Well, OK, so how Canadian will it be?

Be nice to see people’s Reform seat predictions. The key variable is a “known unknown” so for fairness sake let’s say “Prediction With Nige” vs “Prediction Without Nige”.

I’ll go for “win one with Nige, win none without”.

I’m sure they’ll get enough votes that they could in theory win many more seats than that – but Reform’s vote efficiency is terrible, even worse than the Lib Dems and Greens. You really want concentrated areas of support and they don’t seem to have that at all. They’ve also had a poor record on the “ground war” – they lack a base of councillors/activists to do the door-to-door work, and their by-election campaigns have been absolutely terrible given the current state of the government and the obvious demand, among a sizeable chunk of the electorate, for policies more like Reform’s. Previous poor results suggest organisational problems, so the likely outcome is more poor results in future.

It’s possible Nige’s biggest impact would be sorting out some of that organisational shambles rather than swinging a few % of the vote in the “air war”, but even at its height UKIP struggled to win FPTP constituencies. (Not that it mattered for what they were trying to achieve. And indeed it may not matter for Reform either if a Tory wipe-out is the ultimate aim they’re prepared to settle for.)

No matter how bad it gets, a labour government can always make it worse. But that is a price worth paying to wipe out the tories once and for all.

A few weeks ago, the suggestion was that if Nigel stood as a candidate for Reform it would add around 4% to their vote share and take around 4% off the tories. That alone would be about enough to push Reform into second on vote share even if not seats. It was also suggested that if he stood in Clacton, he’d win the seat.

I don’t care if labour gets a 400 seat majority. I think the country is already resigned to that prospect. All I want is for the tory party to be annihilated, a stake driven through its heart and the body buried at a crossroads. And then clearly signposted so we can all piss on the grave.

I think this election is going to be about turnout, if Reform is to get anything like a decent vote they need disaffected voters to turn out for them rather than stay at home. Voter turnout has only been above 70% once since 1997 and that was the referendum.

Pollsters never publish don’t knows and won’t votes and I think we’ll see the Tories in particular working hard on that section By going now rather than waiting for more expected “good” news on the economy I reckon their internal polls must be telling something about those numbers.

In other news, I’ve been boundary changed to West Dorset, another Tory safe seat (53% at last election) so no point in me wondering about my next MP.

@Grikath

A lot of truth in that but also shows the difficulty for Reform of reaching #2 spot: they’d have to get past the Lib Dems, whose vote share isn’t very impressive and whose vote efficiency is poor, but still much better than Reform’s. (And showing signs of improvement: at the recent local elections, they got a similar % of the vote to 2021 but gained two local councils and a quarter more seats.) Even if Reform beat the Conservatives for seats, which is going to be very tough indeed, they’d likely come 4th in parliament behind Labour, LDs and the SNP (who are in turmoil themselves but whose vote is hyper-efficient). If that became the new status quo, and the old Tory party basically dissolved, there’d be a few conservatives of a free-market, pro-business, free speech, classical liberal disposition who’d feel more comfortable making a new bed with the LDs than Reform.

But, and this scenario seems even more likely than the above, if Reform don’t completely wipe the Tories out of parliament and don’t surpass them in MPs either, my guess is the Tory Party will survive, cockroach-like, without a Canadian style realignment of the right. So there’s a high bar for Reform even as a spoiler party: it would only take a dozen or so MPs to survive the Tory Apocalypse for their party to cling to existence, particularly if Reform are MP-less or left with only a one-man-band in parliament. Even if Reform beat them in vote share, it’ll still be Tory MPs – like Lib Dems and Liberals of the past – who get invited on news programmes to make a token right-wing criticism of government policy. It would still be the Tories getting press coverage. It would still be Tories getting talked up as potential power-brokers in the event of a hung parliament.

Another useful Canadian analogy is 2011, when Ignatieff’s Liberals got smashed, losing 43 seats and down to 34, while the leftier NDP comfortably took second spot with 103 seats. Lots of column inches at the time were expended saying Canada was finally going down the route the UK and most European countries had decades ago, with the social democrats/socialists finally overturning the liberals as the main party of the left. Even whether the NDP could win the next election. Instead the Liberals did, and the NDP got relegated back to perennial 3rd/4th party status. Finishing in the top 2 in what’s basically a two-party system is very important, but comebacks are possible. Unless you really do drive a stake through the heart and finish the party off once and for all. Are Reform really in a position to do that? They’re unlikely to get a better chance. But there are still plenty of “true blue” Tory seats which it’s almost inconceivable that they’ll lose, and often in parts of the country where the demographics aren’t great for Reform – they don’t perform so well in more affluent, graduate-heavy areas. Ironically the best chance of the Tories losing in those fortresses is probably a Lib Dem insurgency, so that’s probably what would be necessary to complete a wipe-out.

