I have a dream… and that dream is: zero seats
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The plan immediately meets stiff opposition from the Biden Administration.
How could anyone do any worse? And Starmer says hold my beer.
The video maker – Neema Parvini (Academic Agent) was on GB News a few months ago with Rees Mogg, and he cheekily mention zero seats there 😄. Fair play to Mogg for actually hosting him to be honest.
AA has also recently blasted Reform from the right for being spineless and kowtowing to the left.
In 1993 in Canada we reduced a Conservative governing majority to two seats. Zero seats is certainly possible if enough conservative people realize the full betrayal happening and have a realistic alternative.
I’d say the 1993 destruction of the Conservative Party of that era was necessary and Canada followed a somewhat better course until we inexplicably elected the second Trudeau. No step forward is permanent, alas, and the battle against the left never ends or is ever complete.
Most people in the United Kingdom are still fairly prosperous – as I go out canvassing (which I have done for many years) I am struck by how most (most – not all, but most) people have a reasonable standard of living – certainly better off than I am.
This is a good thing, and I am happy for them – but there is no Divine Right for a nation to be prosperous. A few years of “Progressive” government and mass poverty is the new reality, grinding poverty.
“But Britain is already broken, the people are horribly poor…”
The people who made the film have no real idea what a broken nation really looks like, or what grinding poverty is.
But given a few years of a Labour government and they will find out.
And I type the above as someone who denounced the present government for “lockdown”, the wild government spending, and many other things.
The first people to be hit will be property owners – the concessions made on the new renters “no no-fault evictions” Bill will be withdrawn by the next Labour government and there will be no way to remove tenants, it will be like the medieval Spanish law (copied in Latin American nations that had been part of the Spanish Empire) that made the development of modern farming, and a modern economy generally, very difficult indeed.
I would advise people who rent out property to see that property now – for whatever you can get. The next Labour government will make private renting a mug’s game. But what starts with landlords will not end with them – eventually everyone will be hit, especially people who are already poor (who will get a lot poorer).
And censorship (yes there already is censorship – but it will get vastly worse) will mean that getting the left out of office will be incredibly difficult.
It may be the end of “This island story” as Churchill put it.
We had a bit of this wipeout in my state of Minnesota in our last state election.
The Democrats won the Trifecta – the governorship, the House, and the Senate. They won every institution needed for passing bills.
This means that the Dem wishlist became reality. Everything they could imagine as a state law or program, they could pass.
And they did. The past three months of the legislative session have been cartoonish.
It’s going to take us decades – decades that only start once we win back our own Trifecta, which is a pipe dream here – to undo some of the damage.
Be careful what you wish for. You could teach those damned Tories a great lesson, at the cost of your society’s health for decades.
Don’t be a never-Trumper.
Rishi is shit, Labour is double plus triple shit.
Paul Marks (et al.), I hear you and agree that Labour will probably be worse than the wet Tories have been. The problem, as I see it, is that we have a choice of full-spectrum managed decline under the Tories or more-of-the-same, full-spectrum managed decline, albeit at a faster rate under Labour.
The choice is between the devil and the deep blue sea.
That we need new parties is, at this point, a given. Zero-seating the Tories (or giving it a good go) is, I think, the best way to start that process.
“…and the battle against the left never ends or is ever complete.”
I often wonder why that is. How many times do their ideas have to be shown to be unworkable before the useful idiots start to think, hey I’m starting to think that maybe these ideas are unworkable? Why do people who are living in a prosperous free market economy keep thinking, hey let’s give socialism one more try, I know it has always been a disaster in the past but this time I think it could work.
That misses the point. Rishi isn’t the problem, he is a symptom of the problem that allowed the wokefication of everything & did nothing… zero… about repealing all the enabling acts that now prevent a notional ‘conservative’ government from enacting conservative policies. That problem is the Parliamentary Conservative Party, not the leader, as Truss discovered when she dared to even slightly rock the boat. The majority of MPs voted Remain whilst a majority of their conservative voters voted Leave. The same people are still in Parliament.
Yes, Labour will be worse, but we are where we are after 14 years of governments dominated by the CONSERVATIVE PARTY. The party must & will burn to ash.
@Stonyground
Because most people are generally kind (and often the poorest are the kindest) and think that a little more intervention by the State will make things fairer. Socialists exploit this predisposition.
Looking after one’s property and money for the sake of one’s children is regarded as less worthy (unfair) behaviour. Socialists exploit this predisposition.
But under Socialism at some point the argument for ‘fairness’ becomes interventionism, becomes driven by envy, becomes spiteful, and society drifts into disrepair.
But unfortunately most people do not link the lessons learned to their natural dispositions. And so the cycle restarts.
If one could draw a Laffer curve for governments, no government: people get killed bandits, 100% government: people get killed in gulags, I would say we are well past the optimum. Everything the government does now just makes things worse. We should just send the buggers home and roll with the status quo for a while, see how that works.
