This Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

[JimJamUK]

The Greens have run into local difficulties in Solihull council area so I wouldn’t expect them to feature much in a by-election (they didn’t in North Shropshire despite council strength in Oswestry).

[JimJamUK]

Reports from several quarters that Sebastian Payne, formerly of the Financial Times, and now head of the Onward think-tank is trying to secure the Conservative nomination for a Westminster seat.

Quite possibly the closest the Tories will come to a “celebrity” (within the Westminster bubble, at least) candidate for next year.

One of the people most instrumental in pushing the ‘Red Wall’ narrative in the media, can’t say he will be missed. Let’s hope Matthew Goodwin gets announced as a Reform candidate soon as well.

[JimJamUK]

https://twitter.com/TelePolitics/status/1657457178435788801
No idea what he’d bring to the party, beyond the ability to negotiate half a deal, piss off devolution-supporters, and inject weird populism into the party.

Frost went from a 2016 Remainer to star of the Tory right whose opinions are regularly plastered all over the right wing newspapers front pages, but who not a single normal person would ever have heard of. Utterly bizarre obsession. This story will presumably go the same way as the claim he was going to be the Tory candidate at the Wakefield by-election and have his amazing popularity hold the seat for them against all odds.

[JimJamUK]

It’s only day 2 of the National Conservative conference, because apparently the Bring Back Boris conference was a completely different event despite its great similarities.

[JimJamUK]

Dominic Raab is retiring at the next election - leaving Esher and Walton open. Slim 2.7k Tory majority over the Lib Dems in 2019, after a concerted tactical vote campaign in 2019.

I’d be curious to see whether the tactical vote was anti-Tory, or anti-Raab.

It’s clearly the sort of area that would have significantly swung Lib Dem in 2019, but given how massive the swing was, the latter looks to have been very influential as well. Raab’s on the right wing of the Conservative Party, resigned as Brexit secretary because May’s deal was insufficiently hard Brexit, and appeared to have such poor personal skills that Harry Dunn’s parents (child killed by an American with ‘diplomatic immunity’) decided to actively endorse his Lib Dem opponent. Raab’s retirement should help the Conservatives hold on, though IIRC boundary changes are not good for them.

[JimJamUK]

Normal day on GB News:

https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1672312068047773698?s=61&t=I1DE8_cg7...

[JimJamUK]

Yet another new Conservative group launched today, this time called the ‘New Conservatives’. Focused on significantly reducing immigration, with the suggested policies and rhetoric giving a vibe of ‘something must be done’ rather than an attempt to come up with a plan to reduce immigration that is electorally and economically ‘feasible’.

[JimJamUK]

Don't worry, Sunak plans another "war on woke" to bring the voters flooding back!

How many times have they announced one and then done next to nothing on it?

[JimJamUK]

To be cynical the think tank gig is merely a warm up; it allows you to work and appear on the media and at events- iirc Sunak had some sort of role at some think tank in 20142 when he clearly didn’t need the money!

Weirdly enough it use to be a pipeline for Labour MPs but that route seems to have closed off a bit

Off the top of my head there’s going to be a couple in the next Parliament. Faiza Shaheen was head of CLASS while Miatta Fahnbulleh is the head of the New Economics Foundation. Both on the left and did regular media appearances during the Corbyn era.

[JimJamUK]

God-tier chicken-run attempt reported: Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) has apparently been shortlisted for Windsor.

I have a sneaking suspicion it will only ever be an attempt.

[JimJamUK]

Oh well, at least we won't get the excruciatingly cringey photo-ops with Sunak now.

They were saying on TV how disrespectful it was that Rishi wasn’t there. William I can understand, but would the experience of either the players or the fans have been improved by having an unpopular, uncharismatic prime minister there?

[JimJamUK]

I see deficit spending is a Conservative party past time as well as a Government one...

It’s a pastime for almost everyone except Labour 😁

[JimJamUK]

There’s a piece in the Telegraph today about the behind-the-scenes push for the Truss mini-budget to include a switch to a 20% Estonia style flat tax, at a cost of £41 billion Apparently Rees-Mogg wrote a 600 page ‘memo’ on it, which Truss was receptive to.

Apparently Kwarteng binned it as too extreme (although given the breakdown in relations, it’s possible he’s responsible for the story).

Given what attempted abolition of the 45% rate did to the pound, can’t imagine what this proposal would have done. Insane that they really thought they could fundamentally reshape the country with no mandate, no manifesto, and (as it turned out) absolutely no public support.

Interesting that they actually tried to pay for this proposal. The mini budget was reliant on the tax cuts spurring enough growth to pay for itself, rather than paying for it by raising other taxes or cutting spending. I can actually believe Truss and those around her believed their tax cuts were self-financing, so for them to have another plan which assumed otherwise is interesting (that said, I have no idea how credible the £41 billion figure is, there’s a non-insignificant chance it’s based on some very favourable assumptions). While obviously politically poisonous, I imagine the markets would have reacted better to a budget that did not seem to blow an even bigger hole in the deficit, which may have kept her around for a while longer.

[JimJamUK]

I didn't take it seriously, but the fact there was even a half-assed rumour about her crossing the floor a while back told its own story really. She really does sound like she will be happier out of it.

