George Osborne has said the Conservative Party must resist chasing Reform voters and instead move back to the political centre ground if it wants to return to power.
The former Conservative Chancellor claimed going after Reform supporters would only lose the Tories the support of ‘moderate’ voters. He told his Political Currency podcast:
It is a very hard tactical choice, for the new leader, which is the obvious thing to do if you look at the maths is to say “let’s go and get the 14 or 15% who voted Reform, add it to the 24% who voted Conservative and we’re ahead of Labour, it is easy, job done” without noticing really what I think is the central challenge which is the Conservative Party over a number of years vacated the central ground of British politics and allowed the Labour Party to move from the Corbynista position it was in to the centre ground.
It allowed the Liberal Democrats to get the largest number of seats they have had in a century and decimate the Tories in places like the West Country.
And if you don’t win back that centre ground, frankly you may get some of those Reform votes somehow… and you will lose more of your centre ground support in doing so and there is nothing that says the Labour Party is stuck on 34% of the vote.
There is no reason why they couldn’t go up higher and deprive you of the majority even if you managed to get some of those Reform people on side because they have expanded their position in the centre ground.
The idea that the Tories have “vacated the centre ground” is nonsense of course. Yes, Tory rhetoric and election pledges have often been Right-wing. But the actual way the party has governed has frequently been centre-Left if not outright Left-wing, with extraordinary levels of immigration and tax, a fanatical commitment to the anti-capitalist Net Zero agenda and only a very limp-wristed effort at reining in the spread of wokery across the public sector. The country is clearly far more Left wing than it was in 2010 when the Tories came to power, and the party’s only claim in mitigation could be that it is slightly less so than it would have been under a Labour Government.
But leaving that to one side, Osborne’s argument that there is a large pool of centre ground voters who have gone over to Labour and the Lib Dems and could be wooed back with a solid dose of Cameronism is pure fantasy. This pool simply does not exist.
The Lib Dems may have gained 64 seats (taking them to 72, up from eight) but they only gained 0.6 percentage points in vote share compared to 2019, and crucially, because of the dire turnout (59.8%), lost over 177,000 votes (3,519,199 in 2024 vs 3,696,419 in 2019).
Labour, similarly, may have gained an extraordinary 218 seats, but that was off the back of a gain in vote share of just 1.6 points and, furthermore, a loss of over 564,000 votes (9,704,655 vs 10,269,051).
The Tories lost 7.1 million votes (6,827,311 vs 13,966,454) as their vote share plummeted 19.9 points, but it’s clear from the drop in votes for Labour and the Lib Dems that at maximum only a small number of these voters could have moved over to the “centre ground” parties of Osborne’s imaginings. Those parties didn’t gain votes, so there simply cannot be a large pool of ‘moderate’ Conservative voters ready to be lured back with some good old liberal Toryism.
In 2019, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party won 644,257 votes and in 2024 Reform U.K. won 4,117,221, nearly 3.5 million more. That is clearly a large pool of voters who opted for a Right wing party with a Right wing manifesto who could, in principle, be attracted to an actually conservative Conservative party, assuming trust could be restored. Yes, that is only half of the voters the Tories lost (and not all of Reform’s new voters will be ex-Tories), so there is a question of where the other at least 3.5 million went – many of them presumably didn’t vote at all, or may have gone for one of the many independent candidates or minor parties.
But wherever these other ex-Tory voters went, Osborne’s advice is plainly wrong. He appears still to be oblivious to the fact that the Tory majorities of 2015 and 2019 were achieved not because of some under-appreciated genius in Cameron’s soggy centrism, but because of manifesto pledges respectively to hold a Brexit referendum and leave the EU.
In a voting system that rewards a united Right and severely punishes a divided one, if the Tories listen to Osborne they will be in opposition for a long while indeed.
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This whole level of discourse is a joke. If you hadn’t noticed the most remarkable trend of the last few years is the utter disenchantment and rejection of mainstream political discourse. Just normal people who never bothered looking into anything are know beginning to ken it. In a time like this more can happen in a few weeks than happened in the prwvious few decades.
Osborne is a delusional quomble just like Boris.
For the Tories to gain the centre ground would mean they have to move a significant amount to the right of where they currently are.
I hope they stay where they are or move to the left so they occupy Osborne’s “centre” ground; that will ensure their deserved extinction so that a truly conservative party can take its place.
Osborne is peeved.
The fake tories managed to hold on to 121 seats but the Davos Deviants wanted them wiped out. The tory hierarchy, which of course includes people like Osborne – another non-flushable turd – failed to do their job properly so he is encouraging the rump to go back to their Bliar lite ways thus guaranteeing that if there is another election they will finally be disappeared for good.
