To think the Tories must actually want to loose the next election?

Calling them thick conspiracy theorists will make them adversarial and entrenched.

1. They already are exactly that.

2.Voting based on that would prove that they are exactly what I said they were. Thick, easily manipulated and permanently aggrieved.

1. Anyone who can look around our country after 13 years of the Tories and consider giving them another five years to wreak havoc is unreachable by reason, facts or logic.

3 Luckily there aren't many of them.

As per bloody usual they're going to skip off into the sunset (paying themselves huge exiting payments) while leaving a complete shambles in their wake.

And leaving the tax payers of all shades to pay for the mess.

When you stop laughing, you will realise how true it is.

I'll drop that into my shuffle list. Wet weekends are fast approaching.

@SerendipityJane I'll take a look, hopefully its on kindle, I need a book to read.. Likewise, I recommend "The Righteous Mind", Jonathan Haidt.

But aside from my rant and grievance against this government, ideally we could all go in to election times with some degree of an open mind, listen to manifesto pledges, watch the debates and make a decision based on that.

Well that's never going to happen. So the next best thing you can do is mitigate the outcomes of a lottery based electoral system. Which worked fine as long as no one expected the government to actually do anything. However one of the downsides of giving everyone the vote, is now people expect to see it leads to something.

In "Parliament of Whores", P.J. O'Rourke ponders on the recent modern phenomena that "the government" must do something and wonders where it came from, and what it means.

In a perfect world people would not be so set in their views. Some people still vote for Labour based on things that happened in the 60s, 70s and 80s, before they, and many current politicians were even born. Some people still vote conservative because they feel that they will reward their hard work, be tough on crime and stay out of peoples lives, when they banned people from seeing dying relatives, taxed middle earners into oblivion and don't bother with shoplifters until they nick £200 worth of stuff.

But aside from my rant and grievance against this government, ideally we could all go in to election times with some degree of an open mind, listen to manifesto pledges, watch the debates and make a decision based on that.

It's true what they say about the internet ...

Whose way?

You wouldn't, until the exit poll arrives at 10pm on election day. And you'll see that despite everyone's friendship group voting one way, internet discussion forums unanimously showing support and twitter lightening up with hashtags you love, it didn't go your way again.

On a more serious note, basically when you cancel out the entrenched votes, it's a small proportion of floating voters that hold the balance.

Is that democracy ?

Calling them thick conspiracy theorists will make them adversarial and entrenched.

How could we tell ?

Your hard core Labour and hard core Tories are deeply entrenched. For ease of illustration, not actual figures, say 33.3% will vote for a chimpanzee with a blue rosette and 33.3% will vote for Lama with a red rosette. That is 33.4% of people that are open to discussion and persuasion, and it is that 33.4% that will win or lose you an election. Of that 33.34 there will be people that voted Conservative at previous elections because their policies and personnel resonated greater than Labours' equivalent. They didn't chose to vote blue because their parents, grand parents and great grand parent did, and if Labour make a better argument this time around they might persuade them to give them their vote. Calling them thick conspiracy theorists will make them adversarial and entrenched.

Yep
I'd love to be wrong
(Lovely to see you btw - a fellow Sept 08 graduate here!)

Yes, but they want to steal as much as possible from the country first.

They have doubled the “severance” pay for MPs who lose their seats deliberately because they know loads of them will be in this position.

They’re an absolute disgrace

What is the word for someone who bases a decision on an assertion from a political party without applying their own checks :

A) twat
B) bellend
C) thick

Tbh I wouldn't be suprised, but if that is the case we should be very worried as it means worse is to come and they want no part of it

Pretty odd considering the Tories have never been a low tax party (unless you are mega wealthy).

for her. If you want to be thanked for doing a good job Gillian, try doing a good job!

@Everanewbie if, as you say, calling people thick makes them vote Tory you can bet your bottom dollar Tory shills will be doing it. So there's no point in anyone else holding their tongue.

Instead of making a rational argument as to why a habitual Conservative voter should consider voting Labour

Since we have already established on this thread that a lot of Tory voters don't apply any critical thinking to their vote (do I really need to cite the posts) then that seems like an awful lot of work for no reward.

"So, Prime Minister, what would you like to talk about ?" was how Alec Douglas-Homes first TV interview went. Plus ca change, n'est ce pas ?

Oh, he will. After all if they are going to lose, they need to do it with someone that can then immediately jettison in order to try and pretend they have sorted things out. Scape goat may sound cruel, but there are historical precedents.

So now we know that, we can speculate on how things are shaping up to replace him. A quite insightful discussion I read recently noted that while whoever wants to takeover when Rish! is trounced really needs to start their campaign now, it will be a lot easy when there are only 100 Tory MPs to court than the 350 we have now. Especially when so many are standing down.

For that reason, the recent reanimation of the Bravertron seems noteworthy.

I think a large part of the problem here is that this siege mentality doesn't take any voters with you. Instead of making a rational argument as to why a habitual Conservative voter should consider voting Labour, or indeed perhaps LD, Green or SNP, you attack them as being thick, hysterical and conspiracy theorists. You and your mates might like the 'evil self serving tory' comments and give yourselves a slap on the back, but on the other side someone is saying 'stupid woke money squandering swines who want to take my hard earned money and give it to people that can't be bothered to work'. Popular stuff among fascist cab drivers and pub bores. Both are equally lazy generalisations without nuance.

Politics is a spectrum. Some say even a horseshoe where extreme left and right almost meet. Those who believe in personal responsibility and tend to believe that the state should stay out of their lives as far as possible tend to go blue. Those who believe that everyone should be looked after by the state and it the prosperity of individuals is the responsibility of the state typically go red. Most people sit somewhere between these. You win elections by persuading those people.

They've had 13 years.

If they wanted to sort anything at all out, that's quite long enough, surely.

It won't be Gillian Keegan either after her little outburst on ITV

I'm not sure Rishi will be the Tory leader at the next GE.😆

Hi Nish !