It’s a lesson centre-right parties across Europe haven’t learned, to be fair – and the hard-right parties will always find a more extreme viewpoint.

Oh it’s obvious – when they said “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, they’ve not (yet) been tough enough.

Wasn’t that a New Labour strapline in 1997?

@Tom-B It was, but I thought ‘Causes of crime’ meant improving education/opportunity?

Reading the Observer today, there are growing protests about the asylum seekers who are to be deported to Rwanda, particularly in the ‘performative cruelty’ of the manner in which its being done

I think that once the reality of this starts to get mainstream coverage and these ‘immigrants’ become real people, with lives and families, I don’t think it’s going to the vote winner Rishi hopes for.

They hear a bang at the door and it’s the Home Office’: threat of being ‘disappeared’ haunts asylum seekers amid Rwanda crackdown

The gammons will love it, obviously, but I’d imagine that most people are going to get increasingly uncomfortable with footage of real people being rounded up like criminals and packed off to Africa

And that’s before factoring the enormous cost and the fact that it won’t make a blind bit of difference to ‘Stop the Boats’

“Only if the accusation is not justified I would have thought. Since one accepted definition is “a black person who is overeager to win the approval of whites” I think it describes Suella Braverman perfectly.”

But binners was talking about Kemi Badenoch.

You need to spend more time ‘thinking’ and less time typing.

To be fair there’s barely a fag paper between Badanoch and Cruella as far as both ideology and personality are concerned. Both utterly vile human beings

You need to spend more time ‘thinking’ and less time typing.

Thank you for the tip.

I still “think” that it describes Suella Braverman perfectly.

I’ve just seen her described as ‘a Ouija board linked to the malevolent presence of Enoch Powell’ 😂

I do not understand why they think harder right policies will win them an election. All the evidence of late shows it’s being rejected by the British public.

Hey, it’s working for America, so it’s bound to work for us!

I know it’s not Rishi but there’s a most excellent spat on X. Count Binface got more votes than the Britain First candidate but the BF lot are fighting back demanding that the votes other BF candidates got in constituencies where Count Binface wasn’t standing are also included.

Ha the BF lot have clearly been on the nose beers early doors…..I love the claim that they beat Laurence Fox 🤦

Hey, it’s working for America, so it’s bound to work for us!

Their system is even more broken than ours, so maybe not the best comparison. But some spod in Tory hq is Def looking across the pond for ideas

I expect the Tories will already have their troops taking pointers off Trumps people and we’re about to see the nastiest election campaign ever, by some margin

That truly unhinged black and white film they put out against Khan probably being the sign of what’s to come

If the do go down that route I can see it backfiring massively in them.
Will just be unpleasant to witness it before they get stuffed

politecameraaction

Are you reading a different article or something?

Nope.😉

Second, the pundits’ calculators suggested that if the whole country had voted on Thursday, the gap between the Conservatives and Labour comes out at 9%: not, theoretically, an insurmountable gap to close when the general election campaign is miles away and could bend the curves.

One cabinet minister said that after months of “frothing at the mouth about apocalypse actually, maybe we could have a hung parliament. This will encourage people to believe there is a fight worth having.”

Remember too, Labour fell so far behind in 2019 that it needs to shift millions of votes, not a few here and there, to win outright when it comes to the national question.

And even if the numbers look scary in lots of parts of the country, with the Tories losing hundreds of campaign foot soldiers, changing the leader to an as-yet-undecided alternative candidate might just cause more disruption, more bellyaching, more turmoil.

To be fair there’s barely a fag paper between Badanoch and Cruella as far as both ideology and personality are concerned. Both utterly vile human beings

The other thing they have in common is a density greater than Osmium which is an achievement all on its own.

crazy-legs took the words out of my mouth in a post he made earlier. 👍

The problem with going every further right is you have to keep making ever more extreme and impossible to implement policies, eg Rwanda.

Secondly, however far right they go, Reform will still say it’s not enough and Reform will ALWAYS be further right as they know they will never be in power, hence can promise policies that will never need to be implemented. “You want only white unicorns, we will impliment that!”

Basically, Reform can be far right x ♾️.

