[Tubby Isaacs]

He’s seen them reading clever books on the train. Elite.

[Youngian]

Zia is having a normal one.

Reform's polling suggests we must take these sinister crypto fascists seriously but its so hard. The man is ridiculous.

[davidjay]

If they're going to change every law that a lawyer can be involved with they're going to be very busy.

[kreuzberger]

He’s seen them reading clever books on the train. Elite.

Were they Mein Kampf and Pol Pot's memoirs?

[Bones McCoy]

Before dealing with the Lawyers, I'd begin with the political adjacent spivs.

[Tubby Isaacs]

If they're going to change every law that a lawyer can be involved with they're going to be very busy.

That sounds like a good job creation scheme for... lawyers.

[Andy McDandy]

So what do they propose? Stuff so simple even their supporters can understand it? An end to judicial review?

They're imagining a cross between the Scarecrow's kangaroo court from that Batman film (guilt taken as read, just need to decide on the sentencing - not that it matters because it's death regardless) and the Thunderdome. Bust a deal, spin the wheel. Two men enter, one man leave. No, not that last one. More like no men enter, several thousand leave.

Once again, the assumption that they'll never be on the receiving end. For good reason, the best way to make laws is to consider what you'd like to happen if you're in the frame.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Like those elite Stevenage commuters, lawyers read books.

[Watchman]

Reform UK councillor blames 'mass immigration' for low Leicestershire reservoir levels
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news ... source=app

[soulboy]

Coming over here, drinking our water.

There are links between a lack of water and mass migration, but I lack the time, patience or single syllable words to explain them to Reformers.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's the same thing Farage pulled when he blamed immigration for traffic jams. In a sense of course he's got a point, more people means more water and more roads are needed, but it's not the fault of immigration that we under invested in reservoirs. It's not even the fault of water companies, it's the fault of previous governments leaning on Ofwat to keep bills down. That is being put right now, in fairness, but this government won't get any thanks for it.

[Boiler]

I thought you would be all for efficiency and low staffing, Jenkyns.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y59ln7drzo

The mayor of Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority (GLCCA) Dame Andrea Jenkyns has asked for a £147,000 increase in her office budget to employ people to help her.

"I literally have zero people in my team," she said. "I have over 2,500 emails each month from constituents. I'm staying up until three o'clock in the morning answering some of them myself."

Dame Andrea's request was made at a meeting on Wednesday, which also heard GLCCA council leaders plan to ask the UK government to cover a £630,000 overspend of the mayoral election that appointed her.

[Youngian]

After failing to be selected for the Kitten Drowning Party

Jeremy Kyle is considering running to become a Reform MP
https://www.joe.co.uk/news/jeremy-kyle- ... ONc1mCI9nQ

[Abernathy]

Some extremely perceptive points in Tom (Watson)'s latest newsletter

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
Farage’s pivot: destroy the Tories or absorb them?
Reform’s roll call of former Conservatives and why “Krugocracy” will test the brand
Sep 21





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Farage’s pivot matters
I have always found Nigel Farage a fascinating political leader. For resilience he warrants respect. I worry about what he stands for, because Brexit crushed the economy and, for now, the wind is with him.

Danny Kruger’s high profile defection looks like a change of plan. Until now the Reform strategy looked simple and clear: be the Not Conservative Party. Kruger, best known to many as Prue Leith’s son, is different. Though several of his former colleagues consider him a bit odd, he is a fully fledged Tory insider, former speechwriter to Iain Duncan Smith, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, and a veteran of Conservative think tanks. When he says the Conservative Party “is over” and then appears at Reform press conference as head of “preparing for government”, that is not protest. That is new bureaucracy, the first hint of Krugocracy.


Krugocracy will test the base
Set that against Farage’s own words. He said the “Tory brand is ruined”. He promised an “extinction event”. He said, “I want the Conservative Party replaced”. Those were not slips. They were the mission. For years the pitch was demolition, not assimilation. Now the pictures tell a different story.

Look at the new roll call. Nadine Dorries, former Conservative Culture Secretary, arrives and pronounces the Tories “dead”. Andrea Jenkyns, former Conservative MP, is Reform’s first metro mayor in Greater Lincolnshire. Add Lee Anderson, former Conservative MP for Ashfield; Sir Jake Berry, former Conservative Party chair; Maria Caulfield, former Conservative health minister; Adam Holloway, former Conservative MP for Gravesham; Marco Longhi, former Conservative MP for Dudley North; Anne Marie Morris, former Conservative MP for Newton Abbot; Ross Thomson, former Conservative MP for Aberdeen South; Henry Smith, former Conservative MP for Crawley; David Jones, former Conservative Welsh Secretary; and Ann Widdecombe, former Conservative minister and now a Reform spokesperson. Jacob Rees-Mogg has not defected, but his star turn on the Reform conference stage tells its own story. This reads less like a riot and more like a roll call of absorption.

You cannot be both a demolition squad and a living museum of past Conservative governments. Voters notice when parties change their skin, think Corbyn to Starmer, Cameron to Johnson, and they will notice this one too. So what is Reform now. The Not Conservative Party, or the New Conservative Party. If it is Not Conservatives, stop hiring Tories. If it is New Conservatives, say so and own the consequences.

