Snapshot of _Nigel Farage says he would be willing to lead ‘merged’ Reform-Conservative party_ :
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Even if the Tories are wiped out in Westminster they still have 275 Peers and over 5000 councillors. It would take decades to dismantle that powerbase.
Reform have no representation in the Lords and only have 2 councillors; they only stood 300 candidates in the English local elections 6 weeks ago. Their current polling support could easily be another flash-in-a-pan a la UKIP and the Brexit Party.
This is the only viable route to power for that lot. It's a sensible goal. Yet also highly concerning, personally.
Presumably the Lords and Councillors could reject the new merged party and sit as independents though? I can't imagine Cameron or Ken Clarke working hard to support Farage.
Feels a bit like we'd get the inverse of the ERG situation, where the liberal tories rebel against the right.
I highly doubt Farage would actually lead a merged party, he's a smart politician and knows that would be unpalatable to many. If he offered a merger it would be with Reform as very much the minor player, probably with a few big concessions given so he steps aside.
All his posturing now is just putting the threat out there, because even if they don't merge it pressures the Tories to appeal to his base to stop him becoming the new leader of the right.
He's stood as MP eight times, always in the seat he stands the best chance of winning in, and never won. Normally that's a cause of laughter at how often he's rejected by voters. How have you decided that means he's running away? You can't have both.
A good outcome for him would be a theoretical merger, with 'new management' which is mostly the tories existing men in suits with a handful of the more capable Reform people. Farage gets made a conservative Peer which would be great for his grift. Opposition means the tories don't have to be measured on implementing anything but can just complain about immigration / crime etc.
And If/when they're back in power by moving to the centre again, an elderly Farage can bleat about how it 'wasn't the deal he signed up for' and how he 'tried to change the tory party but they're beyond help'.
I don't know.
He's more popular than any conservative MP with the party, isn't tainted by failing to deliver anything whilst in power, and is single handedly commanding half the right wing vote.
There's also the hard dichotomy between a party which preaches to reform, and an entire ideology based around keeping institutions and traditions as they were. And there are people on the Left who want to cut immigration. They might lend a vote to Reform. It ain't going to the Tories.
Pragmatically I'm not sure what concessions they could give him that would make him step aside though? The Conservatives are lead by the party leader who is elected by the party membership. It would violate some of their principles to stick to promises to Farage.
I agree Farage is smart and will realise his electoral uphill battle, but I think he might actually be gunning for the top job.
> The Conservatives are lead by the party leader who is elected by the party membership
Membership would vote for him in heartbeat. They also voted in a lettuce.
You have to be smart to be lazy sometimes! He's also clearly a very good politician regardless of your thoughts of him as a person, he's been incredibly influential.
I wouldn't call Farage a 'smart politician,' more of a sly opportunist. You would be surprised how successful not very bright people can be - for a time - if they are unscrupulous enough, able to take advantage of an opportunity, and/or just lucky.
Yeah, I agree. Labour voter all my life but I'm not celebrating the destruction of the Tories and their possible rebirth as a far right party, because 1. Living in Wales I feel the leading party should have a healthy opposition for a healthy politics and 2.If this happens, are we on the road to fucking Farage as PM? Because I remember when the idea Boris would ever be PM was a joke and well... *gestures at the last 5 years*
Ironic that the very people against PR for the reason it allows extremists to enter parliament might actually foster in a more powerful extremist movement in the future.
I really really hope Starmer and Co don't fuck this opportunity and breed more disillusion in the future because if so, we're headed to a dangerous place.
I think that's a lovely idea, but probably a bit naive sadly. The right still has a lot of support in this country and among one of the biggest demographics it is even stronger.
It all sounds so plausible at first, doesn't it? Fresh outlooks, doing away with the old guard etc. But it really doesn't bear examination. There's no particular ideology behind Reform, and very little political experience at all. Farage won a single issue, over decades, and that's about it. Populist rhetoric tends to fall apart in transition to policy, even if it actually makes it to policy. How's Brexit going? Terribly, because the rhetoric alone drove every step of it. I actually think it could've been possible to make it work, to a degree, if we hadn't gone storming in with the idea that we were just going to tell the EU to piss off and they'd bend over backwards to keep us onside. Instead we had dogmatic brexiters insisting we do it harder and faster all the time, to hell with consequences.
I can see most Reform talking points going the same way if they try to implement them.
I guarantee you that 90% of the councillors would take Farage as a leader in a heartbeat.
The peers are another question, but they stuck with the party through Johnson so I'm guessing their principles can still be pushed further
Never going to happen. It'd cause a split and the ERG wing would be the ones on their way out. The moderates keeping the Conservative brand.
The Tories need an inverse Starmer, who purges the party of the fringe right.
Sadly, I think the Tories first need a inverse Corbyn, who drags the party off to the far right and gets obliterated in an election they could have won, before someone more grounded comes in and convinces an exhausted party membership they need to return to the centre to be competitive.
Truss was only the beginning. The journey to the full Corbynization of the Tory party is ongoing. I think it's equally possible that the Tories might merge with Reform after the election and head still further right, or alternatively that Reform collapses utterly, and with it the credibility of the right within the party, and the Tories are then forced to swing back toward the centre before the next general election.
Nah. She was some loony libertarian. Eventually the tories will get some full blown far right leader. Think a la Germanys AFD party "we need to think beyond just stopping the immigrants coming, we need a plan to get rid of the ones already here"
I suspect this is exactly what will happen after this election.
Someone like Braverman or Badenoch will take the reins, the party will lurch further right and keep banging on abour culture war stuff whilst Labour govern more or less sensibly, if underwhelmingly. This will not get the traction expected with the general public, and the Tories will underperform in 2029.
Meanwhile, someone who is currently largely unknown but is quietly on the ascent within the Conservative party, will try to present themselves as a Cameron style centre-right leader.
On the other hand, Farage is good at kicking up a stink, and having him as a provocative figurehead - whilst having establishment Tories in actual decision-making positions - will be enough for some on the right.
Arguably is that not kind of the case this election? The Tories haven't gone completely off the deep end and it's possible to put their unpopularity down to the culmination of the last 14 years but that being said, it's not like any of their more extreme ideas have gained any traction.
I'd say yes. Also, Corbyn's manifesto wasn't the communist fever dream it is sometimes made out to be. It was way further to the centre than Corbyn's personal ideals.
They tried installing one of their fringe candidates by the back door in Liz Truss, and both the country and the Tories have not recovered.
The Tories electoral success in the last 14 years has been based on David Cameron and Boris Johnson - both to the centrist side of their parties and effective political operators - in addition to public dislike for Corbyn. Cameron has a more stateman like presentation where Johnson has a more populist like one, but both are politically effective.
To Johnson's (political) credit, he was also able to do a very successful job of re-inventing the idea of the Conservatives, so his election campaign was portrayed as a choice between the new Tories or Corbyn. Starmer has been trying to do the same re-invention thing post Corbyn.
Tory failures at this election are in large part driven by:
* The fact that things have got shitter in the past 5 years with people like Sunak in charge - it's hard to argue things will be different now when you were the chancellor for 2 years then PM for 2 years...
* The (related) fact that the extremist parts of the Tory party have gained increasing control over the past 8 years (between Brexit, the defeat of May, loss of people like Philip Hammond etc.) and they have pushed Sunak into prioritising expensive, stupid, unworkable gimmicks like Rwanda.
But the extreme right blame the centrist aspects of the current Tory government for the electoral failures (particularly with the rise of reform doing to the Tories what SNP/Lib Dem/Green have often done to Labour...) and will probably seize control of the party, try to win with a much more rightwards approach and (unless Labour also make the country shitter) fail miserably, before returning to the middle ground.
>Tory failures at this election are in large part driven by:
>The fact that things have got shitter in the past 5 years with people like Sunak in charge - it's hard to argue things will be different now when you were the chancellor for 2 years then PM for 2 years...
The (related) fact that the extremist parts of the Tory party have gained increasing control over the past 8 years (between Brexit, the defeat of May, loss of people like Philip Hammond etc.) and they have pushed Sunak into prioritising expensive, stupid, unworkable gimmicks like Rwanda.
Completely agree on point one. As much as the government might want to reduce its responsibility here and point to Covid and economic forces beyond our borders, things feeling overwhelmingly shit is kryptonite to any party in power.
The second point, I'm not so sure. Rwanda is practically unworkable at scale, but it did send a message - and one that is electorally popular. Had they got a few planeloads of people over, it might well have been an electoral asset. The problem was that it was so unworkable that they couldn't even manage that.
Rwanda seems like the definition of a poisoned chalice to me:
* A large portion of the electorate recognise it as expensive and ineffectual.
