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The future of Johnson dominates the Friday front pages – politicalbetting.com
The future of Johnson dominates the Friday front pages – politicalbetting.com
There is little doubt that Downing Street has mounted a big operation in the past couple of days to stop a no-confidence move against the Prime Minister. As we all know party managers are tasked with ensuring that 54 CON MPs don’t request a confidence ballot and we have no idea what the current totals are.
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how do we understand the reasoning for Conservative newspapers being so solid behind Boris, when the last thing they should want to see is a Labour government? They must be thinking, he can come back from this, reinvent and rebuild enough to still reach parts others can’t reach, in the only election that matters?
For certain, whatever the report says, we won’t have wall to wall condemnation across the press that evening - Mail, Express, Sun will still be cheerleading for him to stay, with Telegraph and Times not far behind. With all that still in place it just doesn’t feel over does it?
My take on it, they have tried a putsch and failed, it’s hit too much stubborn resistance for Boris on the back benches, in cabinet and throughout the Conservative press hadn’t it? With Boris to get 200+ votes in a vonc, it’s stalemate isn’t it, they can’t call vonc.
This standoff could go on for very long time. May elections? These things are as much art of spin than winning them mid term? Is it your turf this time or theirs, have you a greater or lesser vulnerability? What defines a wipe out or bad night? The leadership will spin not nearly the predicted wipe out, it’s all part of the Johnson recovery! As expected mid term, tough decisions taken. Nothing to see here. Building towards General Election. And the media narrative will move on in hours. Tell me I’m wrong.
This standoff, where they can’t vonc because they don’t have the winning numbers on back bench’s, no support from cabinet, and the press turning on rebels and backing Boris, could go on a long time. In fact the most likelihood in Boris recovery, letters are withdrawn not added.
Night 🙋♀️
I disagree. I don’t think that courage, or lack thereof, has got anything to do with it. It is all to do with timing. May is going to be a Tory bloodbath and that is sub-optimal for the incoming leader.
My judgement call is that Johnson cannot pull back, because he has no plan, no compass. Not talking about his lack of moral compass, but his political one.
To pull back Johnson needs:
1. Clear objectives, preferably achievable within 2 years
2. A unified party
3. No more own goals
If 1 exists, he’d better start selling it pronto. Needless to say, the environment for such a sales push is dreadful: once-sympathetic people have stopped listening (ask Scottish Labour how that feels.) “Levelling-up” takes 2 decades, at least, so is a non-starter, even if Johnson knew how to do it, and he doesn’t.
He can forget about 2. He has angered far too many Conservatives, notably the entire parliamentary group in Edinburgh and Redwall MPs.
Regarding 3: bitter, bitter experience ought to have taught Conservatives that there is *always* capacity for Johnson to keep just digging. It is what he does.
One or two of these points is insufficient. He needs 3 out of 3. The ball is at your feet Mr Johnson. Are you fit for fight?
The only statistically significant change from their last poll, in October, is a 4 point drop in SCon VI for the regional list vote, enough to cost several MSPs their jobs, as nearly all the parliamentary group come from the lists.
It is notable that VI in Scotland remains steady and predictable, whereas we have seen huge changes in VI in England, N Ireland and Wales. The Union rarely marches in step these days.
Voting intention - Constituency vote
SNP 47% (-1)
SLab 22% (nc)
SCon 19% (-1)
SLD 8% (+1)
oth 4% (+1)
Voting intention - Regional lists
SNP 38% (nc)
SLab 20% (nc)
SCon 18% (-4)
Grn 12% (+1)
SLD 9% (+2)
Alba 2% (+1)
oth 1% (nc)
Voting intention - Independence
Yes 50% (+2)
No 50% (-2)
Douglas Ross has played a blinder. As the English Tories sink like a stone, the wily football linesman keeps the Unionists’ heads above water.
Boris Johnson has a future?
Unfortunately, it has diddly squat to do with Mr Cole-Hamilton, who has been as mysteriously invisible as Mr Sarwar. I presume that they are adopting Napoleon’s strategy of not disturbing the Tory enemy in the midst of their endless stream of unforced errors. (That is the charitable explanation for the Lib-Lab team’s AWOL. There are other, less charitable, explanations.)
‘Nicola Sturgeon backed by majority of Scots over Christmas Covid rules in poll’
Scots overwhelmingly back the stricter approach taken by Nicola Sturgeon in response to the Omicron variant, a new poll has found.
