I struggled with whether to comment on the Conservative Party conference this morning.
I did so partly because of this YouGov poll, which shows he current state of the parties, in their opinion:
The Tories are tied in equal third place with the LibDems on a markedly declining trend. Their relevance appears decidedly questionable. Having been replaced by Labour as the party of the centre-right, they have moved to the far-right, where Farage rules the roost, being best able to deliver the political insanity that this sector of political opinion demands. They appear to have nothing left to offer as a result.
But then there is Robert Jenrick, the man who wants to present himself as the first Tory-Reform coalition minister, because Farage clearly could not handle the accountability of that job. He said this about lawyers yesterday, to what still styles itself as the Tory party conference:
I've uncovered dozens of judges with ties to open borders charities who take to social media to broadcast their open border views. Who've spent their careers fighting to keep illegal migrants in this country. Some even continue to do so while, astonishingly, serving as judges.
It's like finding out halfway through a football match that the referee is a season ticket holder for the other side. The public rightly ask, how independent are they? They dishonour generations of independent jurists who came before them and undermine the British people's trust in the law itself.
The Lord Chancellor will once again appoint the judges. No more quangos. And they will be instructed to never permit activists of any political hue to don the wig, ever again.
The suggestion is that judges must be free of opinions.
And that judges must not believe in justice.
Or human rights.
And that they must be racist, as Jenrick appears to be, to me.
But what is more, those possessed of the essential attributes of a belief in the rule of law, government accountability, and an open and inquiring mind, plus confidence in the equality of all who appear before them should no longer be permitted to sit as judges, and those who possessed of such traits should now be barred from their posts by politicans laden by hatred of some of their fellow human beings, which characteristic motivates all their actions.
This is, of course, profoundly dangerous.
This is what Trump has been and is doing in the USA.
This is what fascists do.
This is how government accountability to the higher principle of the law, on which democracy is predicated, is eroded and then entirely destroyed.
This is how the principle on which we enjoy our freedom from tyranny is eroded.
This is how tyrants reinforce their claim to power.
Robert Jenrick might be a tin-pot politician at best, but when the Tories have been reduced to a rump of utterly useless, misguided and frankly nasty politicians possessed of not an ounce of ability, charisma or even nous between them, he is what has emerged from the cesspit of their thinking, and so we should take note. The Tory party is now proposing tyranny.
Take note: fascism is advancing,
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Jenrick is the most talentless and vile opportunist ever to corrode British politics. Sadly, we will be seeing more of him, as no doubt he will form a successful leadership bid against Badenoch in the near future.
I’m not sure he’s the worst; it’s a crowded field.
The Trump Franchise party makes a lot of the ECHR.
I might have missed it but have you done a post on the Court and the number of cases it is really involved with?
I should.
It’s good to see Reform support starting to decline as their closeness to MAGA hurts them.
Pele aren’t going back to the Tories or Labour.
Instead it’s clearly Lib Dems and Green, who both recognise the benefits of close ties with neighbours, reject the racism so common in current political discussion , and understand that inequality is the problem and protecting the environment part of the answer.
Extrapolate the trends to an election period and you might see tactical voting be key to returning fewer seats to Reform than they’re clearly currently expecting.
David, I ******* hope you are correct in that. At present, the Greens ( my first choice by some way, though they have their faults) and LDs are the only two parties I would consider voting for. Of course with a sane voting system talk of tactical voting would be redundant.
Shame the ‘so-called’ labour party, which is supposed to stand for concepts like political and economic justice is headed by the ghastly blue labour faction that useless Starmer listens to who are determined to fight the next election under FPTP and still seem to think they must pander to ignorant racist voters above everything else to win under this rotten system.
What is most alarming about Jenrick’s speech is that he actually believes that it will win him votes, so there must be people out there who think that putting judges under political control is a good idea. One presumes that Jenrick has conducted some polling which suggests that he could win back voters from Reform with this policy. (Maybe I do him too much credit. Maybe he has just been down the pub.) All the same, to those of us still in possession of our marbles this looks totally barking and the idea that anybody could construe it as a vote winning policy terrifying. Maybe Farage will counter by decrying it as too illiberal for his lot, or double down and say that only lawyers who have signed an anti-immigrant pledge can become judges at all. Who knows? Nothing would surprise me. The right will continue to vy with each other as to who can produce the stupidest and nastiest policies. The trouble is that it just pollutes the national debate and makes rational discussion more difficult.
BBC just reports this rejection of a law abiding democracy without comment. I expect the fascist right will have a pact before the election
Nesrine Malik has a brilliant piece on Tories shapeshifting into Reform here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/06/tories-reform-legacy-kemi-badenoch-conservative-party-conference
Also, I came across on my YouTube feed, a Politics Joe interview with a commentator from the Turn Left YouTube podcast channel entitled “the left wing case for leaving the ECHR”. I couldn’t bear to watch all of it, but the gist of it is that leaving the ECHR would kill off the right wing attacks on ‘foreign courts’, and that in it’s place the Human Rights Act (having left the ECHR) would do the heavy lifting alongside a ‘bill of rights’. This is forgetting that the Tories – even before suggesting leaving the ECHR – had scrapping the Human Rights Act as a manifesto commitment. Under a Reform/Tory lash-up there will be no ECHR and no Human Rights Act.
