Unlike the Greens, and unlike left-wingers who had been expelled from the Labour Party, the Reform Party, never mind any of the rest of those, got nowhere at the local elections. Neither Boris Johnson nor Liz Truss will address this month's National Conservative jamboree. Nor will, say, Priti Patel. And nor will anyone from any of those factions.
Instead, the five keynote speakers will include two members of Rishi Sunak's Cabinet, including the one with responsibility for the area of most apparent concern to National Conservatives. National anything has to mean different things in different nations. In Britain, it means this. After all, in the places that matter to the participants, the electoral threat is from the Liberal Democrats. On last night's results, one of the Cabinet speakers would lose his own seat to the Lib Dems.
Everyone is catching up. I predicted both hung Parliaments this century, and I predicted another one on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister. 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 I say again that on the day that 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.
You've always said there was no permanent electoral bloc to the right of wherever the Tory frontbench happened to be.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, I have.
DeleteJacob Rees-Mogg will address the National Conservatism conference alongside some of the leading figures from the Right on both sides of the Atlantic.
ReplyDeleteAnd nobody will listen to a word of it.
DeleteNo idea what faction you’re referring to but the National Conservatism conference will feature a large number of speakers from the ERG/Tory Right from Jacob Rees-Mogg to Suella Braverman and Danny Kruger.
ReplyDeleteThe list of rightwing commentators from both sides of the Atlantic is equally impressive from Douglas Murray, Toby Young, Melanie Phillips, Sherelle Jacobs, Tim Stanley, Theodore Dalrymple, Ed West, and Matthew Goodwin. Rod Dreher, editor of The American Conservative too.
And of course the best of anti-woke academia from Professor Frank Furedi and Professor Nigel Biggar to David Starkey and Professor Gwythian Prins.
You’d plainly never heard of this movement till this week and still don’t understand it now.
Rod has never been the Editor of The American Conservative, and he no longer even writes for it.
DeleteNot sure what "faction" you're referring to but there'll be many speakers from the ERG/Tory Right from Jacob Rees-Mogg and Danny Kruger to Suella Braverman. It's also an all-star line-up of rightwing commentators-from Douglas Murray and Toby Young to Matthew Goodwin, Ed West, Melanie Phillips, Tim Stanley and Rod Dreher, Editor of The American Conservative.
ReplyDeleteThe anti-woke of academia are also out in force from Professor Nigel Biggar and Frank Furedi to David Starkey, Gwythian Prins and Niall Ferguson.
I am a fairly well-informed man, and I have honestly never heard of one of those people.
DeleteThis conference, if it can be so described, is going to give a standing ovation to the Cabinet Minister with responsibility for immigration, and another to a man who has been in the Cabinet almost continuously since 2010. It's a joke.
If, (as indicated by our previous discussion) you consider the notion once expressed by Margaret Hodge that British citizens should get first priority for Britain's public housing as radical and dangerous, then I'd suggest you're of too sensitive a disposition to attend or watch.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there's some 'safe spaces' on-site for other such sensitive souls.
Michael Gove. Let's just put it like that. Michael Gove. That is who you are going to be cheering to the rafters. Him, and the current Home Secretary.
DeleteWhat do you think is going to come of this event? In practical terms, what? But of course that is not the point of it. It is a nice day out.
To be fair, come to think of it, this government has done some nationally conservative things. It took us out of the European Union, ended free movement of people, and introduced the toughest “stop the boats” legislation in Europe and it’s about to launch a bonfire of hundreds of EU laws. It of course also blocked Scotland’s preposterous gender self-ID law and the PM is the only party leader to state unequivocally that women can’t have penises.
ReplyDeleteThat’s not nearly enough but it’s certainly a start.
Speaking as someone whose faction has been permanently exiled from the official Opposition into the political wilderness and who still drones on about “Corbyn” (as if he mattered any more). I wouldn’t use the word “desperate” if I were you…
ReplyDeleteThe conference is seeding ideas for the future and is increasingly the sounding board for future policies as is very clear from the respect shown to it by those at the highest levels of the Conservative Party and Republican Party.
Utterly deluded. In Britain, at least, you are talking only to yourselves. There is now no UKIP elected representative at an level, and Reform failed to secure the election of any of around 400 candidates this week. You have no constituency, no base, no voters. Corbyn, on the other hand, will certainly be reelected. I would say that Farage had never got into the Commons once, in seven attempts, but he is another notable absentee from this bunfight.
DeleteAs it is, you are planning to hang on every word of the man who has been the de facto Leader of Blairism at least since the fall of David Cameron, and who has no interest in anything that you might have to say to him, not least, although not only, because his priority is saving his own seat from the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems.
As for Braverman, if you meant a word of what you were saying, then you would jeer her off the stage. Instead, though, you are going to give her a standing ovation merely because she had been kind enough to turn up. Pitiful.
Labour is only doing ok in the polls because the Far Left has been banished to the outer darkness and is not even mentioned in polite company by the official Opposition. Nobody sane cares a jot about Jeremy Corbyn, a politically homeless soon to be ex MP. Who is deluded here?
ReplyDeleteThe Tory Right has many MPs but the Corbynite Left is soon to be down to nil. Nobody likes you.
You need to pay more attention to Dan Hodges and Tom Harris, who know, and they are right, that there will be at least 20 and possibly 30 "Corbynites" inside the Parliamentary Labour Party next time, never mind who else is going to be in that hung Parliament. For a start, there is simply no doubt at all that Corbyn himself will take 20,000 votes and be the First Past the Post.
DeleteWho are these right-wing Tory MPs? Once a while, one of them is kicked out, but that seems to be to give the impression that there really are any. They are certainly not doing anything. All of 22 voted against the Windsor Framework, plus Andrew Bridgen. That is your absolute maximum, but any real core is half even that size. Watch how many of those were removed from the party between now and the General Election.
Utterly deluded?ou’re clearly referring to yourself. Corbyn who? The Opposition has gleefully driven your faction into the outer darkness and that’s the only reason they’re now doing ok in the polls. Nobody but you talks about J Corbyn any more-he’s politically homeless and soon to be an ex MP. The Opposition defines itself against people like you, you’re toxic. We, meanwhile, have plenty of very rightwing MPs in Parliament and indeed the Brexit bonfire and the “Stop the Boats” policy is entirely for us.
ReplyDeleteDeluded? Please don’t make me laugh.
There is no Brexit bonfire, at least in your terms, and no one is stopping the boats, as your own media complain bitterly every day. At this comical affair, you are going to whoop and holler your adoration of the woman who is not stopping the boats. The whole thing is hilarious.
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