How the pollsters performed on Thursday – politicalbetting.com

System · July 7

How the pollsters performed on Thursday – politicalbetting.com

Now the final result for #GE24 is in, I have calculated pollsters' total absolute error (for all parties, relative to UK/GB vote share depending on the target population). pic.twitter.com/HlrMESXdOd

Read the full story here

mwadams · July 7

Hello, new thread. Not a lot of surprises in that chart!

mwadams · July 7

Actually maybe 1 surprise. YouGov being sub 10% in total error is better than I expected.

Sunil_Prasannan · July 7

Third like Reform or was it the LDs?

mwadams · July 7

Sunil_Prasannan said:
Third like Reform or was it the LDs?

Reform were first like Corbyn.

CatMan · July 7

The polls always seem to overestimate Labour, with 2017 being a notable exception.

AlsoLei · July 7

Verian used a random probability sample, so their success suggests that the managed panels used by other pollsters need to be revisited.

TheScreamingEagles · July 7

This is the most worrying thing I have ever read in the papers ever.

Is the era of ‘posh boy’ dominance really over?

Keir Starmer’s cabinet is almost entirely state-educated, ending many years of public school chumocracy. It points to a deeper shift in the British class system

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/is-the-era-of-posh-boy-dominance-really-over-kn3g7bmw7

Mexicanpete · July 7

TheScreamingEagles said:
This is the most worrying thing I have ever read in the papers ever.

Is the era of ‘posh boy’ dominance really over?

Keir Starmer’s cabinet is almost entirely state-educated, ending many years of public school chumocracy. It points to a deeper shift in the British class system

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/is-the-era-of-posh-boy-dominance-really-over-kn3g7bmw7

One can't help but feel a military coup must be on the horizon. The question is, who becomes titular Prime Minister, Johnny Mercer, Boris Johnson or Prince Andrew?

IanB2 · July 7

FPT:

AlsoLei said:

Farooq said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Peter_the_Punter said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Peter_the_Punter said:

Stuartinromford said:

Jonathan said:
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Not just Truss. The British right loved Beano Boris, and grumily tolerated May and Sunak, who at least tried to be responsible national leaders. Or see the Spectator; yes it sells by the truckload but that's in part because it's given up on being a serious journal of right wing thinking and is now almost entirely there to make people think "OMG what are they going to say now?" Which is an excellent sales strategy, but a terrible way to run a country.

Let us hope that Boring Old PM Starmer can Make Britain Boring Again.
May I join in the chorus.

Reform Uk is the Party of childish politics, of wishful thinking. Farage is an essentially unserious politician, in it for the laughs.
True to an extent but Farage did bring Brexit and should not be underestimated
And what was Brexit but a fantasy project?
EU membership was 'a project'. A sovereign Britain is the status quo ante.
A sovereign Britain in the sense we have it now is a relatively untried phenomenon. Prior to joining the EC we had a short post-colonial window. Before that it was an imperial Britain. Sovereign, yes, but fundamentally different in constitution and economy than now. Prior Imperial Britain, there wasn't a Britain politically at all.

We have entered waters that are not quite uncharted in our history, but poorly visited. We've have ~30 years worth of experience.
In theory, we continued to run monetary policy for the benefit of the Sterling area rather than ourselves until June 1972, so technically there was a gap of only six months between imperial Britain and European Britain.

You can possibly make the case for the 1967 devaluation demonstrating that the reality was somewhat different, but the degree of agonising over it (and the money poured into attempting to avoid it!) means that it's probably better to see it as an exception that proves the rule.

And we were certainly banging on the EEC's door at that point anyway, so it's reasonable to say that the result of Brexit leaves us in an entirely unprecedented situation.

Like being seen as twats on the world stage, I guess you mean.

williamglenn · July 7

An interesting question is what the election would have looked like with a higher turnout. Perhaps a lot of potential Tory -> Reform voters ended up not voting and if they had turned out, 5 seats might have been a lot higher.

DeclanF · July 7

Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.

williamglenn · July 7

IanB2 said:
FPT:

AlsoLei said:

Farooq said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Peter_the_Punter said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Peter_the_Punter said:

Stuartinromford said:

Jonathan said:
I don’t quite know how to make this point, but it’s a serious one. Liz Truss generally comes across to me as a bit childish, lacking the kind of seriousness or gravitas you would normally expect. It seems to be a disease that has infected some on the right. They seem to want to shock and provoke rather than effect change. It’s a subtle thing, but they’re a long way from the kind of intellectual heft that sat behind the Thatcherite revolution.
Not just Truss. The British right loved Beano Boris, and grumily tolerated May and Sunak, who at least tried to be responsible national leaders. Or see the Spectator; yes it sells by the truckload but that's in part because it's given up on being a serious journal of right wing thinking and is now almost entirely there to make people think "OMG what are they going to say now?" Which is an excellent sales strategy, but a terrible way to run a country.

Let us hope that Boring Old PM Starmer can Make Britain Boring Again.
May I join in the chorus.

Reform Uk is the Party of childish politics, of wishful thinking. Farage is an essentially unserious politician, in it for the laughs.
True to an extent but Farage did bring Brexit and should not be underestimated
And what was Brexit but a fantasy project?
EU membership was 'a project'. A sovereign Britain is the status quo ante.
A sovereign Britain in the sense we have it now is a relatively untried phenomenon. Prior to joining the EC we had a short post-colonial window. Before that it was an imperial Britain. Sovereign, yes, but fundamentally different in constitution and economy than now. Prior Imperial Britain, there wasn't a Britain politically at all.

We have entered waters that are not quite uncharted in our history, but poorly visited. We've have ~30 years worth of experience.
In theory, we continued to run monetary policy for the benefit of the Sterling area rather than ourselves until June 1972, so technically there was a gap of only six months between imperial Britain and European Britain.

You can possibly make the case for the 1967 devaluation demonstrating that the reality was somewhat different, but the degree of agonising over it (and the money poured into attempting to avoid it!) means that it's probably better to see it as an exception that proves the rule.

And we were certainly banging on the EEC's door at that point anyway, so it's reasonable to say that the result of Brexit leaves us in an entirely unprecedented situation.
Like being seen as twats on the world stage, I guess you mean.

That's certainly not how Ukrainians see us.

StillWaters · July 7

mwadams said:
Hello, new thread. Not a lot of surprises in that chart!

What was the average in previous elections?

Felt like a lot of the polls were badly wrong - and in a way that influenced the political narrative

another_richard · July 7

For those PBers who haven't read Declan's earlier comment here it is:

DeclanF said:

Before wittering about immigration or whatever, the Tories need to think hard about the 4 things they have lacked or deliberately abandoned in recent years.

1. An understanding of Burkean principles - the idea that conservatism is about preserving the best of what we have built but also about building on that for the next generations - to leave the country in a better state than they found it. So it is not enough to focus only on one elderly generation but to remember those that are and those to come and to make life and opportunities better for them. (Why in God's name did a Conservative government kill off Sure Start? - to give just one example.)

2. Chesterton's Fence: you don't just randomly and angrily attack and destroy institutions and conventions just because they stand in your way. You are meant to be grown ups not tantruming toddlers. The attacks on the rule of law, on any standards of integrity and political decency, on independent institutions etc was pathetic, dangerous and, well, unconservative. See point 1.

3. Competence: obvious but forgotten. Just try to do your tasks well. Good administration, thinking about the consequences, thinking ahead, getting advice, planning, sorting out mistakes, learning from them, small practical improvements instead of snake oil promises backed by nothing more than bullshit etc. You forgot that. You will have to relearn this and try to demonstrate it where you can - in how you run your party and whatever councils you control. It will take time and you won't be listened to for a long time. But unless you do start doing this now, forget the rest.

4. Character: the single most important factor. The moral character, the integrity, the honesty of those who lead your party and those in it and how they behave says more about you than any manifesto. You chose some dreadful leaders in a Faustian pact which has well and truly bitten you on the arse. You abandoned all standards of political decency. You allowed corruption and shadiness and spivs in public office to fester. You gave the impression that duty and public service were jokes. The one abiding image for your years in power was parties in Downing Street while a widowed queen sat alone at her husband's funeral. That image stood for many who did their job while you treated their old-fashioned virtues with contempt. Really, how dare you call yourself conservative and behave like that.

