5d ago

Let’s be clear: this Conservative party is dead. Those who killed it should own up so we can move on

www.theguardian.com

Let’s be clear: this Conservative party is dead. Those who killed it should own up so we can move on | Justine Greening

Justine Greening, the former Tory MP, argues that the current Tory strategy of going after Reform voters isn't working. She seems to think the Tories should try to capture centrists instead (which is what David Cameron did, I would argue).

The party has attempted to be a “mini-me” version of Reform UK, and unsurprisingly Reform voters prefer the real thing. And this strategy’s consequential alienation of Conservative-leaning centre-ground voters has seen them head off to either the Lib Dems or Labour, or to the Green party. The party has no winning majority in any age group of voters other than those over 70. This is no basis for a successful electoral strategy for the longer term.

35 comments

The Tory party purge during Brexit doomed them. All the heavyweights were booted out and there was nothing credible left.
- The Labour purge by Starmer is doing the same.
- The centrists were booted out, yes. Philip Hammond, Kenneth Clarke, David Gauke, Justine Greening, Dominic Grieve, Rory Stewart, etc.
  Anyway, I assume that by the next election, due to First Past the Post, there will be two main groups again. One will probably be a Trump-lite, pro-Brexit faction (either Reform or the Tories, or a pact of both maybe). The other will be a more liberal, pro-Europe faction (either Labour or Lib Dems, or a pact of them with maybe the Greens).
  I dunno, I'm a political novice to be honest, I'm just guessing.
  
  At the mo we're looking at a Reform led coalition with the Tories according to polling
  Scary times. Luckily there's still 4 years of watching the trainwreck unfolding in the US so hopefully the electorate will be put off reform. Labour also need to do a lot of work on their policy platform and messaging too
  Source

They are utterly fucked and it's glorious.
I've been letting reformers have their victory day, but the reality of those local election results isn't a massive blow to labour, oh it's a blow, but they had hardly any seats in those councils to begin with. The tories lost about the same amount that reform gained. Also, good day for the lib dems too. Reform keep saying they'll win the next GE. I'm not so sure, but I think we can all agree they are going to end up with more seats than the tories.
- All reform does is split the Tory vote all but garunteeing a labor win
  Edit: this got down voted quick so I assume there's some sore losers on here
  
  quite probably, but I think 'splitting the vote' doesn't fully describe how much supoort the tories have lost. 68% of their council seats up for election gone, I mean when was the last time an opposition party lost so many seats in a council election?
  I'd say it'd be more accurate to say reform are taking the conservatives place.
  Personally, I hope the lib dems fill in more of the vacuum.
  
  I didn't downvote, but that's way too hopeful. If Reform keeps eating into Tory voters they'll eventually stop guaranteeing labor wins and start winning themselves. US-style fascism is coming to Britain faster than you seem to think.
  
  Tbh I might be slightly too optimistic, but there's a path where this ultimately results in the lib Dems becoming the opposition, and the Tories and reform fight over scraps.
  Tbh Labour and the LibDems should be doing what they can to highlight Farages ties to Russia and Trump—it's like they barely mention it and instead just pander. Every day that passes, those connections become a greater threat to the country, so fucking capitalise on it and turn most of his support off him.
  There will always be that percentage of swivel-eyed wonks who'll vote for him, but there's a whole cohort of his current support that can apparently be swayed one way or another with the right messaging.

Conservatism itself is dead.
Whats left is Oligarchic, Authoritarian, Ultra-Capitalist, and in some extreme cases, overt Fascism and Nazism, wearing the skin of Conservatism, because many of these ideologies cant survive society on their own, so they need a Trojan horse to slip by the societal filters to survive.
- Fucking rats
  
  At least rats leave when the ship starts to sink.

Aka what everyone has been saying for years now.
Going after reform voters is a waste of time, every time the conservatives try to one-up farage he can just come up with increasingly more radical "policies", after all he's never actually going to have to implement any of them so who cares about reality and practicality.
The sort of people who vote reform are the sort of people who aren't exactly politically sophisticated, otherwise they would realise that farage is selling them manure. They are therefore never going to change their minds.
Meanwhile the conservatives are alienating undecided voters with their obsession with hard right politics which by definition are unlikely to appeal to centralists.
This is the level of political insight that a child would be capable of it's utterly pathetic the conservatives can't work this out on their own.

Justine Greening is peddling the same line as Rory Stewart and all the others - the Tory government was perfect up until Johnson/Truss/Sunak ruined everything. Never mind that Cameron was responsible for austerity and Brexit, and May came up with the hostile environment policy that caused the Windrush scandal. Those are just sensible Tory statesmen and totally weren't pandering to the far right.

It's alive and reincarnated in Kid Starver's party
- Kim Strava?

Centrists? You mean Starmer's 'far-right'?
Politics is generally dead like it was in the late seventies. Anarchy was the rising trend as was rubbish in the streets.
Every leader, and I use that word very loosely, of the Tories since 1990 has tried to be the next Mrs Thatcher. There is no next Mrs Thatcher. That time has passed.
That normal people can be labelled by two-tier as far right shows how weak the centre of politics has become.
We have another Blair, an old fashioned Tory leading the Labour party who doesn't believe in anything but a version of 'Tax and Spend' that doesn't involve spending on anything useful. This time he doesn't have a wife who needs a career in human rights law. Let's just hope Trump or his successor doesn't start a war to boost public opinion.
We have a service industry country when services are going AI. Welcome back to real jobs that people do: the trades, manufacturing, making things you can see. It's going to take a couple of decades and a lot of teeth gnashing.

I was listening to an interview by one of Reform’s strategists who categorically ruled out working with the Tories, or forming a coalition. They are extremely confident that the Tories are finished. Given their abysmal track record on things like immigration, I don’t see how they could ever win back voters.
- Given their abysmal track record on things like immigration, I don’t see how they could ever win back voters.
  By NOT being fascists and NOT following racist policies?

35 comments