I have voted for the Conservative Party in every election since 1979 bar one (I voted Brexit Party in the final Euro elections). However, I have told anyone who asks that I will be voting Reform in the next general election.
This often provokes a response along the lines of: “Reform cannot win, all that does is let Labour in.”
To which my reply is: “Yes, I know. But you clearly misunderstand my motives. If Reform wins a few seats, that’s great. But getting some Reform MPs in Westminster in the next general election is not why I am voting for them, that would just be the cherry on top. I am voting Reform because I don’t just want the ‘Conservatives’ to lose, I want them to be utterly destroyed. I want the ‘Conservatives’ as currently understood to be completely discredited, to collapse, to end. And the beauty of it is, Reform can do that to the Tories without winning a single seat themselves.”
As G.K. Chesterton aptly put it:
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.
For all her flaws, Liz Truss was the last chance to save the party, to actually nudge it in kinda sorta the right direction. But she was defenestrated with indecent haste, proving that whilst the Tories were once a ‘broad church’, that is no longer the case. The Blue Blairite Wets will tolerate no challenge to the orthodoxy, that of an ever deeper technocratic regulatory police state, albeit one in which the technocrats are self-referential buffoons, the regulations are self-defeating, and the police are partisan, cowardly and inept. For there to ever again be an actual small-c conservative party in the UK, the capital-C ‘Conservatives’ need to burn, only then is there any chance something better can arise from the ashes, a movement to correct those mistakes the Tories rejoiced in preserving.
A Tory voter declining to vote in the next general election sends a message: “I am disgusted.”
A Tory voter voting for Reform in the next general election sends a slightly different message: “I am disgusted and fuck you.”
The Conservative party are my enemies just as much as Labour are. I hate them and they hate me, why would I give them my vote? No doubt Labour would be worse but not that much worse seeing what the Conservatives have become. Voting Conservative to keep Labour out is a fool’s errand, just endorsing the status quo.
I get that it’s easy to criticise in hindsight, but it’d have been best if Truss had gone to the polls pretty much once she became PM. I suspect she’d have lost, but not in the way the Tories are likely to do now. The current shit show would be Starmer’s shit show (maybe along with the Lib Dems/SNP etc if he’d required a coalition), and we could have got on with rebuilding the right.
Contrary to my previous instincts, I suspect a new party is needed to replace or at least absorb what’s left of the Tory party, although it needs to be more than just Tories 2.0 while also avoiding being seen as an effectively single issue party like UKIP. I wish Reform had better leadership. What I see of Richard Tice even on friendly media (including Reform’s own twitter account!) isn’t flattering, and Reform’s 6th place performance in Rochdale was really bad and I don’t think it was simply due to intimidation or cheating by Galloway supporters (UKIP came 2nd there in 2015 and 60pc voted Leave in 2016 to compare).
Martin – the Reform Party Candidate in Rochdale was an ex Labour MP who had been chucked out sexual stuff, and who has a pro censorship record. It was a poor choice of candidate.
Kettering has a good Member of Parliament and it would be good for him to stay a Member of Parliament – so I will vote for him.
As for what would happen if the Conservative Party was destroyed – well I suspect that Mr Hunt and Mr Sunak would not be as upset as some might suppose. After all the members of the Conservative Party REJECTED both these men when they stood for the leadership – in two different leadership elections.
As with Mrs May, Mr Sunak and Mr Hunt were not chosen by the Members of the Conservative Party.
As for Prime Minister Truss – when the lady was forced to accept Mr Hunt as Chancellor her Premiership was over.
“And who forced Liz Truss to get rid of Kwasi Kwarteng and accept Mr Hunt as Chancellor?”
The same Credit Money controllers who would order about a Reform Party government.
Whilst this financial and monetary system continues – so will the power of those who control the flow of the Credit Money (how much there is – and who gets it). This is not “just” economic power – it is, inevitably, POLITICAL power.
