General British politics discussion thread

Enzokk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122264003#Comment_122264003

Not so much about the Tories doing anything right, more about history and the 1997 election showing what could happen. It will still mean a massive majority for Labour but Reform will most likely be found out the more scrutiny is paid to Farage and what they actually stand for so they will lose some of their current poll number back to the Conservatives. Add in those that just will not be able to vote for Labour on the day will mean a lower outcome.

That is just speculation and presuming no more gaffes from Sunak until voting day. If they continue to pee their pants then all bets are off.

Sam Russell

Quote [That is just speculation and presuming no more gaffes from Sunak until voting day. If they continue to pee their pants then all bets are off.]

If you stand out in the pouring rain, no-one will notice if you are peeing your pants!

Of course, the Tories like to bet on certainties.

Strazdas

Things are really 'that' bad for the Tories it seems :

flatty

It really would be well earned. All because of opening the door to Brexit really. Everything stems from that. Now everyone hates them, the hard right, the left, and the centre.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122264878#Comment_122264878

If that came to pass, then you'd wonder who'd be left, ideologically speaking, to take over the party. Either it went back to formula and really tried to course correct back to "traditional" conservative party structure... or it would try to ape Reform and become even more right wing. It all probably depends on who's left with the keys when the fires stopped burning. I certainly hope it would be the former scenario.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265051#Comment_122265051

I'd say a merger with Reform is likely if both parties end up with double digit amounts of seats. There's a good point here:

https://twitter.com/ProfTimBale/status/1801925899496886511

There's nothing indicating that the Conservatives are likely to engage in the kind of soul searching necessary to become electable again.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265023#Comment_122265023

They opened the door to Brexit precisely because they were facing a similar wipeout at the next election, then there was the other wipeout on the cards for Teresa May when she didn't go hard on Brexit - so they doubled down on Brexit. Brexit was the last gasp of the Tories and it worked - until it backfired. Brexit was the response, not the cause of the Tories troubles.

This wipe out has been on the cards for over a decade and Brexit just posponed the inevitable.

Farage has destroyed the Tories through his 15years of political activism.

wazzzledazzle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265109#Comment_122265109

Agent Farage is an absolute gift to Labour!

Just listening to Wes do an interview. Such an impressive speaker.

Now we have Mark Harper……

wazzzledazzle

Every single Tory come out with the exact same lines. Same nonsense

breezy1985

Why know that a ton of Tory MPs are standing down but it would be interesting to see the brain drain behind the scenes. It doesn't look like there are too many genius still working in Tory HQ.

wazzzledazzle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265216#Comment_122265216

Very good point.
I can’t recall an election where a party has been so uninspiring.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265233#Comment_122265233

That's what happens when you gut the party for inadequate ideological purity.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265109#Comment_122265109

They opened the door to Brexit precisely because they were facing a similar wipeout at the next election, then there was the other wipeout on the cards for Teresa May when she didn't go hard on Brexit

I don't think either of these statements are remotely true. The Tories were absolutely never facing a wipeout at the 2015 election and May's Chequers red lines were what set up a (fairly) Hard Brexit and went way beyond what people were expecting. She was expected to win an easy majority in the 2017 election til she messed up the campaigning.

Brexit was a response to Tory infighting yes, but it was not some kind of existential crisis that they faced.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265098#Comment_122265098

TBF after all the money-making wheezes with Covid, there's no excuse for them to be bankrupt now. They've been making like bandits with covid schemes, as somebody said.

And I'm not sure about them merging with Reform when Farage has said he wants to destroy the Tory Party.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265395#Comment_122265395

They faced significant impacts from defections to the Brexit party which put many of their seats in a very marginal position. They responded by proposing the referendum to steal their only idea. They were in a coalition already with no policy wins to ensure they could gain a majority at the next election.

The referendum was also an act of posturing by Cameron trying to negotiate an opt-out from the new raft of banking reforms the EU was pushing on the UK which were going to be very bad for the city of London.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265098#Comment_122265098

A lot is going to depend on exactly who in the Conservative Party manage to keep their seats. There is still a core there that wouldn't be caught dead talking to Farage.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265395#Comment_122265395

Agreed. Too clever by half is what happened in both those cases: Cameron thought he could cut the legs from under his own troublemakers in the party and also the Farage-types outside it, by getting a Yes vote in an unnecessary referendum that was not even binding, unlike in Ireland.

Then Theresa May (who pretty much only got the job of leader because nobody else really wanted the poisoned chalice at that point) thought she could shore up her position by getting a new mandate well before she needed to, thus preventing her having to go to the polls in a couple of years' time when - she suspected - the Tories might have got a lot more unpopular than they were at that stage with the huge majority they'd recently got.

