Theresa May: "I plan to cut taxes for the rich." Boris Johnson: "I have a bold new plan to cut taxes for the rich." Liz Truss: "Boris's plan failed, but I have a bold new plan to cut taxes for the rich." Rishi Sunak: "Okay, we're going to try something different; Here is my bold new plan to cut taxes for the rich." I can't imagine why they weren't popular.
2010-2015: Conservative Manifesto promises to reduce net migration to the "tens of thousands" per year. Actual net immigration averages around 250,000 per year. 2015-2017: Conservative Manifesto promises to reduce net migration to below 100,000 per year. Actual net migration peaks at over 330,000. 2017-2019: Conservative Manifesto promises to reduce net migration to the "tens of thousands" per year. Actual net migration continues to be over 200,000 per year. 2019: Conservative Manifesto promises an "Australian-style points-based system" post-Brexit, focusing on attracting high-skilled workers while reducing overall immigration levels. Actual net immigration goes above 700,000.
These sorts of comments were made in 1997 and 2001 , saying the Tories were going to be extinct bla bla bla. Only time will tell. But we are not that lucky.
Even by the 2005 election with Blair unpopular because of Iraq the Tories still couldn’t get to 200 seats. A figure Labour hasn’t fallen below in over 18 years. 2024 was the fourth election since 1997 to see fewer than 200 Tory MPs elected. The last 14 years are really a period where the Tories held onto power by their fingertips because Labour made themselves unelectable for most of the period, with 2019 standing out as the time when a serial liar and philanderer backed by an equally unpleasant bunch of liars conned the country with lies and false promises which completely collapsed when met with reality. Like I said in a previous post the demographics of the 2024 election are dreadful for the future of the Tories. Among working age voters it’s not until you get to voters aged 40-49 that they were in second place, and at just 17% in this group that’s still massive under even the historic overall vote share of 24% they achieved among all voters. Meanwhile Labour polled over 40% share in every working age group 18-49 and won the popular vote in every demographic to age 59.
Very different. You have now utterly lost the young vote up to age 40 and the age Demographic that has kept Tories safe since 2010 have been declining (Covid, father time) . Projections look abysmal as your core vote has gone.
Between them parties in centre and centre left current hold over 500 seats in parliament but the answer for the Tory grassroots is to go ever more right wing and extreme. Among the under 30s the Tories didn’t even poll in third place. And it’s not until you get to voters over 40-50 that polled second and that was just 17% of the vote according to YouGov. Let that sink in, this is a party in long term terminal decline. By comparison Labour polled over 40% of the vote in every demographic from 18-49.
You argue well. However, here are some other considerations. 1) The last General Election had the second lowest turnout ever. Party membership is really low on all sides compared with, say, the 1950s. 2) Most voters are not ideologically consistent; they may support policies typically associated with the left on some issues (e.g. wealth redistribution, healthcare) but policies associated with the right on others (e.g. law and order, immigration). Their final vote choice is partly to do with how they balance out these conflicting concerns. 3) A month ago, Labour actually presented itself as to the right of the Conservatives on immigration. It talked pretty tough on it. It doesn’t look like it will govern that way in practice, which could cost it votes. 4) The Lib Dems are best understood not as a soft left party, but as a non-political protest party - as a more respectable “none of the above” choice than Count Binface. Their leader, Ed Davie, ran the most non-political campaign in UK history, spending all his time merely going to theme parks. Even if the Lib Dems think of themselves as a less left wing version of Labour, that’s not how most voters see them. Even though they’re the UK’s most Euro-Federalist Party, before 2016 the Lib Dems regularly got elected in the South West as an outlet for anti EEC/EU anger, especially towards the Common Fisheries Policy. Many of the people who voted Lib Dem in the South and South West in 2024 are NIMBYs. As Labour starts building high rises on the Green Belt, the Lib Dems will have to pivot soft-Right to retain their votes.
Unfortunately - as much I want to see the Tories finished as a political party - they will "be back" - like the T-1000 in Terminator 2 - the parts are slowly reforming. It'll take time. The "blob" is still entrenched in British politics and it likes its uniparty.
James "not so" will ensure the Tories dont get in for a long time. Pritty Pathetic would ensure a longer time in the wilderness. Lesser of two weevils? None of the prospects are old school Conservative 😢
If you want them to shift right then the Tory Party is lost. 62% of voters in the last election went for parties to the left of the Tories. Most of the 38% are elderly. By 2029 the electorate will have lost right-leaning voters to attrition and gained left-leaning voters coming-of-age. With a rightward shift of the party, it will be playing to even fewer voters in a pool already diminishing for the right. Don't get me wrong, you're welcome to encourage the Tories to make themselves even less significant than they are at present, but I really can't see what you'd be trying to achieve in doing so.
