What idiot keeps leaking this stuff?
Wargaming scenarios, even unlikely ones, is sensible and good but you undermine that if you tell everyone about it!
My immediate take is that Farage coming back virtually guarantees that people leaning Lib Dem, Green, SNP, Plaid and even moderate Tory fall in behind Labour and we crush the weird Tory/Reform rump. Farage is not, in fact, popular, even with Leave voters and Tories, while being hugely unpopular with everyone else. All that would change for Labour is the geographical distribution of voters we were winning over, and that would mean reconsidering which seats we put resources into.
Farage is not, in fact, popular, even with Leave voters and Tories
Well I suppose this is what they’re wargaming. A big chunk of Labour voters in the Northern Red Wall are leave voters. If they brought themselves to vote for Boris in 2019 GE and suffered the worst defeat upon Labour in a number of decades, then Labour might be worried again. I don’t think Boris was popular with Red Wall Labour voters but they voted nonetheless.
True, but Farage is both less popular (with Leave voters) and more unpopular (with everyone else) than Johnson. He has no ‘get Brexit done’ type message to unify those voters behind him. He also doesn’t have the good fortune of being up against a divisive leader like Jeremy Corbyn, who couldn’t persuade Lib Dems or even the right wing of his own party to get behind him.
There’s a reason Starmer brought Farage up at PMQs yesterday: even when Farage is not in the Conservatives, the association is damaging.
Thats what Hillary thought about Trump and look where we are now. Underestimating and even promoting far right fringe personalities because you think that will push moderate right wings and centrists towards the left is a risky and historically failing strategy.
Google pied piper Hillary.
I’d be worried if they weren’t. I imagine they are wargaming the return of Liz Truss, down the pub on a Friday afternoon.
