I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
You can't convince people to stop believing that Boris Johnson is a liar, so all you can do is try to persuade them that it doesn't matter. Thus, the debasement of the Conservative party, its MPs and members will continue. There is no way out for them until he is gone; and even then it will be a very long way back given the culture that he has created and they have all enabled. The Anglo-Orbans control the right in the UK as they do in many other parts of the free world.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Long ago, I read something similar about Jeffery Archer's difficult relationship with the truth. Paraphrasing from memory, the thing about Archer's silly boasts (went to Oxford, was the youngest MP) was that they had a bit of something near truth about them (he did spend time studying in Oxford, just not in the way most people understand from a simple statement, he was memorably young when he became an MP), and they were things that were significant in his story of his life. So they got reinforced from a messy truth to a memorable untruth. We're all prone to that a bit, but it's also textbook narcissm.
I can (just about) believe that BoJo didn't intend to flout the rules, or flaunt his flouting of them. And to Boris, that's more important than the objective reality that he socialised in ways that he shouldn't have, and that the majority of us worked much harder to stick to the rules properly and had a rotten 2020 as a result.
And if Boris thinks in his heart that he didn't break any rules, who are we to disabuse him of that notion?
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
They rule Scotland in a PR system.
I would like to see a similar system UK wide.
I wouldn’t. It’s a dogs dinner dreamt up by new labour to try to ensure there’s never a majority.
I’d much prefer STV with multi member seats, based on county borders.
And the LDs. Give the LDs some credit for the perverted d'Hondt system at Holyrood.
I quite like the D'Hondt system. It makes perfect sense and works out well in practice.
The downside is that it is difficult to explain to anyone so has virtually zero chance of being implemented.
I'm not sure what the best system would be for us, or what would be acceptable, but just about anything would be preferable to FPTP which is long past its sell-by date.
TBF we don't have a d'Hondt system in Scotland - just a deliberately degraded one.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
He's mentally ill? Seriously. You're basically saying there is somethiong really wrong with him.
“These two extreme groups [far left and far right] are similar in surprising ways. They are the whitest and richest of the seven groups, which suggests that America is being torn apart by a battle between two subsets of the elite who are not representative of the broader society”
Following the American commentary on the Musk/Twitter saga over the past week has been enlightening, with people changing positions 180º based purely on whether Musk or Agrawal ends up running the company.
Devoted conservatives and progressive activists make up 6% and 8% of the US population respectively.
Yet they also make up the biggest users of social media, with 70% of progressive activists and 56% of devoted conservatives sharing political social media posts over the last year
I don't see how the Tories get back to a pragmatic, bro-business, patriotic Conservatism that accepts the constraints of operating within a liberal democracy.
If such a party still existed, it would renounce Brexit as an existential threat to all those things
I keep awaiting the day that Tory MPs who spent decades campaigning against red tape and petty bureaucracy start attacking their own Brexit settlement. At the moment they either deny there is any, or blame Brussels.
Once they stop messing about there will need to be a solution. They are in simple principle against red tape and petty bureaucracy. Because it is bad for business and makes us uncompetitive. So something will have to give...
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
They rule Scotland in a PR system.
I would like to see a similar system UK wide.
I wouldn’t. It’s a dogs dinner dreamt up by new labour to try to ensure there’s never a majority.
I’d much prefer STV with multi member seats, based on county borders.
And the LDs. Give the LDs some credit for the perverted d'Hondt system at Holyrood.
Apparently Westminster was not so keen on it fearing it might lead to independence, their view was d'Hondt leave me this way.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all. The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The use of the word parties is toxic, yet from what has been reported so farthese were pathetic gatherings of work collegues at work. There is a lot of anger about a lot of things, and it’s being focussed on the wrong thing. Right now the nhs needs help. At a minimum I’d like to see hepa filter units in every ward of the nhs. I’d like a nightingale style plan for how to empty the hospitals of those who are ready for discharge but have nowhere to go without social care. I’d like substantial bonuses paid to nhs staff who are still working incredibly hard. I think the government needs to show how it will deal with the CoL crisis if prices don’t come down for power. I don’t give a fig for partygate. I know many of you see scrupulous in your observance of the rules. I tried my best but I was not perfect. A coffee at a colleagues house when dropping stuff off. My parents bubble including everyone from the family. I think people want Johnson gone and they see this as the way to do it.
