Category: Party Conferences
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Is that light at the end of the tunnel? Kemi Badenoch has been having quite a good year. The Conservative Party has not. Twelve months ago, Badenoch was still struggling to establish herself with voters and faced periodic speculation about whether her leadership would survive. She arrived in Birmingham in a much stronger parliamentary position.…
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Oh Zack! It has been an extraordinary 12 months for the Greens under Polanski: shooting up from 12% in voting intention polls last October, to 21% at the beginning of the year, when it won the Gorton & Denton by-election, before gravity (and some of Polanski’s past) brought the party’s ratings back down to 11%…
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Hoping for some Realism. This task is appointed for you Frodo Andy. Andy Burnham tried to kill off talk of an early election over the weekend, insisting that he would serve out his predecessor’s mandate until 2029. Nevertheless, his first Labour conference speech as PM fired the starting gun on that election by setting out…
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Surprising toxicity, stunted ambitions Four days of earnest, well-meaning discussion, sadly trending towards catatonia (not the band.) If you want to know what the climate implications of angora rabbit farming could be, the LibDem conference is where you want to be. The LibDems have a LOT of policy – and almost the full range of…
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Nigel Farage’s much delayed conference speech was polished, combative and politically effective. It also exposed Reform’s central problem: the leader increasingly looks ready for an election, while the circle around him still does not look even close to being ready for government. Farage warned his supporters that he expects an election next year. That remains…
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BADENOCH.Neverwhere by (Neil Gaiman) Kemi Badenoch, dreaming of a land where anyone might care what the Conservatives might come up with anytime soon. Even as an enthusiastic A-level History student I found Kemi kicking off with 1780s Manchester a little bit too historical. Badenoch managed to tie this back, in the context of Thursday’s murderous…
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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Keir Starmer, aged 10 The Prime Minister’s claim to love this country while he presides over a party and government that muzzles opponents and random eccentrics rings hollow. As he pays to give away historic and useful overseas military bases while he claims that investment in defence is “vital for our…