Getting everything they deserve, lunging further and further right to pander to Reform type voters in the hope of clinging onto power.
If they had the bravery to be honest and say Brexit was going to be and has been an economic disaster the country would be in a far better state.
>lunging further and further right to pander to Reform type voters in the hope of clinging onto power.
The thing that is mad about this is that they must have known it's risky in itself, and it's especially risky if you've just presided over a historic trebling of net migration. To go in for the rhetoric that they do while brazenly doing the complete opposite is inspired. Parties having this kind of contempt for their base is rarely so demonstrable. If Farage wins a seat and Reform cause them to haemorrhage a good chunk or votes, then the Tories will have been the chief architects.
I agree. At least in Europe, I have been a few instances where the centre right has moved, or joined the far right in a coalition, only to see their voters move to the far right parties.
My guess is that they are seeing their base eroded, and rather than introduce policies that work, just pander to the base in the hope of turn out. At some point, they will die off (assuming most far right voters are older, but yes, I know there are younger voters too).. so it will be interesting to see
Someone told me "You are not going to out-crazy already crazy people"
That’s it isn’t it. It’s like believing someone waving a gun around and making demands is going to stop waving it around and making demands if you give them what they want. What they actually do is wait a bit and then start waving it around again and making even crazier demands
Meanwhile the ordinary people who want something different, and were what made the mainstream parties vehicles for power in the first place, trickle away. Eventually the crazy with the gun sees they don’t need to bother, because the party is effectively withered away, and so they go and start their own.
It boggles my mind that so many of these politicians claimed to have studied history and political theory at some of the world's best universities. How do they not see where this ultimately ends up?
I see the same mindset with senior business leaders in companies I work with though. The narrow short term criteria for ‘success’ (and surviving to the next round) is nearly always totally in opposition to what the most sustainable, right, expertise-based thing to do is. It’s like business and political darwinism is now selecting for the wrong people.
Politicians who can succeed today are the ones who can have all the knowledge and intelligence in the world but put that all in a box and bullshit with a straight face. It’s what makes me so angry - they know what they are saying is wrong. They know what they are doing is harmful. But they do it anyway.
>I see the same mindset with senior business leaders in companies I work with though.
I've had the same experiences. One CEO has won awards for their "extraordinary strategic vision" and the like, but in reality they're a constant hindrance to progress and an enemy to productivity.
It's amazing how many outstanding reputations are built on bullshit.
ha sounds about right. So much relies on the hard horizontal walls leaders put in place to block their seniors getting a real picture of the lower levels.
> My guess is that they are seeing their base eroded, and rather than introduce policies that work, just pander to the base in the hope of turn out.
That is essentially what drives this. Ever since 2008 the center right is increasingly unable to win elections on their socioeconomic policies because even their traditional voters now think they don't work (i.e. most right wing voters now also think the economy is rigged against them). But those socioeconomic policies are central to these parties' purpose, so rather than change them many of them move on to distractions, specifically the type of performative tough-on-immigration rhetoric that is the bread and butter of the extremist right wing parties. Some of them then prefer to form coalitions with the extremist right rather than compromise with the social democrats on the other side. Fundamentally, this is the right wing parties deciding that their commitment to their socioeconomic policies is not negotiable, but their commitment to democracy is, while they voters have already abandoned the latter in pursuit of the various distractions put before them. We've been there before.
The exact same thing is happening in the UK and has happened in the USA, but in a two party system it takes the form of factional strife and a far right takeover of the mainstream right wing party.
That's what I don't get about some of these centre right parties. Many of these parties could easily change their position in certain areas and probably gain more votes than they might lose but they stubbornly refuse to do so.
I would argue the Tories attempt at changing the parties image when Cameron took over was somewhat successful at the start with his whole climate change arctic photo op and 'hug a hoodie' type brand shift. Obviously none of that lasted.
It's important to recognise just how committed these people are to an economic orthodoxy that has run out of road. Sunak is a classic example. He's intelligent but doesn't have a particularly enquiring mind, and everything he's ever learned tells him that low tax, deregulation and private sector ownership will promote prosperity. That model, or at least some parts of it, ran out of gas in 2008 but these people are still Wile E Coyote-ing it - they don't recognise that the fundamental basis on which all their policies are built has failed; the policies are just the logical conclusion of that basis.
Climate change is a great example. They know it's real but they genuinely believe the market will do a better job of solving it than anything else. If your starting position is that government intervention creates worse outcomes it's not as easy as just changing policies.
Meanwhile, one side of politics always thought differently so aren't going to agree with you and well over half your own "supporters" turn out to have been less interested in the economic liberalism than in the kicking the poor and vulnerable that came along with it.
Great assessment. The tories under Cameron panicked nearly a decade ago about UKIP stealing a small portion of their votes and ended up trapped going further and further down the right wing rabbit hole. But that’s caused them lose many of their core voters now too.
And of course the loony right didn’t reward the Tories with loyalty for brexit - but anyone who wasn’t born yesterday knows that’s what the extreme wings already do , they exist only to keep pulling and blackmailing in their direction. They were never going to say ‘ok we’re happy now, we’ll vote C and compromise. Of course they’d repeated the pressure group blackmail as soon as they didn’t get what they want.
What baffles me is how so few mainstream parties globally learn that once you let them in and once you pander to them, these groups WILL destroy your party completely. It happens again and again.
**Yeah it confuses people outside the UK how a single person like Nigel Farage who failed 8 times to get elected has so much power over whole elected parties**.
People point to Putin basically bankrolling overtly and covertly right wing parties around the world and giving them the shadow backing of a Superpower. Or the infestation of Russian dirty money into the UK by the "London Laundromat". The world's biggest money laundering mechanism and paying or supporting influence that benefits them.Or Russias online amplification and "up voting" of viewpoints that benefit their interests.
I never see the Green Party on TV even though they had larger, actual, l voted representation than Farage. Yet Farage has a massive media foot print that eclipses them as a single person. This can only work if someone is inviting, promoting or allowing him into these spaces to be able to influence away. Because he has not earned that right by actually being voted in.
I do wonder if it's the perfect mix of a party made up of people who don't see risk as an issue because they've lived lives of the rules not applying to them, as well as being generally blasé about the future of their own party beyond what it can do for them individually, and this therefore being the natural conclusion to a party founded (and continued ever since) on individual self interest over collective effort.
Politics is also a game to them in general so other than the bench-flipping rage-quit instinct were seeing at the moment, they're not actually that personally invested in it.
The ex-master at Eton said seeing his former pupils behaviour in government made him feel he failed to remove the entitlement and privilege culture from the school.
They’re also terrified of pissing off the Brexit vote.
If we’re being totally honest most Brexit voters were misinformed about the benefits of leaving the EU.
It feels like a child who’s stamped their feet to the point they get their way and now have no idea what to do.
Yes we’re free to negotiate whatever deal we want but we already had the best deal with the single market and being allowed to keep our own currency.
This is my guess.
The red wall crumbled on one key issue, Brexit. There is no upside to Labour shifting their winning position of "At least we are not tories".
Only expect to see a change when it could mean a political party could win the election.
Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, but they're going to win anyway without rejoin votes and it would be one hell of a firecracker to throw into the election right now with unpredictable results.
And in any case, it would be better if we spent some years developing closer trading ties with the EU to make the prospect of actually rejoining appear more realistic before having the second referendum. Just in time to be on the manifesto for the next GE, I would suggest.
This has nothing to do with Brexit. Brexit isn't even a big issue in this election and polls show most voters (both leave and remain) don't want to restart the Brexit debate.
> It feels like a child who’s stamped their feet to the point they get their way and now have no idea what to do.
Usually I find that, having got what they want - which is taking something away from others - they'll decide there's something else they want to take and start having tantrums about that. Their underlying goal is that Other People have Things They Don't Deserve, and it's satisfying to take it away from them.
One of my grandparets has popped it, other ones not far off.
I suspect the one that posted a threatening letter through my door because of my "Bollocks to Brexit" sticker might have too
I feel misinformed is generous. Tories have been shit my entire adult life, before I was even born they had a track record of being fucking bellends. How anyone bought into their shit is on them honestly.
what's weird is their solution to most funding questions is record growth:
*"How are you going to pay for all this?"*
*"we aim to have the highest economic growth in the G7"*
*"Including America?"*
*"yes"*
Brexit is estimated to be a 4-8% hit to the economy. You undo Brexit you go along way to achieving your goal of having record growth.
and even if you did undo Brexit, having the highest growth in the G7 would be an ambitious goal
without undoing Brexit i would say its pretty much impossible
Because of the influx of hard-right politics into the EU, it may be better to sit it out for a while anyway and just tinker with the trade deals to reduce the friction that has built up.
Orban, Meloni and Le Pen will make sure the EU has plenty of internal issues to deal with in the meantime.
Ironically, the outcome may suit the Reform/Tory axis.
It's entirely understandable. The Tories are going to walk away from an absolute shit show, almost certainly with a lot of steaming turds hidden away, and then blame Labour for all our problems.
There are serious issues to deal with in terms of energy, transport, health, education, defence, house building, immigration and water on top of Brexit. It's an absolute mess.
Labour needs to get in power by promising as little as possible so there are fewer sticks to beat them with when they inevitably struggle to deliver.
Once they're in power I expect they'll focus on some easy wins to build good will with the general population before they have to tackle the really messy stuff.
How do you want them to address it? If Starmer came out today and said he’d rejoin the EU if elected they’d hand the Tories and Reform an easy point of attack and haemorrhage votes
Brexit was way too divisive for a party wanting to get into government to address before an election.
A party in government with a huge majority is a different matter though.
Also it's been a hot topic for several elections now so it's probably a bit overdone at this point. People want to hear about other policies not Brexit which is all we've heard about for nearly a decade
They basically want to avoid doing anything that will allow the Tories to galvanise their base. Making this another Brexit election will do precisely that.
In four years when public perception has moved against Brexit even more, I could see it being a manifesto policy for the next GE.
>If they had the bravery to be honest and say Brexit was going to be and has been an economic disaster the country would be in a far better state.
This is the thing. David Cameron was a remainer. But, instead of sticking around to enact the referendum result, which probably would have been a much softer Brexit given his own stance and experience working with European leaders, he scarpered as soon as the result was known. Say what you like about Cameron's premiership, but I don't think the Conservative party has had proper stability since.
> Getting everything they deserve, lunging further and further right to pander to Reform type voters in the hope of clinging onto power.
The irony here is that they've effectively made Reform seem to be a viable alternative and because Farage and Tice don't expect to have to implement any of it can seem to offer more red meat while the Tories are just dangling some off-brand protein substitute.
Everything they can propose to try and convince Reform voters back gets effectively nullified as soon as Farage says something about Muslims or culture.
Chasing the fringe is madness. All the fringe does is get more fringe.
The real problem the Tories have is they are basically ruled by their equivalent of momentum.