Get these right. Then you can start worrying about policies. The current government will eventually make mistakes in all these areas. (I mean, Jacqui Smith, really?) But they won't listen to you until you've admitted you fucked things up and have changed.

Available for consultation at £1,3750 per hour + VAT or its euro equivalent. An absolute bargain.

Everyone Conservative MP should have to read it and every Conservative wannabe leader should have to give their thoughts on it.

IanB2 · July 7

With 22% of voters making up their mind on polling day itself, per Ashcroft, any of the polls were shooting partly in the dark. Those who made their mind up on polling day only broke a quarter for Labour, depressing their share, whereas there was both a trickle back to the Tories and an uptick in LibDem and Green support.

Polls are never going to be accurate with so many people deciding late, unless there isn’t any difference between those folks and the rest of us.

YouGov appears to be the gold standard in MRPs, doubtless because of its huge panel giving a reasonable sample in every seat and the amount of back-data it has on them (us).

The Curtis Exit Poll appears to have a fairly crude methodology - how else do Finchley and Cambridge get marked down as LibDem gains? - but in the round, it worked. They’d do better in future to keep the workings to themselves.

CatMan · July 7

Lol at the MP barging into Martin Brundle's Grid Walk at Silverstone.

TheScreamingEagles · July 7

Ugh

Firstly, Sunak left the D-Day commemorations early, a catastrophic political misjudgment which made his personal ratings plummet. He left just after the King, something his aides did not want to brief during the campaign because it would have dragged the monarchy into it.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rishi-sunak-tory-prime-minister-wdvwz0tpp

TheScreamingEagles · July 7

Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c

JosiasJessop · July 7

Off-topic:

I hate to bring up TRANS yet again, but I successfully transitioned twice this morning. And I'm still barely human...

Oh, 'transition' can mean more than one thing?

RochdalePioneers · July 7

I think that the key challenge for the pollsters was that so many seats did not fit any model. We've looked at a few seats already which stick out - Hunt retaining his seat is an abberation. Some of the LD / Lab / Green / Reform gains are completely outside of any model, and yet they happened.

On Tuesday I created those graphics from Survation's MRP mainly trying to (a) ramp the LDs and (b) wind up the cybernats.

Survation said LD 61 SNP 10. Finish was LD 72 SNP 9 - so not that far out overall even if the seat by seat predictions were dodgy.

StillWaters · July 7

TheScreamingEagles said:
Ugh

Firstly, Sunak left the D-Day commemorations early, a catastrophic political misjudgment which made his personal ratings plummet. He left just after the King, something his aides did not want to brief during the campaign because it would have dragged the monarchy into it.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rishi-sunak-tory-prime-minister-wdvwz0tpp

The King who is currently undergoing treatment for cancer and is presumably knackered?

I’d cut him some slack. Sunak not so much.

rottenborough · July 7

I wish the exit poll would ask people whether they have changed their minds on who to vote for in last day or two?

I am convinced that shy tories came back to them at last minute over supermajority warnings - enough to upend the polling predictions by a few points. Based on my gut and no evidence

Eabhal · July 7

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c

Was that line nicked from here?

You can't take the Scottish electorate for granted. Zero party loyalty. It looks like that trend is extending to England now too.

TheScreamingEagles · July 7

StillWaters said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Ugh

Firstly, Sunak left the D-Day commemorations early, a catastrophic political misjudgment which made his personal ratings plummet. He left just after the King, something his aides did not want to brief during the campaign because it would have dragged the monarchy into it.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rishi-sunak-tory-prime-minister-wdvwz0tpp
The King who is currently undergoing treatment for cancer and is presumably knackered?

I’d cut him some slack. Sunak not so much.

Yup, that King.

Leaking about it is such shitty behaviour.

Casino_Royale · July 7

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c

I bet on Labour taking that at great odds.

Only just missed out.

TheScreamingEagles · July 7

Eabhal said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c
Was that line nicked from here?

You can't take the Scottish electorate for granted. Zero party loyalty. It looks like that trend is extending to England now too.

Yeah that's what I posted yesterday afternoon.

Quite a few SNP MPs past and present follow me on Twitter and lurk on here, from Alex Salmond downwards.

(Another PBer did say the Argyll, Bute, and South Lochaber seat had parts further south than Stirling though.)

DecrepiterJohnL · July 7

StillWaters said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Ugh

Firstly, Sunak left the D-Day commemorations early, a catastrophic political misjudgment which made his personal ratings plummet. He left just after the King, something his aides did not want to brief during the campaign because it would have dragged the monarchy into it.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rishi-sunak-tory-prime-minister-wdvwz0tpp
The King who is currently undergoing treatment for cancer and is presumably knackered?

I’d cut him some slack. Sunak not so much.

It shows Team Rishi are still getting their excuses in for a fundamental political misjudgement. Never mind D-Day, it was the greatest photo-op and networking event ever as President Biden and others had hours to kill shooting the breeze against a photogenic backdrop.

Casino_Royale · July 7

On topic, OGH used to have a rule that the pollster with the lowest share for Labour was liable to be the most accurate one. It's still one worth bearing in mind.

OTOH I think it's hard to get the method right. Turnout was probably flying all over the place throughout the polling period, and plenty of people decided they wouldn't bother on the day and or only decided their vote on their day - and it's impossible to pick that all up.

And even the Exit Poll was a bit out, against both the Tories and Reform as it happens.

DecrepiterJohnL · July 7

OT Today is the anniversary of the London tube and bus bombings. It is somehow encouragingly British that we do not make a big fuss of it.

IanB2 · July 7

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.

You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?

RochdalePioneers · July 7

Eabhal said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c
Was that line nicked from here?

You can't take the Scottish electorate for granted. Zero party loyalty. It looks like that trend is extending to England now too.

Services up here are just as broken as they are in England. That clearly shows some systemic issues as it isn't just party political.

The problem for the SNP is that they made out that *any* criticism was unpatriotic. Which is just bollocks. Telling voters that they have to put up with the mess because its "for Scotland" went down catastrophically.

I knew they would do badly because so many people were telling me they were utterly sick of them.

MarqueeMark · July 7

williamglenn said:
An interesting question is what the election would have looked like with a higher turnout. Perhaps a lot of potential Tory -> Reform voters ended up not voting and if they had turned out, 5 seats might have been a lot higher.

A higher turnout would have likely meant less Conservatives sitting it out.

Those who wanted to vote against did so.

Chris · July 7

TheScreamingEagles said:
Ugh

Firstly, Sunak left the D-Day commemorations early, a catastrophic political misjudgment which made his personal ratings plummet. He left just after the King, something his aides did not want to brief during the campaign because it would have dragged the monarchy into it.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rishi-sunak-tory-prime-minister-wdvwz0tpp

But they're briefing it now in order to make themselves look better in retrospect. Even though they decided not to brief it then. Probably because they've never been able to tell their arses from their elbows, then or now.

another_richard · July 7

another_richard said:
For those PBers who haven't read Declan's earlier comment here it is:

DeclanF said:

Before wittering about immigration or whatever, the Tories need to think hard about the 4 things they have lacked or deliberately abandoned in recent years.

1. An understanding of Burkean principles - the idea that conservatism is about preserving the best of what we have built but also about building on that for the next generations - to leave the country in a better state than they found it. So it is not enough to focus only on one elderly generation but to remember those that are and those to come and to make life and opportunities better for them. (Why in God's name did a Conservative government kill off Sure Start? - to give just one example.)

2. Chesterton's Fence: you don't just randomly and angrily attack and destroy institutions and conventions just because they stand in your way. You are meant to be grown ups not tantruming toddlers. The attacks on the rule of law, on any standards of integrity and political decency, on independent institutions etc was pathetic, dangerous and, well, unconservative. See point 1.

3. Competence: obvious but forgotten. Just try to do your tasks well. Good administration, thinking about the consequences, thinking ahead, getting advice, planning, sorting out mistakes, learning from them, small practical improvements instead of snake oil promises backed by nothing more than bullshit etc. You forgot that. You will have to relearn this and try to demonstrate it where you can - in how you run your party and whatever councils you control. It will take time and you won't be listened to for a long time. But unless you do start doing this now, forget the rest.

