Is this the end of the Tory Party

[Tom8]

A quick glance on here and the liveliest of pages are all to do with labour and the prime minister and chancellor which is largely to be expected. The other leading pages seem to be related to Reform.

You have to search back over a month to find anything about the tory party or its leader, so whilst not "science" it is pretty conclusive no one is interested or particularly cares about them.

In national polling focus is on Labour failure and the Reform surge and now with Corbyn joining in a lot of focus on that. Are we now seeing the end of the Tory party as it falls into insignificance and is it recoverable? Is it the leader or more the brand?

Must be a horrible place not being mentioned anywhere, barely ever in the press.

What do they do next? Publicity stunts like the lib dems so at least they might get noticed? Challenge Kemi?

[Yertis]

I hope not. My concern however is that a resurgent Tory party might split the Reform vote, and the thought of any longer with Labour in office is very depressing.

[Wacky Racer]

Whenever I see a picture of that idiot Farage with a stupid grin on his face, holding up a pint in a pub I want to throw a brick through the tv screen.



Who is the leader of the Tory party again?..................

[No ideas for a name]

For what it is worth... I gave up last month

I said:

To membership@....

Hi,

I think it is time to cancel my membership. I have 'held on' thinking that we may turn a corner and get back on track, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I realise, you are just dealing with the membership admin, and not policy - but it appears that the party has very much lost its way. I have been a member for something like 25 years if I remember correctly, and things have changed.

Over recent leadership elections, I feel that the voting process was engineered or manipulated so that the wishes of the membership were ignored.
I still desire a Conservative government, but the party isn't standing for the values that it used to.

Accordingly, if you could cancel the membership and the forthcoming direct debit, I think that is the best way forwards.

[Pitre]

There appears to be a race to obscurity/irrelevance between the Tories here and the Democrats in the US.

[biggbn]

I hope not. Whilst the government are farcical, having a weak, disjointed, directionless opposition impacts that situation further. The Conservative Party is a historically significant and once world wide respected political party and to see it flounder as it is, and having the effect it is having on members as described above; my dad is in the same boat, is genuinely distressing.

But then I could say the same almost verbatim for the Labour Party whose success seems to based on not being the Tories such was their fall from grace...and by promising not to be Labour. Charlatans.

I do sometimes wonder if the fact that the parties, through natural wastage, are becoming more full of younger members that the historical and cultural significance of their party is becoming lost? The same goes for MPs, a backbencher is no longer considered worthy of respect by their peers or the public and such a position seems always to be viewed as a steeping stone to join the others at the trough...

Sad how quickly things turn around.

[sugerbear]

The Tory leader has been out and about this week as I have seen articles in the press.

She no longer identified as nigerian (no idea why) despite growing up their (and the US).
She doesn't beleive in god (due to reading about Josef Frtizel)
She is a bit of do gooder "Kemi Badenoch says she "didn't get praised" for accusing fellow pupil of cheating" - Straight from my two favourite books "How to win friends and influence people" and "no st sherlock"

These are all things that the electorate care deeply about so I expect at the next election the Tories will be back in power off the back of the those announcements.

[Randy Winkman]

I'd not think too much about what you see on this part of PH or on any other internet forum.

[z4RRSchris]

very hard to see who the tory vote is now, what tribe would vote for them

[Muzzer79]

I don't think it's the end....but I'm very much not convinced about Badenoch

The party needs to decide what it wants to be. At the moment, it's decided that it's against everything Labour does, but also not aligned with Reform, who are fast winning votes with the electorate on certain topics.

Badenoch appears to me to just want to sit on the fence, not committing to anything and referencing the past. She then interviews and we get to weird personal topics like her faith being questioned by a criminal in Austria and so on......it's just bizarre.

They need a strong leader with a strong, definitive suite of policies that they stick to in order to play the long game until 2029. Then they have a chance.

[Zetec-S]

I don't think so, but I think we might be coming to the end of the de factor 2 party system in this country, whether a single party can build win enough seats to form a majority or whether we'll see more coalitions remains to be seen.

The next election will be fascinating. Corbyn could well take enough votes from Labour to relegate them into 2nd/3rd, but I don't see him getting more than a handful of nobody MP's. And by then he'll be in his 80's, so probably 1 more term left in him, then the whole project will collapse without him as a figurehead.

Reform won't get enough MP's to form any sort of majority... 48% of the population voted remain so are they going to suddenly forgive Farage and vote Reform? And does anyone believe dear Nige wants the job? He's made a career out of being a st stirrer without having any responsibility.

Labour will take a pounding at the next election, and it won't be the Tory's who benefit (that much), but I don't think it's the end of them.

