Conservative politicians have started to be seen as “weird”, and few members of the public – even including the party’s own voters – are able to identify the Tory leadership candidates, research suggests.
Asked who had the best chance of winning the next election for the Tories, 70% of respondents either said they did not know or that they thought none of the candidates could win – with James Cleverly given the greatest chance, on 8%, followed by Priti Patel.
Multiple focus groups of former Tory voters suggested that those who switched their vote at the last election were not inclined to back to the Conservatives any time soon.
The research by More in Common said the party struggled with relatability, particularly in Liberal Democrat areas, by focusing on topics “which excite the base, or the highly politically engaged” but were distant from ordinary people’s lives.
In a similar vein to the attack that US Democrats have levelled against Republicans, especially the vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, the research found “there is a danger that the Conservatives have started to become seen as ‘weird’”.
Tim Walz somehow shifted political discourse with one simple word and I love him for it.
The world grew numb to the word “dangerous” after decades of every politician using it to describe their opponents so it became useless to try to convince anyone with it… Even if the person in question IS dangerous. It’s like an error message that pops up for no reason - people just start to ignore all error messages.
But modern conservatives are weird. In a really bad way. It’s the perfect word to describe them and it frames them in a way everyone can understand
UK has just been importing American politics whole cloth, makes sense that it appeared so fast over there.
For once, it was a good thing