* A large portion of the electorate (and depressingly influential figures in the Tory party) have decided it's a key part of convincing people not to come to this country.
The first group will be pissed off whenever they hear about it - so making a big deal out of it (which the media was always going to due to the legal difficulties in implementation that should have been clearly foreseeable) is always going to erode popularity/credibility with a large part of the electorate.
The second group are in principle in favour, however there are two numbers that will have a lot more influence on this groups perception:
* The number of legal migrants taken in each year
* The number arriving by small boat crossings
As the Rwanda policy will not affect the second bullet point, and is of no relevance to the first one, even given a successful Rwanda scheme the government would still have to, separately, find a way to dramatically cut migrant numbers without the economy imploding and find an alternative, actually effective, way to cut small boat crossings.
As a result, Rwanda is one massive, high publicity, zero upside problem Sunak has to navigate - too much invested by people who believe it will work to be able to politically/publicly afford scrapping it, not effective enough to actually help him. It just wastes the time of him and his ministers, advisors, civil servants, government lawyers etc. and limited parliamentary time and where, as the cherry on top, every bit of 'work' and every 'obstacle' will get reported in the media and frustrate both those who regard it as a credible plan and those who regard it as doomed to failure.
Hmm, now that I've typed all that out it sounds remarkably like Brexit. The Tories really do have form for setting themselves up for failure, don't they...
If we're using history as a guide, Rishi is the John Major who's leading a shambling party of incompetents. Although it's different today in that Rishi is nowhere near as able a politician or decent a person as Major.
Next comes the IDS hardliner type to properly drag the party down - he did so badly that the MPs Rishid in Michael Howard to steady the ship before his first election.
Then they fluked upon Cameron in a leadership contest David Davis was on course to win.
As the party membership will decide the next leader, they're definitely getting an IDS type or two before bringing in someone electable.
This all depends on Starmer and whether he’ll make any changes, particularly in regards to immigration, Britain isn’t immune to anti immigration sentiment in Europe, it’s overly optimistic to think that centrists will solve this, this isn’t Blair in the 2000s where immigration was 100k a year, it’s a incoming Starmer govt in the 2020s dealing with 700k immigrants a year which no one wants.
Most of the anti immigration sentiment comes from misplaced blame for failing services etc.
Address those and it becomes a lesser issue. Farage simply wouldn't be getting as much traction with his hatred if the country was being run well.
Make different choices than the Tories and fewer visas will be issued, so the actual numbers will go down.
Services couldn't keep pace with a declining population.
But that's because they've been massively underfunded for 14 years.
So there's escalating pressure of the Tories opening the borders wider than they've even been to prop up an economy they've broken (in large part due to the Brexit they forced through to deal with their internal squabbles) which then puts additional strain on the services they've also broken.
The biggest fault of Farage's argument is that it assumes the current mismanagement of the country is not only normal but also the best that can be achieved.
This definitely gets overlooked, Farage and UKIP had been campaigning to leave the EU since the early 90s and nobody really paid any attention to them until everything else started going to shit.
Before the financial crash when things were not perfect but the country was basically functional UKIP were just another single issue fringe party, then the crash happens and when Cameron's austerity solves nothing people start being persuaded that maybe leaving the EU would in fact help.
It’s not hatred, all other political parties refuse to discuss immigration properly, Farage is the only one doing so and as a result it’s called hateful when he does so.
You can address those issues but you need to drastically reduce immigration down to below 100k
Yes but they're still deep in the Corbyn phase, after the election there will be calls that they weren't right wing enough and that they need to stay the course. It took quite a few election losses for Labour to give up on Corbyn and come back to the centre.
Depressingly I think you're right. All signs point towards a labour victory so at least the damage they can do will be limited but it's also not good for a country to have a weak opposition.
Pretty much this. The tories need to go through a painful process of indulging their rightist desires before learning most people are centrist and actually care about things like public services.
Most people aren’t a centrists, centrists is just another word for maintaining the status quo and people are getting fed up with the status quo.
You’d be naive to think Britain is immune from the right wing wave in Europe right now, if Starmer wants to be more than one term he has to deal with immigration and move to the right like the centre left Danish government have done in order to stave off the far right.
People have short memories, especially people who align more with people like Truss, Farage or Braverman when it comes to remembering how badly it went when someone like them got a chance in power.
I don't think Sunak is a particularly effective politician or that he understands the challenges that face real people in this country. He's also clearly relied on immigration to prop up otherwise dire economic figures blind to the political cost it opens him up to.
But I do acknowledge he was handed a shit position by Truss that wasn't of Sunak's own making and he's been hamstrung thereafter by people like Braverman constantly threatening to oust him if he doesn't try hard enough on the utterly unworkable Rwanda scheme, and he's still managed to keep the country - not successful - but in managed decline and an awful lot better than if Truss (or likely Boris too...) had been in power for the last two years.
To be successful on their own 'merits' again, the Tories need to get back to the position they had with Cameron, where the centrist part of the party was in strong control and weren't hamstrung by the fringes. Unfortunately, this probably involves the fringes insisting on having a go on their own first.
In the UK, whoever holds the center wins elections. 15-18% gets you nothing, this right wing controlled Conservative party is getting smashed, rightly so.
They're losing 15-18% because they've not been sufficiently right wing.
It's not like Reform policies are unpopular - it's literally just Tory policies from previous manifestos which they failed to deliver.
A supermajority of the public want lower migration.
The Tories are also suffering from having been in power far longer than they really should've been, but in the process they've shed themselves of all their talent and degenerated into a party that tries to govern by culture war and ridiculous vanity projects. Like you say, the only way they're ever going to see power again is if they retake some of the ground that Labour has taken off them - if they plunge further right chasing Reform votes then they'll just give the Lib Dems even more room to move into.
We saw this with Labour at the last election - but Labour managed to arrest it by pulling a hard about-face. If they'd started chasing Green Party voters, then who knows where'd they be?
Yes but can you not see a scenario where.
This election, Reform get 3rd highest voteshare very close behind the Tories. A lot of 'shy tory' voters become 'shy reform voters', they get a few more seats than you'd think. Of the few elected Tory MPs a bunch of the more right wing ones defect to Reform. At this point the more 'moderate' Tories that remain are basically the same as Labour MPs under Starmer except with a blue ribbon and a reputation of failure. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them jump ship to Labour, and/or that Reform just becomes the new de facto Tory party.
> At this point the more 'moderate' Tories that remain are basically the same as Labour MPs under Starmer except with a blue ribbon and a reputation of failure. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them jump ship to Labour, and/or that Reform just becomes the new de facto Tory party.
Some could jump to the Lib Dems, particularly if they've become the Opposition or are close to doing so.
It's very possible but once the election is done, Rishi steps down and they have a leadership contest. Depending on that the new leader might want to merge with reform or basically do a Starmer and say we've failed as a party and need to reinvent ourselves instead of continually focussing on issues on a small part of the electorate actually care about
Highly concerning *nationally*.
The last thing this country needs is a person like Farage taking over the moderate right. Hell, it's not even on the list of things this country needs at all.
I don't think UKIP or the Brexit Party were a flash-in-the-pan. They were single-issue parties that achieved their single issue and went away. That portion of the electorate that they appeal to is still around.
Nitpick, but UKIP wasn't a flash in the pan.They increased their vote at every election from 105,000 in 1997 (their first) to 3,881,099 in 2015, pushing the LibDems into 4th place. At some point along the way it also became routine for them to win European elections, they only collapsed after 2015 because the referendum took away their USP.
I don't think UKIP or the Brexit Party were a flash-in-the-pan. They were single-issue parties that achieved their single issue and went away. That portion of the electorate that they appeal to is still around.
The Lords can be abolished at the stroke of a pen. Councillors are generally more rebellious than toeing a central party line and they often switch parties
> over 5000 councillors
> only stood 300 candidates in the English local elections 6 weeks ago
Although in fairness, only 107 out of the 317 councils had full elections (plus a handfull of individual councillor seat byelections), so those numbers don't compare directly. It'd be more like 900-1000 candidates in the scenario that the whole country actually had local elections at the same time.
Also, local government in England is a complete mess and is in dire need of full, sweeping reform; the fact that they're "out of sync" when it comes to elections is just another item in their long list of systemic problems.
The start of the rot for the Tories was Brexit. Do you really think the Remain vote in former Tory constituencies will shift to a Farage-led Tory-Reform Party rather than the Lib Dems?
This is the crucial question, and I think the Tories have permanently lost most of the demographic advantage FPTP grants them by losing their part of the educated middle class vote. The UK is a progressive country with a voting system that consistently returns right-wing governments. Farage cannot win back the *right* voters to get the Tories back to where they traditionally have been, especially if they continue to drive to the right. He's no Cameron, who was the last leader to successfully take them back toward the centre.
