To feel sorry for the Tories?

[User135644]

The Conservative Party are a British institution. The most successful political party in the democratic world. They're going through a bad time at the moment and have been dealt a bad hand. They inherited a global financial crash which the western world is still to recover from and then a once in a lifetime pandemic which has further crippled the economy. Now there's wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Really unfortunate circumstances for them to operate in.

It looks like they're going to get a really bloody nose in the next election. Starmer has taken the centre ground and now Reform are starting to steal their MPs as well as voters. Now even their biggest donor is caught up in a scandal. When it rains it pours.

How can they recover from this? Can they recover from this?

The Tories are the great survivors but it's hard to see how they can win the next election, or maybe even the one after that.

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I’m not convinced an organisation that aims to “take the fight to the Establishment” is a source to be trusted.

@Alcyoneus ….this is so funny to read !Errrr who cannot STRING a coherent sentence together 😶🤔

Ah yes. You call yourself a socialist but I perceive you are wearing shoes - pray how do you account for this discrepancy?

Followed by smug , self satisfied smirk.

The economic landscape hasn't fundamentally changed, especially in those 7 months. It was a lie to get votes from the left, a left that has since been systematically purged.

Getting Starmer is getting 5 more years of Tory fiscal policy. He's said they're going to stick to it. Unless he's lying?

It's nothing to do with Corbyn, who btw Starmer claimed in 2020 was a friend & colleague who he had great respect for. Although by 2023 he'd never been friends with Corbyn.

Can we do a 'but Boris Johnson' yet

Would make a change from 'but Jeremy Corbyn'

The economic landscape hasn't fundamentally changed

Did you manage to type that with a straight face? Almost immediately after Starmer took over as leader we had a global pandemic that changed everything, especially the economic landscape. Have you seen how much borrowing increased to pay for that?

My god Sunak mad. Rumours of an election to establish his own mandate. He's never had one and last week wasn't any good for a different reason.

I hope he does get challenged or there is a no confidence vote. He should lose.

He's spent his entire career serving institutional powers that function to prevent fundamental change.

In Starmer's words "Some of the things I thought that needed to change in police services we achieved more quickly than we achieved in strategic litigation ... I came better to understand how you can change by being inside and getting the trust of people".

If you read about Starmer's career you will find a list of occasions on which he has fought for fundamental change.

@BIossomtoes

That is a shit scary chart of National debt.

We are now in the insane position of paying roughly the same amount in interest on the national debt as we are on education.

Yet there are still people wanting the Government or next Labour Govt to borrow more, increasing debt further.

Reminds me of a quote from Alexander Tytler (1747-1813)

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy"

That is a shit scary chart of National debt.

Yup. But apparently a Labour government will bankrupt the country. That ship appears to have already sailed.

There’s plenty of money. Just tax the rich appropriately.

This.

There is plenty of money but it's concentrated on the hands of very few, for whom it is convenient to shout that they work harder. Which they don't.

The fundamentals haven't. In fact we've been on the same path for at least 40 years. It's about fundamental policy being discarded, not budgetary smoke and mirrors. For example, Starmer committed to pledge 5 (common ownership of public services) as part of his campaign for leader before discarding it. The arguments for common ownership haven't changed because our balance of payments increased.

You said the economic landscape didn’t change. Demonstrably it did. Don’t swerve off onto a different course just because you’ve been proved wrong. Aspiration isn’t policy. It’s perfectly obvious that inheriting a catastrophic economic situation will affect just about every aspiration.

I said, "The economic landscape hasn't fundamentally changed". It hasn't. The same pattern of; public assets going into private hands, weakening of employment rights, outsourcing of public services to private companies, cutting of funding for services, failure to regulate the City, lack of investment in critical infrastructure.

These are policy decisions, albeit ideologically driven, and Starmer shows no sign of being able, or willing, to offer an alternative.

He won't do it, we saw in Nottingham what happens if you object to critical cuts in services. You get suspended because "we want to present an image of being fiscally responsible"

He's a bad faith actor who, if he leads Labour into 5 years of simply place holding for the Tories, will be the last Labour PM we have in my lifetime.

And stop giving them massive handouts in the name of business deals.

They can't be taxed more, because otherwise they wouldn't invest the money they didn't work to earn in businesses that pay their workers so poorly the workers have to recieve state benefits to barely get by.

But then they wouldn't donate to our party, and when they do, they are definetely not racist to say they want a black woman shot for being a black woman.

Wise words @JessS1990

What part of the country being effectively bankrupt are you having trouble with? There is no money. This isn’t 1997, the Tories have bled the country dry.

@BestBadger instead of telling us what you think will happen, why don't you tell us what you want to happen and who you will vote for?

Starmer said "Utilities should be in public hands...." given what we ve seen over the last few decades, most people would agree with that... the problem is, it would cost 100s of billions to do so, possibly it was doable pre pandemic but it isn't now.

Of course the economic outlook has altered, dramatically!

What we can do is regulate far more effectively, stop the regulator working hand in hand with the utility, for example Ofgem or Ofwat.

But the bottom line is that Corbyn had go or we may have seen the end of the Labour party (not all his fault by any means)
Starmer had to win and its proven to be a good choice given the mess the Tories are in and the poll lead.

What would you prefer? that Labour become a protest movement with 10 MPs?

We also haven't seen the Manifesto, remember too that Blair introduced policies that weren't in the 1997 manifesto, such as SureStart.

"Dealt a bad hand"...? They have decimated our public services and presided over some of the most shambolic and corrupt governments this country has ever seen. They were not "dealt" anything. They are absolutely culpable for the wretched state of things.

@1dayatatime Who wants more borrowing? oh yes, the Tories do, who over 4 of the next 5 years are planning on increasing it....

We will need to alter the tax burden, too many people have seen huge increases in wealth without an increased tax burden e.g Richi Sunak.

Unearned income and asset taxes are going to have to alter.

But this wont happen under a Tory Govt.