Latest news with #Conservative-held
The Herald Scotland
15-06-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Scottish Tories struggle to be heard after election skelping
'We stopped Nicola Sturgeon converting her gender bill into law. And we have watched Labour try government — but Sir Keir Starmer keeps dropping the ball.' But for all the jibes, the problem facing Mr Findlay's party is that they are struggling to even get on the pitch. READ MORE Findlay: Tories can win seats at Holyrood election despite polls pointing to drubbing Tories unveil plans for 'Scottish first' medical student training policy For Women Scotland threaten SNP with fresh legal action over Supreme Court ruling The party suffered its worst-ever defeat at last year's general election, slumping to just 121 seats UK-wide — a loss of 244. In Scotland, the scale of the collapse was slightly masked. Despite a chaotic campaign that saw Douglas Ross alienate members and then quit before polling day, the party managed to hold on to five of its six seats. Although the Tory vote halved, support for the SNP — the main challengers in each Conservative-held seat — declined even more sharply. The ghosts of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak continue to haunt the party, while the spectre of Nigel Farage looms ever larger. The latest projections from Professor Sir John Curtice, based on last month's Survation poll, paint a bleak picture for next year's Holyrood vote. His modelling has the Tories slumping to fourth place with just 13 MSPs — less than half their current tally of 30. The SNP would return 58 seats, while Reform UK would leapfrog the Conservatives to become the main opposition on 21. Labour would win 18 seats, with the LibDems and Greens on 10 and 8 respectively. Mr Findlay did not shy away from the scale of the challenge, admitting that a huge effort would be needed to even earn the right to be heard. Yet despite the grim outlook, the party is hopeful. 'You would think we had no right to be as upbeat as we are, but it is the phenomena of the Conservative Party,' said Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland. 'Against all of the odds, we are feeling genuinely optimistic and positive.'I think we knew that 2024 was going to be terrible. Having taken that skelping, I think people are back to renew the party — and that is the strong statement of both Russell and Kemi's remarks.' 'We are sitting in a much diminished form at Westminster, our worst ever election result in over 250 years of the Conservative Party really being in existence. And really beginning the fightback,' shadow Scottish secretary Andrew Bowie told Unspun Live, The Herald's politics podcast. 'And that is where we are right now — beginning that long, hard slog of regaining the trust of the British people, hopefully with a view to getting back into power in short order in four years' time.' Mr Findlay has settled into the role of party leader. He is much more relaxed and less like the deer trapped in the headlights he resembled when he took over from Douglas Ross last September. He is putting the effort in. One Tory staffer said the boss had rehearsed his 42-minute address at least eight times before delivering it to party members on Saturday lunchtime. It was an unashamedly Conservative speech with a raft of policies rooted in the party's traditional values: tax cuts funded by £650 million in savings from slashing quangos and civil service jobs; scrapping the SNP's 2045 net zero target; and a pledge to train more Scottish medical students to reduce NHS reliance on immigration. For years, Scottish Tory speeches at conference have been dominated by saying no to indyref2. That was in Mr Findlay's speech, of course — but it was his programme for government that was to the fore. 'The way we beat Reform is by having good, proper policies in place. We have not seen very much from Reform policy-wise,' North East list MSP Douglas Lumsden told The Herald on Sunday. 'I still think there is enough time [to turn things around]. It is 11 months before the election and this is about building a positive message we can take next year. 'We absolutely need to move on from the past.' The scale of the party's challenge — and the threat from Reform — was made painfully clear earlier this month at the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, where the Tories came a distant fourth. In a seat where they had won 17.5% at the last Holyrood election, they only just managed to hold on to their Reform took 26% of the vote. While Labour's surprise win has led to grumblings in the SNP, Mr Lumsden insists the party is united behind Mr Findlay. 'We are 100% behind Russell. There is no briefing at all from anyone. Russell has a brilliant personality and the more people who get to know him the more they like him — so we need to promote Russell.' READ MORE While Mr Findlay's position might be safe, the same cannot be said for Kemi Badenoch. Potential leadership hopefuls are on manoeuvres. The leader of the opposition delivered her speech on Friday. It was only her second trip to Scotland since becoming leader in November. 'There is a lot of work to be done, a lot of messaging, a lot of renewal — and she has got the runway that Russell and the rest of us do not have,' Mr Kerr said. 'I am not worried about threats to her leadership. She is letting her colleagues get on with it. She is not a leader who is lying awake worrying about a challenge to her leadership,' he added. 'Anybody who is going to contest Kemi or Russell for leadership right now is mad — because the challenges will not change.' Mr Kerr compared Ms Badenoch to Margaret Thatcher: 'I am old enough to remember our first female leader and the same stuff was being said about her in terms of her role as Leader of the Opposition and her performance and PMQs — and look what happened to her.' 'You know, we have been written off as a party before,' Mr Findlay told The Herald on Sunday. 'There are many people at this conference who have been around for a very long time, and they have seen some pretty dark days. 'And you know what keeps people going? You know that resilience that we all saw in the hall today — it is because we know that what we stand for is right. 'We stand for personal responsibility, lower taxation, fairer taxes for people, integrity and ensuring the very best public services. We want a Scottish Parliament that is entirely focused on delivering for Scotland — not the fringe obsessions of the SNP and Labour.'So we will be fighting for every single vote.' Murrayfield is used to resilience and fighting talk — it is also, however, no stranger to the wooden spoon, a fate Mr Findlay will be desperae to avoid next May.