(The Scotsman; behind paywall so we’ll have to wait for details)
They are only just being hit by Omicron and their death levels are already high (up their with wave one), and now they are getting a million cases a day.
Scotsman: ‘Boris Johnson should resign, say four in five Scots as poll reveals Downing Street parties scandal 'hurts case for union'’
Herald: ‘Nicola Sturgeon shocked by 'moral decay' of Boris Johnson blackmail claims’
National: ‘Nicola Sturgeon 'shocked' by No 10 'blackmail' claims’
Courier: ‘Broughty Ferry children’s shop hit by break-in as police investigate ‘spate of crimes’ in area’
P&J: ‘Tory MP accuses government of ‘blackmailing’ Boris Johnson rebels’
BBC Scotland: ‘New transport blueprint unveiled for Scotland’
Daily Record: ‘How Loch Ness Monster should really look after mystery of beast debunked’
Scottish Sun: ‘'I'M REALLY SORRY' Tearful Adele announces Las Vegas residency is CANCELLED – 24 hours before first show’
Well done to the Dundee Courier and the Record! 😄
FAV D Trump 7/2
19-year-old Zara Rutherford becomes the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/20/belgian-briton-zara-rutherford-is-youngest-woman-to-fly-solo-around-world
Took her five months to fly the 28,000 miles, dodging everything the weather had to throw at her tiny plane. Awesome achievement 👏
Great to see a fellow EU citizen doing her bit for Global Europe.
Vlaanderen op zijn best!
There is scant evidence to be found that having stricter rules has done any harm to the reputations of the devolved governments with anybody, save perhaps for some exasperated and despairing business owners. If their fiscal autonomy were as extensive as their legislative autonomy then I think that Wales would certainly have gone into a panic hard lockdown over Omicron before Christmas, and Scotland would probably have done so as well - and this would quite likely have made their respective First Ministers more, not less, popular.
Throughout Covid staff have been able to request a visit from the Therapy dogs and it's really had a positive effect on our staff.
Forget the Capitol riot.
Tax evasion is a serious problem for DJT. If the State of New York comes after him, and it goes to trial, then he could end up in prison. Can he run for President from prison? Would it help him to have been locked up by a liberal state? What if he won the election? Could he order the army in to NY to secure his release?
a) No shit Sherlock
b) What evidence is there that Vlad gives a toss about massive loss of life?
At this rate they'll need to rewrite the Wizard of Oz to add a Conservative MP who desperately wants a spine.
VONC!
What he doesn't have is the agreeable future he was looking forward to. Imagine, for example, if he tried to reprise his chairing of Have I Got News For You.
Can't remember who said it, but it was a great line and very apt here.
One wonders how many MPs have decided to play nicely nicely and wait for the Sue Gray report but have already made up their minds to pull the trigger.
What disturbs me and makes me think he’ll cling on is the extraordinary volte face from the Mail & Telegraph in recent days. Puzzling.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/20/schools-defy-boris-johnson-insist-face-masks-must-stay-class/
Its as if the end of the GB as a fully-functioning trading nation isn't relevant to the Boris Liar scandal. But it is...
My conclusion is that as there would be no downsides to brexit there was no point shovelling time and money at such things because they wouldn't be needed. So they didn't. And here we are.
I remember posting last year about how the border queue would take the bulk of a day as it already did at external EU borders. Was mocked by PT and others. Yet we're already at 9 hours and having to turn traffic cameras off in embarrassment and we've barely begun, with part implementation in the lightest trafficed month.
Plus very low cases June -> December ==> Low 'Natural' Resistance wrt end of Delta + Omicron waves. I think.
One of the things that tipped me to Remain - despite being very ambivalent on the subject of the EU, which is corrupt, greedy, dishonest, lazy and self-righteous - was that I noticed every single argument for leaving the EU, and every single batting away of the counter argument, bore a remarkable similarity to the behaviour of the Indy side in the Scottish referendum. And the answers Salmond gave on points like currency, borders, trading standards, debt etc were frankly not convincing.
That's not to say an independent Scotland would be unsuccessful or unsustainable, just as an independent UK could and indeed has survived outside the EU. Merely that the prospectus being put forward was clearly not the one that would be followed. Under such circumstances it was reasonable to conclude that he didn't have a plan or a clue, or if he did, he thought it was so unattractive nobody would vote for it.
