Reform, and the death of the Tory Party

[Pblakeney]

Who knows? They lost a few local elections etc. to UKIP who were polling highly so probably for much the same reason Starmer started making right-wing comments after the recent elections. Say what you like about Farage but he is good at panicking the major Parties and pushing the narrative of UK politics

Oh, I give Farage full credit for managing to get what he wants, however much that I disagreed with it.
He's probably been more successful on that front than any PM in the last 10 years. All while mostly not even being an MP.

 

[BoldonLad]

Who knows? They lost a few local elections etc. to UKIP who were polling highly so probably for much the same reason Starmer started making right-wing comments after the recent elections. Say what you like about Farage but he is good at panicking the major Parties and pushing the narrative of UK politics

This exactly.

As I have said before, in the area in which I live, Conservative voters are a scarce breed, but, Reform is rampant, it is not Conservative voters they are winning over.

Locally, Labour are in panic mode.

 

[Xipe Totec]

In which case, why did Dave panic?

I don't think he panicked at all. He was high on his own hubris, he'd just 'won' the Scottish independence referendum, the AV referendum and a majority in the Commons and he - like pretty much everyone else, including Johnson & Gove - thought that Remain winning was a foregone conclusion. Doubtless also including the almost 30% of voters who stayed at home.

He assumed it would shut the whining Tory Eurosceptics up and put them back in their box, at least for the remainder of his term. I doubt if Farage & UKIP were more than a peripheral concern to him at the time.

 

[Pblakeney]

I don't think he panicked at all. He was high on his own hubris, he'd just 'won' the Scottish independence referendum, the AV referendum and a majority in the Commons and he - like pretty much everyone else, including Johnson & Gove - thought that Remain winning was a foregone conclusion. Doubtless also including the almost 30% of voters who stayed at home.

He assumed it would shut the whining Tory Eurosceptics up and put them back in their box, at least for the remainder of his term. I doubt if Farage & UKIP were more than a peripheral concern to him at the time.

If he was confident then there would have been no need to put the noisy rabble in their box. Put up or shut up. He was concerned.
That's my opinion. YMMV.