@@petemarchetto4998 Left & Right is really an outdated way of looking at things. Globalist Authoritarianism & Patriotic libertarianism are the 2 real choices. 5 years of Labour will gain recruits for the latter.
@@petemarchetto4998 1) The last General Election had the second lowest turnout ever. Party membership is really low on all sides compared with, say, the 1950s. 2) Most voters are not ideologically consistent; they may support policies typically associated with the left on some issues (e.g. wealth redistribution, healthcare) but policies associated with the right on others (e.g. law and order, immigration). Their final vote choice is partly to do with how they balance out these conflicting concerns. 3) A month ago, Labour actually presented itself as to the right of the Conservatives on immigration. It talked pretty tough on it. It doesn’t look like it will govern that way in practice, which could cost it votes. 4) The Lib Dems are best understood not as a soft left party, but as a non-political protest party - as a more respectable “none of the above” choice than Count Binface. Their leader, Ed Davie, ran the most non-political campaign in UK history, spending all his time merely going to theme parks. Even if the Lib Dems think of themselves as a less left wing version of Labour, that’s not how most voters see them. Even though they’re the UK’s most Euro-Federalist Party, before 2016 the Lib Dems regularly got elected in the South West as an outlet for anti EEC/EU anger, especially towards the Common Fisheries Policy. Many of the people who voted Lib Dem in the South and South West in 2024 are NIMBYs. As Labour starts building high rises on the Green Belt, the Lib Dems will have to pivot soft-Right to retain their votes.
@@georgesdelatour 1), this is an argument generally presented to mean 'If everyone who'd wanted what I wanted had turned out, my lot would have won.' The best that can be said is none of those who stayed home wanted anything very much anyone had on offer. 2), fortunately when it comes to the parties those to the left on economics are also those on the left when it comes to social issues. True, you may have right-leaning social conservatives who would prefer a more left-leaning economic system. But the very balance we're talking about here underlines where people's proclivities lie given we don't have parties that are socially conservative and lean left economically. (Or vice versa). So whatever the calculus in the end, we can say pretty clearly that the left is currently winning out over the right when voters balance it all out. 3), Labour will solve immigration in two ways. i), by not perpetuating the artificial small boats crisis which the Tories quite blatantly invented and by implementing obvious measures not only to lessen the problem but to get rid of it altogether. ii), by waiting. No one has forecast legal immigration to do anything other than drop after the last numbers which were artificially boosted by Brexit and covid. They don't need to be tough. They just need to stop creating problems, take some rational measures, and wait. 4), the LibDems were credited with running as a party left of Labour in the last election fiscally. Socially... what? They talked about immigration less than Labour did. What else? And that 'none-of-the-above' party has the third largest grouping of MPs right now. I'd say they were pretty establishment, and 'none of the above' voters these days probably count them as the above they want none of. So if anything the LibDems have learned that having gained their greatest success for some time tacking left, I sincerely doubt they're going to suddenly, for no apparent reason, tack right. Economically at least that's a pretty small corner of a very wide field the Tories and Labour are already crammed together in. Why would they want to join them? As it is they've hardly stepped that far away from them.
@@petemarchetto4998 1) I never assume that my own preferences are shared by most people. I’m the kind of person who’d probably change my preferences if too many other people started to share them. My understanding is that the Conservatives did badly because many Conservative supporters stayed at home, rather than voted Labour. A surprising number were so annoyed by Conservative broken promises, they took the attitude “I’d prefer to be ruled by my enemies for five years than ruled by you”. The “zero seats” campaign was started by disgruntled right wingers, not left wingers. 2) What we keep getting, from both Labour and the Conservatives, is a kind of left wing capitalism (Black Rock style stakeholder capitalism with lots of DEI wokery). This pleases neither the old Clause Four lefties, nor the chavs and gammons, nor the libertarian right. I’m not sure it really pleases anyone, apart from a small number of people who are over-promoted and therefore do well from it. It’s more that it has the inertial power of seeming to be inevitable. But events might change that. “Thatcherism” really started under James Callaghan, as the old approaches of the Wilson-Heath era simply stopped working. 3) That’s a prediction, which is excellent. If it turns out to be false, what then? 4) I don’t think it matters whether the Lib Dems advocate command economy socialism or minimal state anarcho-capitalism. But as I said, a lot of voters in those Southern and South Western seats are NIMBYs - or, if you like, hypocrites. They don’t mind what Labour does, as long as it doesn’t do it where they live. They don’t mind mass immigration, as long as the migrants go either to London or northern working class towns (the odd rich Hong Kong Chinese banker or Indian tech CEO is obviously fine). But Labour are determined to make those Southern and South Western constituencies take their share of migrants, their share of new housing, and so on. Think of New Yorkers. They’re supposedly the most liberal and progressive voters in the USA. But whenever liberal, progressive policies make them feel unsafe, or feel like the neighbourhood is going downhill, they elect right wing mayors to fix it. Any Lib Dem who wants to keep his seat in 2029 will have to embrace NIMBYism.
