So it turns out there's still a sizeable number of Labour MPs demanding more concessions to the benefits bill. Whether it's enough to see it defeated, difficult to say but looks like still some fun and games to play out on Monday and Tuesday. Feeling like the government can't even get a compromise right.
Utter shambles of a government. The inkjet printer of administrations
They do two things kind of OK and then the third time the paper jams and the ink cartridge explodes and weird plastic flaps fall off and then the motor starts smouldering, potentially burning the house down, and all you wanted to do was print a 2 page pdf
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
I, too, think he is their best chance now. Weirdly, this might be a timing thing - if he'd won over Badenoch and immediately took the poisoned chalice I'm not convinced he would be doing much better, but I think the change now would be welcomed.
There is, increasingly, a potential pathway for the Tories opening up. The benefits chaos and the resulting budget tax rises will bring some traditional Tory concerns to the fore - ones that Reform can't deftly capitalise on given their cakeism of late. Of course the very sizeable millstone of the last government's record hangs round their necks, but if they play their cards right I think they could start making a modest recovery. The question for them is when they do the switcheroo - is it better to let Badenoch carry the can for the 2026 elections for instance.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
So it turns out there's still a sizeable number of Labour MPs demanding more concessions to the benefits bill. Whether it's enough to see it defeated, difficult to say but looks like still some fun and games to play out on Monday and Tuesday. Feeling like the government can't even get a compromise right.
Utter shambles of a government. The inkjet printer of administrations
They do two things kind of OK and then the third time the paper jams and the ink cartridge explodes and weird plastic flaps fall off and then the motor starts smouldering, potentially burning the house down, and all you wanted to do was print a 2 page pdf
Just bumped off a full plane at Heathrow. First time that’s happened in many years
I hope you managed to secure plenty of freebies.
They are grovelling. Offering new flight, compo, free biz class return, free hotel when I arrive
I don’t really care. The most annoying thing is that I got up at 5am for this fecking flight and now I won’t fly until 3pm
AAAAAAARGH
Unlucky! The one time I was nearly bumped they offered me a flight in the jump seat (it was that long ago!) and I had a brilliant ride into Heathrow!
What is a “jump seat”??
It's extra fold out seat in the cockpit.
I doubt they ever offer that to anybody these days given terrorism concerns.
I got to go in the cockpit of a Virgin Atlantic 747 at 38,000 feet on 12 August 2001. Reckon I was one of the last to have that pleasure.
More innocent times...
As a teenager in the 1950s, I was invited into the signal box at Scremerston (just outside Berwick) and allowed to signal the actual 'Flying Scotsman' steam engine through on it's way to Edinburgh
I didn't realise just how much effort was required to pull the levers
So it turns out there's still a sizeable number of Labour MPs demanding more concessions to the benefits bill. Whether it's enough to see it defeated, difficult to say but looks like still some fun and games to play out on Monday and Tuesday. Feeling like the government can't even get a compromise right.
Utter shambles of a government. The inkjet printer of administrations
They do two things kind of OK and then the third time the paper jams and the ink cartridge explodes and weird plastic flaps fall off and then the motor starts smouldering, potentially burning the house down, and all you wanted to do was print a 2 page pdf
What are these two things they do OK?
Well, they made some noises that they might be starting to understand the public's concerns on immi... oh wait. Scratch that. SKS was tired and didn't mean it.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
Why pick the only measure by which Starmer wins as the poll of choice? The one that favours the incumbent?
In any case, the point wasn’t whether boring, unpopular politicians could still become PM, it was that Starmer is losing those who were previously sympathetic, and the base was low to begin with
I've said similar things very often (about reviews and hospital funding being linked to performance). These (on the face of it) are serious and positive changes and Labour should be commended.
Let us hope these are serious, peer-reviewed policies and not mere slogans from a brainstorming session.
In a few days Keir Starmer will mark his first year in office but no one will be celebrating. It seemed so easy in opposition. All he had to do was not be one of those evil Tories he despised so much. But it turns out governing is hard and the attacks he levelled at the Conservatives have since been turned on him.
The anger in the country over his failings is palpable.
A detailed seat-by-seat poll found Labour would lose 233 seats if an election was held tomorrow. He has amassed more nicknames than all the Tory leaders he has faced put together. 'Two-Tier Keir', 'Never Here Keir', 'Free Gear Keir', 'Sir Flip Flop', the 'Farmer Harmer', 'Sir Kid Starver' and so on.
In the last 12 months the list of people he has angered includes pensioners, parents, small business owners, farmers, fishermen, people with disabilities, Brexiteers, the Chagossians and, last but not least, Labour MPs.
He is currently on his third U-turn in five weeks.
It is not a sign of weakness to alter your course if the situation has changed, but three cavernous climbdowns in just over a month shows just how badly this government is being run.
So it turns out there's still a sizeable number of Labour MPs demanding more concessions to the benefits bill. Whether it's enough to see it defeated, difficult to say but looks like still some fun and games to play out on Monday and Tuesday. Feeling like the government can't even get a compromise right.
Utter shambles of a government. The inkjet printer of administrations
They do two things kind of OK and then the third time the paper jams and the ink cartridge explodes and weird plastic flaps fall off and then the motor starts smouldering, potentially burning the house down, and all you wanted to do was print a 2 page pdf
What are these two things they do OK?
Well, they made some noises that they might be starting to understand the public's concerns on immi... oh wait. Scratch that. SKS was tired and didn't mean it.
I still can’t believe he did that. Back pedalled on his entire game-changing speech on migration. “I was stoned. Ignore me”
Just such god awful POLITICS. This is not how you do POLITICS. It’s not how you do anything, in fact
Its like going on a long awaited holiday with the family then as you land in Tenerife saying “this is a mistake, I was half asleep when I agreed to this so I’m going to spend all the time in the hotel working”
The family stares at you in horrified disbelief. Within a year you will be divorced
So it turns out there's still a sizeable number of Labour MPs demanding more concessions to the benefits bill. Whether it's enough to see it defeated, difficult to say but looks like still some fun and games to play out on Monday and Tuesday. Feeling like the government can't even get a compromise right.
Utter shambles of a government. The inkjet printer of administrations
They do two things kind of OK and then the third time the paper jams and the ink cartridge explodes and weird plastic flaps fall off and then the motor starts smouldering, potentially burning the house down, and all you wanted to do was print a 2 page pdf
What are these two things they do OK?
lol
I was trying to be generous
Actually I was being unfair, if you work in the public sector they have done ok on giving you a decent pay rise or if you are tiny overseas country looking for a deal for some Islands you have never controlled, they have done more than ok for you.
So it turns out there's still a sizeable number of Labour MPs demanding more concessions to the benefits bill. Whether it's enough to see it defeated, difficult to say but looks like still some fun and games to play out on Monday and Tuesday. Feeling like the government can't even get a compromise right.
Utter shambles of a government. The inkjet printer of administrations
They do two things kind of OK and then the third time the paper jams and the ink cartridge explodes and weird plastic flaps fall off and then the motor starts smouldering, potentially burning the house down, and all you wanted to do was print a 2 page pdf
What are these two things they do OK?
Well, they made some noises that they might be starting to understand the public's concerns on immi... oh wait. Scratch that. SKS was tired and didn't mean it.
I still can’t believe he did that. Back pedalled on his entire game-changing speech on migration. “I was stoned. Ignore me”
Just such god awful POLITICS. This is not how you do POLITICS. It’s not how you do anything, in fact
Its like going on a long awaited holiday with the family then as you land in Tenerife saying “this is a mistake, I was half asleep when I agreed to this so I’m going to spend all the time in the hotel working”
The family stares at you in horrified disbelief. Within a year you will be divorced
I could see Jenrick doing much better than Badenoch, because he has a similar streak of amoral opportunism to Farage, but even more so.
He's also the main rightwinger that I could see complementing Farage in an electoral pact. He's even more ruthless than Farage, but grasps social media in a similar way, to him.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
I, too, think he is their best chance now. Weirdly, this might be a timing thing - if he'd won over Badenoch and immediately took the poisoned chalice I'm not convinced he would be doing much better, but I think the change now would be welcomed.
There is, increasingly, a potential pathway for the Tories opening up. The benefits chaos and the resulting budget tax rises will bring some traditional Tory concerns to the fore - ones that Reform can't deftly capitalise on given their cakeism of late. Of course the very sizeable millstone of the last government's record hangs round their necks, but if they play their cards right I think they could start making a modest recovery. The question for them is when they do the switcheroo - is it better to let Badenoch carry the can for the 2026 elections for instance.
Every day Kemi remains, the Conservatives lose more councillors and activists.
Just bumped off a full plane at Heathrow. First time that’s happened in many years
I hope you managed to secure plenty of freebies.
