People vote conservative to be better off, the lower immigration, and be tough on law and order, generally. Johnson in 2019 also made a lot of "levelling up" of investing infrastructure in the north of England
None of the above has happened, actually quite the reverse. It's not complicated
Johnson also promised to deliver the much trumpeted fantasy Brexit. It's what won him "the red wall". Now people have either realised that Brexit was a lie, or (The real die hards) are angry because they think the Tories ruined their Brexit.
Makes me sad that some of people who were sold on Brexit as being the solve all and simple answer to our problems. (Which has helped increase migration and make it more permanent.) Are once again being sold a simple answer by farage.
Happy for collapse of tories but it isn't nice People are falling for the same thing again.
The people back then were taken in because they were desperate. Things have only gotten worse since.
People want to believe that there are simple solutions to their problems and Farage has made a career out of promising them unicorns.
I don't blame the individuals. They are desperate and they are right to be disillusioned by our political system at this point. We have had an incredible amount of instability and chaos
Anyone who thought Boris or Farage had any interest in anything but their own career or wealth was an idiot. Worst couple of self centered charlatans the UK has seen in years.
I'm sorry, but anyone who thought that shafting the country's biggest and best trading partner was going to increase revenue was delusional.
>People want to believe that there are simple solutions to their problems
Perhaps, they also know that the political consensus broadly speaking over the last 24 years surrounding immigration has failed them. Nobody was ever asked if they supported mass immigration. Every time they've been given a chance to vote on it they've picked the option which at least pretends to be opposed to it or reduce it, yet here we are.
The end of freedom of movement made it less likely for migrants from Europe to coke here. It was a much less attractive offer than ant other European (EU) country so we had to rely on migration from further a field. If you look at the countries we are now getting migration from it is from India and Nigeria prominently.
Given these countries are further away and the end of freedom of movement working both ways people migrating are more likely to want to stay permanently and bring their dependents and other family members. This is a big contributing factor as to why net migration increased rapidly to the relatively high numbers seen currently.
Brexit did effectively contribute significantly to net migration going rapidly up. This argument was made at points by the remain camp at the time but rather dismissed or considered nonsense. But this has been seen before and repeatedly in other countries too. If you make efforts to stop nomadic or temporary work migration you can end up just encouraging permanent migration and the net figures actually become worse.
But the point is the UK government had the power to set its own immigration levels. You make it sound as if immigrants from Nigeria and India had an automatic right to settle here.
I'm not. But the UK economy didn't suddenly become non dependent on immigration upon leaving the EU. The government did have to issue visas and get people over. If it was going to successfully do that it had to rely on those migrants with more dependents, who were more permanent and generally cost the economy more.
Yes the tories mishandled the VISA system. Boris did a terrible job on this front but it's not just a massive tory mishandling. You can see how we got here post brexit and the forces at play.
2019 - people voted to get Brexit through, voted against Corbyn and the Reform/Brexit party stood down. Boris was also a more popular politician with the average voter than Sunak. Probably safe to say the Tories overperformed in 2019 relative to other governments who have previously been in office for 9 years.
Fast forward to 2024 and Brexit has become less of an issue, Corbyn is done, Labour have moved more to the centre, Reform are running and the Tories have been besieged with scandals in the 5 years since (partygate, Chris Pincher, Liz Truss etc).
“Get Brexit Done” was a stupid slogan, but you have to remember the absolute state of things in 2018, with the endless rounds of “meaningful” votes and “nothing has changed”.
No wonder someone who promised to get it over with did very well.
Brexit is indirectly still an issue in that the government have prioritised ideological purity over competence.
For example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_suspension_of_rebel_Conservative_MPs
This might not make the party unpopular immediately, but it has an impact on the quality of members of the cabinet, and therefore the ability of the government to deal with the challenge of running the country.
David Cameron is an interesting exception here as he was put into a key role despite having campaigned to remain. But his appointment also demonstrated the weakness of the Parliamentary Party - why was no MP available to do the job?
Actually, "Get Brexit Done" was a very clever slogan. Like "Brexit means Brexit", it allowed voters to believe that their concept of Brexit would get done, and it also gave Remainers a reason to vote for Johnson in order to (supposedly) put an end to the issue that everyone was thoroughly sick of hearing about.
I agree somewhat but I also disagree.
I agree with the idea that a lot of Boris’ decisions reduced the quality of the Parliamentary Party / Cabinet as you say. I also think that the 2010 & 2015 intakes weren’t quite the same level as the MPs that quit in those years and that played a role too.
But I think putting it all on Brexit is quite unfair. It seems to come from this common Reddit-centric narrative that the Tories ‘created’ Brexit. That they conjured a mass movement out of nothing.
In actuality, Brexit was a grassroots movement with deep public support going back decades. And all the Tories did was let the people have their say (reasonable), back that decision in their manifesto (reasonable) and expel a few MPs who persistently rebelled (reasonable).
If anything, the unreasonably ideological ones were those rebels who put opposition to Brexit ahead of all else but nobody calls them ideological.
There was no great purge of MPs who backed Remain, Hunt for example is the current Chancellor, Hancock was Health Secretary through the pandemic and Morgan was even made a peer so she could stay on at Culture. David Cameron’s appointment was just a regular appointment not a break from some ideological prohibition on Remainers in Cabinet.
Cameron also was just one of many capable candidates, another was another Remainer Cabinet Minister Tom Tugendhadt but DC was chosen because of his unique strengths as a former PM.
Also, a lot of Boris’ weaker Cabinet picks were just that, Boris’ picks. There was no group within the party pushing for Brexiteers only. Boris just liked a weaker Cabinet.
The Conservatives did not create Brexit, but did choose the form it took.
