant as an insult, it is flattery in the ears of Sir Keir’s team. The media thirsts for drama and novelty, but the Labour team’s contrary belief is that most voters currently crave stability and predictability.
The manifesto does indeed contain nothing you would not already know if you’ve been paying reasonably close attention to the “missions” and the “first steps” previously unveiled. That doesn’t make it fair to damn it as a timid prospectus. On the likes of housebuilding, clean power and achieving sustainably higher growth, the longer-term goals are almost heroically ambitious.
The Tories are the party for those preferring one that frantically sprays out unfunded, slapdash, last-minute wheezes. As a strategy, that doesn’t seem to be working out all that well for Rishi Sunak.
Unless the entire polling industry is perpetrating the howler of all time, he will be entering Downing Street in less than three weeks’ time. It will be a dazzling achievement to take Labour into power just five years after the party’s worst defeat since the 1930s. Those who want to cavil will say that the main propellant of Sir Keir’s success is not desire to see him in power, but loathing for the Tories. This is not such a killer point as some imagine it to be. The unpopularity of their opponents played a large part in putting Tony Blair in Number 10 in 1997 and Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
There are two worms of unease wriggling in Labour’s guts. One is that forecasts of a Starmer mega-majority may so alarm rightwing voters that they pinch their noses and rally to the Tories. Mr Sunak’s crew is already desperate enough to be implicitly conceding defeat by publicising graphics suggesting Tory parliamentary representation could be so eviscerated that there will be no meaningful opposition to a Labour government. The other concern for Labour is that there is an “enthusiasm deficit” that will mean victory is tainted by a depressed turnout. Some Labour frontbenchers think the time is coming when there needs to be more effort to lift the spirits of the electorate. One of the leader’s team agrees that “we need to make things sing” in the run-up to polling day. What more can the Labour campaign add? Food for the soul. Providing, of course, it is fully costed.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
He got over 5 million votes and 30% in the 2019 Euro elections. I wouldn't bet on him getting fewer votes than that this time.
Most of those 5m were a Tory vote strike, using it to tell May to sling her hook....
The one that might be a bit more relevant is the 3.8 million votes UKIP got in the 2015 general election.
Still only got them one seat though. The Faragist vote distribution is horrible- not really high enough and definitely not spiky enough.
Absolutely. And the ground game is practically non-existent, in part because those Reformers enthusiastic enough to actually door-knock are really bloody odd.
I don't know in todays world how important door knocking is (beyond knowing who might vote for whom). Reform have a very friendly tv channel in GB News (which also gets large viewership on things like YouTube) and there is social media which even the oldies are on the FaceAche, in fact they are the only ones on that these days.
Some good news for Tory snobs with Survation MRP. Even though the Rishi led Tory party is projected to lose every redwall seat Boris won in 2019 and plenty more leave marginals besides it is forecast to hold Chelsea and Fulham, with 38% for Greg Hands to 36.7% for Labour and 11% for the LDs.
Farage is useful for blue wall and London Tories because he makes them seem relatively moderate and votable. The excuse many were waiting for.
What part of the Reform platform is extreme?
Answering my own question, the exteme part used to be that he wanted to leave the EU, but it's no longer possible to paint that as extreme because it's the accepted position of the major parties.
It's much harder to attack him on domestic policies when a lot of his positions are popular.
How about his weird links with Vlad Putin and Julian Assange. How about the fact that Reform seems to be some kind of weird Farage trust fund masquerading as a political party? How about the fact that 1/3 of Reform candidates follow far-right figures on X?
Good morning and indeed.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
No I don’t agree I’m afraid. I think this place is an echo chamber and the influence of the right is invariably exaggerated. This place is populated by an older ‘anti-woke’ demographic and, whatever Leon might like to proclaim, younger people are far more progressive and liberal in their attitudes. Oh, of course there are noisy right-wing youth whippers but they remain fringe in Britain.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
The problem is not being nasty. To tackle deep-rooted problems, and cope with sudden emergencies, you have to be pretty nasty, at times. Being nice is not a virtue, in government.
As one poster put it yesterday, we lack decent people who will do undecent things.
The problem is being nasty, combined with incompetent and corrupt.
I don't buy that being anti-woke is "nasty" and, in fact, I think it's quite the opposite as it defends enlightenment values.
You can just about argue that migration control is, as there will always be individuals who have a good case for protection or admission, but there's also a "nasty" effect on society at large of letting it run unhindered as well, as Sweden is discovering.
I see the Mail going moderately big on the large number of spooks, creeps and weirdos standing for Reform. I think we will see RefUK momentum in reverse, especially as Tories have their backs to the wall and come out fighting. Nevertheless some long held Tory strongholds will be lost and many will have tiny majorities. It will be a Tory disaster, but may fall short of catastrophe.