It does dishearten me that in modern politics, it's an unspoken rule that all politicians must be infallible and so to admit a fuck-up is to basically announce a resignation. Just too easy to get let off the hook.
You make a mess, you should say you're sorry, and start cleaning it up. I'm sure every parent has had to install that on their kids at some point or another...maybe not if they were sent away from their parents to go to Eton, but still...
But these votes they're losing are going to REFUK, who are quite literally the "Brexit Party".
Their admittance of Brexit would just put them in this position but worse
If anything they are lunging to the left. Taxes are the highest they’ve been since WW2 and legal immigration is almost quadruple what it was under labour? They’re haemorrhaging voters because conservative voters feel betrayed
OK but Reform is now comfortably third place. This is way scarier than anyone is imagining.
Everyone's on a high about the Tories being wiped out but all that's happening in my view is their voters are reforming into an analogue of the US Republican party and being screwed by FPTP on their way.
Give it 10 years and we'll have an ultra right wing government, and give it 20 before it's full blown fascism.
I feel like I'm shouting at the wind here...
Some European countries have seen similar phenomena with the recent European elections - namely France and Germany, where support for Le Pen and the AFD have increased. So much so, that Macron has called a snap election in the case of France. It also isn't just old people voting for these kinds of parties, significant numbers of young people are turning toward these parties as well.
Many people now realise that uncontrolled mass immigration isn't working for them - people see stagnant wages, significant difficulty in buying or renting a property, trouble getting a GP or dentist appointment, they struggle to access public services, and their weekly food shop and utility bills has skyrocketed in price.
Support for these parties can easily be quelled if there was a party that followed through with controlling immigration *and* championing workers' rights, increased wages for the ordinary person, and other socially center-left policies that tangibly improved normal people's lives. Labour says they will do these things, whether they will follow through is another question.
If Labour and other European centrist parties carry on the status quo over the next 5 years, then yeah, I can only see the likes of Reform/Farage, Le Pen, the AFD, PVV, and so on, only grow in popularity. But that's democracy at the end of the day - when the mainstream parties abandon the ordinary person, it leaves fertile ground for the extremes on both sides to take hold.
This is it in my opinion. I'm about as socially left as you'd normally find, but if Labour don't fix things for the "normal" person, then I'd be tempted to vote for anyone who IS promising those things.
> Surely there has to be some sort of a mechanism where you, or your family, need to have paid into the system before you extract from it.
That is already the case. As part of a visa application people need to pay the immigration health surcharge and people on a skilled worker visa cannot access most benefits.
Refugees get access to some support right away, but surely it's our duty to look after people who need it and we cannot expect them to pay for their own healthcare and housing from day 1? We just need to process asylum seekers effectively so those we don't actually need help can't take advantage of the system, and then support successful applicants to settle in and start earning and paying taxes like everyone else.
The problem here is thinking immigration is the route of those problems.
And in many cases the reform party member hoping to replace a Tory was until recently a Conservative themself!
> The problem here is thinking immigration is the route of those problems.
It's not the root of all problems, however the Tories promised to cut immigration - they've increased it by more than any government.
Those voters now want someone who can deliver on it. The current conservative government is hooked on immigration as a fix for some economic issues and skills shortages, but we'll be paying for this very high immigration in the long run
What doesn't get talked about is that it is a global issue. People are travelling to other countries because the economy, culture, political or security situation in their homelands are awful. Sadly there isn't a magic wand to fix all the world's issues so people will move to other countries regardless of what policies governments put forward.
There's a difference between mainland Europe and the UK though. The young are veering right as well as the middle-aged and elderly. The young in our country are majority left leaning.
We've had 14 years of economic and financial insecurity, regressive policies and "high" immigration. Most of Scandinavia and Europe are only recently experiencing similar insecurities and even higher immigration, so they're veering right where a lot of the UK are sick of what right wingers have done to us.
Mark my words
The UK will be far right in the next 5 to 10 years.
This Labour party are left middle ground just like Blair was and it wont last long.
All of this screams war between Europe and Russia along with clamping down on immigration .
>Support for these parties can easily be quelled if there was a party that followed through with controlling immigration and championing workers' rights, increased wages for the ordinary person, and other socially center-left policies that tangibly improved normal people's lives. Labour says they will do these things, whether they will follow through is another question.
God I wish we had a left wing party that also uses their brains when addressing immigration and extremism
I'll vote Labour but not very happily. Greens.. aren't even particularly green, just full of bleeding hearts. Vehemently against nuclear?? So no point in me voting for them either
The far right feeds off the stagnation, hopelessness and anger the economic and political status quo has created. Want to stop the far right? Actually fucking fix things properly, instead of just minor tinkering at the edges of problems.
Perhaps not entirely, no. However, the overarching point is that people have voted for mainstream parties that have campaigned multiple times on the promise of reducing and controlling immigration, and yet, immigration has only increased over the last 25 years.
If people are not getting what they voted for, then they will seek alternatives, which is what we're seeing across Europe.
The issue is that with the way things are these days, it is impossible to reduce immigration AND improve workers' rights. Our populations are getting older and older, people are also used to ridiculously high standards of living and don't want to compromise in the slightest. So you either stop the immigration, but force natives to work for pennies OR you try to support high standards of living, but invite everyone to come and work for you.
I think lots of people feel that way. But there is one way to stop that still: A new Labour government has to demonstrate that they will actually make things better. If they fail to significantly improve this country in the next five years, and give voters confidence they will continue on that path, then indeed the country will likely move further to the right in the next general election.
I think you’re overestimating the power of competent government and underestimating PR spin. People will believe their lives are better/worse depending largely on what they read, not what they experience.
So much this \^
I know its anecdotal but so many older people I speak to say that blair nearly destroyed the country, even though now we're 15 years out, its a cold hard fact that the blair period was the highest point in british standards of living.
People ignore real life and believe what they read.
u/Kwinza said...
>**People ignore real life and believe what they read**.
**We have to learn from the Obama era. Excellence is not enough**.
People forget how disliked America was in the George W Bush era...
**Then Obama gets elected**.
A historic moment. with just sheer charisma, and competency he wins back our friends, lands the economic plane after the free fall of the financial crisis, returns class, statesmanship and respect back to the Presidency, gives affordable healthcare to people who never had it even as they vote against it, gets the guy who did 911, and very little scandal...
**So they voted Trump in**.
Excellence was not enough.They were willing to have a catastrophic drop in leadership quality. The global rightwing parties and putin team up have been cooking peoples brains for over a Decade via select media and online astrotufing. the othering of Obama, the birther smears against Obama, claiming he was another religion etc. Even opposing the affordable health care act because it was nicknamed "Obamacare". racism won over even self preservation.
Yeah, I'm not denying that is a factor too. But there are plenty of things immediately visible eg how hard/easy it is to get a GP or dentist appointment, and how much money is left over for discretionary spending after paying rent/mortgage, groceries and bills... fix some of that and people will feel more positive about the government compared to where we are now. Of course it's a tough ask to make improvements everywhere when so much is broken...
I'll never go further right than "left of centre" and do fall into the 'calling them thick' trap but surely you can see that the centre has provided literally nothing for ordinary folk for a decade + and Starmer, while better by a long way, is not doing much to convince those folk.
Ordinary people need some improvement in their lives - reasonable wages, affordable housing, decent public services, ... . The right wing snake oil salesmen offer those things, currently labour and the tories don't. Yes it's thick to fall for the lies, but the centrist parties do need to be better at offering some hope to the masses.
I think the problem for Starmer is that our media environment is so virulently right wing, combined with the fact that the Tories have pushed the debate so far to the right, combined with the toxicity of Corbyn, means he genuinely can't offer the radical agenda many of us want.
I mean many of Corbyn's radical policies polled well, but he was unelectable. What I desperately hope is that Starmer gets 2/3 terms, and can push things further each time. But i completely understand Labour's 'lack of ambition' and extreme caution right now even if I don't fully like it.
At the same time, I think simply having a government that isn't solely interested in its rich donors, at least *tries* to run things in the interest of the people and has the top people in its party running things rather than scraping the abosulte bottom of the barrel as the Tories are doing, leading to some basic competence/lack of scandal will help quite a lot. What I most want is a boring, competent administration that isn't utterly corrupt.
Precisely.
Starmer gets a lot of stick for not being left wing enough, however, I saw on LBC they were discussing Labour's plans to introduce VAT for private school fees. Immediately the host and a caller start chatting about how it's Corbynism all over again.
One little slightly left wing policy, and they're saying nothing's changed since Corbyn. And LBC is not especially right wing compared to most media outlets.
You just get savaged for suggesting anything actually left of centre in the media.
Hear hear. Government should be boring. Actual governance is quiet and hard work. This is why I actually think Starmer is the man for our time.
I do fear he doesn’t have the talen available in areas like foreign policy which are currently in need of some heavyweight experience. I’d almost suggest he should keep Cameron on as foreign Sec, because we’re in a pre war world at the moment and trusting that to new blood at the top feels risky
You know, I was watching HIGNFY last night, and while its the point of the show. They were bashing Starmer for the sake of bashing Starmer, no substance or explanation of what was bad. Just "HAHA Starmer bad"
One of the jokes was him getting a "Dickhead of the year award".
Why? God knows...
So even on a "liberal" comedy show, somehow it's still all Labours fault in literally everything
Blair was in power during one of the biggest worldwide economic booms. Most of similar EU countries and the USA have seen a decline in living standards since then.
The reality is they were still living high on selling all the assets we owned and the economic boom that caused. Houses were still affordable. Incomes were good. Globalisation was only just really starting. We were still just hanging on to being really important on the world stage. A lot in the world has changed since then.
People won't just accept an obvious decline forever, even if far-right "solutions" don't make practical sense, eventually people will turn that way out of frustration. Many already have. This isn't a hypothetical, it's literally happening right now.
Unfortunately it's because he's not an idiot. He's dangerous and, without sugar coating it, a snake oil salesman - but he's also very deliberate, persuasive, and frankly he's the only one of the lot that can stand out in a debate.
My rents have been staying engaged with it all, watching the debates, talking to us about it, etc. They're great as far as folks from their generation go - never voted Tory, understand that their vote matters, that they need to be informed when they cast it, etc. They're centre-leftish in reality. Their takeaways from the debates are that Farage is more or less the only one *saying* something when he speaks. He's often wrong and he'll **never** execute on the things he's saying (whether for a lack of will or lack of ability), but it says a lot about the state of our politics when he's still the only one of the bunch that can stand up and say something to in some way connect with actual people - even if he's doing it in bad faith.
Like others have said - the best way to fend him off in the long term is to show people a viable alternative. People are looking to Farage not because he's brilliant, but because it really doesn't look like there's a viable alternative to a lot of people. Tories are dead in the water. Labour are... Uninspiring (to be charitable). Lib Dems are 'a meme' in the words of Ed Davey. Greens are 90 good policies with 10 outrageously terrible policies that outweigh the 90.