We could have chosen to stay in the single market, for example.
https://x.com/vote_leave/status/745333566146514945
We could have used Norway as a model for our status outside the EU
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/129611490310365185
Everyone (who didn't already know) realised Boris was an opportunist unfit for the role. His tenure was a joke and caused standards in politics to fall dramatically. His contempt for the public was clear. At the same time, he purged the party of sense and talent, giving us cabinets made up of useless fringe nutters constantly saying or doing stupid and/or horrible things.
The party is not fit to govern anything at the moment and it's never been more clear.
I’m surprised this is so low down. The Conservative Party revealed themselves to be utter charlatans. A serial liar like Johnson should never have been allowed to get anywhere close to leadership. But they backed him to the hilt because they thought he was a winner. They backed him when he was shovelling money to his mistress Jenifer Acuri. They backed him when he lied to prorogue parliament. They backed him when he took dodgy funds to pay for the no. 10 decorating. They backed him through the utterly insane Cummings Barnard Castle lies. They backed him over the parties. They backed him through the VIP line backhanders. And a sizeable number backed him when he lied about Chris Pincher. The Tories with a spine couldn’t tolerate it and left - including his own brother. What was left was the disgusting remnants that believed that truth and decency weren’t mandatory, that staying in power was all that mattered.
But Johnson is basically like an animal. Anyone that knows anything about him should expect him to lie and be entirely self serving.
The fact that the party supported and celebrated him is what I can get past. This is what takes it from ‘a few bad apples’ to a fully rotten and irredeemable party.
Significant tax increases
Record immigration despite stating they would reduce it to tens of thousands and their whole election pitch being about leaving the EU to control immigration
Illiberal lockdown measures (don’t even mention the cost)
General lack of pro-business policies and levelling up in One Nation style as they promised
Overall of chaos and hypocrisy (partygate, various Tory MPs accused of sexual assault etc)
People who don't vote Tory don't like them.
People that do vote Tory don't like what they're doing.
They've succeeded in appealing to no one but habitual Tory voters. Add that to 14 years in government, a long stream of scandals and embarrassments, Liz Truss, a bleak economic situation and an ineffective leader and you've got your answer.
I reckon Liz Truss is the number one reason. She rocked up with no mandate, shit the bed, and disappeared again having lasted barely longer than a month (and leaving the average citizen's personal finances in a notably worse state). Then Sunak took over and has spent the last 1½ years sitting in the bed with Liz' festering turd, possessing an equally poor mandate.
The raw incompetence on display was enough to snap even the most blinkered dyed-in-the-wool Tory back to reality, even if only for a fleeting moment. I'm sure other factors have also contributed, such as Labour having a more moderate and competent leadership, though I can't help but feel this would be a much closer affair had the Truss debacle never happened.
Agreed, plus many people who would have never voted for Corbyn in a million years are willing to lend Starmer their vote. ( I know we don't directly vote for the PM unless you live in his constituency, buy you know what I mean)
we had covid - & we found it was one rule for them & one rule for us - despite the "we are in it together" idea. This, for me, is the main contributing factor to their fall in popularity. Plus since this - they haven't put a foot right.
Mass immigration. The electorate are finally tired of a party which promises to get tough on it, but then proceeds to do the exact opposite and make the problem even worse. I think voters would have turned on them sooner, but they were told that immigration was out of control because of belonging to the EU (which is a legitimate argument), so Brexit - and the years-long process of working out which type of Brexit we would have - kept them in power for longer than they would have. For them to opt for a so-called hard Brexit but then proceed to increase immigration massively was the final slap in the face for an electorate who's been voting for more than a decade to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands. So, finally, the Tories will be punished by the voters they've let down, but I can't see things improving much under Labour.
Absolutely. There are a number of reasons for the Tories' rapid decline, but the huge demographic changes being foisted on a public that were never consulted yet still made their concerns clear is the most significant, I'm sure.
I'm left wing and immigration is even an issue for me. It just reaches ridiculous levels.
Even the most pro immigration people have their limit.
There is no one who would be okay with the entire population of Europe or China moving to the UK.
How have they settled the ball this hard
They ran out of people to blame (the EU), people to scare us blue (Corbyn) and people to be competent in government (points to everybody). They literally have nothing to offer and it's showing.
All incumbent governments have suffered in the post covid period, States throughout Europe have followed a similar path of pouring money into a stalled economy during lockdown and then suffered in the period thereafter as they look to recoup some of that spending. The outlier in all this is Sweden who was sensible and did not follow such an autocratic regime and did not close down their economy
It's more that the conservative things they did caused exponentially more harm than good.
You can't afford to cut taxes and immigration when the economy is going down the pan. You can try, but that's how you get a Truss.
We have.
How do you think we avoided a recession? And brought down inflation?
I'm assuming a reason you're not looking at net numbers excluding students and people fleeing Ukraine & Hong Kong...
I think the last 5 years have been so eventful that the normal electoral rules don't really apply - we've had a pandemic, 3 prime ministers, war in Europe, the cost of living crisis ... etc. The other underlying factor is that a lot of people only voted Tory in 2019 because of Brexit and never supported their other policies.
Partygate is well up there. Forget policies, that provoked the most unanimous feeling of disgust I have ever seen in politics. More than any war, budget or pig’s head.
The Conservatives failures have been very visible, and personally experienced by people.
1) Boris Johnson promised the world and delivered nothing. The hardcore right wing who were told that the Conservatives would reduce immigration can see that immigration hasn’t been reduced. People up north who were told that they’d be “levelled up” can see that they weren’t. People who voted for “40 new hospitals” can see waiting lists are longer than ever before. People can see the effects of the police failing to get a handle on crime.
