Ep: 35 Torygeddon - can the polls be right? With Tory expert Professor Tim Bale

The Lowdown from Nick Cohen

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Nick talks to Professor Tim Bale of the Queen Mary University of London, who is widely looked on as the UK's keenest academic observer of the Conservative Party.
Poll after poll indicates a near-extinction event for the Conservative Party on July 4th. The disasters of Brexit, Johnson and Truss coupled with the Tories' tedious and interminable culture wars have long exposed the supposed go-to party of government as more of an electoral suicide cult than anything else.
Tim and Nick discuss the potential scale of defeat for the Tories and whether or not -post-election - they will try to recapture the vote-rich heartlands of the political centre ground or cling to its Farageist-Brexity wet blanket, a strategy that looks guaranteed to condemn them to the fringes of British politics for years to come, and possibly leave them exposed to a Reform Party reverse take-over.
@ProfTimBale 's latest book The Conservative Party after Brexit (published by Polity) charts the Party's dizzying descent into nationalist and radical hard right Brexit populism.
Don't forget to read Nick's regular Substack column Writing from London.
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