“ Ironically the best chance of the Tories losing in those fortresses is probably a Lib Dem insurgency, so that’s probably what would be necessary to complete a wipe-out.”

I think I’d rather have the rotten and rotting body of a few Conservatives than concede anything to the LibDems.

I reckon BiND is nearer the mark. We don’t really know how many Don’t Knows there are out there and how solid the support for Labour really is.

I think this will be a disappointing result in all respects : the turnout will be low, Labour and the Libs will do well, Reform poorly and the Tories not as badly as we all hope.

Starmer is a fool, in the same way that Cameron is. As a result, I don’t think he will be able to apply the coup de grace and the Tories will carry on as a a zombie party. It is Scotland where this election will be won for Labour.

Not sure, BinD… I think the LibDems are actually useful here…

There’s two ways that Labour can ( and will!) shatter:
Either the true Clowns take over and bitchfight the whole thing into the ground like the Tories did.
Or whoever manages to grab the Labour reins after the election and the first fallout actually has a spine, some presence, and a modicum of sanity, and chases the Clowns out.

Something needs to soak up either the few remaining sane politicians, or the Clowns.
LibDem can do both. And probably will, to it’s own detriment..

So the scenario where the Tories get evaporated, Labour destroys itself, and the LibDems dying along with them is … not impossible.
But then the LibDems need to have a significant presence to be a plausible “safe harbour” for anything Labour sheds.

Before the Rishi Sunak announcement Tice was emailing about a “major” press conference for tomorrow at 11am but his chief problem is that he’s so wet you could shoot duck off him so who cares what he has to say? A major press conference from Tice is sadly as invigorating as putting the kettle on for a nice cup of tea.

Had Nigel Farage taken over some months ago that could have stimulated (perhaps galvanised?) interest at local level but as anon has said, Reform has no infrastructure worthy of the name which is a pity. The Reform candidate on the ballot paper is the place-holder for none of the above.

Incidental question… the optics of Sunak getting soaked by rain and droned out by D:Ream were a terrible start to the campaign. Why do they insist on holding these key speeches outside where you’re at the mercy of the elements and any noisy protestors? I know it’s meant to project strength and authority if you’ve got the black door of Number 10 reassuringly in the background, but Downing Street has revamped its media set-up and there’s a suitably Prime Ministerial lectern space safely indoors. We’ve spent the money on it, so why not use it?

@WB

A lot of that northern industrial support for Project Boris was economically wet. Levelling Up was a vote winner up there. Truss was too fiscally dry to have connected in those parts of the country. In principle the Tories can win an election without bringing those voters into their coalition, indeed historically that’s how how they used to win (as recently as Cameron so this isn’t ancient history), but it does mean finding votes elsewhere. This is what Truss was hoping to achieve, so she was quite willing to cut a lot of those seats out. One of the reasons MPs from those seats were more than willing to stick a knife in her back – not that it’s turned out to save them.

Lots of places where Reform will come 2nd in what become Labour safe seats, where UKIP had come 2nd in the Cameron era, and back in the tail end of Blairism there was talk of a northern revival of the Lib Dems for all their distant 2nd places up there… unless the next Tory leader decides to try to revive Boris’s voter coalition, those are unlikely to be the seats Tories are worrying about in the next few elections. Certainly not ones they’ll be basing their party identity around. They might be quite content to leave those 2nd places to Reform and see what happens. Quite possibly nothing: in the end neither the Lib Dems nor UKIP did much with it when they held that 2nd place prize. (Not much, but not nothing. The Lib Dems ran Newcastle City Council for a few years, for example. Reform would need a big improvement in their infrastructure to pull off something like that.)