4. Character: the single most important factor. The moral character, the integrity, the honesty of those who lead your party and those in it and how they behave says more about you than any manifesto. You chose some dreadful leaders in a Faustian pact which has well and truly bitten you on the arse. You abandoned all standards of political decency. You allowed corruption and shadiness and spivs in public office to fester. You gave the impression that duty and public service were jokes. The one abiding image for your years in power was parties in Downing Street while a widowed queen sat alone at her husband's funeral. That image stood for many who did their job while you treated their old-fashioned virtues with contempt. Really, how dare you call yourself conservative and behave like that.

Get these right. Then you can start worrying about policies. The current government will eventually make mistakes in all these areas. (I mean, Jacqui Smith, really?) But they won't listen to you until you've admitted you fucked things up and have changed.

Available for consultation at £1,3750 per hour + VAT or its euro equivalent. An absolute bargain.
Everyone Conservative MP should have to read it and every Conservative wannabe leader should have to give their thoughts on it.

I especially like Declan's comment as it elucidates, with much better writing, things I have been thinking of. My equivalent was:

The first three lessons the Conservatives need to learn:

1) Personal conduct matters. In particular if you bring in new laws and regulations you have to obey them yourselves.

2) Competence matters. Proper preparation and attention to detail is vital.

3) Crony capitalism and rentierism are not the same as wealth creation and a yearning for unearned money is not the same as proper work.

DavidL · July 7

So have the Brits done Rock Scissors paper for who takes out Verstappen?

DecrepiterJohnL · July 7

rottenborough said:
I wish the exit poll would ask people whether they have changed their minds on who to vote for in last day or two?

I am convinced that shy tories came back to them at last minute over supermajority warnings - enough to upend the polling predictions by a few points. Based on my gut and no evidence

More than 1 in 5 voters (22%) said they only decided which party to support on polling day, or on the day they filled in their postal vote. A further 14% said they decided in the last few days. More than half (59%) of voters said they decided at some point within the last month.

Three quarters (75%) of those who voted for Reform UK or the Liberal Democrats said they decided at some point within the last month, compared to 59% of Tories and 41% of Labour voters. Those who voted for the SNP were the most likely to say they always knew how they would end up voting (43%).
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2024/07/how-britain-voted-and-why-my-post-vote-poll/

williamglenn · July 7

MarqueeMark said:

williamglenn said:
An interesting question is what the election would have looked like with a higher turnout. Perhaps a lot of potential Tory -> Reform voters ended up not voting and if they had turned out, 5 seats might have been a lot higher.
A higher turnout would have likely meant less Conservatives sitting it out.

Those who wanted to vote against did so.

Were you not unable to find any such people? What insight do you have into their thinking?

DecrepiterJohnL · July 7

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c

How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.

MisterBedfordshire · July 7

JosiasJessop said:
Off-topic:

I hate to bring up TRANS yet again, but I successfully transitioned twice this morning. And I'm still barely human...

Oh, 'transition' can mean more than one thing?

I hope you disposed of your old skin wisely.

dixiedean · July 7

"Historically, government in Northern Ireland has not been as good as it might be in income generation. That is something the executive is going to have to look at."
Hilary Benn puts his foot down on no more money to buy off Stormont.
Great start.

another_richard · July 7

Chris said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Ugh

Firstly, Sunak left the D-Day commemorations early, a catastrophic political misjudgment which made his personal ratings plummet. He left just after the King, something his aides did not want to brief during the campaign because it would have dragged the monarchy into it.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rishi-sunak-tory-prime-minister-wdvwz0tpp
But they're briefing it now in order to make themselves look better in retrospect. Even though they decided not to brief it then. Probably because they've never been able to tell their arses from their elbows, then or now.

I'm still curious as to who knew, and what there response was, that Sunak was going to leave early.

Cameron and Shapps must have know - so did they agree with Sunak's decision or did they try to change his mind ?

DavidL · July 7

DecrepiterJohnL said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.

Doing a High Court case there next week. Its the bit that joins Scotland together between the Forth and the Clyde, hence Bannockburn etc.

mwadams · July 7

rottenborough said:
I wish the exit poll would ask people whether they have changed their minds on who to vote for in last day or two?

I am convinced that shy tories came back to them at last minute over supermajority warnings - enough to upend the polling predictions by a few points. Based on my gut and no evidence

Whereas I think it was Green and Lib Dem support that ticked up once people decided it was definitely safe to do so.

It was probably both. And the weather. And the phase of the moon.

JosiasJessop · July 7

MisterBedfordshire said:

JosiasJessop said:
Off-topic:

I hate to bring up TRANS yet again, but I successfully transitioned twice this morning. And I'm still barely human...

Oh, 'transition' can mean more than one thing?
I hope you disposed of your old skin wisely.

My skins (I had two) have been thoroughly washed, after half the River Ouse came off them...

TheScreamingEagles · July 7

DecrepiterJohnL said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.

It is a bit of a political, historical, and geographical nerdiness.

The Tories control the southernmost parts of Scotland so you work from there and with the SNP getting mullered in the central belt/Glasgow

DecrepiterJohnL · July 7

Farooq said:
That PeoplePolling error is huge. Do we know why they are so bad? Is it, as some suspect, that there was a thumb on the scales? Or were they incompetent?

To those people who were shedding their load over the high Reform numbers: we tried to warn you that you were high on hopium.

Tbf the Reform numbers of votes were high but spread out. Reform got half a million more votes than the LibDems but 67 fewer MPs: Five as opposed to 72; 4 million versus 3.5.

MarqueeMark · July 7

williamglenn said:

MarqueeMark said:

williamglenn said:
An interesting question is what the election would have looked like with a higher turnout. Perhaps a lot of potential Tory -> Reform voters ended up not voting and if they had turned out, 5 seats might have been a lot higher.
A higher turnout would have likely meant less Conservatives sitting it out.

Those who wanted to vote against did so.
Were you not unable to find any such people? What insight do you have into their thinking?

There were plenty who didn't want to vote Labour, and were unconvinced by LibDems or Reform on the edges. We knew who they were; some we persuaded to come out to vote; others could not support a Party with their vote that they felt had performed very poorly.

As I said, I suspect a 10% increse in turnout would have gone at least three-quarters to the Conservative vote.

But it didn't happen. And we lost a bunch of MPs as a consequence.

kle4 · July 7

dixiedean said:
"Historically, government in Northern Ireland has not been as good as it might be ~~in income generation. That is something the executive is going to have to look at~~."

More like it.

dixiedean · July 7

Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.

All figures net since 1945.

IanB2 · July 7

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c

Historically, that seems quite apposite?

kle4 · July 7

I thought Scotland had one city, called Central Belt, and the rest was Highlands and pseudo-England.

Explains how my MPs prediction was so off.

Alphabet_Soup · July 7

TheScreamingEagles said:
This is the most worrying thing I have ever read in the papers ever.

Is the era of ‘posh boy’ dominance really over?

Keir Starmer’s cabinet is almost entirely state-educated, ending many years of public school chumocracy. It points to a deeper shift in the British class system

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/is-the-era-of-posh-boy-dominance-really-over-kn3g7bmw7

Surely the chumocrats have better things to do with their lives (and money) than working in Westminster for peanuts. Politics is for the 'help'.

Theuniondivvie · July 7

TheScreamingEagles said:

Eabhal said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c
Was that line nicked from here?

You can't take the Scottish electorate for granted. Zero party loyalty. It looks like that trend is extending to England now too.
Yeah that's what I posted yesterday afternoon.

Quite a few SNP MPs past and present follow me on Twitter and lurk on here, from Alex Salmond downwards.

(Another PBer did say the Argyll, Bute, and South Lochaber seat had parts further south than Stirling though.)

Further south than Edinburgh and Glasgow by some way also.

kle4 · July 7

dixiedean said:
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.

All figures net since 1945.

That is remarkable indeed. 2010 seemed like it was set for a Tory win, so the scale of gains needed almost seemed to be overlooked.

IanB2 · July 7

Farooq said:
That PeoplePolling error is huge. Do we know why they are so bad? Is it, as some suspect, that there was a thumb on the scales? Or were they incompetent?