The accursed Economist magazine says that anti international Corporate State Conservatives, which it calls “National Conservatives”, are O.K. with Big Government – this is an inversion of the truth as it is the Economist magazine itself that is pro Big Government as its support for ever higher taxes and ever more power for international totalitarian organisations such as the World Health Organisation shows.
The accursed Economist magazine also says that “National Conservatives” believe the economy and politics are controlled by “shadowy conspiracies”.
That is an odd way to describe the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, the other Central Banks (who create money from NOTHING and dish it out to their allies) and the vast Corporate organisations (the banks and Corporate entities such as BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard) who get the Credit Money – which they use to buy up real assets before the price goes up (Cantillon Effect – concentration of wealth in corrupt hands).
There is nothing “shadowy” about these people, and their agenda of world governance (controlling ordinary people in every aspect of our lives) is quite open – openly discussed, indeed boasted about, in conference after conference.
At this point, I just have to marvel at anyone who looks at the Conservative/Republican party and thinks that they’re anything different than their opponents. Objectively, performatively…? They are manifestly the same. You’ve been conned, and it is high time you acknowledged that fact.
Same process took place in both nations. Call it “oligarchy capture”: The people running both parties go to the same schools, the same social events, and are all on the same sheet of music, which is a funeral dirge for the rest of us, and a triumphal march for them, taking them onto those Elysian fields of the future where they don’t need the proles, and everything is being “managed” by them. ‘Cos, they just know better.
The future, unless you take it back from them, is not a boot stamping on a human face, forever: It is Greta Thunberg’s smirking face as she and her ilk reduce you to living in caves, in the name of a climate science they can’t even articulate or understand. It’s a religion, not science.
I don’t like pointing this out to all of you who read this, but you let this happen. You should have fought harder, done more to ensure that the insane did not get into office, instead of nodding along politely at their madness when they told you things like “There are way more than two genders, and men should be able to marry men…”
That’s how they got you: Incrementalism. They got you to believe one incredibly stupid thing, a tiny thing, and then you lost all ability to counter their fundamental irrationality because you’d already agreed to the utter balls-out insanity of the first wedge-issue proposition. News flash for you: Giving “equal rights” to women and all the rest? Those were stalking horses, meant to lull you into acquiescence with all the rest that they were planning on shoving down your throat. It was a con from the beginning: Get the mark to say “Yes” to something, and then once you’ve got that through, everything else comes easier. You fell into this through a surfeit of “being nice”, and you’re not getting out of it without being an asshole. You’ve been conned.
And, do note: I’m not saying that “equal rights” are wrong, or bad in any way. What I’m saying is that they used that as an intellectual pry-bar to get the rest of their agenda in. You originally thought “Oh, them n******s/b*****s need to know their place…”, rightfully got argued out of it, and then ceased all critical thought on the next proposition they delivered, and on and on and on until we have drag queen story hours in preschools while demanding priests and other religious figures be “kept away from the kiddies”.
The fundamental problem of our age is that the “leadership elite” is both incompetent and unworthy, in all our nations. Become ungovernable, and refuse to cooperate with them. Cease taking their natterings as being at all meaningful, and begin taking back your personal space, along with that of the rest of us sane people. You see someone being jailed for free speech? Do something, don’t just stand there and nod along, saying “What a pity…” You need to put these assholes in their place, wherever you find them, until every embryo Karen and her full-fledged adult form Greta Thunberg-wrangler is silenced and rendered irrelevant.
I ask you… Where do these jackass types that stand there and watch a high-school dropout autistic teenager pronounce on the climate without a scrap of authority in actual climate science come from? And, why do you listen to them? How do they get paid? Because you don’t resist the indoctrination, that’s why. If the newspaper/propaganda outlets don’t get bought, if the ads on television don’t get watched, then what? Where’s the money come from for all of this? OUT OF YOUR DAMN POCKETS, that’s where. And, how does that happen? Because you let it.
You’ve got rather more power than you realize. Use it. Don’t participate in your own destruction.