Not saying you’re wrong about general Tory wetness being a voter turn-off. On social issues, crime, immigration, etc then the wetness was a problem. Not sure a full-on culture warrior is the answer either, there are too many right-wing firebrands who assume everyone else is plugged into The Twitter Discourse when most normies just aren’t and don’t want to hear politicians bang on about the latest supposed hot button issue. But a big dose of common sense would help. Boris seemed to score okay with the electorate on those issues – and he was socially liberal so this isn’t just about wanting to preserve 1950s social structures in aspic. Economically, though, he was undeniably pretty wet and that played well in many regions where free-market libertarianism had little cut-through.

If you want to play the game of a “build your ideal right-wing leader for winning a parliamentary majority”, you first need to define where you hope to pick those seats up from. And there are quite different paths to victory depending on which sectors you target. I’m sure you’re right that an all-round Tory Wet couldn’t cobble one together. I don’t think a Truss type could either. But you may have to tolerate a bit of wetness in one form or another – the Cameroon route required a degree of social wetness for social acceptability (he did surprisingly well among public sector workers in 2010 for example), the Boris route required a degree of economic wetness, splurging cash to draw in previously unreachable parts of the North. In terms of talent available, I can’t see either Farage or Tice pulling the trick off – is there anybody else in Reform who seems to have a bit of political magic about them?

@M

Ignatieff was such a weird choice. Yes, establishment and all that, but still, from a distance it has always felt inexplicable.

Another of the problems the NDP had after 2011 is that a lot of candidates won who were not expected to win. Paper candidates who didn’t deserve to be there, and it showed.

I’m really bringing 2011 up because so much of the UK right-wing discourse has got fixated on 1993, and the possibility of a Tory total or almost-total wipe-out followed by a reverse take-over of its organisation. It’s not impossible that happens here, but in 1993 Reform did very well in Canada (up from 1 to 52 seats), and in 2024 their UK equivalent is almost certainly not going to manage that. And with so many safe seats, our Tories seem unlikely to do as badly as their Canadian equivalents in 1993 (down from 156 seats to 2). A realistically pessimistic prediction would be for them to fall to 100-ish seats and still be very clearly in second place.

So a 1993 style wipe-out would be an absolutely extraordinary event, and people should only be talking about it as an outside chance. If you’re even having that conversation, then you need to acknowledge that a 2011 style reordering of parties (albeit rejigged, with the UK Tories dropping behind the Lib Dems, rather than Canada’s Liberals dropping behind the NDP) is also possible. Still a tail event, but surely at least an order of magnitude more likely. And yet nobody seems to be discussing that possibility, because the “stake through the heart of the Tory Party” brigade are far too excited about a re-run of 1993. Not that I blame them, but you’d be ill-advised to bet a lot of money (or hope) on it.

You’re right that the Canadian experience isn’t directly transferable to the UK anyway (one reason I find it hard to get wrapped up in this 1993 excitement!). So many of the events and personalities are particular to the time and place. If the Tories did drop behind the Lib Dems, I doubt they’d come back into power anywhere near as easily as the Canadian Liberals did. One thing that would be a point of similarity though: the Lib Dem talent pool is thin and the last time they had a significant crop of MPs, it really showed. If the Tories fall behind them, it will only be because the Lib Dems win a lot of Tory strongholds in the south. I don’t think it will be as bad as the NDP’s paper candidates, but I’d still expect the LIb Dems to struggle to put a decent shadow cabinet together. And the Lib Dems would end up in a more politically difficult situation than the NDP, with growing disapproval with the Labour administration likely to come from the right, and so hard for the Lib Dems to channel into support even with the advantages of being the official opposition. At least the NDP were on the correct side of the spectrum to benefit from an anti-Tory backlash, and indeed at times they did – even after Layton’s death they spent much of 2012 and even part of 2015 in first place in the opinion polls. The Lib Dems will not be well-placed to replicate that, and provided there’s a few dozen Tory MPs surviving, they’d fancy their chances of pulling themselves back to the #2 slot at the next election.

Link to Wootton’s sustak blog ensored, trying this

Election not a certainty

With 44 days until hard socialism sweeps the UK
https://twitter.com/danwootton/status/1793352751474208846

It’s already in progress
https://twitter.com/danwootton/status/1793370361633046997

My suspicion is that Rishi knows that no matter how late the election he is still going to get thrashed so he wants to give up and go. Unfortunately for him, despite the stiff competition none of the Tory MP’s are stupid enough to want what would be a short stint at PM followed by a crushing defect, blame, sacking and back benches or exit. With no replacement his only way out is an early election.

