bickster

Broadly agree but would also add that as well as the polls, the Tories spent weeks telling everyone that Labour were going to win

It was the beating heart of the city centre. A heart that had been arrested 20 times and was clinging on for dear life

No, not really. This is pretty much how he planned it, he was even prepared to let RN win if he had to, put them in power to absolutely feck it up. It’s all about him getting re-elected in 2027, this was always about showing the country that as much as they didn’t like him and his party, the other options were worse. He absolutely knew when he called the election that his party weren't going to win outright.

No, asylum seekers are those coming here to flee persecution in their own country. Their skill base is irrelevant. People coming here with skills we need, apply in advance and are legal migrants.

Eh? The process needs massively speeding up not down. The Tories slowed processing down and look what a mess that created.

You appear to be confusing legal migration and asylum seekers. The Tories like you to do that. What skills people have is irrelevant to a claim of asylum.

Rwanda actually increased that cost because decisions weren’t being made, the backlog increased and so did the housing and other costs

Tell me how the Tory Party survives, not just you think they will, what will be their strategy, how will they achieve survival, which sectors of society will they appeal to and how do they turn those sectors of society into supporting them whilst remaining true to their faux ideology?

This isn’t backed up by the polling. The reform vote is not comprised of 100% former Tory voters. Some of those Reform voters are former Labour voters. A good percentage of the Reform voters hate the Tory Party with a passion and will never vote for them. Some of those Reform voters are hardline UKIP/Brexit/Reform voters and have voted for them for years whenever they could. Also, if you use the (extremely simple and flawed) method of adding the Reform and Tory votes together in a seat to say if it wasn’t for Reform the Tories would have won these seats… the Tories would still have lost… and heavily if the Tories move towards Reform they firstly will not garner all the Reform votes and as everything has an equal and opposite reaction, they will lose more one nation type voters (most likely to LibDems) The very real issue the Tories face is how to get votes from both ends of the spectrum and as they’ve spent the last 14 years in govt and pushing peoples opinions further rightward with their quite frankly racist immigration messaging, they've polarised opinion. If they move towards the right (which they will in my opinion) they lose more One Nation types, if they move in the opposite direction, they push the other side towards Reform. I also won’t bore you with the age demographics again but that will also play a part. But just solely on policy I don’t see how they broaden their appeal, they are stuck in a quandary entirely of their own making.

I'm on the fence too tbh, I just thought it was an interesting prospective from someone who is living the experience and just amazing timing that we had that conversation last night and today it’s a topic of conversation for exactly the same reasons as she outlined last night.

No one wants what the country voted for ten times in a row? Eh?

Amazing timing, not for any other reason than I was out with a very old friend last night who currently lives in Croatia. They have ID Cards. If you are in Croatia for longer than 3 months and don't have a job or the means to support yourself… out you go and it’s all enforced via the ID Cards (you know that rule that we never enforced when we were in the EU but could have done so). This was actually a topic of conversation last night, she was always against ID cards when she lived here but having seen how much easier it is to tackle illegal immigration with them since living there, she’s all for them now. (And she's not some RW loon)

Amusement. And yes those tweets are still up

There’s no point trying to be honest. Because if you can’t see that comparing us to Russia, China and N Korea because the Tory Party was rejected by the electorate in a democratic election then there’s no point. There’s nothing I can say that will convince you because it’s just so obviously wrong.

It absolutely is. Without any shred of doubt

Plenty of nights in theatres in my life, I even used to run Theatres at the Fringe In Edinburgh for a few summers A genuinely good play is a joy to watch. Musical Theatre are the piles on the ring piece of theatrical entertainment.

You couldn’t pay me to go to one

Musical Theatre is the enemy of the people

I think there was some truth in that, it no longer is. Thatcher's children are now reaching retirement age and those age groups even as they've got older have never really significantly shifted to voting Tory. There’s a number of reasons for that including socio-economic ones but there’s also the fact they grew up hating Tories

A dictatorship you vote for? At no point have I said I want Labour in power for ever, in fact there are plenty of posts where I've said the opposite. There are other parties as pointed out above Comparing Labour being in power for a long period of time with a democratic mandate to Russia, China, N Korea is just silly and the kind of bollocks you read in some of the more reactionary right wing papers

1. Even if you count all the seats where Reform allowed in Labour over the Tories because you add the Tory and Reform vote yardda yadda. Labour would still have won 2. The LibDems lost more votes through tactical voting than Labour gained in the opposite direction 3. I've been talking about the Tory demographic timebomb for ages, it's real, once the numbers have been crunched I reckon the crossover point is now around or over 70 years old. We are now dealing with pensioners that were kids under Thatcher, they've never voted Tory in big numbers. The Tory Party is dying and it cannot survive. Please make the next leader a complete nutter to speed the inevitable process up 4. The rise in the Green vote is hilarious tbh, an alliance of disaffected Tory NIMBYs and Corbynista cranks. 2 of the 3 gains were Tory seats and the other in Bristol was as much down to boundary changes in the Greens favour as it was Debonnaire's horrendous personanality

Co-operation with French and other European governments. Something the Tories refused to do because, you know, Europe. There wasn’t a small boat issue before we left the EU, the small boat issue is entirely of the Tories making with their refusal to co-operate with European agencies because… well there was no practical reason just optics with their base (which is now much smaller)