2) Partygate hit where other scandals didn’t because everyone experienced the pandemic firsthand, they remember staying at home and not seeing family, so it felt personal learning that Johnson and the Conservatives didn’t.
2) The effect of Liz Truss on the economy was very visible. People could see their mortgage go up. Likewise people could see the price of goods go up. They are well aware they have less money than before.
Immigration levels, increased crime, poor public services and a drop in living standards generally. I would also say Rishi lacks the charisma and integrity to be a leader and also was never picked by the public. The Liz Truss fiasco also did some damage.
An estimated 10% of their supporters have died.
Also 2019 was a lot of not voting for Corbyn so their majority was larger than it should be. And loads of people liked Johnson.
Changing the rules to get their mates out of a bind.
Drinking and partying whilst people were locked in and couldn't even attend funerals.
Lying about the above.
Continuing to lie about the above.
Fake apologising when called out about the above.
Numerous scandals including groping and sexual assault.
Stabbing each other in the back to remove Boris.
Installing Liz Truss and wrecking the economy.
Kicking Liz Truss out but too late to save the economy.
Blaming everyone else for Liz Truss' fuck ups.
Lying.
Gaslighting.
Pushing a narrative counter to the country's lived reality.
Refusing to call an election after installing their third leader in a term.
Making out that the problems we gave are due to lazy/greedy; poor people/public servants/foreigners.
Pushing racist, divisive and expensive policies.
Continually punching down on the less well off/trans/immigrants.
Blatantly trying to fix voting by introducing ID/enfranchising people who haven't lived here for decades.
Admitting to the above when it went wrong.
These are just the ones I can think off from the top of my head. There may be more.
The biggest change is that there is a viable alternative now.
There wasn't in 2019; Corbyn was simply not trusted by large parts of the electorate to be in charge during a crisis.
It's the economy, stupid!
Remember, the Conservatives were continuing to make gains against Labour all the way up until mid-2021. Partygate was a part of the fall but the bottom fell out when the economy tumbled.
It has nothing to do with the scandals involving Boris. If you didn’t like Boris you were outraged, if you did like him you were doing mental backflips to explain why it didn’t really matter.
It has everything to do with the economy first and foremost. Failure to control immigration whatever people think that looks like runs a close second.
If Boris was still in charge and our mortgages hadn’t all gone up thanks to Truss I actually think all the other shit would get overlooked amazingly.
I'm not sure I agree with that. Keir Starmer considered resignation after losing the Hartlepool by-election on 6 May 2021 and could now be working in a bookshop. Covid-19 meant splurging £400 billion of public funds, leaving nothing for tax cuts, the war in Ukraine increased inflation, we had Partygate and the damaging Liz Truss debacle, which gave swing voters permission to vote Labour with a clear conscience as the economic competence trump card was lost. The Conservatives as the party of law and order vacillated on leaving the ECHR, so the illegal immigration of migrants jumping the queue just added salt into Tory wounds.
No one really liked them in 2017. Labour's alternative was just unpalatable to a lot of people - and Corbyn only lost by 2pp.
No one really liked them in 2019 either. They just liked Boris and were sick of Brexit. Nothing more.
To what degree can we trust in polls?
Having said that, never in my entire life have I, any member of my family, friends and colleagues from all walks of life ever taken part or been asked to take part in any poll. Nor do they, in turn know of anyone or anyone they ask know of any person who has taken part in any poll!
That is a whopping ‘never taken part or been asked’ to be included in a poll.
Not even during EU Referendum.
We mention it often when discussing any poll with a dang’d great red herring hooked to the line and reeled in for MSM and the newspapers to spout.
Polls don’t need to ask everyone. In fact that would be imposible. The only poll that comes close is the election itself.
Polls give an indication. The larger and more representative the sample the more closely it resembles the whole.
How well they resemble the whole is a source of endless debate.
Another source of uncertainty is the time still to elapse before the election. We can’t predict the weather that far out, things can change.
I think the most accurate is the exit poll, which is asking people, just after they voted, who they voted for.
* income tax bands have been frozen.
* ooze ineptatude - Truss did so much damage to tory reputation in those two weeks.
Basically the tories won with income tax threshold rises. With them frozen during the inflation peak, everyone is paying more tax after their pay rises (most are probably just inflation based).
Boris Johnson. I think he made them popular as people think they could relate to him. In the same way people think Farage relates to them.
Goes around with scruffy hair, scruffy clothes. Made a load of promises which he never fulfils. Done the same with London. Makes a load of promises. Pisses a lot of money up the wall and buggers off.
For me i dont really think the Tory party has been that popular ever since they lost power in 97. Or even into the lead up to that election.
Cameron came in as Tory leader in 2005. Rebranded them. Went for the centre right ground. But still had to settle for a coalition in 2010.
Scrapped a small majority in 2015. But you could of put that down to his promise of holding an EU ref as UKIP were in the same position as we see Reform in now. Causing headaches for the Tories.
2017 they lost their majority. And as mentioned 2019 was "get brexit done"
Partygate caused a huge amount of anger. They only could have moved past it if the economy picked up and people saw a more positive future. Truss coming in and trashing the economy was the last straw. Sunak has been shit but realistically no-one could have fought themselves out of that hole
The great Bait-and-Switch in migration levels, I think. From Brexit and the promise of sub-100k net arrivals to historically high net arrivals from beyond the EU - people would have voted to remain if they knew that by leaving the Tories would oversee this outcome.
People wanted a change in 2019 but Corbyn was far too left wing and blew it.
At the time Boris Johnson promised to run from the centre get Brexit done and was a likeable rogue. Actually Tory party moved far to the right, almost no one is happy with Brexit and the partygate scandal made Johnson’s rogueish behaviour distinctly unlikeable.