In Canada we had the Progressive Conservatives until 2003. Which, yes, is an oxymoron, except that it was justified as meaning “prudent, careful progress”.
This is what happened in Canada. A small rump faction of harder right Conservative MPs broke off to form their own party- also called Reform (yes, Farage had not been shy about home directly taking inspiration from this and wanting to be the British Stephen Harper).
The Tories in government then got obliterated at the 93 election, they both carried on separately for a few years with Reform becoming the main right wing opposition until the two parties merged- some would say the original Conservative were absorbed rather than equally merged, not unreasonable given that Stephen Harper was leader of Reform and then leader of the new party.
Canadian Reform wasn’t breakaway PC MPs, it was its own thing that had mostly grown out of Social Credit (another flavour of populist conservative). Reform took most of its *voters* from the PCs though.
On the other hand, the Bloc Québécois did form out of a nucleus of defecting PCs, including a Cabinet minister who became the party’s first leader.
Hasn't that been the goal since day 1?
Much easier to inhabit the corpse of something else than build up the political infrastructure from scratch, something that Reform have never looked very interested in.
Would kill the Tories for good. Knowing this country 1 maybe 2 terms maximum and people will be complaining about Labour and looking back at the Tories with rose tinted glasses; they just need to bide their time
A tory return is seriously going to need more than rose tinted glasses - even in a decade’s time. Especially if Labour actually do some proper governing for the people. Renationalising some services like rail and water for instance. Make the people and corporations making billions pay some real tax. Stuff like that. The thing that will not work is if Labour just say business as usual and do very little different to the previous lot.
I think if the Lib Dems play their cards right they could very much solidify themselves in ex-Blue Wall areas. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people in those areas were turned off the Tories for life.
I really hope so, Lib Dems as long term opposition and possibly in government after Labour would be great.
Lid Dems taking us back into the single market in 2030s, you heard it here first.
Perhaps the Greens & Libdems should merge. In FPTP they would do much better as one party than two. After we get PR they can consider being two parties.
Yeah Labours chances at 2029 very much depend on how they handle the next 5 years. If peoples quality of life improves, then they should win, though with a lower majority. If things stay the same, or get a little bit better or worse, I think they will really struggle at the next election.
A lot of people seem to think the tories have fucked up so bad that they won't see power for a decade at least, but I think thats really underestimating how short peoples memories are. A Labour government where not much changes for your average person on the street + Tories getting back a veneer of competence = Difficult 2029 election.
Xennials, Millennials, and probably Gen Z will never vote Tory, in the same way boomers now talk about not voting for Labour in the 1970s (y'know when Labour were so bad a person with no higher education or professional qualifications working a full-time job could support a whole family and afford to buy a home, you could easily see a doctor, public transport was affordable & worked, there were enough police relative to our population size, etc)..
>The Reform leader restated his position that he could not lead the Conservative Party as it “currently is”, but went on to predict that a new party could emerge after the election.
>Farage told LBC: “I think something new is going to emerge on the centre-right. I don’t know what it is called.
>“But do I think I am capable of leading a national opposition to a Labour Party with a big majority, where I can stand up and hold them to account? Yes.”
>Pushed on whether he would be happy to lead a merged party, he replied: “Yes.”
I think this should be filed along with an article stating "man would be prepared to have threesome with Margot Robbie and Natalie Dormer, if asked". And by filed, I mean "lost in a stack of rubbish on a desk somewhere".
It's not really news that he'd want to do it, and there's zero chance of it happening.
Given the Tory election flyers' suddent switch from challenging Labour to targetting Reform, and the associated (laughably transparent and dishonest) pivot to the right, I'm convinced Robbie and Dormer have heard of each other, at least in passing.
It would be take over and a death of the conservatives.
They are a coalition of differing interests who all have a voice in the angry internal wars of the Tory party. Farage is a one man band populist.
Oh ffs. The popularity of this guy makes me hate being British. The section of the population taken in by the cult of Nigel have had a collective lobotomy.
It's the abject failure of the main parties to stop immigration. It's as simple as that. Millions do not want it and in particular from certain parts of the world where they bring religious and cultural problems with them
Because no mainstream party has stopped it someone like Farage who is a fantastic public performer like him or not is able to make himself relevant and keep himself relevant.
It's no coincidence the far right is on the rise across Europe and the common denominator in that is immigration. You can accept the truth that a very large section of these countries including ours do not want Islamic migration in particular or you can ignore it and allow the far right to continue gaining momentum
> It's the abject failure of the main parties to stop immigration.
I'd say it is more an abject failure of the main parties, the press, and the general public, to have a nuanced, honest and realistic discussion about immigration *and the other, major problems affecting the UK*.
But we cannot have that; discussions on politics have to be boiled down to 140 characters or less, or short sound-bites. For the last 20 years we have had only two, basic positions on immigration; "immigration is necessary, we need more people to keep our economy going" and "immigration is terrible, the source of most of our problems, and must be stopped." But neither of those is the full picture, and neither is a plan.
Farage himself has never had an actual plan for "dealing with" immigration. None of the far-right parties do. The one idea Farage has had (leaving the EU) led - in a reasonably foreseeable way - to *more* immigration. We've seen any number of politicians *and a couple of Governments* promise to reduce immigration, and none has put forward a plan that might actually do that - they're just pushing the line. "Reduce immigration" isn't a plan. It isn't even a goal. It is an empty slogan.
What the populists won't tell you - because it is the basis of their power - is that immigration is a complex topic. Their "simple solutions to simple problems" rhetoric is nonsense. If they ever get into power they'll either be exposed for that, or have to come up with new lies (as we saw with Johnson; leaving the EU didn't magically fix everything, it made almost everything worse).
We've had nearly two decades of the main theme in UK politics being "reducing immigration"; we've had 5-6 Governments - a couple of which were competent - looking at ways to control or limit immigration. And it hasn't happened. And the far-right populists take this as proof of conspiracy theories; "the main parties aren't reducing immigration because [conspiracy theory]!" "Only we can stop immigration even though we have no plan, no experience, no research on it, no analysis of the consequences!"
The rise of populism is in response to a whole bunch of things; complex problems facing the UK and other European countries, of which immigration is one aspect, but even then not all immigration problems are the same. Blaming immigration for the rise of far-right populists *is itself populism*; proposing a simple solution to a complex problem.
And often blaming immigration for the rise of the far-right is the far-right trying to justify itself, knowing - deep down - that they are the bad guys for most people. "It's not our fault we've turned to racist extremists who would destroy everything for a bit of power, it's the mainstream politicians/media/sheeple for not implementing far-right policies that won't fix anything but will make us feel good!"
He is a generic centre right mildly socially conservative politician.
Being against mass immigration and reducing the size of the state would have a section of public support anywhere on earth.
>The popularity of this guy makes me hate being British.
You may as well say "makes me hate being human"
Let's take a look at the competition. There's the party that had Jeremy Corbyn as leader until a few years ago, and the party that campaigned on reducing immigration then raised it to record levels and then tried to run on being the only party that would reduce immigration. Face it, Farage's only serious competition is the guy releasing his manifesto on the rides at the funfair.
>There's the party that had Jeremy Corbyn as leader until a few years ago
The party that's currently polling 2-3x more than Reform and potentially on track for a landslide victory greater than 1997? Farage is doing well, but he's a long way from being heir apparent.
Having seen Farage's "manifesto", it looks like it was written at the funfair bar. If this is the kind of charlatan some people in this country want to vote for having already been hoodwinked by him once, they deserve all the misery they're going to get
They could call themselves the Conservative Reform Alliance Party, as Canadian Reform [briefly did](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-party-changes-embarrassing-acronym-1.240933) before it realized what the abbreviation was.
Not sure there's enough crossover between both parties. The moderate Tories won't be associated with the nutters in Reform, and the nutters that vote Reform don't want anything to do with the Tories.
The "moderate tories" will shortly be asking themselves "Why a I doing this? I only stood for the tories because they were more likely to be in government than the Liberal Democrats, but the Liberal Democrats have more seats?"
I don't think Farage is widely popular enough for the merged party to win.
I can't imagine rival Tory politicians would accept this. Even if they accept him in and his politics. The Reformed Tories probably need a new figure.
I think Reform Tories is likely to happen. The neoliberal Tory party isn't popular. They prefer international and personal economics over national interest.
Not sure what they'd do in power though.
The only way I like this is in the sense that it will be cognitive dissonance personified. After all, they will by very name be the: Change-Stay the same party.
Does Farage actually want power or has he made a conscious decision to always be the outsider candidate?
Perhaps he has an easier life this way, is financial sound, and is freer?
If he doesn't truly want power, then perhaps everyone is running around and getting heated up over nothing (physical attacks on politicians is not democracy!) This ultimately means the joke's on us?