The Herald Scotland
09-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Confidence in UK hits new low while Starmer goes in wrong direction
In the aftermath, arguments have raged both within and outwith Labour over the Government's current course. MPs in formerly Conservative-held seats and across the Red Wall have been arguing for a doubling down on anti-immigration policies and rhetoric. Others have blamed Rachel Reeves' decisions to cut the Winter Fuel Allowance and Personal Independence Payments, arguing for the Government to shift to the left. Read more The backdrop for this debate is the success of Reform UK last week. Nigel Farage's party won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, two mayoralties, 677 councillors, and took control of ten councils. The BBC's projected vote share, which extrapolates from local election results to the full country, suggests Reform would win 30% of the vote in a general election, to Labour's 20%. Labour MPs in more conservative and pro-Brexit constituencies have been spooked by Reform's success, and are focused on how they triangulate against Farage's party. Downing Street appears to agree with those MPs who want Labour to focus on Reform. In the immediate aftermath of the results the Government announced new anti-immigration measures and have stuck by their welfare cuts, signalling no intention to change course and doubling down on their existing bets. There's a problem with this focus on Reform, though. The geography of the local elections last week has heavily influenced the narrative about the results. They took place in some of the most conservative and pro-Brexit parts of England, so a right-wing party coming first isn't a massive surprise. If elections had been held in part of England where the Liberal Democrats did well last year, or in Scotland and Wales, we would be having a very different conversation. In national opinion polls, Labour have lost to the Greens and Liberal Democrats more than double the number of voters they've lost to Reform, whose rise is fuelled more by former Conservative voters than anyone else. In Scotland, they've lost more voters to the SNP, Greens, and Liberal Democrats than to Reform, and in Wales they've lost just 5% of their voters to Reform, but a quarter to Plaid Cymru and and eighth to the Liberal Democrats and Greens. Nigel Farage of Reform UK (Image: free) Labour's problem isn't that they are not enough like Reform. They are bleeding votes to parties all over the political spectrum, more so to the left than to the right. Doubling down on their current direction won't win those voters back and risks alienating even more of them. More than half of Labour's 2024 voters have a favourable view of the Liberal Democrats and Greens, and in Scotland and Wales a significant minority of Labour voters have positive views of the nationalist parties. Not only have they already lost more voters on their left than their right, there's also far more scope for them to lose even more voters on their left flank. Labour's problem isn't that they aren't tough enough on immigration. They won't hold on to power by aping Reform UK and Nigel Farage. Their problem is that, despite only having been in office for ten months, they nevertheless govern a country that most people think is going in the wrong direction. In March, Ipsos found the lowest level of economic confidence in the UK that they have ever recorded, having started tracking in the 1970s. Britons are more negative about the state of the economy than they were in the 1980 recession, in the wake of Black Wednesday in 1992, during the Great Recession in 2008, and even at the height of the pandemic. 59% of us think Britain is going in the wrong direction; just 19% of us are happy with the way things are going. As YouGov's Dylan Difford has put it, the mission of the Labour government should be 'deshittification', both because it's the right one from a policy perspective and because it's the agenda most likely to glue Labour's voter coalition back together. By the time of the next general election, and from the point of view of Scottish and Welsh Labour preferably by the devolved elections next year, Labour need to be able to point to ways in which life has gotten better. Read more Immigration crackdowns and salami-slicing the welfare state are not the path to making life better for ordinary Britons, never mind keeping Labour in power or the Union intact. Voters look at Labour's headline policy decisions since the election and see a government taking money out of ordinary people's pockets rather than those of the wealthiest. Despite the UK being a spectacularly wealthy country, most of that wealth sits in very few hands, and we simply do not tax it properly. The British tax system is a dysfunctional mess that is incapable of mobilising the nation's resources to address the problems we face and needs thoroughly overhauled. But Labour's promises not to increase taxes, which they will ultimately be forced to do and which we knew needed to happen before last year's election, ties their hands behind their backs in this regard. It also leaves a chasm on Labour's left that smaller parties are happily exploiting. Doubling down on their current strategy won't win their voters back because those voters are going left, not right. Only a change of course can win back the people who put Labour in power last July. Mark McGeoghegan is a Glasgow University researcher of nationalism and contentious politics and an Associate Member of the Centre on Constitutional Change. He can be found on BlueSky @
Daily Mail
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Could Reform's victory be the spark for an unstoppable new alliance?
