To be absolutely looking forward to this Tory wipeout

[Viviennemary]

It isn't just me I'm sure but I am totally gleeful at this anticipated annihilation of the Tory party. I did vote Tory last time. But absolutely can't wait to see them routed. They've been awful. How could they have Liz Truss happen. She should have been chucked out the party.

I didn't say it necessarily had to be the Tory party. And agree they fucked up their 80 seat majority from 2019 and pissed away the last 3 years more focused on internal and leadership battles than running the country well.

But that doesn't change the need for a healthy opposition. Whether Tory, Lib Dem, or a mix of them and smaller parties.

I'd say the exact same thing if we were heading for a large Tory win. Need for a healthy opposition.

That said, it's completely up to the remaining Tories after this GE to decide how they sort themselves out. Continue infighting or do something more constructive. Their choice.

It's not a Tory specific thing, the infighting either. Labour has it too. Loads of Corbyn and more leftwing factions who're very against the current direction of the Labour party and they hate Starmer.

Both the Tories and Labour have infighting issues.

My ideal would be more Independents but unfortunately currently FPTP system makes that difficult to achieve.

@keffie12 me too - I will be up all night, don’t want to miss a thing 😄

It’s good you rate him this highly but I think world events will impact us more and that may not be calm

Well, that's quite in line with the police protexction officer and camdidate who bet on election date!!
Put your crystal ball away!!

@Againname thank you, I agree. I don't class the last labour govt as a true Labour Party and didn't vote for them once. I wasn't disabled then but still saw they weren't true supporters of vulnerable people.

I think this Labour Party are slightly better and certainly better than the tories who have ZERO shame in labelling those of us disabled/sick and not working as "malingerers" esp as in my case it's mostly (but not solely) Mh which sunak clearly stated as us being simply incapable of being able to manage life's ups and downs (like he's EVER had to worry about this!)

It drives me nuts!

I WISH I was healthy and robust but I'm not, add the decimation of heath support esp Mh services - well! It's a disgrace! And I agree not only screws people like me but ultimately the country because with support I COULD work! And be paying taxes and contributing which I would love to be.

@ShrinkingEveryDay What you haven’t understood is that we are far more successful with centre left and centre right politics. We’ve mostly had that for decades and there were points of agreement. I agree there’s too much short term ism but Labour has divisions too. In the past, lots of them. Blair was centre left so could hang around successfully. Cameron was sick of his right and Farage so called the referendum. He should have stuck it out but disrupters are here to stay. They have disrupted the Cons. Could be Labour next. It’s not healthy for longer term strategy either. One party politics might end up being Russia!

@noblegiraffe Clearly if the electorate wipe out the Conservatives we have no coherent opposition. So what then? A dictatorship? Who is going to put together alternative policies? Yes, we will need them at some point. We always do. Doesn’t matter whether it’s Blair or Thatcher. We needed an opposition to offer an alternative in a FPTP system. If we don’t have that, what? Massive issue for our democracy in my view. Just because you are a Labour supporter you should understand that a coherent opposition is vital. The Cons can regroup but need to clean up their party. As Labour has tried to do. Not electable otherwise.

@Graphista That's a good post.

And I'm definitely not, contrary to what some posters on this thread think, defending the current government's record including their appalling attitude towards the disabled (I do wonder what would've happened had Boris remained as PM, as I understand he pledged to end austerity but we'll never know now whether he was genuine about that).

Hopefully you're right that the current Labour party have moved on from their previous equally appalling attitude towards disabled and other vulnerable people.

I've said it on other threads. Austerity is not only morally wrong, it's also a false economy.

Good well-funded public services, more social housing, supportive benefits system, improved child support system, job education and training opportunities. Access to timely and effective help is better for individuals, better for society, and better for the economy. So really something that should be supported by both the left and right.

Not true. A healthy opposition ensures a government doesn't lean into becoming a dictatorship. It provides an important balance.

Recent history just doesn't suggest this. The Tories didn't even have a majority when they managed to illegally prorogue Parliament, one of the more outrageous acts of the executive towards the legislature.

The pattern in recent decades has very much been one of parties with small majorities or minority governments being vulnerable to their extremes and parties with larger stable majorities being able to marginalise them.

I'm not a fan of FPTP, but it's just not the case that smaller majorities have led to better legislation or governance. @Eleganz was right.

The polls that show a huge Tory defeat also show that Reform will get a large proportion of the votes. We have FPTP voting so I doubt Reform will get more than one or two MPs. Some Tory seats will no doubt go to Labour but a lot of people will mess around voting for the Greens. Overall I don’t think it will be as much of a landslide as people are saying because I think the polls are just asking people who they will vote for without taking account of the particular constituency.

That’s one example and don’t forget most systems of PR will mean that parties will work together all the time. So lots of back scratching. Look at Israel if you want to see how this doesn’t work for many.

This is how I feel too, @rooinspace - though I am wary of letting the SNP have any more influence.

You ve chosen one extreme but the bottom line is that all of Europe apart from Belarus and the UK use PR in one form or another.

Yes the UK does better with centre right/centre left Govts BUT that centre isn't fixed, it has moved to the right very considerably.