They are grovelling. Offering new flight, compo, free biz class return, free hotel when I arrive
I don’t really care. The most annoying thing is that I got up at 5am for this fecking flight and now I won’t fly until 3pm
AAAAAAARGH
Unlucky! The one time I was nearly bumped they offered me a flight in the jump seat (it was that long ago!) and I had a brilliant ride into Heathrow!
What is a “jump seat”??
Between the pilots in the cockpit!
I should add - in an old Fokker F-27 from Guernsey so not the most glamorous route or plane but I don't think I'd have wanted to do a long flight there. The pilots were both astonishingly laid back and switched on at the same time. And the safety checks were interesting and not for the faint-hearted.
In a few days Keir Starmer will mark his first year in office but no one will be celebrating. It seemed so easy in opposition. All he had to do was not be one of those evil Tories he despised so much. But it turns out governing is hard and the attacks he levelled at the Conservatives have since been turned on him.
The anger in the country over his failings is palpable.
A detailed seat-by-seat poll found Labour would lose 233 seats if an election was held tomorrow. He has amassed more nicknames than all the Tory leaders he has faced put together. 'Two-Tier Keir', 'Never Here Keir', 'Free Gear Keir', 'Sir Flip Flop', the 'Farmer Harmer', 'Sir Kid Starver' and so on.
In the last 12 months the list of people he has angered includes pensioners, parents, small business owners, farmers, fishermen, people with disabilities, Brexiteers, the Chagossians and, last but not least, Labour MPs.
He is currently on his third U-turn in five weeks.
It is not a sign of weakness to alter your course if the situation has changed, but three cavernous climbdowns in just over a month shows just how badly this government is being run.
Three climbdowns in just over a month? The blue team says hold my beer:-
So it turns out there's still a sizeable number of Labour MPs demanding more concessions to the benefits bill. Whether it's enough to see it defeated, difficult to say but looks like still some fun and games to play out on Monday and Tuesday. Feeling like the government can't even get a compromise right.
Utter shambles of a government. The inkjet printer of administrations
They do two things kind of OK and then the third time the paper jams and the ink cartridge explodes and weird plastic flaps fall off and then the motor starts smouldering, potentially burning the house down, and all you wanted to do was print a 2 page pdf
What are these two things they do OK?
Well, they made some noises that they might be starting to understand the public's concerns on immi... oh wait. Scratch that. SKS was tired and didn't mean it.
I still can’t believe he did that. Back pedalled on his entire game-changing speech on migration. “I was stoned. Ignore me”
Just such god awful POLITICS. This is not how you do POLITICS. It’s not how you do anything, in fact
Its like going on a long awaited holiday with the family then as you land in Tenerife saying “this is a mistake, I was half asleep when I agreed to this so I’m going to spend all the time in the hotel working”
The family stares at you in horrified disbelief. Within a year you will be divorced
Your analogy doesn't work....in the above case the person is being honest about the mistake.
Starmer would say I blame the Misses, she booked it all, but on my personal credit card and via my email, but I never looked at my bill or checked the incoming emails from Booking.com until I got on the plane.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
War with the US, elections suspended, Farage on the (physical) front line, and therefore out of sight.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
The only route to coherence, and simultaneously long term credibility on the economy, is the Green Growth plan. He has to bring it back.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
It was interesting that in his address at the Wales labour conference this morning here in Llandudno, he took no questions and couldn't get off the stage and away fast enough
In a few days Keir Starmer will mark his first year in office but no one will be celebrating. It seemed so easy in opposition. All he had to do was not be one of those evil Tories he despised so much. But it turns out governing is hard and the attacks he levelled at the Conservatives have since been turned on him.
The anger in the country over his failings is palpable.
A detailed seat-by-seat poll found Labour would lose 233 seats if an election was held tomorrow. He has amassed more nicknames than all the Tory leaders he has faced put together. 'Two-Tier Keir', 'Never Here Keir', 'Free Gear Keir', 'Sir Flip Flop', the 'Farmer Harmer', 'Sir Kid Starver' and so on.
In the last 12 months the list of people he has angered includes pensioners, parents, small business owners, farmers, fishermen, people with disabilities, Brexiteers, the Chagossians and, last but not least, Labour MPs.
He is currently on his third U-turn in five weeks.
It is not a sign of weakness to alter your course if the situation has changed, but three cavernous climbdowns in just over a month shows just how badly this government is being run.
Three climbdowns in just over a month? The blue team says hold my beer:-
To be honest there are quite a few who would welcome Sunak, especially with Hunt, back in Office
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
It was interesting that in his address at the Wales labour conference this morning here in Llandudno, he took no questions and couldn't get off the stage and away fast enough
Yes. An interesting and pretty brutal appraisal here:
“For months, Starmer has hosted Wednesday lunches with Pret a Manger sandwiches in his Commons office with small groups of MPs. One Labour MP, however, complained: “It’s not a proper meeting. He likes to muse about what he said to Macron at some summit or another but it’s like there’s nothing there behind the eyes.””
“One MP on the Labour left put it more bluntly: “I just can’t see him leading us into the next election. He’s just so damaged on what he is and who he is. You’ve got to stand for something, haven’t you?”
I've said similar things very often (about reviews and hospital funding being linked to performance). These (on the face of it) are serious and positive changes and Labour should be commended.
Let us hope these are serious, peer-reviewed policies and not mere slogans from a brainstorming session.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
Lawyers, particularly court lawyers, have a lot of relevant skills for politics. They are trained to construct an argument and defend it from criticism. They learn how to speak in public. The better ones learn how to be persuasive and to think on their feet. They learn how to analyse a subject and pick out the relevant facts.
But none of this can make up for the inevitability that at least some of our number are just shits. Jenrick being a case in point.
How did Starmer rise so far in the legal profession, then?
Did Starmer “rise so far in the legal profession” as a lawyer or is running the CPS more of an administrative or managerial role? Was he known as one of the great advocates of our time, or acknowledged by his peers as a brilliant legal strategist?
George Osborne and Ed Balls interviewed, briefly, a former colleague who said he was pretty shit hot. I seem to recall Leon also spoke to a judge who said he was a really good lawyer too.
I think the difference is that arguments in court can be quite structured and has quite strict rules, which further enforces which arguments are made and how they are made. Politics, by contrast, has fewer rules and they're possibly a lot more contentious. I would assume your opposite number in court can't get up to address the judge and accuse you of covering up Jimmy Saville's abuse, for instance.
The law (and legal system) is a rules engine.
A linear one.
Most of the world around us (including us) is non-linear.
Which is why Reality disrespects The Law so often.
Of course reality disrespects the law. Reality unencumbered by law is nasty, brutish and short. Reality disrespects all sorts of things. For example, the internet, Political Betting, the rise and fall of civilizations, the value you place on your new baby. Human society is at perpetual war with reality.
In a few days Keir Starmer will mark his first year in office but no one will be celebrating. It seemed so easy in opposition. All he had to do was not be one of those evil Tories he despised so much. But it turns out governing is hard and the attacks he levelled at the Conservatives have since been turned on him.
The anger in the country over his failings is palpable.
A detailed seat-by-seat poll found Labour would lose 233 seats if an election was held tomorrow. He has amassed more nicknames than all the Tory leaders he has faced put together. 'Two-Tier Keir', 'Never Here Keir', 'Free Gear Keir', 'Sir Flip Flop', the 'Farmer Harmer', 'Sir Kid Starver' and so on.
In the last 12 months the list of people he has angered includes pensioners, parents, small business owners, farmers, fishermen, people with disabilities, Brexiteers, the Chagossians and, last but not least, Labour MPs.
He is currently on his third U-turn in five weeks.
It is not a sign of weakness to alter your course if the situation has changed, but three cavernous climbdowns in just over a month shows just how badly this government is being run.
Three climbdowns in just over a month? The blue team says hold my beer:-
To be honest there are quite a few who would welcome Sunak, especially with Hunt, back in Office
My main reason for voting Tory last year was because I thought Sunak and Hunt was a better option than Starmer and Reeves.
I've said similar things very often (about reviews and hospital funding being linked to performance). These (on the face of it) are serious and positive changes and Labour should be commended.
Let us hope these are serious, peer-reviewed policies and not mere slogans from a brainstorming session.
What is a 'peer-reviewed' policy?
Presumably one that has the passed by the House of Lords.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
I'm not sure he's long for the job. If things haven't improved by 2026, they'll start to panic (these aren't a strong and stable cohort of MPs, on recent evidence).