Waiting ’til close to the last minute would have deluged the campaign with lots of headlines about NHS Winter Crisis. July is sort of rational; and as a bonus, it even managed to annoy the Scots.

John,
We should be grateful for small mercies – they are going after Vennells without her or anyone else playing the misogyny cards.

I’m surprised by the comments here that seem confident that Labour will only last one term in office. It’s a given that they will extend the franchise to 16 year-olds which is going to boost their vote more than it would the tories.

“No matter how bad it gets, a labour government can always make it worse. But that is a price worth paying to wipe out the tories once and for all.”

That is the epitome of irrationality! If a Labour government is a worse outcome than a Tory one, then wiping out the Tories is irrational.

I didn’t say a labour government is a worse outcome. No matter how bad it gets, a tory government can make it worse too.

We need to wipe both cheeks of the uniparty arse. This time it’s the tories turn, then we can deal with the labour side.

The only things that matter are:

– securing our borders, and kicking out illegals
– making our streets safe again by jailing anyone caught with a knife for a very long time, ideally forever (in austere, ie cheap, conditions)
– reducing government influence, waste and general expenditure
– mundane stuff like filling potholes

That’s the bare minimum, but it would do for a start.

I’d like a lot more – leaving the WHO, new laws to prohibit lockdowns and any mandatory medical ‘treatments’, implementing Brexit, more local democracy, a proper military set up mostly to defend the country and help secure the shipping lanes, an end to all the Net Zero bollocks, market forces introduced into education and healthcare.

OK, a lot of that is more politically challenging, even with your mate in the pub.

But the initial list would be agreed on by 95% of the population.

Not one of these cunts that you lot are banging on about is going to do any of it.

I’ll stand correction on that, but if no correction – why on earth do you think it matters a flying fuck who sits in No10?

So why do we think he’s done it:
– because he thinks things will get worse between July and November?
– to save himself from a leadership challenge?
– he’s had enough?

I’m going for the leadership challenge – I don’t think the government is bright enough to see worse things coming (or believe them if they did), and I think he’s sufficiently thick-skinned to hang on for the money, perks and status until the bitter end.

But him being a sufficiently selfish weasel to call an early election just to save his own position for a few weeks seems entirely feasible.

Not sure why he wants to lose the election in July instead of waiting to lose it in October. Watching him yesterday reminded me of an old ELO song “Standing in the rain”.

I’m standing in the rain
Getting soaking wet
I’m doing my best
But what do I get?

Not sure about a leadership challenge. Who would want the job right now?

We still don’t have a proper alternative. Looks like Reform have blown it by being cautious and invisible. I know the media have it in for them but you have to work round that. Tice just doesn’t seem up to it IMO.

“It’s a given that they will extend the franchise to 16 year-olds which is going to boost their vote more than it would the tories.”

So, there’s a bunch of 16 year olds are suddenly going to bunk off school, just in GCSE season, and nip down the polling station for a crafty fag and a can of Stella?

Pull the other one.

I don’t care whether Reform are ready or not. They’re the the only viable alternative to the festering heaps in Parliament so I’m voting for them.

Hell, I’d vote Monster Raving Loony if they had a candidate.

Panesar immediately changed his mind. But in terms of localised issues – Panesar was going to stand with Galloway’s crowd, and Gaza’s effect in some urban areas is going to have a similar kind of bite to a more genuinely local issue. Labour didn’t do quite as well as expected at the local elections due to a variety of Muslim independents, pro-Palestine Greens etc taking a chunk of what had traditionally been a Labour vote. Not sure how much cut-through it will have in a general election but Starmer was quite strongly pro-Israel in the months after Oct 7, very slow to call for a ceasefire, and it has destroyed trust in him from that segment of the electorate. I don’t think that will hurt them in many marginal seats though.

As for Nige:

“I have thought long and hard as to whether I should stand in the upcoming general election. As honorary president of Reform UK, I am fully supportive of Richard Tice’s leadership and urge voters to put their trust in him and Lee Anderson. I will do my bit to help in the campaign, but it is not the right time for me to go any further than that.

Important though the general election is, the contest in the United States of America on November 5 has huge global significance. A strong America as a close ally is vital for our peace and security. I intend to help with the grassroots campaign in the USA in any way that I can.

The choice between Labour and the Conservatives is uninspiring, and only Reform have the radical agenda that is needed to end decline in this country.