The interview started with mention of seats lost to Labour, Lib Dems and Reform. I'd be asking whether those switching were showing a positive preference for one of the three parties or looking for their constituency candidate most likely to beat the Tory.
None of the candidates will change the tories sadly. It will be much of the same and that won't win many of us back. It will be interesting to see how membership levels are maintained.
It is certainly true that they need a period in opposition that approaches a decade. That is because they believe in the now discredited theory of 'trickle-down economics'. Almost all of their policies rely on this theory being true. 'Cutting taxes, especially for higher earners should impact those beneath positively'. To just stand up and say, 'I believe in lower taxes', as Sunak did is not rational. The Tories wasted North Sea oil revenue, using this as an excuse. We are in a precarious position: low growth, high taxes, country packed to the rafters, public services strained to breaking. It means the usually fall-backs - mass immigration, under funded/deteriorating public services, lower/higher taxes cannot be used. Can renewable energy save the country? There is every hope. It had better as we are out of options. One option that Labour will get around to, is taxing the rich or a wealth tax to fund better public services. We won't have long to wait for this as such (unpopular) measures need to be introduced early in the parliamentary cycle.
If she d had been the PM of Conservatives, they would have been a very different party and they would still be n power. Therefore she is partly responsible that we have to put up with this disastrous Labour Lot
It is also hard to get a positive rating when the elites and their media mates pile onto someone whose political career they want to destroy. Civil Servants also helped in the case of Patel.
Yeah, they turned the NF into the BNP into UKIP into The Brexit Party into Reform, somehow. Could you explain how they have done this? I honestly can't see it.
How come your polling of party members is so different from the Conservative Home poll of party members? True, the last poll I can find is July 14th, but it's hardly as if anything seismic has taken place since then to shift support so dramatically. One of you appears to be using a random number generator and let's face it, CH seems to have been pretty accurate on this in the past. Can you get your money back? I still reckon it'll be Badenoch. But I doubt she'll lead the party into the next election. It needs one last fling with populism courtesy of the membership, but when it's clear anti-woke obsession isn't hacking it with the electorate more generally those letters will go in as an election begins to loom. The party will then, I suspect, find a way to circumvent the membership and install a more palatable candidate. Should they do so I wouldn't rule the party out of contention.
Wokery covers everything from transgender bathrooms (a niche concern) to DEI hiring, meaning that many talented white employees can’t get promoted over mediocre minority employees (a much more general concern, but coming from exactly the same source). Two-tier policing does not affect the white middle classes in London and the shires, but two-tier laws and hiring practices do.
@@yogi1kenobi dropping fast among whom? I like the fact the Labour Government is using Tory laws against the Tories own far right supporters. It's pure political karma.
@@baronrodrigo5049 you don't for me. I'm quite happy we have adults in Government and finally tell the far right where to go instead of pandering to them for votes like the Tories did for 10 years.
@@mr.mayhem7402 When exactly did Labour lurch to the far left? Those who supported Corbyn really don't like Labour under Starmer. As far as we're concerned they're just Tories light. Meanwhile the Tories are further right than they have ever been. All this talk about the hero Thatcher, but look at them. Major? A leftie Tory. Clarke? A leftie Tory. Heseltine? A leftie Tory. Tebbit? He wrote a piece for the Mirror as early as 2011 slagging off Cameron for privatisation initiatives in the NHS. Let's face it, for all this gabble about 'Sunak is a socialist', if Thatcher were reborn tomorrow she'd be condemned by those same people as a Stalinist.
@@mr.mayhem7402 Now, now comrade. No need to cry now that the government have seized control of production and implemented an equal wage for all. You don't have the time, those potatoes will not harvest themselves.
@@dazjackson1972 Take a look at those other parties. Not one of them is fit for government at the present time; I don't see any encouraging sign that any of them ever will be. Politics is difficult: government is even more difficult - it's not a science, but it's not an art either: it's dealing with impossible circumstances, events and issues you can't control and half the time can't even influence. Just swapping personnel or parties isn't any kind of answer - we're all stuck in the muck.
