Recent polls show Reform just a point or two behind the Conservatives, with one showing them 3% ahead. They are the clear winners of the election campaign if you believe the polls.
The polls show both Labour and Conservative weakening a little over the campaign, with Labour sometimes dipping below 40% and the Conservatives struggling around 20%. In 2017 in the election the Conservatives polled 42% and Labour 40%, a combined total of 82% with no majority of seats for either. Instead today their combined total is around 60% but Labour is forecast to have a huge majority of MP s. Why?
There is a frustration that the two parties are so alike. They both backed COVID lockdowns. They both backed printing large sums of money which proved inflationary. They both back OBR orthodoxy which makes a growth policy difficult. They have both presided over large increases in NHS waiting lists, Labour in Wales and Conservatives in England. They both backed the Windsor framework limiting the opportunities of Brexit. Neither proposed a good pruning of EU bureaucracy and regulations. Both allowed large scale migration.
Reform have tapped into these frustrations, but have not proposed answers that can right the wrongs. Their answer to the Bank of England disasters is to impose a ÂŁ35 bn tax like charge on commercial banks . Why donât they demand an end to the colossal Bank losses coming from needlessly selling long bonds at a loss? That would save a lot of money for tax cuts.
Their answer to the small boats is to turn them round or send them back. Border Force say that is impossible and refuse to do it. Lawyers are ready to show it is illegal.France refuses to let the people land.  Reform  want lower legal migration, but that is now at last government policy.They could identify the further categories they would ban or restrict.
Reform have taken up scrapping IR 35 and raising the VAT threshold for small business, ideas I spent the last Parliament promoting. I agree with those.
Reform want proportional representation. I disagree. Whilst our system can  mean the majority have to put up with a government that only got 43% of the vote the system has two big advantages over PR. We elect a named MP for a constituency which makes MPs much more attentive to local views and needs. A government has the votes to keep its promises so we can judge them at the next election. PR systems usually bring weak governments. The parties form a coalition by ditching the promises to voters that got them elected making accountability difficult or impossible. The result of the combined actions of Reform and the One Nation Conservative leadership if the polls are right will be to visit on us a Labour government that may have a lower vote share than Labour led by Jeremy Corbyn gained in 2017  but have a large majority of MPs giving it a lot of potential power if it can keep its party together.
June 30, 2024
Reform and the Conservatives are NOT âalikeâ. The reality is that Labour and the Conservatives are so alike they have to argue over the minutes of details of extremist woke policies like how many days before trans men will be allowed in womenâs toilets.
NetZero, Mass Migration, EU Alignment, high taxes, lockdowns, hate-speech, woke ideology, globalism, Ukraine and Middle Eastern never ending wars.
These major, radical, extremist globalist policies, are not wanted by British people and are the key policies of both Labour and the Conservatives. Both Labour and Conservative leadership teams have been brainwashed, corrupted and are controlled by the WEF.
Galloway got it right when he said Labour and the Conservatives are two cheeks of the same ****. I would argue they are same **** two months apart.
The observation he also made was that Reform and Voters have the same heart.
June 30, 2024
It’s not a phenomenon, it’s what happens when government continues to ignore the people.
Whether Reform has or has nor got the answers is irrelevant, they at least acknowledge the problems.
As for turning back the boat people, border force and the RNLI should be prosecuted for enabling the passage od boats.
Willpower is what’s needed and the liblabcon don’t have it.
Then we have Rayner saying she will prioritise social housing for immigrants at the expense I’d the taxpayer , what do you expect. It’s happening all over Europe. Watch the Frenxh election today.
June 30, 2024
Agreed Ian – Reform has risen in popularity by offering conservative policies whilst the Tories have moved towards the left. Sir John doesn’t comment that Reform is also campaigning for smaller government, fewer regulations, ditchig net-zero and there may be some small chaneg of NHS reform.
As for Sir John’s statement that PR brings weak governments – ideal. The weaker they are the less they can legislate and damage the UK. Government is best that governs least.
June 30, 2024
Two things that weak governments do agree on – more borrowing and more waste.
June 30, 2024
JR, Belgium turn around the boats stopping them from leaving! Why canât France? You fail to mention this, why?
Why has Sunak wasted ÂŁ500 million giving our taxes to France it has achieved nothing?
Tory party has consistently acted against its own manifestos and promises over 14 years. That is not an accident it is dishonest.
reply France could but only helps in some cases. I am not supporting the current impasse but explaining how Ministers who did want to stop the boats were unable to get the border forces to do so.
June 30, 2024
Reply: Sunak today claims Labour will give amnesty to illegal migrants! He gave amnesty to 68,000 last year, a record high! Why can Sunak not stop lying?
There is no difference between pro EU Tory or Labour. Their fix is in, lock step no divergence and not mention to spook public. The only difference is colour of rosette!
June 30, 2024
Stop blaming the French, when it’s our government that entices the immigrants with a life of milk and honey.
June 30, 2024
+1
June 30, 2024
Sunak says today we are better off than 2010! Tory party came to office ÂŁ800 billion debt, now ÂŁ3 trillion against the reason for electing them to balance structural deficit and pay downâŠ.debt! Promised again 2017,2019,2021 then abandoned! Immigration 4 million more against promises to cut. Does Sunak mean All immigrants are better off with free welfare, 4 star hotels, housing, education, health etc from the British taxpayer.
Read all the comment section in Guido after the TV clip. Better Sunak did not speak or at least tell the truth.
June 30, 2024
+1 Hope.
Reply to Reply!
âreply France could but only helps in some cases. I am not supporting the current impasse but explaining how Ministers who did want to stop the boats were unable to get the border forces to do so.â
This is interesting. We know the government doesnât control our borders but I would be very interested to know who is controlling Border Force, clearly not the government.
July 1, 2024
Reply to reply:
“Unable to get the Border Forces to do so” is not a valid reason to fail. The border force is a woke entity that should have no autonomous decision-making powers – it follows a governmental/ministerial lead.
It is also disingenuous in the article to claim that “lawyers are prepared to show that it is illegal” – there are lots of lefty lawyers around (Jolyon Maugham for example, who almost never wins a case). It doesn’t mean they’re right – and if they are right… THEN CHANGE THE LAW!!!!
What is the point of being in government if you don’t change the law as needed to support/drive your political objectives??? Leave the ECHR if necessary. Sunak clearly never intended to do that and that is why his party is (deservedly) toast.
June 30, 2024
The phenomenon is that every reform voter WAS a tory voter, and rather than trying to win them back they attacked them as right wing zealots
June 30, 2024
I disagree that âeveryâ reform voter WAS a tory voter, the people that are telling me theyâre voting Reform this time were Labour voters. They donât think Labour will stop the immigration, they think Labour are going to move more immigrants into their areas taking priority on social housing and being placed into care home work and lower grade hospital work (as for British people donât want to do that – the NHS HR is rubbish, it runs the jobs down, it doesnât explain pensions, holidays full sick benefits and maternity packages when that time comes) they need to be training again in hospitals from the age of 16 with day release as many boys as girls, if not 16 definitely 18 on clear planned apprenticeships which can lead to becoming a paramedic, a ward medic, or on to specialist training. On care homes we really need to change the social care home model and combine nursery, after school with retirement care.
June 30, 2024
I stand corrected
June 30, 2024
Itâs important to know that Reform has NOT got the answers or the wherewithall to push any answers it might stumble across through the quagmire that is the Civil Service.
There are going to be a lot of people disappointed in Farage and they were disappointed in Steve Baker – so they need to understand that Reform is the protest, not the answer. Iâm not suggesting you donât vote Reform – DO but not expect it is the answer.
The answer lies in a serious, new, Conservative (by another name so we can attract the previous Labour supporters) movement which will become a mighty force and government. It will force the creation of a similar Opposition Party. Both patriotic, both with the interest of the BRITISH people at heart.
Then we are saved, but a lot of work to come.
This election is the start – not the end. But the end is a hill worth dying on.
July 2, 2024
I have to disagree.
Reform does have answers. I read their manifesto and it’s exactly what I wanted to see in a Conservative manifesto for years – and then some.
Being assumed to be “unable to navigate the quagmire that is the civil service” is very unfair on a new party. In fact, they are the only hope of doing so since the other parties have repeatedly failed.
I agree that this election is the start of a sea change, Farage has said as much (not expecting to win this one but aiming for 2029). The fact is that the Conservative Party is fundamentally flawed in its rules – the ability to change leader so easily, CCHQ imposing candidates, even the party whip concept.
Reform needs to subsume the Tories, not the other way round – and then they must ensure that they are not infiltrated in the same way. Once 2/3rds of your MPs are of a different political mind to your voters, you are doomed (if the power lies with the MPs, as it does in the Conservative Party). The associations are in despair over the lack of any say they have in who represents them and the fact that they cannot sensibly recall a candidate except under very narrow circumstances, largely involving criminal behaviour.
I’ve noticed Reform having to pull candidates at the last minute due to inappropriate behaviour, recent or historic – although that is also true of the other parties, I hoped Reform would have had time to notice this problem and shape their rules and procedures to prevent it. They’re not perfect, they have work to do but they’re much more aligned to my views than the Conservative Party has been since Thatcher.
June 30, 2024
Excellent blog Javlin.
June 30, 2024
Sir J. didn’t mention Net Zero. Don’t complain about the BoE losing a few ÂŁ Billions ( otherwise called reversing QE as desired) when the Uniparty INTENDS to waste ÂŁ Trillions. Reform are promising to cancel the Climate Acts, and that alone will enable tax cuts and low cost energy production to boost the economy beyond any fantasy windmill policies promoted by Labour or Conservative.
The choice is really not hard now.
June 30, 2024
Correct.
June 30, 2024
They’re also promising to:
1. Free 1.2 million small and medium sized businesses from Corp Tax by lifting the minimum profit to ÂŁ100,000.
2. Abolish the IR35 Rules to help sole traders
3. Lift the VAT threshold to ÂŁ150,000
All business-friendly, growth-encouraging “conservative” policies. The kind of policies the Not-a-Conservative-Party abandoned in favour of promoting the interests of multi-nationals and globalist corporations.
June 30, 2024
VAT threshold promise FAR TOO LOW! There will be marginal effect.
