The Tories are now incredibly vulnerable to the same problem that has spiralled the GOP in the US. Winning a nomination requires a ‘signal’ far to the right of the mean elector, because the mean Tory party activist is so far off to the right. After a forest fire loss like this one, only the true believers are left, and they will tend to skew more conservative on most policy dimensions. The actual differentiation between Reform and Conservative activists may not be on issues relevant to most voters.
It took over a decade of vote-splitting futility to produce a unified right wing party in Canada after a Reform/Conservative split, with losses in 1993, 1997, and 2000.
OBR has some independence, but it is not total. There are some assumptions that OBR can question (interest rates, borrowing levels), but others that they must take at face value (policy spending mix). OBR doesn’t have particular insight into the real scale of the water infrastructure deficit, for example.
I think the OBR this time round did a good of flagging where they thought policy assumptions they had to except as factual were unrealistic (unless i am confusing them with someone else) - such as the for3cast cut in public spending and incime from a rise in fuel duty which has been repeatedly frozen since 2012 i think.
I was wondering if the liberal segment of the Tories would split and form a new party. Surely, there are some intelligent people who have realised that the right side is saturated and there’s opportunity to challenge Labour in the central ground.
It’s possible but it depends upon numbers. Pity that none of them are capable of following the many surveys that show that the vast majority of the public don’t care for the divisive politics of the extreme right.
