Friday 14 June 2024

Polling latest points to disaster for the Tories

Considering David Cameron called the EU referendum to kill off the UKIP threat, it now seems like the Tory party is facing the chop. Some wild polling figures are coming out, with the Tories well into wipeout territory. I’m not sure they’re all reliable, but if I take Redfield & Wilton and YouGov as reputable pollsters, they both have surveys putting the Tory party on a staggering 18%!  This is well beyond awful for a party that garnered over 44% in 2019. The last four years under Johnson/Truss/Sunak have been nothing short of fatal. For my entire life until 2016, the Conservatives were always a serious party, pragmatic and cautious with the public finances. It is now obvious that Brexit has turned it into a reckless, profligate gang of weird ideologues.

There are three weeks to go until 4 July and who knows what might happen. As things look at the moment, given the hapless campaign the Tories are running, it's quite possible things could get even worse for Sunak.

Here are the YouGov figures:

Reform is leading the Tories.  A party that comprises Nigel Farage and not much else is polling ahead of Britain's oldest political party and self-styled 'natural party of government.' It's a measure of both how low they have been brought and how nutty 19% of the electorate is. If Brexit has broken the Tories (and it has) how would making the man who more than any other is responsible for it, prime minister? Apparently, a fifth of the population think it's fine. Amazing.

Redfield and Wilton found the same result for the Tories with Reform one point behind, so it wasn't a one-off:

If you bung these numbers into Electoral Calculus, you can get a prediction of the number of seats such a result would give. The Tories would end up on 5 July with just 61 seats and in third place behind the Liberal Democrats for the first time ever. It would be seismic:

It may not happen, and probably won't happen but the very act we're talking about is incredible. 

The FT has a great article about the last 14 years with this quote from former Home Secretary Amber Rudd:

“It was a period of two halves. From 2010-16 there was a purpose to the government and it was well controlled. Then it all fell apart. Brexit was the trigger. After 2016 all the stable elements of good government fell apart.”

Ain't that true?

The Conservatives have achieved what I would have thought impossible. They have raised taxes to record levels while slashing public services to the bone - and beyond.  Nothing works any more, local authorities are going bankrupt and the Tory's solution is to offer, wait for it ……more tax cuts.

Roads are covered in potholes, you can't see a doctor in under a month at best, NHS waiting lists are at a record high, seeing a policeman or even a police car nowadays is a rarity and the criminal justice system is broken. Britain is falling apart and all Sunak can do is offer to make things worse.

Labour is right to focus on growth it’s the only solution, but even they aren’t being serious by rejecting any idea of joining the SM or the CU. The LibDems, Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP are all proposing to rejoin the EU in some form or another. It's surely no coincidence that the LibDems are starting to look like the opposition.

The next parliament will probably be the most pro-EU assembly since Tony Blair in 1997. I really cannot see Starmer's position lasting very long. It is an affront to democracy.

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