June 30, 2024
Donna and instead with Labour I predict:
1. Corp Tax: Minimum profit of ÂŁ50k at 19% will be kept for now, maybe raised to 20% in line with income tax.
2. IR35 will be strengthened to encourage large firms to hire unionised workers rather than using contractors.
3. VAT Threshold – reduced to ÂŁ35,000 so that only the Gardener, window cleaner, cleaner ie the smallest sole trader, will not have to register for vat (but I think theyâll want them to do a quarterly turnover to tax report) any other trader will have to register and will have to do their vat return quarterly online and pay their tax and vat quarterly. (Theyâve already said most of the ÂŁ6bn fraud is from small business).
June 30, 2024
Be bold and repeal the EU tax that is VAT for a UK purchase tax
June 30, 2024
The windmill/solar/inter connector policy is against our National Security. It deprives us of our independence in the event of war and negotiations with the vindictive EU and our fish! No steal or heavy manufacturing, costly energy to all businesses. For what? A religion. UK produces 1% of the entire global emissions of the 3% of man made CO2. NO SCIENTIFIC evidence that CO2 drives temperature change, in fact the reverse. It’s an essential plant food, without which all life on Earth dies.
The crazy Uni Party has to go to restore common sense on everything from mass immigration, destruction of our culture, non Equality laws, unlimited welfare, Climate Change Committee zealots, banning our ICE cars to boilers, to wokery, to taxation to refusal to remove EU rules and regs to reform of the NHS to get value for money and stop health tourism etc etc. I hope we’re in for a shock when the results come in and I will not accept Starmagedons new taxes to waste but actively seek ways to deprive him of our hard earned money!!
June 30, 2024
Timaction – – ALL that gets my vote!
June 30, 2024
Imported energy from France via interconnectors tonight as at 21:45hrs is 22.7%
https://grid.iamkate.com/
June 30, 2024
Sunak wrote yesterday he will get rid of trans ideology in schools!! Sunakâs govt introduced Sex and Relationship Act to 4 year olds teaching them a man can be a woman or cat! I formed the opinion that if he is intelligent then he must be a liar.
Both Labour and Sunakâs Govt want to align to EU to prevent divergence and act in lock step. This is why no mention of Brexit or EU issues in parliament. There is no opposition to closely aligning or acting as a vassal state to EU. Both parties are deliberately acting against the mandate to leave the EU. Why has Starmer not demanded the scrapping of EU laws as it formed the strap line to leave the EU take back control of borders, laws and money. France is showing Tory and Labour are. To doing any of these three things! More inter connectors to be dependent on EU rather than energy security! The list is endless. Be it is in peril.
Oust Labour and Tory vote Reform.
June 30, 2024
Indeed âLabour and the Conservatives are so alikeâ the only real difference currently is Vat on school fees. Also Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak (unlike Starmer so far) have has 14 years of blatant lies and cheating on their manifestos and their other promises.
Sunak this morning at about 9.30 BBC1 (on the net zero lunacy). Kunesberg & the BBC obviously wanting even more of this insane agenda.
Suank. â I do not think British Families should have to solve the CO2 problem by themselves.â CO2 is not even a problem Sunak and even if it were, there is no way British Families could solve anything by themselves even if they went back to mud huts and cave dwelling.
Sunak âWe have cut our CO2 by 50% more than any other major economyâ Well not really mate, only by pretending that burning wood (young coal) at Drax saves CO2 (it does not) and also by exporting energy intensive jobs and then ignoring the CO2 them produce overseas to supply the UK with Steel, Fertiliser, Cement, Cars⊠thus throttling the economy and killing jobs – a great plan Sunak.
June 30, 2024
+1 Javelin
Labour and the Conservatives are the Extremists and are not aligned with the majority of the British public.
June 30, 2024
All fair points. Government failures, broken Britain, bad behaviour by various MPs and saying one thing but doing the opposite( or nothing) are also hugely important.
Proportional Represntation could lead to short term ineffective governments as witnessed in post war Italy.
Reform may not have the policies or the ability to implement them.
The question is what are the other options? Donât vote? Vote for one of the established parties?
There will be tough times ahead. I also expect politically driven violence. The French have had this, on and off, since the revolution.
June 30, 2024
This is already happening. It is just not being reported.
What concerns me more is the growing nature of sectarianism by various religious groups, and one in particular. When nations go down this dark path it can only lead to civil war. And for those who think this can never happen here, it has, on numerous occasions, and more recently in Northern Ireland.
June 30, 2024
+1
June 30, 2024
You say âThere is a âfrustrationâ that the two parties are so alike. They both backed COVID lockdowns. They both backed printing large sums of money which proved inflationary. They both back OBR orthodoxy which makes a growth policy difficult. They have both presided over large increases in NHS waiting lists, Labour in Wales and Conservatives in England. They both backed the Windsor framework limiting the opportunities of Brexit. Neither proposed a good pruning of EU bureaucracy and regulations. Both allowed large scale migration.â
âFrustrationâ no anger, fury and a feeling of total betrayal. They also backed the net harm âvaccinesâ even for people like the young and those who had had Covid already who had no need of them even had they been remotely âsafe and effectiveâ. They also both push the insanity of net zero, vast over regulation of almost everything and absurdly high taxes, this while delivering truly appalling public services. They continue to waste billions on HS2, worthless degrees with appalling waste all over the state sector.
Reform are quite weak in Wales and Scotland, though ahead of the Conservative overall. So in England they are well ahead. If I lived in one of circa 10 seats where the Tories had a sound candidate and he/she was the best chance to beat Labour, Libdims I would vote for them. In the many hundreds of other seats Reform is surely the only sensible way to go.
I cannot support parties who clearly support the net zero lunacy and even lie that the Covid vaccines were âunequivocally safeâ and cover up the truth. They clearly support lowering people wage levels and living standards with endless, virtually open door, low skilled immigration both legal and illegal. Wrong on virtually every policy especially taxes, net zero, and the size of the State.
June 30, 2024
“They both backed printing large sums of money which proved inflationary.”
How very surprising printing money devalues money (does Sunak not claim to be good at maths). We of course have criminal laws against printing money and coin clipping (alas not for governments). He, as Chancellor together with the foolish dope Andrew Bailey caused the 12% inflation. He likes to claim that he inherited 12% inflation and has more that halved it (as PM). No he inherited as Chancellor less than 2% and took it to 12% with his QE, net harm lockdowns, net harm vaccines and vast government waste – HS2, PPE procurement frauds, Covid loans, furlough…
I am disappointed to see he is still likely to hold his seat (circa 65% chance it seems). Come on you sensible Yorkshiremen and women he deserves to lose just for his blatant Covid Vaccines are “unequivocally safe” lie. His five pledges 1 out of five hit and his idiotic decision to go for an election 6 months early.
Not that Labour deserve to win, but Sunak certainly deserves to be dumped. He would probably prefer that anyway. In this seat a Labour vote is the way to remove him.
June 30, 2024
Actually it’s a 2 way win. If Sunak wins, it’ll be interesting to see how long he hangs around. If he loses, that would be karma for his dependence on insider processes to become leader in the first place.
June 30, 2024
LL,
â âFrustrationâ no anger, fury and a feeling of total betrayal.â
On this site, certainly. Elsewhere maybe not so much. A sense that nothing can be done may lead to lots of people not bothering to vote. Defeatism and apathy also feature in the mood of voters.
We also have Labour infighting after the election to look forward to. I am not sure how that will pan out.
There is no quick fix either. We are in for a long battle.
June 30, 2024
In the Mail, Telegraph, Express etc, the best comments sections are full of people who are voting REFORM. I guess these people are more active than most as they don’t have the time or inclination to bother, but we can hope. Especially with social media where the msm have little to no control of the obvious propaganda of the BBC and Channel 4 which has hopefully back fired.
June 30, 2024
The Tories have delivered a five to 20+ years disaster from Labour.
Sunak today âLabour would bankrupt people in every generation. Whatever stage of your life, Labour will put up your taxes. Buying your first home, starting a family, sending your kids to a fee-paying school â Labour would raise your taxes.
âInvesting your savings, receiving your state pension and leaving behind a legacy â Labour would raise your taxes.â
But this is exactly what Cameron, May, Boris and Sunak had done for 14 years.
The fake Tories kept IHT threshold at ÂŁ325k for over 14 years now worth circa ÂŁ200k
They increased the top rate of CGT to 28% and removed indexation and SDLT increased on houses from 4% to 15%. Osborne even taxes landlords on âprofitsâ they had not made.
They have also frozen or halved all personal allowances on income, gains, pensionsâŠ
He says a vote for Reform is a vote for Labour – not at all Sunak. In most English seats a vote for reform is the best way to keep Labour out. Anyway most Tory seat have a Libdem or Socialist standing under false pretences – might as well have the real thing.
Does anyone really think Sunak was âHurt and Angryâ as some idiot called him the âP wordâ? Sunak is not even from Pakistan and what is wrong with being from Pakistan anyway? Surely he was actually delighted as he could use it to throw mud at Reform? Just as Starmer pretended that the laughing at him saying he was the son of a toolmaker for the 3000th time was used to pretend it was laughing at people looking down on factory workers/managers like his dad. At least he was not a dire left Lawyer I suppose!
June 30, 2024
One we can win! Letâs damn Labour with a big majority – much more difficult to deal with – they might not last a Parliament.
June 30, 2024
Feudalism is a closed farming community with power structures controlled by the Church. Communism was created directly from feudal societies and just replaced the Church with Marxism.
Globalism is a form of society that is similar to Feudalism, in that itâs anti democratic, but globalism believes the âscience of Government is settledâ and that the managerial elite who studied political science can run the world. Democracy must be manipulated during the transition to a globalist society and voters are controlled using propaganda. People do not belong anywhere are are resources who can either exploit or be exploited. Countries are replaced by super-national organisations. Government is replaced by sub-national regulators. If you object you are cancelled. Eventually voters will forget about democracy and being happy.
That is globalism.
Western democracies are the Goldilocks society.
In western democracies human consciousness is allowed to be free. Democracy, markets, science, government and law slowly evolve by small increments and people are happy.
