There’s less than a month to go before the General Election, and the Conservatives are polling more than 20 points behind Labour. Some forecasters expect them to win less than 100 seats. But losing the election – which they almost certainly will – isn’t their biggest problem. Their biggest problem is they might cease to be the largest right-of-centre party in the country or, indeed, a major political force at all.
With Nigel Farage having assumed leadership of Reform and announced his intention to stand for parliament, the Tories now face an existential crisis. Could they be supplanted by another party on the right?
Reform are hot on the Conservatives’ heels in the national polls, where the blue and turquoise lines appear to be converging. In some seats, they’re now polling even higher, leading irreverent pro-Reform commentators to say things like “a vote for the Conservatives is a vote for Labour!” and “the Conservatives are splitting the Reform vote!”
By one measure, Reform’s leader is the most popular politician in the country. This is even true among 2019 Conservative voters, who hold a more favourable opinion of him than they do of Rishi Sunak – to the tune of 10 percentage points. In fact, a recent poll found that Farage was respondents’ top pick to replace Sunak as Tory leader, ahead of Penny Mordaunt, James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch. In the same poll, more respondents agreed that Reform should become the official opposition than disagreed.
Some Conservatives, such as Home Secretary Suella Braverman, have gone as far as saying that Farage “should be welcomed” by the party. (Others, no doubt, disagree.)
Perusing Twitter, where much of the political debate goes on nowadays, reveals further evidence of Conservative unpopularity. A frequently-seen hashtag is #ZeroSeats, referring to the Conservatives’ dim electoral prospects. What’s noteworthy, however, is that the hashtag isn’t used by Labour or Lib Dem accounts but rather by former Conservatives. This may be the first election where both the left and the right are hoping that the Conservatives lose.
If you navigate to Sunak’s Twitter account, you find that practically every tweet has been heavily ratioed. And among the overwhelmingly negative comments, there are plenty of right-wing avatars: the Prime Minister is getting ratioed by his own former voters. If you look at Farage’s account, by contrast, you see few ratios and largely positive comments.
Twitter isn’t real life, of course. Users are small and selected sample of the population. But they’re selected in an important way: for being much more engaged in politics. Which means that the most politically engaged conservatives in the Twitter-using part of the population (roughly, under 40s) are overwhelmingly anti-Conservative and pro-Reform.
One such individual, who was recently mentioned in UnHerd, is 23-year-old Jack Anderton. On June 8th, he posted a video of himself endorsing Reform, which went viral and got over 12K likes. “The Conservatives will lose and lose big,” Anderton notes. “The real fight is what happens after the election”. He then rattles off a list of Tory failures before getting to the nub of the issue: the Tory Party “has no credibility left”.
And he’s right. The Conservatives have been promising to bring immigration down to the “tens of thousands” since they first got into power in 2010. And when Boris won a landslide in 2019, voters assumed they would finally get round to doing it. Instead, net migration doubled. Where’s your credibility after that? If Sunak pledged tomorrow to adopt the strictest migration policy in British history, it wouldn’t matter; no one would believe him.
Meanwhile, the Tories have barely confronted the ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ racket. Do a keyword search on the main government jobs website, and you will find dozens of listings for jobs like ‘Diversity & Inclusion Lead’. Why do these jobs exist when public finances are under such strain? They are basically just sinecures for Labour-supporting bureaucrat-activists. Why do the Conservatives let this happen? (The phrase “utterly useless” comes to mind.)
So is this the end of the Conservative Party is a major political force? In truth, it’s still too early to say. But the trends don’t look favourable.
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If Penny Mordaunt is the answer then I don’t know what the question is.
It sounds like the rump of Tory party members and voters are not really conservative, and just vote Tory because they perceive it as the party of the CofE or of middle class people or something, party for people who don’t have working class accents. Baffles me. Mordaunt – despicable covidian.
I hope the Tories are finished. Did they ever get started? Were they ever a “major political force”? I suppose Thatcher’s governments changed the game a bit wrt state ownership, and the Johnson govt. sort of exited us from the EU, but I can’t think of anything else “major” that the Tories have done, other than be a little less left wing than Labour. Are they “right of centre”? I suppose it depends what you define as centre, or right for that matter, but it just looks like big state collectivism to me.
What we are witnessing is the systematic and very controlled destruction of the Conservative Party. With the benefit of hindsight I would argue that this began immediately after Call me Dave’s failed EU referendum which clearly shook the Davos Deviants to some considerable extent. Cue Bozo.
