UK Politics

This is opinion. So read it as such. But consider it please.

Obviously if you read this based on the title. I assume you oppose the Tories.

But if you are wondering why labour are so keen to manage expectations. There is a reason.

Campaign funding wise the Tories are estimated to be 19m ahead of labour. But honestly at the moment they are not spending a huge amount more.

We know the Tories are skilled at election manipulation. So there is genuine fear that the Tories plan to launch a campaign within the last few days.

I.E. when there is less time and funding to ensure fact checking is effective.

They know Starmer is more publicity aware then Corbyn was. He is able to play it in a way that dose not scare traditional Conservative voters.

They also know thanks to Boris, that the courts are unable to punish them for outright lies during any political campaign. And that Rishi is prepared to lie about and accuse civil servants of lying when challenged.

As huge as polling is against the Tories. All it would take is some dramatic claim against the party or Starmer. To convince Tory traditional voters to bite their tongue and vote Tory. While convincing left wing voters not to vote or to switch to 3rd party in seats where labour are the 1st or 2nd party.

The fact we know they have a huge amount of money unspent. Makes it clear they plan to launch something nearer the end of the election. And the only advantage of leaving it so late. Is it will limit the ability of the party to effectively react. Or fact checkers to be able to prove and distribute evidence of lies.

Please be prepared for this.

More than 120 Conservative MPs, including Jeremy Hunt, Liz Truss, Sajid Javid and Gillian Keegan, paid £100,000 of taxpayers’ money to the Conservatives’ in-house web design services, it can be revealed.

The MPs used the Bluetree website service to design their websites. When billed by Bluetree, they would pay for the sites then claim back the costs from the public purse via expenses, prompting a complaint to parliament’s expenses watchdog about the practice.

Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) has denied Bluetree is wholly owned by the party and says it is a separate organisation, but repeatedly refused to deny the party receives income from the company, saying it has “commercial arrangements with CCHQ”.

...

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) has said it would not allow websites to be funded if it was clear they were being used for party political purposes – regardless of the services offered by the company. It said if any evidence was found that rules had been broken then it would work with the MP to make amendments or repay expenses.

Senior transparency campaigners said they were alarmed if MPs were using taxpayer funds that could end up with the Conservative party. Tom Brake, the director of Unlock Democracy, said the money should be repaid if any surveys from the website were used to give MPs information for campaigning.

...

The party said Bluetree was part of a registered company separate from the Conservative party but would not say what that company was. All contact details for Bluetree on its website are directed to CCHQ and Bluetree does not have a separate Companies House registration.

Yeeer jolking.... anuthurr wan?

British democracy is designed in such a way that the collision of the country’s most powerful people and its most powerfully motivated pranksters is all but inevitable. To stand for parliament all you need is a deposit of £500 and ten signatures from people registered to vote in your chosen constituency. The low barriers to entry are a historical accident. Deposits were introduced in 1918, part of the same bill that extended the franchise to women over 30 and men who didn’t own property. The sum was set at £150 (about £9,000 in today’s money), seemingly designed to protect Parliament from being overrun by the men and women who were newly allowed to vote for it.

Yet inflation gradually lowered the cost until it was a mere inconvenience, opening the gate for a minor stampede of mad cows. Some joke candidates were single-issue satirists. In 1979 Auberon Waugh, a journalist, ran for the “Dog Lovers’ Party” in Devon against Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party (Thorpe had been charged with conspiring to murder his lover, Norman Scott, after a bungling hitman bumped off Scott’s dog. He was later acquitted).

Others had broader platforms. In 1983 the founder of the Monster Raving Loony Party ran as a candidate in a London by-election. “Screaming” Lord Sutch, a former DJ, wore a top hat and an animal-print jacket. A self-styled peer of the realm, he started a trend for joke candidates to adopt noble titles – a way to poke fun at the most obviously ridiculous element of British democracy.

Sutch proved something of a prophet – his “joke” policies kept being passed into law. As a young man he had founded the National Teenage Party, which demanded votes for 18-year-olds (the voting age used to be 21) and an end to the state’s broadcasting monopoly. (Check, check.) The Monster Raving Loony Party’s proposal for pet passports also eventually became law, and another long-standing Loony demand will be met if the Labour Party reduces the voting age to 16, as it has promised to do if it wins the election.

“Blackadder”, a popular tv sitcom, satirised the Monster Raving Loonies with its fictional “Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly Looking Stupid Party”, while Peter Hennessy, a constitutional historian, praised them as being “part of the continuity of the realm”.

In 1985 the deposit was raised from £150 to £500 in an attempt to make sure only serious candidates stood for Parliament. By then it was already too late. Lamenting the flood of candidates “dressed like idiots, behaving like idiots and waving idiotic slogans”, David Mellor, a Conservative minister, said: “I think we are just going to have to live with this.”

Archive

Eight Reform UK candidates have made a wide range of offensive remarks online about women in the past, the BBC can reveal.

The remarks include disparaging comments about the murdered MP Jo Cox, former Prime Minister Theresa May, and a black reality TV contestant.

The comments were posted between 2011 and 2023.

Reform UK and the candidates involved have all been approached for comment.

Earlier this week, the party said it planned to sue a company it hired to vet potential MPs.

Among the candidates whose comments the BBC has uncovered is Simon Moorehead, standing in Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West, who wrote on X: "[Jo] Cox was a dreadful woman, with bad ideas".

