leah & tigers & bears, oh my! on Nostr: i suspect it goes back to 1997, when the Tories looked like they'd never be elected ...

i suspect it goes back to 1997, when the Tories looked like they'd never be elected again, and a generation of young centre-right wingers who would otherwise have joined, and formed the centrist wing of, the Tories at this point, instead saw New Labour as a more reliable path to power. except, of course, then they ran into the fact that quite a lot of Labour supporters are actually not at all right wing... and set about ensuring that the left of Labour never got near power again. they encountered a setback when Corbyn proved surprisingly popular with the country at large; but they more than capitalised on it when he turned out to be crap at actually being a leader.

essentially they won the next battle in the continuing Labour civil war, getting their glove puppet elected and driving anyone who wasn't fully signed up to the Torification of Labour out of the party wherever possible... and that's where we are now. they may lose the next election, but if the destruction of Labour as a political force is the price of that, it's worth it.

unfortunately, that left the Tories without a centrist wing at the very point they needed it most - those chickens have now come home to roost, with the Tories looking by turns extremist and irrelevant, and the most likely next leader of that party openly advocating a "reverse" takeover of Nigel Farage's nasty little band of fascists.