Corbyn most probably was seen by the DD’s as unreliable but the spectre of the country being run by a trotskyite Labour government scared the pants off the centrist, middle of the road majority and so “bumbling” Bozo got the gig with an 80 seat majority. As he was already in the pocket of the DD’s they were confident they had the right man for the job ie the mayhem and destruction about to be unleashed across the Western world.
A central theme within their ‘Great Reset’ which of course Bozo referenced countless times, was to ‘Build Back Better.’ Implicit of course is that current systems have failed and must therefore be demolished. The Tories commenced state wide national destruction when Bozo signed up to the Scamdemic in March 2020.
And what destruction have we witnessed: of the family and family values, the very notions of biological sex and gender, the glorification of minority sexual preferences via the Alphabet people as though heteronormative is itself deviant. The wilful attempt to destroy the educational progress of a generation of children. The destruction and closing down of our Christian churches in defiance of Christ’s teachings. The destruction of our pubs – those very outlets that almost define Britishness. The concerted programs intended to restrict travel and free movement. The insane and medieval insistence on a fossil fuel free economy. And so on.
Within the core of all this sits the Conservative Party, heirs to one of the oldest political systems in the world, the Party that got us through WWII led by our greatest statesman Sir Winston Churchill, the Party of economic liberalism, the Party of God, King and Country. The bulwark guarding all things British. The party led most honourably by Margaret Thatcher, the last Conservative leader who sought to reignite our Britishness. So yes, as a central pillar of our country the Conservative Party has to be demolished. Who would bemoan the loss of the Labour Party?
Fishy was parachuted in to the job once the DD’s realised that the tory membership were working off script by electing Liz Truss and Ms Truss was decidedly not with the plan.
Fishy was perfect – a foreigner, non English name, no links to the country but allegiances to India and the USA. He was never going to be a particularly expensive purchase given he was still wet behind the ears when he was given the gig so all good to go ie dismantle the Conservative Party.
The relish for incompetence displayed by this semblance of a man is a wonder to behold and first got an outing with “Eat Out to Help Out” when he was playing at sums as Chancellor. Since then he has gone from strength to strength even throwing his plum sized muscles – on behalf of the people of this country – behind a war with Russia. As if?
His nut zero zealatory, perfectly advertised via the closure of Port Talbot Steel Works has resulted in wholesale cost of living rises and the destruction of large chunks of homegrown industry. All good for carbon targets.
And so we reach the D-Day Anniversary Commemerations, eighty years on. An immovable date in our history. What better an opportunity was there to grind the faces of the British people in their downfall than to insult the memories of those thousands who had willingly gone to their deaths on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 in order to free the world of tyranny. An act deliberately engineered and guaranteed to finally destroy the Conservative Party of Great Britain.
I have said it countless times, Fishy is a traitor. He was parachuted in to commit treason and by God is he succeeding at it. Fishy is incompetent only to the people of this country. To the DD’s he is potentially promotional material.
The destruction of the Conservative Party will symbolise the destruction of our country.
To the Globalist “anywhere’s”…..Loyalty to just one country is an aberration.
Your best and most extensive comment on the DS I suspect——well done
Thank you Varmint. Very kind.
The destruction of the Conservative Party started with Call-Me-Dave’s A Lists.
I wonder whose idea it was to put Cameron at the heart of government again with sushi? The very man who suddenly walked away in an access of pique after he lost the Brexit Referendum. A globalist who was a remainer and probably is a rejoiner (he is now careful to say nothing publicly on such subjects).
Cameron will have been “placed” at the heart of government by the WEF.
If Boris did what he proclaimed to do in the manifesto, they would be well ahead by now, but that is not the path his Globalist masters had in mind, so nothing good got done. I only voted for them in 2019 because Farage stood down and the Lib Dems with their “Bollox to Brexit” stood as a threat to the largest democratic vote in British history. I didn’t trust Boris but agreed with people like Carl Benjamin that Boris was the only option left. At the time, I didn’t realise what a Globalist Boris was.
Likewise.
She will do well to hang on to her seat.
Mordant looked good apparently in a nice dress and held a sword rather well so my wife tells me. I was in my workshop at the time of the Coronation. I don’t mind the Royals, it is better than President Blair, Cameron or, Allah and all the Gods forbid, Khant.
Yeah I had better things to do that day, laying some slabs.
I think I was in my workshop. Timothy Taylor’s Landlord was on good form if memory serves.