It's been very noticeable to date how reluctant the Tories are to attack Reform directly. If they have any sense (OK, OK...) that needs to stop.
Indeed.
The trouble is, Sunak and prior to him Johnson, sidelined or chased out many of the moderates. So Sunak pandered to people like Braverman who is basically Reform. So if some in the Party attack Reform, others are not going to like it (Braverman, Andrea Jenkyns, Esther McVey etc. etc.)
By the way, I can just remember the build up to 1997 and this is all very similar. John Major lurched to the right with his Back to Basics nonsense, which was meant to be a restoration of ‘family values’ backed up by then ministers like John Redwood and Peter Lilley, attacking single parent mothers and ‘benefit scroungers.’ We were supposed to return to ‘core values’ based around the traditional family - this from the party which at the time still opposed teaching about homosexuality in schools because it was a ‘Pretend Family Relationship’ (Section 28). All from the good ol' ‘anti-woke’ Bible.
And on the 2nd May 1997 Britain woke up, breathed a sigh of relief, and told the Nasty Party to fuck off.
Which is what’s about to happen again.
I remember all too well being told by a relative who was a Tory activist to spend all my money on new kitchen etc. because the Socialists would take it all away/cause an economic crash. Though we hadn't then heard of Ms Truss, and there wasn't so much of the current "My party has ****ed up Britain and made a hash of Brexit so as a good patriot I'll emigrate" Muzak, even allowing for the Brexit bit.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
I’m currently headed to south of France for work, but I’ll be on the ground in London shortly to sniff out the “mood”.
If you're anywhere near Nice you'll see it buzzing like you haven't seen before. The Tour de France is starting in Florence and finishing in Nice this year and there's bike stuff everywhere. Nice is a great city always but just at the moment it's heaving. I even caught a Gaza demo there yesterday
Thanks Rog. I’m heading to the Festival. Not sure if you’re going, but maybe I’ll see you on the Croisette.
I suspect the Reforgasm has peaked already. Farage won a news cycle in the air war, and that’s that. But ground level activity matters too, and we all know that he can’t manage it.
I’m currently headed to south of France for work, but I’ll be on the ground in London shortly to sniff out the “mood”.
If you're anywhere near Nice you'll see it buzzing like you haven't seen before. The Tour de France is starting in Florence and finishing in Nice this year and there's bike stuff everywhere. Nice is a great city always but just at the moment it's heaving. I even caught a Gaza demo there yesterday
Thanks Rog. I’m heading to the Festival. Not sure if you’re going, but maybe I’ll see you on the Croisette.
This is also the first major election where Farage will be a general-purpose populist rather than a single-issue Eurosceptic candidate. That pushes his theoretical ceiling much higher.
Comments
So had a play with the Survation MRP data just looking at those seats predicted to stay Tory.
A few observations.
If they are right then of the 72 seats the Tories retain, 1 is in Scotland. None in Wales.
The Tories end up with no seats in either the North East or North West regions. They will keep only 2 seats in London
Of the former MPs mentioned this evening;
Robert Jenrick loses his seat in Newark
Penny Mourdant loses her seat in Portsmouth North
Johnny Mercer loses his seat in Plymouth Moor View
Jacob Rees Mogg loses his seat in North East Somerset and Hanham
Patel, Badenoch and Braverman all retain their seats as does Sunak.
Some of the margins on these seats are incredibly tight. The North Cotswold seat has a nominal Tory win but there is less than 1% between the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems. In total there are 8 of the Tory holds where Labour are within 1% of them.
Ground noise seems to suggest Liz Truss has a big fight on her hands. She may be in trouble.
Back down in the South-west, Labour seem to be pretty confident of taking Plymouth Moor View. Interestingly, they are putting no effort into Newton Abbot, leaving that for the LibDems to try and take.
Other notable losses if this poll is correct are David Davis and Ian Duncan Smith.
Reading pb.com you can see how many right wing posters hate Farage, which tallies with those people I know of a similar persuasion. Look at what @BartholomewRoberts wrote about Farage earlier for example. This is something @Leon just won’t hear.
Farage obviously had a huge impact on the Brexit win, although Cummings and Boris at least as much if not more. Indeed, they realised how toxic Farage is and shunted him out to the margins so that Vote Leave took over the campaign.
That legacy is also now tarnished. A significant majority think Brexit has injured Britain.
It may just be a case of Labour wanting to be sure of taking Plymouth Moor View, so unlike my Woking tip which was a constituency I knew better, I’d advise anyone not to follow my Newton Abbot comment. I really don’t know what will happen and three of the four tactical voting websites haven’t made up their minds on it yet. It could be a genuine 3-way marginal.