To those people who were shedding their load over the high Reform numbers: we tried to warn you that you were high on hopium.

Pollsters with their own political agenda can’t be trusted.

Listen to the man on AQ yesterday; he’s off his head.

DavidL · July 7

dixiedean said:
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.

All figures net since 1945.

One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.

kle4 · July 7

Alphabet_Soup said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
This is the most worrying thing I have ever read in the papers ever.

Is the era of ‘posh boy’ dominance really over?

Keir Starmer’s cabinet is almost entirely state-educated, ending many years of public school chumocracy. It points to a deeper shift in the British class system

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/is-the-era-of-posh-boy-dominance-really-over-kn3g7bmw7
Surely the chumocrats have better things to do with their lives (and money) than working in Westminster for peanuts. Politics is for the 'help'.

Some yearn for a bit of public recognition and international influence that being in politics affords. When you are mega rich you get to have that anyway, but your mere super rich get the influence but less obviously, through donations and hob nobbing.

kle4 · July 7

DavidL said:

dixiedean said:
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.

All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.

Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.

LostPassword · July 7

mwadams said:
Hello, new thread. Not a lot of surprises in that chart!

It's the Green vote that I find most surprising.

IanB2 · July 7

DecrepiterJohnL said:

rottenborough said:
I wish the exit poll would ask people whether they have changed their minds on who to vote for in last day or two?

I am convinced that shy tories came back to them at last minute over supermajority warnings - enough to upend the polling predictions by a few points. Based on my gut and no evidence
More than 1 in 5 voters (22%) said they only decided which party to support on polling day, or on the day they filled in their postal vote. A further 14% said they decided in the last few days. More than half (59%) of voters said they decided at some point within the last month.

Three quarters (75%) of those who voted for Reform UK or the Liberal Democrats said they decided at some point within the last month, compared to 59% of Tories and 41% of Labour voters. Those who voted for the SNP were the most likely to say they always knew how they would end up voting (43%).
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2024/07/how-britain-voted-and-why-my-post-vote-poll/

Somewhere around 7% say they didn’t decide until they had the MI5 pencil actually in their hand, and PB’ers here on polling day will remember that I was queuing with one such last Thursday.

kle4 · July 7

IanB2 said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

rottenborough said:
I wish the exit poll would ask people whether they have changed their minds on who to vote for in last day or two?

I am convinced that shy tories came back to them at last minute over supermajority warnings - enough to upend the polling predictions by a few points. Based on my gut and no evidence
More than 1 in 5 voters (22%) said they only decided which party to support on polling day, or on the day they filled in their postal vote. A further 14% said they decided in the last few days. More than half (59%) of voters said they decided at some point within the last month.

Three quarters (75%) of those who voted for Reform UK or the Liberal Democrats said they decided at some point within the last month, compared to 59% of Tories and 41% of Labour voters. Those who voted for the SNP were the most likely to say they always knew how they would end up voting (43%).
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2024/07/how-britain-voted-and-why-my-post-vote-poll/
Somewhere around 7% say they didn’t decide until they had the MI5 pencil actually in their hand, and PB’ers here on polling day will remember that I was queuing with one such last Thursday.

I paused for a good 15 seconds before making my vote.

DavidL · July 7

kle4 said:

DavidL said:

dixiedean said:
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.

All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.

Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.

IanB2 · July 7

MarqueeMark said:

williamglenn said:

MarqueeMark said:

williamglenn said:
An interesting question is what the election would have looked like with a higher turnout. Perhaps a lot of potential Tory -> Reform voters ended up not voting and if they had turned out, 5 seats might have been a lot higher.
A higher turnout would have likely meant less Conservatives sitting it out.

Those who wanted to vote against did so.
Were you not unable to find any such people? What insight do you have into their thinking?
There were plenty who didn't want to vote Labour, and were unconvinced by LibDems or Reform on the edges. We knew who they were; some we persuaded to come out to vote; others could not support a Party with their vote that they felt had performed very poorly.

As I said, I suspect a 10% increse in turnout would have gone at least three-quarters to the Conservative vote.

But it didn't happen. And we lost a bunch of MPs as a consequence.

During the campaign, you seemed pretty confident that your patch was going to stay Tory. Yet the polls suggest the political environment mid campaign was worse than the actual result?

dixiedean · July 7

Hope this is the last election we hear of what lead or swing a Party "needs" to win based on UNS.
Quite obviously Labour fell some way short of the 13% lead required for a majority of one.
Hence the hopelessly Hung Parliament we now face.

Theuniondivvie · July 7

Farooq said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Eabhal said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c
Was that line nicked from here?

You can't take the Scottish electorate for granted. Zero party loyalty. It looks like that trend is extending to England now too.
Yeah that's what I posted yesterday afternoon.

Quite a few SNP MPs past and present follow me on Twitter and lurk on here, from Alex Salmond downwards.

(Another PBer did say the Argyll, Bute, and South Lochaber seat had parts further south than Stirling though.)
Ooooh, does Joanna Cherry come here? If so, may I just say

I laughed when you lost

I’d heard that Transwars was the BIG issue in Scottish politics. Perhaps so, just not in the way people thought. After all the 2 parties that voted unanimously for the GRA bill did ok.

stodge · July 7

MarqueeMark said:

williamglenn said:

MarqueeMark said:

williamglenn said:
An interesting question is what the election would have looked like with a higher turnout. Perhaps a lot of potential Tory -> Reform voters ended up not voting and if they had turned out, 5 seats might have been a lot higher.
A higher turnout would have likely meant less Conservatives sitting it out.

Those who wanted to vote against did so.
Were you not unable to find any such people? What insight do you have into their thinking?
There were plenty who didn't want to vote Labour, and were unconvinced by LibDems or Reform on the edges. We knew who they were; some we persuaded to come out to vote; others could not support a Party with their vote that they felt had performed very poorly.

As I said, I suspect a 10% increse in turnout would have gone at least three-quarters to the Conservative vote.

But it didn't happen. And we lost a bunch of MPs as a consequence.

That's your interpretation and your experience in your seat.

I'd argue a lot of potential Labour supporters didn't bother because they knew the party was going to win and had there been a higher turnout there would have been more Labour seats.

In South Devon, for example, the turnout was 69% rather than 75% but Manganall was thumped by over 7,000 votes so it can't just be that. The Conservative and Labour votes collapsed to Reform and the LDs respectively. The combined Con/Lab share went from 70% to 38% so there's something else at work.

Every seat has its different story - I suspect turnout was related to the amount of campaigning raising awareness there was an election and indeed a contested election. Harder to motivate voters in a seat like East Ham where there is only one winner.

IanB2 · July 7

DavidL said:

dixiedean said:
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.

All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.

Offer them another two…

kle4 · July 7

DavidL said:

kle4 said:

DavidL said:

dixiedean said:
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.

All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.

Ask Marcus Fysh.

A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".

Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.

On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3ge4kd8kl9o

dixiedean · July 7

Farooq said:

kle4 said:
I thought Scotland had one city, called Central Belt, and the rest was Highlands and pseudo-England.

Explains how my MPs prediction was so off.
Everyone who entered the GE competition was way off on SNP MPs. @Benpointer's guess of 15 was the closest. I guessed 19 seats, and only three guesses were closer then mine. Even those on the bearish end hugely overestimated, and I think that was down to an extreme FPTP effect. 30% of the vote and 16% of the seats is brutal.

Although not even close to the brutality of the Labour 2019 result.

Stuartinromford · July 7

IanB2 said:

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?

Here they are, the let's-hope-some-of-them-are-magnificent 26:

Alison Griffiths Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
Ashley Fox Bridgwater
Charlie Dewhirst Bridlington and The Wolds
Peter Fortune Bromley and Biggin Hill
Bradley Thomas Bromsgrove
Lewis Cocking Broxbourne
Patrick Spencer Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
Aphra Brandreth Chester South and Eddisbury
John Cooper Dumfries and Galloway
David Reed Exmouth and Exeter East
Greg Stafford Farnham and Bordon
Andrew Snowden Fylde
Harriet Cross Gordon and Buchan
Ben Obese-Jecty Huntingdon
Joe Robertson Isle of Wight East
Shivani Raja Leicester East
Blake Stephenson Mid Bedfordshire
Peter Bedford Mid Leicestershire
Rebecca Paul Reigate
Neil Shastri-Hurst Solihull West and Shirley
Sarah Bool South Northamptonshire
Rebecca Smith South West Devon
Lincoln Jopp Spelthorne
Katie Lam Weald of Kent
Nick Timothy West Suffolk
Jack Rankin Windsor

(Source https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/ if you want to play yourselves.)