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
They elect Jenrick as leader and accept that they will likely have to do an electoral deal with Farage to survive
That’s it. That’s their choice. If they go for some centrist no-mark like Stride or cleverly - who won’t cut a deal with reform - then they will sink below 100 seats maybe below 50 and that’s curtains
Jenrick has a presence, vivacity and a charisma (esp on social media). He is also a ruthless shit with a dodgy CV but I suspect most British voters have stopped caring about all that (hence their willingness to consider the dubious Farage). They just want someone basically patriotic who will withdraw from the ECHR and stop the boats and crush migration and get a grip on our declining cities
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
Until something else changes, the revival of the Tories can only harm Reform and only help Labour. Try Baxtering: Lab 30 Tory 23 Reform 23 LD 10.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
I'm not sure he's long for the job. If things haven't improved by 2026, they'll start to panic (these aren't a strong and stable cohort of MPs, on recent evidence).
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
Can we write off Cooper? She seems to have avoided being in the headlines as Home Secretary, which is about as good as it gets for a role where if you are in the news it's only ever for bad news. Personally I'm not keen on her but looking around at the alternatives...
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
Try putting a description to 'Conservative' thought and policy right now that is 'right-wing' or 'non social democratic'. The answer has to clearly mark it out from Lab or LDs. It cannot be done.
I don't think it can be done with Reform either, but that is a work in progress.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
Until something else changes, the revival of the Tories can only harm Reform and only help Labour. Try Baxtering: Lab 30 Tory 23 Reform 23 LD 10.
This gives us a Lab government with LD support.
If we do see a modest Tory recovery at the expense of Reform (this is a big if right now) then I think some form of deal between them becomes more and more likely. Jenrick (assuming he takes over) is hungry enough to do it, Farage might not want to miss his big chance.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
I disagree - the current Conservative party is the least conservative and most right-wing it's been in my lifetime. It needs to get back to its roots instead of all the populist nationalist nonsense it's currently obsessed by.
Either way I won't vote for it, but it needs to attract people like my late mother who were conservative to their finger tips but voting LD because the Tories were so awful.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
Her only job is to win the next election and you can easily see how a #kemikampaign will go, and that's badly. One third narcissism, one third narky tweets and one third Fukker-lite policy platform.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
I'm not sure he's long for the job. If things haven't improved by 2026, they'll start to panic (these aren't a strong and stable cohort of MPs, on recent evidence).
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
Another problem for starmer and why even a Falklands moment might not save him is his total lack of guiding principle. The absence of ideology. Apart from “respecting the law especially international law which harms the UK”. Thats all he believes in. Nothing else. There is “nothing behind the eyes” as that politico piece puts it
With thatcher you knew her philosophy. Small state, low taxes, defend the nation, close the mines, crack down on migration, be a dry right wing Tory. For several years it was very unpopular but then the Falklands changed the mood and the voters decided: ok let’s give her a chance. Maybe her policies will work - so they gave her chance the policies worked and she won three terms and saved the UK
What are the starmer policies waiting to be enacted if only the people will give him a chance? What is his two or three term plan for the UK, if he can turn the polls around?
There isn’t one. There is nothing. He is a nullity. There’s no point in “giving him a chance” because he wouldn’t know what to do with it
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
Until something else changes, the revival of the Tories can only harm Reform and only help Labour. Try Baxtering: Lab 30 Tory 23 Reform 23 LD 10.
This gives us a Lab government with LD support.
If we do see a modest Tory recovery at the expense of Reform (this is a big if right now) then I think some form of deal between them becomes more and more likely. Jenrick is hungry enough to do it, Farage might not want to miss his big chance.
Yes. That would absolutely count as 'something changing'. If the next election were a straight Lab v ReformCon alliance in 530 seats, and LD v ReformCon alliance in the other 100 seats, the battle would be titanic and truly epoch making.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
I disagree - the current Conservative party is the least conservative and most right-wing it's been in my lifetime. It needs to get back to its roots instead of all the populist nationalist nonsense it's currently obsessed by.
Either way I won't vote for it, but it needs to attract people like my late mother who were conservative to their finger tips but voting LD because the Tories were so awful.
“Either way I won’t vote for it”
That’s all you need to say. Because it makes the rest of your comments pointless and we can skip them
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
Until something else changes, the revival of the Tories can only harm Reform and only help Labour. Try Baxtering: Lab 30 Tory 23 Reform 23 LD 10.
This gives us a Lab government with LD support.
Lab 30 is more than they currently have. The Tories need to work out how to pick up that loose 5% off Labour, and a similar amount from Reform. Then maybe you're looking at Tory and Labour reversed on those figures. It's not impossible but I don't see how they actually get there given where they are and who they have available.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
They elect Jenrick as leader and accept that they will likely have to do an electoral deal with Farage to survive
That’s it. That’s their choice. If they go for some centrist no-mark like Stride or cleverly - who won’t cut a deal with reform - then they will sink below 100 seats maybe below 50 and that’s curtains
Jenrick has a presence, vivacity and a charisma (esp on social media). He is also a ruthless shit with a dodgy CV but I suspect most British voters have stopped caring about all that (hence their willingness to consider the dubious Farage). They just want someone basically patriotic who will withdraw from the ECHR and stop the boats and crush migration and get a grip on our declining cities
Then why not just vote for Farage? And why would Farage throw a lifeline to Jenrick?
So it turns out there's still a sizeable number of Labour MPs demanding more concessions to the benefits bill. Whether it's enough to see it defeated, difficult to say but looks like still some fun and games to play out on Monday and Tuesday. Feeling like the government can't even get a compromise right.
Utter shambles of a government. The inkjet printer of administrations
They do two things kind of OK and then the third time the paper jams and the ink cartridge explodes and weird plastic flaps fall off and then the motor starts smouldering, potentially burning the house down, and all you wanted to do was print a 2 page pdf
What are these two things they do OK?
Well, they made some noises that they might be starting to understand the public's concerns on immi... oh wait. Scratch that. SKS was tired and didn't mean it.
I still can’t believe he did that. Back pedalled on his entire game-changing speech on migration. “I was stoned. Ignore me”
Just such god awful POLITICS. This is not how you do POLITICS. It’s not how you do anything, in fact
Its like going on a long awaited holiday with the family then as you land in Tenerife saying “this is a mistake, I was half asleep when I agreed to this so I’m going to spend all the time in the hotel working”
The family stares at you in horrified disbelief. Within a year you will be divorced
I cant see this ness doing anything except confirm that Labour cant be trusted.
There seems to be a real disconnect between Westminster and the country these days. The Tories to the end of their reign were hated but had nowhere near the complete destruction of the Labour vote that is happening at the moment. The only areas where their vote is still remaining loyal is Scotland and London. On Thursday in the Chorley council byelection Labour went from first to third and lost about 40% of their vote base. This is a council 90% Labour controlled. Starmer has 10 months left to save his premiership. The elections of May 2026 are probably the most important before the next General Election.
The only thing saving Labour these days is the weakness of the opposition. In Scotland the SNP seem to be on the ropes. They came 5th in the recent Edinburgh council byelection and have not won an election in the last couple of months. The Tories are winning a few council by elections but have yet to address how they messed up so badly. The Lib Dems continue to progress but without any policy apart from rejoining Europe.
The Reform bandwagon now seems almost unstoppable.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
I'm not sure he's long for the job. If things haven't improved by 2026, they'll start to panic (these aren't a strong and stable cohort of MPs, on recent evidence).
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
Another problem for starmer and why even a Falklands moment might not save him is his total lack of guiding principle. The absence of ideology. Apart from “respecting the law especially international law which harms the UK”. Thats all he believes in. Nothing else. There is “nothing behind the eyes” as that politico piece puts it
With thatcher you knew her philosophy. Small state, low taxes, defend the nation, close the mines, crack down on migration, be a dry right wing Tory. For several years it was very unpopular but then the Falklands changed the mood and the voters decided: ok let’s give her a chance. Maybe her policies will work - so they gave her chance the policies worked and she won three terms and saved the UK
What are the starmer policies waiting to be enacted if only the people will give him a chance? What is his two or three term plan for the UK, if he can turn the polls around?
There isn’t one. There is nothing. He is a nullity. There’s no point in “giving him a chance” because he wouldn’t know what to do with it
Errr: migration increased substantially under Thatcher. Much less than in subsequent years, I grant you, but it was still substantially higher when she left office.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
I'm not sure he's long for the job. If things haven't improved by 2026, they'll start to panic (these aren't a strong and stable cohort of MPs, on recent evidence).
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
Next May's Holyrood and Senedd elections may well see Badenoch's resignation and big questions for Starmer
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
You're conflating One Nation Tory with LibDem. I think it's because with gazing at things from so far to the right they look the same to you.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
I'm not sure he's long for the job. If things haven't improved by 2026, they'll start to panic (these aren't a strong and stable cohort of MPs, on recent evidence).