[alangla]

The Tories were in a similar (if not worse) mess after Blair’s 1997 win. No-one remembers much of the Hague/Howard/IDS leadership. 13 years later they were back in government.

This time round things are, I’d argue, a bit different with Starmer’s party not receiving the same adulation that Blair’s did, plus, one could argue, Reform are more significant now than the Lib Dems were then, though the Lib Dems had more electoral success to point to.

Overall, I suspect it’s not the end of the Tories though I doubt Badenoch will be PM and they probably won’t win the 2029 (or whenever) general election.

[Yertis]

They were in a pretty weak position in the mid-70's before M. Thatcher and Keith Joseph whipped them back into shape. They'd gone too far left, and become distanced from their traditional supporters by trying to appease the unions. During her time as education minister Thatcher, as well as snatching milk, closed over a thousand grammar schools, which had also pissed off a lot of trad Tories. Their membership was at an historic low. But they got back in the saddle and I hope with the right people they can do it again. But I've yet to see any evidence of fire in their bellies. Alex Berghart performs much better than Badenoch in PMQs, certainly seems a impassioned enough. But he's just one guy.

[paulrockliffe]

biggbn said:

I do sometimes wonder if the fact that the parties, through natural wastage, are becoming more full of younger members that the historical and cultural significance of their party is becoming lost? The same goes for MPs, a backbencher is no longer considered worthy of respect by their peers or the public and such a position seems always to be viewed as a steeping stone to join the others at the trough...

The issue for the Conservatives is primarily that Cameron stuffed the party's candidate short-lists with natural Lib Dems, but the worst kind of Lib Dem, the ones that weren't happy to sit in opposition pretending they had good ideas. That's the reason why the Party is both incapable of doing the things it promises to do when it wants to win an election and obviously there's only so long you can do that before the disconnect has killed your voter-base.

Labour are doing the same, a majority of MPs keep a lid on it during the election and go along with Keir's clever ideas to get to the trough and now their Members are rightly saying this isn't what we are paying for and those MPs are rightly saying this isn't what we believe in.

Both Parties have a severe disconnect between what they say they want to do and what the public elect them to do and what they actually want to do, it's just not a viable approach in the medium term, we're probably past the point where most people are absolutely sick of it and what comes next can be laid almost entirely at the denial that exists across the Political and Media establishment.

[sugerbear]

Yertis said:

They were in a pretty weak position in the mid-70's before M. Thatcher and Keith Joseph whipped them back into shape. They'd gone too far left, and become distanced from their traditional supporters by trying to appease the unions. During her time as education minister Thatcher, as well as snatching milk, closed over a thousand grammar schools, which had also pissed off a lot of trad Tories. Their membership was at an historic low. But they got back in the saddle and I hope with the right people they can do it again. But I've yet to see any evidence of fire in their bellies. Alex Berghart performs much better than Badenoch in PMQs, certainly seems a impassioned enough. But he's just one guy.

and now they have gone too far right trying to win over the reform voters.

[greygoose]

biggbn said:

I do sometimes wonder if the fact that the parties, through natural wastage, are becoming more full of younger members that the historical and cultural significance of their party is becoming lost?

.

Isn’t it the opposite problem for the Tories, their membership is quite elderly and failing to attract younger members?

[fido]

The Tories might as well merge with the Lib Dems (and sort of did during the Coalition) if it weren't for the huge issue of Brexit. They are no longer a right-wing party. So the only real choice is between Labour and Reform.

[Tom8]

sugerbear said:

Yertis said:

They were in a pretty weak position in the mid-70's before M. Thatcher and Keith Joseph whipped them back into shape. They'd gone too far left, and become distanced from their traditional supporters by trying to appease the unions. During her time as education minister Thatcher, as well as snatching milk, closed over a thousand grammar schools, which had also pissed off a lot of trad Tories. Their membership was at an historic low. But they got back in the saddle and I hope with the right people they can do it again. But I've yet to see any evidence of fire in their bellies. Alex Berghart performs much better than Badenoch in PMQs, certainly seems a impassioned enough. But he's just one guy.

and now they have gone too far right trying to win over the reform voters.

not sure they are as no one really knows what they stand for now, right left or otherwise. They just seem to jump on a polar opposite of something in the news that day, probably clamouring for a headline of their own,

[paulrockliffe]

greygoose said:

Isn’t it the opposite problem for the Tories, their membership is quite elderly and failing to attract younger members?

It doesn't matter what the Membership is though. It matters who the voters are and it matters who is being put up as candidates. Cameron gutted the member's ability to influence candidate selection.

[Diderot]

They need to split - the one nation remains the Cons and the hard line Brexiteers go to Reform; it’s too broad a church. Then the centre ground needs to be reclaimed.