Anyone spot any talent there?

williamglenn · July 7

dixiedean said:
Hope this is the last election we hear of what lead or swing a Party "needs" to win based on UNS.
Quite obviously Labour fell some way short of the 13% lead required for a majority of one.
Hence the hopelessly Hung Parliament we now face.

To be fair, there's zero chance the Tories could pull off the same trick next time and win with a reduced number of votes. That is unless there's some kind of plague between now and the next election.

No_Offence_Alan · July 7

Farooq said:
That PeoplePolling error is huge. Do we know why they are so bad? Is it, as some suspect, that there was a thumb on the scales? Or were they incompetent?

To those people who were shedding their load over the high Reform numbers: we tried to warn you that you were high on hopium.

Over-sampling low-information voters?

nova · July 7

DavidL said:

dixiedean said:
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.

All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.

Not sure that's correct - and it would be a very dangerous "lesson" for the Tories to learn.

Only a third of Reform voters had the Tories as their second choice. Almost the same number had Labour/Lib Dem/Green.

Given the ruthless tactical voting we saw from the latter three, the result would have been similar without Reform.

IanB2 · July 7

Farooq said:

kle4 said:
I thought Scotland had one city, called Central Belt, and the rest was Highlands and pseudo-England.

Explains how my MPs prediction was so off.
Everyone who entered the GE competition was way off on SNP MPs. @Benpointer's guess of 15 was the closest. I guessed 19 seats, and only three guesses were closer then mine. Even those on the bearish end hugely overestimated, and I think that was down to an extreme FPTP effect. 30% of the vote and 16% of the seats is brutal.

My guess was 17, and as a LibDem perhaps my expertise as to the brutality of FPTP helped a little.

IanB2 · July 7

dixiedean said:
Hope this is the last election we hear of what lead or swing a Party "needs" to win based on UNS.
Quite obviously Labour fell some way short of the 13% lead required for a majority of one.
Hence the hopelessly Hung Parliament we now face.

Old Robert McKenzie’s swingometer doesn’t work now that so many seats aren’t Labour v Tory. In some ways it’s surprising the media continues to refer to it at all.

Foxy · July 7

MarqueeMark said:

williamglenn said:
An interesting question is what the election would have looked like with a higher turnout. Perhaps a lot of potential Tory -> Reform voters ended up not voting and if they had turned out, 5 seats might have been a lot higher.
A higher turnout would have likely meant less Conservatives sitting it out.

Those who wanted to vote against did so.

No I don't think that the case.

Take South Devon for example 69% turnout with a LD gain on massive swing. This is a similar turnout to 2015 for example, though slightly down on 2017 or 2019.

I appreciate that you are trying to find a reason for your own canvassing being so wrong, but it wasn't turnout.

Labour turnout was poor in many of its "safe seats" for example Leicester South or Houghton and South Sunderland.

I think the significantly reduced turnout explains a great deal of the polling error. It is even possible that Mogg was right and that voter ID suppressed Tory voters.

Eabhal · July 7

Theuniondivvie said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Eabhal said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c
Was that line nicked from here?

You can't take the Scottish electorate for granted. Zero party loyalty. It looks like that trend is extending to England now too.
Yeah that's what I posted yesterday afternoon.

Quite a few SNP MPs past and present follow me on Twitter and lurk on here, from Alex Salmond downwards.

(Another PBer did say the Argyll, Bute, and South Lochaber seat had parts further south than Stirling though.)
Further south than Edinburgh and Glasgow by some way also.

Liverpool is to the east of Edinburgh

Luckyguy1983 · July 7

another_richard said:
For those PBers who haven't read Declan's earlier comment here it is:

DeclanF said:

Before wittering about immigration or whatever, the Tories need to think hard about the 4 things they have lacked or deliberately abandoned in recent years.

1. An understanding of Burkean principles - the idea that conservatism is about preserving the best of what we have built but also about building on that for the next generations - to leave the country in a better state than they found it. So it is not enough to focus only on one elderly generation but to remember those that are and those to come and to make life and opportunities better for them. (Why in God's name did a Conservative government kill off Sure Start? - to give just one example.)

2. Chesterton's Fence: you don't just randomly and angrily attack and destroy institutions and conventions just because they stand in your way. You are meant to be grown ups not tantruming toddlers. The attacks on the rule of law, on any standards of integrity and political decency, on independent institutions etc was pathetic, dangerous and, well, unconservative. See point 1.

3. Competence: obvious but forgotten. Just try to do your tasks well. Good administration, thinking about the consequences, thinking ahead, getting advice, planning, sorting out mistakes, learning from them, small practical improvements instead of snake oil promises backed by nothing more than bullshit etc. You forgot that. You will have to relearn this and try to demonstrate it where you can - in how you run your party and whatever councils you control. It will take time and you won't be listened to for a long time. But unless you do start doing this now, forget the rest.

4. Character: the single most important factor. The moral character, the integrity, the honesty of those who lead your party and those in it and how they behave says more about you than any manifesto. You chose some dreadful leaders in a Faustian pact which has well and truly bitten you on the arse. You abandoned all standards of political decency. You allowed corruption and shadiness and spivs in public office to fester. You gave the impression that duty and public service were jokes. The one abiding image for your years in power was parties in Downing Street while a widowed queen sat alone at her husband's funeral. That image stood for many who did their job while you treated their old-fashioned virtues with contempt. Really, how dare you call yourself conservative and behave like that.

Get these right. Then you can start worrying about policies. The current government will eventually make mistakes in all these areas. (I mean, Jacqui Smith, really?) But they won't listen to you until you've admitted you fucked things up and have changed.

Available for consultation at £1,3750 per hour + VAT or its euro equivalent. An absolute bargain.
Everyone Conservative MP should have to read it and every Conservative wannabe leader should have to give their thoughts on it.

I'm afraid I can't agree, because unlike @DeclanF's first set of points on the matter, which came over as high-minded and was universal enough for conservatives of all colours (including me, who 'liked' the post) to get behind, this set of requirements is narrowly political, and frankly reads as yet another PB post dolorously opining that the Tories must 'avoid a swing to the right', despite (and probably because of) the centrist position being utterly destroyed in a test with real voters. Time and again, those on the right have urged the building of the same coalition that Boris made into a landslide victory. The post-electoral arithmetic clearly shows this to be the case. Starmer's victory is based on an utterly shallow pool of voters, and it's incredibly self-serving of his supporters to urge the Tories to pull their punches against Labour, leave the right of British politics unrepresented, and attack Reform instead.

Stuartinromford · July 7

DavidL said:

dixiedean said:
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.

All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.

And on the other side, there are some results- in Chingford, Liecester, across Yorkshire and Lanacashire- that must be utterly infuriating. But ultimately, it was a price worth paying.

dixiedean · July 7

Stuartinromford said:

IanB2 said:

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?
Here they are, the let's-hope-some-of-them-are-magnificent 26:

Alison Griffiths Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
Ashley Fox Bridgwater
Charlie Dewhirst Bridlington and The Wolds
Peter Fortune Bromley and Biggin Hill
Bradley Thomas Bromsgrove
Lewis Cocking Broxbourne
Patrick Spencer Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
Aphra Brandreth Chester South and Eddisbury
John Cooper Dumfries and Galloway
David Reed Exmouth and Exeter East
Greg Stafford Farnham and Bordon
Andrew Snowden Fylde
Harriet Cross Gordon and Buchan
Ben Obese-Jecty Huntingdon
Joe Robertson Isle of Wight East
Shivani Raja Leicester East
Blake Stephenson Mid Bedfordshire
Peter Bedford Mid Leicestershire
Rebecca Paul Reigate
Neil Shastri-Hurst Solihull West and Shirley
Sarah Bool South Northamptonshire
Rebecca Smith South West Devon
Lincoln Jopp Spelthorne
Katie Lam Weald of Kent
Nick Timothy West Suffolk
Jack Rankin Windsor

(Source https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/ if you want to play yourselves.)