Since 1997 the globalists have been revolting against a happily improving democratic society and have been replacing voters with managerial technocrats. People in a globalist society are unhappy and most have mental health problems.
June 30, 2024
Correct. Under Blaire Mandelson made it clear representative democracy is dead ie supra national bodies will control countries with national govtâs implementing the global direction.
No thanks. We voted Brexit and want a sovereign nation where we, the public, can elect or boot out our govt.âs. Starmer and Sunak refuse to accept democratic will to leave EU so will act in lock step in defiance of the public and creat narratives to lie otherwise.
Elton John was at it today for Labour and EU. Keep singing Elton keep out of EU debate.
June 30, 2024
Elton John believes Labour are aligning with the EU to allow free movement of people which will eventually lead to a return. I hope heâs sorted out his inheritance tax planning and his kids got their money more than seven years ago before thatâs stopped. It will be fun for these very wealthy champagne socialists to get their wealth taxed 1% over ÂŁ5m each year I think was floated – I wonder how quick heâd non-dom in Monaco and leave everyone else to it.
June 30, 2024
Good morning.
They do not have to as they are not likely to for the next government. What they can form is His Majesty’s loyal opposition. Something else neither the Tories or Labour are prepared to do.
Had they listened to you, Sir John and let Liz Truss implement her policies then all those Tory MP’s now facing unemployment may now be looking for a return to parliament.
As they say : Be careful for what you wish for. They wished for the Little Usurper, and now they are going to regret it.
June 30, 2024
Truss would have lost this election too. The problems run much more deeply than the issue of the mouthpiece in Downing Street.
June 30, 2024
I disagree. If she’d played the same notes in a better order, and proposed cuts, she might well have support in the mid 30s percent or higher.
July 1, 2024
Yes if she had had a Conservative agenda she would have been looking at a 300 seat super-majority.
Instead she proposed no spending cuts and war with north Russia and China.
June 30, 2024
As to FPTP and PR neither are ideal. FPTP is hugely unfair to evenly spread parties and over rewards people like the SNP with regional support (and indeed their own Parliament too. Not only does FPTP cheat people who vote for certain parties hugely in representation per vote but it prevents them voting as they would like to even before they vote. They look at the seat and think (for example) Labour is the worse option and likely to win so what is that I have to vote for to stop that?
PR in its various forms had huge problems too as we see in much of Europe. Direct democracy with loads of votes/referendums Swiss style is the way to go. This is very easy to arrange now with digital tech. too. But the catch 22 is that those in power with never give their power up – unless forced too.
June 30, 2024
+1 LL
Swiss style is the way to go. The people need to have an ongoing say, not just once in four or five years.
June 30, 2024
I think we do over key issues. MPs can no longer be trusted as we see with Brexit.
Starmer and his front bench openly tried to overturn Brexit and should be barred from being MPs for doing so. Same for the EU one nation bunch acting like chameleons in the Tory party.
June 30, 2024
The Swiss are manipulated – look at how it works rather than the theory.
June 30, 2024
How are the Swiss manipulated? You should explain a bit more, not everybody has your extensive knowledge of what is happening in other countries.
June 30, 2024
LL agreed – we have council elections every year in May, how hard to add a local or national referendum to that at virtually no extra cost?
June 30, 2024
With several questions – like tax levels, immigration levels, net zero yes or no, housingâŠnot just would you like this blatant liar or that blatant liar – neither of whom will do what they promise?
June 30, 2024
Sir John today “A government has the votes to keep its promises so we can judge them at the next election”
Exactly – and I’m afraid that is what is about to happen….
June 30, 2024
PR was DESIGNED to weaken Germany so that she was not at the throat of her neighbours again, in a flash.
If you want it to be impossible to sack those in Government – those the top of each parties list – then PR is made for you!
ATM the British people are beginning to queue at the polling stations ready for Sacking Thursday.
You are WRONG on PR, itâs is existential to democracy. Here is idiot Farage, so close to the inflection point where Reform just win huge numbers of seats instead of just losing them, and he wants to change the system.
Well of course he does, it means that he has a job for life at the top of the list! Thatâs what he loved about the EU!
June 30, 2024
Sir John rails against PR and supports FPTP – obvious really because that negates small parties with better ideas than the two big ones. Then he complains that the voters are getting it wrong under FPTP and possibly allowing Labour in with less support. I suppose it depends on the outcome you agree with. I would suggest that the coalition we had in 2010 was far better than the Tory only governments we have had since. At least the LibDims forced up the tax allowances which the Tories now claim as their own. This is obviously a lie as they never wanted it and have now frozen them for years to drag us back to where we were prior to 2010 to drag more and more people with limited and less value money into the various tax bands. They cannot be trusted. I used to trust them. Never again after this and the Brexit mess they made because they never wanted that either.
June 30, 2024
Graham, you are going to be so upset with Labour fully supported by the Lib Dem opposition.
Brown froze the personal allowance in office, he dropped the lower 10% rate, he tapped into the smallest private sector pensions and helped himself.
In 2010 the income tax personal allowance was ÂŁ6475, in the past National Insurance had been aligned with the point at which a person starts to pay income tax, however, the threshold wasnât increased at the same rate as income tax. In 2010 the NI personal allowance was ÂŁ110 pw or ÂŁ5720. In 2021 the Tories increased the NI threshold was ÂŁ9880 it was put up to ÂŁ12570 in 2022. They are both ÂŁ12,570 now although NI is calculated on a wk/mth basis rather than cumulative like tax.
The Tory govt clawed back the increases in personal tax free allowance by cutting the higher rate threshold.
Do you think the Lib Demâs are committed to putting up personal allowances now?
Are they going to drop the rate of VAT that went up from 15% to 17.5% then 20%?
What are they fully supporting Labour doing? Do they support the dropping of the VAT Threshold for small business? In fact what have they said about increasing taxes?
July 1, 2024
Don’t see what the thick end of 20 years ago has to do with it. Times change and the economy has been ruined now and so have all the public services under the genius of5 jobs Osborne austerity (where is he now). Do you dispute that the coalition put up the tax allowances and that the Tories have now frozen them to take us back to the kind of years you are talking about. Do you think money has the same value as it did 14 years or more ago? Live now, don’t keep looking back to the distant past. We need a break, whatever that is from the doom and gloom of the Tories and it is coming regardless. I don’t want Labour but our rotten corrupt voting system is going to see that we get them with probably a low turnout and even lower support than is traditional.
July 2, 2024
I discussed Brown and Darling’s policies of 15-20 years ago because that is the last Labour government we had, and their policies affected the poorest to the average voter.
The economy was plunged into the doldrums in 2008, and manufacturing has been in the doldrums since 1970; it didn’t start recently. I disagreed with George Osborne’s severe austerity. I have read John’s blog from its inception, and if I remember correctly, he has been saying for years that the policy was lop-sided and ineffectual. Osborne relied on tax rises (mainly on the highest paid, taking away parents’ child benefits as a petty policy when one earner got to the higher rate, which more did with frozen higher thresholds and a clawback of the personal allowance at ÂŁ100k) rather than make overall spending cuts and productivity improvements. I felt we’d got a lib dem government.
6.1 million EU individuals applied to the EU settlement scheme, many more than we were told were in the UK. I’m still not sure if the people with settled status could then leave the UK, return to their home nation until retirement, then return to the UK at retirement age and claim pension credits and retirement housing. If people are registered but not here after five or ten years, should there be restrictions on claims and entitlements, or is this another bigger Windrush? All these things over the past twenty years are affecting costs and benefit increases now.
Doom and gloom since COVID-19 because there was optimism in 2019 with Boris. People expected him to follow his promises, e.g., not reduce the net zero deadline from 2035 to 2030 to make things more challenging. The dinghy arrivals from that period left many people feeling desperate, and Labour won’t stop this. The only way Labour makes people feel better is to give away other, more successful people’s money, with their suggested big increases to council tax bands, H bands paying a lot more, wealth taxes, or they take on loads of big loans (such as all the expensive PFI deals they signed up last time) or print even more money than the Tories did in Covid. The Tories did raise the VAT thresholds, helping small businesses and micros and keeping the cost of their work down by 20%.
June 30, 2024
Ref your last paragraph, an 80 seat conservative majority failed to produce cohesive government, so your predictions for a 200 seat labour majority could come true. SKS could be conducting Bach while the orchestra play Chopin over Stravinsky.
Were Reform to find themselves in a position to form a government this time round, a most unlikely event and an undesireable one. They need to experience a learning curve in our schoolboy Parliament. Should they gain a majority at some future election their biggest problem will be the putting of the blob back in its box and in particular reforming our not so civil service with tight contracts of employment and the application of the Official Secrets Act in last resort.
Reforming immigration can be achieved by simple acts. Cancelling legal aid for all illegal entrants. Leaving the ECHR. Both found impossible in a Parliament full of lawyers. Instead of a contentious, out of UK legal control, deportation destination such as Rwanda, set up a prison/work camp under military control on West Falkland or any other undesireable destination such as the Outer Hebrides. Conversely there was plenty of clandestine traffic to a France under German control during WW2. The gendarmerie could be run ragged with arrivals all over their beaches from Belgium to Spain. Very good leadership training for the Royal Navy.
The other big challenge for Reform would be the introduction of legally binding reforenda to ensure the developement of democracy on big issues such as NZ or the use of our own energy resources. Big decisions cannot be left in the hands of fracious minorities in or out of Parliament.
Read Reform’s Contract, which apart from being a promise to the electorate, neatly encapsulates the failures of the existing parliamentary parties.
June 30, 2024
A,
â SKS could be conducting Bach while the orchestra play Chopin over Stravinsky.â
Maybe they will all start singing âthe Red Flagâ again
Sir Keir (my father was a toolmaker) would just have to stand there smiling and miming the words:-
â Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we’ll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.â
Hardliners like Fred Kite might appreciate Stravinsky though.
â Ahhh, Russia. All them corn fields and ballet in the evening.â
June 30, 2024
Good words
June 30, 2024
Natalie Bouchart, Mayor of Calais, said years ago that migrants were gathered in her area because they were treated so well in Britain. We know that even the remote threat of something like the Rwanda scheme causes them to waver. Stop giving them what they want, far easier than argy bargy at sea or an ersatz Cod War with French coastguards. I would fly them anywhere that could be bribed to let us land, ‘safe’ or not, remembering that they have the alternatives of being flown home or not setting out in the first place. I could go on, but of course our elite have no interest in stopping immigration as evidenced by their continuing support for the UN Global Compact on Migration.