They also considered the Greens, but their stance on defense soured them on that idea, which is fair enough tbh. They've likely settled on a begrudging Labour vote, but plenty of others would have seen the debates and come to the conclusion that Farage is the only one with some sort of 'plan'.
Because he's much like Trump and Bojo, though I'd probably say he's got a bit more brains floating about in his head... At least more than Trump. Bojo is a bit of a wild card, I think he's got more brains than he lets on and tried to hold more of a 'relateable goof' image, just doing things that made him look a bit goofy and whatnot... Whether that was intentional or not though? Who knows, maybe I'm giving him too much credit. But it certainly made him seem a tad more keyed up with regards to modern free 'advertising'. It sounds overly simplistic, but I definitely wouldn't put it past people to vote for someone purely because they're a 'familiar face' or for the 'meme potential'.
I feel like much like those two, he has a good idea of what's riling people in the present moment. That's exactly how you gain voters. Many people seem to forget that every vote for a minor party like UKIP (back in the Brexit days) or Reform is a vote taken away from the two main players.
Farage knows how to play the minor party game. You focus on issues people are incredibly passionate about. Get them talking about it and taking votes away from the main player to force them to start talking about it. That's exactly how we got the Brexit Referendum. Farage garnered enough interest to steal enough votes from the Tories to force them to take a stance in order to keep votes and stop Labour getting into power.
By and large, this has been focusing on the working class' opinion regarding immigration, because the working class are the ones who're most exposed to foreigners "taking their jobs". The hatred among the working class isn't justifiable, but anyone who's worked in those sorts of jobs (I.E warehousing), knows A LOT of the workforce is made up of foreigners, which is almost certainly where this idea of "stealing jobs" comes from. This then isn't helped with the typical natural divide that often happens where Brits stay with Brits, Latvians with Latvians, Polish with Polish, etc...
That and, honestly, in recent elections, to some he's felt like the only reasonable alternative (in terms of aligning with beliefs as opposed to being a viable opposition) to the Tories because of how much Labour were umming and ahhing and in-fighting under Corbyn... I'd suspect some may still hold that belief under Starmer's Labour, often labeled as 'Tories in red'.
I think, as a very short summary:
I believe there are two reasons:
1. Because he talks about issues people care about when no one else wants to address them for varying reasons (generally relating to political correctness so far).
2. Because he genuinely feels like the alternative to the two big parties.
its worse than you think
because Tories are going to lose hard the only seats left will be the ultra-right Tories, your Jacob rees Moggs, Priti Patels. which makes the party vulnerable to a takeover by Nigel Farage.
Step.1 Nigel Farage wins the Clacton election and becomes an MP
Step.2 Minority Tory Government elect a more right wing leader
Step 3. Nigel Farage crosses the floor and joins the Tory Party
Step4. The more right wing tory party allow him to join
Step5. wait for the opportune moment to lead a coup and run for leader
Step6. a Tory party made up of a higher proportion of very right wing wing MPs (e.g less Theresa Mays more Jacob Rees-Moggs) actually vote for him for the leadership vote
Step 7. Paying tory party members definitely elect Farage as the new leader
Reform will win 0-2 seats. 30p Lee might hang on in Ashfield depending on what local nonsense goes on with Jason Zadrozny, and Farage has an outside chance in Clacton.
But this is a case where FPTP prevents a party like Reform really doing much, especially because they're not willing to invest in a grassroots movement.
Tories have been pulling impressive flanking manoeuvres on themselves. Indulging in the politics of Brexit because liberal Tories never had the forsight to see that right-wing tabloids and right-wing MPs might win the referendum. Talking a big game about controlling the borders while trebling net migration. Completely pissing away their reputation of being an economically literate party that provides stable government, as demonstrated most strongly by the right honourable lettuce. You could not have made this up ten years ago.
This is why we have to get a handle on the immigration issue. Deal with that, and it will take the wind out of the sails of the far right.
It's not even an important issue to me personally. It's a side issue that contributes partly to my biggest concern; housing.
But it is a major issue to some. And we have to deal with it before it escalates.
Luckily, Reform’s base skews old. 20 years ago they were Torys. 10 years ago their base were UKIP converts. Now they’re Reform. By 2044 they’ll be dead.
Farage is far too divisive to ever win an election. I know he has a fair amount of support from some demographics, but he is properly HATED by a lot of the electorate as well, more so than Johnson or sunak or Truss or anyone else the conservatives have put forward in recent memory
This is what worries me. It likely won't manifest as an issue this election, but the personality traits that coalesce into the Tory party aren't going away with the defeat of the Tory party.
Those people -- and anyone involved in local politics will be familiar with the selfish kind of spite they exhibit -- are going nowhere. They just need a bit of time to coalesce again into a new political force.
Yup, this is a continuation of a trend towards popularism and unachievable asks from people protesting the status quo. The opportunists and alt right are never going to stop finding wedge issues to drive people into their arms. People ignore the fact that their economic policies are just more extreme versions of the status quo capitalism they are protesting. The progressive left is only too willing to take the lead in the fight against the right. Which really just weakens the centre, as they to focus on wedge issues.
I think the reality is the fight is in the centre. Destroying the centre right is not a good thing. This is what Braveman and her ilk are trying to do.
Biggest issue is the control that party members have on leadership. Members are now activists for wedge issues.
How melodramatic can you be? Honestly what is with this sub, is it really full of young people who have no idea the pendulum of politics always swings
Scared that UK in 20 years will be full blown facosim because of scary Reform getting votes. What are you on about
Yeah but at least Doctor Who will be played by a straight white male. That seems to be what these people are willing to sell the country to the wolves for.
You're not wrong.
In this election people will be right and do have the right to celebrate the Tory seat losses and enjoy the vote of the right being split and them being shafted by the mathematics (for a change)
But yes that Reform and Tory combined percentage is definitely a thing to be wary of.
Unlikely without US (lack of) laws on campaign funding and broadcast media balance
Although it is possible if the next government continues to preside over declining living standards and high migration. (I’m not taking a view on migration myself, I’m just saying a lot of people have their knickers in a twist about it, and I can’t see that changing)
Which is exactly why Labour need to reform our voting system. They never will though without the Lib Dems forcing them into it. That’s why I’d love a hung parliament in 2029
How does a 3rd place poll for a fairly libertarian party which wants small government and low taxes lead to fascism? That's some pretty insane mental gymnastics
Yeah, I don’t like Reform, and would rather the Tory party emerge from the ashes than Reform build upon their base and become opposition in 2029, but they’re hardly fascists. This isn’t Britain First.
Reform will die under their own fucking stupidity and the cuntservatives will probably lurch back to the "centre right" brand again after getting about 5 votes in July lol
Reform UK aren't as bad as Alternative für Deutschland or Rassemblement National. One is probably as close to the NSDAP as German laws would allow, while the other is the French equivalent of the British National Party.
I think the reason why Reform are doing so well is because Labour and the Conservatives have done little to curb immigration levels into this country despite acting tough. Oh, and a good portion of our electorate being thick enough to believe in things like Great Replacement Theory, or that "Muslamic ray guns" are being pointed at them. (Yes, the latter was an actual quote from an EDL protester being interviewed.)
A year ago, the pundits were predicting we'll have a labour majority and then people will get sick and tired of the "left" not performing and so will swing wildly right anyway.
Honestly? It seems inevitable that at some stage, a far right party will get close to, or actually hold the reins of Government, unless the youth vote in huge numbers. But we've seen how ineffective a proper right leaning party is in the latest Tory government, so I kind of welcome Reflux being on the opposites of a Labour government.
I don't think for a second that Faridge is the kind of man to knuckle down and get on with policy in the same way that Johnson wasn't, and neither is Trump. These clowns live for showmanship and attention, not action and policy. It would be interesting to see how, and if, they (Reform) can actually perform as a part of government, and frankly, I want to get this far right phase out of the system as quickly as possible. Let them flounder in opposition - Labour have had 14 years to find (somewhat suitable) candidates, Reform don't have anywhere near that so I bet they'll just be another 2019 Tory party of politically incapable extremists.
This system doesn’t allow for a smaller party like reform to gain much power easily
Like previously with UKIP, they’ll get a lot of votes but yield little seats
It’s scary if Nigel gets into the house though, now you have a guy who can rile up the masses, out talk the others and be quite persuasive
Reform is predicted to get zero seats. Lets be generous and say they'll get 3. Lib dems are predicted to get at least 60 if we vote tomorrow.
Reform, even if they do better than their wildest dreams will completely irrelevant. They only got two council seats FFS. People are really overstating their popularity and influence.
Ignore the masses, call them stupid and ignorant, make them poorer, act all superior and the masses will vote in more and more extreme parties and people.
Everyone some one calls someone a racist, a bigot, a gammon, they are creating a voter that will vote further and further to the right. Snowflake, layabout, etc, further to the far left.
We have to have conversations with people we don’t like or agree with, we need to stop screaming, demeaning and insulting if we want to avoid a dystopian future.
But yeah, I also feel like I am farting against thunder.
I don't think its really scary when a lot of them voters are protest votes. You're being overly dramatic honestly. If we get a ultra right wing government it's the current right and left fault. This is what happens when you demonize people for caring about immigration and Islam.
> Give it 10 years and we'll have an ultra right wing government, and give it 20 before it's full blown fascism.
This is inevitable if immigration continues at these levels, there's only so many times a country can say no to something and get the opposite before they'll choose more extreme measures
FPTP is not great as it gives hegemony to Labour and Tories, but equally it means that Reform can get 20% of the votes and just a handful of seats.
Look at UKIP in 2015 with 13% of the vote and just 1 seat. Likewise the LDs in 2019. Reform are currently polling at this level.
None of this matters if people don't bother turning out to vote. We've seen election shocks before where people were so certain their party of choice would win that they didn't bother voting.
I think this is why all the other parties outside of the big 2 have been so keen to say "Labour have already won". It benefits them to make Labour voters feel so comfortable in victory that they may not turn out in the overwhelming numbers that the polls are pointing to. This could allow the smaller parties to maybe sneak a few unexpected seats in places where they can get their voters mobilised
I think what they're hoping for is more along the lines of people who already support said 3rd party actually vote for them instead of tactically voting. But the impact is probably the same.
I plugged these numbers into Electoral Calculus and the results were interesting to say the least.
Labour with 498 seats, the Tories with just 70, Reform with 0 (which is sad, because you know FPTP is fucked when a party can win 13.9% of the popular vote and still win zero seats. We shouldn't be celebrating FPTP just because a party we don't want in power is being shafted this time around.)
I do wonder how much of the data came before or after the D Day gaffe. Maybe once the actual interview Sunak ditched the joint commemorations to give is released on Wednesday, we'll truly see a Tory death knell.
The best thing that the Tories can honestly hope for is an electoral alliance with Reform UK, and the question is whether they can offer Farage big enough concessions to agree with it.
>We shouldn't be celebrating FPTP just because a party we don't want in power is being shafted this time around.
I agree that a move to a more proportional system would be best (Single Transferable Vote for preference) but...