Anyone spot any talent there?

Obese-Jecty, Cocking, Fortune are a disreputable firm of solicitors in a minor Dickens work.
Lincoln Jopp was a minor character edited out of Star Wars at an early draft.

kle4 · July 7

Stuartinromford said:

IanB2 said:

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?
Here they are, the let's-hope-some-of-them-are-magnificent 26:

Alison Griffiths Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
Ashley Fox Bridgwater
Charlie Dewhirst Bridlington and The Wolds
Peter Fortune Bromley and Biggin Hill
Bradley Thomas Bromsgrove
Lewis Cocking Broxbourne
Patrick Spencer Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
Aphra Brandreth Chester South and Eddisbury
John Cooper Dumfries and Galloway
David Reed Exmouth and Exeter East
Greg Stafford Farnham and Bordon
Andrew Snowden Fylde
Harriet Cross Gordon and Buchan
Ben Obese-Jecty Huntingdon
Joe Robertson Isle of Wight East
Shivani Raja Leicester East
Blake Stephenson Mid Bedfordshire
Peter Bedford Mid Leicestershire
Rebecca Paul Reigate
Neil Shastri-Hurst Solihull West and Shirley
Sarah Bool South Northamptonshire
Rebecca Smith South West Devon
Lincoln Jopp Spelthorne
Katie Lam Weald of Kent
Nick Timothy West Suffolk
Jack Rankin Windsor

(Source https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/ if you want to play yourselves.)

Anyone spot any talent there?

I recall Shastri-Hurst from one of the by-elections where the LDs came from nowhere to win, North Shropshire as it turns out*.

I seem to recall he was a medical doctor, military veteran, and a barrister. Sounds like an overachieving type.

*Amazingly after gaining 37.% to win the by-election (despite some Labour figures saying they were wrong to claim they could win from 10%), the LDs increased theri vote share at the GE, +42.5% from 2019.

ThomasNashe · July 7

DecrepiterJohnL said:
OT Today is the anniversary of the London tube and bus bombings. It is somehow encouragingly British that we do not make a big fuss of it.

Also the anniversary of Johnson’s resignation, though I think the latter is worth celebrating.

IanB2 · July 7

Stuartinromford said:

IanB2 said:

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?
Here they are, the let's-hope-some-of-them-are-magnificent 26:

Alison Griffiths Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
Ashley Fox Bridgwater
Charlie Dewhirst Bridlington and The Wolds
Peter Fortune Bromley and Biggin Hill
Bradley Thomas Bromsgrove
Lewis Cocking Broxbourne
Patrick Spencer Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
Aphra Brandreth Chester South and Eddisbury
John Cooper Dumfries and Galloway
David Reed Exmouth and Exeter East
Greg Stafford Farnham and Bordon
Andrew Snowden Fylde
Harriet Cross Gordon and Buchan
Ben Obese-Jecty Huntingdon
Joe Robertson Isle of Wight East
Shivani Raja Leicester East
Blake Stephenson Mid Bedfordshire
Peter Bedford Mid Leicestershire
Rebecca Paul Reigate
Neil Shastri-Hurst Solihull West and Shirley
Sarah Bool South Northamptonshire
Rebecca Smith South West Devon
Lincoln Jopp Spelthorne
Katie Lam Weald of Kent
Nick Timothy West Suffolk
Jack Rankin Windsor

(Source https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/ if you want to play yourselves.)

Anyone spot any talent there?

My new MP Robertson seems moderate and reasonably competent. He’s not popular with his fellow Tories on the IOW council, but that could easily be because his IQ is nearer to Leon’s than theirs. He’s made all the right noises about cross-party working and representing everyone.

Giles Brandreth’s daughter is probably dippy and harmless.

Nick Timothy we all know - at least he’s a thinker. And the social care proposal was actually quite sensible, except during the middle of an election campaign.

The rest, who knows? ConHome has done some profiles. It’s the 95 who are returning and have still to adjust to being essentially irrelevant for the next five years, that we should worry about.

Foxy · July 7

Stuartinromford said:

IanB2 said:

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?
Here they are, the let's-hope-some-of-them-are-magnificent 26:

Alison Griffiths Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
Ashley Fox Bridgwater
Charlie Dewhirst Bridlington and The Wolds
Peter Fortune Bromley and Biggin Hill
Bradley Thomas Bromsgrove
Lewis Cocking Broxbourne
Patrick Spencer Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
Aphra Brandreth Chester South and Eddisbury
John Cooper Dumfries and Galloway
David Reed Exmouth and Exeter East
Greg Stafford Farnham and Bordon
Andrew Snowden Fylde
Harriet Cross Gordon and Buchan
Ben Obese-Jecty Huntingdon
Joe Robertson Isle of Wight East
Shivani Raja Leicester East
Blake Stephenson Mid Bedfordshire
Peter Bedford Mid Leicestershire
Rebecca Paul Reigate
Neil Shastri-Hurst Solihull West and Shirley
Sarah Bool South Northamptonshire
Rebecca Smith South West Devon
Lincoln Jopp Spelthorne
Katie Lam Weald of Kent
Nick Timothy West Suffolk
Jack Rankin Windsor

(Source https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/ if you want to play yourselves.)

Anyone spot any talent there?

I think the MP for Huntingdon has a fat chance.

Theuniondivvie · July 7

dixiedean said:

Stuartinromford said:

IanB2 said:

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?
Here they are, the let's-hope-some-of-them-are-magnificent 26:

Alison Griffiths Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
Ashley Fox Bridgwater
Charlie Dewhirst Bridlington and The Wolds
Peter Fortune Bromley and Biggin Hill
Bradley Thomas Bromsgrove
Lewis Cocking Broxbourne
Patrick Spencer Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
Aphra Brandreth Chester South and Eddisbury
John Cooper Dumfries and Galloway
David Reed Exmouth and Exeter East
Greg Stafford Farnham and Bordon
Andrew Snowden Fylde
Harriet Cross Gordon and Buchan
Ben Obese-Jecty Huntingdon
Joe Robertson Isle of Wight East
Shivani Raja Leicester East
Blake Stephenson Mid Bedfordshire
Peter Bedford Mid Leicestershire
Rebecca Paul Reigate
Neil Shastri-Hurst Solihull West and Shirley
Sarah Bool South Northamptonshire
Rebecca Smith South West Devon
Lincoln Jopp Spelthorne
Katie Lam Weald of Kent
Nick Timothy West Suffolk
Jack Rankin Windsor

(Source https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/ if you want to play yourselves.)

Anyone spot any talent there?
Obese-Jecty, Cocking, Fortune are a disreputable firm of solicitors in a minor Dickens work.
Lincoln Jopp was a minor character edited out of Star Wars at an early draft.

Aphra Brandreth straight outta Hardy.

Had to edit auto correct that gave me Ashram for Aphra

Stuartinromford · July 7

Apologies if this has already been said, but those figures do show the advantage of doing polling properly, busting a gut to get a really random sample. Because anything else depends on what assumptions you make to mash your unrandom sample to match the population as a whole. Even if you do that in good faith, you risk it going wrong.

Shame that it's so difficult and expensive to do a proper random sample.

WildernessPt2 · July 7

IanB2 said:

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?

I just need to pick you up on that. This is how opposition at a council level is done, budget amendments are moved, not with an expectation at success but at the hope of failure
. In a past life I used an opposition budget response to sink the Labour PPC who sat as a councillor in the ruling group by putting forward an amendment I knew her group would be compelled to vote against. Up until that point the local press had been hands off criticising her despite having a few different stories that could be used. This amendment had her voting against a cause that only a month earlier she had championed and got lots of positive coverage from.
The local press went to town and it broke the dam on the other stuff, she lost a seat that was projected to be gained.

Nigelb · July 7

stodge said:

MarqueeMark said:

williamglenn said:

MarqueeMark said:

williamglenn said:
An interesting question is what the election would have looked like with a higher turnout. Perhaps a lot of potential Tory -> Reform voters ended up not voting and if they had turned out, 5 seats might have been a lot higher.
A higher turnout would have likely meant less Conservatives sitting it out.