Nigel Farage, Honorary President of Reform UK”

Seems the American life is more comfortable, and reading between the lines, he doesn’t see much chance of a historic realignment here either.

@TG

They’ve got so many of these blessed lecterns, I don’t know why they don’t have an all-weather one with a canopy if they will insist on doing things outside. But they’ll always be a hostage to fortune with the sound of protestors.

I liked Rob Hutton’s take on the mess. By doing his response video from somewhere safely indoors, at least Starmer demonstrated his basic competence at looking out the window before deciding where to speak from. https://thecritic.co.uk/please-look-after-this-bear/

anon;

“Labour didn’t do quite as well as expected at the local elections due to a variety of Muslim independents, pro-Palestine Greens etc taking a chunk of what had traditionally been a Labour vote.”

Or, Labour assumed that the votes were theirs, and would have been correct, if the local demographics hadn’t changed, and crucially, there hadn’t been an external shock.

Nobody, outside of wonks, nerds and activists, really gives a monkeys about local elections. Turnout is ridiculously low, partly down to the fact that at the lowest tier, your council has pretty much no freedom of action, hemmed in by regulatory duties and limited ways to raise cash. So nothing gets done unless the councillors can wangle something out of Whitehall, via the MP(s). Which gets the MP a profile or reputation, less so for the councillors.

But, at a GE, this stuff plays out across the media for an entire month, which will have some effect outside of the specific wards, at national scale. Bad news if some of those candidates are seen as Labour, Green or whatever, as some perceived safe seats could unexpectedly become marginals.

Polls are not as accurate as they have often been portrayed, and support can translate oddly into seats.

But the Conservatives in 1993 were down to *6% support* shortly before the election.

Are the Tories anywhere near that level in Britain right now? No?

Then a 1993 moment seems unlikely.

Ducky – experience in terms of the processes and protocols of the House. Remember Vince Cable? Managed to vote against his own bloody department. Also, Blair’s Rapid Rebuttal Unit. Not clear whether Starmer would be able to keep everyone singing from the same hymn sheet.

They don’t do hymns at the mosque, innit.

I wondered how long it would be before diehard tory Theo popped in to enjoin us to still vote conservatives because “this time lads, it’ll be different. I pinky swear”

Ducky – or Jimi Hendrix’s Allah Long The Watchtower

I don’t think that Theo is claiming that a re-elected Conservative government would be any better than the current one: just that we’re underestimating how dreadful life will be for us under a Labour one.

I wonder whether that calculation has contributed to Farage’s decision today? Perhaps he’s looked at Starmer and Lammy and Burgon now that they are actually going to rule us, and thought, “Oh Christ, what have I done?”

I’m going to try to convince my lefty friends to vote Reform, tactically, on the basis that their people are going to win anyway, but voting Reform gives the chance of utterly crushing the Conservatives.

WB;

“Anyone who cares much about Starmer kneeling is already voting Reform… And no, please don’t tell me that Starmer is going to be worse. I know that he is.”

Reform put up the “Starmergeddon” line, possibly quite some time ago. Now, I don’t think he’ll be worse; some of the policy positions look OK to me, but, they are quite old, and we won’t really get a proper idea until the manifestos come out.

“The fundamental problem with the Conservatives is that they haven’t done the stuff that people who are likely to vote for them care about: cutting taxes, reforming government, sorting out crime, rounding up illegal immigrants.”

Hate to break it to you, but “reforming government” simply isn’t a vote winner. It just isn’t. There is however, this; https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/sir-john-kingman-speech.pdf. A bit old now, as it starts by mentioning the recent departure of Cummings, but then moves on;

“First of all, we are obviously talking about changing a very large and complex system, with a strong
embedded culture.
That is clearly a long job. It’s also, for most of the public, deeply boring, obscure and irrelevant. It is
not susceptible to headlines or sugar-rush announcements. And it won’t yield any political return
on any meaningful timetable.”

Starmer may, or may not, have a position on this. He certainly does not appear to have a Dominic Cummings knocking around though. Which just possibly might be a smart move.

That aside; “rounding up illegal immigrants” well, one T. May tried this when she was at the Home Office, under Cameron. “Hostile environment” and all that. There’s the Rwanda flights, pushed through by Sunak, plus the disused airfields/barracks idea. So, I’m not sure where this claim comes from. Starmer’s stated position is to scrap Rwanda and, er, set up a new agency or something. So, how does voting Reform help with this?

