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Is there any point to the ERG now?
Sunak’s solution to the Northern Ireland agreement problem was voted through. Some ERG members voted for it. The bonfire of EU regulations seems to have been thrown into the long grass. The ERG seem to be fading slowly into irrelevance. With an election round the corner, is there any point to this group of self centred, impractical group any more?
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The group came first and is somewhat independent of the signifier, they are basically a mix of the reactionary/libertarian right of the Conservative Party. There's a nearly 1/1 overlap with the Covid Research Group and the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, and all three are or have been led by Steve Baker at some point.
I assume when he tires of parliamentary politics he'll end up in some opaquely funded think tank like Carswell.
To be fair, any thread doing justice to the ERG must certainly belong in Hell. I'm thinking mostly 8th (fraud) circle, with a good chunk of 9th (treachery) and a dash of 4th (greed).
Quite so.
Hopefully, they will soon become entirely negligible and irrelevant.
Steve Baker has lost interest in the ERG since he got his ministerial car.
European Research Group. A right-wing think-tank in the UK.
I think "think tank" is over-egging the pudding. It's something akin to a group like the "freedom caucus" in the US congress.
Closely linked, if not. Tufton Street's denizens include:
Taxpayers' Alliance
LBG Alliance (transphobic hate group, basically)
Migration Watch UK (guess what they're about)
Some very unpleasant people there, often with links to incredibly unpleasant people.
No, they are comprised of a bunch of MPs on the right wing of the Tory Party, their staff often move to or are former Tufton Streeters though.
Lemme guess. A self-proclaimed gay-rights group dedicated to denouncing and battling the trans menace. Sorta like the last era's Gays Against Pride Extremism.
(Though my impression of GAPE is that they were focused on standing against the more easily sensationalized aspects of gay and lesbian culture, eg. g-stringed cowboys at the parades, rather than trans folks in particular.)
lol GAPE
But yes basically, and also upwards of 80% of their membership are straight.
Yeah, there's alot you can do with that. Gapes in their logic, just for starters.
And at least one of the prominent gay ones is a celibate evangelical.