June 30, 2024
You say “or any other undesireable destination such as the Outer Hebrides”.
Please tell us all, what is undesireable about the Outer Hebrides ?
England is the undesireable place, stuffed full of immigrants and grotesquely overcrowded.
June 30, 2024
MWN
Please tell us all, what is undesireable about the Outer Hebrides ?
Bad weather and the Wee Frees (Barra excepted).
June 30, 2024
‘There is a frustration that the two parties are so alike. ‘
The electorate has watched for years as mistake after mistake has continued, you assume Labour will mean more of the same disatisfaction.
Reform offers more of a return to conservatism principles, with little except the leader’s history of facing up to issues the electorate have always wanted fixed.
A very natural and understandable position.
June 30, 2024
”Reform offers more of a return to conservatism principles”
Spot on Mickey
June 30, 2024
They are not the same.
Starmer has already said heâs over-riding NIMBIES, the tory party is full of Nimbies, isnât the council that stops Jeremy Clarksonâs farm from doing anything enterprising a Tory Council? Starmer will press ahead with electricity pylons in fields near to homes to cut the costs of connecting the new inland turbines.
Instead of foreign students paying their way in our universities, he wants to go back to free places at our expense for EU students. It is saving us a fortune that they can no longer study for free all loans provided by British taxpayers and free education in Scotland.
I just despair that people arenât listening to âmake a pointâ.
June 30, 2024
Reform is the Party I have chosen for which to support and vote; it is unproven but espouses the best principles. However in my view proportional representation is as unsatisfactory as FPTP and a fairer system is the preferential or single transferable vote system which for instance is used in Australia. It has flaws (and one loses the excitement and immediacy of election night!) but not those JR lists for PR.
June 30, 2024
A system where people vote on FPTP for things promised (in for example the last three Tory manifestos) but then, once elected, these Tory MPs decide to deliver the complete reverse for 14 years. This cannot remotely be called democracy. They, as now, we find the only way to remove the Tories is to suffer Labour who will deliver the same as the Con-socialists but even worse still.
Yet they claim this is democracy.
June 30, 2024
LL,
Very true. The deviousness of May followed by the deceit of Johnson and so on. Plus endless excuses on why things cannot be fixed, but the prompt implementation of policies not mentioned in manifestos.
June 30, 2024
That is the problem of losing control of the government ie those who would be top of the party list and unsackable. Noting to do with the electoral system.
June 30, 2024
Single Transferrable Vote is PR!
June 30, 2024
Well no STV does not produce proportional representation. One candidate might get 51% and another with 49% after the eliminations – but the 51% gets represented the other no representation.
July 1, 2024
STV uses multi-member seats (if you’re talking about a single member seat, then that is AV voting, not STV).
In any STV multi-member constituency, both those candidates would get elected as they would both be above the threshold (which would be just under 34% in a 2-member constituency, and lower for higher numbers of members).
June 30, 2024
Reform acknowledge that the UK is “skint” and needs business friendly policies to stimulate growth including lower corporation tax, abandonment of net zero and related subsidies, encouragement of UK oil and gas production to substitute for imports. It also proposes raising the IHT threshold to ÂŁ2 million. Farage is an effective public speaker and makes the case for Reform as the principal opposition party to both Conservatives, who he accuses of betrayal over immigration, and Labour, who he expects to form the next government. He adds interest and challenge to what would otherwise be a boring campaign between the established parties who offered nothing to deal with the UK’s mounting list of problems.
June 30, 2024
I agree with your overview of PR versus first past the post thoughts Sir John.
That does not mean we can’t adopt some of the benefits of PR while retaining FPTP.
My adjustment to the current political fix that operates in the Westminster election system would involve making he second house the HoL the PR balance in the system.
If the HoL was modified as Blair has already demonstrated it can be, and simply done. Then we could use the second house or should that be rightly called the Upper House, to bring voters representation into the heart all be it currently the silent pointless heart of government ?
The care home that sits at the centre of our democracy is long overdue reform of its red benches and the make up of those who sit on them.
June 30, 2024
@ Rod Evans – what do you propose concerning power struggles between both houses, each claiming better legitimacy to represent the people than the other?
June 30, 2024
What would you call the 3rd House required to break the deadlock of two elected Houses?
June 30, 2024
The HoC would as now retain overall final say. The important point of the change would be the removal of the cronyism that is the prime feature of the HOL. It would also remove the endless presence of politicians that have gone past their use by date, simply being given a permanent seat as is the case now.
June 30, 2024
Mr Farage has stated that Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine. By excusing Putin for war crimes will inevitably encourage this tyrant to continue to attack other innocent nations.
June 30, 2024
He hasn’t excused Putin for war crimes.
He simply stated that the behaviour of the USA, EU and NATO provoked the attack on Ukraine which plenty of other people, including Johnson and George Robertson (former SecGen of NATO) also stated ….. along with a number of senior military personnel.
I wonder why Blair hasn’t been held to account for his war crimes of attacking and invading Iraq which had not attacked or threatened to attack the UK, and participating in the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians?
June 30, 2024
Rubbish.
June 30, 2024
If you don’t know the true facts or history do not make accusations or comments that are simply not true. Many promises were made by the US to Russia when the Soviet Union broke up. This included buffers and non membership of NATO/EU/ Nuclear weapons by bordering Countries etc. There were lots of issues in Ukraine in 2014 and interference by the EU/US administration’s and offers of future EU membership which the West new would poke the Bear. Farage merely pointed out the folly of the West and its interference leading to Putin’s actions. He didn’t encourage or agree with Putin. That’s just msm, The Snake and Starmers propaganda. Do keep up.
June 30, 2024
What I heard him say to Nick Robinson was that the EU had given Putin the excuse he needed to invade Ukraine. Most Russians believe they are being threatened by the West and why not when Putin controls the media?
Most Brits believe in the Climate Emergency and why not when it is constantly promoted here. The BBC effectively banned any debate on the subject some years ago – most importantly with regards the economics of the Net Zero solutions being followed. That’s why they wouldn’t allow Nigel Lawson any air time (because it was “settled science”).
Putting Ukraine to one side, just think for a moment about Turkey joining the EU, which has been under discussion since 1999. Turkey controls the Bosphorus strait and therefore access to the Black Sea. Do you think the Russians don’t see this as a strategic threat? Aftyer all, we are not very happy with the Iranians controlling the straits of Hormuz are we?
June 30, 2024
Russians think they are threatened by the west because of the bombing of Russian civilians over 20 years. Nothing yo do with the media.
June 30, 2024
When the British voted to join the Common Market in the ’70s they did not expect to be intertwined in the politics a Baltic State behind the Iron Curtain on the edge of Russia.
We should have kept well away.
July 1, 2024
Turkey does not control access to the Black Sea-it is governed by international treaty-the 1936 Montreux Convention.
Moreover,the Black Sea is becoming less important with the opening of the INSTC(International North South Transport Corridor)which connects Russia with India(and the Indian Ocean trade networks) via Iran (either down the Caspian Sea or across land through the Caucasus).You/goods will soon be able to travel seamlessly from Murmansk in the Arctic to Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf and,when the Iranians complete the new railway link, to their Indian Ocean deep water port of Chabahar which is being substantially expanded with Indian investment.The Iranians are already asking Russia to consider re-routing its grain exports via the INSTC.
These developments are hugely significant(that’s why the west is both desperate for regime change in Iran and to cause trouble in the Caucasus),particularly if you look at how BRICS+ is developing-the last batch of members(Iran,Saudi,Egypt,UAE,Ethiopia) give BRICS a dominant presence in the Persian Gulf,Arabian peninsular and Gulf of Aden/Red Sea,especially if you include the Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen and Ethiopia’s association with the breakaway Somali autonomous maritime provinces of Somaliland and ,now,Puntland.
We expect the next batch of members(to be announced at the BRICS summit at Kazan,Russia,this autumn) will be clustered at the other,eastern end of the ocean -some or all of Indonesia,Malaysia,Thailand and Vietnam.The Indian Ocean will be a BRICS+ lake!No western involvement needed -or desirable!
June 30, 2024
What’s basically at issue here in my view is peace and security in Europe, and how it has, or rather hasn’t, been preserved. Ramping up aggressive moves against Russia for years and then, in late 2021, refusing a mutual security agreement convinced Russia that war with NATO’s Ukraine proxy was inevitable. Likewise NATO’s refusal to allow the peace treaty agreed between Ukraine and Russia in March 2022, which convinced the Kremlin it was dealing with an opponent hell-bent on Russia’s military defeat and destruction. It is to Farage’s credit that 10 years ago he foresaw the armed conflict that would result if NATO pursued its policy of threatening and destabilising Russia. You can approve of this policy if you want to, but then you can’t blame him for pointing out what it would lead to. That is all Farage did.
June 30, 2024
Sir John, you ask why Labour is forecast to have a huge majority, and answer it yourself – because lower migration, is now “at last” government policy. But controlling migration has been in the Tory manifesto in every election since at least 2015. So what has changed? Is it that “at last”, after 14 years, the Conservatives honestly really mean to do something about it?
Too little too late.
June 30, 2024
I subscribe to Matt Goodwin’s substack and listen to him quite a lot.
He is supporting Reform but says that he doesn’t believe Reform has all the answers to the problems afflicting the UK. However, they ARE asking the right questions and they ARE talking about the issues on which the Westminster Uni Party has adopted a CONsensus position and refuses to discuss.
The Westminster Uni-Party and the Civil Service are basically operating a dictatorship, with a fig-leaf of respectability once every 4-5 years when we are permitted an election to choose the new monkeys who will dance to the tune of the UN/WEF/IMF and soon to be WHO.
Galloway expressed it very well when he called Labour and the Not-a-Conservative-Party “two cheeks of the same arse.” I use the following analogy: the Uni-Party is like a 3-legged stool (LibLabCON) and is extremely stable. But break one of the legs and it CANNOT stand.