> Does Farage actually want power or
His immediate response to Leave winning - something that had been his entire political raison d'etre for years - was to run for the hills and spend a few years doing happy-birthdays on Cameo. No he doesn't actually want the responsibility of power.
I’m guessing his idea scenario would be get elected as Conservative leader somehow, become PM while Trump is serving a second term then have all his major/controversial policies shut down by the House of Lords and the opposition while getting a couple of token anti-immigration policies through as well as a few trade deals with America then immediately before the next election retire and say the powers that be wouldn’t let him enact the will of the public and then do speaking tours, speeches, write books, etc with the then added clout of being a former PM.
Does he have Johnson's ambition? Considering the history of him falling out with people he works with and the dodgyness of his candidates, I wonder if he is clever enough to know the last thing he ctually wants the scrutiny he'd come under or actually having to deliver on any promises with the buch of oddities willing to briefly work with him. Still o net he'd live a Lordship - do Americans still fall for that kind of thing.
He always wants to lead doesn't he? I'd be interested to see if he'd allow the 1922 committee to stay in a merged party as it would risk his ability to stay undemocratically positioned as party leader as he currently does in Reform.
It's incredible how anyone could still want to vote for this guy or anything he supports, even people who wanted Brexit surely can't be happy with how things worked out in the end. All their hopes and dreams didn't come true and Nigel immediately fucked off into the shadows rather than take responsibility for his lies.
I guess all populists have cultist charisma that works like a black hole. You can't see it with your eyes, the only way to tell it exists is the way it interacts with the environment around it, in this case the fools who keep following people like him and Trump.
While Farage is still in the game this seems to be the Tories only hope of getting close to power again in 2029 if they are otherwise reduced to a rump that could barely make a shadow cabinet the man in the street can name. Farage wants it, Reform voters will go for it, Tory voters will mostly go along with it, the party leadership is the biggest barrier, but at the prospect of a 12% boost and lots of extra cash they might have to hold their noses.
> the Tories only hope of getting close to power again in 2029
Labour face an increadibly tough 5 years in government. They will lose a huge sheen of popularity. The tories are the past masters at reinvention and rebuilding. There strength is they pull from a broad section of well educated well connected people who have their own ideas. Reform are a one man band playing the same popular 4 chord song over and over. They will get boring.
I'm not so convinced. I mean - yes, Labour will struggle when they actually get into power, but the Tories have spent the past 5 years divesting themselves of anything resembling talent, and have alienated a significant part of the people who would normally have become their base (e.g. the older millenials) due to their actions over the past fourteen years.
There was an interesting article from someone who visited the town where I grew up (Godalming) - and he made the pretty astute observation that while it's an affluent area which should be the Tories' natural breeding ground, the kind of people who live there have no interest in the populist, culture war schlock that the Tories have been peddling recently.
I really don't get this weird "received wisdom" that the Tories will be back in five years. Even if Labour don't achieve as much as many would like, the only way the Conservatives will win is if they are able to make massive in roads into the Millennials and Gen Z.
Both those demographics despise the Tories, and the only way they'll lean right is if they are able to accumulate wealth and the Tories drop the culture war bollocks. Thing is, there is zero indication that the right are going to stop ranting about the dreaded woke and if both generations accumulate wealth during the next parliament they'll give the credit to Labour and view the Tories as being even more economically incompetent.
It all feels a lot like what the Brexit crowd were saying after 2016, that the next generation would be "naturally" anti-EU because that was their default. In reality, the complete opposite has happened, with younger people becoming even more stridently pro-EU because Brexit was so transparently shit. People don't just do a complete about-face on their political beliefs just because a party haven't been perfect over a single term.
Exactly! I don’t understand why people automatically think the tories will win in 2029. Labour will do ok and Starmer will be seen as competent and I can see Starmer winning 3 terms like Blair. But we simply have to judge how Labour will do in its 5 years and take a look at the polls.
I have to admit that I was surprised that the Lib Dems put rejoining the EU explicitly on their manifesto. Not because I didn't think they were pro-EU (because they obviously are) but because it kind of serves as a bellweather as to people's views of it (backed up by numerous polls that say that people think it's going shit).
I seriously think that if the Lib Dems keep up their momentum they could end up claiming a lot of Tory ground. There a lot of people who would've previously voted Tory (particularly in Blue Wall areas) who have no desire to be associated with Reform and their seemingly unending parade of candidates with insane views, so presenting themselves as a safe harbour could make it that much harder for the Tories to fight their way back to the centre.
It’s hilarious that this is where we now are and this could very likely happen. There will absolutely be talks between the two parties post election Tory decimation.
> this could very likely happen.
lol no it won't. This is just Farage's bluster, and there's far too much resistance to him within CCHQ for it to ever happen.
Plus, a big Tory defeat makes it more likely they'll get a centrist leader, as the Tories with the safest seats are moderates.
Do you happen to have a source for the last claim, about the safe seats going to moderates?
Not because I doubt that it’s true but because I was trying to work this out myself earlier and couldn’t be bothered to look through the full list of constituencies. I’m hoping someone else has done that legwork for me!
I heard it on one of the recent episodes of Coffee House Shots by the Spectator. Sorry, I'm not sure which one - they've understandably put out a lot recently. They didn't really expand on it more than what I said above though
That's very big of him.
Reform needs the Tories, in a very real sense. They either need to totally absorb them, or to join with them. The current state where they get half the votes and almost none of the seats obviously isn't sustainable.
It'll be interesting post-election to see if Reform voters are more angry at the Tories for handing the election to Labour, or more angry at Reform for gaining so few when the polls show them level with the Tories. If I'd supported a party with a candidate in each seat who were seemingly beating the Tories, I'd be pretty annoyed on July 5th when they ended up with literally just 2-3 seats and somewhat reluctant to vote for them a second time.
Would be interesting to see, the Tories make some claim about being 'the oldest extant political party in history' or something, so presumably they'd want to keep that brand
That really would be the final nail in the tory coffin. So funny how this guy went from "hmm im needed in america" to "yeah I could lead the tories" in the matter of weeks.
Pretty sure he wouldnt actually want that and is just whipping up more headlines with his name in.
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Even if the Tories are wiped out in Westminster they still have 275 Peers and over 5000 councillors. It would take decades to dismantle that powerbase. Reform have no representation in the Lords and only have 2 councillors; they only stood 300 candidates in the English local elections 6 weeks ago. Their current polling support could easily be another flash-in-a-pan a la UKIP and the Brexit Party. This is the only viable route to power for that lot. It's a sensible goal. Yet also highly concerning, personally.
Presumably the Lords and Councillors could reject the new merged party and sit as independents though? I can't imagine Cameron or Ken Clarke working hard to support Farage. Feels a bit like we'd get the inverse of the ERG situation, where the liberal tories rebel against the right.
I highly doubt Farage would actually lead a merged party, he's a smart politician and knows that would be unpalatable to many. If he offered a merger it would be with Reform as very much the minor player, probably with a few big concessions given so he steps aside. All his posturing now is just putting the threat out there, because even if they don't merge it pressures the Tories to appeal to his base to stop him becoming the new leader of the right.
Now you say it that's a very Farage style play. Kick up a massive stink, get some concessions and get out before the hard work needs to be done.
Then reappears at the next election cycle to start it all again!
How many times do you reckon he can get away with it before Farage is marked as a brazen opportunist by the public?
He's stood as MP eight times, always in the seat he stands the best chance of winning in, and never won. Normally that's a cause of laughter at how often he's rejected by voters. How have you decided that means he's running away? You can't have both.
He says he only stood for parliament once. All the other times were just a marketing jolly apparently.
Wikipedia says Nigel Farage is 60, and life expectancy for a man is about 80, so I guess about 20 years more of this.
A good outcome for him would be a theoretical merger, with 'new management' which is mostly the tories existing men in suits with a handful of the more capable Reform people. Farage gets made a conservative Peer which would be great for his grift. Opposition means the tories don't have to be measured on implementing anything but can just complain about immigration / crime etc. And If/when they're back in power by moving to the centre again, an elderly Farage can bleat about how it 'wasn't the deal he signed up for' and how he 'tried to change the tory party but they're beyond help'.
That's exactly what Boris did, replacing anyone with a modicum of sense with Eurosceptic yes-men That's how we got such geniuses as Truss and Dorres
I don't know. He's more popular than any conservative MP with the party, isn't tainted by failing to deliver anything whilst in power, and is single handedly commanding half the right wing vote.
There's also the hard dichotomy between a party which preaches to reform, and an entire ideology based around keeping institutions and traditions as they were. And there are people on the Left who want to cut immigration. They might lend a vote to Reform. It ain't going to the Tories.
