We’re not actually at the point where the Tories are setting up and then losing by-elections so fast that we won’t need a general election to change government, but we are set up for “corrupt/bully/harasser Tory MP recalled in disgrace…loser Tories lose again, guess everybody hates them” being a leitmotif of news reporting throughout the year. This is unlikely to be a good platform for a general election.
Does that mean Sunak will bite the turd sandwich now and call a May election? I’d like to think so because the sooner the better, but realistically, no, he’ll hope for something better and have a bigger sandwich to eat later.
No, they’ll take as long as they can to mess things up as much as possible, and leave their successors in an impossible position to try and clean up after them.
Just seen this, which makes me wonder if the polls are flattering Sunak
52 Tory MPs are standing down at the next election. These people have to some extent a personal vote in their constituency. They are known faces, they appear at community events, they have some sort of track record as constituency MPs. Now, they might be awful! But if they are good, if they can command some level of personal vote, then the fact they are not standing to be replaced as candidate by somebody that to the nearest approximation nobody knows from Adam then on the margin (and on these polling numbers everyone is on the margin) that could costs seats.
Well, a nontrivial number of them are standing down because they have no prospect of being re-elected, even with whatever name recognition/personal following they have. In those cases the Tory loss is already baked in; the sitting MP standing down does not add to it.
Jacques Delors died today. Architect of the European integration that the UK so wisely rejected in 2016, with the myriad benefits that have since accrued to our great nation. Given our dubious history with Europe, it’s sad but fitting that in a brief five-sentence obituary on the BBC site, one of those five sentences was a reminder (as if it were needed) of the famous Sun headline “Up Yours Delors”.
A piece about the possible future direction of the Conservatives that survive the expected rout (granted, The Guardian is parti pris against them, but it’s not unusual for a party that loses an election to revert to its members’ idea of the true faith)
The pic in the article is well chosen. His expression just screams “I have no idea how to escape this predicament, and little understanding of how I got into it.” Sincere bewilderment.
Quite. The more interesting question is whether that instinct will find enough followers among your country’s voters. The corresponding forces of mean-spirited fundamentalist rightism in this country seem to be doing just fine lurching ever farther out there.
Some have said it’s a distraction tactic - to give the opposition a really egregious thing to focus on and legitimately complain about (and if it doesn’t happen, then all that complaint can just be waved off), as well as to give the hardcore ‘comin over ere’ bigots something to feed on. So the attention of both opposition and extreme supporters is occupied, while endless other fraud and incompetence is going largely unnoticed.
There are those that say the government actually has zero intention of sending anyone to Rwanda; that it’s just too absurd to be true, but I thought the same thing was perhaps true about jamming asylum seekers into an under-provisioned, overcrowded, woefully unsafe floating prison they were setting up off Portland, at the same time as watching it become reality.
Cheers!