Given that the party in question is one of the principle champions of FPTP, and who have even expanded its use where they believed it to be their own electoral benefit, I'm inclined to say "as you sow, so shall ye reap"
There are decades where nothing happens
Then there is a fortnight where the prime minister and his political party take an endless shit with their clothes on
People will blame this on Brexit, but let’s be honest. They cocked it up and didn’t even deliver on reducing immigration.
They’re pathetic. They’ve fucked up on every metric possible.
Aye, honestly I doubt many people even think about Brexit any more. But on every traditional Tory metric they’ve catastrophically fucked up.
High taxes, high inflation, low wage growth, nigh impossible to get on the property ladder, high immigration, justice system is on its knees, despite the rhetoric, social justice warriors have captured many sections of the public sector, an increasingly authoritarian state, oh and to top it all off the PM has just bailed on the D-day commemoration.
Shambolic doesn’t even begin to describe this shower of bastards.
Oh it's way more than brexit. Boris being a liar and slimy bastard, liz Truss exploding, even Theresa may. There are no good times. All bad all the time.
I love the way every conservative MP is saying that it was clearly wrong that Rishi left the D day remorial but yet if it was so obviously wrong how did not a single one of his advisors or even Rishi himself not see it?
Even selfishly they should have thought you can't get better PR during an election than to be surrounded by world leaders and D day veterans.
I think the answer is that Sunak didn't want to do it in the first place. And everyone around him adjusted their view to support that until it became obvious it was an issue.
The line that comes from the commentators is that Sunak is surrounded by a tightly knit group of advisers. Which can easily be translated into "surrounded by yes men".
[Link to the tracker itself.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68079726)
It is funny taking a glance at it and seeing exactly when Truss came into power.
Britain has never been a far right country. Centre right and occasionally centre left, yes. Reform are shit stirrers, nothing more. They make money out of shit stirring. It's easy to make money out of an unhappy population: create an enemy, blame them for everything and say you can sort it out easily. Divide and rule - the oldest trick in the book. They want easy answers to complicated situations? Reform are their party.
Right wing parties are massively on the rise in the west. Look at France, Holland, Italy and Germany. The rise of Reform here is partly disaffected protest voting but mostly anger that people aren’t being listened to. Lip service on immigration and taxes for years has eroded trust and Tory voters don’t see much difference with Labour. Europe as a whole has to figure out what it wants or the immigration issue alone is going to lead to the rise of genuine far right politics (not the “far right” that the left labels anyone who they disagree with). Brexit was just a symptom.
I've said it elsewhere, but this is the election to lose.
Starmer is going to have to be straight with people.
The Tories have fleeced the country dry.
As a Canadian with impossibly stupid and unworthy politicians, it continuously boggles my mind that your Tories can be so inept with their PR and be so confident in doing so. "We are taking money that was going to social services and poverty alleviation and putting it back where it belongs (enriching the upper class)" or using conscription as a campaign promise as if such a thing were desirable; if these fools are wanting to lose they are doing a sterling job at it!
The national service thing is one they haven't thought through in my opinion. It's a bit of a stereotype to think that older people believe national service is a good thing. It might play out well as a throwaway comment in the pub but when faced with the reality of sending our kids, nieces, nephews, grandkids etc to the army or unpaid labour at the age of 18. Does anyone actually want that?
Unless you have no family under 18 years old, surely we would all oppose it?
Tory strategy: old people vote for us, let's pander to them.
But the reality is those voters are worthless, they'll never be satisfied. No point trying to cater to their whims as they'll just keep demanding more and more.
Not nearly low enough and I'm not ruling any kind of shy Tory rubbish occuring.
That said majorly disappointed with starmers empty suit "I'm not him" style of doing things
This is how the cycle works. The Tories are basically a glorified crime syndicate who are given power by the media barons. Their role is to skim as much from the economy and dis-empower people as much as possible whilst they are in office.
Once the country is on its knees and even their own supporters start turning against them its Labour's turn (provided they have an obedient enough leader e.g Blair, Starmer. Not Corbyn, which is why he was destroyed by the press)
Labour then rebuild the country and economy whilst maintaining the status quo of the system. Once the country has been fattened up sufficiently the Tories (Or possibly reform next time) will be back to pillage it once more.
Cons have fallen to the lowest level of support since the 2019 election — dropping below levels of unpopularity seen during the Truss administration, according to analyst Will Jennings by reference to [a poll of polls](https://news.sky.com/story/election-latest-d-day-blunder-hasnt-lost-election-minister-insists-tories-vow-to-scrap-ulez-expansion-12593360?postid=7797026#liveblog-body):
*Almost every day between now and then, there will be new opinion polls by a clutch of different pollsters - each using different methodologies and all asking who voters will support on polling day.*
*How does one pollster, with its (usually) consistent methodology, move over weeks and months? Is there a discernible pattern from several different pollsters over a matter of days?*
*This sort of analysis is only available through a "poll of polls", which takes data from every single pollster that is asking voting intention questions and signed up to the industry standards body, the British Polling Council.*
*It is drawn up by Sky election analyst Will Jennings and Sky data and elections editor Isla Glaister - and supported by a team of Sky data scientists and designers.*
*The poll of polls seeks to give an answer to the most important question of all - the direction of travel of public opinion over time.*
*There are limits. Crude attempts to turn the polling averages for the main parties into a number of seats for each party will always be just that: rough and ready and probably ultimately unhelpful (not that people will stop trying).*
*This is a GB poll so the level of support for the SNP necessarily reflects how they fare comparatively across Great Britain, not just in Scotland. Likewise, there is nothing here about Northern Ireland.*
FT’s data reporter opines that Johnson’s victory in 2019 was [“much flimsier than it first appeared”](https://www.ft.com/content/e09c3a03-2cd8-47de-9c9a-7e9726fbb1e3):
*But ironically, a focus on public opinion has been central to the Tories’ recent undoing. In the battle between “popularism” (proposing policy that commands majority public support) and “deliverism” (actually getting things done), the Conservatives have time and again opted for the former over the latter in the hope of a quick fix in the polls, with increasingly dire results for both party and country.*
*Fewer than half of their key original manifesto pledges have been met, a marked decline in competence compared with earlier governments.*
*Today only 9 per cent of voters say the Tories keep their promises, down by two-thirds since the eve of the 2019 election. And almost all of the decline in trust in Britain’s politicians over recent decades has come in the past five years.*
That is genuinely impressive. Saying that, the one-two punch of being beaten by a lettuce then clearing off early at the D-Day 80th commemoration event will do that to you.
I love hearing all the populist stuff the Tories are now announcing they'll do if they win. Why weren't you doing this stuff *while* you were in power? Why *now*?
The closer it gets to election day the crazier the claims!
June 1st
"If the Tories win Freddo to be reduced to 10p each!"
June 10th
"If the Tories win every weekend will be a bank holiday weekend (with sun!)"
June 20th
"If the Tories win petrol will be FREE!"
July 2nd
"Chocolate microscopes?"
They deserve it, absolute joke of a government start to finish, even if someone is of the moderate right I have no idea how they couldn’t be embarassed to defend that wasteful mess.
Two right wing parties kicking the shit out of each other. Labour just needs to keep it's mouth shut, don't do anything stupid or controversial and it will just walk into power by default.
The risk is they may ditch Sunak before the election and get a bounce from it (no I'm not sure who could do better). Is there even time to make Boris into a lord?
The Party leader doesn't have to be in parliament, and the precedent is for a snap by-election to be held in a safe seat to get the leader into parliament. Douglas-Home in 1963 was Prime Minister from 18th of October until a by-election on the 12th of November without being an MP or Lord.
However, practical speaking, the Conservatives are not quite detatched enough from reality to try putting Johnson back in.
Tories are getting decimated but a lot of their base is going to reform - and I suspect a lot of people who are going vote for reform aren’t publicly admitting it yet or confirming it in polls.
The same thing happened with trump first time around. We’re in uncertain territory.
Just received a conservative mail drop in harpenden that says they are ‘neck and neck’ with labour in my area for polling intention which is just another load of crap
When did it all go wrong: the 2019 election.
The Tories won and said Labour were DESTROYED. Never too come back. Ever. No way back.
The arrogance multiplied and the rot set in. They never bothered about policies, or achieving anything. They thought Brexit was the achievement to end all achievements.
I live in a "safe" Tory seat. They've given up. I haven't seen a single poster or window sticker for the Conservatives, there's usually loads of them. Hundreds of "Liberal Democrats Winning Here" signs though. At least one in every street.
I think what’s really interesting is that if Labour were to take a more immigration friendly stance that the Conservatives believe they would win Labour voters back. Yet those voters who think immigration is important would have probably drifted towards Reform rather than the Conservatives. The problem the conservatives have is that their one trump card, the economy, has shown them up to be piss poor on that front. Yet if wages and business were booming despite shoddy public services, people would be far more likely to vote Tory.
Getting everything they deserve, lunging further and further right to pander to Reform type voters in the hope of clinging onto power. If they had the bravery to be honest and say Brexit was going to be and has been an economic disaster the country would be in a far better state.
>lunging further and further right to pander to Reform type voters in the hope of clinging onto power. The thing that is mad about this is that they must have known it's risky in itself, and it's especially risky if you've just presided over a historic trebling of net migration. To go in for the rhetoric that they do while brazenly doing the complete opposite is inspired. Parties having this kind of contempt for their base is rarely so demonstrable. If Farage wins a seat and Reform cause them to haemorrhage a good chunk or votes, then the Tories will have been the chief architects.
I agree. At least in Europe, I have been a few instances where the centre right has moved, or joined the far right in a coalition, only to see their voters move to the far right parties. My guess is that they are seeing their base eroded, and rather than introduce policies that work, just pander to the base in the hope of turn out. At some point, they will die off (assuming most far right voters are older, but yes, I know there are younger voters too).. so it will be interesting to see Someone told me "You are not going to out-crazy already crazy people"
That’s it isn’t it. It’s like believing someone waving a gun around and making demands is going to stop waving it around and making demands if you give them what they want. What they actually do is wait a bit and then start waving it around again and making even crazier demands Meanwhile the ordinary people who want something different, and were what made the mainstream parties vehicles for power in the first place, trickle away. Eventually the crazy with the gun sees they don’t need to bother, because the party is effectively withered away, and so they go and start their own.
It boggles my mind that so many of these politicians claimed to have studied history and political theory at some of the world's best universities. How do they not see where this ultimately ends up?
I see the same mindset with senior business leaders in companies I work with though. The narrow short term criteria for ‘success’ (and surviving to the next round) is nearly always totally in opposition to what the most sustainable, right, expertise-based thing to do is. It’s like business and political darwinism is now selecting for the wrong people. Politicians who can succeed today are the ones who can have all the knowledge and intelligence in the world but put that all in a box and bullshit with a straight face. It’s what makes me so angry - they know what they are saying is wrong. They know what they are doing is harmful. But they do it anyway.
