General British politics discussion thread

Hamas sympathizer slashing painting of Balfour.

With the recent debacle in the Commons being described by the Speaker as being his response to threats etc,MPs resigning out of fear, Jihadi George winning in Rochdale. It appears that politics in England is continuing to head in a very nasty direction.

I don't normally agree with that sort of thing, but all depictions of Bloody Balfour should be fúcked into a canal.

This type of vandalism sounds like an excuse rather than a reason. Probably a hotheaded student doing some grandstanding.

In truth, the BNP would probably be more his stomping ground. How he ever became prominent in the Tory Party is a bit of a mystery : he never seemed to fit in with the usual Eton toffs, as a gruff north of England working class far right type.

I was watching Sky News and had the segment with Lee and Beth

Wow that Lee Anderson is some nasty piece of work

At long last — a scintilla, a tiny shred, of good news for the Tory Party.

To be fair, not that many north of England Tories fit in to the Eton toff stereotype.

The Tories loved Lee Anderson because (while a local councillor) he defected from Labour to the Tories in 2018, and went on in 2019 to win for the Tories a seat that had been Labour-held more or less since the Norman conquest. Nobody cared at that point what his views were like.

His appointment as Deputy Chairman came in 2023, and in less dire circumstances it would have been considered an, um, surprising appointment. It was clear by then that he was being appointed not in spite of, but because of, his kneejerk right wing views. The party was in a dire place in the pools and had nothing to lose by trying surprising things. Like all the other surprising things they tried at the time and since, the appointment did nothing to solve their problem with voters.

I said above that his defection is good news for the Tory party. This is because anyone in the Tory party who actually cares about the Tory party — and there may still be a few — is fully aware that, after the next election and probably after the one after that, the Tory party's route back to power involves reestablishing itself as a credible party of the centre-right. That means a shift sharply to the left from where they currently are, and that means purging the party of the likes of Lee Anderson. But Anderson, at least, has purged himself.

Yes, they're responding to the appetites of the membership. Problem is, they need to have a far wider appeal than that if they want to win any elections. The membership thought Liz Truss would make a credible PM.

Maybe not after the next one, but after two or three or maybe even four lost elections, the penny will have to drop eventually

What happened?

Could it be about their biggest backer who is in the media for being an odious scumbag.

Yes. While the Tory party need to move back to the centre to have any chance of returning to power, they have purged the party of centrists — indeed, of pretty much anyone with a brain or a backbone — and the hard-right rump that remains will be very resistant to accepting this. So they'll start by doubling down on rightp-wing batshittery. But in the end the appetite for power will prevail, and coming up to the general election to be held in or about 2034 they will be trying to position themselves to attract the centrist vote.

The Liberal decline happened at a time of massive electoral change. The split between right and more right was never going to last as more and more became enfranchised.