So, “cutting taxes…sorting out crime”. Well, OK. Cutting taxes might well be somewhat problematic, and there does appear to be an issue with Plod, certainly at senior management level. Mind you, Blair tried that as well. On eco/net zero – some of that has been rolled back, diluted.

Anyway, late last night (UK time), anon responded to you, talking about wetness and dryness;

“Not saying you’re wrong about general Tory wetness being a voter turn-off. On social issues, crime, immigration, etc then the wetness was a problem. Not sure a full-on culture warrior is the answer either, there are too many right-wing firebrands who assume everyone else is plugged into The Twitter Discourse when most normies just aren’t and don’t want to hear politicians bang on about the latest supposed hot button issue. But a big dose of common sense would help. Boris seemed to score okay with the electorate on those issues – and he was socially liberal so this isn’t just about wanting to preserve 1950s social structures in aspic. Economically, though, he was undeniably pretty wet and that played well in many regions where free-market libertarianism had little cut-through.

The way to win big, is to be a bit moist. Reform are unlikely to cut through in large areas of the country. The apparent “destroy the Tories” result won’t happen. Second, they don’t have a presence, so most normies haven’t really heard of them. And, given what they’ve got up on the website; it’s pathetic. They’ve been at it a while now, and I suspect someone’s taking the piss.

Brexit is safe – not because it’s safe with Starmer, but Brussels centralisation will all be going to turd in June. I predict.
From 5 years ago:
“Von der Leyen won 383 just slightly above the absolute majority of 374 she required to be elected”
From 10 years ago:
Juncker got 422 votes.
I just can’t see it going well for the EU project next month. Sure, no UK members, but there will be a lot more leave inclined members elected.

Bongo,

Over the last 72 hours, the AfD have alienated all their European friends, and crashed and burned with not only the enormous constituency of wavering voters fed up with the uniparty, refugees welcome, massive government overreach etc, but with their own large majority moderate constituency.

Either we need an AAfD, or the AfD need to actually finally kick out, permanently, the small but increasingly visible, and increasingly damaging group of latent national socialists. Maybe the latest shenanigans will be the catalyst that sees that happen.

Theo – As Bismarck said: “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.”

That’s a good one, you should try it on the doorsteps and let us know how you get on.

Steve
That’s a good one, you should try it on the doorsteps and let us know how you get on.

OK, Bismarck might not go down well on the doorsteps, but the attitude would. Adults recognise that democracy occasionally involves some negotiated compromise and the finding of common ground with opponents (which is quite different to acquiescence in a muddled consensus). Adolescents always refuse to compromise and they insist that they get everything they demand. Such adolescent behaviour used to be the preserve of the left, but it’s spread to the right.

Theo,

“OK, Bismarck might not go down well on the doorsteps, but the attitude would. Adults recognise that democracy occasionally involves some negotiated compromise and the finding of common ground with opponents (which is quite different to acquiescence in a muddled consensus). Adolescents always refuse to compromise and they insist that they get everything they demand. Such adolescent behaviour used to be the preserve of the left, but it’s spread to the right.”

But what is the common ground? Taxes are as high as ever. They seem wedded to Net Zero. They aren’t delivering on immigration. Or reform of the state.

I struggle to find common alliance with them. They have the same mindset as Labour, that more government is good.

@Theo & there’s always a reason to vote Tory©
This really has nothing to do with me;. I fucked off (although I suspect I would have a vote if I could be bothered to claim it) But as far as I can see for the UK, it has to get worse before it gets better. There is no other path. So it’s a choice between the Tories who’ll drag you eventually to total disaster Or Starmer who’ll get you there a lot quicker. So maybe the quicker the country’s the other side of that the better. Less long term damage. It is really starting to look like a one term Corbyn government would have been a blessing.

WB – Yarp.

Also, we saw how quickly the British government could do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, with plenty of menaces, during the Covid regime.

But they just “can’t” stop themselves from printing over a million immigration visas a year or whisking migratory dinghymen, gang rapists, Stabby McJihadis (of the Dundee McJihadis?), plus the occasional passing acid throwing nutter (and eventually, all their friends and families) onto a lifetime of permanent free bennies courtesy of mug British taxpayer. All that stuff just happens – magically – against the will of the British government, according to the British government. It’s all very complicated, you see, here’s a vape ban.

