Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are facing their worst ever result at the general election and could be left with just 130 seats, according to Professor Sir John Curtice.

The country’s top polling guru warned of the bleak situation faced by the Tories as they head into winter with the news dominated by infighting over the prime minister’s Rwanda deportation plan.

  • Navarian@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    130 is more than they deserve.

    Hopefully they decide to support PR voting off the back of this, I’m not ‘too’ hopeful though, would be quite unlike them to do something that actually benefits the electorate.

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukOP
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      7 months ago

      It’s interesting. It has to be on or before 28th January 2025. Common thinking is that the Tories will wait as long as possible to grab what they can for themselves and their mates, while spoiling things for Labour but the polls keep getting worse and I do wonder if Sunak might threaten to call one early if there’s a whiff of him being replaced - the Tory headbangers might just call his bluff.

  • BurningRiver@beehaw.org
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    7 months ago

    So I’m a yank and might need help understanding this. Through Thatcher all the way through Brexit, this Rwanda deportation deal is the driving nail that makes everyone understand that the Tories are a bunch of cunts?

    I’m trying to figure out how to get my country to understand that our conservatives are a bunch of nation wrecking cunts as well, so any guidance would be appreciated.

    • FarceOfWill@infosec.pub
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      7 months ago

      No that deal is helping them. It was having parties while no one was allowed to meet in COVID. Giving away money to mates for PPE that didn’t work. Truss having 30 days in power and making the economy even worse. Massive inflation.

      • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukM
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        7 months ago

        I think of it like trying to squash a mattress with lots of small objects. The more objects that you put on, the more areas that are squashed, but there are still parts that haven’t been compressed yet.

        Similar thing with the politics, people don’t change allegiances until it’s a bombshell they care about.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 months ago

    the election isn’t going to be like the polling suggests; it’ll be a lot closer.

    and regardless, it’s just going to be the red tories replacing the blue tories so will anything really change? and i say this as a trans person.

    • frazorth@feddit.uk
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      7 months ago

      and i say this as a trans person.

      I’m not sure what this adds to your comment.

      I completely disagree that it’ll be “red Tories”, his voting record is nothing like the “softer Tories”. It just won’t be as left as some people want.

      All this doom and gloom about Starmer also plays right into the Tory smear playbook. If they can get everyone to talk about it then it doesn’t matter how true or false it is. People who would have voted are now feeling “what’s the point” and the Tories can win through disaffection.

      Yeah it could be better with a different Labour leader, but fucking hell, it’ll be a hell of a lot better than the past decade of rotating Tory failures we’ve had as PM.

      Don’t use headlines as basis for your opinion, use his voting record to show what he really believes.

      https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25353/keir_starmer/holborn_and_st_pancras/votes

      He has voted against restricting legal aid

      He has voted against tuition fees.

      He has voted against reducing welfare benefits

      He has voted for increasing disability payments

      That’s not Tory.

      • 15liam20@feddit.uk
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        7 months ago

        That’s right. I was someone who fell into the “they’re red tories” trap during the Blair years. We were spoilt and didn’t know how good we had it.

        • buzziebee@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Yeah “They are all the same” clearly wasn’t true then, let’s not fall for it again. It’s too damaging to the country.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          7 months ago

          Blair was New Labour, which I suppose you could call them, Tories Lite, but that’s kind of unnuanced.

          Regardless, “New Labour” essentially doesn’t exist anymore.

          • frazorth@feddit.uk
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            7 months ago

            Not “unnuanced”, completely unjustified.

            Even New Labour has absolutely no relationship to the Tories, spending on services went up, standards of living went up, child poverty went down, the economy grew, everyone was better off.

            The only down point for the UK was during the global recession caused by the Americans, but that can’t be blamed on Labour.

            Then the Tories came back, cut everything, reduced taxes, and it all went to shit.

            • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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              7 months ago

              The problem with that comparison is that the Tories have been shifting more and more right for a decade now.