The British people are not fickle about their politics. While almost every European country has undergone something like a revolution, with new parties and movements, over the past 20 years, English voters have remained largely loyal to their two big, old parties. Things have been notably different in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but the most populous part of the kingdom has generally kept hold of Tory or Labour loyalties stretching back for a century, especially in general elections. Thursday's local election voting suggests that this is now coming to an end. Both Labour's Sir Keir Starmer and Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch have much to worry about. A general election fought with voters in this mood could leave them both in the dust. Nigel Farage 's Reform UK has achieved far more than his previous movements, Ukip and the Brexit Party, could ever do. So, are we on the brink of the sort of convulsions which have recently gripped France, Germany and Italy? It's hard to say. Is Labour becoming an urban rump of privileged graduates, cut off from its base? Increasingly. Will the Tories be swept away? Not necessarily. The first-past-the-post voting system (which has often served this country well) puts pressure on rivals to form alliances before elections, rather than after them. Is Labour becoming an urban rump of privileged graduates, cut off from its base? Increasingly. Will the Tories be swept away? Not necessarily. Pictured: Nigel Farage poses for a picture with winnning candidate Sarah Pochin as Reform beats Labour by six votes to take Runcorn in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election Mr Farage has shown in the past that he is ready to do deals with the Tories. He did this in 2019 when he stood down Brexit Party candidates in Conservative-held seats, helping to give Boris Johnson the most convincing Tory majority since the Thatcher era. The balance of power on the Right has shifted greatly since then, but can we see in this episode the faint shadow of a new and devastating political alliance? Let us watch carefully. Send Letby case back to court If we are serious about the punishment of crime, we have to be sure we are punishing the right person. Long prison terms meet a reasonable public demand to see the criminal pay. They deter crime. But what if an innocent person goes to jail? Imagine the horror of being locked up for years for a crime you did not commit. A society in which such miscarriages were ignored would not be safe or just. The recent case of Andrew Malkinson, wrongly imprisoned for a rape he absolutely did not commit, is a distressing example. Now there are growing concerns about the case of the former nurse Lucy Letby, 35, convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more. Multiple whole-life orders imposed on her mean she will die in prison. But did she have a fair trial? The Mail on Sunday today publishes a summary of the many doubts about this case, the weakness (and absence) of evidence, the wrong conclusions drawn from statistics. Some doubt that any crimes were committed at all. Voices speaking out against the safety of the convictions now include the distinguished barrister Adam King and the retired Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption. This controversy has undoubtedly been distressing for the parents of those babies. This newspaper has the greatest sympathy with them. But if an injustice has been done, then it must be righted. We do not say that Ms Letby is innocent. What we do say is that there is now so much doubt, the Criminal Cases Review Commission should urgently refer the matter to the Court of Appeal.
Time of India
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Poilievre's home turf under siege; Liberals threaten upset in Carleton
Live Events Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre finds himself in an unexpected battle for his political survival as the Liberal Party mounts a serious challenge in his long-held riding of Carleton, according to multiple sources within both the Conservative and Liberal the Liberals gaining momentum nationally, the potential loss of Poilievre's seat would not only be a significant blow to the Conservative Party but also cast serious doubt on his future as the leader of one of Canada 's major political situation has become so precarious that Conservative Party headquarters has reportedly diverted significant resources, including experienced campaigners typically deployed to other tight races, to shore up support in strategic shift, confirmed by four sources, two from the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and two from the federal level, underscores the gravity of the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that the party's Ottawa war room has also been mobilized to defend Conservative-held ridings, suggesting a broader vulnerability in the polling paints a concerning picture for Poilievre. While he secured comfortable victories in Carleton in 2019 and 2021, recent surveys indicate a dramatic shift in voter from both the Ontario PC Party and the federal Liberals, who have access to these polls, report that Poilievre is now locked in a tight race with Liberal candidate Bruce Liberal insider even claimed a statistical dead heat, with Poilievre leading by a mere one percentage point within the poll's margin of Ontario PC Party's internal polling suggests a wider Liberal surge in the Ottawa area, with the party holding a commanding 53% lead compared to the Conservatives' 31%.While this poll did not specifically target Carleton, the trend is alarming for the Conservative Senate leader Marjory LeBreton, a veteran of Canadian politics, warned of dire consequences should Poilievre lose his riding and the election."All hell will break loose. The party will fracture," she stated, highlighting the potential for internal the mounting evidence, Conservative Party spokesman Simon Jefferies downplayed the concerns, expressing confidence in Poilievre's pollster Nik Nanos echoed LeBreton's sentiment, stating that Poilievre's leadership would be untenable in the event of a Liberals' resurgence in Carleton appears to be part of a broader trend, with national polls showing them leading the shift in the political landscape has forced Poilievre to play defense in the final days of the campaign, including a rally in Saskatoon, a city traditionally considered a Conservative stronghold.
CBC
26-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Canada election: Carney speaks in Ontario's auto sector heartland amid spectre of Trump's trade war
The Latest Liberal Leader Mark Carney is outlining parts of his plan to support workers harmed by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs. We're expecting to hear the NDP's fiscal plan this morning. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will be in Quebec later today. It will be the first time during the campaign that Poilievre holds an event in a Conservative-held riding. Do you have a question about the federal election? Send an email to ask@
