Me-OW!
That’s likely as sensible a statement as a lot of what comes out of No. 10.
Never has this tweet been more relevant:
And yet another Tory splinter/pressure group launches (sort of). At least this time Truss doesn’t seem to have got lost on the way out.
What exactly are the Tories doing to turn things around?
heh this might be relevant… apparently great britain needs to be made great again :
(link takes you to story)
Cutting taxes and more austerity, apparently…
Good news: the Tories got a deserved and expected kicking, further demonstration of how unwelcome they are in government.
Bad news, the Tories got a deserved and expected kicking, further demonstration of how unwelcome they are in government, and consequently the chances of an early general election, which were already slim, just got a whole lot more emaciated and we’re stuck with these useless clowns till something like November.
Apparently (and we can but dream), if the swings were the same at the general election, the tories would go from 349 seats to just… FOUR. Making them just about Plaid Cymru, and a quarter the size of the current libdems.
Isn’t it pretty to think so?
I guess this is the riposte to my bad news above; good news, by hanging on to November in the teeth of almost universal loathing, the Tories ensure that when the election does happen the nation will turn out to annihilate them.
So Rishi Sunak may join former Canadian PM Kim Campbell in a very exclusive club? Fascinating.
Unspoken here, of course, is the detail about which other parties might benefit from such a hypothetical collapse: Labour supermajority? The Lib Dems building on recent local successes and resurrecting themselves at the national level? Elevation of the angry conservative fringe as Tory voters flee to the right instead of the center? (Er, excuse me, centre.)
It’s pleasant to imagine the Tories suffering a catastrophic wipeout, but the form of the wipeout remains to be clarified.
Suspect it will be a combo of all of the above. And some complete fascist lunatic will become Tory leader.
Worse than the lunatics already running the show? Shudder.
Quite. My entirely inexpert guess is that there will be not so much a massive swing of voters from the Tories to Labour as a lot of Tories staying at home, some switching to the Faragistes, and some switching to the LibDems as well as Labour. On balance, that would favour Labour with a substantial majority and the LibDems with a fair few more seats where they are the perceived leading alternative to the Tories; the Faragistes will have an increased share of the vote but it would probably not give them much in the way of seats, if any at all. Labour will likely pick up a useful number of seats from the SNP, but may do less well in some places with substantial Muslim and other groups wanting a stronger line on Gaza.
But don’t forget the “shy Tory” phenomenon, where what people tell the opinion polls is not what they do in the polling booth. That will be conditioned by what the Budget contains, and whether those voters are more concerned about the decline in public services than about taxes.
Oh yes, there’s plenty waiting in the wings. Wholly unelectable outside of Tory Party Members of course (touches all wood in sight). I still have nightmares after seeing Farage dancing with Priti Patel at the Tory Party conference.
Hoping Sunak loses whenever they hold their election.
Biden wins, Sunak’s opponent wins = Happy Mahaloth
Will the UK election be in November like the US one?
That’s the question. I believe the conventional wisdom is that these results, and the latest glum economic news (UK slipping into technical recession), make it unlikely Sunak will want to call an early election, though it was fairly obvious that they were working towards a Budget (due in March) with some giveaway tax goodies (and any nasty expenditure cuts kicked down the road until after the election). He doesn’t have to call an election until November/December, or even early January at a pinch.
They might still feel tempted to cut and run early though, especially if the various disaffected MPs start making more trouble for Sunak’s leadership. You could hardly blame him for contemplating a quiet afterlife looking after his money.
And a spring/summer election is much more convenient for electioneering and getting voters out to vote, weather-wise.
The flatulent hate-gonk didn’t count?
That’s the best guestimate at the moment. Sunak can call an election anytime from now until January.