And when I applied that to Johnson and Farage, the same logic applied. And nothing I have seen since has made me doubt my judgement.
Of course, if you are in favour of both the UK leaving the EU and Scotland leaving the UK as for example @BartholomewRoberts is, there's no issue of logic. But favouring one without the other like certain Nationalists or Jacob Rees-Mogg do is just silly.
Anyway, have a good morning,
I was pointing out in 2016 that the first thing the UK needs to do is recruit customs and excise staff and build the physical and IT infrastructure. Instead Big Dog was asleep in his basket, dreaming of bones.
Over the past few days, those very same papers have discovered that a liar, a bullshitter and a moral incontinent runs the government. They are, naturally, horrified.
The furies are now descending upon this prime minister. Having thoroughly chewed him up and digested every last point of polling advantage, the party he led to its first serious majority in 30 years is about to spit him out; the very MPs who most directly owe him their seats are plotting his demise. The obit already being written is about how one man, beset by monstrous flaws of character, presided over a rotten, insensate culture in Downing Street. Scarcely a word is said about how a rotten political culture chose this cracked actor to be prime minister in the first place.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/20/boris-johnson-culture-mourning-mother-downing-street-partied-prime-minister
http://twitter.com/ALDC/status/1484417166451646467
Not a big deal in the overall scheme of things, but potentially a harbinger of more. Carterton is very military (it’s the town for RAF Brize Norton) and not somewhere the LDs have had a presence before. If this carries through to District level, which is clearly the intention, the Conservative majority will start to look very shaky.
Agree entirely on Boris Johnson's incompetence.
https://january6th.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.house.gov/files/2022-1-20.BGT Letter to Ivanka Trump - Cover Letter and Enclosures_Redacted 2.pdf
The whole point about trade is that you form a block and negotiate en masse. The EU trade deals were better than anything we can realistically hope for because the EU is bigger than the GB. As we're now finding out.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60066432
I'd vote for Starmer in a heartbeat if the Conservatives were led by a man who marched alongside swastika flags and Hitler banners.
And that is the Brexit free gift for the nats. They don't need to propose a solution as the UK will have to create one long before it may be needed for Eng / Sco
Exactly what’s meant by levelling up.
Nigel Farage answers your quest… http://pltwps.it/_OE1qKNp
https://twitter.com/deletedbyMPs/status/1484426896779714567
"The court filing claims that at least two false statements were made to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) - the main tax body in the US - that "substantially overstated" the value of two properties to get a tax break."
Not sure how that works, but anything is possible I guess.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60050141
Also remember that Attourney General is a directly elected position, and this Democrat is up for re-election this November, having stood last time on a platform of putting Donald Trump in prison.
No-one really got agitated about divergence of trade standards, and the benefits from diverging are largely a mirage, as subsequent events are proving.
On topic, Johnson's wiles and woes, I watched the beginning of QT last night, and there was absolutely no support for Johnson. It was from St Andrews, and as might have been expected, the SCon man distanced himself from the Dirty Dog.
Why though, given the local MP is LibDem, was there no LibDem on the panel?
And we were told there's to be a QT on vaccination soon, from London, with anti-vaxxers recruited for the audience.
Why; unless the panel, when announced will include tough talkers like Sir JVT.
Edit, and yes, I know the opinions here about QT. Which I largely share. One question/discussion is usually enough for us.
In fact the whole Brexit realignment so far has been net bad news for consumers. Not disastrous, and outweighed by other problems caused by Covid, but not positive.
The trouble is the downsides are boring. Somewhat reduced choice in retail. Traffic jams of stationary lorries in Kent. Increased costs and back office paperwork for businesses. It’s bad, but boring. So almost completely absent from media. Downing st parties, a pandemic and Russian aggression are all much more exciting.
Absolutely gutted.
Deals may benefit the EU overall but harm individual countries. You think that wouldn't play into anything affecting us? It's madness to let a foreign power dictate our trade policy.
At about 80 kWH per car battery pack, it's an annual production of 24 GWh of battery storage, so a somewhat smaller contribution to providing battery storage for a grid with a large proportion of wind power. We might end up wanting a large battery factory in every county.
A moment of silence wouldn’t really be appropriate, maybe we should all play Bat Out Of Hell at full volume!
I was telling my partner 'I'd do anything for love but I won't do that.'
Also a rare Republican supporting US musician, here he is singing with Mitt Romney at a rally in 2012
https://youtu.be/Y7nVteJ8_8k