As the WEF has instructed …… in order to Build Back Better, first we have to destroy what is already in place.
That’s what we’re going to do.
June 30, 2024
+many
June 30, 2024
The failure of the uniparty to govern for the benefit of the heritage population of Britain, is coming home to roost.
Of course Reform will not be the next government. That is a sea change that simply cannot happen.
I’m reconciled to living under an extremist government led by Sir Keir Starmer for the next five or so years. Hopefully by then, the population will have woken up to the reality. You Cons, Labs, Libs and Greens are all useless.
If Reform can win a presence in parliament, maybe they will be able to have a small but important influence.
They will get my vote.
June 30, 2024
Reformâs âContractâ matches closely with what possibly most of UK voters want to accomplish.
SJR states: âFrance refuses to let people landâ. Those people start on French soil. The UK can refuse to let people land on ours too!
Plenty of tactics can be devised to prevent small boats crossing the 12 mile point in the English Channel. The first small boat returning would freak out others trying. People-smugglers would struggle to find small boat users willing to pay their heavily overpriced transport fees. SNOOKER!
June 30, 2024
Agreed. It’s the only certain way of stopping the boats. A physical intervention and return. The French are incapable of stopping the boats but in reality want rid of THEIR problem. So return them to France have a big row and then it will stop. Forget the diplomatic niceties, this is a national emergency and they should be TOLD, not asked!
June 30, 2024
Migrants are not going to France and then deciding that they don’t like it and Britain would be better. They are setting out to the north of France from their homeland with the intention of getting to the land of milk and honey. OUR elites are responsible for camps in Calais, not the French.
June 30, 2024
If the Conservative over-late rules on legal immigration are effective, a Reform Government could simply inherit those alone and achieve their Contractual obligation of reducing immigration. SNOOKER again!
June 30, 2024
I largely agree Sir John’s analysis, including his comments on PR. The calamity which will damage the Conservative Party may be the catalyst for a realignment of the right, but only if the ‘one nation’ MPs can either see the light or be ejected from the party.
On the economics of Reform UK, the one enormous saving will be rejection of the Net Zero madness.
June 30, 2024
‘See the light’ – you mean agree with your point of view. Eject people from the party simply because you don’t agree with them? Ever heard of the ‘broad church’ and ‘democracy’? Sounds like you prefer the Putin style of government. Labour might just suit you with their gerrymandering ideas of giving children the vote.
June 30, 2024
As an âejectedâ Conservative circa Fowlerâs Difficult list, I can tell you that the One Nation Conservative Party tolerates nobody unless they are in step.
July 1, 2024
Oh so that’s alright then. Not surprising from a Putin suppoter.
June 30, 2024
The idea that we send 650 people to Parliament to represent the people in their constituency is fanciful. Iâm sure the MPs representing constituencies along the route of HS2 tried to get it stopped or routed elsewhere- to no avail. How many people want mass immigration? Are they represented? No, MPs owe their allegiance to their party, that is obvious – you all have whips to make them do as they are told.
First past the post is undemocratic and, clearly, does not produce successful government.
PR is fairer and more democratic. Not perfect but many other countries seem to do okay on it.
Iâd prefer direct democracy like the Swiss have.
There was a hustings event in a nearby town the other night. I couldnât make it. My wife attended – along with 12 other people. Thatâs how disillusioned people are with our present system. A town with 2500 people and lots of quite sizeable local villages – and 13 people turned up and 23 watched it on YouTube.
June 30, 2024
You are soooo wrong. I donât know where to begin with your fantasies. Each constituency is responsible for sending a rational, reasonable, undrugged, capable individual to Parliament. If you have a problem, that is the ONLY individual you can apply to.
July 1, 2024
So WHAT?! I have a problem with:
Mass immigration
The boats
Public sector waste and productivity
The Bank of England
Net zero
⊠to name but a few. I email my MP to complain and???!! He is unable to do a damn thing about t because he represents his party, not me.
June 30, 2024
Your last sentence, SJR, surely makes us question whether FPTP is a desirable system. A party can lose in one election with a larger vote share than a party that gains a huge majority in another election. Yet an election is supposed to be about ‘representation of the people’, as the legislator calls it. I appreciate that Britain held a referendum in 2011 on the preferred voting system, and FPTP won. But I wonder if the poor turn-out on that occasion was because many people didn’t understand what the alternative was, and stayed at home.
June 30, 2024
The referendum was on a voting system which is not proportional as it does not give proper weight to people’s first choice over subsequent ones. It was offered cynically by the Tory party to appease their LibDem co-habitees. The LibDems favoured it because they thought it would give them power through people’s second choices. It was rejected because it is not better than FPTP for a very obvious reason.
New Zealand selected their replacement for FPTP as most countries have by now apart from the undemocratic warmongering US, and gave the people firstly a referendum to determine whether there was a majority in favour of reform and secondly one to determine which system of PR the people preferred: thoroughly democratic.
June 30, 2024
The referendum was on the system that those who want to ditch FPTP would be most attractive. It lost by a supermajority of 67%.
Those who did not vote also did not want to change the system.
June 30, 2024
True conservatives and ex serving MPs are leaving because the party leader takes little notice of what they say. You can only keep banging your head against the same wall for so long before you decide enough is enough, there are better ways and things to do.
If only we had local candidates, but we now have huge numbers of wannabes sent in from a distance who know nothing about the area they want to represent at all., they are just in love with being an MP.
The reason I voted conservative in the past John was because I had you as my representative in Parliament, now you have understandably had enough, so have I.
The party that comes closest to my views is now Reform, and yes I understand the risk of some undesirables being elected, but at least our candidate has lived within the constituency for many years and so should be aware of what and who he will be representing.
Farage may be a little rough around the edges and so is unliked by some, but at least he gives a straight answer to a question, a very refreshing change for a political leader.
June 30, 2024
Reform are WRONG on Proportional Representation.
A better system may be to have a 2-stage election.
Voters would know the result of the first stage.
Then they could assess whether that veers too far from what they want with an over-dominant government.
Their 2nd vote would then deliver a balanced opposition.
The French do something like that, but waste months of PR negotiation leading to a mish-mash.
June 30, 2024
Why when the electorate get the best and right answer every time? They were wrong once because it was the first time a PM lied – the âletâs join a trading group with our friends and partnersâ – and Heath later boasted on TV of having lied. So the electorate can be excused that one mistake.
Go back and look at the options at each election. They ALWAYS do the right thing. Itâs a miracle, a collective mind. But you can often feel it deciding. (Brexit and this election)
June 30, 2024
Dear Bloke,
We can see the French system in action over the next seven days. Not PR of course but In principle it has many advantages:
1) It gives popular insurgent parties a much better chance, not just from the Left or Right but also back in the day M.Macron’s centre party.
2) Extremist parties will almost always lose out in the second round, so there is a strong incentive to avoid intentionally divisive policies.
3) There is still only one kind of MP, who has by definition been chosen by he majority of local voters.
Combine that with a referendum on any constitutional issue, such as votes at 16 or binding future governments (as in Net Zero commitments ) and we would give ordinary people much more democratic power.
But both of these are a pain in the neck for the political class, which is why none of them want anything to do with either, as evidenced by the Electoral Reform Society.
July 1, 2024
Well put.
June 30, 2024
Most political parties are the sum of their parts. No so Reform, which is not a political party, but a limited company where Farage owns the majority of the shares.
Reform exists to promote the views of Farage, who has made a succession of major gaffes during his campaign, notably his support of the war criminal Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His followers and activists have been exposed as racists of the worst kind. Farage wants to destroy the BBC as it is too un-biased for his taste. He hates the very concepts of net-zero, renewable energy, protecting the environment, high skills immigration etc. Farage’s pro-fossil fuel policies will leave the UK massively exposed to fluctuations in the wholesale price of gas.
Will Reform achieve any MPs? On average, in recent large scale MRP polling across all the seats, Reform secured an average 14.6% of the vote share. This has left it in second place in about 25 seats, but the winner in none. Reform’s vote share is not concentrated in individual seats in the way that the Green’s is and this exposes the weakness of the MRP methodology
Reform will draw votes primarily from Conservative candidates and to a much lesser extent, Labour and the Lib Dems. The effect of voting for Reform will be the massive Labour super-majority that the Tories, correctly, fear
June 30, 2024
Your comment on Farage’s alleged support for Putin, is a good illustration of why it is so difficult for any politician to say anything that is at odds with the supposedly correct view: it is immediately taken out of context, like Enoch Powell’s reference to ‘Rivers of blood’. Farage was not expressing support for Putin; he was explaining why Russia felt it necessary to imvade Ukraine.
June 30, 2024
Farage did not and does not support Putin and the invasion of Russia. Why resort to lies, rather like your contentions about renewable energy?
June 30, 2024
Iâm very pleased that he does not support the invasion of Russia, proposed by the powers that be in the west relentlessly.
July 1, 2024
What invasion of Russia? Must have missed that one. Talk is one thing action is another. He was just foretelling the future about Ukraine which turned out to be right, whilst the establishment turned a blind eye. Why do you twist the arguments to suit your warped view?
June 30, 2024
You say, S.G., that Farage’s ‘followers and activists have been exposed as racists of the worst kind’. I think you mean Channel 4 and its production company have been exposed as purveyors of fake journalism.
You, like them, are clearly very worried that the election will give ordinary people the chance to say what they think of the elite agendas favoured in our broken political system.
June 30, 2024
SG :
If Reform are not going to win any seats as you predict why bother to expend all this energy attacking them? It is said that you know when you are over the target when you get the flak.
BTW, Net Zero, with huge amounts of steel and concrete required for low energy density bird chopping windmills, massive amounts of environmentally damaging mining for the necessary metals and minerals, the covering of the country with pylons and toxic solar panels whose production leaves huge toxic tailing lakes in China is definitely not âprotecting the environmentâ. And with low density renewable energy spread out over half the North Sea and vast swathes of the country will leave us totally exposed to attack by simple, cheap drones.
June 30, 2024
The list system was used for the European Parliament elections.
The nearest the designated Conservative MEP ever got to the constituency I resided in was in the aeroplane overhead on her way to Brussels.
