I do not know why I have only just noticed this. Nobody speaking officially on behalf of the Conservative Party ever, ever brings up that "Corbyn and the IRA" stuff. They just don't. Of course, the people to whom it matters are hardly swing voters, anyway. Or are they?
Until the Brexit Party decided to negate its own purpose by accepting Boris Johnson's Withdrawal Agreement and by standing down over half of its candidates, then the Conservatives had had every reason not to encourage the Outer Right to vote at all. The days when, on arriving at the polling station, they had been obliged to vote Conservative for the sheer want of anything else, had seemed to be over.
Until the Brexit Party decided to negate its own purpose by accepting Boris Johnson's Withdrawal Agreement and by standing down over half of its candidates, then the Conservatives had had every reason not to encourage the Outer Right to vote at all. The days when, on arriving at the polling station, they had been obliged to vote Conservative for the sheer want of anything else, had seemed to be over.
Those days are back now. Even if there is a Brexit Party candidate, then what is the point of that person, since people who want to vote for Johnson can and will simply vote for his party? But the pattern has been set. The Conservative Party is now out of the habit of mobilising the old troops as part of its core vote strategy. With other options to its right as an increasingly normal feature of British politics, it is no longer convinced that they necessarily are part of its core vote. That is a very major shift.
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