He’d also been pro-Remain when a Labour MP. Given that Galloway has always been anti-EU and supported the Brexit Party (what Reform were called then) in 2019 precisely because of that, it does make me wonder what Reform were smoking when choosing Danczuk. Add along the sexual stuff…it wasn’t like this was just a few unsavoury facebook posts from 15 years they may have missed…..
I can understand a new party wanting to attract defectors and expelled members from other parties. The experience and publicity may be valuable. However, this has to be balanced against not looking like a dumping ground.
Agreed, ‘rights’ have been an effective trojan horse, at least since certain important people started claiming they were universal and self-evident. It’s very easy for radicals to adopt such language for their pet cause and frame it that that they are the heirs to a long struggle for freedom, and that critics are monsters for denying someone or something’s ‘rights’ and on the ‘wrong side of history’.
Martin – yes the choice of Mr Danczuk was bizarre. But then Reform has still, as far as I know, not yet denounced the Covid “vaccines” either.
Kirk.
Certainly the future will not be what BlackRock and co want – indeed they have managed to alienate BOTH sides.
Real socialists would gladly cut the throats of these Corporate technocrats – and, after the disgusting way they have behaved (pushing such things as ESG and DEI – and they are still doing it, they have just changed the names, not the totalitarian agenda), the right have no reason to protect them. Why risk your life to protect people such as Bill Gates – people who despise us.
As society comes apart the ultra rich technocrats will find that even their money does not protect them.
Vote Reform to punish the Conservatives and not reward Labour?
Works for me. I only hope it is, or becomes, enough to persuade the main parties to recognise *they* need to change, not us.
I have said it before, if not here then on other blogs, that if only three people in the country voted, the party getting two votes would claim that with 66% of the vote, they have a clear mandate to do whatever the hell they liked.
The other party would say that they lost by only one vote and demand a recount.
Neither party would get the message.
Paul:
I would love to know how the pressure was applied, and by whom, on Liz Truss to make Jeremy Hunt the Chancellor. It was the equivalent of a suicide note for her premiership. Did she not realise that?
I think she had lost the will to go on by then, but still, why Hunt of all people? That was really rubbing her nose in it. In her position, I would have called a general election rather than appoint that man as Chancellor.
As for Rishi Sunak, the least said the better. He was lumbered with Hunt too (I doubt he wanted him), and Hunt has now decided that Mrs Sunak’s non-dom status is to go. Time for the Sunaks to get those Green Cards ready for their Big Family Move in 2025. They are rich enough to say bye-bye to the mess that is Britain. Some of us have to stay here.
As a general strategy, voting Reform makes sense for true conservatives.
It seems to me, however, that, in the UK, it makes more sense to vote tactically: to vote only for conservative-Conservative candidates. That is because the candidates who get elected are going to choose the next Conservative leader.
— I might have said this before: it was the reaction against Trump in 2016 and later, that made me realize how important it is NOT to reflexively vote for the lesser (short-term) evil. American conservatives who did not vote for McCain and Romney might have done the right thing, in spite of the outcome of the Obama regime.
That party is a write-off & I could not care less who will preside over the ashes of it.
JohnK: I would love to know how the pressure was applied, and by whom …
That is the crucial question. Eventually some incoming Government, whether Reform or reformed Conservative, is going to have to tackle it (or face collapse and/or revolution). I suspect a first priority at that point will be to make it possible to sack or otherwise discipline senior civil servants, but without knowing how the manipulation happens it is hard to be sure.
As for leaving the country, the Sunaks might be able to float off to any transnational cosmopolitan enclave but they and their ilk have not really left anywhere for the rest of us to go even if we could afford it.
The thing that has really blackpilled me on the Conservatives is immigration. That Johnson, Truss and Sunak used Brexit to increase immigration and make the net migration under Blair, Brown, Cameron and May look restrained shows that that the faint fear I had back in 2016 that if implemented the Tories would utterly muck up Brexit has sadly been vindicated. Perhaps some Tufton Street think tanks on the ‘right’ and a few midwit ‘free market’ journalists like Kate Andrews in the Spectator advocated this immigration policy, but I don’t know any mass Tory voter support for this, especially not in the heavily working class areas the Tories managed to win in 2017/19.
