Long term I suppose that would actually be in their interests.
Siphon off the RW nutters to their own party and return the mainstream Conservatives to a more centre right position.
Problem: there arenât any - de Pfeffle saw to that.
Only the swivelled eyed loons are left in the partyâŚ
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The proposition presumes that the ones who were kicked out (or new members of similar views) might be able to return once the boil is lanced.
Funnily enough a suppurating boil seems about the right metaphor for the present incarnation of the party.
will they want to?
The party is now so tainted and the leadership so intent on maintaining the extreme right status quo it will take at least one generation to remove the nutjobs.
A reasonable question.
In the short term maybe not - but I think the party will be radically different after the next election.
My personal fantasy is that they win 0 seats.
Youâre still seeing politics within that âbattle of ideasâ or ideological framework though.
The point about the comparison with the Tory âCorn Lawsâ split is the the different views within the party reflected different economic interests, not just choices. (Basically the early Tory party was an alliance between on the one hand rural land owners, including squires and aristocrats, and on the other hand the nouveau riche - ie. a section of the urban entrepreneurial class that aspired to aristocratic acceptance; however, the rural landowners wanted high food prices - which translated into rural profits and land rents - while the entrepreneurs wanted cheap food, so they could keep wages low and make more profits themselves. As the numbers of urban entrepreneurs increased, this tension could not be maintained within a single party, and it split.)
Itâs easier to see these things in retrospect, of course (at the time, the division was experienced by many as a difference of belief, not economic interests) - but acute analysts like George Monbiot - and even informed centrists like Will Hutton - see a division between âdisaster capitalistsâ and âresponsible businessâ - on which Hutton (on the Truss party) for example writes:
The Tory edifice is ignorant about this enterprise revolution. In their terms, these canât be real entrepreneurs: they vote Labour, Lib Dem and Green, abhor Brexit, worry that the UK is being kicked out of the EUâs Horizon programme, prize universities, want action on climate change and, for the main part, canât bear the Tory party, its press and freakish leading commentators.
Elsewhere, Hutton sees a split between âthe hyper-short-termist hedge funds and day traders⌠fiercely pro-free market, anti-regulation and pro-Brexitâ, and those that âtake green and socially responsible investment seriously, are pro-EU, understand the case for regulation.â
One of the most interesting features of the âwe didnât vote for thisâ article is the belief that âit is the speed at which the green agenda is being pushed through by the government that will help drive voters to Reform UK: âWe will pick up a lot of their voters. The Reform party is now the only party that doesnât subscribe to the green agendaâ.â As climate/ecological breakdown inevitably comes to dominate politics and economics more and more, this division in the background Tory voting alliance, extending into party membership, councilors and MPs, might well become less and less sustainable.
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Part of an article in The Atlantic states succinctly what went wrong in the UK:
The British economy chose finance over industry, Britainâs government chose austerity over investment, and British voters chose a closed and poorer economy over an open and richer one. The predictable results are falling wages and stunningly low productivity growth. Although British media worry about robots taking everybodyâs jobs, the reality is closer to the opposite. âBetween 2003 and 2018, the number of automatic-roller car washes (that is, robots washing your car) declined by 50 percent, while the number of hand car washes (that is, men with buckets) increased by 50 percent,â the economist commentator Duncan Weldon told me in an interview for my podcast, Plain English . âItâs more like the people are taking the robotsâ jobs.â
That might sound like a quirky example, because the British economy is obviously more complex than blokes rubbing cars with soap. But itâs an illustrative case. According to the International Federation of Robotics, the U.K. manufacturing industry has less technological automation than just about any other similarly rich country. With barely 100 installed robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers in 2020, its average robot density was below that of Slovenia and Slovakia. One analysis of the U.K.âs infamous âproductivity puzzleâ concluded that outside of London and finance, almost every British sector has lower productivity than its Western European peers.
Americans who have visited the U.K. may not recognize the portrait Iâm painting. Thatâs probably because theyâre familiar with London, not the country as a whole. As the economics writer Noah Smith notes, Londonâs financial prowess has concealed the overall economyâs weakness in innovation and manufacturing. Or, as the economic analyst Matt Klein puts it, âTake out Greater Londonâthe prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Unionâand the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.ââŚ
The electorate is dominated by older voters who care more about culture wars than about competitiveness. âIn 2019, when Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party won a big majority in the House of Commons, most people of working age did not vote for them,â Weldon told me. âIâm pretty sure thatâs the first time thatâs ever happened. You have this post-economic, older, economically insulated voting bloc that⌠donât have to care about economic outcomes.â
(I wonât link the whole article, as it also gets a lot wrong in typical US style - principally (a) that the relatively good economic statistics coming out of the UK before 2007 were no more than a bubble produced by North Sea Oil and other unsustainable factors; and (b) complete misunderstanding of how climate/ecological breakdown has changed conventional economic thinking.)
