So, what will it take for the Tories tod itch Cameron?

'No longer is European law an incoming tide flowing up the estuaries of England. It is now like a tidal wave bringing down our sea walls and flowing inland over our fields and housesto the dismay of all. '

Exactly, and of course it is deliberate and of course our luvvies will not dredge our rivers to save us from that fate.

But the people now know it and that is why they are voting UKIP.

'They are pleasing themselves Claig. They have achieved what they want - they have power.'

Yes you are right. But they will lose power. But the real tragedy for the public is that they don't care if they lose power because what matters to them is the path that they are on and they will just hand the baton to Labour who will continue along the same path. They don't listen to the public, they don't care about them, because they are not allowed to change path, the path has been predetermined for them, and now the public knows it.

That is why the public is voting UKIP and is about to cause a political earthquake and a crisis of credibility and a loss of faith in the establishment.

And Tory voters have abandoned the Tories, which they always believed and hoped stood against the country going to the dogs and stood for conservative, values that respect history and tradition. But it is all going to the dogs, because the Tories are almost as "politically correct" and as big spinners and as progressive as the progressives in New Labour. tory voters passed the "tipping point" and switched to UKIP because they had convictions and wanted the country to be saved from going to the dogs.

No single policy the Tories can offer can win them back. It would require a sea change, an end to spin and "political correctnesss", but the Tories only have one year left before the election and they will find it hard to turn around the tanker and change their progressive habits of a lifetime in that short time.

But, if any party can do it, then the Tories can. They can be ruthless, they can change track, but only if their real leadership understands what has happened with the electorate and why it has happened. Can they do it? Not if they continue reading the Guardian. To understand the people, they have to start reading the Daily Mail and they haven't got much time left.

Ukip is the fly in their soup. It has exposed them all for what they are - puppets - and without their master's approval they are not allowed to change, so all they can do is join together and try to swat the fly that has shown the public what they are.

They hoped that no one would ever mention that there is an "open door" immigration policy from the EU and that they are all "powerless" to do anything about it. Being "powerless" is being a "puppet" and they didn't want the public to find that out because the public might then ask who their masters are.

'All these politicians are just people-pleasers.'

But they are pleasing no one. A party described as consisting of "fruitcakes" has trounced them. Cleggy, educated at the best private schools and the best universities was trounced. Are they all stupid, can they not see what the public feel and think or do they understand it but cannot do anything about it. They are at a complete loss, they are all at sea, they cannot please anyone and their voters are abandoning them. They are all "out of touch". They are all losing. They can't all be stupid, they went to Oxbridge, so they must have no choice.

Newsnight, a progressive programme, has unserstood it.

They said today that the feeling among UKIP supporters is that the country is going to the dogs, that it is being ruined and that that is hard for teh establishment parties to counter because it is not about a particular policy, it is about everything.

They didn't say the real reason that people feel thecountry is being ruined, they may not understand it - but it is "political correctness" and the establishment parties cannot counter it because by definition they are all "politically correct" and are not allowed to be anything else.

'whose only objective is the seizure of power itself and who will tell the elecrorate whatever it wants to hear to gain that power'

I don't think that is it. They know what the people want but they are not allowed to say what the people want to hear. They are all politically correct, they are all progressive and they probably all read the Guardian. if they said what the people want to hear, then they would win, but they can't. The Tories will never say what the people want to hear, they can never say what UKIP says (which is now Britain's most popular party) because they are not allowed to.

UKIP is the Independence party, they are independent, but none of the other parties are independent, they are not allowed independence, they have to be "politically correct" whether they like it or not and that is why they have lost public approval and it will only get worse for them because they are not allowed to really change. They will spin around the edges to try and fool the public, but really saying what the public want to hear is off bounds for them. And they are all in the same boat and that is why their only strategy is to all join together , to be "all in it together" and try to attack UKIP together. They are all for one and one for all, they are not allowed to make the correct call.

I am totally convinced that the core Tory vote feels let down by Cameron, & feels he doesn't stand up for them, hence the surge to ukip. And 5 years of a labour govt is seen as a price worth paying to get rid of Cameron.

Who to replace him though? Boris? Gideon? Theresa May? None very exciting really.

Agree about the 'career politician' - when asked why he wanted to be PM, Cameron famously replied 'because I think I'd be rather good at it - how hard can it be?'.

"Please show us the salary band re the 73% tax you mentioned, as clearly the Miliband fight to win the middle classes, who would also benefit from the £10,500 start level of income tax."

I'm not sure what your question is, as this sentence doesn't make sense.

The 73% hits families with children, salary range between 50k and 60k. And remember households on 100k may not have lost any child benefit.
There is a little benefit from the 10500 starting level, though the starting rate of HRT was also brought down so the first raising of the personal allowance would not benefit HRT payers. Subsequent rises have been passed on, but families are worse off if they are losing child benefit.

In terms of aspiration, it is not good for a so called low tax party to impose marginal rates this high - where is the motivation to work harder?