I have thought this in the past but increasingly suspect the current Conservative Party is a containment machine that will frustrate any genuine British right emerging. On the continent I don’t see many ‘centre-right’ parties offering a genuine right rather than just woke and liberalism at slightly lower speeds than the left. The main exception is Fidesz in Hungary, but Orban is perhaps sui generis. I also don’t see a sui generis British equivalent of Donald Trump performing a hostile takeover of the Tories like the Donald has with the GOP. In France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Italy, the ‘centre-right’ are containment, while the supposed ‘far-right’ parties in each are the actual conservatives.
I should have added that by all accounts, European ‘reactionary’ parties like National Rally, Alternative for Germany, PVV, Brothers of Italy,etc., appear to be increasingly popular with young people in their respective countries. Whereas the semi-woke Tories are extremely unpopular with the young and increasingly rely on the retired vote. Makes me think that even out of self-interest alone, the British right needs a reboot.
Quite right. Voting for Reform despite zero chance of them getting elected in my constituency, but sometimes it’s just about doing the right thing for the right reasons.
“Tories delenda est”
Exactly correct. The Tories are not the solution, they are the problem.
My question is, when Labour wins in a landslide how bad do you expect their tenure to be?
Will there be anything left for your small-c conservative revival to save? Or will your new, authentic conservative party rise in a remnant nation that has been inundated with hostiles beyond any hope of recovery, and effectively no longer exists?
“I have voted for the Conservative Party in every election since 1979 bar one”
Who would admit to that?
Why has it taken you so long to see the light?
I expect Labour to:
1) Bring in votes for 16-year-olds, foreign residents, and (maybe) electoral reform,
2) Carry on with mass migration,
3) Expand the equalities legislation and weaponise it.
The result of all this will make it all but impossible for a new centre-right party to get elected (if one is even permitted to exist and not classified as a proscribed organization).
How this is resolved peacefully is beyond me.
Sadly it is the best Members of Parliament, the people who really do support national independence and individual liberty, who are likely to lose their seats – “Central Office” works to try and make sure that it is “liberals” (really anti liberals – the modern inversion of the word “liberal” which would have baffled Gladstone or John Bright, just as “One Nation” means anti nation – a Member of Parliament has to sign up to international governance to join the Orwellian named “One Nation Group”).
John K and Barbarus.
Yes the Civil Service is a bad idea – that is one thing I agree with Disraeli about, and the “independent authorities” are vastly worse than the Civil Service.
However, the real problem is Credit Money – the authorities, the Bank of England and the allied Credit Bubble banks, can create endless “money” from NOTHING and can (as Lee Anderson might put it) can “dish it out to their mates”.
There is no way that can “just” be economic power (the Cantillon Effect – concentration of wealth into institutionally corrupt hands) – it inevitably becomes POLITICAL power.
Whilst this monetary and financial system remains – democracy will be a bit of sham, as the people who create the money (from NOTHING) and dish it out, can do Prime Ministers who do not “go along with the narrative” what they did to Liz Truss.
Because it didn’t have to be this way. It was not preordained the party would end up where it has. But it did.
Yet another reason why the party needs to utterly burn. All that will be left is the vilest shits, meaning all but the most delusional Tory votes will not be able to sell the undead corpse as a ‘conservative’ party.
It probably won’t be peaceful.
Andy – the Republic of Ireland has a way of, hopefully, dealing with the problem of a political and economic elite totally out of tune with, indeed full of hatred for, ordinary people.
This way is referendums – such as referendums last Friday, rejecting by two thirds and three quarters, the elite plans to change the Irish Constitution to fit in with the international agenda of the Corporations and international governmental bodies.
