Brecon & Radnorshire by-election date confirmed as criminal Tory fights to stay
From the Daily Mirror: The Tory party has formally triggered a crucial by-election that could see Lib Dems unseat a convicted criminal.
Category: #ToriesOnTheWayOut
#ToriesOnTheWayOut
Brexit: Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt risk making Tory party unelectable if they allow no deal, poll suggests
From The Independent: Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have been warned they risk making the Conservatives unelectable if they take Britain out of the European Union without a deal.
Tory MP Chris Davies removed and by-election triggered after losing recall petition over faked invoices
From The Independent: Expenses cheat MP Chris Davies has been stripped of his seat, plunging the next Conservative leader into a perilous by-election. A recall petition easily cleared the 10 per cent threshold for triggering a by-election, with 19 per cent of local voters – a total of 10,005 people – demanding Mr Davies be removed.
Tory members happy to trash UK economy and destroy their own party to get Brexit, poll finds
From The Independent: Conservative Party members would happily support the break-up of the UK, “significant damage” to the British economy and even the destruction of their own party in order to secure Brexit, a poll has found.
Boris Johnson could lose his seat as voters under 50 abandon Conservatives
From the Daily Mirror: Boris Johnson could lose his Uxbridge & South Ruislip seat to a surge of younger voters, research shows.
Conservative Party could face electoral defeat on 1997 scale over Brexit, former Tory minister warns
From The Independent: Former minister Jo Johnson is set to claim the Conservative Party could face an electoral defeat on the scale of the party’s historic loss in 1997 over Theresa May’s plans for Brexit.
Labour gains three-point lead as May’s Brexit plan hits buffers
From The Observer: Labour has opened up a three-point lead over the Tories as Conservative Leave supporters appear to be deserting Theresa May’s party in droves, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.
Compared with a month ago, the Tories have dropped five points to 36% while Labour has gained three to stand on 39%. The Liberal Democrats have fallen by one point to 7%, while Ukip has gone up two to 8%.
Opinium found that the Tory decline was primarily a result of Leave supporters deserting the party. Last month (on 11 October) 59% of Leave supporters said they would vote Conservative.
But in Sunday’s poll, conducted entirely after details of May’s Brexit deal were made public last week, the proportion of Leavers backing the Tories has dropped by 10 points to 49%. Labour’s support among Leavers has risen by four points to 26%, while Ukip has surged by six points among Leavers to 16%.
The poll will encourage Jeremy Corbyn’s party as it tries to push for a general election as the means to end the Brexit chaos.
Recording reveals Tory official admitting people far more likely to vote Labour on ‘caring stuff’
From The Independent: A Conservative official has admitted the party’s own research shows people are “far more likely” to vote Labour on “caring stuff” and as a result tailored their local elections message on bins and council tax.
Prepare for Labour government, bank says as it predicts 31% chance of Corbyn taking power this year
From Daily Telegraph: Analysts at the bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods conclude that the chances of the Tory Government collapsing after failing to win support for a Brexit deal have jumped, which could lead to a snap election and Labour victory.
Ruth Davidson rules herself out of any bid to succeed Theresa May to become prime minister
From The Independent: Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson has ruled out ever becoming prime minister for the sake of her mental health and relationship.
SNP membership overtakes Tories, pushing Conservative Party into third place
From The Independent: SNP membership has overtaken the Conservatives for the first time, pushing the UK’s governing party into third place.
Labour is Britain’s richest party – and it’s not down to the unions
From The Guardian: Some argued that the dead generated more income for the Conservative Party than the living, because subscriptions from the party’s 124,000 members produced a paltry £835,000 for the party’s national accounts, which was half the £1.7m the party received from legacies and wills.
So concerned were the Conservatives about the idea that the party was literally dying off that the party deputy chairman, James Cleverly, tweeted on Wednesday night that local associations retained the bulk of membership subscriptions, amounting to a total of £4m a year. In any event, the claim is only true if the party’s living donors, such as the JCB owner, Anthony Bamford, and Lord Ashcroft, were excluded from consideration. Donors raised £34.3m between them, three-quarters of the Tories’ total annual income.
