LEAVE the Conservative Party and save your country!

Not the main point about the Conservatives' pivot to pandering to online conspiracy theorists, but didn't the opposition tag an amendment onto a bill about water companies and then say that all the Tories who voted against it were in favour of putting shit in rivers?

Claiming this part of it is an outrage is performative.

By "cover up" do you mean the 2015 public enquiry? Or not doing anything about it's findings since 2022?

Voters who are angry about a "perceived cover up" are clueless. As above, there was a public enquiry, it produced several hundred recommendations, none of which successive Tory govts enacted. The story of grooming gangs was exposed and reported extensively by Andrew Norfolk over a decade ago. I worked for a youth charity at the time, my colleague worked on and secured funding for projects which directly addressed CSE and supported victims of grooming gangs across the NW. Keir Starmer as DPP at the time appointed Nazir Afsal to oversee prosecutions and met with Andrew Norfolk to review the whole range of cases. Starmer also changed the prosecution thresholds to make it easier for victims to give evidence and the perpetrators to be prosecuted.

The problem here is that people are badly informed and frankly too lazy and ignorant (talking about the wider public that have fallen for Musk's rhetoric) to find out the truth about what happened. People perceive a cover up as they have bought into lies and misinformation and are so beholden to the powers of social media that they cannot fact find for themselves, or are so deep into conspiracy theories that even when presented with the truth they choose to ignore it. Frankly, we are now living in an age of idiots who are in thrall to what they believe to be demi-gods.

As Jacob Bronowski put it so eloquently in 'The Ascent of Man', "When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods".

Why do they need another enquiry when they all know exactly what the problem is?

And here, in a nutshell, is why the UK can't afford the Tory Party trying to out-Farage Farage. Firstly, they won't - he's too clever (much more adept at making vaguely normal people think he's on their side than Badenoch, who talks down to everyone). Secondly, the UK now has no moderate-right party... that's where Tories should be. All they are doing now is recruiting for Reform.

What that shows me is Labour self destructing.

At this rate, it is looking quite possible.

Although I didn't know that Reform were quite that keen on juvenile dogs 😉

If you look at Europe and the world, this is the way that politics are going - rightward, like it or not. I posted this pic in the funnies thread but it has a point:

Labour are now starting to look like left wing outliers.

In the end the only thing that might save them come the next GE is if the right of centre vote is sufficiently split between Tories and Reform. In which case, some form of alliance or agreement between them on which seats to contest might be the best way of getting rid of this leftie shower.

It will continue to swing. Look at Brazil.

I'm sure the Fib Dums wanted to destroy the tories when they were deluded enough to think that they could, and ended up in a coalition with them.

It needs to swing here...

I don't think they did. I don't think there was that much of a gap between Clegg and Cameron. Badenoch clearly loathes Farage, and based on that poll, the Tories look like they would be the junior party.

Listening to some of the older posts on here from Lib Dem leaning posters, I could be forgiven for thinking that.

The 2010 result made it clear they couldn't and that alliance was the only way they could get anywhere near the levers of power.

Another view on the incompatibility of Reform and Conservative parties.

Reform are a bunch of economic lefties.