As I said downthread, I am not really condoning or criticising policy, the question was about how long it would take for Tories to ditch Cameron, and my answers are in response to that. Tory grass roots are VERY hacked off, even if you think the things they are hacked off by are small. The last thing they want is for Cameron to win, and them be stuck with him for another 5 years. Hence the move to UKIP - I don't think they care if Labour get in, as long as Cameron goes.

He won't be able to take up a Commissioner post until 2019. Commissioners don't resign very often, the only resignations I can recall are the whole Santer Commission(!) in 1999 and the Maltese one in 2012. I've heard nothing about him going for the next Commission.

I expect we'll be seeing him here in Brussels before long though.

LilyBolero….On taxes, Labour changed from a 40% tax rate to 50% in the last months in power, if anything is brought in LESS tax revenue which wasn’t the point, and sent out the wrong 1970’s signal to inward investing wealth/jobs creators.

Please show us the salary band re the 73% tax you mentioned, as clearly the Miliband fight to win the middle classes, who would also benefit from the £10,500 start level of income tax.

Please explain why ‘in touch’ Brown took away the 10p start rate of income tax in 2008, to no doubt help the poor through the recession?

Please explain why Brown lowered the tax on speculation, the Capital Gains Tax, to 10% (the lower end of taper relief) early in his administration when “tea lady’s paid more tax” than Private Equity company owners , and still left it at a flat rate of 18% in 2010?

In answer to the original post, here is the definitive answer.

“David Cameron would quit as Prime Minister after general election if he could not deliver on in-out EU referendum pledge”
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-would-quit-as-prime-minister-after-general-election-if-he-could-not-deliver-on-inout-eu-referendum-promise-9299472.html

“David Cameron pledged tonight to step down as Prime Minister after next year’s general election if he could not deliver on his promise to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.”

“His comments indicate that the pledge to stage the EU vote in 2017 would be a “red line” for the Conservatives in any post-election negotiations to form a Coalition government.”

So as Ukip CANNOT deliver on their promise to bring the UK out of the EU, and the Labour and Lib Dem's will not offer a referendum, if the Conservatives do not get a majority in 2015, we will be stuck in the EU for the next decade at least, waiting for the Conservatives to get a new leader and try again.

Lilybolero ….. you are avoiding the question, “the one year consolidation” to 2011 when the crash was from late 2007, was what, other than Labour’s economic ‘smoke and mirrors’, waiting for 'something to turn up'?

WHERE WAS THE ECONOMIC GROWTH PLAN for the government of the day, to put the economy on a balanced and sustainable footing – you cannot borrow and tax an economy to growth when the structure of the economy is wrong?

Look at the definitions of ‘growth’ below, any fool of a government can borrow MORE money to achieve fools growth (paying more interest on top), sustaining the Quangocracy ‘growth’, YES the government spending £167 billion (Darling’s figure) more than we earn BUYS Ballsian ‘growf’, but when there is sod all else, when the money runs out, so does the ‘growf’.

Gross Domestic Product – Basic Definition.
www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gdp.asp

Private Consumption/Spending + Government Spending + Business capital Spending + Net Exports (Exports – Imports).

That is why when Osbourne took a UK debt junkie off the Labour borrowing ‘fix’ (and Europe slowed further), our GDP stalled, a £167 billion deficit buys more ‘government’ and ‘private consumption’ that the £108 billion deficit now, especially having increased the Public Sector head count by over 1 million since 1997 – in the Labour growth Ponzi Scheme.
www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-29/u-k-economic-growth-accelerates-to-0-8-as-recovery-broadens.html
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27177766

If a Labour government lose 1 million manufacturing jobs through a global boom (before the financial crash), when they’re spending hundreds of £million of ‘jobs for the apparatchiks’ government Quangocracies – how can you possibly think that they had a solution in a crisis, which would explain WHY WE NEVER SAW THEIR PLAN – which was to no doubt to excessively tax after 2010, as they did in 1997 when didn’t need to?
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html

Labour without a plan, laughed at the Conservatives saying Osbourne's Plan A would lose 1 million jobs, whereas with a more vibrant private sector the opposite was true.

Sorry, it appears I was mistaken. Johnson only has one illegitimate child.

Sorry for multiple posts

I think Clegg has tied his future to the outcome of the European elections. If they lose all their MEPs, given they're positioning themselves as the party of 'in', it'll be difficult for him to ride it out.

That said, I don't think that there are many LibDems who'd want to take over leadership of the party ATM. You don't get the impression that there are any Liberal Democrats stalking Nick Clegg, waiting to pounce at his weakest moment. If he stays leader, it'll be because no-one else wants to do the job.

Here's something about BoJo's extra-marital activities. The opposition would have a field day if he were selected as Tory leader.

Didn't the Court of Appeal attack Johnson for his attitude towards his two illegitimate children rabbitrisen? I don't think you need to allege he's had affairs if it's been recognised in a court of law.

Or should that be alledgedly had affairs? Hard to keep up with celebs.

Not sure what to make of Boris. Loose cannon, or safe.
I think that becuase he has had affairs, I think of him as untrustworthy. If you can do that to someone you loved, you can do a lot to the country and not be bothered.