I seem to remember I went ice skating.
Not for me tof. Me and ice skating don’t get on.
As someone once said to me, every man needs a hobby. The ice rinks were shut during “covid” but down London way at least during lockdowns a big roller skating community sprang up as it was something you could do outdoors and keep some human contact – helped to keep me sane.
Golf for me.
I guess they shut the courses during “covid”?
Yes they did. Probably one of the most ‘socially distanced’ sports there is. All in the fresh air.
That’s what was so good about the roller skating – you can do it pretty much anywhere so it was easy to carry on regardless.
Well if the criteria is looking good in a nice dress let’s have Bev Turner as Conservative leader.
Not half.
Very classy isn’t she
Very, very classy.
I agree. But when you look at the rest of the Tory front bench she’s about the only one who can string a sentence together and both look and sound human. And that’s enough for most of the sheeple.
All you need is the tune of the times.
Around 60 years ago, when I was a mid-teen, I asked my mother who she voted for. I recall her reply: “I don’t for any of ’em son. They’re all the bloody same.” She was a clippie on the buses, having transitioned ‘up’ from working 13 looms in the local cotton mill. Turns out she wasn’t far off the mark. Fingers crossed Nigel pulls a rabbit out of the hat.
Sorry don’t trust Farage either. Yes he always says the right things but he has a habit of flitting in and out of things. Where was he during he scamdemic for instance?
I may be amongst few to say it but I stick to what I said two years ago: it will be a hung Parliament. It should not be of course but the issue is actually Starmer. I bet his dog bites him. He is impossible to warm to and unbelievably impossible to trust. Almost everything he says is a lie, and I don’t say that lightly, look at his record.
When the average Pleb is face by two piles of stinky stuff they stick with the stinky pile they know. It’s human nature. We sit here and we pontificate on the fine points and the policies.
All Pleb Man wants to know is “Who is going to make it even bloody worse?”. That is Starmer, and I’ll tell you when he lost his chance: when Rayner lied about her house and Starmer did nothing.
So, a vote for Reform really is a vote for Reform: we can change the country in a Coalition with the Tories.
Anyone looking at the articles on the Telegraph and Spectator, and I am sure in other MSM publications will have no doubt noted the smears on Reform have began. as has the fear ramp up of what voting for reform will do.
The brass necked arrogance of the 2 Party elites and their little band of faithful newshounds who believe that it is only the Conservative Party or Labour who are entitled to rule, no matter how incompetent, useless, and pathetic they are. and that to dare think of appoint
ing another new Party is just not the way things are.
It’s almost as if that along with the king the MSM believe that those in the uni party are also hereditary monarchs, whose birthright it is to rule us.
I fervently hope people ignore the treacherous msm, and vote reform. let’s kick these entitled and arrogant politicians down the road.
My hope is that the majority vote for anyone but Labour, LibDim or Tory. I don’t care who they vote for to be honest or even stay at home staring at the TV. The fewer who vote for them the better. The average is that a party wins with 27% of the electorate, that is absurd: total control with a quarter of the entire electorate.
I never believed in PR, I voted against Clegg’s absurd idea. What I have seen in the last 5 years and what I have seen of Starmer has completely changed my mind. We cannot continue to be dictated to by lunatics like Starmer.
The Lib Dem chap with his leaflets arrived at our door yesterday. He didn’t tell us we should be voting Lib Dem because of their policies, but only because if we didn’t vote for them it would help SNP remain in power.
This is a bit like your Doctor telling you to eat jelly Babies because they are not as bad for you as Wine Gums.
Am I mistaken or did Starmer claim he was traumatised when the phone was cut off when he was a kid? He’s one year younger than me and back then kids didn’t have anyone to phone. If the phone rang nobody wanted to answer it.
There is also the fact that his Dad was a Toolmaker and that was a skilled job and amongst the highest paid in factories. I know because I worked with them when I was a spark: we were all grade 1. His Mom was a Nurse.
So Starmer has a history of financial incompetence. Few people had anyone to call back then. So how did his Mom and Dad not pay the bill? They didn’t: he was lying.
Kneel’s dad wasn’t a too maker he was the owner of a factory which made tools. I doubt Kneel could tell the difference between a table knife and a screwdriver.
Isn’t it horrific to think that we are going to have to look at this beadie eyed parasite on GB News etc for the next 5 years and come onto this website and try not to have blood spitting from our eyes in every comment.