A pedantic but germane PB point: the parties were not a matter of work colleagues at work. The presence of Mrs Johnson alone disproves that instantly.
But I entirely agree re HEPA filters in hospitals (and a wider review of ventilation and disease control, so we don't get a repeat of a former minister for health trashing the pandemic planning).
You can't convince people to stop believing that Boris Johnson is a liar, so all you can do is try to persuade them that it doesn't matter. Thus, the debasement of the Conservative party, its MPs and members will continue. There is no way out for them until he is gone; and even then it will be a very long way back given the culture that he has created and they have all enabled. The Anglo-Orbans control the right in the UK as they do in many other parts of the free world.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
They rule Scotland in a PR system.
I would like to see a similar system UK wide.
I wouldn’t. It’s a dogs dinner dreamt up by new labour to try to ensure there’s never a majority.
I’d much prefer STV with multi member seats, based on county borders.
And the LDs. Give the LDs some credit for the perverted d'Hondt system at Holyrood.
Apparently Westminster was not so keen on it fearing it might lead to independence, their view was d'Hondt leave me this way.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
They rule Scotland in a PR system.
I would like to see a similar system UK wide.
I wouldn’t. It’s a dogs dinner dreamt up by new labour to try to ensure there’s never a majority.
I’d much prefer STV with multi member seats, based on county borders.
And the LDs. Give the LDs some credit for the perverted d'Hondt system at Holyrood.
I quite like the D'Hondt system. It makes perfect sense and works out well in practice.
The downside is that it is difficult to explain to anyone so has virtually zero chance of being implemented.
I'm not sure what the best system would be for us, or what would be acceptable, but just about anything would be preferable to FPTP which is long past its sell-by date.
The d'Hondt system is not difficult to explain at all. Party X gets more votes than party Y, so they deserve the first seat. But who deserves the second? If party X has more than twice as many votes as party Y, then party X deserves a second seat before party Y gets their first. If, on the other hand, party Y had more than half as many votes as party X, then party Y would deserve their first seat before party X got their second. (and scale up for more parties and more seats).
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Long ago, I read something similar about Jeffery Archer's difficult relationship with the truth. Paraphrasing from memory, the thing about Archer's silly boasts (went to Oxford, was the youngest MP) was that they had a bit of something near truth about them (he did spend time studying in Oxford, just not in the way most people understand from a simple statement, he was memorably young when he became an MP), and they were things that were significant in his story of his life. So they got reinforced from a messy truth to a memorable untruth. We're all prone to that a bit, but it's also textbook narcissm.
I can (just about) believe that BoJo didn't intend to flout the rules, or flaunt his flouting of them. And to Boris, that's more important than the objective reality that he socialised in ways that he shouldn't have, and that the majority of us worked much harder to stick to the rules properly and had a rotten 2020 as a result.
And if Boris thinks in his heart that he didn't break any rules, who are we to disabuse him of that notion?
His boss? The PM works for the country.
If he wants to be a narcissist journalist, author, celeb or businessman fine. If he wants to lead us then a minimum expectation is to live in a shared reality, not his own narcissistic imaginative one.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
I'll take this point on. It is absolutely right that people can delude themselves, make the lie so prominent in their head that it becomes the truth. So yeah, such a thing is possible. Though as the polis tell you it is not a defence. "I don't think I murdered that person" vs "but you did and we have the proof"
The problem here is that it isn't true in the case of Boris Johnson. If the only infraction was the birthday cake then perhaps. But it isn't. Hard to say with any credibility "I had no idea this was a party" when you attend a BYOB event. Or pour the drinks. Or wave your can of shit lager at the camera. Or belt out The Winner Takes It All in your "we fucked up Cummings" party in your flat with music so loud they could hear it across Whitehall.
I wouldn't put it past him to try it. Its just that "I didn't know I was lying" is itself another lie.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR is a much better system.
Blair should have introduced it. He probably didn't because he thought it would disadvantage Labour, so one of his smaller failures.
It's hard to say who it would advantage most now, probably the LDs but that could change. No matter. If it's a better system, it should be introduced regardless.
FPTP is a dinosaur.
