Solid Workers

In their 1994 study of the Tory party membership, Patrick Seyd, Jeremy Richardson and Paul Whiteley came to the surprising conclusion that despite the success of the Thatcher years, the membership were, in the main, distinctly non-Thatcherite and much less extreme than the "swivel-eyed loons" referenced 20 years later . Well, if a certain YouGov poll of party members is anything to go by, we've gone way beyond even that . In case you haven't heard, 63% would rather have Brexit if it meant Scotland leaving the UK, 61% if it meant severe damage to the UK economy, 59% if Northern Ireland left, and 54% prioritise Brexit over the continued survival of the Conservative Party . The only thing that is not an acceptable price to pay is Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10. Interesting. Okay, so what is happening. How have we gone from a party whose official mythology paints it as level headed, and pragmatic in the pursuit of power to, well, outright psychopathy? Stephen Bush suggests ...

While everyone loses their heads over the expulsion of Alastair Campbell, let's consider weightier matters: what Nigel Farage's Brexit Party is going to do next. After all, here we are two days after the election results and the media, including the BBC, seem to have forgotten already that the Brexit Party steamed to the top of the poll with 31% of the vote and had 29 MEPs returned. We know there is something of a bias against in-depth coverage of the Tories compared to Labour, but seeing the commentariat carry on as if the near total displacement of the mainstream right by a fringe outfit is nothing less than astonishing. Their loss. The problem facing Farage now is how to keep the bandwagon going and, unfortunately, there are forces at work making life easier for him. Having seen the wipe out coming, the Tory leadership contest is already heavily conditioned by the Faragist insurgency before Sunday night's disaster hit. For instance, it was surprising to see Jeremy Hun...

If you are a Tory supporter, this week's polls make for grim reading. Following Survation - the only pollster whose findings should be taken with more than a pitch of salt - all the rest are posting leads for Labour of between one and nine ( nine! ) points. Things look especially catastrophic in the latest offering for YouGov on voting intentions in the European elections. As noted in discussing the Newport by-election , second order elections (all elections that aren't a general election, basically) tend to a flatter results profile as different issues and, in some cases, different electoral systems are in play. The common outcome are more potent challenges from fringe parties that depresses the share of the two main parties. With that caveat in mind, YouGov puts Labour on 24%, which is the same achieved by the party back in 2014. The Tories are on 16%(!), with Nigel Farage's Brexit Party on 15%, and UKIP on 14%. The Liberal Democrats, Greens and CHUKa bring up the also-ra...