Both of those were eminently political calculations that backfired spectacularly. They were not inevitable at all.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265425#Comment_122265425

The Brexit Party didn't exist in 2015. They had literally one MP defect to UKIP.

The referendum proposal was meant to quell disquiet in Conservative Party ranks yes, but it was a reaction to moderate amounts of infighting. Not an attempt to arrest "wipeout" which was not remotely on the cards.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265425#Comment_122265425

You're correct that Cameron had tried to use the threat of internal opposition to Europe as a way of renegotiating even more favorable terms from Europe, but I'm not sure how you think the referendum would have LED to that. He didn't want to lose the referendum, he wanted to win it.

What happened as I recall it was that he had previously used that internal (UK and Tory Party) opposition to Europe as a bargaining card to try to get better results in negiotiations (channelling Thatcher's "No, no, no"), and the referendum only came AFTER the EU had sent him off with a flea in his ear. He had played up that internal opposition to the EU, so then couldn't really refuse a referendum to test that opposition which he had been telling the EU was such a threat to his administration and to the UK's place within the EU if they didn't give him what he wanted. They didn't.

It's the problem of wanting/needing to send different messages to different audiences. A very tricky thing to do these days.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265419#Comment_122265419

I'd say that that money's been spent at this point, what little went to party coffers that is.

Farage is ideologically flexible on anything but grifting and racism. He won't mind. He just wants to be PM and he thinks that if he can take over or replace the Conservative party, he will. Expect his previous opinion on voting reform to be dropped like a hot potato.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265444#Comment_122265444

True but the red wall will be gone for them and Johnson purged the party when he took over. The likes of Nicholas Soames are gone for good.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122263788#Comment_122263788

The only real Labour-LibDem contest is Sheffield Hallam and it has bene reported that Nick Clegg has been donating a lot to the local LibDem branch. That one should be interesting.

My long-standing belief was that Labour would only just scrape a majority but I have now given up on that. All this "supermajority" talk is just the Conservatives scraping the bpottom of the barrel.

I think the SNP will do very well to keep above 20 seats. On top of all the other stuff they don't have the funds for a proper campaign.

flatty

I actually disagree. Europe was way down on the list of voter priorities. That idiot Cameron just wanted to head off the hard right, and it backfired spectacularly. The hard right were bolstered by chancers like Johnson who just rolled the dice because they had few prospects otherwise, and then, like Frankenstein, it just kind of took over.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265498#Comment_122265498

Well, second-guessing Farage is a risky thing to do, but my impression is that he enjoys being a thorn in peoples's sides, and that the boring work of being an MP, never mind PM, is not what he really wants.

It was noticeable during the debate the other night that there was real fear in Sunak's eyes, and even Starmer didn't seem completely at ease - but the one person who was absolutely revelling in it all was Nigel Farage. He's absolutely living his best life at the minute. Boring stuff like reading all those dossiers for minsterial meetings would be such a comedown.

(That said, I also expected Donald Trump to be a hands-off president for somewhat similar reasons, but I underestimated his rage and his need to "get even" with anyone who had slighted him at all. I don't think that's an element that will play as much in Farage's case - but I could be wrong.)

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265626#Comment_122265626

Farage will be happy if the end result is that whatever immerges from the right wing of British politics will be far closer to his beloved Fascism than it is now. That's his ultimate goal and he will probably get it.

wazzzledazzle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265650#Comment_122265650

My highlight of the weekend was Brian Cox calling him a fascist on Laura K this morning

A Dub in Glasgo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265626#Comment_122265626

When was Farage in a debate with Sunak and Starmer?

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265650#Comment_122265650

Assuming you mean emerges, well, possibly.

But TBF I think Farage's current "success" is a symptom of the problem in British politics, and not the cause. And if what emerges is closer to fascism, then that will also be the fault of the mainstream political parties rather than because the British genuinely want fascism.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265667#Comment_122265667

I have said this before, most people do not really understand the British population and just how prejudiced they really are. Farage got where he is today by understanding the British public and pressing all of their buttons. The Tories tried to copy him but they are simply not as nasty as Farage.

The Tories got where they are today by not been nasty enough for their target electorate, coupled with destroying their reputation for superior economic management and not been hard enough on law and order.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265660#Comment_122265660

Sorry no, I didn't mean he was in the same debate - I meant the whole situation. I saw him being asked about the debate, afterwards, and in the clips they showed, neither Sunak nor Starmer looked too happy, whereas Farage, commenting on it to (I think, Sky) was practically bouncing up and down with delight.

A Dub in Glasgo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265682#Comment_122265682

That is because of two things

1. He is being given all sorts of media platforms to spout his lies and
2. He knows he can just ignore questions and still he will get the media presence

The only time this week when he looked startled was when Stephen Flynn was having none of his nonsense during the 6 way debate the other evening