The ECHR is a bulwark against British governments ‘doing things’ to us – that’s why the far right who very much want to ‘do things’ to millions of British people (such as violently deport them) want no supranational checks on this.
How naive and stupid from a ‘left wing’ viewpoint.
Much to agree with – and that is a piece well worth reading.
Jenrick addresses symptoms not cause. Migration not the causes of migration. In that he is identical to US politicos of all hues – who never reflect that the actions of their gov since?? 1900? has destabilised large parts of South & Central America leading to mass migration.
In the case of Europe – a cursory glance at conflicts in Africa or e.g. Afghanistan finds Europe at least partly to blame (failing to act &/or just doing hand wringing). Jenrick follows in a long line of Tories – focused on the symptoms not causes – because, like so many tories, he lacks the mental capacity and is sufficiently blinkered to do anything else, all amplified by a yapping UK meeja.
Earlier this year, I retired from practice as a barrister after 45 years in the legal profession. In recent years many of my then colleagues, and I, detected a growing hostility towards lawyers and judges amongst the public. Whilst the appalling Daily Mail “Enemies of the People” headline contributed significantly to this hostility, it was already developing. One of the main causes has been the deliberate highly selective reporting on cases and judgments by the mainstream media. Most of this reporting was designed to serve the vested interests of big business. Now I frequently hear ill informed comments about “lefty lawyers”. It is ironic that when I started in practice judges were often seen as reactionary, the complete opposite of Jenrick’s characterisation yesterday. A further irony is that Mrs Thatcher, the politician that the likes of Jenrick claim to revere, would not tolerate such attacks on judges. Jenrick and Badenoch (who are clearly battling it out for leadership of what remains of the Tory Party) are nasty, puerile and incompetent third rate politicians who have brought the Tories to their knees. However, Jenrick, who qualified as a solicitor, ought to know better. All he has done is cement his reputation as a vile self-serving reptilian. I pray that he is never allowed to get near power ever again.
But the fact remains is that this atmosphere is resulting in judges being threatened and assaulted on a daily basis. This has been documented in a growing number of reported cases. It is also a phenomenon witnessed elsewhere, especially in Trump’s America.
Personally, I now avoid telling anyone I meet for the first time about what I did for a living for fear of what response I might get. I was proud to have been a barrister but I am not proud that I have to hide that fact out of a fear for my own safety. I also know that I am not alone in feeling this way. The targeting of judges and lawyers in this way shows a complete disrespect for the rule of law. It does, however, speak volumes about the likes of Jenrick.
Much to agree with.
And I wish you would get off the fence one day Bayleaf and let us know what you really think :).
I imagine (I have no proof, but do have a very strong suspicion based on their previous results) that Tory vote is pretty much evenly spread out around England and Wales (unlike LibDems whose vote is very concentrated in certain parts). 15 per cent nationally would bring them a handful of MPs. This should make them the biggest cheerleader for PR, as only PR could save them from annihilation. And still I can’t think of any Tory talking about PR.
You are right. This is why YouGov forecast more LD seats than Tory on equal 17% support.
Two points: one is that the judge in Oregon who has stopped Trump bringing in the National Guard – for the moment – was appointed by Trump, so judges are not always as compliant as the politicians would like.
Two: I have noticed that politicians complaining about the human rights court often say ‘We always lose’. Apart from being factually incorrect, it depends on who you think is ‘we’. As cases are invariably brought by British citizens against their own government, their ‘we’ is not usually the same as my ‘we’.
You couldn’t make this stuff if you tried! Picture Jenrick reporting to Badenoch that he couldn’t find “a white face in Handsworth (Birmingham)” on a recent trip there and Badenoch ironically replying “Yes, it’s dreadful, there’ll soon be no white faces left in the country!”
Jenrick is an odious character.
You can tell that he is just a mouthpiece for a rich clientele who have no intention of letting something like the law interfere with the custody they have of their wealth.
The other worrying trait he has is the conviction with which he delivers his missives. He seems to really believe in what he is saying.
He makes George Osbourne look like a decent bloke and that is saying something.
I found this recent analysis of British political attitudes fascinating. Its novel (to me at least) methodology reveals just how complex and fractured the public’s attitudes are. It’s hard not to conclude that we are in deep trouble, and that mainstream media bear a lot of responsibility for that.
https://benansell.substack.com/p/british-politics-midlife-crisis
Just when you thought Badenoch’s ideas were bad they get even badder:-
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/oct/08/badenoch-unveils-golden-rule-to-use-half-of-spending-cuts-to-reduce-deficit
The woman is a joke. As if withdrawing demand through gilts issues isn’t a factor to consider she’s clearly never heard about the Paradox of Thrift applied to a government!