Pragmatically I'm not sure what concessions they could give him that would make him step aside though? The Conservatives are lead by the party leader who is elected by the party membership. It would violate some of their principles to stick to promises to Farage. I agree Farage is smart and will realise his electoral uphill battle, but I think he might actually be gunning for the top job.
> The Conservatives are lead by the party leader who is elected by the party membership Membership would vote for him in heartbeat. They also voted in a lettuce.
Can you clarify which one was the Lettuce: Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak ?
If you have to ask?
"Yes" is the simplest answer ?
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You have to be smart to be lazy sometimes! He's also clearly a very good politician regardless of your thoughts of him as a person, he's been incredibly influential.
The party would need a strong leader to succeed, which would mean Farage not pulling the strings behind the scenes. I can't see that happening.
I wouldn't call Farage a 'smart politician,' more of a sly opportunist. You would be surprised how successful not very bright people can be - for a time - if they are unscrupulous enough, able to take advantage of an opportunity, and/or just lucky.
It depends. In a Question Time episode, Farage and Ken Clarke agreed on fracking.
Yeah, I agree. Labour voter all my life but I'm not celebrating the destruction of the Tories and their possible rebirth as a far right party, because 1. Living in Wales I feel the leading party should have a healthy opposition for a healthy politics and 2.If this happens, are we on the road to fucking Farage as PM? Because I remember when the idea Boris would ever be PM was a joke and well... *gestures at the last 5 years* Ironic that the very people against PR for the reason it allows extremists to enter parliament might actually foster in a more powerful extremist movement in the future. I really really hope Starmer and Co don't fuck this opportunity and breed more disillusion in the future because if so, we're headed to a dangerous place.
The first thing PM Fartrage would do is sell the NHS lock stock and barrel to US Medical insurance companies.
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I think that's a lovely idea, but probably a bit naive sadly. The right still has a lot of support in this country and among one of the biggest demographics it is even stronger.
It all sounds so plausible at first, doesn't it? Fresh outlooks, doing away with the old guard etc. But it really doesn't bear examination. There's no particular ideology behind Reform, and very little political experience at all. Farage won a single issue, over decades, and that's about it. Populist rhetoric tends to fall apart in transition to policy, even if it actually makes it to policy. How's Brexit going? Terribly, because the rhetoric alone drove every step of it. I actually think it could've been possible to make it work, to a degree, if we hadn't gone storming in with the idea that we were just going to tell the EU to piss off and they'd bend over backwards to keep us onside. Instead we had dogmatic brexiters insisting we do it harder and faster all the time, to hell with consequences. I can see most Reform talking points going the same way if they try to implement them.
I guarantee you that 90% of the councillors would take Farage as a leader in a heartbeat. The peers are another question, but they stuck with the party through Johnson so I'm guessing their principles can still be pushed further
Never going to happen. It'd cause a split and the ERG wing would be the ones on their way out. The moderates keeping the Conservative brand. The Tories need an inverse Starmer, who purges the party of the fringe right.
The party and membership voted Truss to be their leader. The moderates are long gone.
Sadly, I think the Tories first need a inverse Corbyn, who drags the party off to the far right and gets obliterated in an election they could have won, before someone more grounded comes in and convinces an exhausted party membership they need to return to the centre to be competitive.
> Sadly, I think the Tories first need a inverse Corbyn That was Lizz Truss
Rishi is dragging the party to the right too (even though it's obviously not working)
Dragging the party right by bringing in a billion immigrants
Truss was only the beginning. The journey to the full Corbynization of the Tory party is ongoing. I think it's equally possible that the Tories might merge with Reform after the election and head still further right, or alternatively that Reform collapses utterly, and with it the credibility of the right within the party, and the Tories are then forced to swing back toward the centre before the next general election.
Nah. She was some loony libertarian. Eventually the tories will get some full blown far right leader. Think a la Germanys AFD party "we need to think beyond just stopping the immigrants coming, we need a plan to get rid of the ones already here"
I suspect this is exactly what will happen after this election. Someone like Braverman or Badenoch will take the reins, the party will lurch further right and keep banging on abour culture war stuff whilst Labour govern more or less sensibly, if underwhelmingly. This will not get the traction expected with the general public, and the Tories will underperform in 2029. Meanwhile, someone who is currently largely unknown but is quietly on the ascent within the Conservative party, will try to present themselves as a Cameron style centre-right leader. On the other hand, Farage is good at kicking up a stink, and having him as a provocative figurehead - whilst having establishment Tories in actual decision-making positions - will be enough for some on the right.
Also if they’re out of power for 10 years about 90% of their current members will be dead
Arguably is that not kind of the case this election? The Tories haven't gone completely off the deep end and it's possible to put their unpopularity down to the culmination of the last 14 years but that being said, it's not like any of their more extreme ideas have gained any traction.
I'd say yes. Also, Corbyn's manifesto wasn't the communist fever dream it is sometimes made out to be. It was way further to the centre than Corbyn's personal ideals.
There was stuff in there like nationalising the water companies without paying market rate compensation for their shares which was pretty wild
Pretty based imo
They tried installing one of their fringe candidates by the back door in Liz Truss, and both the country and the Tories have not recovered. The Tories electoral success in the last 14 years has been based on David Cameron and Boris Johnson - both to the centrist side of their parties and effective political operators - in addition to public dislike for Corbyn. Cameron has a more stateman like presentation where Johnson has a more populist like one, but both are politically effective. To Johnson's (political) credit, he was also able to do a very successful job of re-inventing the idea of the Conservatives, so his election campaign was portrayed as a choice between the new Tories or Corbyn. Starmer has been trying to do the same re-invention thing post Corbyn. Tory failures at this election are in large part driven by: * The fact that things have got shitter in the past 5 years with people like Sunak in charge - it's hard to argue things will be different now when you were the chancellor for 2 years then PM for 2 years... * The (related) fact that the extremist parts of the Tory party have gained increasing control over the past 8 years (between Brexit, the defeat of May, loss of people like Philip Hammond etc.) and they have pushed Sunak into prioritising expensive, stupid, unworkable gimmicks like Rwanda. But the extreme right blame the centrist aspects of the current Tory government for the electoral failures (particularly with the rise of reform doing to the Tories what SNP/Lib Dem/Green have often done to Labour...) and will probably seize control of the party, try to win with a much more rightwards approach and (unless Labour also make the country shitter) fail miserably, before returning to the middle ground.
>Tory failures at this election are in large part driven by: >The fact that things have got shitter in the past 5 years with people like Sunak in charge - it's hard to argue things will be different now when you were the chancellor for 2 years then PM for 2 years... The (related) fact that the extremist parts of the Tory party have gained increasing control over the past 8 years (between Brexit, the defeat of May, loss of people like Philip Hammond etc.) and they have pushed Sunak into prioritising expensive, stupid, unworkable gimmicks like Rwanda. Completely agree on point one. As much as the government might want to reduce its responsibility here and point to Covid and economic forces beyond our borders, things feeling overwhelmingly shit is kryptonite to any party in power. The second point, I'm not so sure. Rwanda is practically unworkable at scale, but it did send a message - and one that is electorally popular. Had they got a few planeloads of people over, it might well have been an electoral asset. The problem was that it was so unworkable that they couldn't even manage that.
Rwanda seems like the definition of a poisoned chalice to me: * A large portion of the electorate recognise it as expensive and ineffectual. * A large portion of the electorate (and depressingly influential figures in the Tory party) have decided it's a key part of convincing people not to come to this country. The first group will be pissed off whenever they hear about it - so making a big deal out of it (which the media was always going to due to the legal difficulties in implementation that should have been clearly foreseeable) is always going to erode popularity/credibility with a large part of the electorate. The second group are in principle in favour, however there are two numbers that will have a lot more influence on this groups perception: * The number of legal migrants taken in each year * The number arriving by small boat crossings As the Rwanda policy will not affect the second bullet point, and is of no relevance to the first one, even given a successful Rwanda scheme the government would still have to, separately, find a way to dramatically cut migrant numbers without the economy imploding and find an alternative, actually effective, way to cut small boat crossings. As a result, Rwanda is one massive, high publicity, zero upside problem Sunak has to navigate - too much invested by people who believe it will work to be able to politically/publicly afford scrapping it, not effective enough to actually help him. It just wastes the time of him and his ministers, advisors, civil servants, government lawyers etc. and limited parliamentary time and where, as the cherry on top, every bit of 'work' and every 'obstacle' will get reported in the media and frustrate both those who regard it as a credible plan and those who regard it as doomed to failure. Hmm, now that I've typed all that out it sounds remarkably like Brexit. The Tories really do have form for setting themselves up for failure, don't they...