It also helps explain why the Tories have to spend so much time publicly fundraising. At this year’s fundraising Black and White ball, one person paid £55,000 to spend a day shadowing Theresa May; another paid £12,500 to have home-cooked dinner with the environment secretary, Michael Gove, and his wife, Sarah Vine.
Tories better off with May than any other leader, poll suggests
From The Guardian: Replacing Theresa May with Boris Johnson, or other potential leadership candidates, would not boost the Conservative party’s chances of winning the next election, a poll has suggested.
In findings that will offer some relief to the prime minister, an ICM survey for the Guardian found that voters believe the Tories would be more likely to lose the next election if May was replaced by Johnson or five other potential successors.
The only scenario deemed likely to improve Tory prospects, according to the poll, was if the party was led by an unspecified person who was “quite young and able [and] not currently in government”.
George Osborne says Tories are ‘screwed’ if Theresa May fails to connect with new voters
From PoliticsHome: The Conservatives will be “politically screwed” if Theresa May fails to reach out to a more diverse group of voters, George Osborne has warned.
The former chancellor – who was sacked by Mrs May in 2016 and now edits the Evening Standard newspaper – said the Prime Minister needed to find “a way to reconnect” with voters beyond the party’s traditional base.
He told GQ: “If the Conservative Party does not try to reconnect with modern Britain, with urban, ethnically diverse, sexually diverse Britain, it is politically screwed.
“The current leadership needs to find a way to reconnect or we will need new leadership.”
Labour opens up biggest lead over Tories since general election
From The Guardian: Labour has opened up its biggest poll lead over the Conservatives since shortly after last June’s general election, as the government’s chaotic handling of Brexit appears to have triggered a dramatic fall in support for Theresa May and the Tories.
The latest Opinium poll for the Observer puts Labour on 40%, the same score as last month, but four points ahead of the Tories who have dropped by six points since early June to 36%.
May’s leadership ratings have also nosedived, while those of Jeremy Corbyn have remained stable. May’s net approval rating – when the number of people who disapprove of the way she is leading the country is subtracted from the number who approve – has tumbled from -8% in June to -24% over a turbulent political period of just five weeks.
She is now well behind Corbyn who is on -12%, little changed from -13% last month.
Activate deactivated: Conservatives’ Momentum imitation folds after 8 months
From The London Economic: Activate, the Conservatives’ imitation of Momentum, has folded after just eight months.
The political movement was set up to engage young people in centre-right politics but has struggled to make any headway since it was launched in August last year.
Many have argued that the group was doomed from the start having been set the impossible mission of becoming the vehicle for a conservative mass movement that never existed.
A visit to the Activate website returns a ‘404’ error – while the group’s Twitter account now shows only a single tweet under a revised name of “The artist formerly known as Activate”.
Labour’s lead over Conservatives surges to 7% in polls over fears brutal Tory cuts will spark recession
From the Daily Mirror: Labour has surged to a 7% poll lead amid fears that ongoing brutal cuts by the Tories will spark a recession.
Labour open up eight-point lead over Tories in new poll
From The Independent: Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party has extended its lead over the Conservatives to eight points, according to a new poll by Survation. It puts Labour on 45 per cent, with Theresa May’s Conservatives trailing behind on 37 per cent, and the Liberal Democrats under Vince Cable on six per cent.
New Zealand: Conservative government loses election to Labour-Green coalition
From The Guardian: In New Zealand the conservative National Party has lost power following their general election, to a coalition led by the New Zealand Labour Party and backed by the Greens.
New Zealand Labour has pledged to wipe out child poverty, make university free, decriminalise abortion, and make all rivers swimmable within ten years. Read more
#CrabbMustGo: Photos from day of action in Preseli Pembrokeshire
#PreseliPembrokeshire #CrabbMustGo: Great photos from a day of action led by Owen Jones to unseat #StephenCrabb as Tory…
Posted by Stop The Tories Channel on Monday, October 16, 2017