She must make these ideas up after a long night at the pub!
She is literally seeking to crash the eocnomy.
Worryingly this sort of rhetoric is normalising Reform politics. Come the next election we may well see the right consolidate (rather than split). Both Conservative and Reform seem to have licence to say things that would have sat comfortably with the BNP in the 1990s – and roundly condemned by Parliament.
I feel a bit guilty as I watched Badenoch’s speech live on tv this morning because I enjoyed watching her make a complete fool of herself. It was appalling. I cannot see a way back for the Tories now. Given that Farage cannot stand anyone else being in the limelight it is hard to see why he would allow the likes of Jenrick or Braverman etc to defect to Reform or go into some form of electoral pact/ coalition. If the Tories hang on then come 2029 they could split the right wing vote. Mind you, the way LINO is going under Starmer, the right wing may become a rather overcrowded place.
I was talking to Bloomberg, as Tom said “as you do”.
Tom’s comment is in another post.
“It’s like finding out halfway through a football match that the referee is a season ticket holder for the other side”
It’s like watching a Scottish football match against a certain team 🙂
I’ll start by reiterating a point you make at the outset, but which needs stating even more explicitly: all we are seeing from Reform and the Tories is directly related to – AND DRIVEN BY – what Trumpists are doing in the US. ‘Inspired by’, or ‘reflecting’, or whatever other slightly ambiguous phrase that gets bandied about are no longer sufficient. The networks that exist between the extreme right in the US and here in the UK are being constantly used to ‘drive’ and ‘control’ and ‘dominate the narrative’ of UK politics as much as they are in the US.
The UK is now overwhelmingly ensnared in the Trumpist project. The belief is that the time has come to banish ALL the progressive/liberal/woke ‘nonsense’ (referred to frequently as a ‘deep state’ project) that those on the right believe to the bottom of their feet that has been visited on them for decades. And by banish, that means ‘making people pay’ for the ‘suffering’ they believe they’ve had to endure all these years.
Why do I say all this? Well, for the past few months I’ve been immersing myself in the many corners of the internet that most people of my political persuasion avoid. And it’s been an eye opener. I’ve watched as people circulate a Soviet manual from the 1950’s and claim that it’s the manual that’s being used to this very day by ‘communists’ (i.e. anyone whose not extreme right wing) to take over the government of the united states. I’ve watched thousands of people circulate material from the text on ‘replacement theory’ without taking a second to pause and consider whether the claims make sense. I’ve seen absolutely made up figures on so called left wing violence, which ‘demonstrate’ that there’s way more left wing violence than right. And any judge that dares to pass a judgement that stays any action by Trump is instantly attacked – and labelled as attempting ‘legal insurrection’ (sic) – simply for upholding the law with personal details circulated widely. And everything that Trump and his minions do is beyond question, of course, and more often than not, not drastic enough. Not fast enough. And not cruel enough.
Part 1
Part 2
In short, this is not just the politics of hate, but the politics of vengeance. And by God, are these people on a roll – which is, of course, exactly where we are in the UK now. We’re all caught up in the Trumpist (fascist) storm, rushing ever more violently across the Atlantic. From which, incidentally, GB News now broadcasts, with the blessing of Trump (a White house meeting for Farage and senior people, on a par with that given to Starmer as our PM. That shows how little Trump thinks of Starmer) and in an obvious attempt to become the UK equivalent of the Fox propaganda channel that’s so effective at feeding the politics of hate on a daily/hourly basis.
Anyway, as an aside – and to get back to some sanity, as well as pick up on a point I made above – it’s well worth watching this segment from Ari Melber, in which he puts forward the FACTS on political violence in the US. It’s an admirable effort by Melber, who makes a specialism of segments examining the actual FACTS of various political developments in the US. But sadly, it won’t cut any ice with Trumpists – just as it wouldn’t with Jenrick, Badenoch, Farage, or anyone who follows them. Facts are no what they’re interested in. Their only interest is anything – said, done, seen or heard – that promotes their supporters desire to defeat ‘the enemy’ and exact the revenge they believe is their ‘right’. In short, we might say: “Fascism: dripping red in tooth and claw.”
Here’s the link to some sanity: https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber
Many thanks for both posts Ivan.
Someone had to do it. It turned out it was you…
Conservatives would scrap stamp duty, Badenoch announces.
“We must free up our housing market, because a society where no one can afford to buy or move is a society where social mobility is dead.”
There is a reason why no one can afford to buy, and it is not stamp duty.
Shows how dumb she is. Reducing stamp duty has always resulted in higher house prices.
Badenoch insisted she could meet this promise with the money to come from £47bn in planned savings…
First time buyers are exempt from stamp duty on properties worth up to £300,000, so basically it is a policy for the well off, paid for by the poor.
There is a post coming on this in the morning.