Those who wanted to vote against did so.
Were you not unable to find any such people? What insight do you have into their thinking?
There were plenty who didn't want to vote Labour, and were unconvinced by LibDems or Reform on the edges. We knew who they were; some we persuaded to come out to vote; others could not support a Party with their vote that they felt had performed very poorly.

As I said, I suspect a 10% increse in turnout would have gone at least three-quarters to the Conservative vote.

But it didn't happen. And we lost a bunch of MPs as a consequence.
That's your interpretation and your experience in your seat.

I'd argue a lot of potential Labour supporters didn't bother because they knew the party was going to win and had there been a higher turnout there would have been more Labour seats.

In South Devon, for example, the turnout was 69% rather than 75% but Manganall was thumped by over 7,000 votes so it can't just be that. The Conservative and Labour votes collapsed to Reform and the LDs respectively. The combined Con/Lab share went from 70% to 38% so there's something else at work.

Every seat has its different story - I suspect turnout was related to the amount of campaigning raising awareness there was an election and indeed a contested election. Harder to motivate voters in a seat like East Ham where there is only one winner.

Though there were also some pretty low turnouts even in three way marginals.

FPTP fairly consistently gives results which are poorly correlated with the actual number of votes cast for parties. And historically, sears which elect the proverbial donkey with a rosette.
I suspect that leads to a general sense of “voting doesn’t make any difference”, which is hard to cut through even when the government is spectacularly unpopular.

IanB2 · July 7

Luckyguy1983 said:

another_richard said:
For those PBers who haven't read Declan's earlier comment here it is:

DeclanF said:

Before wittering about immigration or whatever, the Tories need to think hard about the 4 things they have lacked or deliberately abandoned in recent years.

1. An understanding of Burkean principles - the idea that conservatism is about preserving the best of what we have built but also about building on that for the next generations - to leave the country in a better state than they found it. So it is not enough to focus only on one elderly generation but to remember those that are and those to come and to make life and opportunities better for them. (Why in God's name did a Conservative government kill off Sure Start? - to give just one example.)

2. Chesterton's Fence: you don't just randomly and angrily attack and destroy institutions and conventions just because they stand in your way. You are meant to be grown ups not tantruming toddlers. The attacks on the rule of law, on any standards of integrity and political decency, on independent institutions etc was pathetic, dangerous and, well, unconservative. See point 1.

3. Competence: obvious but forgotten. Just try to do your tasks well. Good administration, thinking about the consequences, thinking ahead, getting advice, planning, sorting out mistakes, learning from them, small practical improvements instead of snake oil promises backed by nothing more than bullshit etc. You forgot that. You will have to relearn this and try to demonstrate it where you can - in how you run your party and whatever councils you control. It will take time and you won't be listened to for a long time. But unless you do start doing this now, forget the rest.

4. Character: the single most important factor. The moral character, the integrity, the honesty of those who lead your party and those in it and how they behave says more about you than any manifesto. You chose some dreadful leaders in a Faustian pact which has well and truly bitten you on the arse. You abandoned all standards of political decency. You allowed corruption and shadiness and spivs in public office to fester. You gave the impression that duty and public service were jokes. The one abiding image for your years in power was parties in Downing Street while a widowed queen sat alone at her husband's funeral. That image stood for many who did their job while you treated their old-fashioned virtues with contempt. Really, how dare you call yourself conservative and behave like that.

Get these right. Then you can start worrying about policies. The current government will eventually make mistakes in all these areas. (I mean, Jacqui Smith, really?) But they won't listen to you until you've admitted you fucked things up and have changed.

Available for consultation at £1,3750 per hour + VAT or its euro equivalent. An absolute bargain.
Everyone Conservative MP should have to read it and every Conservative wannabe leader should have to give their thoughts on it.
I'm afraid I can't agree, because unlike @DeclanF's first set of points on the matter, which came over as high-minded and was universal enough for conservatives of all colours (including me, who 'liked' the post) to get behind, this set of requirements is narrowly political, and frankly reads as yet another PB post dolorously opining that the Tories must 'avoid a swing to the right', despite (and probably because of) the centrist position being utterly destroyed in a test with real voters. Time and again, those on the right have urged the building of the same coalition that Boris made into a landslide victory. The post-electoral arithmetic clearly shows this to be the case. Starmer's victory is based on an utterly shallow pool of voters, and it's incredibly self-serving of his supporters to urge the Tories to pull their punches against Labour, leave the right of British politics unrepresented, and attack Reform instead.

Absolutely not. No sensible tactician would urge the Tories to go back to chasing after some white van man in Redcar. It’s the sensible folk of Surrey and Sussex and Hampshire and Wiltshire and Somerset and Devon and Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire and … that you should be worrying about. By and large, they don’t want a government of ideological obsessives, and right now, that’s you, not them.

Mexicanpete · July 7

Stuartinromford said:

IanB2 said:

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?
Here they are, the let's-hope-some-of-them-are-magnificent 26:

Alison Griffiths Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
Ashley Fox Bridgwater
Charlie Dewhirst Bridlington and The Wolds
Peter Fortune Bromley and Biggin Hill
Bradley Thomas Bromsgrove
Lewis Cocking Broxbourne
Patrick Spencer Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
Aphra Brandreth Chester South and Eddisbury
John Cooper Dumfries and Galloway
David Reed Exmouth and Exeter East
Greg Stafford Farnham and Bordon
Andrew Snowden Fylde
Harriet Cross Gordon and Buchan
Ben Obese-Jecty Huntingdon
Joe Robertson Isle of Wight East
Shivani Raja Leicester East
Blake Stephenson Mid Bedfordshire
Peter Bedford Mid Leicestershire
Rebecca Paul Reigate
Neil Shastri-Hurst Solihull West and Shirley
Sarah Bool South Northamptonshire
Rebecca Smith South West Devon
Lincoln Jopp Spelthorne
Katie Lam Weald of Kent
Nick Timothy West Suffolk
Jack Rankin Windsor

(Source https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/ if you want to play yourselves.)

Anyone spot any talent there?

Nick Timothy. His dad once appeared in Some Mothers do 'ave 'em. Which is remarkably apt bearing in mind his role in GE2017.

BatteryCorrectHorse · July 7

All I have heard from the Tories today is complete nonsense, very similar to what I heard from Jezza and co after the 2019 defeat.

Saying the country is "instinctively conservative" implies they somehow own the voters, they don't. It's also hard to conclude that when the Tories just got their lowest voteshare and seats in history.

But I have heard no solutions thus far from any of the potential candidates about how they intend to return to the centre ground or to win back people they lost. We've had let's just add Reform's votes to the Tories, neglecting all the voters they lost to the Lib Dems and Labour, we've had "immigration is the issue" despite it not being even on the top three list of the concerns of voters. We've had "there's no enthusiasm for SKS", despite him having just won the second largest Labour majority ever.

None of this has changed my mind that at this rate, the Tories will be out for a decade. There seems to be no want to understand that any voter under about 65 does not and will not vote Conservative and that going down a more right wing path will not bring these people back.

The Tories are dead as of right now. Let's hope for all our sakes, they decide to look at what Sir Keir did after 2019.

IanB2 · July 7

WildernessPt2 said:

IanB2 said:

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?
I just need to pick you up on that. This is how opposition at a council level is done, budget amendments are moved, not with an expectation at success but at the hope of failure
. In a past life I used an opposition budget response to sink the Labour PPC who sat as a councillor in the ruling group by putting forward an amendment I knew her group would be compelled to vote against. Up until that point the local press had been hands off criticising her despite having a few different stories that could be used. This amendment had her voting against a cause that only a month earlier she had championed and got lots of positive coverage from.
The local press went to town and it broke the dam on the other stuff, she lost a seat that was projected to be gained.

Trust me, that wasn’t what they were up to. I was there. Until 4 am.

Luckyguy1983 · July 7

TheScreamingEagles said:
This is the most worrying thing I have ever read in the papers ever.

Is the era of ‘posh boy’ dominance really over?

