Kemi Badenoch and the Norwegian Blue!

I am sure we are all familiar with the famous Monty Python “Dead Parrot” sketch in which involves a Mr Praline (John Cleese) returning to a pet shop with a dead Norwegian Blue parrot that he had purchased earlier that day. He confronts the shopkeeper, insisting on a refund because the parrot is, as he describes in increasingly creative terms, "dead." The shopkeeper (Michael Palin) finds equally creative ways to deny the obvious death of the parrot! Well, this is where we are with the Conservative Party as we finish 2024. It is an ex-Party, it has ceased to be!

Over the Christmas break, there was a fiery on-line exchange between Reform UK and the Conservatives in which Reform put up a live ticker showing their fast growing membership and seeking to overtake that of the Conservatives by year end. When it first appeared Reform has 120,000 approx member vs the Conservatives 131,000. This then happened!

Very clever aggressive marketing from Reform showing it overtaking the Conservatives and now becoming the 2nd largest political party in the country by membership level. Since then, that number is now in excess of 145,000.

Kemi Badenoch was obviously stung by this and swiftly posted the following message on social media!

Reform has subsequently shown several prestigious news organisations their back end and source does which strongly suggests that Reform numbers are CORRECT and that Kemi has got it calamitously wrong!

So far, silence from Kemi. She has been utterly humiliated and she seems unable to do the right thing and apologise to Farage. I think she believes that if she does this, Reform will grow only stronger and her “leadership” look even weaker than it is.

The real problem for Kemi Badenoch is that the Conservative Party she leads is fundamentally dying, if not dead. Reform have plunged a dagger into the back of the Conservatives and it reflected in many opinion polls which show Reform as the real challenger to Labour. At current rates of membership growth, Reform may even start to chase the Labour Party which has an alleged membership of 370,000.

All the while, the Conservatives become irrelevant and like the Dead Parrot simply deserve a decent burial. This may well happen in the 2025 Local Council elections!