The Tories can’t celebrate their glacial rise towards where they were polling in 2024, and Reform should be very worried – not burying their heads – about how far they have fallen in a year. But becoming boring, and thereby increasingly irrelevant is absolutely toxic. The risk is the “Boring!” slap down becomes self attaching
Aside from grabbing a bit of media attention in the run up to Thursday, I really don’t see what the purpose of the rally was. It may well be the case that I just don’t understand the complexities of modern day media strategies, but my takeaway was that the whole ordeal made Badenoch look a little bit lost at sea.
The effective argument between the main political parties is whether we should go bankrupt in the 2040s, bring it forward to the 2030s, or put it off until the 2050s.
I am beginning to harbour suspicions that Reform don’t actually have an ideologically consistent policy platform. Their beliefs seem to be grounded in an ideological framework I would term as ‘Pollism’ – creative, I know. There is no actual belief behind their ideas, nor is there any philosophy to be anchored to.
ConservativeHome’s round-up of ten of our best articles from the preceding week.
And yet, if yesterday’s dealings were anything to go by, it appears as though that promise has been broken. Because what we saw yesterday was not a break from the past, but merely a continuation of it. The Tories have been criticised for labelling Andy Burnham as ‘Keir Starmer 2.0’, but maybe they were right after all.
We were quietly promised a ‘nothing major’, steady as she goes Budget and that’s what we got. Tinkering and avoiding. The biggest tax rise will be drag so he didn’t mention that. Kemi Badenoch had it right when she said people were entitled to ask, “Is that it?”
I still maintain, and, increasingly so do MPs on all sides, that this is a step on the path to Burnham trying a gamble. It will be as the Number 10 spinners want – a muted steady as you go Budget with some hidden signs buried in the detail. Don’t expect fireworks, but look out for the tell-tale signs that something bigger may be afoot.
So, to those obsessing over tomorrow’s numbers, might I leave you with a warning? Healey’s speech may well be bland, dull and utterly unremarkable. You might sit there, wondering where this supposed return to 1970s-style socialism is. Perhaps you will be a little deflated, owing to the fact that you had placed a bet on Healey having to ask the IMF for a post-Budget bailout.
ConservativeHome’s round-up of ten of our best articles from the preceding week.
If Kemi Badenoch is even able to do the things she wants to do, she will, logically need far more MPs than she currently has, and people coming to be potential MPs are already signed up to her programme.
Her MPs are aware of this as well. One texted me after the clash that she is “still finding the right line and length” at PMQs, whilst another argued that Kemi is very much in the “calibration stage”, tinkering with the tone and delivery to see what works best.
Trump has abandoned Ukraine in order to try and claw back some mid-term electoral traction. He’s stuffed many an economy with his failure to prosecute properly another war with Iran that he was over confident would be over in days not months. Putin thought the same in Ukraine, and should pay for that mistake.