Yep. Giving him that extra layer of legitimacy by having him sitting in Parliament (even if he'll do **** all actual work, just riding the gravy train like he did in Brussels for years) is scary. Gives him even more of a platform.
I said before that Reform is nothing more than a vehicle for Farage’s political ambitions, but it could be worse than you think. The Tories are going to lose, Sunak will be off to California, and the Tory party is going to tear itself to pieces trying to figure out what it really wants to be. Ordinarily I wouldn’t lose much sleep over that, but if Farage somehow manages to win the Clacton seat there is a real danger that he defects to the Tories and makes a play for the leadership. Farage winning that seat is not a far-fetched crackpot theory either, that seat has previously been won by Douglas Carswell for UKIP. As gratifying as it might be to watch the Conservatives drop to less than 100 seats, and smile smugly as the party tears itself to pieces afterwards… the irony is that I actually want a strong and principled Conservative party in opposition. It’s a disservice to everyone when the opposition has no real power to hold the government to account. But the prospect of having that man sat behind a despatch box in the House is one I don’t even want to think about.
The other worry is that the Tories lurch even further to the right in an attempt to compete with Reform. Either way, I think we can agree that Reform are pushing the Overton window further to the right and that's grim stuff.
That strategy has worked spectacularly well for the thus far. Also it's weird seeing half a conversation. I can probably guess who the [to me] muted side of it is. Which leads me to - 'No-one listens to us any more' bleat the tories 'not one engages in debate'... That's because you've spent the last 14 years spouting demonstrable and verifiable bollocks. No one will listen or engage because you've demonstrated that you are not worth listening to or engaging with. You are just spouters of irritating noise.
My local reform “candidate” just got outed as a former BNP member. Looks like the best and brightest, scraped from the bottom of the barrel to fill the all those voting slips for Reform.
The Lib Dems are the party most likely to keep the Tory out here so, I will be voting with the recommendation, although my decision was already made before I looked at that site. This site is useful https://stopthetories.vote/
This should cheer you up then - the other side of the family is from the Island, so the eldest has kept the flame burning with a commitment to Duolingo. Separately amusing was the fact that the missus couldn't spell her own village name but I could (mainly because I practised it a lot in order to get one of the locals to go on a date with me. Obviously that didn't work but it did leave me with a useful skill. And a missus).
re-did the survey using the "full" options; and got this: Interesting that its evolved from a 3-way split for Green, Lib Dem and Labour to a much more nuanced look. Made me realise that some policy areas i understand more than others!
I chose the person whose address is in the same general area as me, via postal vote. Their party happen to be 1 out of 2 that lines up with result of my policy survey, which looks extremely similar to the above post.
Will be voting tactically using online guidance. That candidate came to my house the other week and I was interested to talk to him. We could be in for an unheard change of colour in a True Blue Blue Rinse town!
Same, most polls where i am still show its one of the few areas that the Tories might hold, so any vote that isnt for Labour, is just another vote for the Tories
Same here too. The Labour candidate is within 2 points of a the Tory, in a seat that's been blue sicne it's inception, as well as blue for over a century in it's previous boundaries. 2 points here is 1500 people, dare I dream?
This was the most likely possibility in my list of options, however; https://www.getvoting.org/constituency/E14001579 https://stopthetories.vote/parl/west-worcestershire Between the 2 resources which appear on this thread no main party is bothering with targeting our constituency and it's a crap shoot
For the lulz I went back and answered all areas... Yeah, still no surprise, and I'm still not gonna vote for any of them My Labour MP seems to have an outright allergic reaction to the Welsh language or further transfer of power to the Senedd. However… when the patient is bleeding to death, the best course of action is to stop the bleeding before you try and fix their broken arm. The Tories need to go; I’ll worry about Welsh politics in the next round of Senedd elections.