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Article in todayâs Independent suggesting 2/3 of Britons would support a referendum.
Is it too early to hope that Labour will make it part of their manifesto?
Donât answer 
Just been reading about Boris Johnsonâs New Year message at the start of 2022. He claimed that the country had the âfastest growth in the G7â and that wonderful things would be coming our way in the days and weeks and months ahead.
12 months later, on December 8th the OECD predicted UK growth of â0.4% for 2023, the lowest of any country in the G7 and that the UK would be mired in economic doldrums, strikes, chaos, spiralling inflation and interest rates and a cost-of-living crisis.
How wrong could he be?
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A referendum on what? Re-joining the EU???
If the UK has learned one thing, it should have learned that people should be helped to understand what they are voting for. Make it clear that voting to re-join would not mean turning back the clock, reversing Brexit and going back to how things were in 2015. The EU has moved on since then. Re-joining would involve submitting an application, which may or may not be accepted. Remember that the EU currently has a number of disputes in progress with the UK for not respecting its commitments, and Macron has said publicly that the UK needs to take time out to resolve its internal political problems before it can be viewed as a reliable partner, so itâs likely that France at least might block the UKâs application until some kind of enduring political stability has been established. Once the application is accepted it would be the beginning of another potentially long period of uncertainty while the UK tries to meet the EUâs requirements. This would involve for one thing going back on the trade deals itâs done since Brexit, which wouldnât please Australia for example, Then eventually accepting the euro currency, restoring freedom of movement - including to members who have joined during the UKâs absence, and it likely there will be a few, including Serbia - and signing up to EU budgets on the EUâs terms. Now it does seem that a lot of people are not happy with the reality of Brexit is, but I am not sure they would be happy with the reality of re-joining either. Johnson and his cronies did a lot of damage by promising unicorns.
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The EU would never trust a british government again after seeing the mess they made/are continuing to make.
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Never trust the current British government. Many bridges need to be mended and that process canât begin until the current Tories have been replaced.
Edit: actually, would Starmer be viewed any differently? He has the option to call out Brexit as a failure and promote rejoining the EU but chooses not to do so. Will his reluctance to discuss rejoining the EU be considered negatively by member states?
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I just think all british politicians currently have been tainted by this shower currently in power however good or honest they may be. Those who come out best, just donât make any difference and tend to keep quiet. We all thought Starmer was going to be a saviour, heâs just a puff of smoke in the wind afraid of upsetting folks.
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So, not in our lifetimes then 
Very well itemised post, @Sandcastle!
Yes, Iâm inclined to agree (hence my edit to my original post).
I can see why Starmer didnât initially want to discuss Brexit but now public opinion has visibly changed so he should be less worried about alienating Leave voters.
But however much he might want to discuss Brexit, if the EU is not open to discussion then the option is not there and it would be dishonest to pretend that it is.
If I were an MEP and I had a vote on whether or not the EU should accept an application from the UK, I would block it until:
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A transparent and responsible government had been elected, served a full term, and been reelected with a functional majority
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The Brexit agreement had been implemented in full, including the NIP
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Northern Ireland had a functional government, and the DUP had adopted a more responsible and reasonable stance
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Either Indyref2 had taken place, or a timescale or some other kind of workable strategy had been reached that had the full agreement of Scotland
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And that is before we even start looking at how the UK measures up against the economic, technical, ethical and legislative criteria and evaluating how willing and able it is to bring itself into line.
You could argue that the Northern Ireland issues would fall away if the UK were to rejoin. But I do not think the EU will allow this to be used as an excuse for leaving those issues outstanding in anticipation of being allowed to rejoin. Otherwise what would certainly happen is that the UK would scapegoat the EU and try to use blackmail, saying âall the problems in NI are happening because the EU is stalling on the rejoining processâ. Two/three decades ago the EU put a lot of effort into helping negotiate the Belfast agreement to solve the UKâs problems in Ireland. The UK cannot keep on screwing up own domestic politics within the Union and expecting the EU to step in and put things right.
So I do not think Starmerâs reticence is anything to do being afraid of alienating leave voters, I think it is more a case of him being aware what a long uphill struggle the UK has ahead of it before the EU will even entertain an application to rejoin. I would be surprised if Starmer has not unofficially sounded out his EU contacts to see what the likely reaction would be, and has gauged that there is no appetite for opening discussions. I would be disappointed if not, I do not think he is as shallow as Johnson whose only concern was pandering to public opinion and votes. But of course life is full of disappointments and Starmer has yet to prove himself in my view.
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Right now voters are more concerned about the cost of living, the NHS and keeping their jobs than another EU referendum so Starmer is right to effectively ignore Brexit. Once in power if the clamour to re-join grows louder then can ride the wave of popular opinion without harming Labourâs (or his) reputation.
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I would edit that to say "A transparent and responsible government had been elected by truly proportional voting systemâŚ
Without that the ridiculous swing from left to right & back again will blight progressive UK politics forever.
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