I think outright stating PR is better is not quite right. FPTP produces coalitions within parties, as we see with labour and conservative. PR is thought to produce coalitions after the vote. Now in some ways that means better representation of wider views, but the danger is what happens to manifestos. Parties stand on a set of policies, votes come in and no one party wins. Now the negotiation starts. And you know who has no say at this point? The voter. There are no guarantees that your favourite parts of the manifesto of the party you voted for gets through. Of course, manifestos are often not worth the paper they are written on. Now Scotland is an exception, as a single issue party has captured the vote. But I think that is indivdual circumstances there.
Yes as they only have English parties as competition. Given there is only ONE Scottish party then it makes sense why they get lots of votes rather than English parties.
I thought there were TWO Scottish parties?
Or do you mean only ONE that gets meaningful numbers of votes?
There are a few minor ones for sure but as you well know , only one sizeable one though things may change as they have chosen the Tory model of lying, cheating and grifting nowadays.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
I believe it more likely that he doesn't believe rules/laws apply to him. So how can he break rules if they don't apply? Why should he resign for misleading Parliament when it doesn't matter if he misleads Parliament because etiquettes don't apply to him?
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
They rule Scotland in a PR system.
I would like to see a similar system UK wide.
I wouldn’t. It’s a dogs dinner dreamt up by new labour to try to ensure there’s never a majority.
I’d much prefer STV with multi member seats, based on county borders.
And the LDs. Give the LDs some credit for the perverted d'Hondt system at Holyrood.
Apparently Westminster was not so keen on it fearing it might lead to independence, their view was d'Hondt leave me this way.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR is a much better system.
Blair should have introduced it. He probably didn't because he thought it would disadvantage Labour, so one of his smaller failures.
It's hard to say who it would advantage most now, probably the LDs but that could change. No matter. If it's a better system, it should be introduced regardless.
FPTP is a dinosaur.
I think outright stating PR is better is not quite right. FPTP produces coalitions within parties, as we see with labour and conservative. PR is thought to produce coalitions after the vote. Now in some ways that means better representation of wider views, but the danger is what happens to manifestos. Parties stand on a set of policies, votes come in and no one party wins. Now the negotiation starts. And you know who has no say at this point? The voter. There are no guarantees that your favourite parts of the manifesto of the party you voted for gets through. Of course, manifestos are often not worth the paper they are written on. Now Scotland is an exception, as a single issue party has captured the vote. But I think that is indivdual circumstances there.
Yes as they only have English parties as competition. Given there is only ONE Scottish party then it makes sense why they get lots of votes rather than English parties.
TBF, there are two other smaller ones even if the Trots have vanished (or been absorbed).
You can't convince people to stop believing that Boris Johnson is a liar, so all you can do is try to persuade them that it doesn't matter. Thus, the debasement of the Conservative party, its MPs and members will continue. There is no way out for them until he is gone; and even then it will be a very long way back given the culture that he has created and they have all enabled. The Anglo-Orbans control the right in the UK as they do in many other parts of the free world.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
Why are they keeping him?
They are waiting until May to see how bad the local elections and polls are before they decide whether to keep him or not
You can't convince people to stop believing that Boris Johnson is a liar, so all you can do is try to persuade them that it doesn't matter. Thus, the debasement of the Conservative party, its MPs and members will continue. There is no way out for them until he is gone; and even then it will be a very long way back given the culture that he has created and they have all enabled. The Anglo-Orbans control the right in the UK as they do in many other parts of the free world.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR is a much better system.
Blair should have introduced it. He probably didn't because he thought it would disadvantage Labour, so one of his smaller failures.
It's hard to say who it would advantage most now, probably the LDs but that could change. No matter. If it's a better system, it should be introduced regardless.
FPTP is a dinosaur.
I think outright stating PR is better is not quite right. FPTP produces coalitions within parties, as we see with labour and conservative. PR is thought to produce coalitions after the vote. Now in some ways that means better representation of wider views, but the danger is what happens to manifestos. Parties stand on a set of policies, votes come in and no one party wins. Now the negotiation starts. And you know who has no say at this point? The voter. There are no guarantees that your favourite parts of the manifesto of the party you voted for gets through. Of course, manifestos are often not worth the paper they are written on. Now Scotland is an exception, as a single issue party has captured the vote. But I think that is indivdual circumstances there.
Yes as they only have English parties as competition. Given there is only ONE Scottish party then it makes sense why they get lots of votes rather than English parties.
I thought there were TWO Scottish parties?