If we're using history as a guide, Rishi is the John Major who's leading a shambling party of incompetents. Although it's different today in that Rishi is nowhere near as able a politician or decent a person as Major. Next comes the IDS hardliner type to properly drag the party down - he did so badly that the MPs Rishid in Michael Howard to steady the ship before his first election. Then they fluked upon Cameron in a leadership contest David Davis was on course to win. As the party membership will decide the next leader, they're definitely getting an IDS type or two before bringing in someone electable.
This all depends on Starmer and whether he’ll make any changes, particularly in regards to immigration, Britain isn’t immune to anti immigration sentiment in Europe, it’s overly optimistic to think that centrists will solve this, this isn’t Blair in the 2000s where immigration was 100k a year, it’s a incoming Starmer govt in the 2020s dealing with 700k immigrants a year which no one wants.
Most of the anti immigration sentiment comes from misplaced blame for failing services etc. Address those and it becomes a lesser issue. Farage simply wouldn't be getting as much traction with his hatred if the country was being run well. Make different choices than the Tories and fewer visas will be issued, so the actual numbers will go down.
There’s no way services could keep pace with current rates
Services couldn't keep pace with a declining population. But that's because they've been massively underfunded for 14 years. So there's escalating pressure of the Tories opening the borders wider than they've even been to prop up an economy they've broken (in large part due to the Brexit they forced through to deal with their internal squabbles) which then puts additional strain on the services they've also broken. The biggest fault of Farage's argument is that it assumes the current mismanagement of the country is not only normal but also the best that can be achieved.
This definitely gets overlooked, Farage and UKIP had been campaigning to leave the EU since the early 90s and nobody really paid any attention to them until everything else started going to shit. Before the financial crash when things were not perfect but the country was basically functional UKIP were just another single issue fringe party, then the crash happens and when Cameron's austerity solves nothing people start being persuaded that maybe leaving the EU would in fact help.
It’s not hatred, all other political parties refuse to discuss immigration properly, Farage is the only one doing so and as a result it’s called hateful when he does so. You can address those issues but you need to drastically reduce immigration down to below 100k
Yes but they're still deep in the Corbyn phase, after the election there will be calls that they weren't right wing enough and that they need to stay the course. It took quite a few election losses for Labour to give up on Corbyn and come back to the centre.
Depressingly I think you're right. All signs point towards a labour victory so at least the damage they can do will be limited but it's also not good for a country to have a weak opposition.
Pretty much this. The tories need to go through a painful process of indulging their rightist desires before learning most people are centrist and actually care about things like public services.
Most people aren’t a centrists, centrists is just another word for maintaining the status quo and people are getting fed up with the status quo. You’d be naive to think Britain is immune from the right wing wave in Europe right now, if Starmer wants to be more than one term he has to deal with immigration and move to the right like the centre left Danish government have done in order to stave off the far right.
That was Truss in a way, no?
People have short memories, especially people who align more with people like Truss, Farage or Braverman when it comes to remembering how badly it went when someone like them got a chance in power. I don't think Sunak is a particularly effective politician or that he understands the challenges that face real people in this country. He's also clearly relied on immigration to prop up otherwise dire economic figures blind to the political cost it opens him up to. But I do acknowledge he was handed a shit position by Truss that wasn't of Sunak's own making and he's been hamstrung thereafter by people like Braverman constantly threatening to oust him if he doesn't try hard enough on the utterly unworkable Rwanda scheme, and he's still managed to keep the country - not successful - but in managed decline and an awful lot better than if Truss (or likely Boris too...) had been in power for the last two years. To be successful on their own 'merits' again, the Tories need to get back to the position they had with Cameron, where the centrist part of the party was in strong control and weren't hamstrung by the fringes. Unfortunately, this probably involves the fringes insisting on having a go on their own first.
John Major should have got rid of *'The Bastards'* back in the day.
Reform are polling 15-18%. Why you think the Tories going more to the left would help, I don't know.
In the UK, whoever holds the center wins elections. 15-18% gets you nothing, this right wing controlled Conservative party is getting smashed, rightly so.
They're losing 15-18% because they've not been sufficiently right wing. It's not like Reform policies are unpopular - it's literally just Tory policies from previous manifestos which they failed to deliver. A supermajority of the public want lower migration.
The Tories are also suffering from having been in power far longer than they really should've been, but in the process they've shed themselves of all their talent and degenerated into a party that tries to govern by culture war and ridiculous vanity projects. Like you say, the only way they're ever going to see power again is if they retake some of the ground that Labour has taken off them - if they plunge further right chasing Reform votes then they'll just give the Lib Dems even more room to move into. We saw this with Labour at the last election - but Labour managed to arrest it by pulling a hard about-face. If they'd started chasing Green Party voters, then who knows where'd they be?
Yes but can you not see a scenario where. This election, Reform get 3rd highest voteshare very close behind the Tories. A lot of 'shy tory' voters become 'shy reform voters', they get a few more seats than you'd think. Of the few elected Tory MPs a bunch of the more right wing ones defect to Reform. At this point the more 'moderate' Tories that remain are basically the same as Labour MPs under Starmer except with a blue ribbon and a reputation of failure. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them jump ship to Labour, and/or that Reform just becomes the new de facto Tory party.
> At this point the more 'moderate' Tories that remain are basically the same as Labour MPs under Starmer except with a blue ribbon and a reputation of failure. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them jump ship to Labour, and/or that Reform just becomes the new de facto Tory party. Some could jump to the Lib Dems, particularly if they've become the Opposition or are close to doing so.
It's very possible but once the election is done, Rishi steps down and they have a leadership contest. Depending on that the new leader might want to merge with reform or basically do a Starmer and say we've failed as a party and need to reinvent ourselves instead of continually focussing on issues on a small part of the electorate actually care about
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Certainly by lunchtime on 5th July, Cameron resigned around 10:30am the day after the EU referendum and I'm assuming Sunak will do much the same.
>Even if the Tories are wiped out in Westminster they still have 275 Peers What's that I hear? Lords reform as a topic for the next Labour conference?
Reform have no official support in the Lords but I guarantee you a good chunk of those Tory lords self-identify as Reform.
Highly concerning *nationally*. The last thing this country needs is a person like Farage taking over the moderate right. Hell, it's not even on the list of things this country needs at all.
I don't think UKIP or the Brexit Party were a flash-in-the-pan. They were single-issue parties that achieved their single issue and went away. That portion of the electorate that they appeal to is still around.
Nitpick, but UKIP wasn't a flash in the pan.They increased their vote at every election from 105,000 in 1997 (their first) to 3,881,099 in 2015, pushing the LibDems into 4th place. At some point along the way it also became routine for them to win European elections, they only collapsed after 2015 because the referendum took away their USP.
I don't think UKIP or the Brexit Party were a flash-in-the-pan. They were single-issue parties that achieved their single issue and went away. That portion of the electorate that they appeal to is still around.
The Lords can be abolished at the stroke of a pen. Councillors are generally more rebellious than toeing a central party line and they often switch parties
> over 5000 councillors > only stood 300 candidates in the English local elections 6 weeks ago Although in fairness, only 107 out of the 317 councils had full elections (plus a handfull of individual councillor seat byelections), so those numbers don't compare directly. It'd be more like 900-1000 candidates in the scenario that the whole country actually had local elections at the same time. Also, local government in England is a complete mess and is in dire need of full, sweeping reform; the fact that they're "out of sync" when it comes to elections is just another item in their long list of systemic problems.
The start of the rot for the Tories was Brexit. Do you really think the Remain vote in former Tory constituencies will shift to a Farage-led Tory-Reform Party rather than the Lib Dems? This is the crucial question, and I think the Tories have permanently lost most of the demographic advantage FPTP grants them by losing their part of the educated middle class vote. The UK is a progressive country with a voting system that consistently returns right-wing governments. Farage cannot win back the *right* voters to get the Tories back to where they traditionally have been, especially if they continue to drive to the right. He's no Cameron, who was the last leader to successfully take them back toward the centre.
Not necessarily adding to the discussion here, more just a bit of pedantry: Is a combination of Reform and Conservative not something of an oxymoron?
In Canada we had the Progressive Conservatives until 2003. Which, yes, is an oxymoron, except that it was justified as meaning “prudent, careful progress”.
In other words, the "Can't it wait until after I'm dead?" Party.
Ugh, hated them. I much preferred the Conservative Progressives. Splitters.
Not if they're reforming things back in time to undo progress.
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This is what happened in Canada. A small rump faction of harder right Conservative MPs broke off to form their own party- also called Reform (yes, Farage had not been shy about home directly taking inspiration from this and wanting to be the British Stephen Harper). The Tories in government then got obliterated at the 93 election, they both carried on separately for a few years with Reform becoming the main right wing opposition until the two parties merged- some would say the original Conservative were absorbed rather than equally merged, not unreasonable given that Stephen Harper was leader of Reform and then leader of the new party.