“George Osborne has said the Conservative Party must resist chasing Reform voters and instead move back to the political centre ground if it wants to return to power.”
And what part of the political battlefield does Osborne believe the criminal, lying tories are occupying exactly?
The only reason Ozzy doesn’t want the tory remnants chasing the Reform position is because he knows this might prolong their miserable lifespan and as stated above the DD’s don’t want that.
This is the woke circling their waggons around the Tories in the hope that they won’t be able to escape from their clutches. Simply put, Osborne, like Johnson, is a globalist traitor who wants British people to suffer and to diminish the UK as much as possible because that’s what his masters demand.
How does one remove the neocon globalists from power, that is the question.
Coming from a fully enrolled attendee of Bilderberg meetings, George Osborne’s musings on trying to lure back voters hold about as much weight as a Gary Glitter announcement on childcare.
I like that we can see that they try to maintain the mainstream narrative and yet people look upon it with scorn and derision and laughter. In that sense this is a fine time to be alive.
The centre ground is code for “my views and policies”.
I have been trying to work out what “centre” means and that is the best I can do. The only alternative is “policies the BBC will report without either a smile or a sneer”.
“The centre ground” is code language for: Sunak has cautiously back-pedalled from Net Zero a little and overseen a slight pushback against trans-ideology. This goes against the established political dogma the Osbornes and Johnsons of this world claim to be in favour of (while they’re really just sock puppets moved by invisible forces). Sunak lost an election Labour won. Labour is still fully in bed with Net Trans and Zero Economy hence, it’s now occupying “the centre ground” Sunak Right-Wing Radikalinski carelessly vacated and hadn’t he done so, the muppet show of non-conservative Tory government had certainly just continued. The Tories must therefore, urgently transition back to Net Zero True Believers and champions of the notion that human children are born sexless if they ever want to win an election again.
Under no circumstance must they become so populist to try to do what the voters they lost want to be done. That would be very bad for the puppetmasters.
Read Janet Daley in yesterday’s DT. Excellent piece and says it all in her inimitable way. Osbourne is half the trouble and Cameron is the other half. The way they went o with the Liberals from 2010 set the path of going Left and away from Conservatism.
Remember that Cameron said, when he resigned outside No 10, that his greatest achievement in 5 years as PM was single sex marriage legislation. Was not even in the Manifesto. I rest my case.
Slightly Off-T.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-have-to-deal-with-the-anti-vaxxers-says-kier-starker-next-uk-pm-with-the-endorsement-of-the-wef/5858558
Kneel is a serious threat to the people of this country as this article makes clear.
When Scamdemic ll launches it could become extremely nasty particularly in relation to killer ‘vaccines.’
Centre means complete adherence to neoliberal orthodoxy. Neoliberalaism is basically a scam masquerading as an ideology. Keep the charade going on long enough so that you can get away with all the spoils. It is a perfectly natural approach for someone who considers themself to be on the upper rung of humanity, Just get what you can from the peasants and store it up and weather the storm. Sadly for them things will not work out that way.
Lol back to the centre ground, from the far left…
Why doesn’t he piss off and join Labour or the Lim Dems or the Greens?
This was first asked of the Tory left at the time of Maastricht. For some the answer was to avoid the consequences of daring to deny the blackmail.
The answer since 1992 has been to use the brand of the CP to act as an anger sink and thereby facilitate a further globalist left drift.
Sadly true
It is like a predator appearing among a flock of animals or a remote SIberian village that is being terrorised by a bear. A point comes when it doesn’t matter what you know. You are alerted to the main thing which is that you are being hunted by a predator. Birds might go quiet. When Jeffrey Dahmer walked past the cells of fellow mass-murdering convicts they all stayed silent until he was past. It is never wise to take counsel of your fears but in our time everyone will get it because we have that spark. This is a serious anti-human agenda that requires a serious response.
Focus on getting the spunk. If you haven’t got the spunk then all else fails. Courage is a cardinal virtue according to Plato because without the spunk you won’t do anything. If you feel that your nutsack is depleted then store it up, That can make a big difference, Taoist alchemy involves holding the seed for many years. It is basic and primal but you have to do it. Don’t succumb to this culture that tells you that it is okay to jerk off as much as you want because it really isn’t.
Oh, for crying out loud.
Logged in to upvote.
As someone that trains, there is truth in that.
There are definitely certain individuals on here that would benefit from taking your sage advice. Depleted nutsacks indeed.
Plus, there’s also oysters.
You were given a big pair of swollen bull testicles for a reason. Now put them to use.
Pack it in.
