LEAVE the Conservative Party and save your country!
Comments
-
Way too much hard work; nowhere near enough swanning around mouthing off.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
-
If that happened it would probably warrant its own thread, Trump style.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
I have concluded that the Conservatives would be a lot better off without their party members.
0 -
It's a rather sweet corollary of the Labour Party and how the members (including Stevo) gave them Corbyn. The question is now whether they go for someone even more extreme, or find a Tory Starmer to drag it back from the brink.
0 -
Apologies for the wholesale quoting of a Telegraph piece, but it's from the perspective of a 'leftie' actually wanting the Tory Party to come to its senses. Stevo seems to think that the way ahead is braggadocio and to go on the offensive against Labour (if his posts on CS are anything to go by), but that ignores the fact that now no-one trusts or believes the Tories, or thinks of them as any way competent at, well, anything.
Far be it for me to intrude on private grief and all that. But, cordially, I will make an exception for the Tory party. In the spirit not of gloating, obviously, but of giving. They need all the help they can get right now, the poor shell-shocked souls who once seemed invincible but who turned out to be all too dispensable, human even.
Except, of course, the seemingly unrepentant and robotic Liz Truss. The loss of her seat on election night was no exercise of graciousness in defeat. Instead, it was a petty display. But it’s her lack of contrition that really damns her.
Though she of course was not the only rogue in the gallery: that vanquished popinjay George Galloway did not even turn up for his count.
Privately, they must go through all the various stages of grief, because politics is a brutal game. In no particular order, grief counsellors talk of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We have glimpsed some of this already.
Publicly, they have to find a new leader and, indeed, something much more difficult – a meaning in opposition. Who really are the Conservatives now? I grew up in a working-class Tory-voting household and once understood what they stood for, even if I didn’t agree with them. Lately, beyond anti-immigration policies, I really have little idea of what they represent.
So, if they want to get back on track, here are 10, I imagine unwelcome, suggestions to the party.
1. Just calm down about Reform. In 2015, Ukip got 3.8 million votes and now, a decade later, Reform gets four million. They have no structure, no real policies and, apart from Farage, no real recognition. They care about immigration above all else and are not interested in the difficult, nuts and bolts of day-to-day politics. This is why in 2017 Ukip lost all 145 of its local council seats. Blaming immigration for every social ill does not get the bins collected or dentists taking on more patients. As a party of Parliament, Reform will now have to up their game. Just how often will Nigel Farage actually go to Clacton or Richard Tice to Skegness? Will they make a lot of noise though? Sure. My advice: ignore it.
2. Remember you lost many votes to the Lib Dems too! Suella Braverman’s rhetoric does not play well in the shires. Rwanda was a colossal waste of money. Immigration will remain an issue for this Labour government, and you can sit back and watch that play out instead of becoming ever more rabid. As Labour has shown, elections are won from the centre ground.
3. You were ejected because you were seen to be corrupt and incompetent. A well-run leadership contest could at least reassert some basic Tory values. I do not hold out much hope of this, and the well-trodden path of ex-ministers gliding into well-paid directorships hardly speaks of the public service ethos that Sir Keir Starmer is effectively peddling at the moment.
4. Stop pining for Boris Johnson. He did you over. He did everyone over. It’s bad enough watching Nadine Dorries do it. Everyone else, get a grip.
5. Ditto Thatcher. Ditto Cameron. Move on.
6. Unless you are actually to die out as a party, you have to acknowledge that young people exist. You seem to offer nothing for the young. As this election taught us – ignore them at your peril.
7. Stop disparaging the country you live in. If everything is dark and dangerous and falling apart after 14 years of Tory rule, what of the future? Tory visions of the future are all re-runs of an imaginary past.
8. Work cross-party and with the Lords. This has already been done in areas such as women’s rights. This will be a different kind of parliament and rather than noxious tribalism, you could make yourselves look at least a little more grown up.
9. I would ban the word “woke” but I would keep an eye on how Labour does on gender ideology, an issue that is not going to go away.
10. Say sorry for the errors made while in power and show that, the rules do apply to you too, from Partygate to Covid contracts. Personally, I would like to see Kemi Badenoch lead the revival, but restoring integrity to your party will require much more than simply a change at the top. For critics, the whiff of excess, of decadence, of entitlement will continue to linger unless addressed head-on
Fake piety won’t do it. Listening might. Hope can only come after grief has been processed, and part of that is having a sense of both the present and the future.
That is a collective enterprise for a party that prides itself on individualism, but the country has moved on and it has left you trailing behind. Begin to carve out a vision in opposition, really tell us what modern conservatism actually means. Alternatively, you could just sulk and bicker until the next election.
0 -
Number 7 nails it for me.
0 -
They all do for me. I'm not a great Suzanne Moore fan, but she's given them a sensible roadmap for rediscovering sensible politics on the right, which the country needs as an alternative vision (even if the electorate disagrees with that vision for a while).
I know I'm biased, but they could still pull the rug out from Starmer's feet if they found the courage to explore how to re-engage with the pragmatism of working with EU businesses more enthusiastically than Starmer.
All that said, I think they are having a bit of an existential crisis, not knowing which way to go, and not (yet) able to process the catastrophe that they were as a government and the scale of the electorate's hatred of them as a party.
0 -
I’m convinced they are going to go the wrong way. All the high profile options for leader seem to be right-wingers. They’ll probably conclude that as it was their right-wing candidates that got elected that is what the electorate wants.
0 -
I suspect you're right, sadly.
I realise it's hard for them to admit they got it so wrong, and to accept that people who disagree with them politically actually are trying to help, but if Stevo's public persona mirrors that of Tory Party members, then the Tory Party is going to find it a very long road back to relevance. I come back to Thatcher's stated desire to have her 'Willie' as a close confidant to tell her things she would probably disagree with: having intellectual lightweights who just agree with one is no help at all, in the longer run.