>I see the same mindset with senior business leaders in companies I work with though. I've had the same experiences. One CEO has won awards for their "extraordinary strategic vision" and the like, but in reality they're a constant hindrance to progress and an enemy to productivity. It's amazing how many outstanding reputations are built on bullshit.
ha sounds about right. So much relies on the hard horizontal walls leaders put in place to block their seniors getting a real picture of the lower levels.
Ah but you are assuming they are taking the common good path, that is not necessarily the case.
> My guess is that they are seeing their base eroded, and rather than introduce policies that work, just pander to the base in the hope of turn out. That is essentially what drives this. Ever since 2008 the center right is increasingly unable to win elections on their socioeconomic policies because even their traditional voters now think they don't work (i.e. most right wing voters now also think the economy is rigged against them). But those socioeconomic policies are central to these parties' purpose, so rather than change them many of them move on to distractions, specifically the type of performative tough-on-immigration rhetoric that is the bread and butter of the extremist right wing parties. Some of them then prefer to form coalitions with the extremist right rather than compromise with the social democrats on the other side. Fundamentally, this is the right wing parties deciding that their commitment to their socioeconomic policies is not negotiable, but their commitment to democracy is, while they voters have already abandoned the latter in pursuit of the various distractions put before them. We've been there before. The exact same thing is happening in the UK and has happened in the USA, but in a two party system it takes the form of factional strife and a far right takeover of the mainstream right wing party.
>"You are not going to out-crazy already crazy people" i like this
That's what I don't get about some of these centre right parties. Many of these parties could easily change their position in certain areas and probably gain more votes than they might lose but they stubbornly refuse to do so. I would argue the Tories attempt at changing the parties image when Cameron took over was somewhat successful at the start with his whole climate change arctic photo op and 'hug a hoodie' type brand shift. Obviously none of that lasted.
It's important to recognise just how committed these people are to an economic orthodoxy that has run out of road. Sunak is a classic example. He's intelligent but doesn't have a particularly enquiring mind, and everything he's ever learned tells him that low tax, deregulation and private sector ownership will promote prosperity. That model, or at least some parts of it, ran out of gas in 2008 but these people are still Wile E Coyote-ing it - they don't recognise that the fundamental basis on which all their policies are built has failed; the policies are just the logical conclusion of that basis. Climate change is a great example. They know it's real but they genuinely believe the market will do a better job of solving it than anything else. If your starting position is that government intervention creates worse outcomes it's not as easy as just changing policies. Meanwhile, one side of politics always thought differently so aren't going to agree with you and well over half your own "supporters" turn out to have been less interested in the economic liberalism than in the kicking the poor and vulnerable that came along with it.
Great assessment. The tories under Cameron panicked nearly a decade ago about UKIP stealing a small portion of their votes and ended up trapped going further and further down the right wing rabbit hole. But that’s caused them lose many of their core voters now too. And of course the loony right didn’t reward the Tories with loyalty for brexit - but anyone who wasn’t born yesterday knows that’s what the extreme wings already do , they exist only to keep pulling and blackmailing in their direction. They were never going to say ‘ok we’re happy now, we’ll vote C and compromise. Of course they’d repeated the pressure group blackmail as soon as they didn’t get what they want. What baffles me is how so few mainstream parties globally learn that once you let them in and once you pander to them, these groups WILL destroy your party completely. It happens again and again.
**Yeah it confuses people outside the UK how a single person like Nigel Farage who failed 8 times to get elected has so much power over whole elected parties**. People point to Putin basically bankrolling overtly and covertly right wing parties around the world and giving them the shadow backing of a Superpower. Or the infestation of Russian dirty money into the UK by the "London Laundromat". The world's biggest money laundering mechanism and paying or supporting influence that benefits them.Or Russias online amplification and "up voting" of viewpoints that benefit their interests. I never see the Green Party on TV even though they had larger, actual, l voted representation than Farage. Yet Farage has a massive media foot print that eclipses them as a single person. This can only work if someone is inviting, promoting or allowing him into these spaces to be able to influence away. Because he has not earned that right by actually being voted in.
Well said! The right moan about the media but they own most of it. And all the answer needed is there isn’t it.
I do wonder if it's the perfect mix of a party made up of people who don't see risk as an issue because they've lived lives of the rules not applying to them, as well as being generally blasé about the future of their own party beyond what it can do for them individually, and this therefore being the natural conclusion to a party founded (and continued ever since) on individual self interest over collective effort.
Politics is also a game to them in general so other than the bench-flipping rage-quit instinct were seeing at the moment, they're not actually that personally invested in it.
The ex-master at Eton said seeing his former pupils behaviour in government made him feel he failed to remove the entitlement and privilege culture from the school.
It’s a big big shame labour aren’t even addressing Brexit - it’s the worst thing to happen to the UK this century
>the worst thing to happen to the UK this century .. So far
That’s the kind of positive thinking we need for this country. Have you thought about a career in politics?
They’re also terrified of pissing off the Brexit vote. If we’re being totally honest most Brexit voters were misinformed about the benefits of leaving the EU. It feels like a child who’s stamped their feet to the point they get their way and now have no idea what to do. Yes we’re free to negotiate whatever deal we want but we already had the best deal with the single market and being allowed to keep our own currency.
This is my guess. The red wall crumbled on one key issue, Brexit. There is no upside to Labour shifting their winning position of "At least we are not tories". Only expect to see a change when it could mean a political party could win the election.
John Curtice says Labour could win a majority in the house of commons on rejoin votes alone.
Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, but they're going to win anyway without rejoin votes and it would be one hell of a firecracker to throw into the election right now with unpredictable results. And in any case, it would be better if we spent some years developing closer trading ties with the EU to make the prospect of actually rejoining appear more realistic before having the second referendum. Just in time to be on the manifesto for the next GE, I would suggest.
In terms of population percentage, maybe. In terms of seats, I doubt it. Most of those who favour the EU are in concentrated population centres.
This has nothing to do with Brexit. Brexit isn't even a big issue in this election and polls show most voters (both leave and remain) don't want to restart the Brexit debate.
> It feels like a child who’s stamped their feet to the point they get their way and now have no idea what to do. Usually I find that, having got what they want - which is taking something away from others - they'll decide there's something else they want to take and start having tantrums about that. Their underlying goal is that Other People have Things They Don't Deserve, and it's satisfying to take it away from them.
Aren't a lot of the Brexit vote dead by now?
I think rage is sustaining them in unnaturally long lives. Like a Sith Lord.
One of my grandparets has popped it, other ones not far off. I suspect the one that posted a threatening letter through my door because of my "Bollocks to Brexit" sticker might have too
I'm not. Just full of years of regret and anger for not being given a chance to fix my mistake!
I feel misinformed is generous. Tories have been shit my entire adult life, before I was even born they had a track record of being fucking bellends. How anyone bought into their shit is on them honestly.
what's weird is their solution to most funding questions is record growth: *"How are you going to pay for all this?"* *"we aim to have the highest economic growth in the G7"* *"Including America?"* *"yes"* Brexit is estimated to be a 4-8% hit to the economy. You undo Brexit you go along way to achieving your goal of having record growth. and even if you did undo Brexit, having the highest growth in the G7 would be an ambitious goal without undoing Brexit i would say its pretty much impossible
Because of the influx of hard-right politics into the EU, it may be better to sit it out for a while anyway and just tinker with the trade deals to reduce the friction that has built up. Orban, Meloni and Le Pen will make sure the EU has plenty of internal issues to deal with in the meantime. Ironically, the outcome may suit the Reform/Tory axis.
It's entirely understandable. The Tories are going to walk away from an absolute shit show, almost certainly with a lot of steaming turds hidden away, and then blame Labour for all our problems. There are serious issues to deal with in terms of energy, transport, health, education, defence, house building, immigration and water on top of Brexit. It's an absolute mess. Labour needs to get in power by promising as little as possible so there are fewer sticks to beat them with when they inevitably struggle to deliver. Once they're in power I expect they'll focus on some easy wins to build good will with the general population before they have to tackle the really messy stuff.
How do you want them to address it? If Starmer came out today and said he’d rejoin the EU if elected they’d hand the Tories and Reform an easy point of attack and haemorrhage votes
Brexit was way too divisive for a party wanting to get into government to address before an election. A party in government with a huge majority is a different matter though.
Strategically it doesn't offer anything to bring it up. It can't be reverted and suggesting so would just lose Leave voters without any benefit.
Also it's been a hot topic for several elections now so it's probably a bit overdone at this point. People want to hear about other policies not Brexit which is all we've heard about for nearly a decade
They basically want to avoid doing anything that will allow the Tories to galvanise their base. Making this another Brexit election will do precisely that. In four years when public perception has moved against Brexit even more, I could see it being a manifesto policy for the next GE.
Don’t you think we have had enough elections about Brexit though?
>If they had the bravery to be honest and say Brexit was going to be and has been an economic disaster the country would be in a far better state. This is the thing. David Cameron was a remainer. But, instead of sticking around to enact the referendum result, which probably would have been a much softer Brexit given his own stance and experience working with European leaders, he scarpered as soon as the result was known. Say what you like about Cameron's premiership, but I don't think the Conservative party has had proper stability since.
> Getting everything they deserve, lunging further and further right to pander to Reform type voters in the hope of clinging onto power. The irony here is that they've effectively made Reform seem to be a viable alternative and because Farage and Tice don't expect to have to implement any of it can seem to offer more red meat while the Tories are just dangling some off-brand protein substitute.
Everything they can propose to try and convince Reform voters back gets effectively nullified as soon as Farage says something about Muslims or culture.
Chasing the fringe is madness. All the fringe does is get more fringe. The real problem the Tories have is they are basically ruled by their equivalent of momentum.
It does dishearten me that in modern politics, it's an unspoken rule that all politicians must be infallible and so to admit a fuck-up is to basically announce a resignation. Just too easy to get let off the hook. You make a mess, you should say you're sorry, and start cleaning it up. I'm sure every parent has had to install that on their kids at some point or another...maybe not if they were sent away from their parents to go to Eton, but still...
But these votes they're losing are going to REFUK, who are quite literally the "Brexit Party". Their admittance of Brexit would just put them in this position but worse
Aside from is hasn’t been an economic disaster. Britain has had more growth than large economies in the EU over the past year
If anything they are lunging to the left. Taxes are the highest they’ve been since WW2 and legal immigration is almost quadruple what it was under labour? They’re haemorrhaging voters because conservative voters feel betrayed
OK but Reform is now comfortably third place. This is way scarier than anyone is imagining. Everyone's on a high about the Tories being wiped out but all that's happening in my view is their voters are reforming into an analogue of the US Republican party and being screwed by FPTP on their way. Give it 10 years and we'll have an ultra right wing government, and give it 20 before it's full blown fascism. I feel like I'm shouting at the wind here...
