Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

I wonder whether Labour recognise a country with the lib dems as the main right wing opposition would be a brighter place.

Cornwall is one of those places where the existence of tories makes very little sense. Fingers crossed.

You just get ready for the Tory-Green coalition you and your kindred spirits are building. 

I'm all for the unlikely theoretical of the greens forming part of a coalition but... Tories?

[Jacob]

I'm all for the unlikely theoretical of the greens forming part of a coalition but... Tories?

For sure. The Tories give the Green the reigns on NIMBYism, and the Greens let the Tories do shitty things to poor people and money to oligarchs.

[Duque de Bragança]

I'm all for the unlikely theoretical of the greens forming part of a coalition but... Tories?

 
For sure. The Tories give the Green the reigns on NIMBYism, and the Greens let the Tories do shitty things to poor people and money to oligarchs.

 

[Valmy]

I wonder whether Labour recognise a country with the lib dems as the main right wing opposition would be a brighter place.

Cornwall is one of those places where the existence of tories makes very little sense. Fingers crossed.

You just get ready for the Tory-Green coalition you and your kindred spirits are building. 

I'm all for the unlikely theoretical of the greens forming part of a coalition but... Tories?

Greens have been happy to ally with the right in other European countries 

[crazy canuck]

I wonder whether Labour recognise a country with the lib dems as the main right wing opposition would be a brighter place.

Cornwall is one of those places where the existence of tories makes very little sense. Fingers crossed.

More likely if the Conservative party is destroyed then Labour will hold power until it becomes so long in the tooth that even the Lib-Dems could take them on.

[Sheilbh]

For sure. The Tories give the Green the reigns on NIMBYism, and the Greens let the Tories do shitty things to poor people and money to oligarchs.

The BBC had a story today about the East West Rail project. I wonder what the local candidates have to say about it:

Chris Carter-Chapman, from the Conservatives, said the route was in the "wrong place". He called for it to take a northern route via the new town of Northstowe instead.

Miranda Fyfe, from the Green Party, said she wanted EWR to be "stopped ASAP", adding: "I want to see public money put towards other solutions for travel between Bedford, St Neots, Cambourne and Cambridge."

Very much on brand Via John Burn-Murdoch:

More likely if the Conservative party is destroyed then Labour will hold power until it becomes so long in the tooth that even the Lib-Dems could take them on.

It is weird that every local activist in the Tories and Labour hate the Lib Dems locally. They are famous as the most ruthless, underhand, dishonest lot in local campaigning. And yet nationally their brand is very much this


Practically there'd be a replacement for the Tories which may well be the Lib Dems. I don't think that opens up sunlit uplands of centre-left utopia because I think parties are more shaped by the voters they win and try to attract than vice-versa. Or an alternative would emerge.

If the Tories are absolutely wiped out - I'd be willing to double on my suggestion so far that if Britain ever re-joins the EU it will do so from the right

[garbon]

That labour candidate who bet against himself. Oh my.

[Josquius]

I'm all for the unlikely theoretical of the greens forming part of a coalition but... Tories?

For sure. The Tories give the Green the reigns on NIMBYism, and the Greens let the Tories do shitty things to poor people and money to oligarchs.

Definitely possible on a local council level.
More than possible even. This has almost certainly happened.
But on a national level president farage is more likely. The greens know where much of their support is coming from and they saw what happened with the lib dems.

That said a showdown between the nimby hobbit wing and the actual green wing would be nice.

[Sheilbh]

That labour candidate who bet against himself. Oh my.

I'm fairly sympathetic to him.

Edit: And good statement from him:

Kevin Craig for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
@KevinCraigUK
Throughout my life I have enjoyed the odd bet for fun whether on politics or horses.

A few weeks ago when I thought I would never win this seat I put a bet on the Tories to win here with the intention of giving any winnings to local charities.

While I did not place this bet with any prior knowledge of the outcome, this was a huge mistake, for which I apologise unreservedly.

I have so much respect for how Keir Starmer has changed the Labour Party and I have been fighting so hard to win this seat and change the country alongside him.

However, it is right that the party upholds the highest standards for its Parliamentary candidates - just as the public expects the highest standards from any party hoping to serve in government.

I deeply regret what I have done and will take the consequences of this stupid error of judgement on the chin.

I am deeply sorry to the many dedicated and loyal local Labour Party volunteers who have been supporting my campaign.

I will comply fully with the investigation.

That said a showdown between the nimby hobbit wing and the actual green wing would be nice.

Well the Greens contain multitudes.

A significant part of Green support now is in rural Tory seats - like the Lib Dems pre-coalition they're winning in progressive cities from the left and well-off rural areas from the right. Possibly not sustainable.

I'd add there was also Brighton where they run the council and it has not gone well. Very factional, lots of fights between the "mangos" and "watermelons". Basically Greens who behave like Lib Dems in local government and Greens who are basically hard left.

[crazy canuck]

Practically there'd be a replacement for the Tories which may well be the Lib Dems. I don't think that opens up sunlit uplands of centre-left utopia because I think parties are more shaped by the voters they win and try to attract than vice-versa. Or an alternative would emerge.