0 -
They are essentially becoming like Labour under Corbyn. The ideological lunatic fringes have taken over and are more interested in running the party than running the country.
I still think it is 50/50 as to which way they will head, whoever wins the leadership contest will determine the direction the party goes in.
0 -
I have a friend, he's retired early from a FA world, whose mother and late father had been Tory party members for years. She ditched them in mid 20 teens, was disgusted by their move towards Brexshit and the like. I have no idea just how anti current #toryscum she will be now, not seen her since moving back to The Homeland. But of course they live in #toryfree leftie woke Oxfordshire... residences of that gammon faced pig botherer and that Spaffer Blojo.
0 -
Spookily, JoB says exactly the same as I did above, re admitting the mistake of Brexit. They'll never out-Farage Farage, so the logical, pragmatic thing would be to become the party of business again, and encourage trade with our nearest biggest trading bloc.
They really can't lose much more, electorally, and many of their remaining supporters will be pushing up the daisies in ten years or so.
0 -
They're not doing that any time soon
- Genesis Croix de Fer
- Dolan Tuono0 -
Almost certainly not, but it would massively put the cat amongst the pigeons if they did.
0 -
They've probably just seen what their lowest possible vote is. It's not like rejoining the EU (or something more mild) would put Stevo off.
It would also be a move towards appealing to the young professional class who maybe don't feel like natural labour voters (they'd never join a union) but don't think the previous iteration of the conservatives were really interested in good governance.
0 -
Thought you'd have been watching the football 😉
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]1 -
It might also appeal to some of the 'lefties' on here, as well as (maybe) making the party more likely to attract candidates who aren't loons and incompetent. That said, if Labour can demonstrate that they are competent and do sensible things, a Tory volte face on the EU by itself might not be enough of an electoral draw. But it would still be very interesting in how it could reframe the debate.
0 -
The problem with an about turn on the EU is that it is not clear that the EU wants us back, and even if they are on the fence, the Tories would be absolutely the worst people to persuade them.
Besides, too many of the electorate in the UK would still be against freedom of movement.
Regulatory alignment (on account of the fact you can't really diverge with your still largest trade partner anyway, so this was always fairly stupid), + customs union would be a potentially sensible platform.
0 -
Eh, what's going on? It's not often that Allister Heath writes anything that's not entirely bonkers, but he just has.
Well, to be fair, he pins the blame entirely on Tories, even if his solutions ignore some of the reasons so many people have voted for a left-of-centre landslide. He recognises that the Tories have allowed record high taxes while breaking things such as the NHS, and stifling house building. I'm also very much of the opinion that we need a 'broad church' on the right as an antidote/challenge to 'leftism'. And at least he realises the need for contrition in light of the electorate's rejection of Tories' 'offer'.
Every Tory prime minister since 2010 shares in the blame. All are jointly responsible for the party’s lack of any legacy, apart from a de jure Brexit. Yet despite this unforgivable record, I still don’t detect any genuine remorse, any real contrition, any meaningful reflection, any realistic understanding of the scale of the apocalypse. A necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a Tory rebirth is for the party to reunite the Right. It should be a broadish church, home to a range of opinions, but within narrower centre-Right parameters. There should no longer be room for those who believe in higher taxes, for advocates of extreme gender and woke ideology, for Rejoiners, for the soft on crime, for those too scared to confront Islamist extremism. The Tories must commit to much lower levels of immigration, and a gentler approach to decarbonisation. A small number of Tory MPs may not fit into this new, more coherent coalition: the sooner they leave the better. Yet adding Conservative and Reform votes together wouldn’t have delivered victory. Many Tory sympathisers refused to vote, and others backed Leftist parties. Once they have consolidated their Right-flank with sounder policies, the Tories need to woo aspirational middle England, young and old alike, offering distinctive conservative solutions to the problems of interest to floating voters. They need to ooze competence, honesty and unity.
0 -
Yeah, don't disagree with any of that. But I think that drift will be back towards something that eventually might make the difference between where we'll be outside and where we would be inside seem not too scary. Not holding my breath... but what happens over the next five years will be interesting and maybe enlightening.
0 -
Isn't that just "I believe the party should be a broad church of people who agree with me on everything "?
1 -
Yea, I'm not sure that's a broad church! Also listing gender and woke second in his list doesn't scream competence.
0 -
Maybe the current top of the form sect in the 'Conservative' party should grow up a bit and move on from student union debating mechanisms?
0 -
Yes... I think his idea of 'broad' is fairly narrow, not only on the evidence of this, but also on his past mad ramblings.
That said, his recognition that contrition is required at the outset for the shitshow the Conservatives brought about is sensible. Attacking Labour without recognising their own part in the poisoned chalice they've left them with will mean that no-one will take any notice of them. And the formulaic kind of "We're very sorry that people have found the past fourteen years hard" won't wash: it needs to be a "We're very sorry that we abandoned the principles we should have stuck to, of good, competent government and the mainstream Conservative values that we believe in. We must change, and convince voters that we are honest, principled, and competent". But that will be really hard, since Sunak's similar promise at the start of his doomed incumbency was obviously utterly untrue. Goodness knows how they turn the ship around, given all that.
0 -
That's the stuff that he and the loons will have to wrestle with. Culture wars aren't the way to good government.
0 -
His idea of centre right differs from mine. If those are his centre right issues I don’t know what his far right looks like.
0 -
I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for Allister Heath not to be nuts.
0 -
In fptp coalitions are formed in the main parties and then voted on, rather than between parties after an election
0 -
Yeah, they need to show contrition, realise they weren't batshit enough, and kick out anyone who disagrees with allister.
He's not a serious person.
1
