“You’ll never live like common people
You’ll never do whatever common people do”
Are the Tory’s on the way back, the party of the right? Has Kemi turned the ship around?
Well, yes and no.
Yes: YouGov shows that a year ago Reform lead the Tories 29% to 16%. Today its neck-and-neck, both on 20%.
No: the Tory improvement is marginal, the real story is the collapse in Reform’s following.
In terms of her own popularity, there has been an improvement, today: Burnham+ 7.9, Badenoch -1.2, Farage -27.6
She has benefitted from circumstances, as no one could have foreseen the debacle of Starmer’ reign. Whilst, on the right, Reform, with their ongoing lead in the polls captured the headlines, keeping her below the radar. The result is, that, until the emergence of Burnham, Kemi hid behind her opponents failings.
At this week’s party conference her headline speech was part of her “”battle for the soul of this nation.” A modest ambition when compared to her predecessor, Liz Truss, who is “saving the west.”
Cutting to the chase it was nothing new; defense, benefit recipients are scroungers, love for pensioners, tax cuts, shrinking the state.
Two highlights for me were: more drilling in the North Sea, to increase our tax revenues and drive down energy prices, and no IHT on the family home.
Blah, blah, blah!
The climate emergency didn’t merit discussion, unless you include more drilling to make it worse.
‘The climate emergency didn’t merit discussion, unless you include more drilling to make it worse’
This summer’s excess deaths from the heatwaves, warnings from the intelligence services of serious disruption to our food supply from 2030; so what?
Instead, she committed to repealing the Climate Change Act, and telling anyone who will listen that reaching net zero by 2050 is “impossible” without bankrupting Britain.
This is a remarkable about-face from 2021, when, as a Treasury minister, she told parliament net zero would cost less than 2% of GDP, which would come from “increased investment in growth markets of the future”.
She also has a unlikely role-model, Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei. His government has imposed dramatic cuts to pensions, universities and public healthcare, as a result poverty is once more surging.
Poverty isn’t something Kemi cares about, its their own fault. Too much procreation, SKY TV and cigarettes. Their punishments is the return of the two-child benefit cap which will return hundreds of thousands of children into poverty, creating the next generation of NEETS
Of course, not all benefits are equal. In fact pensions are sacred, especially the triple-lock. After all, other than pensioners, who else votes Tory?
‘Poverty isn’t something Kemi cares about, its their own fault. Too much procreation, SKY TV and cigarettes’
The reason we have all these malingerers is too many benefits: “Conservatives don’t believe in a something for nothing culture. The best welfare is a well-paying job. Cutting the welfare bill will allow us to fund our defense”.
Well-paying job? Many would be pleased just to have a job. The numbers don’t compute.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the estimated number of job vacancies was 702,000 for the three-months from June to August 2026. Whereas, there was 1.78m unemployed, 4.9% of people 16+. Isolating those aged 16-24, 751,000 were unemployed, a rate of 16.4%.
Kemi like all good right-wing libertarians sees free-speech as the “the birthright of every citizen”, however this only applies if your thoughts align with hers. As an example, she proposes a blanket ban on pro-Palestinian protests, who supports Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza, with the justification that “Israel is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the UK”.
As for immigrants, well its ICE, ICE, baby! Mass deportations, widespread surveillance, in-line with Trump’s ICE. Its quite ironic from someone who described herself as being “to all intents and purposes a first-generation immigrant,” of Nigerian parents.
‘Well-paying job? Many would be pleased just to have a job’
Kemi isn’t quite a populist, but she is giving it a go.
Speaking of populists, we turn our attention to the Greens who, after masquerading as cuddly tree-huggers, have turned out to be closet racists.
With their right-wing contemporaries being Islamophobic it seems natural for a populist party of the left to be antisemitic, which explains why their conference supported a motion that defines Zionism as being “to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population” in historic Palestine.
Having researched Zionism it can be described as the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and a homeland in their ancestral region of Israel. They, like other nations, deserve a safe and independent state of their own.
It can be argued that recent actions under PM Netanyahu have gone too far, displacing Palestinians with discriminatory policies or conflict.
Nonetheless, there is still no excuse for antisemitism.
The net result is that the party has isolated itself at home and abroad.
‘after masquerading as cuddly tree-huggers, have turned out to be closet racists’
They are right to be hostile towards the Netanyahu government, and the obscene racism of his far-right ministers, and the atrocities they are committing in Gaza. But that doesn’t mean that country itself shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
The Greens rejection of a two-state solution in the Middle East on the basis that Israel is illegitimate in its conception, is little more than an exercise in racism.
As I have long written, deep-down the majority of Brits aren’t racist. The polls endorse this; the Greens hit a high of 21% in March, today gravity and reality have returned, as they fall back to 11%. As for their leader, Polanski his approval rating is -24, only a little better than Nigel Farage. As I said, Brits don’t like racists!
If the Greens want to attract a wider audience, and to campaign effectively on the climate, they need to understand that the road to a low-carbon future isn’t paved with rows about antisemitism. Just as labor did under Corbyn.
Last nights election result in Holborn & St Pancras, a seat the Greens were capable of winning tells a story.
Yes, they were up against a well-liked local candidate who likely benefitted from the Burnham bounce, but any cosmopolitan constituency is unlikely to favour candidates from a party that passes racist measure.
Brits just don’t like that!
“Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees”
The Tories remain in la-la-land, offering up more of the same. It’s as if they are in an ideological time warp.
Tax cuts for upper-middle- and high-income families, pledges to boost spending on defense and prison places, while also reducing the national debt. All based on the premise of £70bn of “savings” in cuts to the civil service, regulators and working-age benefits.
It’s as real as Pegasus! The mythical undeserving benefit-claiming idlers and enterprising, overtaxed middle-class families.
The biggest fib is “something for everyone”.
This is aimed at winning back voters in their former “blue wall” heartlands, now held by LibDems, and those who backed Boris Johnson in 2019 who have switched allegiance to Reform. These groups have very different attitudes. Whilst both might have voted “leave” in 2016, the blue wall is socially liberal, whereas the red wall is socially conservative and nationalistic.
The blue wall isn’t coming back as long as the party stays so far to the right. These voters, myself included are socially liberal and many voted” Remain.”
The best that can be said for their conference was that the delegates enjoyed themselves. Like Kemi, they missed the fact that the electorate no longer trusts them. Electing a new leader with the same policies is just a different dog with the same fleas
The battle today is old versus young, haves versus have-nots. The under-50s versus the over-65s. The former want hope, a future, which is what the latter are still enjoying, as their triple-lock pensions gobble everything-up!
This is the battle being fought in France and Spain; it’s coming to a town near you soon!
Lyrically, we start with “Common People” by Pulp, which is dedicated to Kemi and all those idle malingerers. We end with something different, “Strange Fruit” written by Lewis Allan, popularised by Billie Holiday, which is dedicated to the Greens.
Me, I’m practising becoming a barricader!
Philip
@coldwarsteve
Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.
Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s
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