I told you these people are batshit insane..... [View all]

[T_i_B]

My first hand experience of Conservative party grassroots has made me very aware of how dreadful they are, but they keep plumbing new lows in their drift into full on extreme nationalism.

The grassroots tories interviewed are sadly not unrepresentative of that parties activists at all. And now they have Boris Johnson telling them what they want to hear, and they will lap it up no matter how blatantly untrue it is or how badly their representatives behave.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-boris-johnson-jeremy-hunt-tory-leadership-elections-romford-a8991441.html

"We are crying out for a strong person. It is their strength that we are seeking. Boris offers that. We want someone strong. We haven’t had a strong leader since Margaret Thatcher. Boris is the nearest and the best. He is a strong man. He is a heavyweight.”

Linda Owen, who is 81, says these words while framed by a proscenium arch of Margaret Thatcher photographs on the wall beside her. She is sitting inside Margaret Thatcher House, as Romford MP Andrew Rosindell has renamed his constituency office in what is technically east London but spiritually very much Essex. Linda is one of roughly 160,000 people who, over the next two weeks, will exercise their right to choose the country’s next prime minister. She has brought her voting slip with her. It is fair to say the weight of the decision, between the two names on the paper, has not borne down very heavily upon her. The same is true for Sue Connolly, 71, the Romford Association secretary and Mr Rosindell’s constituency secretary. There is little point asking who she intends to vote for. She has a “Back Boris” badge on her top, and she’s just finished handing out three more to everybody else in the office, one of whose work overalls and branded polo shirt intimate he is there in a maintenance, rather than political, capacity.

“Oh I’ll be voting Boris. Big time. Big time. Jeremy Hunt’s a Remainer. You can’t vote for a Remainer. We’ve already had one, and Hunt’s just Theresa May in trousers. We can’t have all that again,” she says. Sue sees Brexit as the first domino in the EU’s eventual collapse, an outcome that can’t come soon enough. “Once we go, all the others that want out will follow,” she says. “That’s why they’ve made it so difficult. Once we’re out it starts the roll. The whole thing is a shambles, it’ll all break up.”

And getting out, on 31 October, is all that matters. The spending commitments, the other policies, of either candidate, do not weigh a feather in the balance.