“But the actual way the party has governed has frequently been centre-Left if not outright Left-wing, with extraordinary levels of immigration and tax, a fanatical commitment to the anti-capitalist Net Zero agenda and only a very limp-wristed effort at reining in the spread of wokery across the public sector.”
Indeed, though oddly Mr Jones forgets to mention their crowning achievement – CONVID!
Yes
Throughout MacMillan, Heath, Hague and everyone since except Maggie and theoretically Truss they have moved significantly left.
The people haven’t.
Hauge was a fake Eurosceptic. Once the 2016 Referendum came where was he!
Osborne brought us Austerity , which in reality was , do nothing . Ever since , they have done nothing and Brexit was a complete surprise to everyone except those of us could not believe how lucky we were . The final message from the Pseudo Tories , was that they were all too ready to become Autocrats and completely destroy our Trust . We are now in an age when There is No Trust and Osborne was in at the beginning !
Osborn was such a success I hope the Tories take his advice. His mate Cameron-Clegg was/were just as skilful politically and I’m sure they endorse this view.
A bigger question is just why a political party would change its values (sic) just for electoral success. If it was about values and policies rather than holding office with mates for its own sake they would campaign accordingly.
As the Tories have no values they can do no other than “let’s outflank the Labour Party to please those nice people we met at the WEF/Gates/etc conference or weekend break”.
This apparent conundrum is nothing of the sort. In Westmonster the center is assumed to be somewhere between Tories and Labour, which means it’s all part of the indistiguishable groupthink. In the real world the centre is to the right of all of them. Moving right and occupying the centreground is the same thing!
In the real world 86% of voters chose left wing parties in the last UK GE
I wonder if we can envisage something new over the rainbow free from these levels of corruption. I think it is possible. You speak to the average person now and you are pushing at an open door. They just lost their old world schema and are hoping that there is a new vision. The new vision will be formed out of the horror of our collapse and our last days might be breadcrumbs. But it has to happen. It will be harsh in Britian though how they suddenly pulled the props out of the way and lifted the curtain and you are faced with the coldness of the brick wall at the back of the thatre.There is still some native genius left I hope it manages to overcome this Satanic impulse.
We have to do something the alternative is an everlasting hell of their device.
Centre ground, isn’t as central as I remember. I used to consider myself centre-left, but magically without changing my views substantially, I have become ‘extreme far-right’. The whole concept of left and right is out of date. I would propose ‘realists’ for right and ‘idealists’ for left.
It is a terrible situation in regard to what we are dialled into in terms of the launch of missiles. All the other crap counts for nothing. For me I don’t even know how to look at such a deterioration in intellectual standards and that is before even considering the dreadful consequences to our country. I think we assume that because we are an island we are therefore immune to missile attacks. This is simply not true, We should try to avoid such an exchange in my view.
If missiles start flying about the UK will be hit before the chief warmonger Uncle Sam.
Those Bollox to Brexit leftist Lib-Dems played a part as Nigel stood down, and once he stood down, the Tories pushed the ladder away. Shame they weren’t completely annihilated.
They think of you as less than vermin. Your might might’ve served their purposes for a brief while. There was no thought for your long-term sustenance. Like they might’ve watched a million go into battle in the first world war a century ago. You are just as expendable now to them in fact even more so because they want you out of the way. As long as you understand that you are being attacked by an enemy that wants you out of the way.
These creatures still don’t get it.
As Norman Tebbit pointed out, there is no centre ground, there is common ground.
Chasing some imaginary ‘centre’ ideology misses what people actually want. It is a play ground for a disconnected political elite.
It has become dehumanised. It’s all about abstractions, generalities: the planet, the environment, stopping climate change, saving the forests, fish, apes, equality, fighting racism and obesity, etc all at the expense of Humans as individuals their prosperity, wellbeing, freedom, property rights.
Mr Osborne, if you’re reading this, great, read on…
People who voted Reform are, in the main, precisely the people you should chase. They left you because they were sick of voting Conservative, having the Conservatives win and then getting something that was more Labour than a Corbynista’s wet dream.
But then I forget – you’re not really a Tory, are you?! Silly me. No – you are, as others here have already elucidated, an unflushable turd.
Remind me which General Election Osborne won? Oh yes, that’s right. None.
What is a “moderate voter”? Is it just a particular shade of vanilla on everything? Maybe the vanilla moderate wants only some mass immigration. Maybe he wants to save the planet, but only at the weekend. Maybe he wants men in frocks in their daughters toilet if they would only just have a badge saying “Really a Man” on their chest. Maybe the vanilla moderate wants to be tough on crime but not too tough because that wouldn’t be nice.
——-Yes Politicians just love all the vanilla moderates as their votes are so easy to hoover up. It is so much easier to sell silly Kylie Minogue records than it is to sell proper music.