Why absorb them at all ?

Because it looks serious. Recognisable names fill benches, calm donors and pass the television test. Because Farage wants to sound like a government in waiting rather than a protest movement. Reform promised rupture in the system, but if the weekly photo is a panel of former Conservative ministers, it begins to look like continuity Conservatism.

There is jeopardy here. Reform has found an audience among a slice of Labour’s old, dyed-in-the-wool vote, people who loathe the Conservative Party yet feel at home with Reform’s punchy approach to the establishment. They signed up for a kicking against the cosy club, not an annex to it. Will they still feel that way with Danny Kruger lecturing about “preparing for government”?

Recent polling is clear, and this is not hypothetical. Many current Reform supporters are not locked in. Only a minority say they would never vote Conservative again; a significant chunk say they might. If Reform starts to look Tory, some of its base may drift back the moment the original looks even half plausible. The bridge built for arrivals becomes the exit.

The Kruger moment also prompts the dull but vital questions a wannabe government must face. Where are your costings? Who wins and who loses with your tax strategy? What are your policy priorities? A movement makes noise; a party preparing for government must show next steps and timelines. And the man doing that job is a slightly odd former Tory insider.

None of this says the strategy cannot work. There is a coherent New Conservatives offer if Reform writes it with care: tighter borders, tidier finances, fewer psychodramas, less ego and more detail. If that is the plan, say so plainly. Admit the aim is not to destroy British Conservatism, but to be the new party that represents it. Replace the ancient Conservative and Unionist Party with your Kruger version of modern Conservatism.

There is also a coherent Not Conservatives path. Keep the outsider posture, be sparing with grandees, and give the country a costed programme on the economy and the welfare state, even if it borrows policies from Labour and the Conservatives.

What will not survive is the fudge. You cannot run the “ruined brand” line on Monday and the alumni association on Tuesday and expect to look serious. Politics is not kind to split identities. Voters do not reward costume changes unless the work underneath changes too.

Farage has earned his reputation for endurance. He has also reached a moment of choice. If Reform is only a spruced up version of the Tories, what is the point. If you want Conservatives, originals exist. If you want a revolt, stop staging a revival. He can wield the sledgehammer to the system, or join it, but not both for long. Voters, including former Labour supporters who lent him their anger, will decide whether they are buying a change of government or a rebranded Conservative Party.

Nigel Farage is riding high, but we are only fourteen months into a new government. We are about to see whether Reform can live with Krugocracy and meet the next level of public scrutiny.

[Youngian]

Slicker leaders then Jenrick and Kemi would be able to make hay with the defections. Why vote for a party of failed Tories when you can vote for the Tory A team. Damn fools.

[satnav]

The Reform leader of Derbyshire County Council claims that he is going to carry out a review to see if Asylum hotels in Derbyshire have the necessary planning permission. I'm not an expert on local government but I'm pretty sure that planning issues are dealt with by borough councils and district councils. So it is hard to see how a county council can actually carry out such a review.

[Youngian]

So this is Farage's plan to capitalise on his poll numbers and nudge Reform up to 40 percent. What a nasty myopic bunch of arseholes as a nation we've become.

Nigel Farage’s plan to scrap the right for immigrants to settle in the UK without citizenship could separate parents from children and husbands from wives, experts have warned.

The Reform policy to abolish indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and force immigrants to reapply for five-year visas, while making it harder to obtain citizenship, was also rounded on by industry for threatening economic growth and by NHS chiefs as a “kick in the teeth” for health and care workers that could bring the sector to its knees.https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/farag ... es-3932356

[Andy McDandy]

Mums and dads go out to work. Half the mums do childcare for the other half. Kids leave school and enter an economy built on betting shops and sites, and service provision. Lads go into compulsory national service patrolling beaches for migrants, and council estates for misfits to scapegoat. Girls serve their NS in care homes, wiping arses for Britain in a modern take on temple prostitution. University is finishing school for the children of the well off. The future! Take it, it's yours!

[Abernathy]

I don’t like Farage’s latest policy plan not because it is hopelessly impractical, short-sighted, probably unworkable, and expensive, although it’s all of those things, but principally because it is hideously cruel, racist and xenophobic, and frankly, obscene.

But flagshagging twats that are incapable of thinking past the next fucking lamp-post are probably going to love it, and vote for it in their droves.

[Tubby Isaacs]

So this is Farage's plan to capitalise on his poll numbers and nudge Reform up to 40 percent. What a nasty myopic bunch of arseholes as a nation we've become.

Nigel Farage’s plan to scrap the right for immigrants to settle in the UK without citizenship could separate parents from children and husbands from wives, experts have warned.

The Reform policy to abolish indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and force immigrants to reapply for five-year visas, while making it harder to obtain citizenship, was also rounded on by industry for threatening economic growth and by NHS chiefs as a “kick in the teeth” for health and care workers that could bring the sector to its knees.https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/farag ... es-3932356

As I understand it, most of these people can get citizenship anyway. If they're inclined to stay, they'll apply for it. Or perhaps Ireland, Australia, Canada will make them a better offer.