As Bismarck once said, “just stuff your country full of poor people and criminals from Africa and Asia it’ll be great lol”.

Now it turns out the Rwanda flights aren’t going to take off before the election, which means more than likely not a single one ever will. What was the point?

The point was to present an unworkable policy which would convince mug punters that the Tories really wanted to deal with immigration, but faced interminable obstacles. Unfortunately there’s very few mugs left who believe their bullshit.

It is really starting to look like a one term Corbyn government would have been a blessing.

I think you might be correct. A Corbyn government with a tiny majority would have been a shitshow, but would have reminded everyone what socialism is about yet not been strong enough to get much done. There’s Brexit of course. A Corbyn government might have given us a half-hearted Brexit and then done nothing to take advantage. Horrors!

@Theo:

If a Starmer Labour government would be worse than a Tory government, then it’s a worse outcome in this election.

But if a Starmer Labour government would be no worse than a Tory government, then a Labour government would not be a worse outcome in this election.

This is the fundamental problem with your argument – you are assuming that a Starmer government would be worse than the Tory government currently seeking re-election. However, there is almost nothing to support this assumption.

Labour and the Tories are not equivalent

Oh yes they are!

eg the Tories are not proposing votes for children.

Neither are Labour – they’re proposing votes for 16-year-olds. Not a policy I favour, but not children – although Sunak apparently wants to treat them as such (eg. smoking ban, compulsory maths, etc).

To the extent that 16-year-olds are children, it is due to the recent infantilisation of teenagers – this is something that the Tories are more responsible for than anyone else. In this respect, the Tories are actually worse than Labour.

allowing the election of a socialist government

Social Democrat, not socialist. If the Tories were actually, erm, tory, this might be a significant difference between them, but since the Tories are also Social Democrats, it isn’t.

to destroy the Tories is irrational for any right-winger.

Again, If the Tories were actually, erm, tory, this might be “irrational for any right-winger”, but since the Tories are also Social Democrats, it isn’t.

[Response to RichardT]
Allowing the election of a socialist government (which is likely to be in power for 10+ years) in order to destroy the Tories is irrational for any right-winger. Labour will rig the electoral system with votes for children,

Polly want a cracker? See above.

import more potential voters desirous of handouts

700,000 of them in a year? I may be wrong but I don’t recall Labour ever having imported this many in a single year – on this issue, the current administration is actually worse than Labour.

pass more rights-based legislation that would frustrate the efforts of any future right-of-centre government,

Because the current government have done something – anything? – to counter the existing rights-based legislation that frustrates the efforts of any right-of-centre government?

Do Labour actually even need to pass any more such legislation?

and also do a huge amount of irreparable damage to the economy, education and our culture.

Is there anything that Labour would do, that the Tories wouldn’t? That’s not a rhetorical question, BTW – can you name any significant Labour policy that is substantially worse (or even substantially different) than the equivalent Conservative policy?

Have you forgotten the Blair tyranny?

Substantially to the right of the current government on issues such as IR35 (rejected by Mandelson and subsequently imposed by “Red Dawn” Primarolo on a relatively small section of the workforce; rammed down everyone’s throat by the current mob), stamp duty [cough]fiscal drag[cough], income tax thresholds [cough]fiscal drag again[cough], military spending, legal immigration…

A tyranny it might have been, but was it actually any worse than the current lot?

Show me a coherent, viable and genuinely electable party to the right of the Tories and I would vote for it.

Labour?

I’m not saying ‘this time, it’ll be different”: I am saying that the Tories would be less bad than Labour,

In what way?

and that a Labour victory would entail huge and irreversible damage…

Anything different to the “huge and irreversible damage” that the current lot would do?

One of the reasons that the damage seems “irreversible” is that the Tories won’t bother to reverse it – and in some cases actually make it worse.

So many posters here don’t get that politics (like life generally) is about trade-offs.

And what you don’t seem to get is that the Tories haven’t been offering us any trade-offs – only more of the same.

@Simon Jester – indeed.

Imagine voting Tory because you are worried about immigration under Labour! Net migration was nearly 1.5m over the past two years. And I don’t think that includes illegals/’asylum seekers’.

Labour’s really going to have to go some to beat that.