June 30, 2024
Dear Bingle,
The region where I voted had an old rural Liberal tradition that usully led to one LibDem MEP being elected. But the LibDem list was always headed by an arch-federalist member of the Spinelli Group which was not at all what most LibDem voters there had in mind.
June 30, 2024
“We elect a named MP for a constituency which makes MPs much more attentive to local views and needs.”
Scottish and Northern Irish local government, as well as the Northern Ireland assembly all use PR and they all elect individual constituency or ward representatives as well.
Claiming that you can’t have this with PR is an untruth.
June 30, 2024
Indeed so, the Northern Ireland assembly uses a Single Transferrable Vote system with multi-member (five) constituencies. There are some virtues worth considering.
The key characteristic of any system ought to be that it makes it easy to replace a government that has failed, importantly also making it easy to remove particular representatives from parliament.
June 30, 2024
They could not have got the terrorists in otherwise. You want the same here?
June 30, 2024
@Lynn Atkinson, voters who choose to vote for a particular party should see that support reflected in the relevant legislative assembly, whether you (or I) like a particular party and what they stand for, or not.
In 2015, the “majority” government secured the support of just 36.9% of those who voted (hardly anywhere near a majority), a party who gained 12.6% of the votes were “rewarded” with just 1 MP out of 650, and yet a party who gained 4.7% of the vote gained 56 MPs.
Whatever FPTP does deliver, fairly and accurately representing the wishes of the electorate in terms of who they expressed a preference by voting for is something it definitely does not deliver.
June 30, 2024
You are wrong. Voters in each constituency see the person they know, selected, worked for and voted for elected – we donât vote for parties or PMs but for representatives. Itâs right that whosoever gets the most votes in each constituency wins that seat. Whosoever gets the most seats forms the Government.
You want a presidential election, and nobody will get the âmost votesâ. They will barter in back rooms and in trying to secure the last few seats, those who got the least votes will wield the most power.
That is the converse of the objectives of Democracy.
We have rejected it by a supermajority a decade ago.
If Reform want to win seats they need to start working before the election is called. They need to target seats and work to beat the incumbent, thatâs what the Lib Demâs do successfully. They need to put up a few excellent candidates, so that if they win they donât start withdrawing the whip before a single vote is even cast!
Stop trying to gerrymander a result that nobody would ever have voted for. We said No!
Because of this mad, dangerous idea will will not vote for Reform. I never once voted for UKIP and my husband almost won the leadership of that âpartyâ. It could have been a very powerful protest force, but Farage used it for jobs for the boys instead.
July 1, 2024
How is it wrong to expect Parliament to be representative of the voters. You might think that the current system which gives “majorities” to 35.2% of the vote share or 36.9% of the vote share is the best way to do it. I don’t. I want Parliament to be representative of us, the voters. Currently, it clearly does not.
That can be done using constituencies and electing individuals from those constituencies in a proportional way by constituents voting for individuals, not parties, and with those individuals being representatives of a specific individual constituency. That is the way, for example, the Irish Dail is elected. Using STV with constituencies which elect between 3 and 5 individuals (depending on constituency size).
July 2, 2024
Plus FPTP even deters many people voting how they would wish to realising that the best/only way to stop X winning is to vote for Y a vote for A,B, C or D is a wasted vote. So even the 12.6% of voter who got 1 MP might well have been 25% of votes had they been free to vote without wasting their votes!
@Lynn âVoters in each constituency see the person they know, selected, worked for and voted for elected â we donât vote for parties or PMs but for representativesâ
Well some do but rather few hence so very few independents are ever actually elected. You almost invariable need party support. Many voters know nothing about the candidate not even their name often.
June 30, 2024
@ Lynn Atkinson – was it not a case of excluding the terrorists before they became terrorists that led to the creation of terrorists? Do you want the same here?
June 30, 2024
You argue that PR is not a good system, that First Past the Post is better.
In the very next paragraph you go on to say “…if the polls are right will be to visit on us a Labour government that may have a lower vote share than Labour led by Jeremy Corbyn gained in 2017 but have a large majority of MPs”.
Well FPtP isn’t very good either then, is it?
A balanced MSM and freedom of expression would probably be the best starting points for recovering a functioning democracy, after that we can argue about voting systems and everything else.
Reply I agree if FPTP delivers a large majority to a party with 40% that is a bad result. On current polls PR would deliver a Lib/Lab coalition.
June 30, 2024
To reply.
JR, It is mathematically illogical just to take the expected vote under FPTP and convert it to PR as people under PR can vote how they wish so they vote differently. Under FPRP most sensible voters with vote for whomever with prevent a dire Labour, Green or LibDim candidate from winning. Be that Tories or Reform (mainly Reform) in England. Yes PR has many problems too.
Just as illogical as suggesting as the left constantly do that poverty leads to ill health from life expectancy statistics when it is far more likely that poor health, alcohol, drugs, serious illnesses, stupidity⊠leads to poverty rather than the reverse.
June 30, 2024
So wrong. Iâm intent on sacking the Tories. I can vote exactly as I wish, and will do, and I will successfully achieve my aim.
Why are you fixated on gerrymandering the system?
June 30, 2024
According to what Jacob Rees-Mogg has said publically, it was this outgoing Conservative government who have been attempting to gerrymander the system.
July 1, 2024
I am not at all doing this you have not read or understood what I said. I am merely pointing out that under first past the post people often (rightly) feel they had best vote X to keep Y out, so they do not vote as they would under PR or transferable vote. Just a statement of fact.
June 30, 2024
Reply to reply:
FPTP delivers a never ending pro EU socialist torylab monopoly! JR, your view is theory only. Where have you been for 14 years of heirs to Blaireâs!
June 30, 2024
It also delivered Blair/Brown with large majorities and all the total disaster of their botched devolution, the supreme court, the counter productive wars, US extradition treaty, the private pension mugging, sale of the gold – I have still yet to find a single positive from the disaster of Blair/Brown. David Starkey cover it well, as does the Gordon is a Moron book.
June 30, 2024
So does PR. Look at Macron, asking for a coalition of those with tiny minority support to keep out the most popular party.
You want that here? Labour/Lib Dem forever?
June 30, 2024
Under the first past the post electoral system, the Conservative Party is a coalition between traditional and one-nation conservatives. Before the election, the Party should have devised policies to appeal to both sets of voters. A compromise has not happened with disagreements over multiple issues.
The result is that traditional conservatives are moving en masse to Reform UK. They know that Reform can not win. But, they want to use it to re-align politics and form a new coalition to challenge Labour next time.
If you want to retain first past the post and achieve electoral success, the Conservatives need to create policies attractive to all their voters.
Reply Creating popular policies is what the arguments within the Conservative Party have been all about
June 30, 2024
Reply to reply.
And the One Nation LibCONs won every so-called argument. The Not-a-Conservative-Party doesn’t represent Conservative, let alone Brexit-supporting conservative voters.
June 30, 2024
Correct – whoever wins the election should only consider its winning votes wishes, ignoring the losing opposition side …..and vise-versa
Bring back positive strong government …not this one-nation rubbish
June 30, 2024
They did not win a single argument, but they won the votes because they hold the power.
July 1, 2024
reply to reply … really? and what an abject disaster that has been!
June 30, 2024
âReform want proportional representation. I disagree. Whilst our system can mean the majority have to put up with a government that only got 43% of the vote the system has two big advantages over PR. We elect a named MP for a constituency which makes MPs much more attentive to local views and needs.â
We should have voted for AV when we had the chance. AV maintains the good FPTP idea that there is a single elected representative for the constituency but ensures that the winning candidate obtains 50% or more of the vote. AV also prevents a constituency electing a candidate who does not represent their views through a split vote.
We also definitely need referendums as Brexit showed.
Reply Yes referendums are good. I want one on net zero
June 30, 2024
Referendums are good indeed and can be done very cheaply with modern IT.
A referendum on net zero:- A. would to like to pay ÂŁ200k more in taxes and on heat pumps and EV cars and in energy bills. Plus have many blackouts with negative benefits of perhaps slightly less CO2 or
B. Ditch net zero?
I wonder how that will go?
June 30, 2024
You get to pose the question – or Greta?
June 30, 2024
PR voting can also deliver named MPs for individual constituencies.
Have a look at how STV works. Every Scottish and Northern Irish councillor is associated with and elected by a specific ward, and every Northern Irish assembly member is associated with and elected by a specific constituency.
June 30, 2024
It says everything about the feebleness of the British establishment that they happily accept boats from France, but say it is impossible to return them to France. I personally think Reform have missed the core of the problem here , that being the Refugee Convention in conjunction with Human Rights Act , yes they will get rid of the ECHR, but the HRA is a similar impediment to us being able to act in our interests.
June 30, 2024
Surely we should at least have Single Transferable Vote. This would ameliorate the deplorable situation where talking heads tell voters that they can’t vote for the party they want because it would be a vote for the party they don’t want. Use your main vote as you wish and your transfer vote as the ‘tactical’ vote. This would allow support levels and retention of deposits to be resolved fairly. The only disadvantage is it would probably prevent the breathless revelation of the first seat to declare hours after the polls close.
June 30, 2024
I agree with everything you’ve said SirJ, however with this election its ‘go big or go home’ and the reform party have said they’d cancel net-zero ….all the other parties are the same old, same old woke
June 30, 2024
Indeed ditch Net Zero and they have promised an inquiry into the vast net harms from the Covid Vaccines just these two policies are sufficient to justify supporting Reform.
June 30, 2024
Reform is the only party advocating the scrapping of Net Zero. This policy alone will save hundreds of ÂŁbillions, turbocharge the economy and release us all from unworkable and unpopular restrictions forced upon us to save the planet from our 1% contribution to the CO2 cult that wrongly believes that increasing CO2 will bring climate breakdown/emergency/chaos/crisis/catastrophe.
Note that this cult only believes that it is CO2 emissions from the democratic West that will destroy the climate. Fortunately China and India and the row use a different atmosphere.
June 30, 2024
If voter frustration is that the two parties are similar then logically there should be a closer gap. This is a protest vote about ineptitude, utter failure to honour promises and for the traditional Tory vote the fact that the Government was not Tory but lib/social democrat.
