What happens if the Tories get destroyed at the next election? To be clear here, I mean destroyed - less than 50 seats, maybe less than 10? What comes next for them and British politics? The polls this week are bad for the Tories. Really bad. They appear to be inching back towards where they were under Liz Truss, which is to say, they seem to be approaching existential danger territory once again. Labour are opening up 20 to 25 point leads, with the Conservative party sometimes polling below 25%, which is arguably the point at which they’d start to shed seats in a way that would be perilous to their ongoing existence. While Westminster rabbits on about what Keir Starmer will do in a hung parliament, the polling data tells us the Tories are strapped on for one hell of a beating at the next general election.
We saw the Tories crushed before, at the end of the Thatcher disaster era, but they came back. With Sir Keir waffling about 'making Brexit work' recently I don't feel that Labour is as credible as they could be.
Do I vote Green for the only Rejoin party, or risk Labour coming to its senses?
Vote Green, John. Imagine a House with Labour in and Green as the Opposition. LibDem third; SNP fourth; and Tories fifth ... just ahead of the Mad Ulsters.
The 25-50 seat Tory demolition is highly unlikely. It's a lot more likely that with help from right wing rags and a lot of campaign money they will pull back a bit into the 100 odd, a position they will probably take 2-3 elections to recover from, although the demographics are working against them this time. The under 35's are not getting more right wing as they age. They've been totally shafted on housing, brexit, student finance and the graduate job market plus the casualisation of employment and pensions. Add to that botched covid years, a cost of living crisis, crummy and expensive public transport, over priced energy and global warming which they do believe in, then why would any sensible younger people vote for the right wing shower most associated with these disasters?
It seems to me that once the tories are out, it will be a lot more difficult for them to come back.
As to the LibDems. If you take away Clegg's naive and highly damaging capitulation on student finance, they fitted into government ministries very easily, as if they were meant to be there. There was a long list of useful stuff carried out, despite the worst austerity following the biggest peacetime deficit. Pension reform, equalities in the workplace, near doubling of Income tax allowance, tripling of wind power and it's cost falling to below coal, an insulation scheme financed out of future reduced bills, Tidal power plans etc. You cannot look like a government in waiting with 50 seats, still less with 14, but the LibDems find good, honest hard working and well educated people to stand, all over the country. They have full, detailed programmes for government and have done since their inception.
My feeling as a European ( I have an EU passport as an Irish person ) is that the UK was since time immemorial a Two Party country, the Whigs and the Tories and were it not for the great Ramsay McDonald would still be. I hope Labour has recovered from the extreme leftism of Corbyn and will
be the Government in 2024. I fear however that they will be significantly hampered by the extreme mess the UK is in when they take up the reins: I profoundly hope I am wrong.
If the Tories have a meltdown on that scale, then there probably are more than 50 Lib Dem MPs, just because the Tories have to lose them to someone. Lab + LD has to exceed 560 to get the Tories into 4th if there are 35 SNP.
Labour isn't going to win half of Devon or half of Surrey, which is what you'd need for the Tories to lose that badly. But the Lib Dems could, faute de mieux.
More importantly, a key factor in what happens to a Tory party with 25 MPs is who those MPs are. Many of the likely leadership contenders would lose their seats. Indeed, I suspect that the greater a national profile an MP has, the more likely they would be to lose. Those with the best chance of survival will be the assiduous constituency MPs in safe seats who never had ambitions of higher office, but those are also people who couldn't possibly become leader.
If Braverman is the only serious contended left standing, then she's going to be leader regardless. But, equally, she could lose her seat. The same for anyone else. If you're writing a novel, you just pick the leader you want, but as a prediction, it's going to be really hard to guess what happens to the Tories because it's so dependent on the vague rises of the voting system.
I think, given the right space and opportunity, the Lib Dems could potentially come into their own as a center-Right replacement for the Tory party.