Or do you mean only ONE that gets meaningful numbers of votes?
I can think of at least 4 distinctly Scottish Parties: SNP Alba "no, I don't need planning permission for the massive YES sign permanently erected in my garden anyone saying I do is part of the evil Sturgeon's plot against me" Party Scottish Green Party Scottish Family "well we say family but its more like we want to beat your deviant family with a stick for all their SINS! You SINNERS! DEVIANTS! BURN THE HERETICS! Party
And there will be others whose leaflets I have not received.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
Huh? What planet are you on?
FPTP gives the SNP 81% of the seats on 45% of the vote. PR would be a boon for the Unionist parties. Starmer would be mad to miss this opportunity.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
They rule Scotland in a PR system.
I would like to see a similar system UK wide.
I wouldn’t. It’s a dogs dinner dreamt up by new labour to try to ensure there’s never a majority.
I’d much prefer STV with multi member seats, based on county borders.
And the LDs. Give the LDs some credit for the perverted d'Hondt system at Holyrood.
Apparently Westminster was not so keen on it fearing it might lead to independence, their view was d'Hondt leave me this way.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all. The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The use of the word parties is toxic, yet from what has been reported so farthese were pathetic gatherings of work collegues at work. There is a lot of anger about a lot of things, and it’s being focussed on the wrong thing. Right now the nhs needs help. At a minimum I’d like to see hepa filter units in every ward of the nhs. I’d like a nightingale style plan for how to empty the hospitals of those who are ready for discharge but have nowhere to go without social care. I’d like substantial bonuses paid to nhs staff who are still working incredibly hard. I think the government needs to show how it will deal with the CoL crisis if prices don’t come down for power. I don’t give a fig for partygate. I know many of you see scrupulous in your observance of the rules. I tried my best but I was not perfect. A coffee at a colleagues house when dropping stuff off. My parents bubble including everyone from the family. I think people want Johnson gone and they see this as the way to do it.
I think different, these public paid arseholes were whooping it up while passing laws to stop me living my life. I would jail every lying, cheating, stealing one of them after tarring and feathering them.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
I believe it more likely that he doesn't believe rules/laws apply to him. So how can he break rules if they don't apply? Why should he resign for misleading Parliament when it doesn't matter if he misleads Parliament because etiquettes don't apply to him?
It's the sense of privilege, Pete, and it applies to those he surrounds himself with. Laws are for little people.
How else do you explain that nonsense with the fridge for the wine? They just thought it was a laugh, and they were immune because of Boris's protection. It's a self-serving little clique at the heart of Government.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
He's mentally ill? Seriously. You're basically saying there is somethiong really wrong with him.
Did you see what I wrote above? I think he was foolish, but lots of people bent the rules. I know most didn’t, but a lot did. They convinced themselves that as they were at work it was ok. It wasn’t the Wannsee meeting, to go full invocation of the Nazis.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Long ago, I read something similar about Jeffery Archer's difficult relationship with the truth. Paraphrasing from memory, the thing about Archer's silly boasts (went to Oxford, was the youngest MP) was that they had a bit of something near truth about them (he did spend time studying in Oxford, just not in the way most people understand from a simple statement, he was memorably young when he became an MP), and they were things that were significant in his story of his life. So they got reinforced from a messy truth to a memorable untruth. We're all prone to that a bit, but it's also textbook narcissm.
I can (just about) believe that BoJo didn't intend to flout the rules, or flaunt his flouting of them. And to Boris, that's more important than the objective reality that he socialised in ways that he shouldn't have, and that the majority of us worked much harder to stick to the rules properly and had a rotten 2020 as a result.
And if Boris thinks in his heart that he didn't break any rules, who are we to disabuse him of that notion?
His boss? The PM works for the country.
If he wants to be a narcissist journalist, author, celeb or businessman fine. If he wants to lead us then a minimum expectation is to live in a shared reality, not his own narcissistic imaginative one.
Agreed.
