I have published this video this afternoon. In it, I suggest that the Tories are going to have another summer of meltdown, division and in-fighting as Badenoch and Braverman fight it out to lead the party towards the exit on the right-hand side of the political stage.
There is no audio version of this video as yet.
The transcript is:
Who do you want to lead the Tory party? Kemi Badenoch or Suella Bradman?
Don't tell me you aren't interested, because you are, because you're watching this video.
So let's talk about it.
What is going to happen to the rump of the Tories that are left in the current parliament? 120 of them at the time we're making this video.
That might increase by one or two, but give it a week or so and somebody will be subject to some form of scandal and the numbers will begin to decline.
They are a tiny rump of those who were in the 2019 Parliament elected with Boris Johnson in charge.
Now, who is going to lead them? Most of the obvious candidates have either lost their seats - Penny Mordaunt, Grant Shapps, and so on - or are elder statesmen, as they would like to think of themselves, like Jeremy Hunt, and so forth.
Or there's Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch.
I don't believe Tom Tugendhat is in the race.
I can't see anybody else who might be. Not seriously.
So, we have the prospect of somebody leading the Tory party who is going to drive it to the seriously far right. Who denies critical race theory and pretends that there isn't inbuilt discrimination against people in this country on the basis of their colour.
Who denies that there are any problems with regard to discrimination against women in this country.
Who denies that there is a problem in discrimination against people on the basis of their wealth, or rather their absence of it.
This is serious because if the Tories go really far-right no one outside the 25 per cent or so who always seem to vote for very far-right parties is going to take them seriously.
They're going to fall behind Reform. They're going to lose any form of moral leadership they ever once had. And then we're going to be left without, one, an effective parliamentary opposition, and two, well, a second party in a two-party system. That could bring about a serious political revolution in the UK.
We don't know how to operate without the Tories.
They've always been one of the two parties in this country, ever since this system was created in 1832, with what was called the Great Reform Act, which brought in modern parliamentary democracy in something like its current form.
So, what is going to happen now?
I don't know. But I suspect, whether it's Badenoch, or whether it's Braverman, the Tories are going to exit, stage right, I think it fair to say, and we're going to have to look for somebody else to fill this gap.
Is it the Liberal Democrats?
Is it Reform?
Could it be the Greens?
Or is it something new altogether?
This is the big, unanswered, and as yet unanswerable, question that this Parliament will pose. But I'm not expecting the Tories to survive this as an effective electoral fighting force. And in that case, we're going to be living in interesting times.
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My tuppence worth, is that with Reeves’, Streeting’s and similar influence the march towards free (unregulated) market and monetarism once again will be renewed with further turmoil unleashed on the long suffering British. The Greens and the Regional parties (National in two cases) will come to an agreement to develop,an alternative philosophy to government.
If they get on with it in five years the Westminster government could offer a vision of Britain that reflects it’s true place in the world (just outside the top 20 and falling) but one that is increasingly content with itself, welcoming to all who choose to make it home, working collaboratively with any who wish, and perhaps leading the world again not by force of Arms and industry, but by the moral courage of its people and offering and heeding advice when requested or offered.
It would then be a mature family, with the different members living on their own, but able to rely on other family members as and when needed!
That is a great idea…
Orwell said (the Lion and Unicorn) England was like a family with the wrong people in charge. 90 years on, it is still relevant.
Very true
Charon?
I have no idea what you mean
Who Pays the Ferryman?
If a soul is not given funeral rites, nor has the fee for Charon the ferryman, they are condemned to wander the banks of the Styx for a hundred years before they can cross over.
I may have wrongly assumed, of course. Which is why I have not strayed into allegory and Catholic theology.
I get it now
Sorry – I have not had a lot of sleep
Charon, the ferryman across the Styx?
As in ‘Don’t pay the ferryman’, by Chris de Burgh?
Is that on Spanish Train? That takes me back…..
I think it’s on The Getaway, one of my favourite albums.
Don’t pay the ferryman
Don’t even fix the price
Don’t pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side.
I so wish we could apply that to rewarding our politicians.
I just played it
Good memories
Thank you
This is a decision for Conservative Party MPs and then the members.
Assuming we aren’t, then we don’t get a say. This is similar to elections in France and the United States of America.
We can take an interest of course. That’s it.
We all know that
Your point is?
it is certainly not the greens..the likelihood is Badenoch leads the Party and they eventually merge Reform. There is your effective opposition and they probably form the next Government. Immigration insist going away and it will be the downfall of Labour as it has been for the Conservatives.
And you think killing people at sea is a winning policy?
Can you explain why?
“Who do you want to lead the Tory party? ”
My understanding is that Keir Starmer already leads it. Have I missed something?
Regards
🙂
I expect Priti Patel or James Cleverly.
Julian Smith is probably the best of a bad bunch. And that means he has 0 chance.
Priti Patel is as bad as Badenoch and Braverman
And Cleverly just isn’t
Cleverly for leader would be my favourite. Because as you say he [really] isn’t.
Iain Duncan Smith would be my choice. He is more than elitistly odious enough to appeal to any traditional nasty tory types and aspirational new tory types. Badenoch and Braverman and any other ambitious tory nasty will continually be snapping at his heels or attempting back stabbing to roll him. The whole nasty carry on should keep the filthy lot better engaged to possibly keep them all contained in the slime pit of their own minds and creation. They are not going to be any sort of ethical responsible opposition anyway so better to keep them contained.
Apologies for being so caustic, a lifetime of fighting off corrupt tory types leaves one less tolerant of them. By the way, there are some decent if hopelessly deluded Tory supporters, they are not all monsters (maybe), even if they have voted that way irresponsibly.
Surely his day was over by 2005 or whenever it was?
I want to see Nigel Farage emerge as the party leader.
I don’t care who on the far right is appointed in the interim, before the realignment with Reform.
Farage is utterly incapable of leading or managing a disparate group of egos effectively, let alone a whole party, not a small private company with a single funder, so will take the new right of the NatCs into the wilderness. Populists are there for protests only.
He will also alienate the entire centre right and erstwhile one nation Tories.
Surely Chris Philp is the obvious choice!
Of course
Silly me….
Is he still an MP?
(Addendum: yes he is. How did that happen?)
This letter in The Guardian today is quite pertinent to this discussion.
“In her acceptance speech, Angela Rayner said that the result was a response of the electorate to 14 years of Tory failure. I don’t think the Tories failed – they have been highly successful for the elite they represent.
Since 2010, the country’s top few percent have seen their wealth quadruple, while most people have seen their real-terms income drop. Bankers enjoy unlimited bonuses, public sector pay has been substantially cut, the tax burden has been significantly switched from rich to poor, privatised utilities profiteer from monopolistic positions without hindrance, and our railways are among the worst in the developed world, while being among the most expensive.
These are all amazing achievements from a neoliberal perspective. The chief reason for their being ousted is that they didn’t persuade the electorate as successfully as Reform that immigrants were responsible for all this.
Dr Stephen Riley
Bruton, Somerset”