Given she backed Truss on ideological grounds, truly so.

[JimJamUK]

The Conservatives have picked their candidate for the new, pretty safe seat of Harpenden and Berkhamstead.

Slight snag - he’s a lobbyist who represented both the Russian Government, and a number of Russian state-owned companies throughout the 2000s.

Also nominated multiple times as a Labour candidate, which the constituency party apparently did not know until after they selected him.

[JimJamUK]

Reading West in its current form is a classic bellwether - Tory until Labour took it in 1997, then flipping blue again in 2010. Sharma won slim 2.8k and 4.1k majorities in 2017 and 2019, so it's right on the line. It's being redrawn as Reading West and Mid Berkshire for the next election - which I believe make it rather more Conservative? Still getting to grips with the prediction tools.

Definitely. It loses 4/7 of its Reading council wards while gaining a large chunk of rural mid Berkshire. If an election was held today I’d imagine it would still be Tory held.

[JimJamUK]

Very tetchy Sunak interview for Sky News. Lots of talking over the interviewer.

He suggested Nigel Farage could be readmitted to the Conservatives - he’s attending his first Conservative conference this year, since he left the party, in 1993. Which is perhaps the most “abandon swing voters, throw red meat to an imagined base” move possible.

An underdiscussed point. Farage is just really unpopular, and polls have found him net negative even among Leave voters. The fact he got 1/3 of the vote on a very low turnout should not have been taken as a personal endorsement of him by the British people. Some of his ideas and focus could be a lot more electorally potent should they be framed correctly and delivered on by the government (so not what they’re currently doing).

[JimJamUK]

Government minister Nus Ghani (herself the victim of religious discrimination), has been scathing about Susan Hall’s attacks on Sadiq Khan (and draws unfavourable comparisons with Zac Goldsmith’s campaign, which will raise some eyebrows). All with Steve Baker, of all MPs, nodding along in the background. I do wonder if we could be headed towards Hall being forced out, with someone like Paul Scully imposed instead at this point.

IIRC Baker was quite ‘woke’ about Black Lives Matter, so he does have previous form (perhaps not entirely unrelated to representing a Labour trending constituency with a large ethnic minority population).

[JimJamUK]

“You either think this country needs to change, or you don’t. And if you do, you should stand with me and every person in this hall, you should stand with the Conservatives.” Sunak really said this!

And despite this rhetoric, the main policies he’s announcing are inherently conservative. Scrap HS2, scrap T-Levels, no ‘woke’ etc. And they’re also painting Starmer as some far left radical progressive, because we need to protect the status quo from change.

[JimJamUK]

One question, do nobody talks about the fact that the guys is Indian and how Conservative voters will react to that, or do they all ignore the issue that people who don’t like East European coming to UK, may also have a problem with other foreigners? He doesn’t even have the benefits like Braverman or Priti Patel have (women and married to a white Briton), it seem obviously to me that some Conservative voters will react to that by voting for another party or stay home.

They are trying to position themselves as immigrants who share the anti-immigration views of the white population. The problem is that alienates ‘liberal’ voters but the complete inability to actually deliver onimmigration (massive levels of legal migration, nevermind the Channel crossings) means that the voters they are pandering to hate them as well. This approach can work, but you need to actually deliver on the things you are promising.

Also, to answer your question more directly, there’s a group of voters who swung heavily to the Conservatives in 2019 in large part because the Labour Party became completely culturally alien to them. That the Conservative Party now has an Asian billionaire in charge is not good news for them (more so vibes than outright racism).

[JimJamUK]

Yet another gay Tory MP turns out to be an absolute rotter and resigns.

Chris Pincher
Crispin Blunt
Boris Johnson
Imran Ahmed Khan
Andrew Rosindell (Coming soon?)
Scott Benton (Coming soon?)

I didn’t know Boris was gay!

[JimJamUK]

Also isn't GB News's original thing COVID trutherism and especially anti-lockdown. Johnson is seen as the ultimate high priest of those policies by them. And it's surely the main thing holding him back from being popular with the nutty Right.

A good proportion of the headbangers actually like Boris and don’t seem to realise how moderate he was/conveniently ignore it. I mean, this is a guy who called for an amnesty for illegal immigrants and oversaw a rising tax burden, yet some of his ‘loyalists’ spend their time banging on about the Channel crossings and how high the tax burden has become under Sunak.

[JimJamUK]

Not to state the bleeding obvious, but the number of Conservative MPs attempting chicken runs from the #RedWall suggests even they know the jig is up. I mean, Richard Holden could easily follow the most Conservative part of his constituency into the enlarged Bishop Auckland constituency which is notionally ‘safe’ Conservative, but instead he’s trying to be selected 100 miles or so away.

[JimJamUK]

Interesting that Therese Coffey is bottom. What’s she done to upset the Tory faithful?

[JimJamUK]

Incidentally, how did such a strong traditional labor seat have such a close result in 2019?

It was ‘only’ Labour by 20% in 2017, knock off the 10% nationally swing, and knock off the a few % more for how pro-Brexit it was, and it was basically the expected result given what happened nationally. The constituency has a few rural/middle class pockets, and similar seats were all largely close or even flipped that year. Obviously it won’t mean much for next years election, even if this May’s council results were noticeably good for the Conservatives.