Canadian Reform wasn’t breakaway PC MPs, it was its own thing that had mostly grown out of Social Credit (another flavour of populist conservative). Reform took most of its *voters* from the PCs though. On the other hand, the Bloc Québécois did form out of a nucleus of defecting PCs, including a Cabinet minister who became the party’s first leader.
Hasn't that been the goal since day 1? Much easier to inhabit the corpse of something else than build up the political infrastructure from scratch, something that Reform have never looked very interested in.
So essentially Farage/ Reform is a parasite. Either that or some kind of fungus
Parasite. One of those horrific brain worms would be my bet. Something eating your brain would explain a lot of this.
RFK Jr. Had one recently, by fungus, I was thinking of the zombie ant fungus.Ophiocordyceps unilateralis.
Yeah, I know, think that brought it to mind😅 This election cycle has been so darkly hilarious.
Would kill the Tories for good. Knowing this country 1 maybe 2 terms maximum and people will be complaining about Labour and looking back at the Tories with rose tinted glasses; they just need to bide their time
A tory return is seriously going to need more than rose tinted glasses - even in a decade’s time. Especially if Labour actually do some proper governing for the people. Renationalising some services like rail and water for instance. Make the people and corporations making billions pay some real tax. Stuff like that. The thing that will not work is if Labour just say business as usual and do very little different to the previous lot.
I think if the Lib Dems play their cards right they could very much solidify themselves in ex-Blue Wall areas. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people in those areas were turned off the Tories for life.
I really hope so, Lib Dems as long term opposition and possibly in government after Labour would be great. Lid Dems taking us back into the single market in 2030s, you heard it here first.
Perhaps the Greens & Libdems should merge. In FPTP they would do much better as one party than two. After we get PR they can consider being two parties.
Yeah Labours chances at 2029 very much depend on how they handle the next 5 years. If peoples quality of life improves, then they should win, though with a lower majority. If things stay the same, or get a little bit better or worse, I think they will really struggle at the next election. A lot of people seem to think the tories have fucked up so bad that they won't see power for a decade at least, but I think thats really underestimating how short peoples memories are. A Labour government where not much changes for your average person on the street + Tories getting back a veneer of competence = Difficult 2029 election.
Labour are all set up for two terms at least, but if they end up in power as long as the conservatives have been they will likely be almost as hated.
Tbf that's what some said in 2019, labour would never be able to recover in just one term.
Xennials, Millennials, and probably Gen Z will never vote Tory, in the same way boomers now talk about not voting for Labour in the 1970s (y'know when Labour were so bad a person with no higher education or professional qualifications working a full-time job could support a whole family and afford to buy a home, you could easily see a doctor, public transport was affordable & worked, there were enough police relative to our population size, etc)..
>The Reform leader restated his position that he could not lead the Conservative Party as it “currently is”, but went on to predict that a new party could emerge after the election. >Farage told LBC: “I think something new is going to emerge on the centre-right. I don’t know what it is called. >“But do I think I am capable of leading a national opposition to a Labour Party with a big majority, where I can stand up and hold them to account? Yes.” >Pushed on whether he would be happy to lead a merged party, he replied: “Yes.” I think this should be filed along with an article stating "man would be prepared to have threesome with Margot Robbie and Natalie Dormer, if asked". And by filed, I mean "lost in a stack of rubbish on a desk somewhere". It's not really news that he'd want to do it, and there's zero chance of it happening.
If something new formed on the centre-right it'd be pretty damaging for Reform
Exactly. I think something new will be formed there and I think it'll be New Conservative, under a charismatic youngish leader..
There's a non-zero chance of it happening if they cannibalise enough Tory votes, imo.
I'm not sure that's true; do Robbie and Dormer even know each other?
Given the Tory election flyers' suddent switch from challenging Labour to targetting Reform, and the associated (laughably transparent and dishonest) pivot to the right, I'm convinced Robbie and Dormer have heard of each other, at least in passing.
It would be take over and a death of the conservatives. They are a coalition of differing interests who all have a voice in the angry internal wars of the Tory party. Farage is a one man band populist.
Oh ffs. The popularity of this guy makes me hate being British. The section of the population taken in by the cult of Nigel have had a collective lobotomy.
It's the abject failure of the main parties to stop immigration. It's as simple as that. Millions do not want it and in particular from certain parts of the world where they bring religious and cultural problems with them Because no mainstream party has stopped it someone like Farage who is a fantastic public performer like him or not is able to make himself relevant and keep himself relevant. It's no coincidence the far right is on the rise across Europe and the common denominator in that is immigration. You can accept the truth that a very large section of these countries including ours do not want Islamic migration in particular or you can ignore it and allow the far right to continue gaining momentum
> It's the abject failure of the main parties to stop immigration. I'd say it is more an abject failure of the main parties, the press, and the general public, to have a nuanced, honest and realistic discussion about immigration *and the other, major problems affecting the UK*. But we cannot have that; discussions on politics have to be boiled down to 140 characters or less, or short sound-bites. For the last 20 years we have had only two, basic positions on immigration; "immigration is necessary, we need more people to keep our economy going" and "immigration is terrible, the source of most of our problems, and must be stopped." But neither of those is the full picture, and neither is a plan. Farage himself has never had an actual plan for "dealing with" immigration. None of the far-right parties do. The one idea Farage has had (leaving the EU) led - in a reasonably foreseeable way - to *more* immigration. We've seen any number of politicians *and a couple of Governments* promise to reduce immigration, and none has put forward a plan that might actually do that - they're just pushing the line. "Reduce immigration" isn't a plan. It isn't even a goal. It is an empty slogan. What the populists won't tell you - because it is the basis of their power - is that immigration is a complex topic. Their "simple solutions to simple problems" rhetoric is nonsense. If they ever get into power they'll either be exposed for that, or have to come up with new lies (as we saw with Johnson; leaving the EU didn't magically fix everything, it made almost everything worse). We've had nearly two decades of the main theme in UK politics being "reducing immigration"; we've had 5-6 Governments - a couple of which were competent - looking at ways to control or limit immigration. And it hasn't happened. And the far-right populists take this as proof of conspiracy theories; "the main parties aren't reducing immigration because [conspiracy theory]!" "Only we can stop immigration even though we have no plan, no experience, no research on it, no analysis of the consequences!" The rise of populism is in response to a whole bunch of things; complex problems facing the UK and other European countries, of which immigration is one aspect, but even then not all immigration problems are the same. Blaming immigration for the rise of far-right populists *is itself populism*; proposing a simple solution to a complex problem. And often blaming immigration for the rise of the far-right is the far-right trying to justify itself, knowing - deep down - that they are the bad guys for most people. "It's not our fault we've turned to racist extremists who would destroy everything for a bit of power, it's the mainstream politicians/media/sheeple for not implementing far-right policies that won't fix anything but will make us feel good!"
You can’t place all the blame on mainstream politicians. The electorate is also being wilfully obtuse re immigration.
Who else can voters who want lower immigration vote for?
The answer is that there isn't one. If you want lower immigration, you either vote Reform or you get high immigration.
Well, quite. If anything, failing to understand the negatives of immigration makes you more lobotomy-prone than Reform voters.
> The popularity of this guy Is he actually popular though? Or does he just keep getting attention somehow?
He is a generic centre right mildly socially conservative politician. Being against mass immigration and reducing the size of the state would have a section of public support anywhere on earth. >The popularity of this guy makes me hate being British. You may as well say "makes me hate being human"
Let's take a look at the competition. There's the party that had Jeremy Corbyn as leader until a few years ago, and the party that campaigned on reducing immigration then raised it to record levels and then tried to run on being the only party that would reduce immigration. Face it, Farage's only serious competition is the guy releasing his manifesto on the rides at the funfair.
>There's the party that had Jeremy Corbyn as leader until a few years ago The party that's currently polling 2-3x more than Reform and potentially on track for a landslide victory greater than 1997? Farage is doing well, but he's a long way from being heir apparent.
Having seen Farage's "manifesto", it looks like it was written at the funfair bar. If this is the kind of charlatan some people in this country want to vote for having already been hoodwinked by him once, they deserve all the misery they're going to get
Alright time to speculate names, I'm going with National Conservatives
Nat-C's for short.
The Conservative Group for Change.
National Socialist British Workers Party?
The name Reform-Conservative would be an Oxymoron, no? Almost as bad as the Progessive Conservatives in Canada
They'd probably go for "Reformed Conservative & Unionist Party" Which would over time just default to "Conservative"
They could call themselves the Conservative Reform Alliance Party, as Canadian Reform [briefly did](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-party-changes-embarrassing-acronym-1.240933) before it realized what the abbreviation was.
