It’s just over a month since Richard Foord achieved one of the best results in by-election history. Last night the Conservative leadership candidates continued their race to the bottom at a hustings in Exeter.
Richard reflected on their performance, saying that they had learned nothing from his win:
Tonight’s debate showed that Sunak and Truss have learned absolutely nothing from their Tiverton and Honiton by-election defeat.
This is a dismal contest between the former Chancellor who repeatedly hiked taxes and a Foreign Secretary who sold out West Country farmers with botched trade deals.
Rural communities across Devon spoke with one voice in the by-election – they demanded change.
People told me they wanted a fair deal for local farmers, a plan to solve the NHS backlog, and targeted support for rural communities, who suffer higher energy bills and pay more for petrol. We saw no sign of such support tonight.
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4 Comments
To be fair to Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, the electorate they need to appeal to at this stage is the Conservative membership not the general electorate. Appealing to the general electorate comes later; more than 99% of which are not paying attention now or will have little memory of what was said now when it comes to casting their vote at a general (or local) election. Trying to appeal to that electorate now will only dilute their ability to win over the necessary votes from (the very different) Conservative membership electorate.
I wonder how many Conservative party members will spoil their ballot paper in protest…
We saw no sign of such support tonight.
And long may it continue!
The longer it continues, the harder it will be for people to turn a blind eye and vote out of habit for the Conservatives…
Unless the bookmakers have got it very wrong and I seriously doubt that Liz Truss is going to win.
That is good news for the opposition parties because she has zero charisma, combined with no original policy ideas. Her history shows her opportunism and any short term poll bounce will not be sustained.
Here’s hoping that as a result of Tory decline and his hard work in the constituency Richard Foord is return again as an MP along with plenty of other Liberal Democrats.
The Conservative agenda serve it’s own purpose that’s pretty obvious. When depending on funding from outside individuals of course something is wanted in return.
I have felt personally that funding in this way is not an answer for democracy.