He then added: "No-one wanted her dead though"

Mark Cole, the candidate in Harwich and North Essex, said in a Facebook post: "Accidently switched on to X-Factory. The only thing worth watching is the black bint.... whoever she is."

Mr Cole deleted this comment after being approached by the BBC.

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Malcolm Cupis, the candidate for Melksham and Devizes, accused women dancing in a music video posted on Youtube of "behaving like a gutter slut" and referred to one woman as a "malignant old hag".

Mr Cupis told the BBC he stood by his comments.

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Ian Gribbin, the candidate for Bexhill and Battle, who we previously revealed had written that the UK should have stayed neutral in World War Two, posted a series of comments on the UnHerd website which included saying: “Right now all men pay for all women: we pay 80% of tax and you take out 80%. The fact you’re able to write on a technological device is all down to us.

“The cultural feminisation of the west is a disaster of epic proportions. We have elevated female characteristics – especially neuroticism, to the highest levels. Hysteria is now common place. The evidence from repeated psychologically testing is that women are appalling at taking criticism.

“Modern feminism belongs in the sewer of self hate from which it came: you say it yourself, you’re all jealous of the perceived freedoms of men.”

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Asked about the vetting issues in a BBC Panorama interview which aired on Friday, Mr Farage said: "Frankly, they [Reform UK] were so desperate for people to stand that people stood, and then we employed a big vetting company who didn't do the job.

"I can assure you that when the Labour Party go through those that apply, when the Conservative Party go through those that apply, they have to reject many."

He also said the party had had "an awful lot of candidates being stitched up in the most extraordinary way, with quotes taken out of context".

Source>> Tory stumbles drive Labour to near-record 20-point poll lead

A handy tool to sense check you're voting for the correct party.

Edit: 🤣 4 down votes. For this of all things. Lord above 😂.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/13644221

A man standing for election against Jacob Rees-Mogg in a mask covered in beans and eggs wants to introduce a “statutory brunch hour.”

Phin “Barmy Brunch” Adams is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidate for North East Somerset and Hanham. He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that at the time he decided to become a parliamentary candidate, the constituency had looked more like a safe seat.

He said: “I wanted to run against someone who looked to be safe in their seat to create a Portillo moment if possible or at the very least — let’s be realistic here — provide a none of the above alternative for those voters who are either disaffected by politics or whatever.”

He added: “If people don’t ordinarily vote, then vote extraordinary.”

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If elected as Barmy Brunch, he wants all workplaces to have to stop and serve brunch between 11am and midday. He said he wants to “MAKE BRUNCH GREAT AGAIN” — but that there is a serious point behind it too.

He said: “Yes, it's ambitious, it's bold, it's an hour long. If we can just pause and just breathe, its one of the things that I think is key to upholding the good mental health that we all really desire.”

He warned that the mental health system was “underfunded” and “broken.” He said: “However the policy manifesto is read, it can be taken as a joke, that’s fine if it brings a smile to someone’s face that’s fine — but equally, if someone comes and accuses me of not taking politics seriously, I am incredibly serious about positive mental health.”

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Barmy Brunch said he had looked at Ed Davey and considered the Liberal Democrats, but was worried by the party going against its 2010 manifesto policy of voting against tuition fee rises, which happened when he was a student. He said: “At the very least, the Monster Raving Loony Party has never broken a promise. That’s because they’ve never been elected.

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He added that some friends had told him his Barmy Bruch mask looked “scary” or criminal. But he said: “I would like to see a criminal get involved in any criminal activity wearing a face mask that has beans and egg and has holes cut out for the eyes. I think it's more in the realm of Mr Blobby than one of the drug lords in Colombia.”

The Forde report, an independent inquiry into Labour’s culture that was published in July 2022, found that the party was an “unwelcoming place for people of colour” and had a “toxic” culture of factional disputes between the party’s right and left.

In March 2023, Mr Forde gave an interview to Al Jazeera in which he said that no one from Labour had been willing to discuss the recommendations further and highlighted concerns raised by ethnic minority politicians within Labour about racism in the party.

In response, it has now emerged that the Labour Party sent Mr Forde a robust legal letter, seen by The Independent, accusing him of acting against the party’s interests and advising him that it was “considering all of its options”.

Lawyers accused Mr Forde of having made “extensive negative and highly prejudicial comments” and questioned his professional conduct.

Speaking to The Independent this week, the respected barrister said: “I don’t know if it was an attempt to silence me. I mean, they’ve couched it carefully along the lines of ‘We’re reminding you of your professional duties,’ which I found mildly irritating because I am a regulatory lawyer, and I don’t like my professionalism or ethics being questioned ... but I felt it was more.

He continued: “I’m a private individual; they can’t silence me. I fundamentally object to people saying to me, ‘You don’t know how to behave as a professional.’ I’m afraid that Black professionals get it all the time.”

This should've always been the case.

I'm just thinking about ways that PR could be passed. If Labour get a massive majority, and the party (ie. MPs) want PR but the government does not, would having a ton of MPs beyond a majority make it easier to pass as a private member's bill in defiance of the government, as even a substantial amount of Labour MPs sticking with the govt would not bring aye votes below the 50% mark? (Plus if the newly strengthened Lib Dems voted in favour)

The projected poll places the Tories on just 53 seats - with even the PM losing his seat. This would place the Tories with lowest number of seats since 1832 when party was formed.

You may need to click through to see the maps and breakdown.