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
Another problem for starmer and why even a Falklands moment might not save him is his total lack of guiding principle. The absence of ideology. Apart from “respecting the law especially international law which harms the UK”. Thats all he believes in. Nothing else. There is “nothing behind the eyes” as that politico piece puts it
With thatcher you knew her philosophy. Small state, low taxes, defend the nation, close the mines, crack down on migration, be a dry right wing Tory. For several years it was very unpopular but then the Falklands changed the mood and the voters decided: ok let’s give her a chance. Maybe her policies will work - so they gave her chance the policies worked and she won three terms and saved the UK
What are the starmer policies waiting to be enacted if only the people will give him a chance? What is his two or three term plan for the UK, if he can turn the polls around?
There isn’t one. There is nothing. He is a nullity. There’s no point in “giving him a chance” because he wouldn’t know what to do with it
Thatcher was not small state She ran a large state slightly smaller than it would have been under others, but the differences in state size were very minor.
From the NS 8 April 2013:
Despite the rhetoric of “rolling back the state”, Margaret Thatcher was less successful in cutting public spending than many of her supporters (and opponents) like to believe. As the IFS graph below shows, real-terms spending rose in every year of her premiership apart from two. Only in 1985-86 and 1989-90 did spending fall, by 1.1 per cent in the former and 2.3 per cent in the latter. On average, it increased by 1.1 per cent a year.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
I'm not sure he's long for the job. If things haven't improved by 2026, they'll start to panic (these aren't a strong and stable cohort of MPs, on recent evidence).
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
Another problem for starmer and why even a Falklands moment might not save him is his total lack of guiding principle. The absence of ideology. Apart from “respecting the law especially international law which harms the UK”. Thats all he believes in. Nothing else. There is “nothing behind the eyes” as that politico piece puts it
With thatcher you knew her philosophy. Small state, low taxes, defend the nation, close the mines, crack down on migration, be a dry right wing Tory. For several years it was very unpopular but then the Falklands changed the mood and the voters decided: ok let’s give her a chance. Maybe her policies will work - so they gave her chance the policies worked and she won three terms and saved the UK
What are the starmer policies waiting to be enacted if only the people will give him a chance? What is his two or three term plan for the UK, if he can turn the polls around?
There isn’t one. There is nothing. He is a nullity. There’s no point in “giving him a chance” because he wouldn’t know what to do with it
Thatcher was not small state She ran a large state slightly smaller than it would have been under others, but the differences in state size were very minor.
From the NS 8 April 2013:
Despite the rhetoric of “rolling back the state”, Margaret Thatcher was less successful in cutting public spending than many of her supporters (and opponents) like to believe. As the IFS graph below shows, real-terms spending rose in every year of her premiership apart from two. Only in 1985-86 and 1989-90 did spending fall, by 1.1 per cent in the former and 2.3 per cent in the latter. On average, it increased by 1.1 per cent a year.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
I disagree - the current Conservative party is the least conservative and most right-wing it's been in my lifetime. It needs to get back to its roots instead of all the populist nationalist nonsense it's currently obsessed by.
Either way I won't vote for it, but it needs to attract people like my late mother who were conservative to their finger tips but voting LD because the Tories were so awful.
“Either way I won’t vote for it”
That’s all you need to say. Because it makes the rest of your comments pointless and we can skip them
Well no, I'm trying to be dispassionate - you think the best approach is to copy Reform and perhaps merge, I disagree because I see a need for a 'conservative' party. I'm not one and while I'd love it if everyone agrees with me on everything that's not going to happen in a democracy and I'd prefer there were some good choices available for those who hold opposite views to mine.
I know you'd rather see Reform win anyway - personally that fills me with dread and I'd rather (through gritted teeth) there was an electable Conservative Party so I'm just musing on how it might be possible.
If the Tories fall apart and we're left with Reform on the right as the only choice then Labour wins by default until further notice. I don't want that either.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
You're conflating One Nation Tory with LibDem. I think it's because with gazing at things from so far to the right they look the same to you.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
I disagree - the current Conservative party is the least conservative and most right-wing it's been in my lifetime. It needs to get back to its roots instead of all the populist nationalist nonsense it's currently obsessed by.
Either way I won't vote for it, but it needs to attract people like my late mother who were conservative to their finger tips but voting LD because the Tories were so awful.
“Either way I won’t vote for it”
That’s all you need to say. Because it makes the rest of your comments pointless and we can skip them
Well no, I'm trying to be dispassionate - you think the best approach is to copy Reform and perhaps merge, I disagree because I see a need for a 'conservative' party. I'm not one and while I'd love it if everyone agrees with me on everything that's not going to happen in a democracy and I'd prefer there were some good choices available for those who hold opposite views to mine.
I know you'd rather see Reform win anyway - personally that fills me with dread and I'd rather (through gritted teeth) there was an electable Conservative Party so I'm just musing on how it might be possible.
If the Tories fall apart and we're left with Reform on the right as the only choice then Labour wins by default until further notice. I don't want that either.
But that’s the point. You dread an actual right wing party in charge - one that will leave the ECHR and end net immigration and win the culture wars
So your simply hoping that some wet drippy lib demmy Tory party emerges and becomes successful rather than a populist right wing party under Jenrick or Farage
And the idea that voters won’t elect populist right wingers is nonsense. Meloni is in power. So is Trump. The populist right can win and is winning across the west
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
I'm not sure he's long for the job. If things haven't improved by 2026, they'll start to panic (these aren't a strong and stable cohort of MPs, on recent evidence).
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
Another problem for starmer and why even a Falklands moment might not save him is his total lack of guiding principle. The absence of ideology. Apart from “respecting the law especially international law which harms the UK”. Thats all he believes in. Nothing else. There is “nothing behind the eyes” as that politico piece puts it
With thatcher you knew her philosophy. Small state, low taxes, defend the nation, close the mines, crack down on migration, be a dry right wing Tory. For several years it was very unpopular but then the Falklands changed the mood and the voters decided: ok let’s give her a chance. Maybe her policies will work - so they gave her chance the policies worked and she won three terms and saved the UK
What are the starmer policies waiting to be enacted if only the people will give him a chance? What is his two or three term plan for the UK, if he can turn the polls around?
There isn’t one. There is nothing. He is a nullity. There’s no point in “giving him a chance” because he wouldn’t know what to do with it
Thatcher was not small state She ran a large state slightly smaller than it would have been under others, but the differences in state size were very minor.
From the NS 8 April 2013:
Despite the rhetoric of “rolling back the state”, Margaret Thatcher was less successful in cutting public spending than many of her supporters (and opponents) like to believe. As the IFS graph below shows, real-terms spending rose in every year of her premiership apart from two. Only in 1985-86 and 1989-90 did spending fall, by 1.1 per cent in the former and 2.3 per cent in the latter. On average, it increased by 1.1 per cent a year.
Errrr: she massively shrank the state by privatising half of it
Noted, but it doesn't really deal with the facts of real terms state expenditure rise under Mrs T. She may have preferred others to bank the proceeds of gas, electricity and telecoms, fair enough, but a small state is one which undoes comprehensively elements of the post WWII social democratic consensus - ie the cradle to grave welfare state WRT cash handouts, pensions, NHS, free education to 18 etc.
I’m not convinced that a centrist-to-centre-right voter coalition exists in the numbers it used to, to viably challenge for power on its own anymore. I would like it to, because it’s where I largely sit on the spectrum. But I think we do need to acknowledge that the right now attracts a lot of supporters on issues of culture and national identity. The genie is out of the bottle on that now, and it won’t go back in.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
I disagree - the current Conservative party is the least conservative and most right-wing it's been in my lifetime. It needs to get back to its roots instead of all the populist nationalist nonsense it's currently obsessed by.
Either way I won't vote for it, but it needs to attract people like my late mother who were conservative to their finger tips but voting LD because the Tories were so awful.
“Either way I won’t vote for it”
That’s all you need to say. Because it makes the rest of your comments pointless and we can skip them
Well no, I'm trying to be dispassionate - you think the best approach is to copy Reform and perhaps merge, I disagree because I see a need for a 'conservative' party. I'm not one and while I'd love it if everyone agrees with me on everything that's not going to happen in a democracy and I'd prefer there were some good choices available for those who hold opposite views to mine.
I know you'd rather see Reform win anyway - personally that fills me with dread and I'd rather (through gritted teeth) there was an electable Conservative Party so I'm just musing on how it might be possible.
If the Tories fall apart and we're left with Reform on the right as the only choice then Labour wins by default until further notice. I don't want that either.