              New Labour was supposed to combat Tory classic, not this new branch of wingnuts. You know the Tories of the '90s they did at least recognize that welfare was something they had to spend money on.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        7 months ago

        Don’t use headlines as basis for your opinion, use his voting record to show what he really believes.

        It’s always a bad idea to let one party form your opinion of the opposing party.

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
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    7 months ago

    However anyone feels about their performance they can’t simply do a better job between now and the election. The signs are there for everyone to see that it’s simply time to let someone else have a go.

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukOP
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      7 months ago

      They probably feel that, at a minimum they could spend the time ripping off as much as they can and laying traps for Labour to stumble into to give them a better chance of getting back in at the following election.

      • Jaysyn@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        Yep. The GOP did the same thing & it seems to be working for them because people have the political attention spans of fruit flies.

      • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukM
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        7 months ago

        That’s giving labour too much credit: To stumble into a trap, you have to actually come off the fence some time.

    • apis@beehaw.org
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      7 months ago

      Of course, but there’s a whole lot of destruction they wish to wreak before relinquishing power to make it all the harder for Labour to reverse the damage. They definitely don’t want Labour to be able to get beyond reversing damage & onto instituting good things!

      Meantime, they retain opportunities to carry on grifting until the next election.

      Incompetence & bad ideas are one thing (governance is genuinely hard & complex after all), but they’re not even operating in semi-reasonable faith.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    7 months ago

    It’s so easy to be a political pundit right now, anyone can do it.

    The Tories are going to lose the next election says top political commentator, a.k.a. bloke from down the pub.

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The key thing to realise is this doesnt count the hundreds of seats the Tories will get for simply donning a red tie while keeping the same exact policies and mindset we’ve had for the last decade.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      7 months ago

      You mean switching sides? I don’t think anyone will trust them enough to vote them in if they do that

      • gmtom@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        No I mean that the current labour party shares the vast majority of their policies with the Tories, so are effectively the same party.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          7 months ago

          How can you say they share the same policies when they obviously don’t?

          Immigration for one an area in which the Tories are normally strong but Labour are absolutely beating them over their head and telling them to just start processing the applications instead of messing around with this pointless deportation deal. So labour would process the applications. That’s a massive difference right there.

  • HowManyNimons@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The “shy Tories” may yet hold the balance of power. Most of those "don’t know"s and even a few professed Labour voters may well stow their votes with the Conservatives when it’s only them and God in the voting booth. They just don’t want to admit it to a human poll taker.

    Edit: added end quote.

    • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      My fear. Polls are kinda meaningless nowadays.

      I just fail to understand what sort of person views the last 14 years as anything but a series of disasters?!

      • HowManyNimons@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        We’ve gotten very bad at voting. It’s not just the British, if that’s any comfort. It isn’t any comfort.

        • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Sometimes I wonder if voting should be mandatory, like in Australia… but forcing everyone to vote doesn’t at all solve the problem of how so much of our news media is going out of their way to mislead and manipulate the voting public. Might even make things worse.

          I keep seeing people whingeing about Starmer, saying they’ll never vote for him, then you get several comments down the chain and they let slip that they don’t actually bother to vote anyway. Madness.

          • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukM
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            7 months ago

            Not to mention that despite mandatory voting, Australia has managed to have Scotty From Marketing, then the next election a party who’s entire policy could be summed up with “at least we’re not the last guy”

            • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Exactly, the reason for my concern over mandatory voting. Also it has ‘tory’ in the word and who knows, it might Derren Brown some people into voting for them!

              • Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk
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                7 months ago

                I didn’t used to vote when I was in my 20’s. At the time I didn’t listen to the news or watch TV. I didn’t vote because I had no idea who to vote for. Totally disconnected. It seemed a bit wrong to vote on something I know little about so I would choose not to.

                If voting was mandatory it wouldn’t have changed my lack of interest or knowledge.

                Thankfully I’m more engaged these days but I think there’s a lot of people out there who aren’t.