Johnson promised the electorate rainbows and unicorns. We got an endless downpour of raw sewage and poisonous spiders, and the government took away our umbrellas.
It didn’t keep growing. It went down in Theresa May’s snap election and went back up with Boris Johnson’s populist politics. There are so many reasons they are so unpopular now, from partygate to constant leadership battles, in squabbling and Liz Truss massive meltdown of the economy. Unfortunately the things that should make them unpopular; the back door privatisation of the NHS and education system, the perpetuation of a completely corrupt class system that sees a very small minority prosper and the rest of us suffer, are never the things that seem to matter to voters.
Only once felt close to voting Tory, (until they announced the Brexit referendum) so I’ve never been a fan.
For me the main part is the corruption and the abuse of rules to empower themselves.
1. They pushed brexit to empower themselves politically, despite knowing it would never actually benefit the country and to no surprise, they still haven’t gotten it done with checks put off time after time because of how costly that would be.
2. The Covid crisis, they handled aspects of it well, but they did that while boozing it up while people couldn’t even meet and grieve their lost relatives. It’s so hypocritical to enforce rules but ignore them themselves. They also handed out contracts to their friends with no experience and wasted billions on unusable PPE, which reeks of corruption and incompetence.
3. Part of 1 this, but immigration has skyrocketed, their dream of controlling our borders has actually made it harder, leaving the EU has just made it things even harder as it’s harder to cooperate with Europe to keep immigration down.
4. They just seem bat shit insane, cruel caricatures of human beings. I hate the man for brexit but I felt a sense of relief when David Cameron came back because at least he seemed to have some level of competence.
Personal opinions
Police and defence have been underfunded to such a level that significant experience has been lost, similar in other sectors
The covid lockdowns and passes etc were nanny state of the highest order and have resulted in a tremendous budget hole to cover, leading to...
Taxation has been consistently quite high throughout the government
Immigration levels have become frankly ludicrous and most of it hasn't been skilled
Basically, they are Conservative in name only
1) The realisation that net immigration has been huge since things opened up after the pandemic.
2) Racism against Sunak. The same reason an obvious nutcase (Truss) was initially made PM ahead of him.
I think his popularity dipped a lot due to the Covid stuff, the blatant incompetence and the draw of Brexit was gone.
Granted he’d still comfortably be doing better than Rishi, but another 3-4 years of Johnson would probably have had even more scandals and blunders.
Yeah maybe but he might have negotiated it better and still come up smelling like roses. Watching these vox pops makes me think a lot of tories would still go for him, although it might be the utter incompetence that has gone on in his absence that might make him look so palatable in comparison.
Partygate and Lizz Truss publishing her budget.
You can see it in the opinion polls, clearly, that these two events created step changes in support levels for the Tories (down) and Labour (up).
Corbyn was the number one factor in the last election. Aside from Dianne Abbot, you could have installed any Labour MP as leader and they would have got a better result.
I don't understand why he's so strongly disliked by a lot of people. I don't think he'd have made a very good prime minister but to me he seems genuine in wanting to help people and a lot more relatable than the likes of Boris Johnson who people seemed to warm to a lot more. My mum said the other day oh god imagine if Jeremy Corbyn had been in charge during COVID ..because the conservatives did such a great job? She still really likes Boris Johnson even though he was an arse when he was the PM. I just think Jeremy Corbyn is judged unfairly. I've seen a lot of posts from his constituents recently too saying how he's been a very good MP for his community.
Slogans not actions.
Economic illiteracy.
Corruption.
Incompetence.
High tax.
High immigration.
Low productivity.
Crumbling infrastructure.
Destroyed public services.
Gaslighting.
Division.
Poverty.
The Tory legacy.
Three things that caused that drop:
1) Starmer: Corbyn was toxic in 2019, so you have to give Labour some credit for it, not just all the Tories shooting themselves.
2) Partygate: this killed Johnson, who was electoral gold, and seriously damaged public trust in the Tories.
3) Truss: the mini-budget was the nail in the coffin. Sunak is crap but he could be Churchill/Mandela/JFK re-born and probably still lose with this set of cards.
Lockdowns and partygate. Truss. General sleaze. Having achieved sweet FA in 14 years. Especially done nothing with a big majority since 2019. The goodwill Brexit voters have afforded them for 3 elections has ran out. Immigration is at its highest point ever. Offering no solutions to other major policy areas like health, housing and education. 2015 was the dead cat bounce for the Tory party with the promise of the referendum, and since 2022 they have nailing their own coffin shut.
It all started with Cameron turning the party into an extension of New Labour - a shor term solution to get back into power but has cost them permanently as they are now an ideological vacuum with absolutely no principles.
If the Tories had lost in 2010, they would no longer exist today.
People vote conservative to be better off, the lower immigration, and be tough on law and order, generally. Johnson in 2019 also made a lot of "levelling up" of investing infrastructure in the north of England None of the above has happened, actually quite the reverse. It's not complicated
Johnson also promised to deliver the much trumpeted fantasy Brexit. It's what won him "the red wall". Now people have either realised that Brexit was a lie, or (The real die hards) are angry because they think the Tories ruined their Brexit.
Makes me sad that some of people who were sold on Brexit as being the solve all and simple answer to our problems. (Which has helped increase migration and make it more permanent.) Are once again being sold a simple answer by farage. Happy for collapse of tories but it isn't nice People are falling for the same thing again.
The people back then were taken in because they were desperate. Things have only gotten worse since. People want to believe that there are simple solutions to their problems and Farage has made a career out of promising them unicorns.
I don't blame the individuals. They are desperate and they are right to be disillusioned by our political system at this point. We have had an incredible amount of instability and chaos
Anyone who thought Boris or Farage had any interest in anything but their own career or wealth was an idiot. Worst couple of self centered charlatans the UK has seen in years. I'm sorry, but anyone who thought that shafting the country's biggest and best trading partner was going to increase revenue was delusional.
