we're gonna get this nonsense all the way to October/November
The guy from the NHS Confederation is very impressive.
Victor Adebowale, Baron Adebowale - His Desert Island Discs was a good listen. Years old now but I still go back from time to time.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b016kgtz
I love the fact that the right wing press went into meltdown when Angela Rayner described Rishi as a ‘pint-sized loser’ at PMQ’s, but then she’s subsequently pointed out that she was directly quoting Nadine Dorres 😂
I trust the little fella is enjoying his last week before the local elections, in the wake of which the Tory party will inevitably declare war on itself again.
I hope to god that, even just out of spite, he calls a general election as the letters go in.
California beckons…
I hope to god that, even just out of spite, he calls a general election as the letters go in.
Screaming '**** YOU' at your Parliamentary colleagues is a great way to propel yourself into a month of election campaigning, but I suspect, like all the other rumours, it's the usual scare tactics to prevent the letters going in in the first place. Would be fun if they ditched him for Mordaunt just so a sitting PM can lose their seat at a GE.
I wonder if Charles's re-emergence has got anything to do with Rishi wanting to pop in on Monday morning for "a quick chat"?
i think Charlie had heard about Sunak's campaign against sick note skivers & was worried he'd lose his state benefits 😉
on the subject of which
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1784256235811770414?t=fT9UXIa-brCik9mcOSmdbg&s=19
A grifter wanting his slice of the privatisation pie.
I’m not sure it’s that at all. I think he’s just had enough, and unless you’re Churchill, crossing the floor almost always seems to end political careers (he’s also said he’s not seeking re-election).
I think there’s a decent subset of Tory MPs who just want to get the election over with so they can get on with the next part of their lives. Poulter is in the happier position than some of them of having a career outside politics to fall back on.
Chris Philp has had 8 ministerial jobs in 4 years. Home office, justice, culture, treasury, cabinet office, minister for London, housing, home office again, this is his second attempt at it, as they just endlessly shuffled him around trying to find something he knew something about. Now they've given up and he's the Minister For Being Sent On TV This Week To Look Like A Mushroom
He was Paymaster General ffs! For 11 days!
Ratherbeintobago
Poulter has made it clear he wants more privatisation and this is his wsy to get a slice of the kucrative contracts Sweeting is going to dish out. He is going to be an adviser to labour.
Why has he only found his principles now? Its grift pure and simple
It would make me dance for joy if Rwanda now declared themselves ‘out’
That would be nice, but the chances are some of those millions have been siphoned off to some Rwandan cabinet ministers personal offshore bank account.
So they won't be looking to put an end to that gravy train.
Britain isn't the only country with a government of grifters.
Why has he only found his principles now?
Funny that innit? For 14 years he was happy to be a Tory MP and yet now, just a few months before a general election, he suddenly decides that he isn't a Tory after all and not only resigns from the party but joins Labour!
I think someone might be thinking of his post Parliamentary career - it's likely to be a long time before the Tories are back in government - time to rub shoulders with the new political masters.
I think for a while the one nation tories thought they had a chance to regain control of their party, but that glimmer has been snuffed.
Yeah, the Tory party is no more, UKIP metastasised it into the ugly beast of a monster it now is.
They will go full civil war after the GE.
UKIP is a dead duck, Reform is the new UKIP, and they are somehow polling better than the lib dems, lol!
If Reform packed up and went home, you'd see that massive lead labour have over the tories shrink to almost nothing as Reform voters would just vote tory again.
Labour are not doing well, it's just the tory vote is split...it was to UKIP, but now it's to Reform.
Labour are not doing well, it’s just the tory vote is split
How are Labour not doing well? Opinion polls put them on about 45%, and it's backed by by-election results, by any measure that is very good.
If Reform packed up and went home, you’d see that massive lead labour have over the tories shrink
This. Massively underpriced
How are Labour not doing well? Opinion polls put them on about 45%, and it’s backed by by-election results, by any measure that is very good.
As I alluded to, if you add up reform and conservative voting intentions, Labours 'lead' doesn't look so solid, As I imagine a lot (probably all) of potential reform voters, will just go back to voting conservative.
We could even see a reform/conservative coalition (shudder).
If you combined Tory and Reform support (it really doesn’t work that way, but let’s keep it simple), Labour would still have a 10% lead. That lead could well disappear, anything can happen… but currently it really does feel that the UK wants the Tories out, and as soon as possible.
To be honest I think there are a lot of labour voters that will vote Reform too, it's not just tory votes that are being taken.
So nearly half of all voters say that they would vote Labour if there was a general election right now and that isn't very good for Labour?
It doesn't matter one iota how well Reform UK are doing, 45% for any one party is extraordinarily good.
When do think was the last time any party got that size share of vote? 60 years ago? 80 years ago?
Reform packed up and went home, you’d see that massive lead labour have over the tories shrink
This. Massively underpriced
Reform pulling out as they did last time would surprise no one, but yougov polled on this and only about 3rd of reforms vote was winnable by the Tories, , reform were polling at about 8 or 9 % at the time so maybe youd say half of reforms current vote (which seems to have dropped off a bit with no benefit to the Tories)
So you'd be looking at maybe only a 100 seat majority for labour in the Tories best case scenario
If Reform packed up and went home, you’d see that massive lead labour have over the tories shrink
But the Tories have made this rod for their own back.
