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I agree, they’re in a mire. The membership (and the fumbled leadership contest) has tied them into fighting Reform for a share of votes that will never win them power, and that’s even if they could succeed on that front, which they can’t because Reform will always outflank them on the right for the moron vote. Meanwhile the voters they lost to the LibDems and Labour, who would have been much more easy for them to win back, will continue to be appalled by the Tories and lose the habit of voting for them. Eventually they’ll be joined by those who stayed home at the last election when they see that the Tories have no intention of taking things seriously and winning them back.
The result, if they can be nimble enough, will be the LibDems hoovering up the disaffected centre-right and threatening the Tories’ position as the second biggest party.
rodan-
I agree, they’re in a mire. The membership (and the fumbled leadership contest) has tied them into fighting Reform for a share of votes that will never win them power, and that’s even if they could succeed on that front, which they can’t because Reform will always outflank them on the right for the moron vote. Meanwhile the voters they lost to the LibDems and Labour, who would have been much more easy for them to win back, will continue to be appalled by the Tories and lose the habit of voting for them. Eventually they’ll be joined by those who stayed home at the last election when they see that the Tories have no intention of taking things seriously and winning them back.
The result, if they can be nimble enough, will be the LibDems hoovering up the disaffected centre-right and threatening the Tories’ position as the second biggest party.
100% agree. The only thing I think that might be interesting here is the Greens and the formerly Tory NIMBY vote - if the Greens continue their policy of NO NO NO NO to all development then that might become the (somewhat surprising) home of a lot of formerly Tory voters in the Shires who don't want new housing, new infrastructure, new factories and facilities near their village thank you very much.
Dammit
It’s where the membership is, and Jenrick is like Vance- his position and political philosophy are whatever gets him closer to power. It’s possible he has no true politics of his own- merely that which is expedient.
Then you have the Very Online Right who think that immigrants and immigration is the number one issue, and if we could only throw out everyone who sounds funny the economy would be fixed.
Finally you have the actual party, and admittedly some of them are nutters, but I suspect a fair few of them realise that the membership and the VOR are so far to the right of where the public is that to pander to them means irrelevance- but, they can’t change the membership so they’re stuck with whoever said membership will elect.
Whilst I’m sure they will be back as a political force it’s hard to see how they accomplish the required pivot. Clone a million Andrew Tates maybe and put one in every school in England as a PE and Social Philosophy teacher maybe easier.