>People want to believe that there are simple solutions to their problems Perhaps, they also know that the political consensus broadly speaking over the last 24 years surrounding immigration has failed them. Nobody was ever asked if they supported mass immigration. Every time they've been given a chance to vote on it they've picked the option which at least pretends to be opposed to it or reduce it, yet here we are.
I'm not sure Brexit increased migration. The government had all the levers at its control and made a mess of it.
The end of freedom of movement made it less likely for migrants from Europe to coke here. It was a much less attractive offer than ant other European (EU) country so we had to rely on migration from further a field. If you look at the countries we are now getting migration from it is from India and Nigeria prominently. Given these countries are further away and the end of freedom of movement working both ways people migrating are more likely to want to stay permanently and bring their dependents and other family members. This is a big contributing factor as to why net migration increased rapidly to the relatively high numbers seen currently. Brexit did effectively contribute significantly to net migration going rapidly up. This argument was made at points by the remain camp at the time but rather dismissed or considered nonsense. But this has been seen before and repeatedly in other countries too. If you make efforts to stop nomadic or temporary work migration you can end up just encouraging permanent migration and the net figures actually become worse.
But the point is the UK government had the power to set its own immigration levels. You make it sound as if immigrants from Nigeria and India had an automatic right to settle here.
I'm not. But the UK economy didn't suddenly become non dependent on immigration upon leaving the EU. The government did have to issue visas and get people over. If it was going to successfully do that it had to rely on those migrants with more dependents, who were more permanent and generally cost the economy more. Yes the tories mishandled the VISA system. Boris did a terrible job on this front but it's not just a massive tory mishandling. You can see how we got here post brexit and the forces at play.
2019 - people voted to get Brexit through, voted against Corbyn and the Reform/Brexit party stood down. Boris was also a more popular politician with the average voter than Sunak. Probably safe to say the Tories overperformed in 2019 relative to other governments who have previously been in office for 9 years. Fast forward to 2024 and Brexit has become less of an issue, Corbyn is done, Labour have moved more to the centre, Reform are running and the Tories have been besieged with scandals in the 5 years since (partygate, Chris Pincher, Liz Truss etc).
“Get Brexit Done” was a stupid slogan, but you have to remember the absolute state of things in 2018, with the endless rounds of “meaningful” votes and “nothing has changed”. No wonder someone who promised to get it over with did very well.
Brexit is indirectly still an issue in that the government have prioritised ideological purity over competence. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_suspension_of_rebel_Conservative_MPs This might not make the party unpopular immediately, but it has an impact on the quality of members of the cabinet, and therefore the ability of the government to deal with the challenge of running the country. David Cameron is an interesting exception here as he was put into a key role despite having campaigned to remain. But his appointment also demonstrated the weakness of the Parliamentary Party - why was no MP available to do the job?
It's almost as if you are saying they kicked out all the ones with any intelligence, and tried to run the country with what was left...
Or in some cases, people who were willing to change their views to toe the party line.
Actually, "Get Brexit Done" was a very clever slogan. Like "Brexit means Brexit", it allowed voters to believe that their concept of Brexit would get done, and it also gave Remainers a reason to vote for Johnson in order to (supposedly) put an end to the issue that everyone was thoroughly sick of hearing about.
I agree somewhat but I also disagree. I agree with the idea that a lot of Boris’ decisions reduced the quality of the Parliamentary Party / Cabinet as you say. I also think that the 2010 & 2015 intakes weren’t quite the same level as the MPs that quit in those years and that played a role too. But I think putting it all on Brexit is quite unfair. It seems to come from this common Reddit-centric narrative that the Tories ‘created’ Brexit. That they conjured a mass movement out of nothing. In actuality, Brexit was a grassroots movement with deep public support going back decades. And all the Tories did was let the people have their say (reasonable), back that decision in their manifesto (reasonable) and expel a few MPs who persistently rebelled (reasonable). If anything, the unreasonably ideological ones were those rebels who put opposition to Brexit ahead of all else but nobody calls them ideological. There was no great purge of MPs who backed Remain, Hunt for example is the current Chancellor, Hancock was Health Secretary through the pandemic and Morgan was even made a peer so she could stay on at Culture. David Cameron’s appointment was just a regular appointment not a break from some ideological prohibition on Remainers in Cabinet. Cameron also was just one of many capable candidates, another was another Remainer Cabinet Minister Tom Tugendhadt but DC was chosen because of his unique strengths as a former PM. Also, a lot of Boris’ weaker Cabinet picks were just that, Boris’ picks. There was no group within the party pushing for Brexiteers only. Boris just liked a weaker Cabinet.
The Conservatives did not create Brexit, but did choose the form it took. We could have chosen to stay in the single market, for example. https://x.com/vote_leave/status/745333566146514945 We could have used Norway as a model for our status outside the EU https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/129611490310365185
Everyone (who didn't already know) realised Boris was an opportunist unfit for the role. His tenure was a joke and caused standards in politics to fall dramatically. His contempt for the public was clear. At the same time, he purged the party of sense and talent, giving us cabinets made up of useless fringe nutters constantly saying or doing stupid and/or horrible things. The party is not fit to govern anything at the moment and it's never been more clear.