So yes, the Tories should be going towards the centre but they now haven’t got the time to do so and even if they did their own voters and Reform will crucify them.

It’s entirely of their own making, this existential crisis. It would be hugely funny if it wasn’t so damaging to the country.

Now many, many people know about the huge advantage tactical voting gives, I hope we can keep the far right of of power, whatever it’s party name morphs into.

I think, @poopscoop, if you read that pieces and came away with the conclusion “Laura K is a raging Tory”, it’s because you thought that before you began it, and not because of what she wrote.

It’s not a certainty that Labour will win, and you wouldn’t expect a political journalist to make that kind of sweeping assertion now anyway. “not, theoretically, an insurmountable gap” is hardly telling the Tories they’re golden. And the reasons why she thinks Sunak is safe from internal challenge for the moment are sensibly explained.

politecameraaction
Free Member
I think, @poopscoop, if you read that pieces and came away with the conclusion “Laura K is a raging Tory”, it’s because you thought that before you began it, and not because of what she wrote.

It’s ok for us to disagree politecameraaction and I don’t get into the permawars, I don’t believe you do either. Your opinion is just as valid as mine even if it differs from mine.👍

Most importantly, you and I agree in about 95% of our politics, we want the same thing.  4% of that 5% remaining is probably how we define the best way to do it and the last 1% is about Laura K in this particular article.

(As an aside, I would be mortified to see the Beeb disappear and never have bought into it being biased.)

If i lived there,  I’d d be a bit worried that big gains for the centre left (libs, labour and the greens) means the Tories will double down on hard right policies

They probably will. But if they become a minority issues party in the process, they deserve that to happen.

bigrich
Full Member
If i lived there, I’d d be a bit worried that big gains for the centre left (libs, labour and the greens) means the Tories will double down on hard right policies

That’s absolutely the direction they will at least say that are going to voters. Hell, they actually would go ever further right but they only have the time for announcements now, not enough to actually do much about them. Thankfully.

Going to be a nasty GE campaign though. It’s going to be vicious and I still think there will be violence aimed at some poor sod in one of the more moderate parties.

The whole MAGA rigged election trope has been embraced too, within the right/ far right, even a Tory MP gave it inferred support on X in a nudge, nudge, wink, wink way yesterday.

The Tory party has been on a one way journey into right wing nationalist oblivion since 2016. It’s been a Talibanisation, with each of these unhinged factions claiming that only they’re the true believers.

It’s now just completely unhinged and nobody but the real nutters want to go where they want to take us

So **** ‘em! Let them fight it out with Farage and Reform as to who can be the most mental, while those of us who are ok with the 21st century and don’t want to live in some myth of 1955 just leave them to their ever decreasing circles

That’s absolutely the direction they will at least say that are going to voters.

Because they feel their growing popularity is all down to that?

I think a much better ploy might be to lie to the electorate concerning the economy – they have always been very good at that and it has given them some excellent results in the past.

It just needs some nonsensical but well delivered myths endlessly repeated until people start believing that they must be true because they hear them every day.

After all the hard work your Conservative government has put in inflation is finally falling and everything is going to be really great very soon. Don’t spoil it by voting Labour because they will trash the economy – everyone knows that Labour always do.

It sounds a bit more of a convincing reason to vote Tory than “we’re better racists than Reform UK”. No one is going to believe that Nigel Farage isn’t a better racist than Rishi Sunak.

ernielynch
Because they feel their growing popularity is all down to that?

I think a much better ploy might be to lie to the electorate concerning the economy – they have always been very good at that and it has given them some excellent results in the past.

I agree. Heading further right seems to have backfired but there are still countless influential Tories going on X and TV stating they aren’t cutting through because they, “insert quote about not being real Tories at the moment, or spouting off a far right agenda they need to embrace.”

They seem to have a political momentum behind them now that seems unstoppable within the party. I’ve no doubt they will talk a pack of lies about the economy but I think even they know that much of the electorate simply won’t buy it anymore. We are all living the reality everyday. Add in the NHS, “pothole armageddon”, dentists etc and they can lie all they want. It won’t float.