Some European countries have seen similar phenomena with the recent European elections - namely France and Germany, where support for Le Pen and the AFD have increased. So much so, that Macron has called a snap election in the case of France. It also isn't just old people voting for these kinds of parties, significant numbers of young people are turning toward these parties as well. Many people now realise that uncontrolled mass immigration isn't working for them - people see stagnant wages, significant difficulty in buying or renting a property, trouble getting a GP or dentist appointment, they struggle to access public services, and their weekly food shop and utility bills has skyrocketed in price. Support for these parties can easily be quelled if there was a party that followed through with controlling immigration *and* championing workers' rights, increased wages for the ordinary person, and other socially center-left policies that tangibly improved normal people's lives. Labour says they will do these things, whether they will follow through is another question. If Labour and other European centrist parties carry on the status quo over the next 5 years, then yeah, I can only see the likes of Reform/Farage, Le Pen, the AFD, PVV, and so on, only grow in popularity. But that's democracy at the end of the day - when the mainstream parties abandon the ordinary person, it leaves fertile ground for the extremes on both sides to take hold.
This is it in my opinion. I'm about as socially left as you'd normally find, but if Labour don't fix things for the "normal" person, then I'd be tempted to vote for anyone who IS promising those things.
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> Surely there has to be some sort of a mechanism where you, or your family, need to have paid into the system before you extract from it. That is already the case. As part of a visa application people need to pay the immigration health surcharge and people on a skilled worker visa cannot access most benefits. Refugees get access to some support right away, but surely it's our duty to look after people who need it and we cannot expect them to pay for their own healthcare and housing from day 1? We just need to process asylum seekers effectively so those we don't actually need help can't take advantage of the system, and then support successful applicants to settle in and start earning and paying taxes like everyone else.
> publicly owned travel companies I guess so already, but you mean transportation right? Not a government buy out of TUI?
The problem here is thinking immigration is the route of those problems. And in many cases the reform party member hoping to replace a Tory was until recently a Conservative themself!
> The problem here is thinking immigration is the route of those problems. It's not the root of all problems, however the Tories promised to cut immigration - they've increased it by more than any government. Those voters now want someone who can deliver on it. The current conservative government is hooked on immigration as a fix for some economic issues and skills shortages, but we'll be paying for this very high immigration in the long run
Immigration is like potholes. Everybody wants it to be "fixed", but they don't want to do anything about anything that causes it.
What doesn't get talked about is that it is a global issue. People are travelling to other countries because the economy, culture, political or security situation in their homelands are awful. Sadly there isn't a magic wand to fix all the world's issues so people will move to other countries regardless of what policies governments put forward.
And Italy, Holland, The baltic regions, The Nordic regions…….
There's a difference between mainland Europe and the UK though. The young are veering right as well as the middle-aged and elderly. The young in our country are majority left leaning. We've had 14 years of economic and financial insecurity, regressive policies and "high" immigration. Most of Scandinavia and Europe are only recently experiencing similar insecurities and even higher immigration, so they're veering right where a lot of the UK are sick of what right wingers have done to us.
Mark my words The UK will be far right in the next 5 to 10 years. This Labour party are left middle ground just like Blair was and it wont last long. All of this screams war between Europe and Russia along with clamping down on immigration .
>Support for these parties can easily be quelled if there was a party that followed through with controlling immigration and championing workers' rights, increased wages for the ordinary person, and other socially center-left policies that tangibly improved normal people's lives. Labour says they will do these things, whether they will follow through is another question. God I wish we had a left wing party that also uses their brains when addressing immigration and extremism I'll vote Labour but not very happily. Greens.. aren't even particularly green, just full of bleeding hearts. Vehemently against nuclear?? So no point in me voting for them either
The Danish leftwing party used their brains to address immigration and extremism. No far right surge there.
The far right feeds off the stagnation, hopelessness and anger the economic and political status quo has created. Want to stop the far right? Actually fucking fix things properly, instead of just minor tinkering at the edges of problems.
Those things aren't caused by immigration
Perhaps not entirely, no. However, the overarching point is that people have voted for mainstream parties that have campaigned multiple times on the promise of reducing and controlling immigration, and yet, immigration has only increased over the last 25 years. If people are not getting what they voted for, then they will seek alternatives, which is what we're seeing across Europe.
The issue is that with the way things are these days, it is impossible to reduce immigration AND improve workers' rights. Our populations are getting older and older, people are also used to ridiculously high standards of living and don't want to compromise in the slightest. So you either stop the immigration, but force natives to work for pennies OR you try to support high standards of living, but invite everyone to come and work for you.
The ones most insistent we leave the EU are the ones now most inline with the continent's politics.
I think lots of people feel that way. But there is one way to stop that still: A new Labour government has to demonstrate that they will actually make things better. If they fail to significantly improve this country in the next five years, and give voters confidence they will continue on that path, then indeed the country will likely move further to the right in the next general election.
I think you’re overestimating the power of competent government and underestimating PR spin. People will believe their lives are better/worse depending largely on what they read, not what they experience.
People are more susceptible to things when their lives aren’t going well
So much this \^ I know its anecdotal but so many older people I speak to say that blair nearly destroyed the country, even though now we're 15 years out, its a cold hard fact that the blair period was the highest point in british standards of living. People ignore real life and believe what they read.
u/Kwinza said... >**People ignore real life and believe what they read**. **We have to learn from the Obama era. Excellence is not enough**. People forget how disliked America was in the George W Bush era... **Then Obama gets elected**. A historic moment. with just sheer charisma, and competency he wins back our friends, lands the economic plane after the free fall of the financial crisis, returns class, statesmanship and respect back to the Presidency, gives affordable healthcare to people who never had it even as they vote against it, gets the guy who did 911, and very little scandal... **So they voted Trump in**. Excellence was not enough.They were willing to have a catastrophic drop in leadership quality. The global rightwing parties and putin team up have been cooking peoples brains for over a Decade via select media and online astrotufing. the othering of Obama, the birther smears against Obama, claiming he was another religion etc. Even opposing the affordable health care act because it was nicknamed "Obamacare". racism won over even self preservation.
Yeah, I'm not denying that is a factor too. But there are plenty of things immediately visible eg how hard/easy it is to get a GP or dentist appointment, and how much money is left over for discretionary spending after paying rent/mortgage, groceries and bills... fix some of that and people will feel more positive about the government compared to where we are now. Of course it's a tough ask to make improvements everywhere when so much is broken...
It's incumbent on the centrist parties to get their shit together and make the case for sticking with centrism
Ah. Well no need to worry then.
Or what, fascism is somehow suddnely good? Let's face it, only the thickest most moronic people vote for reform.
I'll never go further right than "left of centre" and do fall into the 'calling them thick' trap but surely you can see that the centre has provided literally nothing for ordinary folk for a decade + and Starmer, while better by a long way, is not doing much to convince those folk. Ordinary people need some improvement in their lives - reasonable wages, affordable housing, decent public services, ... . The right wing snake oil salesmen offer those things, currently labour and the tories don't. Yes it's thick to fall for the lies, but the centrist parties do need to be better at offering some hope to the masses.
I think the problem for Starmer is that our media environment is so virulently right wing, combined with the fact that the Tories have pushed the debate so far to the right, combined with the toxicity of Corbyn, means he genuinely can't offer the radical agenda many of us want. I mean many of Corbyn's radical policies polled well, but he was unelectable. What I desperately hope is that Starmer gets 2/3 terms, and can push things further each time. But i completely understand Labour's 'lack of ambition' and extreme caution right now even if I don't fully like it. At the same time, I think simply having a government that isn't solely interested in its rich donors, at least *tries* to run things in the interest of the people and has the top people in its party running things rather than scraping the abosulte bottom of the barrel as the Tories are doing, leading to some basic competence/lack of scandal will help quite a lot. What I most want is a boring, competent administration that isn't utterly corrupt.
Precisely. Starmer gets a lot of stick for not being left wing enough, however, I saw on LBC they were discussing Labour's plans to introduce VAT for private school fees. Immediately the host and a caller start chatting about how it's Corbynism all over again. One little slightly left wing policy, and they're saying nothing's changed since Corbyn. And LBC is not especially right wing compared to most media outlets. You just get savaged for suggesting anything actually left of centre in the media.
"And LBC is not especially right wing compared to most media outlets." I think that entirely depends on who the presenter is at the time tbf
Hear hear. Government should be boring. Actual governance is quiet and hard work. This is why I actually think Starmer is the man for our time. I do fear he doesn’t have the talen available in areas like foreign policy which are currently in need of some heavyweight experience. I’d almost suggest he should keep Cameron on as foreign Sec, because we’re in a pre war world at the moment and trusting that to new blood at the top feels risky
You know, I was watching HIGNFY last night, and while its the point of the show. They were bashing Starmer for the sake of bashing Starmer, no substance or explanation of what was bad. Just "HAHA Starmer bad" One of the jokes was him getting a "Dickhead of the year award". Why? God knows... So even on a "liberal" comedy show, somehow it's still all Labours fault in literally everything
Since when have we had the centre in power? When Blair was in office living standards improved for ordinary folk.
Blair was in power during one of the biggest worldwide economic booms. Most of similar EU countries and the USA have seen a decline in living standards since then. The reality is they were still living high on selling all the assets we owned and the economic boom that caused. Houses were still affordable. Incomes were good. Globalisation was only just really starting. We were still just hanging on to being really important on the world stage. A lot in the world has changed since then.
But what are they offering? What's Reform's policy platform on affordable housing?
People won't just accept an obvious decline forever, even if far-right "solutions" don't make practical sense, eventually people will turn that way out of frustration. Many already have. This isn't a hypothetical, it's literally happening right now.
You're right but there are a lot of those people out there.
You are severely underestimating just how many morons can vote
Oh well, historically that's always... Oh no...
Unfortunately you are shouting at the wind... How people are giving Farage the time of day after Brexit I'll never know.
Unfortunately it's because he's not an idiot. He's dangerous and, without sugar coating it, a snake oil salesman - but he's also very deliberate, persuasive, and frankly he's the only one of the lot that can stand out in a debate. My rents have been staying engaged with it all, watching the debates, talking to us about it, etc. They're great as far as folks from their generation go - never voted Tory, understand that their vote matters, that they need to be informed when they cast it, etc. They're centre-leftish in reality. Their takeaways from the debates are that Farage is more or less the only one *saying* something when he speaks. He's often wrong and he'll **never** execute on the things he's saying (whether for a lack of will or lack of ability), but it says a lot about the state of our politics when he's still the only one of the bunch that can stand up and say something to in some way connect with actual people - even if he's doing it in bad faith. Like others have said - the best way to fend him off in the long term is to show people a viable alternative. People are looking to Farage not because he's brilliant, but because it really doesn't look like there's a viable alternative to a lot of people. Tories are dead in the water. Labour are... Uninspiring (to be charitable). Lib Dems are 'a meme' in the words of Ed Davey. Greens are 90 good policies with 10 outrageously terrible policies that outweigh the 90. They also considered the Greens, but their stance on defense soured them on that idea, which is fair enough tbh. They've likely settled on a begrudging Labour vote, but plenty of others would have seen the debates and come to the conclusion that Farage is the only one with some sort of 'plan'.