But that’s the point. You dread an actual right wing party in charge - one that will leave the ECHR and end net immigration and win the culture wars
So your simply hoping that some wet drippy lib demmy Tory party emerges and becomes successful rather than a populist right wing party under Jenrick or Farage
And the idea that voters won’t elect populist right wingers is nonsense. Meloni is in power. So is Trump. The populist right can win and is winning across the west
Sorry hopping on someone else's debate. It remains to be seen whether right wing populists can win power under our electoral system. Trump won in a system where people vote directly for him. In competitive elections other right wing populist MAGA types don't do nearly as well. Meloni won power under a PR system and as part of a coalition government. To get a majority here Farage has to find 325 other candidates capable of winning a majority in 325 very different seats (unless he can form some kind of coalition which is very difficult for him).
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
I disagree - the current Conservative party is the least conservative and most right-wing it's been in my lifetime. It needs to get back to its roots instead of all the populist nationalist nonsense it's currently obsessed by.
Either way I won't vote for it, but it needs to attract people like my late mother who were conservative to their finger tips but voting LD because the Tories were so awful.
“Either way I won’t vote for it”
That’s all you need to say. Because it makes the rest of your comments pointless and we can skip them
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
I disagree - the current Conservative party is the least conservative and most right-wing it's been in my lifetime. It needs to get back to its roots instead of all the populist nationalist nonsense it's currently obsessed by.
Either way I won't vote for it, but it needs to attract people like my late mother who were conservative to their finger tips but voting LD because the Tories were so awful.
“Either way I won’t vote for it”
That’s all you need to say. Because it makes the rest of your comments pointless and we can skip them
Well no, I'm trying to be dispassionate - you think the best approach is to copy Reform and perhaps merge, I disagree because I see a need for a 'conservative' party. I'm not one and while I'd love it if everyone agrees with me on everything that's not going to happen in a democracy and I'd prefer there were some good choices available for those who hold opposite views to mine.
I know you'd rather see Reform win anyway - personally that fills me with dread and I'd rather (through gritted teeth) there was an electable Conservative Party so I'm just musing on how it might be possible.
If the Tories fall apart and we're left with Reform on the right as the only choice then Labour wins by default until further notice. I don't want that either.
But that’s the point. You dread an actual right wing party in charge - one that will leave the ECHR and end net immigration and win the culture wars
So your simply hoping that some wet drippy lib demmy Tory party emerges and becomes successful rather than a populist right wing party under Jenrick or Farage
And the idea that voters won’t elect populist right wingers is nonsense. Meloni is in power. So is Trump. The populist right can win and is winning across the west
I agree the populist 'right' can win, and maybe will in the UK (though I doubt it). What they can't and won't do is govern as 'right wing' in any true sense. They will be tough on borders and inward migration, but that is neither left nor right, their tone will be from the 1950s and will sound a bit like Old Labour. They will not run a small state, and won't undo the post WWII welfare state. They will be old fashioned centrists.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
I disagree - the current Conservative party is the least conservative and most right-wing it's been in my lifetime. It needs to get back to its roots instead of all the populist nationalist nonsense it's currently obsessed by.
Either way I won't vote for it, but it needs to attract people like my late mother who were conservative to their finger tips but voting LD because the Tories were so awful.
“Either way I won’t vote for it”
That’s all you need to say. Because it makes the rest of your comments pointless and we can skip them
Same applies to your comments about Labour then.
No, because I am not trying to advise Labour what to do (eg choose this or that leader after starmer). I am merely noting - as a dispassionate outsider - that they are monumentally fucked and that Starmer is a moron
“Speaking at the conference in north Wales on Saturday, Sir Keir said fixing the "broken" benefits system needed to be done because it was "failing people every day", leaving "a generation of young people written off for good and the cost spiralling out of control". "Fixing it is a moral imperative, but we need to do it in a Labour way," he added.”
Well, if by “Labour way” we mean creating a two tier system…
Home Office staff are concerned about the “absurd” decision to ban Palestine Action under UK anti-terrorism laws, a senior civil servant has said.
“My colleagues and I were shocked by the announcement,” they said. “All week, the office has been a very tense atmosphere, charged with concern about treating a non-violent protest group the same as actual terrorist organisations like Isis, and the dangerous precedent this sets.
“From desk to desk, colleagues are exchanging concerned and bemused conversations about how absurd this is and how impossible it will be to enforce. Are they really going to prosecute as terrorists everyone who expresses support for Palestine Action’s work to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes?
“It’s ridiculous and it’s being widely condemned in anxious conversations internally as a blatant misuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes to clamp down on protests which are affecting the profits of arms companies.”
Home Office staff are concerned about the “absurd” decision to ban Palestine Action under UK anti-terrorism laws, a senior civil servant has said.
“My colleagues and I were shocked by the announcement,” they said. “All week, the office has been a very tense atmosphere, charged with concern about treating a non-violent protest group the same as actual terrorist organisations like Isis, and the dangerous precedent this sets.
“From desk to desk, colleagues are exchanging concerned and bemused conversations about how absurd this is and how impossible it will be to enforce. Are they really going to prosecute as terrorists everyone who expresses support for Palestine Action’s work to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes?
“It’s ridiculous and it’s being widely condemned in anxious conversations internally as a blatant misuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes to clamp down on protests which are affecting the profits of arms companies.”
I wonder if that’s the “Association of Muslim Civil Servants”
There are some serious accusations against them on X (however I’ve no idea if these are valid): of them striving to delay or even thwart government policy when they dislike it
Lawyers, particularly court lawyers, have a lot of relevant skills for politics. They are trained to construct an argument and defend it from criticism. They learn how to speak in public. The better ones learn how to be persuasive and to think on their feet. They learn how to analyse a subject and pick out the relevant facts.
But none of this can make up for the inevitability that at least some of our number are just shits. Jenrick being a case in point.
The problem comes with a certain type of lawyer. Who believes that The Law is the Goal and The All.
Hence you get lawyers in management who prevent non-lawyers being promoted - because “specialists might get bogged down in the details”
Many years ago, when I worked in an oil company, I used to attend lots of meeting and conferences. I was curious about the workings of the company.
At one meeting, someone gave a proud presentation of how he had cut costs on a new oil field. I noticed that he had substituted regular steel for the well heads, rather than a special steel (pretty much stainless).
I put my hand up, and being stupid, asked.
Yup - he hadn’t checked. The reason for the original special spec was that the field had lots of water in the oil, and the oil came out under great pressure and very hot. Regular steel gets eaten by that at a crazy rate. Mm per hour can happen.
If that had gone ahead, multiple blowouts. Probably deaths.
My career survived (my manger protected me quite well, in those days). What was interesting was the reaction of all those around the clown - “he couldn’t be expected to know technical stuff - that’s not his job”.
Everyone in that meeting (apart from me) was a lawyer or accountant.
They were right: it’s wasn’t his job to know the technical stuff.
Home Office staff are concerned about the “absurd” decision to ban Palestine Action under UK anti-terrorism laws, a senior civil servant has said.
“My colleagues and I were shocked by the announcement,” they said. “All week, the office has been a very tense atmosphere, charged with concern about treating a non-violent protest group the same as actual terrorist organisations like Isis, and the dangerous precedent this sets.
“From desk to desk, colleagues are exchanging concerned and bemused conversations about how absurd this is and how impossible it will be to enforce. Are they really going to prosecute as terrorists everyone who expresses support for Palestine Action’s work to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes?
“It’s ridiculous and it’s being widely condemned in anxious conversations internally as a blatant misuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes to clamp down on protests which are affecting the profits of arms companies.”
I would have totally sympathised with this view UNTIL the stories came out about a) their sabotaging of arms for Ukraine and b) their pro-Putin backer.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
It's quite a puzzle. Starmer's lack of leadership touch and failures would have lost him everyone normally, but all politics is relative. About 60-65% of voters have nowhere else to go that could actually do better or help the cause of grown up politics, except those in the 100 or so seats where the LDs are the contender. So for the moment Starmer and Labour are the only grown up, non nationalist centrist option in about 530 seats.
It may be over for Starmer (though I am not sure) but it certainly is not all over for Labour.
The LibDems really aren’t “grown up politics”. They are spenders to their core.
Home Office staff are concerned about the “absurd” decision to ban Palestine Action under UK anti-terrorism laws, a senior civil servant has said.
“My colleagues and I were shocked by the announcement,” they said. “All week, the office has been a very tense atmosphere, charged with concern about treating a non-violent protest group the same as actual terrorist organisations like Isis, and the dangerous precedent this sets.
“From desk to desk, colleagues are exchanging concerned and bemused conversations about how absurd this is and how impossible it will be to enforce. Are they really going to prosecute as terrorists everyone who expresses support for Palestine Action’s work to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes?
“It’s ridiculous and it’s being widely condemned in anxious conversations internally as a blatant misuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes to clamp down on protests which are affecting the profits of arms companies.”