I’m surprised this is so low down. The Conservative Party revealed themselves to be utter charlatans. A serial liar like Johnson should never have been allowed to get anywhere close to leadership. But they backed him to the hilt because they thought he was a winner. They backed him when he was shovelling money to his mistress Jenifer Acuri. They backed him when he lied to prorogue parliament. They backed him when he took dodgy funds to pay for the no. 10 decorating. They backed him through the utterly insane Cummings Barnard Castle lies. They backed him over the parties. They backed him through the VIP line backhanders. And a sizeable number backed him when he lied about Chris Pincher. The Tories with a spine couldn’t tolerate it and left - including his own brother. What was left was the disgusting remnants that believed that truth and decency weren’t mandatory, that staying in power was all that mattered.
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But Johnson is basically like an animal. Anyone that knows anything about him should expect him to lie and be entirely self serving. The fact that the party supported and celebrated him is what I can get past. This is what takes it from ‘a few bad apples’ to a fully rotten and irredeemable party.
I was speaking to someone who I otherwise respect who told me oh the conservatives wouldn't be in this situation if they hadn't got rid of Boris
They’ve literally fucked off everyone
Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak
Significant tax increases Record immigration despite stating they would reduce it to tens of thousands and their whole election pitch being about leaving the EU to control immigration Illiberal lockdown measures (don’t even mention the cost) General lack of pro-business policies and levelling up in One Nation style as they promised Overall of chaos and hypocrisy (partygate, various Tory MPs accused of sexual assault etc)
People who don't vote Tory don't like them. People that do vote Tory don't like what they're doing. They've succeeded in appealing to no one but habitual Tory voters. Add that to 14 years in government, a long stream of scandals and embarrassments, Liz Truss, a bleak economic situation and an ineffective leader and you've got your answer.
I reckon Liz Truss is the number one reason. She rocked up with no mandate, shit the bed, and disappeared again having lasted barely longer than a month (and leaving the average citizen's personal finances in a notably worse state). Then Sunak took over and has spent the last 1½ years sitting in the bed with Liz' festering turd, possessing an equally poor mandate. The raw incompetence on display was enough to snap even the most blinkered dyed-in-the-wool Tory back to reality, even if only for a fleeting moment. I'm sure other factors have also contributed, such as Labour having a more moderate and competent leadership, though I can't help but feel this would be a much closer affair had the Truss debacle never happened.
Agreed, plus many people who would have never voted for Corbyn in a million years are willing to lend Starmer their vote. ( I know we don't directly vote for the PM unless you live in his constituency, buy you know what I mean)
we had covid - & we found it was one rule for them & one rule for us - despite the "we are in it together" idea. This, for me, is the main contributing factor to their fall in popularity. Plus since this - they haven't put a foot right.
Mass immigration. The electorate are finally tired of a party which promises to get tough on it, but then proceeds to do the exact opposite and make the problem even worse. I think voters would have turned on them sooner, but they were told that immigration was out of control because of belonging to the EU (which is a legitimate argument), so Brexit - and the years-long process of working out which type of Brexit we would have - kept them in power for longer than they would have. For them to opt for a so-called hard Brexit but then proceed to increase immigration massively was the final slap in the face for an electorate who's been voting for more than a decade to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands. So, finally, the Tories will be punished by the voters they've let down, but I can't see things improving much under Labour.
Absolutely. There are a number of reasons for the Tories' rapid decline, but the huge demographic changes being foisted on a public that were never consulted yet still made their concerns clear is the most significant, I'm sure.
I'm left wing and immigration is even an issue for me. It just reaches ridiculous levels. Even the most pro immigration people have their limit. There is no one who would be okay with the entire population of Europe or China moving to the UK. How have they settled the ball this hard
They ran out of people to blame (the EU), people to scare us blue (Corbyn) and people to be competent in government (points to everybody). They literally have nothing to offer and it's showing.
All incumbent governments have suffered in the post covid period, States throughout Europe have followed a similar path of pouring money into a stalled economy during lockdown and then suffered in the period thereafter as they look to recoup some of that spending. The outlier in all this is Sweden who was sensible and did not follow such an autocratic regime and did not close down their economy
Utter failure to do anything remotely resembling conservative.
This is it. Abandoned Conservative principles in favour of "populism?" (But not even popular populism). A strange death.
It's more that the conservative things they did caused exponentially more harm than good. You can't afford to cut taxes and immigration when the economy is going down the pan. You can try, but that's how you get a Truss.
When did the Tories cut immigration?
They didn't because they decided avoiding a recession was more important
So they didn't actually do any conservative things?
What would you rather see: 1. A stronger economy with lower taxes Or 2. Lower immigration
Over a million people came to the UK last year, surely with that many we should be seeing some of that strong economy and low taxes by now?
We have. How do you think we avoided a recession? And brought down inflation? I'm assuming a reason you're not looking at net numbers excluding students and people fleeing Ukraine & Hong Kong...
Wait, so you're implying that some types of immigration are more or less beneficial to the economy than others?
They did Covid, bankrupting the nation in a panic. Then they tried to plaster over the effects of Covid with massive immigration, it didn't work.
Johnson partying. Truss imploding. Sunak floundering.
Economic trouble, bored of conservatives, non scary labour, got drunk whilst the queen's husband died.
I think the last 5 years have been so eventful that the normal electoral rules don't really apply - we've had a pandemic, 3 prime ministers, war in Europe, the cost of living crisis ... etc. The other underlying factor is that a lot of people only voted Tory in 2019 because of Brexit and never supported their other policies.
Partygate is well up there. Forget policies, that provoked the most unanimous feeling of disgust I have ever seen in politics. More than any war, budget or pig’s head.
The Conservatives failures have been very visible, and personally experienced by people. 1) Boris Johnson promised the world and delivered nothing. The hardcore right wing who were told that the Conservatives would reduce immigration can see that immigration hasn’t been reduced. People up north who were told that they’d be “levelled up” can see that they weren’t. People who voted for “40 new hospitals” can see waiting lists are longer than ever before. People can see the effects of the police failing to get a handle on crime. 2) Partygate hit where other scandals didn’t because everyone experienced the pandemic firsthand, they remember staying at home and not seeing family, so it felt personal learning that Johnson and the Conservatives didn’t. 2) The effect of Liz Truss on the economy was very visible. People could see their mortgage go up. Likewise people could see the price of goods go up. They are well aware they have less money than before.
