Similarly to what happened with UKIP, the Tories will just take Reforms policies, bring in new further-right leadership and support will come back.
Especially after Labour (who just got elected on a fairly bland centrist manifesto) won’t manage to magically fix things in 2-3 years. Conservative media will blame Labour for all the issues (even though most are the fault of the Tories) and Conservative voters will rally around the banner of “Labour out!”.
Or Reform just eats the Tories, which seems a but less likely to me, but either way the split won’t last.
But one of the main reasons that the conservatives are so unpopular is because they’ve been chasing the right and leaving the centralist politics basically defended, which is why Labour wandered over there, and they have clearly done well out of that.
They have done well but they only won because Reform stole votes from the Tories, and because of the voting system, those votes go in the bin. Labour barely got a third of the national vote.
Similarly to what happened with UKIP, the Tories will just take Reforms policies, bring in new further-right leadership and support will come back.
Especially after Labour (who just got elected on a fairly bland centrist manifesto) won’t manage to magically fix things in 2-3 years. Conservative media will blame Labour for all the issues (even though most are the fault of the Tories) and Conservative voters will rally around the banner of “Labour out!”.
Or Reform just eats the Tories, which seems a but less likely to me, but either way the split won’t last.
I think that’s right. Tories will move further to the right on immigration and force Labour to move with them. Populism isn’t going anywhere.
But one of the main reasons that the conservatives are so unpopular is because they’ve been chasing the right and leaving the centralist politics basically defended, which is why Labour wandered over there, and they have clearly done well out of that.
They have done well but they only won because Reform stole votes from the Tories, and because of the voting system, those votes go in the bin. Labour barely got a third of the national vote.
That’s my point really. Labour’s biggest risk is that the Tories become moderately reasonable again. Then they’d actually have to step up.
Yes. Thinking that reform will always be there is extremely naive, reform can disappear just as quickly as UKIP did after Brexit.
UKIP disappeared because they were a single issue party.
while also dragging labour further right on immigration and culture wars.