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Notes -
I think you’re significantly understating the potential impact of Reform, and the amplifying effect of Farage’s return to leadership. Polling today puts them just two points behind the Tories.
A key point I’d emphasise is that Brexit hasn’t gone away. A majority voted to leave the EU, and while it’s not so well regarded now, most Leave voters blame the politicians (specifically the Conservatives) for failing to deliver on its opportunities rather than regarding it as a bad idea in the first place. For many of these voters, just as the Tories are irredeemably tainted, Farage is innocent — blaming him for Brexit would mean blaming themselves. Better to believe it’s the Tory traitors’ fault.
Anecdotally, I can add that of the people I knew who voted Tory at the last election and Leave in 2016, all of them are intent on voting for Reform this time. While of course they’re not going to be the next government, and they’re unlikely to pick up many seats, I think there’s a decent (25%ish) chance that they get a greater share of the national vote than the Tories.
Right, polling done after the announcement of Farage's return. Prior to that, they were at ~10% and led by the hopeless Tice, who was sure to drag that figure down.
edit: just to underline this, a poll done mostly pre-Farage has them at 9% with the Lib Dems and Greens https://x.com/keiranpedley/status/1798624495546302937?t=1SonhIjy1dbqjEdpE6BCng
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If you are a typical Motte-poster (i.e. under 50 and educated), the people you knew who voted Tory at the last election are likely to be highly atypical of the people across the country who voted Tory. The only person I know who falls into that category and is happy to discuss politics is my mother-in-law who is a more stereotypical Leave/Tory voter (non-graduate Boomer, self-identifies as working class despite enjoying an affluent retirement due to Boomer privilege). She is also voting Reform, but for the rather more straightforward reason that the Tories are a bunch of lying incompetent expletive deleteds who need to be thrown out.
The tl;dr version of any discussion of the issues in this election is the shockingly bad record of the current Conservative government that even the columnists at conservativehome.com are struggling to defend. Rishi Sunak's problem isn't that he is losing votes to Reform by being a closet Lib Dem or losing votes to the Lib Dems by being a closet Faragite, it is that he is so bad at governing that he hasn't delivered any agenda at all, and so bad at comms that the electorate can't tell if the agenda he failed to deliver is a Lib Dem one or a Faragite one.
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