In the tiny, foetid world of Westminster politics, where the rats are too well-paid to jump ship, passions are stirring and stresses are building up. Despite growing unpopularity, the Cleggerons – or unidentified factions therein - want to acquire an electoral identity and put up candidates at the next playtime. Others, who still have some ambitions of being Conservatives, want to go it alone in the expectation of being able to acquire a majority vote.

View full article here

Intriguing prospects.
One wonders if it is the sight of Mr Cameron hijacking his party which accounts for Mr Clegg's distress. With the recent acquisition of that armour-plated ministerial car, he can at least be sure he is safe from the voters.
This UKIP voter doubts that the number of Conservative MPs departing in the event of a schism would be sufficient to swell UKIP's electoral prospects significantly. Most would stay close to the trough.

I agree that the Conservative Party needs to split. I have never been a member of the Conservatives, but I used to vote for them until disillusionment with their policies and exasperation at their lack of robust opposition, set in around the turn of the millenium. By coincidence, I live next door to the constituency chairman and know several of their most active members. They lobbied hard (but failed) to gain my vote at the last election. All of them broadly agreed with my views on the EU, immigration, taxation and so on. Conrastingly, most were keen on Cameron and forgave the U-turns and his "wet" views - claiming that he was very media friendly and would attract voters. To them, "power was everything" - they were adamant that the party would shift to the right as soon as it was in government. At the time, this belief seemed complete nonsense; however, if true, surely this would have meant that the party was planning to deceive the electorate of their true intentions when canvassing their votes.

It is often said that in some labour heartlands, if a goat with a red rosette stood as a labour candidate, it would still be elected. From my experience, many conservative party members suffer from the same syndrome - as long as the candidate has a blue rosette, they will vote for them. Winning power seems to be the only goal with some hazy notion that things would be much better as a conservative government would mean that at least labour were no longer in power.
It angers me, that the one mainstream party that should be representing my views (which appear to be shared by a majority of its members) has been hijacked by the centre left and its supine membrship has allowed it to happen with bearly a whimper. A splitting of the party cannot come soon enough.

Please don't mention this to Lord Tebbit. He still thinks his party can be made conservative from within.

Meanwhile,

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/alexs ... ower-grab/

So presumably we're talking a rump of Cornerstone? Or have we younger Tory blood hunting for the Taxed Enough Already mantle?
I am wary that they would all have a Party mindset and approach to politics. Pre-selling your vote to Party, no matter what issues may emerge, makes you little more than a 'bot. I want MPs who blog and discuss issues, the Westminster bubble must be blown open for the Nation to see.

Stuart:



Such is the optimism which pervades the thinking of all in the political class - there is always that hope for power, no matter how distant the prospect. As I posted previously here, it is only when our current party political system is entirely dismantled can there be any progress towards real democracy.
Not only cannot the Cons party be made conservative from within, IMO neither is the whole political system as represented by the 'Westminster village' able to be reformed from within. A political revolution must now occur, and the sooner the Coalition and the rest of the party systems falls into permanent dissolution, the better. We can then begin the urgent debate as to how best to replace it with real representative democracy.
As things are, the lunatics are not only running the asylum, they have locked the doors and thrown the keys away.

That caption looks like a Homer Simpson moment ... "D'oh!"

Actually it kind of sums up the present administration rather concisely.

Clegg and Cameron, good speakers and then what? What lies behind the facade? Nowt.

The Tories, I long ago gave up with those twats, I hate socialists and they are socialists by another name, it has been a source of constant amusement/amazement that the Tories have stayed together for such a long time, when they booted out Thatcher, I thought the schism would come, then after Major's defeat....but it didn't happen, it is power and the ecstatic fetishistic lust for the greasy reins of power...... but in the end, who really pulls the strings now?? I'll tell you, it isn't Westminster.

100% right and the sooner this happens, the better.

Canada provides a perfect example of this. For decades there were Not Conservatives, calling themselves Progressive Conservatives. Under PM "Lyin'" Brian Mulroney, they won two back-to-back majorities and still did nothing Conservative. They did bring in a VAT and a Free Trade Agreement, the first of which universally unpopular but enabled successive Liberal governements reign in the defecit.

Of course, conservatives do have an option, and that is to not vote. A splinter party developed in the West called The Reform Party. Over a period of years, this party increased from it's regional origins to a national force. It changed its name to The Alliance. Eventually the rump of the PCs joined th Alliance to form The Conservative Party, which has slowly increased but all federal parties have a problem getting a majority these days due to the Bloq Quebequois.

I think, with the UKIP and BNP getting so many votes, the process is well on its way in the UK.

What mystifies me is how the Conservative party has been captured and run by the centre left when the majority of the grassroots appear to be from the party's right-wing. My belief is that the aging membership is living 30 years in the past and still believes the BBC to be politically impartial and that the opinions and judgements of the broadsheets (particularly the Telegraph) to be sound. Consequently, they voted Cameron as leader because he was endorsed by the MSM. They were told he was "media friendly" and would win them lots of new voters; what he actually stood for, politically, didn't seem to concern most of them.

Conservative party "grassroots" rarely "do" politics in any meaningful sense. By and large, they leave that to the hired help.

All one needs to know about this dogs dinner of a coalition is that the Labour party would be happy to have an election now, after being booted out only 6 months ago, haveing totally wrecked the country and then chooseing Red Ed as it's leader.

I have to hold my hand up as one of the useful idiots (or useless, depending on your POV) who still has hope of a conservative revival in the Conservative Party. Although I'll be laughed at on here I actually deliver leaflets and do my teeny weeny bit trying to get involved. Just last month we got the ballots for the Scottish list MSP's and there were a couple who seemed like proper small state conservatives (out of 9, the other 7 were pretty dreadful) and I put my x next to their names. I know it's meaningless in the grand scheme of things but what's the alternative?

I do see that the political system we have here is completely dysfunctional as far as representing the views of the electorate, we may as well just have 500 cardboard cut-out's on wheels that the whips can push through the division lobby for all the good most MP's are (and the way the EU is motoring ahead we soon won't even need that, just a regional committee submit reports on how well we are meeting our targets to Brussels every 6 months) but I really don't see an alternative in my lifetime. It would be nice to think that a peaceful transformation of our system of governance can happen in my lifetime but I really don't see it happening so I'm trying to make the best of a bad job.

I know people will think that this attitude is part of the problem, as long as people think like me nothing will change, etc. but I'm firmly of the belief that the majority of Britons are brain dead morons who couldn't tell you who the Chancellor of the Exchequer is, let alone the intricacies of our political system and the Party's in it. Maybe that's unfair to the populace at large, but it's what I see round about me, from all walks of life.

Trying to get people roused in a political cause in UK must seem like mission impossible. it's no wonder Labour simply tries to buy votes with benefits, far easier (and no doubt more effective) than trying to govern responsibly. It's tragic that the Conservatives now seem to be of the same opinion.

I get the impression that the Conservative Party assumes that its core voters are unconditionally loyal and will put up with almost anything as long as it's from a nominally Conservative government. With the core vote in the bag, they attempt to pander to a variety of interests via focus groups. e.g. X percent of the population support the WWF in some way, so they offer things angled to appeal to them etc. None of this is particularly based on Conservative policies derived from Conservative principles, or any clear principles come to that, so they end up with an incoherent mess of policies they assume the core vote will go along with through loyalty.