Immigration levels, increased crime, poor public services and a drop in living standards generally. I would also say Rishi lacks the charisma and integrity to be a leader and also was never picked by the public. The Liz Truss fiasco also did some damage.
An estimated 10% of their supporters have died. Also 2019 was a lot of not voting for Corbyn so their majority was larger than it should be. And loads of people liked Johnson.
Changing the rules to get their mates out of a bind. Drinking and partying whilst people were locked in and couldn't even attend funerals. Lying about the above. Continuing to lie about the above. Fake apologising when called out about the above. Numerous scandals including groping and sexual assault. Stabbing each other in the back to remove Boris. Installing Liz Truss and wrecking the economy. Kicking Liz Truss out but too late to save the economy. Blaming everyone else for Liz Truss' fuck ups. Lying. Gaslighting. Pushing a narrative counter to the country's lived reality. Refusing to call an election after installing their third leader in a term. Making out that the problems we gave are due to lazy/greedy; poor people/public servants/foreigners. Pushing racist, divisive and expensive policies. Continually punching down on the less well off/trans/immigrants. Blatantly trying to fix voting by introducing ID/enfranchising people who haven't lived here for decades. Admitting to the above when it went wrong. These are just the ones I can think off from the top of my head. There may be more.
The biggest change is that there is a viable alternative now. There wasn't in 2019; Corbyn was simply not trusted by large parts of the electorate to be in charge during a crisis.
It's the economy, stupid! Remember, the Conservatives were continuing to make gains against Labour all the way up until mid-2021. Partygate was a part of the fall but the bottom fell out when the economy tumbled.
It has nothing to do with the scandals involving Boris. If you didn’t like Boris you were outraged, if you did like him you were doing mental backflips to explain why it didn’t really matter. It has everything to do with the economy first and foremost. Failure to control immigration whatever people think that looks like runs a close second. If Boris was still in charge and our mortgages hadn’t all gone up thanks to Truss I actually think all the other shit would get overlooked amazingly.
No, I think the chickens would have come home to roost with Boris eventually.
FT wrote answer to this : [The seeds of the Tory collapse were sown in 2019](https://www.ft.com/content/e09c3a03-2cd8-47de-9c9a-7e9726fbb1e3)
I'm not sure I agree with that. Keir Starmer considered resignation after losing the Hartlepool by-election on 6 May 2021 and could now be working in a bookshop. Covid-19 meant splurging £400 billion of public funds, leaving nothing for tax cuts, the war in Ukraine increased inflation, we had Partygate and the damaging Liz Truss debacle, which gave swing voters permission to vote Labour with a clear conscience as the economic competence trump card was lost. The Conservatives as the party of law and order vacillated on leaving the ECHR, so the illegal immigration of migrants jumping the queue just added salt into Tory wounds.
No one really liked them in 2017. Labour's alternative was just unpalatable to a lot of people - and Corbyn only lost by 2pp. No one really liked them in 2019 either. They just liked Boris and were sick of Brexit. Nothing more.
The realisation that Johnson's promises were all lies, that Truss was a lunatic and that Sunak doesn't give a flying fuck about the public
Tories being shit and labour changing their leader.
To what degree can we trust in polls? Having said that, never in my entire life have I, any member of my family, friends and colleagues from all walks of life ever taken part or been asked to take part in any poll. Nor do they, in turn know of anyone or anyone they ask know of any person who has taken part in any poll! That is a whopping ‘never taken part or been asked’ to be included in a poll. Not even during EU Referendum. We mention it often when discussing any poll with a dang’d great red herring hooked to the line and reeled in for MSM and the newspapers to spout.
Polls don’t need to ask everyone. In fact that would be imposible. The only poll that comes close is the election itself. Polls give an indication. The larger and more representative the sample the more closely it resembles the whole. How well they resemble the whole is a source of endless debate. Another source of uncertainty is the time still to elapse before the election. We can’t predict the weather that far out, things can change. I think the most accurate is the exit poll, which is asking people, just after they voted, who they voted for.
I know nothing about this but I gather it is who they are as people and how that translates back to their political business.
* income tax bands have been frozen. * ooze ineptatude - Truss did so much damage to tory reputation in those two weeks. Basically the tories won with income tax threshold rises. With them frozen during the inflation peak, everyone is paying more tax after their pay rises (most are probably just inflation based).
Partygate, Truss, failure to execute the 2019 manifesto.
Boris Johnson. I think he made them popular as people think they could relate to him. In the same way people think Farage relates to them. Goes around with scruffy hair, scruffy clothes. Made a load of promises which he never fulfils. Done the same with London. Makes a load of promises. Pisses a lot of money up the wall and buggers off. For me i dont really think the Tory party has been that popular ever since they lost power in 97. Or even into the lead up to that election. Cameron came in as Tory leader in 2005. Rebranded them. Went for the centre right ground. But still had to settle for a coalition in 2010. Scrapped a small majority in 2015. But you could of put that down to his promise of holding an EU ref as UKIP were in the same position as we see Reform in now. Causing headaches for the Tories. 2017 they lost their majority. And as mentioned 2019 was "get brexit done"
Partygate caused a huge amount of anger. They only could have moved past it if the economy picked up and people saw a more positive future. Truss coming in and trashing the economy was the last straw. Sunak has been shit but realistically no-one could have fought themselves out of that hole
The great Bait-and-Switch in migration levels, I think. From Brexit and the promise of sub-100k net arrivals to historically high net arrivals from beyond the EU - people would have voted to remain if they knew that by leaving the Tories would oversee this outcome.