Keir Starmer’s cabinet is almost entirely state-educated, ending many years of public school chumocracy. It points to a deeper shift in the British class system

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/is-the-era-of-posh-boy-dominance-really-over-kn3g7bmw7

I'd be interested to see equivalent stats for the MPC, the Supreme Court, and senior CS appointees.

another_richard · July 7

Stuartinromford said:

IanB2 said:

DeclanF said:
Right - Tory party: if you're listening.

Leadership and How To Do Opposition

These are hard and so my rates will have to increase significantly. But still a much much better bet than Levido and whichever Cummings-look alike cretins have been advising you up till now.

Leadership

1. See the basic principles from my earlier post on previous thread. People with a loose understanding of integrity should not even be in contention. That rules out Braverman and Jenrick - also on the grounds of competence.

2. Take your time. No-one wants to hear from you right now and they certainly don't want to hear retreads they've just blown a gigantic raspberry at. See also point 1.

3. Your new leader needs to be a new face or, at least, one capable of creating a new face for themselves and the party. Tetchy arrogance is not a good look. So think next generation or the bridge to it. If there is no-one ready yet look for another Michael Howard and accept this will be a long game.

4. Whatever you do stop looking for the next Cameron or Thatcher. You're meant to remember your granny not turn into her.

5. They will need one thing above all: courage. First, courage to speak some truths to the membership. Preserving and building on the best of the past does not mean living in it. If they don't like that message, the party will die. Be blunt and don't pander. Second: they will need the courage to tear up party shibboleths, be ruthless with the drama queens and be largely irrelevant for a while. That lack of attention gives some space to rebuild.

Opposition

This will be hard. You don't set the agenda. You will be blamed for everything. Find an answer to the obvious blame statements. One good one is: You're in power now so expect to be put under scrutiny for what you are doing now. Develop a thick skin.

You do have a lot of experience of government so you should know where the traps are. Plus you have quite a few ex-MPs who can give you useful intelligence. Use them.

Work on the competence and delivery angle: this is where governments come unstuck. So patiently ask questions, get into the detail, know your briefs and keep on asking questions and probing and pointing out errors etc.,. Think Jason Beer KC. Remember it's not whether they're doing things as you would like them to do. It's whether the government achieves what they have promised. That's what you attack and probe and target. That - if you do it well - is what will undermine voters' faith in a government and start the process of them looking at alternatives.

New faces please and ones who communicate as humans.

Ditch the entitlement: no group of voters belong to you, not Reform, not Blue Wall, no-one.

Do not copy the USA.

Remember: you are planning for the 2030's and beyond.
You’re forgetting the change curve. I think the Tories will find this all exceptionally difficult, at least for a while.

I was elected to my former council in 1994, and at that election an unbroken series of Conservative majorities since the council had been created came to an end, with the council going balanced and a minority Labour administration taking office for the first time.

All but a handful of the Conservative councillors were used to making decisions and having the council carry them out, and being in opposition came as a massive shock. At the first budget setting meeting, we had sorted out the budget with the Labour Group in advance, and the Tories simply couldn’t cope with the reality that all their amendments were simply going to be voted down. They reacted by raising points of order and recorded votes and making lengthy speeches, such that we carried on through the night and the budget was not actually set until 4am the following morning.

How many of the current bunch of Tory MPs are new to parliament, and won’t have to go through the denial stage?
Here they are, the let's-hope-some-of-them-are-magnificent 26:

Alison Griffiths Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
Ashley Fox Bridgwater
Charlie Dewhirst Bridlington and The Wolds
Peter Fortune Bromley and Biggin Hill
Bradley Thomas Bromsgrove
Lewis Cocking Broxbourne
Patrick Spencer Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
Aphra Brandreth Chester South and Eddisbury
John Cooper Dumfries and Galloway
David Reed Exmouth and Exeter East
Greg Stafford Farnham and Bordon
Andrew Snowden Fylde
Harriet Cross Gordon and Buchan
Ben Obese-Jecty Huntingdon
Joe Robertson Isle of Wight East
Shivani Raja Leicester East
Blake Stephenson Mid Bedfordshire
Peter Bedford Mid Leicestershire
Rebecca Paul Reigate
Neil Shastri-Hurst Solihull West and Shirley
Sarah Bool South Northamptonshire
Rebecca Smith South West Devon
Lincoln Jopp Spelthorne
Katie Lam Weald of Kent
Nick Timothy West Suffolk
Jack Rankin Windsor

(Source https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/ if you want to play yourselves.)

Anyone spot any talent there?

Greg Stafford is the brother of Alexander Stafford who did well as Rother Valley MP.

dixiedean · July 7

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
All I have heard from the Tories today is complete nonsense, very similar to what I heard from Jezza and co after the 2019 defeat.

Saying the country is "instinctively conservative" implies they somehow own the voters, they don't. It's also hard to conclude that when the Tories just got their lowest voteshare and seats in history.

But I have heard no solutions thus far from any of the potential candidates about how they intend to return to the centre ground or to win back people they lost. We've had let's just add Reform's votes to the Tories, neglecting all the voters they lost to the Lib Dems and Labour, we've had "immigration is the issue" despite it not being even on the top three list of the concerns of voters. We've had "there's no enthusiasm for SKS", despite him having just won the second largest Labour majority ever.

None of this has changed my mind that at this rate, the Tories will be out for a decade. There seems to be no want to understand that any voter under about 65 does not and will not vote Conservative and that going down a more right wing path will not bring these people back.

The Tories are dead as of right now. Let's hope for all our sakes, they decide to look at what Sir Keir did after 2019.

By contrast. I'm mildly surprised, and extremely content, that we've heard so little from the Tory Party since Thursday.
I'm not sure if this is shock, or a pause to take stock?
Either way. It's a blessed relief, and I'm not keen to have it end any time soon.

StillWaters · July 7

kle4 said:

DavidL said:

kle4 said:

DavidL said:

dixiedean said:
Another couple of amazing stats from this bizarre election.
Labour have never lost more than 91 seats at an election (2010). The Tories lost 252.
The Tories have never gained more than 96 (2010 again). Labour gained 239.

All figures net since 1945.
One of my pals put it this way: to get 5 far right MPs elected cost 250 centre right MPs. Not a great piece of business.
Now be fair at least a fifth of the Tory MPs were probably Reform curious at heart.
Let's see if they feel that way now they are unemployed.
Ask Marcus Fysh.

A former Tory MP who lost his seat in the general election says he has quit the party because "it's dead".

Marcus Fysh was Yeovil's MP but lost heavily to Adam Dance from the Liberal Democrats.

On X, the former minister said the current parliamentary composition of the party was "non-Conservative".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3ge4k
d8kl9o

He’s a right wing nutter. I’m glad he doesn’t agree with the composition of the Conservative Party

Carnyx · July 7

Farooq said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Hmm.

Even in Dundee — the fabled “Yes City” — Chris Law clung on to the new Dundee Central constituency by only 675 votes. The SNP’s catastrophic result was “much worse than I thought in my darkest days,” one veteran said. “There is just shock among the entire party,” another insider said. The nationalists no longer hold any seats south of Stirling.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/can-the-snp-recover-from-labour-landslide-d00rhcn0c
How many of us need to look at a map to find Stirling? Just me then.
It won't be just you. A good number of Scotch experts on here have clearly no idea about the country and wouldn't be able to tell their Arisaig from the Elgin

Remember their conviction there was a Great Scottish Central Desert with hardly any camel caravans moving between Edinburgh and Glasgow past the Green Pyramids and under the Red Erg of Bathgate.

MisterBedfordshire · July 7

A few weeks ago I said that good leaders needed to be decent people prepared to do indecent things in the national interest

I am cautiously optimistic that SKS may fit this category. The first such leader since Margaret Thatcher.

His treatment of Labours "longest" serving MP and former leader along with others like Abbot was shabby and ruthless but arguably necessary to purge the party of trots and make it electable in a fraction of the time it took Kinnock/Smith/Blair.

The next test is whether he will be the first PM since Thatcher to realise that the press /media can only print papers /broadcast talk and can only hurt you or drive you off course if you let them.

IanB2 · July 7

williamglenn · July 7

IanB2 said:
..

"There's a woman works down the chip shop, swears she used to be prime minister."

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