For voters that like that the âStarmerâ schmoozeâ offers more of the same but hopefully a chance to show they can do better.
For you, and you should be grateful to Reform it offers your party the chance to move back to your moderate low tax/low state traditional Right and if you do and the Labour Party stuff it up, the Reform vote will switch back. If that happens and Farage is no fool, I see Reform doing a deal on the right and âfoldingâ into a Tory pact.
If your âhatredâ of Farage blinds you to the political realities and the One Nation group somehow keeps you in the centre, I believe you are finished/struggling for decades.
Sunak and his acolytes in Central Office/Whitehall have demonstrated how breathtakingly out of touch/naive/âdishonest politically they have been and certainly unfit to carry on.
The fact that allegedly Central Office is looking to fix the rules about selection etc demonstrates they are beyond redemption hence why I am hoping you get thrashed.
Reply Do read what I write. I have not expressed any hatred of Mr Farage and note where they have copied, separately identified or drawn on my policy proposals
June 30, 2024
Sorry didnât mean to imply your feelings on Farage, I meant the Cameroons who have been and still are your major problem
June 30, 2024
JR has no hatred for Farage. Why would anyone sensible have such feeling. Farage is pushing sensible policies:- ditch net zero, skilled quality only immigration, cut taxes, deregulate, ditch HS2, cut the vast government waste, law and order with deterrents, tax cut to encourage people not to use state schools and the NHS if they can⊠what is not to like.
June 30, 2024
Ditch the evil & woke, equality & diversity lunacy, talk full advantages of Brexit.
June 30, 2024
If we continue to vote for any of the existing Parliamentary parties and hence continue with mass legal immigration, uncontrolled borders and Net Zero (whatever the pace) then the inevitable outcome will be third world impoverishment, chaos and eventually civil war.
June 30, 2024
You are accurate in every statement. We find that this is the path through the fire.
There is no no option but to brace ourselves for the flames and the cleansing. The dead wood will burn.
But we must ask how it is that we have come to this? When we reach the ashes, we must make sure never to ignite the fire again.
We MUST have a capitalist, democratic alternative to the horrors all parties offer at this terrible Hobsons Choice election.
No more dodging the question and hoping that the Conservatives have the ability to pull themselves together. We have given them âone-more-chanceâ too often and they despise us.
The horror must be over – the new door must be opened and through it we need to see the sunlit uplands.
June 30, 2024
You have to ask why did C4 follow and actor around, then why did Starmer call the actor aâ candidateâ? Meaning to suggest someone that was standing to represent a constituency.
How low has those in UK Politics become?
June 30, 2024
Surely the dire results of the Conservative party and the frustration of Conservative voters show the One Nation Torys have been rejected, the electorate needs an opposition not another carbon copy of a Socialist Government.
June 30, 2024
The big 3 have had decades to put right the things described as ‘needing to be done’, but have simply allowed it all to get worse.
So, today is attack the upstarts day. Fair enough Farage did put his head above the battlement. Some of their ideas may sound rash, but thanks to One Nation Conservatism nothing at all was done to stand up for ourselves as a country, to pursue our aims.
How about changing the rules so turning back the immigrants is not illegal, and why are we still in the ECHR?
One Nation Conservatism has made us weak, feeble even, with no respect from abroad. The EU still walks all over us as they only follow the rules they want to.
We need this revolution of Reform, because it is time we stood up for ourselves, our values, and stopped playing the victim.
June 30, 2024
Sir John
Thank you for your service.
Three ways that the Channel invasion could be stemmed.
1) Review and reduce all benefits for new arrivals. Stop the main magnetic draw.
2) Ban the RNLI and the UK Border Force from accepting handovers of safe migrants on French boats. Restrict them to only saving those in peril on the sea. The current arrangement is nothing more than assisting people smuggling.
3) The number of crossings has increased since 2018…and the UK has continually increased the number of migrant assistance boats. Always increase, increase. Never a reduction…
Announce that the assistance will be safely and gradually scaled back from a fixed date and that the migrants undertake the crossing solely at their own risk…and at their own peril.
June 30, 2024
PR, consolidates the premise that is only and approved Political Leadership can that appoint your Candidate, meaning your Representative is an Agent of a Gang.
Unfortunately, the way candidates are seemingly selected as of now there is no difference to the above alternative. The flaw is like most things that are wrong with our Political Leadership they are frightened, very frightened of the People that they, in their own heads they say represent. Candidate should only be chosen by the community they wish to serve, ideally the money for campaigns should only come from the Communities they wish to serve.
What is trying to be achieved with Democracy is that we get Government for the People by the People. There is purity in that and it may never be achieved â but it should always be the aim.
We have had 40 years of EU corruption and corrosion of Democracy that has led us down a dangerous path.
With this situation, I am always reminded of âDaniel Hannanâ making a point in the Media during the elections for your MEP. To paraphrase, he said people have asked him why he isnât out canvassing in the election, his response, âhe was number 1 on the partyâs candidate list so he âisâ your MEPâ. The only way to stop him being an MEP was for the whole party to achieve ânilâ votes. The 2 takeaways, the constituents have no choice, and a rotten MP cannot be removed without removing a whole party.
FPTP as with Democracy has it flaws but it is far superior and safer than all the alternative.
June 30, 2024
Yes, the current Tory government and the Labour alternative are pretty much one and the same in most policies. Funnily enough, the Sunday Tory press today claims that Labour will destroy the country in 100 days, so what does that say about the Tories. Maybe they will destroy it in 95 or 105 days instead.
“They both backed COVID lockdowns.” How terrible, apparently the right wingers think it would have been far better to just let all those old people (and teachers and …) die a horrible death.
“They both backed printing large sums of money which proved inflationary.” Delusional. The main cause of the recent inflationary spike was the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“They both back OBR orthodoxy which makes a growth policy difficult.” More babble speak.
“They have both presided over large increases in NHS waiting lists.” The main cause is demographic, i.e. baby boomers.
“They both backed the Windsor framework limiting the opportunities of Brexit.” The alternative was a right wing fantasy.
IR35: this was introduced to stop tax avoidance (e.g. by BBC presenters and software techies). Of course people who hate government and therefore hate taxes always cheer when someone is cheating the system (especially the rich).
Reform is a “populist” party run by rich people who made all their money from the financial services industry but who pretend that now they are champions against the financial services industry. “Populists” always have simplistic answers to complicated problems, often by claiming that immigrants are the source of all the problems of poor people, when in fact it is the fault of rich people like those who run Reform. Unfortunately people who voted for Brexit are taken in by this. So a lot of Brexiters will vote for Reform.
Instead of proportional representation, we could have ranked voting, so that in the end each candidate commands a majority of the votes, instead of a minority of the votes. The Tories have long opposed this because it was convenient for the Tories that Labour and Lib Dems split the anti-Tory vote. Now that Reform has come along to split the right wing vote, the Tories might suddenly discover reason to support ranked voting.
June 30, 2024
I also disagree with proportional representation.
Reform will need to build support and win a majority of MPs in Parliament.
I doubt they will do that this time around but they may do in the following Parliament, especially if there is a coming together of Reform and proper Conservative politicians.
June 30, 2024
I do not agree with the Uni-Party contention of many commenters on this blog. While the Conservatives may put up taxes yet further, Labour would put up taxes even more. Though the Conservatives cannot really prove it, I think it is correct Labour would put up taxes more – and ÂŁ2,000 (over 5 years) is probably on the low side.
So without great confidence in the Conservatives (though with Conservatives there would be less wokery and less restrictions on free speech) I have nevertheless sent in my postal vote and voted for the Conservatives. Like practically all Conservative voters it has been grudging.
I have been crossing the Pennines to help Andrea Jenkyns because she was practically the only Conservative M.P. to have both backed Boris Johnson and publicly written a letter to ask for a vote of confidence to remove Sunak and so not contributed to their own electoral problems. The seat is competitive. I hope others go to Morley to help her.
I believe the opinion polls are incorrect. From speaking to acquaintances and listening to others I think the Conservative vote is a little more resilient than polling suggests. I think Labour’s vote will be nearer to 30% than 40%. Most important it is clear the critical momentum is now with Reform and they are now getting support from many who would otherwise have voted Labour rather than Conservative and are on the threshold of winning many seats in Parliament (especially as their support is far from evenly spread), so much so that they may prevent Labour from winning any overall majority. This is the result of anger at immigration and lack of support for both Sunak and Starmer who both unlike Farage lack charisma. Also, many people are treating this election like a reality TV show – it is becoming like a public vote in a celebrity game show!
June 30, 2024
âWhy donât they demand an end to the colossal Bank losses coming from needlessly selling long bonds at a loss? â
Maybe they donât know about this as it hasnât been in the media.
From your diary today you seem to be much closer to the Reform policies than the Conservative ones. Maybe you should offer to help Reform and put our country before your party which has ignored your advice for years. Reform is a tiny party with limited funds. It is an arduous task for them to compete against the well-funded big parties.
Iâve been delivering leaflets for Reform, doing my bit to help save this country.
June 30, 2024
Donât blame Reform for the mess your party is in. You have brought this all on yourselves by ignoring your voters. Your party could have stayed in power for decades if only you hadnât gone down the Net Zero, high taxes and uncontrolled immigration route plus the Brexit betrayal.
June 30, 2024
+many
June 30, 2024
I have reservations over Reform policies but as a life-long Thatcherite Conservative, I have even more concerns over a Sunak and Hunt Conservative party.
I will be again be voting for our previous MP, Christopher Chope, as I would have for our host, if he had been my MP and was standing for re-election. There are many Conservatives I would not have voted for !
The forthcomimg war in the party will be between the Wets/One Nation left wing and the centre right faction which will start at a disadvantage because there will be fewer of them left. We badly need many more people like our host and Lord Frost in the Commons to have any chance of taking back our party.
A merger with Reform looks to be the best way forward to reclaiming the centre-right ground and having any chance of beating Labour. That will probably be unlikely to be achievable until the electorate has rediscovered just how bad a Labour government really is ! I hope it will be by 2029, but it might not be until 2034…..
June 30, 2024
‘Why donât they demand an end to the colossal Bank losses coming from needlessly selling long bonds at a loss?’