I understand Starmer's latest ruse of a 'one out one in' policy with France is being attacked by EU member states who are opposed to it
He's seeking a compromise by negotiation. He's a nice guy and does nice guy things, like sitting down around a table and talking. He can't imagine that at this level his job is not to negotiate solutions by talking, it's to impose solutions by force. The small boats situation will not be solved by passing them back to the French, it's turning the boats around (or reboating the occupants) and beaching them on the shores of France/Belgium/Netherlands/wherever. That way they become somebody else's problem and there's no need for lawyers to get involved.
Lawyers, particularly court lawyers, have a lot of relevant skills for politics. They are trained to construct an argument and defend it from criticism. They learn how to speak in public. The better ones learn how to be persuasive and to think on their feet. They learn how to analyse a subject and pick out the relevant facts.
But none of this can make up for the inevitability that at least some of our number are just shits. Jenrick being a case in point.
How did Starmer rise so far in the legal profession, then?
He was an administrator not really a lawyer from early on in his career.
When my mother worked with him she called him about as triangulating, no moral or ideological core and an interesting approach to money
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
I'm not sure he's long for the job. If things haven't improved by 2026, they'll start to panic (these aren't a strong and stable cohort of MPs, on recent evidence).
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
Next May's Holyrood and Senedd elections may well see Badenoch's resignation and big questions for Starmer
It's quite possible the it will further Tory disintegration, yes. What is unlikely - in a way quite sad - is that both Tory and Labour will hit 'crisis absolute' at the same time. Our system requires two national parties to be in the ring. Change is that really would be radical. The LDs are not going to be the other one apart from Reform. That's the sad bit. The Tories won't be the other one.
Which leaves us in Sherlock Holmes land: 'once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth'.
Only Labour can be the national party remaining in the ring with Reform. No other candidates.
If (!!) my argument is right, then the Tories only future (apart from sensibly being One Nation again) is a pact with Reform.
Home Office staff are concerned about the “absurd” decision to ban Palestine Action under UK anti-terrorism laws, a senior civil servant has said.
“My colleagues and I were shocked by the announcement,” they said. “All week, the office has been a very tense atmosphere, charged with concern about treating a non-violent protest group the same as actual terrorist organisations like Isis, and the dangerous precedent this sets.
“From desk to desk, colleagues are exchanging concerned and bemused conversations about how absurd this is and how impossible it will be to enforce. Are they really going to prosecute as terrorists everyone who expresses support for Palestine Action’s work to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes?
“It’s ridiculous and it’s being widely condemned in anxious conversations internally as a blatant misuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes to clamp down on protests which are affecting the profits of arms companies.”
I wonder if that’s the “Association of Muslim Civil Servants”
There are some serious accusations against them on X (however I’ve no idea if these are valid): of them striving to delay or even thwart government policy when they dislike it
Its also bollocks in that, the likes of Hizb ut-Tahrir and National Action are rightly also banned under this legalisation, but they have never carried out violent terrorist acts. Hizb ut-Tahrir in particular follow a very extreme Islamist agenda but a founding principle is it that they are non-violent, instead they believe in causing a take-over / revolution from within the system. They don't even go smashing up banks, factories or military bases.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
I disagree - the current Conservative party is the least conservative and most right-wing it's been in my lifetime. It needs to get back to its roots instead of all the populist nationalist nonsense it's currently obsessed by.
Either way I won't vote for it, but it needs to attract people like my late mother who were conservative to their finger tips but voting LD because the Tories were so awful.
“Either way I won’t vote for it”
That’s all you need to say. Because it makes the rest of your comments pointless and we can skip them
Same applies to your comments about Labour then.
No, because I am not trying to advise Labour what to do (eg choose this or that leader after starmer). I am merely noting - as a dispassionate outsider - that they are monumentally fucked and that Starmer is a moron
PJH was saying exactly that about the Cons and their leading lights - and in rather more 'dispassionate outsider' language than you manage here.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
It's quite a puzzle. Starmer's lack of leadership touch and failures would have lost him everyone normally, but all politics is relative. About 60-65% of voters have nowhere else to go that could actually do better or help the cause of grown up politics, except those in the 100 or so seats where the LDs are the contender. So for the moment Starmer and Labour are the only grown up, non nationalist centrist option in about 530 seats.
It may be over for Starmer (though I am not sure) but it certainly is not all over for Labour.
The LibDems really aren’t “grown up politics”. They are spenders to their core.
It depends what you spend your money on. If Starmer had spent 25 billion on the green infrastructure plan large numbers of both economists and industry specialists endorsed, and Ed Miliband spent five years finessing, that would be grown-up politics.
If a Lib-Dem-Labour pact were to revive the plan, that could also be more grown-up than Farage's Trussian tax cuts and spending rises.
Home Office staff are concerned about the “absurd” decision to ban Palestine Action under UK anti-terrorism laws, a senior civil servant has said.
“My colleagues and I were shocked by the announcement,” they said. “All week, the office has been a very tense atmosphere, charged with concern about treating a non-violent protest group the same as actual terrorist organisations like Isis, and the dangerous precedent this sets.
“From desk to desk, colleagues are exchanging concerned and bemused conversations about how absurd this is and how impossible it will be to enforce. Are they really going to prosecute as terrorists everyone who expresses support for Palestine Action’s work to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes?
“It’s ridiculous and it’s being widely condemned in anxious conversations internally as a blatant misuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes to clamp down on protests which are affecting the profits of arms companies.”
I wonder if that’s the “Association of Muslim Civil Servants”
There are some serious accusations against them on X (however I’ve no idea if these are valid): of them striving to delay or even thwart government policy when they dislike it
Its also bollocks in that, the likes of Hizb ut-Tahrir and National Action are rightly also banned under this legalisation, but they have never carried out violent terrorist acts. Hizb ut-Tahrir in particular follow a very extreme Islamist agenda but a founding principle is it that they are non-violent, instead they believe in causing a take-over / revolution from within the system. They don't even go smashing up banks, factories or military bases.
Home Office staff are concerned about the “absurd” decision to ban Palestine Action under UK anti-terrorism laws, a senior civil servant has said.
“My colleagues and I were shocked by the announcement,” they said. “All week, the office has been a very tense atmosphere, charged with concern about treating a non-violent protest group the same as actual terrorist organisations like Isis, and the dangerous precedent this sets.
“From desk to desk, colleagues are exchanging concerned and bemused conversations about how absurd this is and how impossible it will be to enforce. Are they really going to prosecute as terrorists everyone who expresses support for Palestine Action’s work to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes?
“It’s ridiculous and it’s being widely condemned in anxious conversations internally as a blatant misuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes to clamp down on protests which are affecting the profits of arms companies.”
I wonder if that’s the “Association of Muslim Civil Servants”
There are some serious accusations against them on X (however I’ve no idea if these are valid): of them striving to delay or even thwart government policy when they dislike it
Its also bollocks in that, the likes of Hizb ut-Tahrir and National Action are rightly also banned under this legalisation, but they have never carried out violent terrorist acts. Hizb ut-Tahrir in particular follow a very extreme Islamist agenda but a founding principle is it that they are non-violent, instead they believe in causing a take-over / revolution from within the system. They don't even go smashing up banks, factories or military bases.
They sound really sinister!
They are and why they were rightly eventually banned. It took far too long.
How does Starmer come back from all of this? I do not see a route. There is literally no returning
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
I'm not sure he's long for the job. If things haven't improved by 2026, they'll start to panic (these aren't a strong and stable cohort of MPs, on recent evidence).
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
Next May's Holyrood and Senedd elections may well see Badenoch's resignation and big questions for Starmer
It's quite possible the it will further Tory disintegration, yes. What is unlikely - in a way quite sad - is that both Tory and Labour will hit 'crisis absolute' at the same time. Our system requires two national parties to be in the ring. Change is that really would be radical. The LDs are not going to be the other one apart from Reform. That's the sad bit. The Tories won't be the other one.
Which leaves us in Sherlock Holmes land: 'once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth'.
Only Labour can be the national party remaining in the ring with Reform. No other candidates.
If (!!) my argument is right, then the Tories only future (apart from sensibly being One Nation again) is a pact with Reform.
Why should Labour be the only one in the ring anymore than the end of the conservative party
Home Office staff are concerned about the “absurd” decision to ban Palestine Action under UK anti-terrorism laws, a senior civil servant has said.
“My colleagues and I were shocked by the announcement,” they said. “All week, the office has been a very tense atmosphere, charged with concern about treating a non-violent protest group the same as actual terrorist organisations like Isis, and the dangerous precedent this sets.
“From desk to desk, colleagues are exchanging concerned and bemused conversations about how absurd this is and how impossible it will be to enforce. Are they really going to prosecute as terrorists everyone who expresses support for Palestine Action’s work to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes?