In the United Kingdom we had a referendum to gain independence from the European Union – but, sadly, that meant that the domestic branch of the international elite just carried on the same “Progressive” policies. We shall have to see if the Irish people manage to defeat the elite – I do not know if they will or not.
“So what is the peaceful solution for the people of the United Kingdom?”
I do not know. There does not seem to be a way of countering the elite here. Certainly a Labour Government will not help.
I commend this post to the House!
Perry – perhaps it will not be resolved. Not peacefully and not violently either.
Yes, England has lasted more than a thousand years (indeed Bede’s history of the English proceeds the creation of the English state by centuries – the English people came first, the unified state of England happened later), but all things come to an end.
Still there may be a recovery – after financial and monetary collapse leading to economic collapse.
That will be a new situation – with vast amounts of human suffering, it is possible (possible) that the people will wake up at that point.
The election doesn’t have to be until December, and I can see no reason why rancid arsecrack shouldn’t wait until then.
A wildcard has been thrown in, the truly disgusting Galloway is now an MP and his “workers party of Britain” intends on standing in 300 seats (I don’t see why they can’t). But in a few months, Galloway (say what you want about him but he does have a nose for publicity) has the potential to cause a great deal of trouble for Sturmer (not a misspelling) largely by exposing the sheer cant and hypocrisy in a way that the controlled media might not be able to resist actually reporting.
“The next election will be about muslims” gorgeous George just said. It may well be!!
I expect labour to get a majority and to form what is euphemistically called a government, but it will be interesting what it’s list of blatant lies (aka “manifesto”) will have to include thanks to Saddam’s best mate.
To grossly misquote JFK, “If you make electing the reasonable man impossible you make electing the unreasonable man inevitable.” It wouldn’t surprise me if gorgeous George’s party picks up quite a few protest votes in a “pox on all their houses” sense.
@Roue le Jour
Indeed, and it will be interesting to see who he might get them from.
In fairness parliament and all parties are dire.
The problems are complex and many but a lack of constitutional constraint and accountability are the biggest. I’m glad we have the right of recall. That was a step forward.
Some people believe separation of powers would improve things or PR. Politicians act in their own self interest. That’s a weakness inherent with representative democracy. Having representatives will always end up the same way.
The only option is petition initiated referenda. If we had that, the climate change act could be struck down. The hra. The un conventions for refugees.
Not sure how we could get net immigration down to below 50ka year as this isn’t achieved by legislation.
The really strange thing is, you go out and talk to the people? The majority know things aren’t right, are on the wrong track, and agree that the people running things are utter dunces and twats. The people running things? Insist that they’re doing everything right, and that the people are the ones who’re wrong.
What we really need is a wholesale elimination of the people in power, replacing them with actual competent individuals who should, in theory, do a better job. Elimination, to my mind, does not include their personal deaths, but they do need to be removed from power and authority, based on their performance.
The critical failure of Western representational government is the manner in which we utterly failed to account for the development of the “professional” political class. Representational government does not work when it is not actually representational, but composed of the sort of self-interested ambitious twats we’re currently infested with. When the assholes vote for what’s good for Ms. Pelosi, rather than the people of her district? You’re seeing a failure of representation, right there.
On the face of things, we’ve failed at this. And, we’ve failed at it because of these professional grifters, who should never have been allowed into power over anything, even the county dog pound. The cruft needs to be cleaned out of government. How to do it, short of revolution? I can think of several options, but I fear the one they’re going to insist on, by clinging to power, will be bloody revolution.
If you liken our situation in government to that of elder care, we’re at about the point where we need to take the keys of governance away from Grampa, because if we don’t…? He’ll run his car off the road and kill someone. That’s exactly what our idjit class of politician is in the process of doing.
Mark – the election could be delayed to January 2025.
Kirk – the people do know that things are not right, so they are minded to “let the other lot have a go” – the trouble is that “the other lot” (the Labour Party) are even more Collectivist, they will “double down” on existing DEI and ESG style policies – far from offering more resistance to officials and “experts” their approach will be “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”
In short the United Kingdom is likely to be destroyed.
