Execrable stuff from Richard Tice as to why Reform UK will not be contesting the Kingswood by-election, as if that would save the cost of it by causing it be cancelled. Last time, under its previous trading name, that limited company raked in seven million pounds before it um-ed and ah-ed its way out of contesting the seats of the people who have taken the country down the pan ever since. Fight every seat? On present form, it will not even fight one seat. And then where will the money go? Where did it go after 2019?
Tice did not leave the Conservative Party until his appointment as a director of that company on 8th May 2019. Until then, he remained a donor to it and a contributor to ConservativeHome. One would hardly be either as a disgruntled former member of the Conservative Party, much less as a member of what was even nominally a rival party.
But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.
To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
As you said on Guido it's a grift.
ReplyDeleteAn almost admirably successful one.
DeleteIt doesn’t make it a “grift”-influencing one of the major parties is all anyone outside them can hope for since, as Peter Hitchens spent years explaining, under FPTP no party other than the Big Two incumbents stands a chance of a majority (unless and until one of them collapses). Farage has been very successful at making it work-his UKIP charge forced the Conservative Party into pledging an in-out referendum that won them the 2015 election and then ultimately delivered a vote to Leave. His Brexit Party were then instrumental in converting the Conservatives into a party campaigning on a platform to “Get Brexit Done.”
ReplyDeleteBut Peter Hitchens is ultimately right-these parties can only achieve a limited amount until one of the Big Two collapses and creates a gap in the market.
In 2010, the Tories hadn’t won an election since 1997 and wouldn’t have survived another defeat (hence Hitchens then campaigned for their defeat and replacement by a proper rightwing formation that would do popular things in crime, immigration, tax, education, the EU, net zero and political correctness) while Labour hasn’t won an election since 2005 and is in a similar predicament.
It's a grift.
Delete