Yep, a good example of that is what happened to the BC Liberal party.  It was an actual Liberal party until the right wing voters flocked to it when the BC Social Credit party collapsed.  And from that day forward it ceased to be a Liberal party.

[Jacob]

But on the flipside of that, while it's true that the BC Liberals were no longer a Liberal party, at the same time the BC Conservative party (which looks like it's capturing most of the same voters) is going to be different and have different policies than the BC Liberal successors (BCUP). So while the voters may mostly be the same, the policies and practical outcomes will still differ.

[/end BC politics highjack]

In UK, if we posit a Tory collapse leading to a replacement - even if the successor party captures most of the same body of voters, I expect it'll still vary depending on where they come from. I expect that the Lib-Dem's capturing enough of former Tory constituencies to become viable as one of the two main parties is still going to end up in a different place than the Reform party doing the same (and which will probably take the shape of a Reform merger into the Tories, rather than rising as a third party to become a second party).

[Josquius]

I have no doubt that long term the lib dems as the second party would shift rightwards.
However

1: this won't happen over night. There'll be many years of productivity with the main opposition being fairly centrist with little in the way of right wing disaster capitalism.
2: the tories took many years to reach their current extremes. You'd essentially be resetting the clock by starting again from the centre.

Also, there's that most important of policies that is fundamental to the future of the UK -voting reform. A lib dems temporarily (?) in ascendance are in the majority likely to keep their support for this.

[crazy canuck]

/begin BC highjack/

Jacob, not necessarily the BC Conservatives are starting to attract more moderate MLA's who are jumping ship from B.C. United (for other readers the old B.C. Liberal party).

If that continues it could be the same group again with yet another name.

/End BC highjack

[Barrister]

I have no doubt that long term the lib dems as the second party would shift rightwards.
However

1: this won't happen over night. There'll be many years of productivity with the main opposition being fairly centrist with little in the way of right wing disaster capitalism.
2: the tories took many years to reach their current extremes. You'd essentially be resetting the clock by starting again from the centre.

Also, there's that most important of policies that is fundamental to the future of the UK -voting reform. A lib dems temporarily (?) in ascendance are in the majority likely to keep their support for this.

The voters are who the voters are.  They aren't about to change.

Political parties however can change very quickly - and often do.

If we hypothesize a total Tory collapse and the Lib Dems taking over as the main opposition - one of two things happen.  Either the Lib Dems pivot and start sounding very much like tories, or else the Lib boost is short-lived and the Tories (or maybe Reform) come to replace them.


Because one Canadian politics hijack wasn't enough... we saw this in Canada in 2011.  The Liberal vote collapsed, falling to third party status.  While the winners were the Conservatives, the official opposition was now the left-wing NDP.

The NDP did try to pivot somewhat towards the centre (even electing a more centrist leader in Tom Mulcair) the party itself was never very comfortable going centrist and wound up staying on the right.  As a result in 2015 the Liberals rebounded and won government.

[Sheilbh]

In UK, if we posit a Tory collapse leading to a replacement - even if the successor party captures most of the same body of voters, I expect it'll still vary depending on where they come from. I expect that the Lib-Dem's capturing enough of former Tory constituencies to become viable as one of the two main parties is still going to end up in a different place than the Reform party doing the same (and which will probably take the shape of a Reform merger into the Tories, rather than rising as a third party to become a second party).

Yeah, I agree it would be different. But I think that's because it would depend on which constituencies that new party was winning or trying to win. It would be structured by the electoral coalition it was aiming to win. And to an extent this has been the Tories problem since 2019.

The British experience of parties getting replaced is Labour and the Liberals. Labour won many seats that had once been liberal but had a fundamentally different class basis, organisational structure and because of that there were parts of the country and types of voters that were always Liberal but didn't go to Labour. In turn that shaped the Labour party and the remnant Liberals. I think a post-Tory (which I still don't think will happen) Lib Dem party of the right would be Southern, stock-broker belt, competitive in London with professionals. Basically the Tory party pre-Brexit (and, perhaps impishly, I might suggest that could be the easiest way for a re-join party if that's a priority for you ).

FWIW I think there's almost zero chance of a Reform merger while the Ukraine war is on - and already signs in the polls that Reform have plateaued and may be falling given Farage's stance on Ukraine. And more generally Farage has a low ceiling. The more people see him, the more they dislike him.

1: this won't happen over night. There'll be many years of productivity with the main opposition being fairly centrist with little in the way of right wing disaster capitalism.
2: the tories took many years to reach their current extremes. You'd essentially be resetting the clock by starting again from the centre.

I don't really get how we can say the Tories have been taken to the extremes. They've been criminally incompetent. But their record is the highest levels of net (legal) migration in history, the highest tax take since the war, gay marriage, fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe, strong support for Ukraine, tougher net zero targets than the EU. This is not the Republican story.

I think this is why the whole "they weren't right-wing enough"/"they abandoned the centre" stuff misses the point - they were just really, really shit. They were flattered because the main opposition decided to elect a leader who wanted to leave NATO and attended a Black September memorial service.

It's also why I think people are underestimating the impact of having a government that is just basically competent.