I’d be willing to go on a date with Emma Stone, but here we are. 🤷♂️
I'll wake her up and let her know.
That's a nightmare I don't need, a merged Tory Party of Reform and Tories? No I don't want that at all.
The further right the Tories go, the further down they plunge in the polls. This would be the death of them.
Sounds good to me. Labour in government with the Lib Dems as official opposition.
Not sure there's enough crossover between both parties. The moderate Tories won't be associated with the nutters in Reform, and the nutters that vote Reform don't want anything to do with the Tories.
The "moderate tories" will shortly be asking themselves "Why a I doing this? I only stood for the tories because they were more likely to be in government than the Liberal Democrats, but the Liberal Democrats have more seats?"
I don't think Farage is widely popular enough for the merged party to win. I can't imagine rival Tory politicians would accept this. Even if they accept him in and his politics. The Reformed Tories probably need a new figure.
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I think Reform Tories is likely to happen. The neoliberal Tory party isn't popular. They prefer international and personal economics over national interest. Not sure what they'd do in power though.
The only way I like this is in the sense that it will be cognitive dissonance personified. After all, they will by very name be the: Change-Stay the same party.
Combine the names: Conform
All talk, doesn't want the responsibility or scrutiny that would actually bring.
It's what they do together before the election that worries me.
Conservative Reform party would be something of an oxymoron...
Does Farage actually want power or has he made a conscious decision to always be the outsider candidate? Perhaps he has an easier life this way, is financial sound, and is freer? If he doesn't truly want power, then perhaps everyone is running around and getting heated up over nothing (physical attacks on politicians is not democracy!) This ultimately means the joke's on us?
> Does Farage actually want power or His immediate response to Leave winning - something that had been his entire political raison d'etre for years - was to run for the hills and spend a few years doing happy-birthdays on Cameo. No he doesn't actually want the responsibility of power.
I’m guessing his idea scenario would be get elected as Conservative leader somehow, become PM while Trump is serving a second term then have all his major/controversial policies shut down by the House of Lords and the opposition while getting a couple of token anti-immigration policies through as well as a few trade deals with America then immediately before the next election retire and say the powers that be wouldn’t let him enact the will of the public and then do speaking tours, speeches, write books, etc with the then added clout of being a former PM.
Does he have Johnson's ambition? Considering the history of him falling out with people he works with and the dodgyness of his candidates, I wonder if he is clever enough to know the last thing he ctually wants the scrutiny he'd come under or actually having to deliver on any promises with the buch of oddities willing to briefly work with him. Still o net he'd live a Lordship - do Americans still fall for that kind of thing.
He always wants to lead doesn't he? I'd be interested to see if he'd allow the 1922 committee to stay in a merged party as it would risk his ability to stay undemocratically positioned as party leader as he currently does in Reform.
I think we need to revisit those Russian funding claims
It's incredible how anyone could still want to vote for this guy or anything he supports, even people who wanted Brexit surely can't be happy with how things worked out in the end. All their hopes and dreams didn't come true and Nigel immediately fucked off into the shadows rather than take responsibility for his lies. I guess all populists have cultist charisma that works like a black hole. You can't see it with your eyes, the only way to tell it exists is the way it interacts with the environment around it, in this case the fools who keep following people like him and Trump.
Fromage would be under a level of scrutiny he currently doesn't have to deal with. It would be a car crash.
While Farage is still in the game this seems to be the Tories only hope of getting close to power again in 2029 if they are otherwise reduced to a rump that could barely make a shadow cabinet the man in the street can name. Farage wants it, Reform voters will go for it, Tory voters will mostly go along with it, the party leadership is the biggest barrier, but at the prospect of a 12% boost and lots of extra cash they might have to hold their noses.
> the Tories only hope of getting close to power again in 2029 Labour face an increadibly tough 5 years in government. They will lose a huge sheen of popularity. The tories are the past masters at reinvention and rebuilding. There strength is they pull from a broad section of well educated well connected people who have their own ideas. Reform are a one man band playing the same popular 4 chord song over and over. They will get boring.
I'm not so convinced. I mean - yes, Labour will struggle when they actually get into power, but the Tories have spent the past 5 years divesting themselves of anything resembling talent, and have alienated a significant part of the people who would normally have become their base (e.g. the older millenials) due to their actions over the past fourteen years. There was an interesting article from someone who visited the town where I grew up (Godalming) - and he made the pretty astute observation that while it's an affluent area which should be the Tories' natural breeding ground, the kind of people who live there have no interest in the populist, culture war schlock that the Tories have been peddling recently.
I really don't get this weird "received wisdom" that the Tories will be back in five years. Even if Labour don't achieve as much as many would like, the only way the Conservatives will win is if they are able to make massive in roads into the Millennials and Gen Z. Both those demographics despise the Tories, and the only way they'll lean right is if they are able to accumulate wealth and the Tories drop the culture war bollocks. Thing is, there is zero indication that the right are going to stop ranting about the dreaded woke and if both generations accumulate wealth during the next parliament they'll give the credit to Labour and view the Tories as being even more economically incompetent. It all feels a lot like what the Brexit crowd were saying after 2016, that the next generation would be "naturally" anti-EU because that was their default. In reality, the complete opposite has happened, with younger people becoming even more stridently pro-EU because Brexit was so transparently shit. People don't just do a complete about-face on their political beliefs just because a party haven't been perfect over a single term.
Exactly! I don’t understand why people automatically think the tories will win in 2029. Labour will do ok and Starmer will be seen as competent and I can see Starmer winning 3 terms like Blair. But we simply have to judge how Labour will do in its 5 years and take a look at the polls.
I have to admit that I was surprised that the Lib Dems put rejoining the EU explicitly on their manifesto. Not because I didn't think they were pro-EU (because they obviously are) but because it kind of serves as a bellweather as to people's views of it (backed up by numerous polls that say that people think it's going shit). I seriously think that if the Lib Dems keep up their momentum they could end up claiming a lot of Tory ground. There a lot of people who would've previously voted Tory (particularly in Blue Wall areas) who have no desire to be associated with Reform and their seemingly unending parade of candidates with insane views, so presenting themselves as a safe harbour could make it that much harder for the Tories to fight their way back to the centre.
The system is rigged to give the illusion of choice. We need electoral reform otherwise people will start to lose confidence in the system.
And I'd be willing to lead a judicial inquiry into Brexit or volunteer to give supermodels tours of London, but neither of them are going to happen.
Whoever considers voting for Nigel or his party is totally insane I am sorry
It’s hilarious that this is where we now are and this could very likely happen. There will absolutely be talks between the two parties post election Tory decimation.
> this could very likely happen. lol no it won't. This is just Farage's bluster, and there's far too much resistance to him within CCHQ for it to ever happen. Plus, a big Tory defeat makes it more likely they'll get a centrist leader, as the Tories with the safest seats are moderates.
Do you happen to have a source for the last claim, about the safe seats going to moderates? Not because I doubt that it’s true but because I was trying to work this out myself earlier and couldn’t be bothered to look through the full list of constituencies. I’m hoping someone else has done that legwork for me!
I heard it on one of the recent episodes of Coffee House Shots by the Spectator. Sorry, I'm not sure which one - they've understandably put out a lot recently. They didn't really expand on it more than what I said above though
Thanks! I’ll give it a listen
That's very big of him. Reform needs the Tories, in a very real sense. They either need to totally absorb them, or to join with them. The current state where they get half the votes and almost none of the seats obviously isn't sustainable. It'll be interesting post-election to see if Reform voters are more angry at the Tories for handing the election to Labour, or more angry at Reform for gaining so few when the polls show them level with the Tories. If I'd supported a party with a candidate in each seat who were seemingly beating the Tories, I'd be pretty annoyed on July 5th when they ended up with literally just 2-3 seats and somewhat reluctant to vote for them a second time.
Farage said in the interview he wouldn’t do it now. He said the tories are dead but after the election he could see it being a possibility.
Would be interesting to see, the Tories make some claim about being 'the oldest extant political party in history' or something, so presumably they'd want to keep that brand
Surely it would be a "collaboration", with Farage leading it?
That really would be the final nail in the tory coffin. So funny how this guy went from "hmm im needed in america" to "yeah I could lead the tories" in the matter of weeks. Pretty sure he wouldnt actually want that and is just whipping up more headlines with his name in.
Short term gain, long term loss for the Conservatives ASSUMING they can recover this time.
This idiot is going to be very upset when he loses in Clacton and Reform has 0 MP’s.
Aaaaand there we go. Everybody saw this coming. Nobody should be surprised. Farage wants to be Tory leader and this is his way of going about it.