The left are good at narratives, propaganda and appealing to emotions through persuasion techniques. The majority of people do not think about politics rationally and have a pretty tenuous grasp of history at best. The left are also brilliant at organisation and subtly taking over institutions that allow them to further influence elite and public opinion. They also tend to be very good at patronage, which also helps with occupying institutions of influence.
As for zero seats, I have to admit that in my weaker moments I am wavering due to fears about Labour as well as frustrations that Reform look hopeless. But as I’ve expressed on the thread about national service, it really does look like Sunak is deliberately trying to lose, so they may get zero seats by design. I always thought the Tory campaigns in 1997 and 2001 were bad but this really is the pits.
The film shows, for example, film of Margaret Thatcher as someone who supposedly destroyed Britain – supposedly Britain is “over” because of people such as Margaret Thatcher.
As for “how could anyone be worse than us?” – very easily, as the makers of the film will soon see.
As I have already stated, the Bills that Mr Sunak put before Parliament, Bills I agree he should not have put before Parliament – such as the smoking Bill and the renters Bill, will not be abandoned by the Labour Party – on the contrary they will all be made worse, much worse. Starting with the Bill to prevent property owners from reclaiming their property from renters.
Well that’s one interpretation I suppose, but I see it has showing a declining progression *from* Thatcher.
That is your first mistake 🙂 You assume that many in the left want workable ideas. That is not true, they want power. And some those want power to only negate your individuality and to control you.
You never saw The Guardian , The Independent , The BBC etc etc posting photos of drowned Cubans trying escaping from the Communist Regime. You never saw in BBC a photo of drowning Cuban children in decades of Cuban refugees history, but you did see of a Syrian children refugee after only a couple years.
Communist Cuba never worked and they don’t care.
“at some point …‘fairness’ becomes interventionism, becomes driven by envy, becomes spiteful, and society drifts into disrepair”
I would say we’re well past that point already.
Perry de Havilland (Wiltshire)
The party must & will burn to ash.
And what happens next, after the cataclysmic labour government?
@Kevin Jaeger
What do you mean by saying sadly, and defeatistly (is that a word?), “alas, and the battle against the left never ends or is ever complete”.
Of course it’s not. That’s the point. The fight against evil never ends.
We are judged by the determination of our fight, not by whether we win or lose a particular war or battle.
If we didn’t have this endless fight, what he hell else would we do with our free time?
The impending disaster as Labour dials all the Tory idiocy up to 11 is what will hopefully create the political space for an actual small-c conservative party, likely some messy mishmash of nationalists, classical liberals & old-school pre-woke former tribal labour supporters.
The not-very-ideological “tribal voters” (which face it is a large chunk of Labour & Tory voters) will only be up for grabs when it become impossible to pretend the old tribes still exist. Most Tory tribal voters have got the message, and some Labour ones as well. The next few years will convince what remains.
It will be a ruinous, horrible intermediate period (in the Egyptian sense of the term) & many with assets will move elsewhere until it becomes clear how things will shake out in the medium to long term.
@Perry de Havilland (Wiltshire)
create the political space for an actual small-c conservative party, likely some messy mishmash of nationalists, classical liberals & old-school pre-woke former tribal labour supporters.
I hope you are right, but you are far more optimistic than I am. It is a rare thing for to nations to turn back to freedom. It is hard to root out existing entitlements and government programs that people depend on. I remember Harry Browne’s famous promise “Would you give up your favorite government program if it meant you’d never pay taxes again?” It fell on deaf ears.
I think the best you can hope for in democracy is to hold back the barbarians a bit longer, until some radical thing much akin to a revolution takes place. For sure history says that society gets better over time, I think largely due to advancing technology, but government always gets bigger, and always gets worse. Until such times as they send the king to the chopping block. And even then your chances of things getting better are less than one in three.
But do I have a better plan? Not really. Not one that doesn’t involve getting a new passport. That might be worth considering. And at the very least you get the schadenfreude of seeing the party you trusted getting their just deserts.
I think you overestimate my level of optimism. The remark I made that you quoted is the only way I can see a worthwhile opposition arising, so that’s what I think is needed. Am I sure that’s going to work? No, not at all sure, I can see things going many ways, some of them bad, and a few very very bad. But I cannot see a quick-and-easy way to fix the structural/institutional/cultural fix we are in without the Tories (who I think take 51% of the blame) burning to ash first.
The worst outcome for the medium to long term in the impending election would be an absolute Labour majority plus the Tories NOT burning to ash.
Reform?
Maybe.
I am inclined to agree.
Pessimistic take: if the Tories implode, they won’t be resurrected. But, Labour’s opponent will be a newly formed Sharia ‘Party’. (or lack thereof). Both will wreck the economy. They will only disagree on which forms of social expression to ban.
The Conservative message boils down to this:
‘You have no choice but to let us hold office as the Left destroy your future, since Labour will be worse.’