If he doesn’t turn the ship around he could defect back to reform before the next GE

Oh there are plenty of Tories who are quite happy to accommodate partisans. I can’t see that being a big dividing line

Quite. An army of touts who have bought software to allow them to get to the front of the queue multiple times.

We are definitely riding our luck at the moment

Now Hirst. Insanity

He’s going to go for Trumpball isn’t he?

Farage is many things … but he’s not an idiot.

I think he’s looking covetously at the conservatives institutional memory, when it comes to actually running a government.

Recent attempts have shown this to be hard.

And reform aren’t blessed with high achievers.

We really miss Burns, Chaplin and Hutchinson from that promotion side. Their replacements haven’t hit the same heights so far.

You mean ruin, by winning. Right?

I’ve been wondering if a small number of traders have figured the OBR have been doing this for a while and using this information very quietly to make money

Really? Wow

Presumably most are arriving with two kidneys too …

Cumulative in what sense? Not deficit over time (which is debt).

Boris sending his loyal MPs to defend some policy (free school lunches) only to u-turn the next day didn’t do him much good.

You’d think an embattled PM would be smarter than this

That’s all fair. But I don’t think the “it is easy, just break your huge promise you idiots” narrative I’m seeing this morning captures the potential downsides.

But maybe people care less about manifestos/always expect them to be broken.

I agree it was stupid. I said so at the time too. I agree about pitch rolling/retreating.

Not breaking it is definitely worse economically than breaking it.

But I don’t see how they can break it, and not forever taint the party as one which will say anything to get into power then do the opposite

I don’t agree with the (implicit) argument that a huge majority is a mandate to break the manifesto on this.

They said “we can make things better without putting up IT”

Voters said “OK then”

Having made such a stupid promise, I can see why they are very reluctant to break it

I went to the effort of going in and spoiling my ballot “don’t politicise the police” each time. Until last time round when I couldn’t even be arsed to do that.