Have you seen this article? Coming from a family of gamekeepers, Starmer must protect the rur… (countryside-alliance.org)
Thanks for the link, I’ve just read it. So Kneel’s background is poaching. Very apt.
Don’t forget Labour & Tories only superficially disagree, they are in Lockstep on the big economy destroying issues Agenda 21/30 — Health fascism to name a few.
Sunook today was saying how security comes before the ECHR….Oh yeah, why are we still in it then, and your mates in Whitehall disagree with you there, but you won’t get shot of them like anyone genuine would do. When things get tough, he can swan off to anywhere while Rome burns. The slow demolition of the UK under the Great Reset is underway.
I recall Starmer saying when he was at Davos that he far preferred WEF to Parliament. So we know where he intends to take us then.
Correct. ——Last week on Nana Akua there were 4 guests having a “debate” on Net Zero. They all agreed with Net Zero, it is just that some truly thought they were doing us a favour by taking 5 years longer to implement a couple of aspects of it. —–What kind of debate is that, when they are in full agreement? —– Where was the guest who didn’t agree? They were only represented by Miss Akua who intervened with the occasional “But some people say……..”
I just don’t understand how people can get energised by all this electoral politics.
Doesn’t anyone realise we don’t actually live in a democracy and that the whole thing is smoke and mirrors.
Sunak was put in place as PM following a coup. That’s not hyperbole. An actual coup. Well, actually two coups.
First Johnson was overthrown on the pretext of throwing a party. And then when the wrong person took over they orchestrated a second even more crass coup against Truss.
The whole Farage Reform show is going nowhere. Literally nowhere. They already have their man Starmer lined up with a gigantic majority to push The Agenda harder and faster.
Reform and Farage are a pointless sideshow which they are allowing and probably even encouraging to maintain the recalcitrant population’s faith in the system and ensure they don’t actually physically rebel against the horrors that are coming out way, because hey there was an election fair and square. And now with Reform and Farage it will be harder to claim that an alternative wasn’t available, and all we had was a uniparty etc etc
I hate to say this but Reform and Farage are the useful idiots that are going to maintain the credibility of the system for one more electoral cycle. That’s if Farage isn’t in on it in the first place.
I agree with most of what you say. There’s a tiny possibility IMO that the Tories are destroyed and replaced by Reform, who might be able to form a government in 5 or 10 years’ time, and be vaguely conservative. But I am not optimistic.
Look at what the French bond market is doing at the prospect of Le Pen being president. Tanking. Why would French bonds tank? The economy is suddenly going to go to hell because Le Pen is there?
It’s exactly the same play they pulled on Truss. Any attempt to put the wrong person in the post and the countries line of credit is removed.
Modern economies can’t function without their lines of credit. They can bankrupt a country any time they like. That’s how it works.
The signal to the people is clear. Fail to obey us and we’ll crush you.
Farage will remain an irrelevant voice in the wilderness or be made to heal if he gains any relevance.
You’re probably right. Somewhat depressing. I think a fairly self-sufficient country could survive – that’s certainly not the UK.
I think you’re correct about a coup, not just Boris,Truss etc, many Tories who were pro Brexit somehow got rid of by the civil service (blob). whether it was bullying or throwing bananas — But remember, when the left misbehave “Brexit trumps bad behaviour” on the Speaker of the House. UK Column covered this in yesterdays show
https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/uk-column-news-10th-june-2024
If you wany Jelly Babies you go out and buy a packet of Jelly Babies. If you want a packet of crisps, you go and buy a packet. If you want to vote for a right wing party there is only one on the shelf————-Reform.
Reform isn’t right wing.
They want rid of Net Zero (or so they say) and that is good enough for me. I don’t care what label we give them.
I would argue the Tories are not centre right and have not been for many years. I was a Tory supporter for decades, but no more. Sunak’s appointment was the last straw, I burned my membership card and sent the video of it to CCHQ.Reform are centre right and that’s who I support now.
The Conservative party is eating itself, and the sooner if finishes the job the better.
The ruling Liberal Party died and so will the Conservative Party. That’s what you get for ignoring your memberships wishes.
I understand Richard Tice thought Andrew Bridgen was a hot potato and didn’t think it wise to have him on board. Nigel Farage however, probably will not change his mind and get another jab. I know where Sir Christopher Chope stands as he was in the Chamber whenever Andrew Bridgen spoke. He spoke out too and he is my Conservative MP for East Dorset. Probably a very safe seat given the age of people around here.
The Conservatives have ceased to be conservative.