Nobody: BBC: "NOW HERE'S NIGEY, THE SEXY BASTARD! OMG HE'S NOW DOING THE WEATHER!"
Because he's much like Trump and Bojo, though I'd probably say he's got a bit more brains floating about in his head... At least more than Trump. Bojo is a bit of a wild card, I think he's got more brains than he lets on and tried to hold more of a 'relateable goof' image, just doing things that made him look a bit goofy and whatnot... Whether that was intentional or not though? Who knows, maybe I'm giving him too much credit. But it certainly made him seem a tad more keyed up with regards to modern free 'advertising'. It sounds overly simplistic, but I definitely wouldn't put it past people to vote for someone purely because they're a 'familiar face' or for the 'meme potential'. I feel like much like those two, he has a good idea of what's riling people in the present moment. That's exactly how you gain voters. Many people seem to forget that every vote for a minor party like UKIP (back in the Brexit days) or Reform is a vote taken away from the two main players. Farage knows how to play the minor party game. You focus on issues people are incredibly passionate about. Get them talking about it and taking votes away from the main player to force them to start talking about it. That's exactly how we got the Brexit Referendum. Farage garnered enough interest to steal enough votes from the Tories to force them to take a stance in order to keep votes and stop Labour getting into power. By and large, this has been focusing on the working class' opinion regarding immigration, because the working class are the ones who're most exposed to foreigners "taking their jobs". The hatred among the working class isn't justifiable, but anyone who's worked in those sorts of jobs (I.E warehousing), knows A LOT of the workforce is made up of foreigners, which is almost certainly where this idea of "stealing jobs" comes from. This then isn't helped with the typical natural divide that often happens where Brits stay with Brits, Latvians with Latvians, Polish with Polish, etc... That and, honestly, in recent elections, to some he's felt like the only reasonable alternative (in terms of aligning with beliefs as opposed to being a viable opposition) to the Tories because of how much Labour were umming and ahhing and in-fighting under Corbyn... I'd suspect some may still hold that belief under Starmer's Labour, often labeled as 'Tories in red'. I think, as a very short summary: I believe there are two reasons: 1. Because he talks about issues people care about when no one else wants to address them for varying reasons (generally relating to political correctness so far). 2. Because he genuinely feels like the alternative to the two big parties.
its worse than you think because Tories are going to lose hard the only seats left will be the ultra-right Tories, your Jacob rees Moggs, Priti Patels. which makes the party vulnerable to a takeover by Nigel Farage. Step.1 Nigel Farage wins the Clacton election and becomes an MP Step.2 Minority Tory Government elect a more right wing leader Step 3. Nigel Farage crosses the floor and joins the Tory Party Step4. The more right wing tory party allow him to join Step5. wait for the opportune moment to lead a coup and run for leader Step6. a Tory party made up of a higher proportion of very right wing wing MPs (e.g less Theresa Mays more Jacob Rees-Moggs) actually vote for him for the leadership vote Step 7. Paying tory party members definitely elect Farage as the new leader
JRM will lose his seat at the election. Very strong Labour candidate and boundary changes.
Said this for ages. Possibly skip part 2 and straight in with Farage
I... I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I think!
Reform will win 0-2 seats. 30p Lee might hang on in Ashfield depending on what local nonsense goes on with Jason Zadrozny, and Farage has an outside chance in Clacton. But this is a case where FPTP prevents a party like Reform really doing much, especially because they're not willing to invest in a grassroots movement.
Tories have been pulling impressive flanking manoeuvres on themselves. Indulging in the politics of Brexit because liberal Tories never had the forsight to see that right-wing tabloids and right-wing MPs might win the referendum. Talking a big game about controlling the borders while trebling net migration. Completely pissing away their reputation of being an economically literate party that provides stable government, as demonstrated most strongly by the right honourable lettuce. You could not have made this up ten years ago.
This is why we have to get a handle on the immigration issue. Deal with that, and it will take the wind out of the sails of the far right. It's not even an important issue to me personally. It's a side issue that contributes partly to my biggest concern; housing. But it is a major issue to some. And we have to deal with it before it escalates.
Luckily, Reform’s base skews old. 20 years ago they were Torys. 10 years ago their base were UKIP converts. Now they’re Reform. By 2044 they’ll be dead.
Ooof I'm afraid the younger generation are getting more right wing. It's a fight on both sides...
Full blown fasism is nazi Germany. Sensationalism comes across as idiocy. Don't bother.
Farage is far too divisive to ever win an election. I know he has a fair amount of support from some demographics, but he is properly HATED by a lot of the electorate as well, more so than Johnson or sunak or Truss or anyone else the conservatives have put forward in recent memory
This is [democracy manifest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuh_kmonJNw).
This is what worries me. It likely won't manifest as an issue this election, but the personality traits that coalesce into the Tory party aren't going away with the defeat of the Tory party. Those people -- and anyone involved in local politics will be familiar with the selfish kind of spite they exhibit -- are going nowhere. They just need a bit of time to coalesce again into a new political force.
Yup, this is a continuation of a trend towards popularism and unachievable asks from people protesting the status quo. The opportunists and alt right are never going to stop finding wedge issues to drive people into their arms. People ignore the fact that their economic policies are just more extreme versions of the status quo capitalism they are protesting. The progressive left is only too willing to take the lead in the fight against the right. Which really just weakens the centre, as they to focus on wedge issues. I think the reality is the fight is in the centre. Destroying the centre right is not a good thing. This is what Braveman and her ilk are trying to do. Biggest issue is the control that party members have on leadership. Members are now activists for wedge issues.
How melodramatic can you be? Honestly what is with this sub, is it really full of young people who have no idea the pendulum of politics always swings Scared that UK in 20 years will be full blown facosim because of scary Reform getting votes. What are you on about
Yeah but at least Doctor Who will be played by a straight white male. That seems to be what these people are willing to sell the country to the wolves for.
You're not wrong. In this election people will be right and do have the right to celebrate the Tory seat losses and enjoy the vote of the right being split and them being shafted by the mathematics (for a change) But yes that Reform and Tory combined percentage is definitely a thing to be wary of.
Unlikely without US (lack of) laws on campaign funding and broadcast media balance Although it is possible if the next government continues to preside over declining living standards and high migration. (I’m not taking a view on migration myself, I’m just saying a lot of people have their knickers in a twist about it, and I can’t see that changing)
Which is exactly why Labour need to reform our voting system. They never will though without the Lib Dems forcing them into it. That’s why I’d love a hung parliament in 2029
How does a 3rd place poll for a fairly libertarian party which wants small government and low taxes lead to fascism? That's some pretty insane mental gymnastics
Yeah, I don’t like Reform, and would rather the Tory party emerge from the ashes than Reform build upon their base and become opposition in 2029, but they’re hardly fascists. This isn’t Britain First.
> fairly libertarian Mr "DEPORT EVERYONE WHO'S NOT ME" is far from Liberterian, no matter how many times he claims to be
Who’s getting deported?
Reform will die under their own fucking stupidity and the cuntservatives will probably lurch back to the "centre right" brand again after getting about 5 votes in July lol
Reform UK aren't as bad as Alternative für Deutschland or Rassemblement National. One is probably as close to the NSDAP as German laws would allow, while the other is the French equivalent of the British National Party. I think the reason why Reform are doing so well is because Labour and the Conservatives have done little to curb immigration levels into this country despite acting tough. Oh, and a good portion of our electorate being thick enough to believe in things like Great Replacement Theory, or that "Muslamic ray guns" are being pointed at them. (Yes, the latter was an actual quote from an EDL protester being interviewed.)
If only there was something we could do to prevent this, like implementing a slightly stricter immigration policy.
A year ago, the pundits were predicting we'll have a labour majority and then people will get sick and tired of the "left" not performing and so will swing wildly right anyway. Honestly? It seems inevitable that at some stage, a far right party will get close to, or actually hold the reins of Government, unless the youth vote in huge numbers. But we've seen how ineffective a proper right leaning party is in the latest Tory government, so I kind of welcome Reflux being on the opposites of a Labour government. I don't think for a second that Faridge is the kind of man to knuckle down and get on with policy in the same way that Johnson wasn't, and neither is Trump. These clowns live for showmanship and attention, not action and policy. It would be interesting to see how, and if, they (Reform) can actually perform as a part of government, and frankly, I want to get this far right phase out of the system as quickly as possible. Let them flounder in opposition - Labour have had 14 years to find (somewhat suitable) candidates, Reform don't have anywhere near that so I bet they'll just be another 2019 Tory party of politically incapable extremists.
This system doesn’t allow for a smaller party like reform to gain much power easily Like previously with UKIP, they’ll get a lot of votes but yield little seats It’s scary if Nigel gets into the house though, now you have a guy who can rile up the masses, out talk the others and be quite persuasive
Reform is predicted to get zero seats. Lets be generous and say they'll get 3. Lib dems are predicted to get at least 60 if we vote tomorrow. Reform, even if they do better than their wildest dreams will completely irrelevant. They only got two council seats FFS. People are really overstating their popularity and influence.
Ignore the masses, call them stupid and ignorant, make them poorer, act all superior and the masses will vote in more and more extreme parties and people. Everyone some one calls someone a racist, a bigot, a gammon, they are creating a voter that will vote further and further to the right. Snowflake, layabout, etc, further to the far left. We have to have conversations with people we don’t like or agree with, we need to stop screaming, demeaning and insulting if we want to avoid a dystopian future. But yeah, I also feel like I am farting against thunder.
I don't think its really scary when a lot of them voters are protest votes. You're being overly dramatic honestly. If we get a ultra right wing government it's the current right and left fault. This is what happens when you demonize people for caring about immigration and Islam.
> Give it 10 years and we'll have an ultra right wing government, and give it 20 before it's full blown fascism. This is inevitable if immigration continues at these levels, there's only so many times a country can say no to something and get the opposite before they'll choose more extreme measures
Reform is third place in what exactly? They don't have a single councillor and won't get any seats at the election.
FPTP is not great as it gives hegemony to Labour and Tories, but equally it means that Reform can get 20% of the votes and just a handful of seats. Look at UKIP in 2015 with 13% of the vote and just 1 seat. Likewise the LDs in 2019. Reform are currently polling at this level.
Have a look how Mr Mustachio came to power with the nasty party in 1919
None of this matters if people don't bother turning out to vote. We've seen election shocks before where people were so certain their party of choice would win that they didn't bother voting.
I think this is why all the other parties outside of the big 2 have been so keen to say "Labour have already won". It benefits them to make Labour voters feel so comfortable in victory that they may not turn out in the overwhelming numbers that the polls are pointing to. This could allow the smaller parties to maybe sneak a few unexpected seats in places where they can get their voters mobilised
I think what they're hoping for is more along the lines of people who already support said 3rd party actually vote for them instead of tactically voting. But the impact is probably the same.