I am not a supporter of these initiatives but would say it is an error to assume that the conservative party are more centrist/respectable than Reform, and would suggest that this is actually just a form of manipulation. The policies of both Reform and Conservative are now part of the western political mainstream and a lot of these comments are best read as people expressing disgust/denial about that.
It's probably one where a big Reform vote locally lets them through.
Which all matches Electoral Calculus MRP.
“The small boats crisis threatens our security. Brexit has been betrayed. Multiculturalism has imported separate communities that reject our way of life. ‘Woke’ ideology has captured our public institutions.”
The emphasis there on the threat of other ethnicities and the use of language like “betrayed” and “captured” certainly echoes common fascist themes.
Their manifesto also has plenty of conspiracy theory talk. It talks of an “Excess Deaths and Vaccine Harms Public Inquiry”. It denies anthropogenic climate change. They want to “Ban Critical Race Theory in Primary” schools, despite critical race theory never having been taught in primary schools. They want to “Reject the influence of the World Economic Forum”.
We are about to witness a centrist landslide. Britons don’t like extremists and one of the reasons that the Conservatives are about to take a hammering is that they pandered to the Right. I have heard so many former Conservatives saying they can’t stand how nasty the party has become, again. Which is exactly how the former party chairwoman once described the party. The Nasty Party. They chased stupid anti-woke culture wars that the majority either don’t care about or disagree with.
The irony is that for all the froth and bubble, it’s the hard Right ’Nasties' who are about to take one hell of a beating.
And I predict that Reform will not perform particularly well two weeks Thursday.
This makes sense since he is losing support amongst Muslims, and the far left (those that are unhappy with how he has treated Corbyn).
Nevertheless some long held Tory strongholds will be lost and many will have tiny majorities. It will be a Tory disaster, but may fall short of catastrophe.
As one poster put it yesterday, we lack decent
people who will do undecent things.
The problem is being nasty, combined with incompetent and corrupt.
The trouble is, Sunak and prior to him Johnson, sidelined or chased out many of the moderates. So Sunak pandered to people like Braverman who is basically Reform. So if some in the Party attack Reform, others are not going to like it (Braverman, Andrea Jenkyns, Esther McVey etc. etc.)
By the way, I can just remember the build up to 1997 and this is all very similar. John Major lurched to the right with his Back to Basics nonsense, which was meant to be a restoration of ‘family values’ backed up by then ministers like John Redwood and Peter Lilley, attacking single parent mothers and ‘benefit scroungers.’ We were supposed to return to ‘core values’ based around the traditional family - this from the party which at the time still opposed teaching about homosexuality in schools because it was a ‘Pretend Family Relationship’ (Section 28). All from the good ol' ‘anti-woke’ Bible.
And on the 2nd May 1997 Britain woke up, breathed a sigh of relief, and told the Nasty Party to fuck off.
Which is what’s about to happen again.
Oh.
But I remember the feel of the country on May 2nd 1997. The euphoria for some, the sheer relief for many.
I predict there will be something similar on July 5th 2024. An emergence from a long, dark, tunnel. Labour may not right now feel like saviours, and they are bound to fail on several fronts, but the sheer bloody relief will be palpable.
Britain has always been a remarkably outward-facing nation with the capacity to renew itself. We are not the US. Neither are we mainland Europe. A once seafaring nation, globalist, with a sense of humour and an innate sense of fair play. We will move forward, socially as well as politically.
And love him or loathe him, the early years of Blair saw ‘Cool Britannia’.
It was a good time in this country. Very little nastiness around, at least compared to the latter years of the Conservatives.
I saw a program early in the campaign where a reporter was at a bingo hall in Preston and she asked for a show of hands who were going to vote Leave. It appeared to be unanimous. "Why?' She asked. "Immigrants" they answered almost in unison.
Apart from the few obvious Powellites who post here I don't know anyone who has a problem with immigrants. They are part of the rich tapestry that brings colour and vitality particularly to towns and cities
Your descent into this rabbit hole of personality cults really does remind me of Plato. She started watching Fox 24h, only read stuff that confirmed her biases. And it didn’t end up well for her.
It was a joyous occasion. A burden lifted. The anguish of 1992 forgotten.
You have no sense of, and exhibit very little interest in, the feelings and thoughts of those in Britain who don't think like you. Even if, as I hope, Tory government is, at least temporarily, banished from Britain at this election, somewhere in the region of a third of voters will vote Tory or Reform. What of their feelings? One imagines that many voters who put their X against a Green or Liberal Democrat candidate will feel a bit wary about the prospect of finding that Starmer's Labour government is simply tweedledee to the Tory tweedledum.
This is why Casino Royale's posts over recent weeks and months have often been so interesting to me. They represent the thoughts and emotions of a segment of the British population that I don't otherwise come into contact with.
