It's a remarkably persistent idea that loads of remaining Tories are just waiting to make the switch, but it's just not true. Just 1 in 8 still loyal Tories have an outright positive view of the Lib Dems or would consider voting for them. They're ideologically miles away from the Lib Dems.

While this is true, Reform’s core electorate are ppl who don’t understand local govt and readily believed a lot of guff about how councils were wasting their money & may not take kindly to Reform led councils hiking their council tax (the one loc gov thing they do notice).

I think a real problem is that a lot of people in the media and politics live in places where the care crisis means their council is slower and more constrained than it would be if the UK still had the same age profile as 2010, but not somewhere where local elections are literally meaningless.

It’s happened again

A party which isn't even interested in talking about the most important public service to voters is not a party serious about returning to government.

Maybe they all just believe in austerity now

Maybe they all just believe in austerity now

Hard agree - there are very vivid examples of why the disappearance of a functioning centre right option in a system which props up the two largest parties every single day, when the news reports on the Trump administration.

"If something's not working..." my SKETCH of the unassailably, frankly unreasonably confident Kemi Badenoch.

“If I was to hand you a list of centre-right parties that have beaten the radical right at their own game, I’d hand you a blank sheet of paper.” Terrific piece, this

I just have no idea who the Tories think the audience is for full bore authoritarianism plus austerity. Very few who want the former want the latter.

I think it shows just how powerful the government of the day’s ability to agenda-set really is. “How do we win” is the government’s only real vision, and as a result British politics is uniquely obsessed with the next election too.

Terrific weekend essay by @henrymance.bsky.social

Barely a fortnight has passed since Kemi Badenoch’s reflexive and incredibly OTT hostility to the government’s proposals for digital ID.

Quite. I expect headlines like this will be on every LD leaflet in S England seats - how can the Tories not realise that mass deportation is not a popular policy, even with migration sceptics?

It's a strategy that amounts to: > Ignoring or even tarnishing strengths > Constantly bringing up major weak spots, while repeating the failings that made them weak spots > Missing open goals > Paying no attention to voters you should be targetting

One of the party's key strengths among their voters, as well as others, are defence and foreign policy. How regularly is Ukraine cropping up in Conservative messaging? Rarely. Who do they hang round with internationally? US politicians that are hated by most Tory voters.

E.g., environment is one of their relative successes in govt, a potential wedge against Reform, a key issue for what should be key targets (younger professionals), and an issue on which their loyal voters are basically 'I quite like trees'. So obvs the party goes 'screw nature, screw renewables'.

It is genuinely amazing the extent to which the Conservatives' current strategies are basically the complete opposite of what they should be doing.

Immigration is the major issue on which the public least trust the Conservatives, with it the only issue on which they have a clearly negative net trust rating among 2024 Conservative voters. I'm sure that they'll be won round by more undeliverable policies and targets.

NEW: The BBC has apologised for airing a false claim about Tony Blair's son's company being awarded a government contract to produce the new digital ID scheme

The complaint that polling is a misleading distraction is not a new one - here from “The British General Election of 1959” is the Daily Express dismissing its own poll - “The British public is sick and tired of polls.”

To be honest the more accurate line would have been “the path to number ten involves Farage consuming the corpse of the Conservative party” but i felt that might put FT readers off their breakfast

Utterly despicable.

A few weeks back, I wrote a post on why Greater Manchester is the fastest growing part of England. Today, I’ve followed this up by creating a Northern productivity leaderboard and then looking at the second fastest: Cumbria. futurenorth.substack.com/p/is-cumbria... 🧵 1/6

I would add one thing: we are bombarded with two claims: 1) the UK can leave the ECHR without lowering human rights protection and 2) the ECHR significantly limits what the government can do and hence the UK has to leave it. These cannot both be true. /1

Support for staying in the ECHR has been rising (probably a Farage effect of solidifying the majority who oppose him, maybe Trump osmosis effect). Media and political opinion on the right believes there is a strong public desire to quit. Badenoch has now committed the Conservatives to quitting.

@robfordmancs.bsky.social in fine Goth mode this morning

In her lunch with the FT the OnlyFans CEO says her company pays more tax than the entire British fishing industry. Quite a stat.

There are lots of reasons not to leave ECHR. But apart from anything else, it just doesn't solve the problem the Tories/Reform think it does. E.g. the Supreme Court judgment re Rwanda being unsafe explicitly said it was not based on ECHR.

Just had time to properly read this brilliant piece by @benansell.bsky.social. It left me even more convinced than I already was that what he calls Labour's (and indeed the Conservative's) "prole-whisperers" are horribly mistaken if they genuinely think chasing after Reform voters is the way to go.

I'm so pleased to see our new article out in Perspectives on Politics. Since I moved to Australia, I've heard many people say "you'll never publish in a top US journal with Australia as your only case" (and they weren't wrong to think that). But yesterday, we did. Thread by Josh about it below:

Possibly the most hilarious combination of confidence and ignorance on Ireland since Alan Partridge opined on Bloody Sunday

Imagine being the leader of the party which delivered Brexit going into a filmed interview with a Northern Ireland journalist at a time when your competence is being questioned, and not thinking to check how Northern Ireland voted in the EU referendum beforehand.

Stark charts this. And yet there are still people at the heart of this government trying to 'stick to the strategy'. (I mean, among other things "what strategy?"

As Labour conference wraps up, I've done a piece for the Swingometer looking at their record in the polls so far. Visual summary below... swingometer.substack.com/p/labour-how...

Run up to Conservative conference off to a great start for the party' beleaguered leader.

Keir Starmer performance tracker: Is the PM making progress towards his key policies? news.sky.com/story/keir-s...

A changing electoral landscape is putting us in uncharted territory ✍️ @robfordmancs.bsky.social

'Many seats may turn on whether progressive fear of Farage outweighs disappointment with Starmer' A predictably great @robfordmancs.bsky.social piece for us on the emerging political landscape and what it means in our electoral system: chaos

Living. Working. Paying taxes. Contributing. This is a desperately poor editorial.

I liked Jane's tweet so much I turned it into a chart - the bump for the new Reform voters and the Conservatives is crucial to Labour, the Conservatives and Reform.

Yeah - a depressing truth about this parliament is that the 2024 Labour intake is really strong - it just coincides with a deeply vapid moment in our politics, including from Labour's own leadership.

An important new paper from my talented, but BlueSky-less PHD Jose Lopes www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Separately, what are we doing here? Migrants already can't claim benefits before they get permanent residency, surely we remember this? Migrants already pay NI contributions, again, extremely obvious. So what actually is the notional policy change? Just the volunteering bit?

In addition, I think also: politics is about argument! When I say 'the free movement of services, goods, capital and people is good for growth', I am not saying it because it is popular, but because it is true. It is in fact racist to say that mixed-race people should be deported!

Seeing him and the conference finally rise to this is quite something. You can see the surge of confidence in the speech as he realises, hey basic antiracist rhetoric is popular and I believe it too! Glad the message has sunk in.

Can't disagree with Gavin Barwell. It's high time the right in this country cleaned house. They won't though, because this is what the right have become. The likes of Barwell are very much a minority.

📣 Catch up on our event at Labour Party Conference 📣 Watch back @anandmenon.bsky.social and @emilythornberry.bsky.social's fierce and frank discussion on: 🌹 Her career in politics 🌍 The role of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee 1️⃣ Labour's first year in office And more! youtu.be/kkBTohVMzeY?...