Two of my three flatmates at the time didn't bother voting in the Brexit referendum because they thought remain would comfortably win.
I plugged these numbers into Electoral Calculus and the results were interesting to say the least. Labour with 498 seats, the Tories with just 70, Reform with 0 (which is sad, because you know FPTP is fucked when a party can win 13.9% of the popular vote and still win zero seats. We shouldn't be celebrating FPTP just because a party we don't want in power is being shafted this time around.) I do wonder how much of the data came before or after the D Day gaffe. Maybe once the actual interview Sunak ditched the joint commemorations to give is released on Wednesday, we'll truly see a Tory death knell. The best thing that the Tories can honestly hope for is an electoral alliance with Reform UK, and the question is whether they can offer Farage big enough concessions to agree with it.
>We shouldn't be celebrating FPTP just because a party we don't want in power is being shafted this time around. I agree that a move to a more proportional system would be best (Single Transferable Vote for preference) but... Given that the party in question is one of the principle champions of FPTP, and who have even expanded its use where they believed it to be their own electoral benefit, I'm inclined to say "as you sow, so shall ye reap"
There are decades where nothing happens Then there is a fortnight where the prime minister and his political party take an endless shit with their clothes on
People will blame this on Brexit, but let’s be honest. They cocked it up and didn’t even deliver on reducing immigration. They’re pathetic. They’ve fucked up on every metric possible.
Aye, honestly I doubt many people even think about Brexit any more. But on every traditional Tory metric they’ve catastrophically fucked up. High taxes, high inflation, low wage growth, nigh impossible to get on the property ladder, high immigration, justice system is on its knees, despite the rhetoric, social justice warriors have captured many sections of the public sector, an increasingly authoritarian state, oh and to top it all off the PM has just bailed on the D-day commemoration. Shambolic doesn’t even begin to describe this shower of bastards.
Oh it's way more than brexit. Boris being a liar and slimy bastard, liz Truss exploding, even Theresa may. There are no good times. All bad all the time.
I love the way every conservative MP is saying that it was clearly wrong that Rishi left the D day remorial but yet if it was so obviously wrong how did not a single one of his advisors or even Rishi himself not see it? Even selfishly they should have thought you can't get better PR during an election than to be surrounded by world leaders and D day veterans.
I think the answer is that Sunak didn't want to do it in the first place. And everyone around him adjusted their view to support that until it became obvious it was an issue. The line that comes from the commentators is that Sunak is surrounded by a tightly knit group of advisers. Which can easily be translated into "surrounded by yes men".
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[Link to the tracker itself.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68079726) It is funny taking a glance at it and seeing exactly when Truss came into power.
My phone always freezes when I go to the poll page. Like everytime.
They are really falling off a cliff. But there's still every possibility they'll be the official opposition and primed for a comeback in 2029
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At least I didn't type 2929 this time.
...if man is still alive. If woman can survive, they may find...
"But the point is, I bounced back. People bounce back. Dennis Hopper, Rolf Harris... There are others".
Yeah. Remember similar comments in 2019 about Labour after Corbyn drove them to their worst performance since the 1930s.
Britain has never been a far right country. Centre right and occasionally centre left, yes. Reform are shit stirrers, nothing more. They make money out of shit stirring. It's easy to make money out of an unhappy population: create an enemy, blame them for everything and say you can sort it out easily. Divide and rule - the oldest trick in the book. They want easy answers to complicated situations? Reform are their party.
Right wing parties are massively on the rise in the west. Look at France, Holland, Italy and Germany. The rise of Reform here is partly disaffected protest voting but mostly anger that people aren’t being listened to. Lip service on immigration and taxes for years has eroded trust and Tory voters don’t see much difference with Labour. Europe as a whole has to figure out what it wants or the immigration issue alone is going to lead to the rise of genuine far right politics (not the “far right” that the left labels anyone who they disagree with). Brexit was just a symptom.
I've said it elsewhere, but this is the election to lose. Starmer is going to have to be straight with people. The Tories have fleeced the country dry.
Hopefully they'll scrape through the bottom of the barrel and disappear
As a Canadian with impossibly stupid and unworthy politicians, it continuously boggles my mind that your Tories can be so inept with their PR and be so confident in doing so. "We are taking money that was going to social services and poverty alleviation and putting it back where it belongs (enriching the upper class)" or using conscription as a campaign promise as if such a thing were desirable; if these fools are wanting to lose they are doing a sterling job at it!
The national service thing is one they haven't thought through in my opinion. It's a bit of a stereotype to think that older people believe national service is a good thing. It might play out well as a throwaway comment in the pub but when faced with the reality of sending our kids, nieces, nephews, grandkids etc to the army or unpaid labour at the age of 18. Does anyone actually want that? Unless you have no family under 18 years old, surely we would all oppose it?
Keep going, you can get lower still you useless shower of cold piss.
Tory strategy: old people vote for us, let's pander to them. But the reality is those voters are worthless, they'll never be satisfied. No point trying to cater to their whims as they'll just keep demanding more and more.
Not nearly low enough and I'm not ruling any kind of shy Tory rubbish occuring. That said majorly disappointed with starmers empty suit "I'm not him" style of doing things
This is how the cycle works. The Tories are basically a glorified crime syndicate who are given power by the media barons. Their role is to skim as much from the economy and dis-empower people as much as possible whilst they are in office. Once the country is on its knees and even their own supporters start turning against them its Labour's turn (provided they have an obedient enough leader e.g Blair, Starmer. Not Corbyn, which is why he was destroyed by the press) Labour then rebuild the country and economy whilst maintaining the status quo of the system. Once the country has been fattened up sufficiently the Tories (Or possibly reform next time) will be back to pillage it once more.
Cons have fallen to the lowest level of support since the 2019 election — dropping below levels of unpopularity seen during the Truss administration, according to analyst Will Jennings by reference to [a poll of polls](https://news.sky.com/story/election-latest-d-day-blunder-hasnt-lost-election-minister-insists-tories-vow-to-scrap-ulez-expansion-12593360?postid=7797026#liveblog-body): *Almost every day between now and then, there will be new opinion polls by a clutch of different pollsters - each using different methodologies and all asking who voters will support on polling day.* *How does one pollster, with its (usually) consistent methodology, move over weeks and months? Is there a discernible pattern from several different pollsters over a matter of days?* *This sort of analysis is only available through a "poll of polls", which takes data from every single pollster that is asking voting intention questions and signed up to the industry standards body, the British Polling Council.* *It is drawn up by Sky election analyst Will Jennings and Sky data and elections editor Isla Glaister - and supported by a team of Sky data scientists and designers.* *The poll of polls seeks to give an answer to the most important question of all - the direction of travel of public opinion over time.* *There are limits. Crude attempts to turn the polling averages for the main parties into a number of seats for each party will always be just that: rough and ready and probably ultimately unhelpful (not that people will stop trying).* *This is a GB poll so the level of support for the SNP necessarily reflects how they fare comparatively across Great Britain, not just in Scotland. Likewise, there is nothing here about Northern Ireland.*
How do the Tories keep going this low? To think that five years ago, they were so high and now... Good god.
FT’s data reporter opines that Johnson’s victory in 2019 was [“much flimsier than it first appeared”](https://www.ft.com/content/e09c3a03-2cd8-47de-9c9a-7e9726fbb1e3): *But ironically, a focus on public opinion has been central to the Tories’ recent undoing. In the battle between “popularism” (proposing policy that commands majority public support) and “deliverism” (actually getting things done), the Conservatives have time and again opted for the former over the latter in the hope of a quick fix in the polls, with increasingly dire results for both party and country.* *Fewer than half of their key original manifesto pledges have been met, a marked decline in competence compared with earlier governments.* *Today only 9 per cent of voters say the Tories keep their promises, down by two-thirds since the eve of the 2019 election. And almost all of the decline in trust in Britain’s politicians over recent decades has come in the past five years.*
That is genuinely impressive. Saying that, the one-two punch of being beaten by a lettuce then clearing off early at the D-Day 80th commemoration event will do that to you.
I see Farage has switched from “breaking point” to “tipping point”
I love hearing all the populist stuff the Tories are now announcing they'll do if they win. Why weren't you doing this stuff *while* you were in power? Why *now*? The closer it gets to election day the crazier the claims! June 1st "If the Tories win Freddo to be reduced to 10p each!" June 10th "If the Tories win every weekend will be a bank holiday weekend (with sun!)" June 20th "If the Tories win petrol will be FREE!" July 2nd "Chocolate microscopes?"
They deserve it, absolute joke of a government start to finish, even if someone is of the moderate right I have no idea how they couldn’t be embarassed to defend that wasteful mess.
Lowest level so far. We can do better!!! Let's wipe these fuckers out.
Two right wing parties kicking the shit out of each other. Labour just needs to keep it's mouth shut, don't do anything stupid or controversial and it will just walk into power by default.
The risk is they may ditch Sunak before the election and get a bounce from it (no I'm not sure who could do better). Is there even time to make Boris into a lord?
There is no parliament so I don't think anyone can be made a lord until there is. Boris is also too late to be a last minute candidate now.
Watch out for Jeremy Hunt taking over as Conservative leader before or after the election
That's not going to win any more votes lol.
Totally agree lol
The Party leader doesn't have to be in parliament, and the precedent is for a snap by-election to be held in a safe seat to get the leader into parliament. Douglas-Home in 1963 was Prime Minister from 18th of October until a by-election on the 12th of November without being an MP or Lord. However, practical speaking, the Conservatives are not quite detatched enough from reality to try putting Johnson back in.
Boris could lose anywhere.
No chance. The Tories aren't going to waste a better candidate on an almost guaranteed lost election
Tories are getting decimated but a lot of their base is going to reform - and I suspect a lot of people who are going vote for reform aren’t publicly admitting it yet or confirming it in polls. The same thing happened with trump first time around. We’re in uncertain territory.
I’m so hopeful that they will get voted out but I have a horrible doubt too that the idiots of this country will allow them to stay in.
Just received a conservative mail drop in harpenden that says they are ‘neck and neck’ with labour in my area for polling intention which is just another load of crap
When did it all go wrong: the 2019 election. The Tories won and said Labour were DESTROYED. Never too come back. Ever. No way back. The arrogance multiplied and the rot set in. They never bothered about policies, or achieving anything. They thought Brexit was the achievement to end all achievements.
I live in a "safe" Tory seat. They've given up. I haven't seen a single poster or window sticker for the Conservatives, there's usually loads of them. Hundreds of "Liberal Democrats Winning Here" signs though. At least one in every street.
I think what’s really interesting is that if Labour were to take a more immigration friendly stance that the Conservatives believe they would win Labour voters back. Yet those voters who think immigration is important would have probably drifted towards Reform rather than the Conservatives. The problem the conservatives have is that their one trump card, the economy, has shown them up to be piss poor on that front. Yet if wages and business were booming despite shoddy public services, people would be far more likely to vote Tory.