@Simon Jester: https://archive.ph/xpX47 should get you there

@formertory

Thanks for that!

@Marius

“The point was to present an unworkable policy which would convince mug punters that the Tories really wanted to deal with immigration, but faced interminable obstacles”

Yeah but to what end? If you know the policy won’t work and won’t materialise, why waste all that time on it given the election is lost already? Did they not have any concrete aim in mind when they went into politics that they would like to spend their last months in power actually turning into physical fact?

Many of those obstacles were self-inflicted anyway. Every now and then the Tories would suggest they’d repeal Blair’s Human Rights Act, replace it with a Bill of Rights, maybe even leave the ECHR. I suspect polling evidence put them off, and leaving the ECHR is the kind of thing that would energise the Guardian classes and lead to lawyers on strike and hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in London. But even if it’s paltry compensation, at least they might have been able to get the planes in the air, and enact a few other policies where the HRA was a barrier.

Also self-inflicted – the UK idea was to use Rwanda as the final destination even for people with a valid claim to asylum, which raises a lot of routes to legal challenge. Several European countries have taken a leaf from the Rwanda policy, but as I understand it they’re only intending to use it for offshore processing, which is seen as legally easier to defend because you agree someone with a valid claim gets on a plane back to you. But it still makes applying for asylum less attractive, especially for people whose claim is likely to be turned down, and it solves the problem – or at least outsources it to the offshore country – of people whose claim is rejected but either scarper and work illegally, or who win a court order saying that legally they can’t be deported because the country they fled is too dangerous (quite common final outcome for rejected asylum applications BTW).

I think a competently delivered version of the Rwanda policy might have “worked”, to some extent – it is difficult to disincentivise people from crappy countries coming to claim asylum, and a realistic prospect of ending up in Africa shortly after they get off the boat would have been one way to do it. It would likely be more powerful than trying to enforce deportation back to home countries, which is another frequently touted but also largely unworkable* “solution”. Still only a small part of the immigration stats but likely the one that upsets the electorate the most. They don’t tend to mind the doctors and care workers – though truth be told they’re not that big a slice of the immigration stats either.

* Deportation sounds like the obvious way to deal with the problem but illegal migrants can lack paperwork, even claiming to be from a different country to where they really originate, and source countries can refuse to accept deportees or can be declared unsafe by the courts, precluding return. Even a successful deportation can take years of appeals. You could ratchet up the level of enforcement, but still plenty of migrants would fancy their chances of at least lasting a few years here and making (for their home situation) decent money while they’re at it. You still should work on improving enforcement, which is currently crap, like you should work on a bunch of other interventions and disincentives, but none of them individually are going to fix the issue. This is not a policy area with plentiful magic bullets available – so while I can understand the Tories jumping on Rwanda as a potential game-changer, I still struggle to understand why they put quite so much hope in it as “the solution”, put so much energy into it, and now right at the end have basically given up on it.

Yeah but to what end?

They don’t work for you, but the people they do work for are very keen to kill off British sovereignty by physically extirpating the British people.

Have you wondered why every “Western” nation is marching in ideological lockstep towards its own grave?

anon – you seem to be confusing the Tories with a party which gives a shit about stopping illegal immigration. They just wanted a policy which makes it look like they are doing something. Just like the vans and ‘hostile environment’ bullshit from a decade ago.

“why waste all that time on it given the election is lost already?” – because the Rwanda theatre got a lot of headlines and they thought it might shore up a bit of the vote. They don’t, after all, want to be reduced to 30 seats. However, they also don’t want the hassle of real solutions and also don’t care about illegals because they are a drop in the ocean of 750,000 migrants each year. And the Tories are committed to mass immigration, whatever they say.

I really like the Littlejohn manifesto, but there’s one (correct) point that needs further work:
“Bring in new staff rotas 24/7, ending the four-and-a-half day week widespread across the health service.”

It is, indeed, ridiculous that billion-pound hospital complexes are largely unused for 2½ days each week. But 24/7 operation requires 5x as many staff – no doubt many efficiencies are possible, but you’d still need a lot more heads.

If, If, Tories want to win they should broadcast this as a Party Political broadcast

Keir Starmer Labour leadership launch video; January 2020
Once a socialist, always a socialist
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1213536222783688704
Or
youtube.com/watch?v=F-Yru2Ridk0

H/T Camilla Tominey: https://archive.ph/FA8U4