I think Farage and Tice would readily listen should you propose it.
‘Lawyers are ready to show [turning around the boats] is illegal.’
Will the law-subsidy farmers be able to do this after leaving the ECHR; another of Reform UK’s aims.
‘France refuses to let the people land.’
I understand the rules are they should be accepted by France.âHow about escalating by sending them on a Royal Navy ship.âThis will bring the French government to the table through an old form of diplomacy.
‘PR systems usually bring weak governments.âThe parties form a coalition by ditching the promises to voters that got them elected making accountability difficult or impossible.’
Peter Hitchens, at the UnHerd Alternative Debate, also argued against PR.âHe agreed that a first-past-the-post advantage is a party can be voted out, not cling to power by having few rigid values and being able to form a motley coalition one election after another.
June 30, 2024
Sir John
The bit you havenât tapped into is that although Labour is predicted to have a massive majority, the actually numbers voting for them are said to be considerably less than when Corbyn stood as their leader.
They take away from that is that no one wants Labour, and considerably less want the Sunak/Hunt version of Government either.
If the aim was to destroy the Conservative Party it would appear that job has been well done for a generation.
June 30, 2024
An 80 seat majority a chance to secure a fabulous future. A Conservative Government would have pushed the economy, created the money and the wealth to consolidate that massive advantage. A Socialist Government would have squandered it with uncontrolled expenditure, high taxation and massive borrowing having no means to earn going forward.
What sort of Government have we had in the last 5 years they deserve to lose they refused to manage, they refused to be a Conservative Government.
By becoming a Socialist, following Socialist doctrines they destroyed the Conservative movement and party.
In trashing the Conservative Party, they created Reform, they created the reason for change. Reform was the consequence of the Johnson Government, emblazoned further by Sunak, failing to hear, listen and work with the Country
June 30, 2024
Sir John
The One Nation tribe of un-named individuals (but we can guess) have managed to get the media talking about lurching to the ârightâ. The majority of the UK and its people do not fit in that category, never have, so would never vote that way. There has never been a Conservative MP voted on right-wing policies.
The problem now is the headline writers (what some of us know as click-bait artists), the headline sound-bite is to grab attention generally it is for something mythical. But essentially to expose advertisers to the viewer.
The UK Population in practice and in deed is all for working hard and achieving the best they can be â that is the centre-ground. All Parties in Parliament have deserted them, they have all become die-hard Socialists, knee jerk responses to noisy terrorists that want to undermine society, by making the noisy rabble on the fringes believe in entitlement without contribution.
All the Parties wish to dictate not work with the people that do the work that keeps them in office. They all have the Socialist trait of equality, an ideology of all and everyone being 100% the same and part of the collective. âLevelling up means levelling downâ â Government will guide you along the right path as long as you agree with the diktats that canât be questioned coming from above(?)
âNutZeroâ would be a case in point, the diktats are do as we say, not how can we move forward. Do you want a cleaner safer World of course you do, but as now do you want to be the only ones out 3.5Billion people paying for it? That is not a Parliament, a government wishing to work with people to achieve equal aims. That is a Parliament treating the minions as their serfs, their slaves.
June 30, 2024
I have been amazed by our Parliament condoning those that do âCriminal Damageâ and think they should get away with it.
Even worse when it is shown these same individuals have had as their major sponsors being foreign citizens that have no connection to the UK. Then the only UK sponsor being a commercially and politically motivated individual promoting his own business to make him a few more millions.
Then you rationalize things further our Parliament is promoting foreign criminals to profit from the UK Taxpayer from the criminal activity, they donât stop it they condone it. In an airy-fairy speech government did suggest it should crack down on this criminal activity by targeting the traffickers, it hasnât happened they canât find them. Yet last week the BBC managed to get an interview with one of the guys charging people ÂŁ1.5K for a seat on his boats.
June 30, 2024
Voting Conservative is a vote for far left fascist Labour.
Vote Reform.
June 30, 2024
Sir John
What ever is the outcome on Thursday the picture is clear, it is that this Conservative Government has trashed their 80-seat majority all on their own. They deserted those that voted for them.
Government, the Cabinet, is a Collective all with equal responsibility to what has happened and I hope that is remembered when any of those individuals suggest they should be the new Conservative Leader.
June 30, 2024
@ Ian B – I think you are right although I do wonder if the One Nation types had gone further Left and more closely mimicked the Labour offering it might have made it a more difficult choice to decide whether to support those who had betrayed us and failed or those who have yet to betray us and fail.
June 30, 2024
Reform’s tax proposals you do not mention but surely those are very attractive?
A personal allowance of ÂŁ20,000 seems very approporiate, not least because the statutory wage threshold (full time, 35 hour week) would be at least ÂŁ20,820.80.
(National Living Wage for those aged 21 or older is ÂŁ11.44 per hour – x 35 hours x 52 weeks = ÂŁ20,820.80.)
Then raising the Inheritance Tax(IHT) threshold to ÂŁ2 million likewise, to help stop it being a tax to clobber the middle classes. The administrative burden of IHT compliance is onerous, as anyone just perusing the main IHT400 form that must be submitted in all cases can see.
June 30, 2024
It seems to me that the logical conclusion of your arguments, Sir John, is to pick up the phone and talk to Richard Tice and offer your experience and support for their policies. It sounds to me like you would be welcome in Reform and would find it a more like minded berth than the Conservative Party.
June 30, 2024
PS. the result of coalitions in the two patry FPTP system can be disastrous in a way that would not happen with PR. Cameron’s and Clegg’s Fixed Term parliaments Act was the price of Cameron’s premiership. It gave the Remainers a shield from the electorate, behind which they set about undermining Brexit with disastrous consequences which UK is still disadvantaged by to this day. Boris had only one choice: to prorogue Parliament. That led to the Supreme Court removing the sovereign froom Parliament, where he or she had sat happily for three centuries, in order to argue that the prorogation was done to parliament, not by parliament, and was therefore illegal. That damage to the constitution remains unrepaired. There are more.
No. Two-party stitch ups are not the answer.
June 30, 2024
“We elect a named MP for a constituency which makes MPs much more attentive to local views and needs”.
Yes, that is what we expect of them but over the past decades and with changing governments, their personal involvement into the aspirations of their constituents for our country have been ignored. Although they may have been elected on that ticket.
They all vowed to honour the decision of the people in the 2016 Referendum but post election, their “honour” disappeared along with our trust in them.
And in UKIP we saw in a new Party a light coming through and we joined millions of others in voting for them. In 2015, UKIP amassed more votes than Libdem and SNP combined with 12.4% of the total votes but received just a single seat in the HoC.
And this is the reason why we desperately need PR in our electoral system, else we’ll just get more of the same from either Party in our TWO PARTY State. And that is no longer good enough for us, anymore.
June 30, 2024
They are all Career Politicians. “What’s in it for ME”. YOU are irrelevant.
June 30, 2024
On PR you say âThe parties form a coalition by ditching the promises to voters that got them elected â But the Conservatives won a majority under FPTP and also ditched the promises that got them elected. So thatâs not much of an argument against PR is it ?
June 30, 2024
Tone-deaf Sunak claims the country is in far better shape than 2010.
He obviously hasn’t been outside his protected little Establishment bubble for a very long time.
July 1, 2024
never has been !
June 30, 2024
“There is a frustration that the two parties are so alike. They both backed COVID lockdownsâŠâŠ Both allowed large scale migration.”
In addition to this extensive list, both, and indeed every single one of the existing Parliamentary parties, support the delusion that CO2 determines global temperature and hence climate and weather. This theory is incapable of explaining past climate let alone predicting any future climate. It has no explanation for why temperature rose in the Cretacious period when CO2 was falling, no explanation for ice ages and no explanation as to why we warmed out of the last ice age just 11,000 years ago. And no explanation as to why CO2 followed temperature over the last 500,000 years as shown by the Antarctic Vostok ice core data. Or for the Minoan, Roman and Middle Ages warm periods in which the last saw Icelandic Norsemen colonise Greenland for several hundred years which would have required temperatures to be 5 degrees warmer than today. No explanation as to how todayâs melting glaciers are revealing 7000 year old tree stumps in BC, Canada and elsewhere.
So destructive of our economy and well-being will be the attempt to achieve the unachievable and unnecessary Net Zero that we should have a referendum on this issue. Especially when the climate activists believe that China and India live on a different planet with a different atmosphere to us and hence are allowed to emit vast quantities of CO2.
June 30, 2024
Under the heading Proportional Representation there are different solutions that allow a constituency candidate together with a few additional parliamentary members elected to make the final number of representatives proportional to the actual numbers of votes usually within very few percent.
To try to make the point that FPTP is always preferable to âPRâ is rather curious from the owner of this blog.
June 30, 2024
@JBW – who gets to choose the candidates? The People or the Political Group Bosses?
July 1, 2024
@Ian B, are you sure that with FPTP it is always the People who get to choose the candidates?
I am afraid that the choice has nothing to do with what voting system is then used.
June 30, 2024
Unlike the Tories Starmer has said that he will make enemies of those who did not vote for him.
As soon as Sir John said “I have to think of people who did not vote for me.” and Boris said “The Red Wall votes are borrowed.” I knew that the backtracking on election pledges had commenced.
Labour are going to be utterly ruthless.
July 1, 2024
Just watched the Reform meeting in Birmingham. All the speakers sounded like people awaiting office. Pity they will not get he seats they deserve. I suggest Mr Sunak gets talking lessons from Nigel Farage and the others. They spoke with real commitment to the cause. Sorry but the Tories have asked for what is coming and Labour will be no better. The two parties seem to be the same which is the problem. At least Reform give some ideas of what can be done which is not coming from the others. I have been dithering but not now. We must build for the future and I see that through Reform just I did through UKIP. A long job but if we do not give up hope and don’t die, as I have been going for so many years, we will get there.
July 3, 2024
As with UKIP and the final Euro MP elections, Reform is the tool to rightly smash the PCP and as a whole they thoroughly deserve it. From the ruins, a true conservative offer can be rebuilt.
Incredible that the conservative leadership since 2010 never called upon John to serve in cabinet. The treasury cabinet posts needed his expertise so badly. Which sums the situation up.