Will the UK Conservative Party cease to exist?
The UK European elections are about to happen, and it couldn't be worse for the Tories.
A new poll has put the Conservatives behind Labour, the Brexit party and Change UK as voters prepare for the European elections almost three years since 2016's vote to quit the EU.
Coming in 4th looks really bad (Change UK has only existed for two weeks), but this is just the latest in an uninterrupted string of bad news for the ruling party.
The Brexit Party and Change UK are mostly defectors from the Tories.
Major donors are abandoning the Tories because of Brexit as well.
This collapse in Conservative support has left Labour on top in all of the polls.
Between 11-13 April, five new opinion polls were released. Each of them showed the same thing. As the Conservative Party continues to face crisis after crisis over its hand handling of Brexit, its support is plummeting. And Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party could be heading for government.
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 40%
CON: 31%
LDEM: 8%
UKIP: 8%
GRN: 5%via @HanburyStrategy, 05 - 08 Apr
First voting intention by Hanbury - BPC approved pollster. Welcome!— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 11, 2019
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 35% (+4)
CON: 31% (-9)
LDEM: 11% (+3)
UKIP: 7% (+1)
GRN: 4% (-2)via @KantarPublic, 04 - 08 Apr
Chgs. w/ 11 Mar
Tabs: https://t.co/1S8Peo44cA— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 11, 2019
Westminster voting intention (ft. new parties):
LAB: 32% (+1)
CON: 28% (-4)
LDEM: 11% (-1)
BREX: 8% (+3)
UKIP: 6% (-1)
CHUK: 3% (+3)
GRN: 3% (-1)via @YouGov, 10 - 11 Apr
Chgs. w/ 03 AprFirst Labour lead with YouGov since July 2018.
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 13, 2019
However, Labour could still blow it. The neoliberal establishment wing of the party is die-hard Remain.
Yesterday, Labour’s national executive committee reaffirmed the party’s position on Brexit: that is, it would prioritise a general election to remove the Tories from power, and if that wasn’t possible, it would “support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”. This isn’t controversial, you would think: it would be odd for the NEC to usurp the decision of the party’s sovereign body, and – until now – the conference policy has been lauded by advocates of a second referendum. Yet for the monomaniacal ultra-remainers – who treat those of us who campaigned and voted for remain but are willing to accept compromise as bitter enemies, on a par with Nigel Farage or Jacob Rees-Mogg – this is a great betrayal that makes voting Labour a disgrace.
...
The chasm that exists between the ultra-remainers and political reality is so vast, it nearly contains enough room for their arrogance and entitlement. Does the Tories’ relentless attempt to portray Labour as the Stop Brexit party not bother them? “The biggest thing you could do to help the Tories in the next election is to make Labour a party of remain,” says Spectator editor Fraser Nelson in his podcast. You are far more likely to encounter someone on the doorstep angrily denouncing Labour for trying to stop Brexit than failing to do so.
In 2017, Corbyn whipped his MPs to trigger article 50, and campaigned in the general election to accept the referendum result. This, the neoliberal Blairites predicted, would lead to electoral doom.
Instead Labour gained dozens of seats. There is a lesson to be learned here.
Corbyn learned it, but the neoliberals refusee to acknowledge it.
Comments
Hope he wins and soon
Maybe he can save Assange.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
election
Local elections tomorrow, the Tories are expected to take a beating. If the results are as predicted it will be further proof that the left is making a comeback.
It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. Carl Sagan
Remember this is a parlimentary system
and a right wing pro brexit coalition wins. It will be unstable, and Trumpist, but it will be hard brexit.
Jeremy Corbyn is the most popular politician in Britain.
Theresa May is the most hated person in Britain, a national embarrassment.
BUT If the Blairites continue to undermine Corbyn for their corruptocrat crusade to ram the EU down the throats of England (The EU has advantages , but like the ACA the public sees those advantages as not being worth it, and right or wrong the Blairite efforts, like the US Obamabots/HIllbots, are making matters worse because they are clearly acting against the welfare of the people.) Even when they are right it is not because it is going to be better for the people, it will be ultimately for the worse, at least as far as the people can see.