By opportunistically aping Reform/Brexit/Whatever Nigel calls it this week, they’ve tried to go toe to toe with them for the racist pensioner and white van driving BNP member vote, while alienating everyone else. Then they got carried away on post-Brexit hubris and purged anyone who didn’t sign up to the new flag-shagging agenda.
They didn’t have to do this, they chose to.
Now it’s all coming home to bite them on the arse. they’ve done so much damage to this country since 2016 with their opportunistic nationalist populism , that if they’re now undone by it then that’s exactly what they deserve
****’em!
Yeah I agree. All I'm saying, in a round-about sense is Labour are not polling so well on merit, they are polling so well because they are not the conservatives.
It's a pretty fragile place to be, especially as Starmer seems to be lurching ever more right, over EU policy, symbolic flag waving, etc.
I think you’re underestimating how appalled a lot of previous Tory voters are by Bluekip.
They’ve forsaken all human decency to pursue the right wing headbangers vote, but that can’t win you a majority. Thankfully
I’ve never bought into this daft ‘all Tory voters are *s’ narrative. It’s stupid. There are a lot of Tory voters who are socially liberal and look at this nasty populist rabble that they’ve become, with their bullshit culture wars, and think that they can’t vote for that.
That’s why they’re 20 points behind in the polls. They’ve made themselves a circle that can’t be squared. Move in one direction, whichever way, lose the same amount of voters in the other direction
Like I said… * ‘em!
I’ll be staying up all night when Rishi finally has the bollocks to call a general election, for all those ‘Portillo moments’
Please let one of them be Liz Truss!
It doesn’t matter one iota how well Reform UK are doing, 45% for any one party is extraordinarily good.
When do think was the last time any party got that size share of vote? 60 years ago?
I just looked it up - Ted Heath, 1970.
Interestingly, the closest since then: Maggie in 79 (43.9%) and then... Boris in 2019 (43.6%).
a lot of very bitter tory fanboys saying they're going to release the scandalous stuff on poulter....
I’ll be staying up all night when Rishi finally has the bollocks to call a general election
As will I, and I'm pretty sure Labour will win, but it won't be because Labour are a 'good' party, it will be because most people hate the conservatives...
...And that bothers me.
It bothers me that Labour will more than likely win (which is good) but a party shouldn't be elected on the basis that they are only slightly less of a bunch of bastards than the conservatives are.
Maybe I'm too idealistic, But I'd like to vote for a party that I belive in, rather than vote for 'party X' in order to get rid of 'Party Y'.
I have no control over the outcome, So I'm probably going to vote green for a laugh.
The constant binary flip flop between Labour and conservative, is not a bun fight I want to get involved with.
**** me, they have got to go, at any cost. They need to be removed from anywhere near government.
I'm speechless. First couple of paragraphs.
I’ve never bought into this daft ‘all Tory voters are ****s’ narrative. It’s stupid.
Not really. Okay the tory party is now worse than ever but lets not forget it has been horrible for a long time (Thatcher anyone). The fact people have chosen to vote for any form of tory party over the last 50 years says to me they are ****ers.
Labour never fights on a level playing field - the press is stacked against them. Run an ideologically socialist campaign and you get destroyed.
When do think was the last time any party got that size share of vote? 60 years ago? 80 years ago?
Last few Scottish elections. Snp vote is around that much and the labour vote used to be 45 % as well.
🤣
Okay the tory party is now worse than ever but lets not forget it has been horrible for a long time (Thatcher anyone). The fact people have chosen to vote for any form of tory party over the last 50 years says to me they are ****.
That's a very blinkered and bigoted attitude. Name calling is not a convincing argument in a debate.
Thatcher devastated many industries and communities, but created chances for many others - like my parents - to do very well. It's only now the longer term effects of Tory policy are biting them with NHS cuts and seeing how their grandkids are struggling to get a start in life that they are questioning their previous choices.
And for chunks of the last 50 years, the Labour alternative has been not always been an attractive option to people with their splits and internal faction fighting.
So I’m probably going to vote green for a laugh.
Aren't you a long time LibDem supporter?
More cash. Remember the tories exist for onecreason only. To keep wealth and power in the hands of the wealthy and powerful.
They have blood on their hands
IMO the problem is that the global right lacks a coherent narrative to counter democratic socialism. Hayek and the Austrian school of economics’ ideas about free-market individualism have been thoroughly debunked and they don’t have an ideology to replace it.
Hence they’re stuck on tax cuts at all costs, because that is what their membership wants. It remains to be seen how detached from political reality that is.
Ironically I think it’s the state of the roads that’s starting to filter through to the Tory heartlands that repeated cuts to public spending do have consequences.
Personally I think it’s past time that we moved towards evidence based policy making. We’ve had it for 40 years in healthcare, and we’ve (finally) been moving towards it for the past ten years in economics, it’s time that we demanded it in politics too.