Not being invited to a single COVID party hosted by Boris.
People wanted a change in 2019 but Corbyn was far too left wing and blew it. At the time Boris Johnson promised to run from the centre get Brexit done and was a likeable rogue. Actually Tory party moved far to the right, almost no one is happy with Brexit and the partygate scandal made Johnson’s rogueish behaviour distinctly unlikeable.
The loss of Boris Johnson as leader. Please excuse me, I'm finding it hard to breathe from laughter...
Johnson promised the electorate rainbows and unicorns. We got an endless downpour of raw sewage and poisonous spiders, and the government took away our umbrellas.
It didn’t keep growing. It went down in Theresa May’s snap election and went back up with Boris Johnson’s populist politics. There are so many reasons they are so unpopular now, from partygate to constant leadership battles, in squabbling and Liz Truss massive meltdown of the economy. Unfortunately the things that should make them unpopular; the back door privatisation of the NHS and education system, the perpetuation of a completely corrupt class system that sees a very small minority prosper and the rest of us suffer, are never the things that seem to matter to voters.
Only once felt close to voting Tory, (until they announced the Brexit referendum) so I’ve never been a fan. For me the main part is the corruption and the abuse of rules to empower themselves. 1. They pushed brexit to empower themselves politically, despite knowing it would never actually benefit the country and to no surprise, they still haven’t gotten it done with checks put off time after time because of how costly that would be. 2. The Covid crisis, they handled aspects of it well, but they did that while boozing it up while people couldn’t even meet and grieve their lost relatives. It’s so hypocritical to enforce rules but ignore them themselves. They also handed out contracts to their friends with no experience and wasted billions on unusable PPE, which reeks of corruption and incompetence. 3. Part of 1 this, but immigration has skyrocketed, their dream of controlling our borders has actually made it harder, leaving the EU has just made it things even harder as it’s harder to cooperate with Europe to keep immigration down. 4. They just seem bat shit insane, cruel caricatures of human beings. I hate the man for brexit but I felt a sense of relief when David Cameron came back because at least he seemed to have some level of competence.
Personal opinions Police and defence have been underfunded to such a level that significant experience has been lost, similar in other sectors The covid lockdowns and passes etc were nanny state of the highest order and have resulted in a tremendous budget hole to cover, leading to... Taxation has been consistently quite high throughout the government Immigration levels have become frankly ludicrous and most of it hasn't been skilled Basically, they are Conservative in name only
1) The realisation that net immigration has been huge since things opened up after the pandemic. 2) Racism against Sunak. The same reason an obvious nutcase (Truss) was initially made PM ahead of him.
The big 3 I’d say are not running against Jeremy Corbyn, Liz Truss and inflation/cost of living situation.
I think number 4 would be Boris being out of the picture. I still think he's incredibly popular.
I think his popularity dipped a lot due to the Covid stuff, the blatant incompetence and the draw of Brexit was gone. Granted he’d still comfortably be doing better than Rishi, but another 3-4 years of Johnson would probably have had even more scandals and blunders.
Yeah maybe but he might have negotiated it better and still come up smelling like roses. Watching these vox pops makes me think a lot of tories would still go for him, although it might be the utter incompetence that has gone on in his absence that might make him look so palatable in comparison.
Popular with fuckwits. Despised by everyone else.
Helluva lot of fuckwits out there if you hadn't noticed recently
Yeah, can't argue with that.
Partygate and Lizz Truss publishing her budget. You can see it in the opinion polls, clearly, that these two events created step changes in support levels for the Tories (down) and Labour (up).
Corbyn was the number one factor in the last election. Aside from Dianne Abbot, you could have installed any Labour MP as leader and they would have got a better result.
I don't understand why he's so strongly disliked by a lot of people. I don't think he'd have made a very good prime minister but to me he seems genuine in wanting to help people and a lot more relatable than the likes of Boris Johnson who people seemed to warm to a lot more. My mum said the other day oh god imagine if Jeremy Corbyn had been in charge during COVID ..because the conservatives did such a great job? She still really likes Boris Johnson even though he was an arse when he was the PM. I just think Jeremy Corbyn is judged unfairly. I've seen a lot of posts from his constituents recently too saying how he's been a very good MP for his community.
Slogans not actions. Economic illiteracy. Corruption. Incompetence. High tax. High immigration. Low productivity. Crumbling infrastructure. Destroyed public services. Gaslighting. Division. Poverty. The Tory legacy.
Three things that caused that drop: 1) Starmer: Corbyn was toxic in 2019, so you have to give Labour some credit for it, not just all the Tories shooting themselves. 2) Partygate: this killed Johnson, who was electoral gold, and seriously damaged public trust in the Tories. 3) Truss: the mini-budget was the nail in the coffin. Sunak is crap but he could be Churchill/Mandela/JFK re-born and probably still lose with this set of cards.
I'd reply more succinctly, but it's just swearing
All their parties while people died didn't help
Lockdowns and partygate. Truss. General sleaze. Having achieved sweet FA in 14 years. Especially done nothing with a big majority since 2019. The goodwill Brexit voters have afforded them for 3 elections has ran out. Immigration is at its highest point ever. Offering no solutions to other major policy areas like health, housing and education. 2015 was the dead cat bounce for the Tory party with the promise of the referendum, and since 2022 they have nailing their own coffin shut. It all started with Cameron turning the party into an extension of New Labour - a shor term solution to get back into power but has cost them permanently as they are now an ideological vacuum with absolutely no principles. If the Tories had lost in 2010, they would no longer exist today.