They could end up representing the interests of relatively affluent but now disillusioned "middle England" (read: Blue wall Tory-shire heartlands), but with a less toxic, more environmentally and socially conscious brand.
We saw the Tories crushed before, at the end of the Thatcher disaster era, but they came back. With Sir Keir waffling about 'making Brexit work' recently I don't feel that Labour is as credible as they could be.
Do I vote Green for the only Rejoin party, or risk Labour coming to its senses?
Vote Green, John. Imagine a House with Labour in and Green as the Opposition. LibDem third; SNP fourth; and Tories fifth ... just ahead of the Mad Ulsters.
Thanks.
The wild card here is the voting system. If we got a representative voting system then the Tories ain't never coming back (nor Labour).
The 25-50 seat Tory demolition is highly unlikely. It's a lot more likely that with help from right wing rags and a lot of campaign money they will pull back a bit into the 100 odd, a position they will probably take 2-3 elections to recover from, although the demographics are working against them this time. The under 35's are not getting more right wing as they age. They've been totally shafted on housing, brexit, student finance and the graduate job market plus the casualisation of employment and pensions. Add to that botched covid years, a cost of living crisis, crummy and expensive public transport, over priced energy and global warming which they do believe in, then why would any sensible younger people vote for the right wing shower most associated with these disasters?
It seems to me that once the tories are out, it will be a lot more difficult for them to come back.
As to the LibDems. If you take away Clegg's naive and highly damaging capitulation on student finance, they fitted into government ministries very easily, as if they were meant to be there. There was a long list of useful stuff carried out, despite the worst austerity following the biggest peacetime deficit. Pension reform, equalities in the workplace, near doubling of Income tax allowance, tripling of wind power and it's cost falling to below coal, an insulation scheme financed out of future reduced bills, Tidal power plans etc. You cannot look like a government in waiting with 50 seats, still less with 14, but the LibDems find good, honest hard working and well educated people to stand, all over the country. They have full, detailed programmes for government and have done since their inception.
My feeling as a European ( I have an EU passport as an Irish person ) is that the UK was since time immemorial a Two Party country, the Whigs and the Tories and were it not for the great Ramsay McDonald would still be. I hope Labour has recovered from the extreme leftism of Corbyn and will
be the Government in 2024. I fear however that they will be significantly hampered by the extreme mess the UK is in when they take up the reins: I profoundly hope I am wrong.
If the Tories have a meltdown on that scale, then there probably are more than 50 Lib Dem MPs, just because the Tories have to lose them to someone. Lab + LD has to exceed 560 to get the Tories into 4th if there are 35 SNP.
Labour isn't going to win half of Devon or half of Surrey, which is what you'd need for the Tories to lose that badly. But the Lib Dems could, faute de mieux.
More importantly, a key factor in what happens to a Tory party with 25 MPs is who those MPs are. Many of the likely leadership contenders would lose their seats. Indeed, I suspect that the greater a national profile an MP has, the more likely they would be to lose. Those with the best chance of survival will be the assiduous constituency MPs in safe seats who never had ambitions of higher office, but those are also people who couldn't possibly become leader.
If Braverman is the only serious contended left standing, then she's going to be leader regardless. But, equally, she could lose her seat. The same for anyone else. If you're writing a novel, you just pick the leader you want, but as a prediction, it's going to be really hard to guess what happens to the Tories because it's so dependent on the vague rises of the voting system.
I think, given the right space and opportunity, the Lib Dems could potentially come into their own as a center-Right replacement for the Tory party.
They could end up representing the interests of relatively affluent but now disillusioned "middle England" (read: Blue wall Tory-shire heartlands), but with a less toxic, more environmentally and socially conscious brand.
If they're canny they could really pull it off.
"Also, it is actually run by the donors..."
But what if the donors are fruit loops as well? The Republican experience in the U.S. shows that could easily be the case.
You’re getting ahead of yourself- out in the country most people don’t follow politics. Not just the countryside but across towns and cities.