One thing to look for is the detail on their £50 billion per year cuts. It's not easy to cut £10,000 from 5 million people, £5000 from 10 million etc when there are no areas of public services not demanding massive rises. They will probably do it by centralising the ordering of paper clips.
It was, for a start, overwhelmingly directed at Tories and their supporters.
As for Cool Britannia, you're not seriously suggesting that was a good thing, are you? It was so silly it was genuinely farcical. Who could forget that ghastly jazz version of the National Anthem he came up with? It's a terrible piece of music anyway but at least the original has some dignity.
...and got the name of the doctor wrong.
Edit - d'oh! That's what your article is actually about.
Click link before engaging typepad...
NEW THREAD
You seem to have it spot on and certainly this is very 1997 though not with quite the expectations that Blair received
The reality of 24/7 scrutiny that Starmer is about to experience will be a challenge as will the decisions he is facing
I read that France is currently suffering its own 'Truss' moment with interest rates on government borrowing rocketing and fighting between right and left in the streets
Europe is not in a good place nor is the ROW and looking at the photograph of the G7 leaders every one had negative ratings
I hope that we can defeat the Farage right and enjoy a period of less anger and division
On a personal note our youngest son, who joined the RNLI just under 3 years ago, is about to qualify as a helm on the Inshore Lifeboat being his first command position
We have a family tradition of seafaring going back generations and he is continuing that tradition
The crews are not interested in politics, but in saving lives at sea whilst devoting many hours both in the classroom and at sea and entirely without any payment
I know many on here donate to the RNLI and I just want to say it is very much appreciated as it is essential for the service to continue
I can say there is some good stuff in there but anti vax and WEF conspiracy stuff leaves me cold.
However, the total ban on LTNs is going to cost billions. Every dead end and cul de sac torn up. Hundreds of houses demolished to make way for A-roads.
Not sure if you’re going, but maybe I’ll see you on the Croisette.
But it seem weird to pick on a rearrangement of the national anthem. I’d take that over, say, Al Campbell’s dodgy dossier.
If so, I'd love to see an MRP which gives two readings: One where one of the input factors used is "which party is the tactical vote recipient for the seat" and one where it does not use that factor.
So we can see if the swing to LD/LAB/SNP is bigger in seats where LD/LAB/SD is the TV recipient and by how much?
Is this possible?
From the off, this election has been Labour’s to lose – and boy does it know it. I say...this as a compliment to the professionalism of the Labour campaign, not least because I’ve witnessed so many past contests in which the party lacked the ferocious focus and the steely will to prevail in the brutal contact sport of electoral politics.
As we puff past the halfway mark, journalists pronounce themselves bored with Labour. Meant as an insult, it is flattery in the ears of Sir Keir’s team. The media thirsts for drama and novelty, but the Labour team’s contrary belief is that most voters currently crave stability and predictability.
The manifesto does indeed contain nothing you would not already know if you’ve been paying reasonably close attention to the “missions” and the “first steps” previously unveiled. That doesn’t make it fair to damn it as a timid prospectus. On the likes of housebuilding, clean power and achieving sustainably higher growth, the longer-term goals are almost heroically ambitious.
The Tories are the party for those preferring one that frantically sprays out unfunded, slapdash, last-minute wheezes. As a strategy, that doesn’t seem to be working out all that well for Rishi Sunak.
Unless the entire polling industry is perpetrating the howler of all time, he will be entering Downing Street in less than three weeks’ time. It will be a dazzling achievement to take Labour into power just five years after the party’s worst defeat since the 1930s. Those who want to cavil will say that the main propellant of Sir Keir’s success is not desire to see him in power, but loathing for the Tories. This is not such a killer point as some imagine it to be. The unpopularity of their opponents played a large part in putting Tony Blair in Number 10 in 1997 and Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
There are two worms of unease wriggling in Labour’s guts. One is that forecasts of a Starmer mega-majority may so alarm rightwing voters that they pinch their noses and rally to the Tories. Mr Sunak’s crew is already desperate enough to be implicitly conceding defeat by publicising graphics suggesting Tory parliamentary representation could be so eviscerated that there will be no meaningful opposition to a Labour government. The other concern for Labour is that there is an “enthusiasm deficit” that will mean victory is tainted by a depressed turnout. Some Labour frontbenchers think the time is coming when there needs to be more effort to lift the spirits of the electorate. One of the leader’s team agrees that “we need to make things sing” in the run-up to polling day. What more can the Labour campaign add? Food for the soul. Providing, of course, it is fully costed.
You can just about argue that migration control is, as there will always be individuals who have a good case for protection or admission, but there's also a "nasty" effect on society at large of letting it run unhindered as well, as Sweden is discovering.