“It’s ridiculous and it’s being widely condemned in anxious conversations internally as a blatant misuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes to clamp down on protests which are affecting the profits of arms companies.”
I would have totally sympathised with this view UNTIL the stories came out about a) their sabotaging of arms for Ukraine and b) their pro-Putin backer.
It seems like only last week we were told of PA's Iranian money.
At the time, what I could see of social media was very angry at the PA plane stunt and split between calling it terrorism or even treason.
Now I am no hotshot lawyer like Keir Starmer or even Rob Jenrick but istm it is hard to call painting or even destroying planes terrorism but easy to call it treason.
On topic: The elder Cuomo once said something like this: We campaign in poetry, we govern in prose.
I understand his point, and assume that a good lawyer can do both. But I think that for much of government, a successful leader must govern in statistics. Which, not every lawyer can do.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
That sounds like a comment straight off of ConHome.
As if the biggest problem the Tories have right now is how right wing to be?
They f****d up on protecting our borders. They put us through years of Brexit psychodrama for no discernible benefit whatsoever. The water industry is f****d. Our railways are f****d. The housing market is f****d. The health service is on its knees, many local councils are heading for bankruptcy, the justice system and prisons are in crisis, our schools are falling apart. Levelling up came to nothing, HS2 is a shambles, low level crime was overtly ignored. And despite all the cuts the budget wasnt balanced and we remain as much in debt as ever. They even failed on defence.
It doesn’t matter how right wing you are if nothing you do ever works. Except pandering to pensioners and lining the pockets of Tory grifters.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
Try putting a description to 'Conservative' thought and policy right now that is 'right-wing' or 'non social democratic'. The answer has to clearly mark it out from Lab or LDs. It cannot be done.
I don't think it can be done with Reform either, but that is a work in progress.
Utter rubbish.
Conservatives across Reform and the Tories have realised that the state itself underlies the UK's decline and that elected Governments of any colour will not succeed in doing anything remotely worthwhile whilst the Blair and Brown 'reforms' remain on the statute book, and potentially (see Cummings) whilst the Civil Service (Treasury, Cabinet office) remains in its current 1850 format. Labour and the Lib Dems are completely beholden to those systems and 'anti-radical' in that sense. They have no answers to today's issues beyond tinkering, because even if they wanted to do more than tinker, a judicial review, ECHR law, piece of Cabinet Office 'advice' , environment agency ruling, etc etc etc would stop them. They are hundreds of miles off the pace.
That article mentions "Labour Future". I'd never heard of it so I did a bit of Googling (it doesn't have a wikipedia page). It seems to be a sockpuppet of Blue Labour, having the ineffable Maurice Glasman in both
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
Try putting a description to 'Conservative' thought and policy right now that is 'right-wing' or 'non social democratic'. The answer has to clearly mark it out from Lab or LDs. It cannot be done.
I don't think it can be done with Reform either, but that is a work in progress.
Utter rubbish.
Conservatives across Reform and the Tories have realised that the state itself underlies the UK's decline and that elected Governments of any colour will not succeed in doing anything remotely worthwhile whilst the Blair and Brown 'reforms' remain on the statute book, and potentially (see Cummings) whilst the Civil Service (Treasury, Cabinet office) remains in its current 1850 format. Labour and the Lib Dems are completely beholden to those systems and 'anti-radical' in that sense. They have no answers to today's issues beyond tinkering, because even if they wanted to do more than tinker, a judicial review, ECHR law, piece of Cabinet Office 'advice' , environment agency ruling, etc etc etc would stop them. They are hundreds of miles off the pace.
When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.
I think I was one of the first to spot that he was a diabolical combination of uncharismatic berk and sociopathic liar.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
And yet, they still get their name engraved on the trophy.
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
This is not actually true
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
That's why I said head-to-head.
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
I predict even Starmer’s head to head performance will crater over time. Indeed it will get so bad he will step down
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
Jenrick would take more votes from Farage than Starmer
For gods sake tell them to choose Jenrick. He’s your only hope. The only Tory with ideas and vigour and chutzpah
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
Indeed: Jenrick could rescue the Conservatives. He's telegenic, vigarous, youthful (without appearing to still be an undergraduate), and can appeal to at least some Reform supporters, without scaring off traditional Conservatives.
Yes exactly
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I always thought Badenoch would be useless, but she is the right choice if the only alternative is Jenrick. (Tory MPs- you are culpable here). He is just too dodgy personally, although I do recognise his strengths as you've outlined.
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
The Conservatives *are* the real thing. The only reason Reform exists at all is because the Tories have been infested with Lib Dems who ran an aggressive campaign (and still are) to cleanse the party of any right-wing thought and turn it into the social democratic party: blue team. It is a farce that the same weasels now turn round and say 'we shouldn't ape reform'.
Try putting a description to 'Conservative' thought and policy right now that is 'right-wing' or 'non social democratic'. The answer has to clearly mark it out from Lab or LDs. It cannot be done.
I don't think it can be done with Reform either, but that is a work in progress.
Utter rubbish.
Conservatives across Reform and the Tories have realised that the state itself underlies the UK's decline and that elected Governments of any colour will not succeed in doing anything remotely worthwhile whilst the Blair and Brown 'reforms' remain on the statute book, and potentially (see Cummings) whilst the Civil Service (Treasury, Cabinet office) remains in its current 1850 format. Labour and the Lib Dems are completely beholden to those systems and 'anti-radical' in that sense. They have no answers to today's issues beyond tinkering, because even if they wanted to do more than tinker, a judicial review, ECHR law, piece of Cabinet Office 'advice' , environment agency ruling, etc etc etc would stop them. They are hundreds of miles off the pace.
Thanks. Good effort. Questions: 1) How do you know. Are there links to Reform and Tory policy documents which illustrate this, and how they are going to get it done?
2) If you mark their homework, how did that project get on under the Tories from 2010 to 2024, where does it stand now only one year on, and why did the electorate reject it so decisively?
3) How did the Cummings project get on and what are its fruits?
3) What reasons do you have for thinking these are policies for government rather than policies for opposition?
Comments
There is, increasingly, a potential pathway for the Tories opening up. The benefits chaos and the resulting budget tax rises will bring some traditional Tory concerns to the fore - ones that Reform can't deftly capitalise on given their cakeism of late. Of course the very sizeable millstone of the last government's record hangs round their necks, but if they play their cards right I think they could start making a modest recovery. The question for them is when they do the switcheroo - is it better to let Badenoch carry the can for the 2026 elections for instance.
He’s the only one that makes you sit up and think OK perhaps he will do something. Maybe I’ll give them another shot
He’s proved that with Jenrickvision. The fact he alienates the lefty centrist dad Lib Dem Tories is an ADVANTAGE. They are the people who will lead the Tories into oblivion - they’ve already taken them halfway there
I was trying to be generous
I didn't realise just how much effort was required to pull the levers
It is a lifetime memory unavailable these days
In any case, the point wasn’t whether boring, unpopular politicians could still become PM, it was that Starmer is losing those who were previously sympathetic, and the base was low to begin with
The anger in the country over his failings is palpable.
A detailed seat-by-seat poll found Labour would lose 233 seats if an election was held tomorrow. He has amassed more nicknames than all the Tory leaders he has faced put together. 'Two-Tier Keir', 'Never Here Keir', 'Free Gear Keir', 'Sir Flip Flop', the 'Farmer Harmer', 'Sir Kid Starver' and so on.
In the last 12 months the list of people he has angered includes pensioners, parents, small business owners, farmers, fishermen, people with disabilities, Brexiteers, the Chagossians and, last but not least, Labour MPs.
He is currently on his third U-turn in five weeks.
It is not a sign of weakness to alter your course if the situation has changed, but three cavernous climbdowns in just over a month shows just how badly this government is being run.
Just such god awful POLITICS. This is not how you do POLITICS. It’s not how you do anything, in fact
Its like going on a long awaited holiday with the family then as you land in Tenerife saying “this is a mistake, I was half asleep when I agreed to this so I’m going to spend all the time in the hotel working”
The family stares at you in horrified disbelief. Within a year you will be divorced
I'm still married.
He's also the main rightwinger that I could see complementing Farage in an electoral pact. He's even more ruthless than Farage, but grasps social media in a similar way, to him.
Starmer would say I blame the Misses, she booked it all, but on my personal credit card and via my email, but I never looked at my bill or checked the incoming emails from Booking.com until I got on the plane.
Unless he gets some weird Falklands black swan, the British public have decided they despise him and that’s that. What’s worse - it looks like most of his MPs and half his cabinet despise him as well
“For months, Starmer has hosted Wednesday lunches with Pret a Manger sandwiches in his Commons office with small groups of MPs.
