This gave me a big belly laugh:
Another Conservative said: “The answer is we need to find a way to appeal to voters we lost to all parties. I don’t know how you do that on policy, but Keir Starmer showed you can do it by looking competent and serious. But I don’t know if any of the candidates we have at the moment can do that.”
The sliver of petty vengeance in me quite enjoyed this bit:
“There are a load of MPs I thought I’d be spending decades with in this place,” said another. “They’re really good mates. And almost all of them are gone. It’s a reminder of how vulnerable we all are.”
Given that they were responsible for this (or worse) happening to hundreds of thousands of people over the last decade and a half, I wonder if there’ll be any life-changing realisations for any of them? What happens when a Tory learns about empathy?
What happens when a Tory learns about empathy?
Cognitive dissonance.
The way that Tories are explaining this loss shows they don’t understand the reasons they were voted out. The problem is being voted out, not that they need to appeal to voters for their vote. Tories will next attack democracy itself.
It blows me away how much they can ignore something until it affects them personally
Chasing after Reform is a losing game. You can’t win over anti-establishment votes as the establishment. The only way forward for the Tories is to the left.
Except their funding source(s) would prefer to set the money on fire, rather than allow the Overton window to slip even slightly left
The overton window slides this way and that, but eventually it snaps back to more central. We’ve just observed this here and in France.
I fully agree, but I believe this is the perspective of the billionaire class funding Reform and Tories.
Way more of their “one nation” faction lost their seats in the last election unfortunately. Including Penny Mordaunt who was being mooted as a potential leader. Tom Tugendhat is on maneuvers though, and he is trying to appeal to both sides so I suppose he might take the party in that direction.
Previously it was looking like Kemi Badenoch (Scruton style tory) vs Suella Braverman (populist tory) but support has melted away for the latter since the election, mainly due to her incendiary statements about LGBT people at a conference in the USA.
They lost those guys because those seats couldn’t be won by a more right wing Conservative. But the party went full further right and those voters rejected it. They will not rewin those seats from the right.
Agree that going further right is not a winning move. Brexit is the most right wing policy they delivered in 14 years and it tore them apart. If they want to win again in 5 or 10 years then they need to look competent and demonstrate a united front - basically everything Starmer did to become a serious candidate.
End FPTP! Then fracture into the two (possibly three) parties you really are.
(the same can be said for Labour. Winning elections in the U.K. is all about getting your own party to find some kind of middle road no-one in the party really likes, then convincing the voters you all believe it, all in the name of avoiding a greater evil, namely not being in power; is it any wonder voters are disillusioned and feel no-one really represent them).
Thing is, I think the core Labour party would lead coalitions on a regular basis if we ditched FPTP. Far more than they win elections currently.
trans ones
Only way I can imagine Suella chasing a trans voter is with a cricket bat.
++ disabled folks.
There is really only one electoral strategy for them and it’s the mirror image of the best strategy for Labour: chase the people they lost to their left. The risk of losing voters to Reform is real, but it will be mitigated by winning over the voters they most need: Labour and Lib Dem voters.
For the Tories in particular, this is the best strategy not only electorally, but morally. They should not be normalising the toxicity of Reform by chasing the mix of fantasists, conspiracists and racists that make up Farage’s fan club. Even as a Labour voter who would never consider voting Conservative, I see the fact that some Conservatives have already started speaking out against the two-child benefit cap, the housing crisis and the dropping of net zero targets, as an encouraging sign.
Why would they be ‘chasing’ any voters with up to 5 years until the next election? How about do your jobs and represent the people who did vote for you in opposition of the government? Then you might win back some respect of the electorate.
I thought the whole point of 5 year terms was to avoid the constant election cycle.
Westminster journalists can’t see politics as anything other than a team sport. It’s not about democracy, ideas, or doing what’s right for the people of Britain. It’s just tactics and strategies to win the match.
Keir Starmer showed you can do it by looking competent and serious.
He doesn’t have a charisma to be honest, unlike Blair.
Also, many people voted Labour solely because they voted against Tories, not because people like Starmer and Labour. The fact that Starmer isn’t polling well in terms of popularity shows that. But this doesn’t matter seeing as Labour won a landslide.
I just hope that Labour and Starmer doesn’t end up like the German SDP and Olaf Scholz. The latter won but doing badly as government. Scholz also presented an air of seriousness but is unpopular.
Agreed, that is why people voted the way they did, but Starmer has already had a bump in approval. The next GE will be on his record. Nobody will care if he’s somebody they want to talk to down the pub if he delivers improvements.