Still we will have the year of anniversaries in 2025 – 60 anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill, 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and (local one for me) the 800th anniversary of Kettering Parish Church.
Time to say goodbye.
In the United States there are examples of low tax States that did not have Covid lockdowns – such as South Dakota.
There is even Florida – a very large State (tens of millions of people) which is reasonably well governed (hence the hatred the Economist magazine has for Florida).
No such examples can be given in British political discourse – “show me what you mean – show me how you want to govern” is a request that can not be answered – there is nothing to show.
If that great Anglophile T.S. Eliot, was still about I would advise him to go back to Missouri (the “Show Me” State still has some good governance to show) – but, of course, to stay away from the big cities, such as St Louis, which have turned from the good places he knew, into Progressive Hell-Holes.
Stuart:
The solution seems obvious to me:
Make sure that Britain is no more attractive than France to immigrants.
I don’t see why people would risk a Channel crossing to go to a place where they are no better off.
““liberals” (really anti liberals – the modern inversion of the word “liberal” which would have baffled Gladstone or John Bright…”
– An aside. Amit Varma, the erudite writer of the old “India Uncut” blog, explored this some years ago; the word “liberal” sulking in a bar, bemoaning his massively changed and greatly reduced circumstances. The bartender consoles him with “It could be worse, and you’re not the only word this has happened to – think about poor “gay”!”
And the whole “vote for somebody other than the two main Parties” thang is very sadly familiar to Canadians. Our current “LIE-beral” prime minister (whose name I decline to speak, and you’ll notice I also didn’t capitalise his title or attach the “Right Honourable” tag to it) was manifestly unsuited to the job even before he was elected into it – and there’s some pretty rank speculation on the street concerning what (if any) job he’s suited to. The “other” party here, the “CON-servatives”, lumbered themselves with two utterly duff leaders in succession: the first an amiable do-nothing* who actually garnered more votes in his election than said prime minister did, just not the right ones; the second a nasty vest-pocket tyrant who, frankly, Canada is better-off without. I voted for both, under the rationale that the Con’s are the only Party that can rid us of the other guy; and if the Cons’ leaders had turned-out to be as bad as they (successively) looked, well hopefully it won’t take us more than one election to rid ourselves of them next time.
But there was a distraction in the wings here, both times; the People’s Party of Canada, led by a disgruntled ex-Con who said all the right things to those of us who longed for a serious reboot (emphasis on “BOOT”) to our federal government, and particularly its legions of self-serving bureaucrats who really run the country – the actual meaning of ‘fascist’ describes them to a tee. And loud and omnipresent were the calls from the Canadian Right to show our backbones, vote our conscience and make a statement by casting our vote for the P.P.C. despite there being no way they could win (or even place; in both of the last two elections they failed to elect a single member into Parliament**, not even their leader). To any of them who’d listen, I parroted that a vote for the PPC was a vote for the Liberals – and so it proved. So I am in principle, against diluting the vote – but here in Canada we at least have an actual alternative to the LIE-berals, and at the moment it’s looking pretty good for the CON’s next time around. We’ll see, I guess…
{* – the joke about Andrew Scheer was that he’s every mother’s vision of an ideal son-in-law, but not the one their daughter would pick – }
{** – “PARLIAMENT” – derived from two French words; “Parler” (to speak) and “Mentir” (to lie) – }
Ferox asks
There is nothing to save now. We need to move on from the “Conservative” belief that this country is basically in a sound condition, and we need to resist those who would destroy it, and to realise that everything we love has already been destroyed. Nothing, literally nothing, remains. Not freedom, not belief in freedom, not aspiration for freedom, not even the memory of freedom. Not only amongst the elites that rule us, but across the land the people have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the philosophy of wreckers and bandits, charlatans and predators, slavers and slaves.
First we must recognise this; only then can the task of rebuilding begin.