One Labour MP, however, complained: “It’s not a proper meeting. He likes to muse about what he said to Macron at some summit or another but it’s like there’s nothing there behind the eyes.””
“One MP on the Labour left put it more bluntly: “I just can’t see him leading us into the next election. He’s just so damaged on what he is and who he is. You’ve got to stand for something, haven’t you?”
https://www.politico.eu/article/keir-starmer-peter-mandelson-agenda-election-politics-labour/
The other weakness to Jenrick is - if he's copying Reform, why not just vote for the real thing? And by fishing from the same pool he loses the centre without necessarily gaining anything in return.
If I was a Conservative I would be utterly depressed. Instead I'm watching with amazement as the most successful political party ever falls apart. I would laugh but the alternative is Farage and the chancers in Reform, and I never thought I would say this, so the Conservative party needs to survive somehow. Don't ask me how they do it.
Of course, that then begs the question who comes after him. Quite difficult to see beyond Our Ange (who brings with her, her own baggage). Streeting is too Blairite for them and Reeves has ruined her political career.
That’s it. That’s their choice. If they go for some centrist no-mark like Stride or cleverly - who won’t cut a deal with reform - then they will sink below 100 seats maybe below 50 and that’s curtains
Jenrick has a presence, vivacity and a charisma (esp on social media). He is also a ruthless shit with a dodgy CV but I suspect most British voters have stopped caring about all that (hence their willingness to consider the dubious Farage). They just want someone basically patriotic who will withdraw from the ECHR and stop the boats and crush migration and get a grip on our declining cities
Lab 30
Tory 23
Reform 23
LD 10.
This gives us a Lab government with LD support.
I don't think it can be done with Reform either, but that is a work in progress.
Either way I won't vote for it, but it needs to attract people like my late mother who were conservative to their finger tips but voting LD because the Tories were so awful.
With thatcher you knew her philosophy. Small state, low taxes, defend the nation, close the mines, crack down on migration, be a dry right wing Tory. For several years it was very unpopular but then the Falklands changed the mood and the voters decided: ok let’s give her a chance. Maybe her policies will work - so they gave her chance the policies worked and she won three terms and saved the UK
What are the starmer policies waiting to be enacted if only the people will give him a chance? What is his two or three term plan for the UK, if he can turn the polls around?
There isn’t one. There is nothing. He is a nullity. There’s no point in “giving him a chance” because he wouldn’t know what to do with it
That’s all you need to say. Because it makes the rest of your comments pointless and we can skip them
I cant see this ness doing anything except confirm that Labour cant be trusted.
There seems to be a real disconnect between Westminster and the country these days. The Tories to the end of their reign were hated but had nowhere near the complete destruction of the Labour vote that is happening at the moment. The only areas where their vote is still remaining loyal is Scotland and London. On Thursday in the Chorley council byelection Labour went from first to third and lost about 40% of their vote base. This is a council 90% Labour controlled. Starmer has 10 months left to save his premiership. The elections of May 2026 are probably the most important before the next General Election.
The only thing saving Labour these days is the weakness of the opposition. In Scotland the SNP seem to be on the ropes. They came 5th in the recent Edinburgh council byelection and have not won an election in the last couple of months. The Tories are winning a few council by elections but have yet to address how they messed up so badly. The Lib Dems continue to progress but without any policy apart from rejoining Europe.
The Reform bandwagon now seems almost unstoppable.
From the NS 8 April 2013:
Despite the rhetoric of “rolling back the state”, Margaret Thatcher was less successful in cutting public spending than many of her supporters (and opponents) like to believe. As the IFS graph below shows, real-terms spending rose in every year of her premiership apart from two. Only in 1985-86 and 1989-90 did spending fall, by 1.1 per cent in the former and 2.3 per cent in the latter. On average, it increased by 1.1 per cent a year.
https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2013/04/how-public-spending-rose-under-thatcher
I know you'd rather see Reform win anyway - personally that fills me with dread and I'd rather (through gritted teeth) there was an electable Conservative Party so I'm just musing on how it might be possible.
If the Tories fall apart and we're left with Reform on the right as the only choice then Labour wins by default until further notice. I don't want that either.
So your simply hoping that some wet drippy lib demmy Tory party emerges and becomes successful rather than a populist right wing party under Jenrick or Farage
And the idea that voters won’t elect populist right wingers is nonsense. Meloni is in power. So is Trump. The populist right can win and is winning across the west
“Speaking at the conference in north Wales on Saturday, Sir Keir said fixing the "broken" benefits system needed to be done because it was "failing people every day", leaving "a generation of young people written off for good and the cost spiralling out of control".
"Fixing it is a moral imperative, but we need to do it in a Labour way," he added.”
Well, if by “Labour way” we mean creating a two tier system…
Home Office staff are concerned about the “absurd” decision to ban Palestine Action under UK anti-terrorism laws, a senior civil servant has said.
“My colleagues and I were shocked by the announcement,” they said. “All week, the office has been a very tense atmosphere, charged with concern about treating a non-violent protest group the same as actual terrorist organisations like Isis, and the dangerous precedent this sets.
“From desk to desk, colleagues are exchanging concerned and bemused conversations about how absurd this is and how impossible it will be to enforce. Are they really going to prosecute as terrorists everyone who expresses support for Palestine Action’s work to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel as it commits war crimes?
“It’s ridiculous and it’s being widely condemned in anxious conversations internally as a blatant misuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes to clamp down on protests which are affecting the profits of arms companies.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/28/home-office-staff-concerned-about-absurd-palestine-action-ban-says-senior-civil-servant
There are some serious accusations against them on X (however I’ve no idea if these are valid): of them striving to delay or even thwart government policy when they dislike it
But he should have known to ask an expert
When my mother worked with him she called him about as triangulating, no moral or ideological core and an interesting approach to money
Which leaves us in Sherlock Holmes land: 'once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth'.
Only Labour can be the national party remaining in the ring with Reform. No other candidates.
If (!!) my argument is right, then the Tories only future (apart from sensibly being One Nation again) is a pact with Reform.
And, a day later, seeing Ed Davey walking down Downing St and into No 10!
If a Lib-Dem-Labour pact were to revive the plan, that could also be more grown-up than Farage's Trussian tax cuts and spending rises.
Is it just me
Seems OK now
Why should Labour be the only one in the ring anymore than the end of the conservative party
Nobody has a clue where we will be in 2028/29
At the time, what I could see of social media was very angry at the PA plane stunt and split between calling it terrorism or even treason.
Now I am no hotshot lawyer like Keir Starmer or even Rob Jenrick but istm it is hard to call painting or even destroying planes terrorism but easy to call it treason.
I understand his point, and assume that a good lawyer can do both. But I think that for much of government, a successful leader must govern in statistics. Which, not every lawyer can do.
As if the biggest problem the Tories have right now is how right wing to be?
They f****d up on protecting our borders. They put us through years of Brexit psychodrama for no discernible benefit whatsoever. The water industry is f****d. Our railways are f****d. The housing market is f****d. The health service is on its knees, many local councils are heading for bankruptcy, the justice system and prisons are in crisis, our schools are falling apart. Levelling up came to nothing, HS2 is a shambles, low level crime was overtly ignored. And despite all the cuts the budget wasnt balanced and we remain as much in debt as ever. They even failed on defence.
It doesn’t matter how right wing you are if nothing you do ever works. Except pandering to pensioners and lining the pockets of Tory grifters.
Conservatives across Reform and the Tories have realised that the state itself underlies the UK's decline and that elected Governments of any colour will not succeed in doing anything remotely worthwhile whilst the Blair and Brown 'reforms' remain on the statute book, and potentially (see Cummings) whilst the Civil Service (Treasury, Cabinet office) remains in its current 1850 format. Labour and the Lib Dems are completely beholden to those systems and 'anti-radical' in that sense. They have no answers to today's issues beyond tinkering, because even if they wanted to do more than tinker, a judicial review, ECHR law, piece of Cabinet Office 'advice' , environment agency ruling, etc etc etc would stop them. They are hundreds of miles off the pace.
Betting PostF1: backed Russell boosted each way at 29 for pole, hedged at 5.
Also, weirdly, had a free bet and threw it on Leclerc with the same hedge set up.
https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/06/austrian-grand-prix-2025-pre-qualifying.html
Slowly, bit by bit, all the little things that make life vaguely tolerable are being eroded
1) How do you know. Are there links to Reform and Tory policy documents which illustrate this, and how they are going to get it done?
2) If you mark their homework, how did that project get on under the Tories from 2010 to 2024, where does it stand now only one year on, and why did the electorate reject it so decisively?
3) How did the Cummings project get on and what are its fruits?
3) What reasons do you have for thinking these are policies for government rather than policies for opposition?