Theresa May might be removed, but the right will win, and May's replacement will be worse. The Bairites will blame Corbyn, and Labor will disappear, not the Tories.
On to Biden since 1973
it's also a first-past-the-post election system.
if labor polls 32% against a motley assembly of 6 other parties, they will almost certainly win a clear majority.
in June 1983, thatcher won the largest parliamentary majority in UK history, with a plurality of 42% of the vote, vs 28% labor and 25% "Liberal/SDP Alliance".
looking at that one poll that has all of those new parties in it, not one of them is likely to win a single seat. literally. The CHUK and Brexit parties are stripping votes not only from the Tories, but from all the parties, and the most vulnerable of the lot is the LibDem, which at 11% is going to have a damned hard time reaching a plurality anywhere, except perhaps where it is running popular incumbents. in the 2015 election, the LibDem vote share dropped from 23% in 2010 to 8%; but their seat count dropped from 57 to 8!
Other than the minor parties with nationalist identification (DUP, SNP, Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru), the numbers are laughable. UKIP won a single seat in 2015, despite polling 12% nationally.
The two most likely outcomes are:
A. Labor wins an outright majority -- possibly a substantial one;
or
B. Labor wins a significant plurality, with the Scottish National Party holding the balance of power -- ie., no coalition can govern without the SNP (which will win somewhere between 40 and 59 seats -- i'd guess 50 is likely, stripping a dozen from the Tories and a few each from labor and libdem). That would be an interesting conversation, because the polls from Scotland are not ambiguous: The Scots want to be represented by the SNP, and they do not want Brexit, AND they do not want another independence referendum any time soon. They would appear to prefer Brexit to UKexit.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Aah. But there are still historical possibilities
to consider. Think Britain post WW1 - The Liberal Party split on what was essentially a power game between Lloyd George and Asquith and the split cost the Liberals so much that they literally disappeared. You're suggesting a similar fate for the Tories? True enough, but the Liberal implosion created a vacuum which was almost instantly filled by the Labor Party. Conservatism (though not the Tories) is strong enough in England that if the Tories implode like you say they may (pun writes itself) there will be a replacement also almost immediately, and that replacement will certainly be a harder (more Trumpist, perhaps outright fascist) right than the Torries.
I am thinking more like what happened in Canada. The Conservatives screwed up so badly they were reduced to 1 seat, but not conservatism, and the Labor Party capitalized on their gains so hideously that rather than disappearing the Conservatives not only rebounded but took power in a few years. The Torries may go down to a pathetic total tomorrow, but if Labor saddles Corbyn with a remain policy and other Blairite millstones he will quickly lose all of his gains. (To Americanize imagine if Bernie wins in 2020 and the Democratic majority imposes "election reform" based in defending us from "Russian hackers" by allowing Homeland Security to install Crosscheck and voter ID laws nationwide, "immigration reform" based on another amnesty, and rather than Medicare for all a "strengthening of the ACA" by reimposing the mandate and increasing the subsidies with cuts in Social Security.)
On to Biden since 1973
You're talking to the wrong guy ...
I'm not saying the Tories are going to be beaten in anything comparable to what happened to poor Kim whatserface in Canada. I think the numbers are likely to be something along the lines of the 2015 numbers, but with Labor and Tories reversed. So maybe:
Labor 335 seats
Tories 225
SNP 56
LibDem 10
DUP 8
Sinn Fein 9
Plaid Cymru 5
Green 1
UKIP 1
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
incidentally, there is no Labour Party in Canada.
the main leftish party is the New Democratic Party, which unlike UK's labor has never formed a federal government, and has only rarely been in contention, or even served as official opposition.
i don't know whether it was the NDP or the Liberals who were mainly to blame for failing to put a stake in the heart of the Canadian Tories.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Oops, confused "liberal" with "labor:
yake my memory for what it's worth, but as I remember it the NDP joined the Liberals as junior partners and wound up giving in on everything they stood for. They were seen as willing accessories in Liberal betrayals and suffered the fate of all flunkies.
On to Biden since 1973
George Galloway's take
UK Labour Party Deputy Leader Tom Watson walked out of a shadow cabinet meeting when his demands to see a draft of the party's manifesto for the EU parliamentary elections were not met. (6 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXF3VokhohI]
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”