It seems certain now that their main battle line will be immigration, way too late to change tack and way to much infighting to steer a new course.

Mad, as it doesn’t seem to be working but the Tory party is it’s own worst enemy now.

Just saw this on the FT front page as if by magic. Lol  pretty much says what I believe they will do.

Just saw this on the FT front page as if by magic. Lol  pretty much says what I believe they will do.

They have arrived at the meme of the dog sitting in a room on fire “this is fine”

Unfortunately for us, we are in the room with them shouting “help”

the Tories ignoring completely that theyre now the 3rd party in local government, behind the lib Dems

desperately chasing reform votes, meanwhile…. https://twitter.com/MattSingh_/status/1787094579038093789?t=Mhg87NabmWqkGPDI3AFTgA&s=19

Tactical voting, the Tory nightmare.👍

They (Tories)  will be screaming about it being unfair/rigged after the election. However, the far right have use of the same tool and shouldn’t be underestimated in the future.

After all the hard work your Conservative government has put in inflation is finally falling and everything is going to be really great very soon. Don’t spoil it by voting Labour because they will trash the economy – everyone knows that Labour always do.

They have been saying that for the last year and I think at last a lot of people are not falling for it.  Everyone they send out to the media each day says the same unchallenged crap and the lazy people ‘interviewing’ them can’t be bothered to put them straight every day so are as much to blame

Being kind to them they may not have time as they have their own agenda/questions to get through as easy enough to ask (“So what exactly did the tory party do to bring down inflation” and “how are people going to be better off seeing that things are continuing to get more expensive by the month”)

This is also the Biden dilemma: there’s no point telling people the economy is OK. If they don’t already feel it, they won’t believe you regardless of the facts. “You’ve never had it so good”.

PMQs on Wednesday should be amusing.
I note that we’ve seen nothing of Rishi for a while, it’s been a selection of fall MPs wheeled out to deal with the press so far…

They have been saying that for the last year and I think at last a lot of people are not falling for it.

They really haven’t . What do you think the very real and obvious threat from Reform UK is based on – the state of the economy? Support for Reform UK has more than double in the last year.

Suella Braverman was making the headlines again yesterday and she was urging Sunak to cap legal immigration, withdraw form the European Convention on Human Rights, and stop the boats. That’s the sort of things that the Tories have been talking about in the last year.

When people claim that the Tories have lurched to the right it really isn’t with regards to the economy. I see no evidence that the Tories have become significantly more right-wing in that respect, and yet everyone on this thread seems to agree that they have become more right-wing.

There was a  Tory MP on the radio who said that responding to voters going left by going further right was a mistake.

The phrase “never correct your enemy while they are making a mistake” is more and more accurate

bigrich
Full Member
There was a Tory MP on the radio who said that responding to voters going left by going further right was a mistake.

He’s spot on of course but he’s a marginalised voice in what now passes for the Tory party.

grahamt1980
Full Member
The phrase “never correct your enemy while they are making a mistake” is more and more accurate

Damn true, the Tories are their own worst enemy.

And in answer to what happened last week, they couldn’t signal their total desperation and complete bankruptcy of ideas more than bycoming out with this latest culture war nonsense.

We’ll file this under the ‘seriously? You think this is what the country needs right now? Really? Section.

You couldn’t make it up. Though they clearly are…

Gender-specific toilets to be required in non-residential buildings in England

When people claim that the Tories have lurched to the right it really isn’t with regards to the economy. I see no evidence that the Tories have become significantly more right-wing in that respect

What about the bit where Liz bypassed the OBR, ignored all sane advice had the Tufton Street lot conduct a financial experiment on the entire UK by announcing billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts, mainly for the rich?

That spooked such left-wing organisations as the Bank of England and the international bond markets and crashed the economy, requiring an enormous bailout to stop the entire financial sector from collapsing

Its difficult to imagine how an economic policy could have been any more right wing

@bigrich Some of them do have insight, but the one thing that’s been consistently depressing since, well, 2016 is the way that the One Nation wing of the Conservative party have sat on their hands whenever they’ve had an opportunity to rein in the headbangers.