Hardened Thatcherites such as Clarke, Heseltine, Stewart, Soubry, Grieve all gone.
Even May, one the UKs most right wing Home Secretaries is now considered a woke liberal by the Tory party, consigned to the back benches.

The Le Pens RN is more to the left than the Tory Govt we now have ie pro EU, lower retirement age, better welfare.....

Borris johnson had a majority of just 80 seats, he drove through anything he wanted, including locking us all away for months on end.

Large majorities often lead to rebellions, as govt MPs feel safe to criticise, this happened to both Thatcher and Blair....

Small majorities often to lead to the very things you re complaining about.... Sunak now has a much smaller majority, he is doing as he wants, no one can stop him (obv pre election)

They’ve pissed away the last 3 years on leadership battles, scandals and a total lack of action. They can’t organise a healthy anything.

Not the last 3 years, the last 8 years.
Vote for David Cameron's Tory Party, get Theresa May's Tory party.
Vote Theresa May's Tory party, get Boris Johnson's Tory party.
Vote Boris Johnson's Tory party, get Liz Truss's Tory party.
Then Rishi Sunak's Tory party.

Conservative chaos has cost the country dearly. Not only that, but people now think this sort of shit is normal in UK government.🤦‍♀️. That's why they talk about Starmer being replaced once in No.10. But it is not normal and never has been.

The Tories are incapable of running a political party nevermind a country.

If the electorate wipe out the Conservatives then the Lib Dems be the next largest party and form the official opposition.

And I'm not a Labour supporter.

I have a very close friend who used to be a political correspondent for The Times. She's retired now, but still follows Westminster with great interest. She says it's been an open secret since Covid that the Tories would be out at the next GE.

She's been saying for a good 2-3 years now that it's going to be a landslide for Labour. All Labour had to do was keep their heads down and stay quiet, and let the tories dig themselves the hole. And it seems like it's coming true.

The Brexit and Clinton polls were partly wrong because they measured who you'd support if you voted, and loads of Remain and pro-Clinton people were over confident and stayed home... DON'T MAKE that mistake this time, vote!!!!!!!

Look at where Reform are campaigning. Not in the wealthy Tory heartlands but in the disenfranchised working class areas like Clacton. Places like this are what they are because of Tory policies.

Tory financial policies make sense to the wealthy but the hard nosed ultra right policies make sense to the poor, disenfranchised and resentful 'lower classes'.

The tories would never have been elected in history without the support of 'the working class' whose interests they did not support. Reform have carved out the working class tories.

Most the Brexit polling had the race as very tight, in any case. It's revisionist history to think they all said Remain would win. I agree some people were complacent, some voted Leave as a form of protest, some stayed at home. But the polls didn't give them any reason to do it!

@PocketSand The seaside has been on the wane for decades! Don’t know why you just think it’s 15 years. That is truly rubbish!

I find it quite interesting that people don’t understand the difference between a majority and a hung parliament. A hung parliament is where you don’t have a working majority and you have to get support from other parties. A majority means you actually have 80 more seats than everyone else added together. So the way it works is that, yes, that Government makes the laws and policies they want. It’s what FPTP usually produces.

The big issue is that quite often, in fact 100% for some of us, you never get the MP you want. Your vote doesn’t count unless you vote for the winner. There’s definitely a problem with this but it lets in extreme parties.

The working class areas wanted Brexit. Tories said they would deliver it. There wasn’t much else considered by loads of voters was there?

The City did well under Blair. Never forget that. Brexit is killing the golden goose. Plus always remember who pays most tax and underpins social policy. The poor don’t pay for themselves. Everyone else contributes to them.

When Johnson misbehaved I would have predicted they would lose the next election too. Hardly rocket science! Even for a Times journo.

@EasEasternStandard I agree with you that external events have a place in how it all pans out.

No one is ever completely in control, however much we think we are.

Let's face it we don't have to go back to far in our history to know that one. It would have been on no one 5 year plan in 2015 to survive a worldwide pandemic 😏

Anyhow, I digress, as per: I just think KS is the right man at the right time.

Careful, plans, eye for detail, calm (though I'm sure he has his moments behind closed doors) extremely disciplined giving nothing away. A legal mind, which gives nothing away until he is ready

It's what our country needs right now. Is he perfect? No! No one is. I'm.sure Victoria his wife, would tell a tale or two of the ways he drives her daft

However, normal after 14 years of chaos, I am chomping at the bit for.

I don't want sexy politics, chaos, or charisma. I doubt many of us do. I want to yawn again at politics and be quite happy to do so

It’s been pretty well established that people lied to the polls about Brexit. They actually made sure the Brexit vote came out.

Giving nothing away is a problem for me. The IFS is clear Labour has wishful thinking on productivity and how reforms will be paid for. It’s time we had clarity instead of very wooly aspiration on where the money is coming from given we have massive debt. Not much borrowing is possible and taxing more highly could really make home ownership a pipe dream again.

I don't know why people describe the Brexit/Ukip/Reform voters disenfranchised. They are the most enfranchised people in the country. They got every single thing they voted for, the opposite nearly 50% of voters got nothing they wanted, no concessions or consideration at all, just the enormous cost to pay.

I wish I'd gone to the bookies the day after Boris's 2019 win and placed a bet on a Labour landslide at the next GE!

Wonder if anyone did that? They'll be happy whatever their political inclinations.