But who is going to tell dare him that? Part of his imagined reality is that he can say and do whatever he damn well pleases because he's World King.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all. The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The use of the word parties is toxic, yet from what has been reported so farthese were pathetic gatherings of work collegues at work. There is a lot of anger about a lot of things, and it’s being focussed on the wrong thing. Right now the nhs needs help. At a minimum I’d like to see hepa filter units in every ward of the nhs. I’d like a nightingale style plan for how to empty the hospitals of those who are ready for discharge but have nowhere to go without social care. I’d like substantial bonuses paid to nhs staff who are still working incredibly hard. I think the government needs to show how it will deal with the CoL crisis if prices don’t come down for power. I don’t give a fig for partygate. I know many of you see scrupulous in your observance of the rules. I tried my best but I was not perfect. A coffee at a colleagues house when dropping stuff off. My parents bubble including everyone from the family. I think people want Johnson gone and they see this as the way to do it.
A pedantic but germane PB point: the parties were not a matter of work colleagues at work. The presence of Mrs Johnson alone disproves that instantly.
But I entirely agree re HEPA filters in hospitals (and a wider review of ventilation and disease control, so we don't get a repeat of a former minister for health trashing the pandemic planning).
The point about Mars Johnson is less significant than that. Firstly No 10 is the home of the PM and family, and secondly does she no longer work for the party?
You can't convince people to stop believing that Boris Johnson is a liar, so all you can do is try to persuade them that it doesn't matter. Thus, the debasement of the Conservative party, its MPs and members will continue. There is no way out for them until he is gone; and even then it will be a very long way back given the culture that he has created and they have all enabled. The Anglo-Orbans control the right in the UK as they do in many other parts of the free world.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
Why are they keeping him?
They are waiting until May to see how bad the local elections and polls are before they decide whether to keep him or not
Agreed.
PB is indebted to you for a consistently clear and level-headed view from the front line.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
Huh? What planet are you on?
FPTP gives the SNP 81% of the seats on 45% of the vote. PR would be a boon for the Unionist parties. Starmer would be mad to miss this opportunity.
FPTP benefits the SNP, Corbynites in Labour (see 2017), SF and the DUP and the Conservatives.
PR benefits the LDs, the Greens, ReformUK, the UUP, SDLP and Alliance and probably the Cameroon wing of the Tories and the Starmer/Blairite wing of Labour (as they would be more likely to lead coalition governments).
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Nonsense. PR would kill the monstrous New Brexit Party that murdered the old Conservative Party. It would not kill centre-right sentiment in the countries. Centre-right voters will coalesce round new, fresh, positive parties.
(And I can’t recall ever “squealing about gerrymandering” in my life, so not sure where you’re inventing that from.)
I detect a touch of hysteria in the air this morning. Yes, BoJo is a lazy, fat, good-for-nothing, with a disdain for the truth, but what really annoys some posters is that he's lucky. 'It's not fair' is what they're really saying. He has no principles we can pin him down to, because he's looking after number one all the time.
He's the exact opposite of a political activist, and that's his only saving grace. At least, he won't be exhorting others to glue their heads to pipelines in an effort to blackmail normal people. And when did the electorate gain this sense of self-importance?
Seriously, I would quite like a politician who admits he doesn't know everything. We're on a journey of exploration in a changing world, and we need to be free to change our minds. Unfortunately, we end up with a Boris, or a fool who thinks he knows all the answers.
Parties and leaders who don't have all the answers and say so are a good thing. Suspect we will see that deployed quite a lot in the run up to 2024. "So what would you do about inflation" asks someone thinking there is no answer, met with "well for a start I wouldn't blame the people suffering from it like you do".
I wouldn't describe Boris as lucky. He is calculating. We know this - he considers both sides of the debate before choosing which gives him best prospects. He didn't accidentally come down on the side of Brexit he calculated that was the best choice in his mission to become PM.
Nor is it luck that he is surrounded by a similar cast of crooks, bullies, liars and idiots. The party is prone to infestation with these sort of people. Remember the Major government was riddled with them and then Redwood presented a challenge with what looked like the cast of The Munsters as his supporters. Redwood himself - who declares that he works a 50-hour week in his side job - is still an idiot, attacking state run train companies on Twitter this weekend for doing the things that the state (his government) tell them to do.
Boris the act just makes sure he thinks about who is the disposable idiot, or the chaff he can use to lure the chasing press pack away, and calculatingly lines them up. The Number 10 operation against Number 11 even more scheming than the reverse operation had been previously. So lucky, no.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
I'll take this point on. It is absolutely right that people can delude themselves, make the lie so prominent in their head that it becomes the truth. So yeah, such a thing is possible. Though as the polis tell you it is not a defence. "I don't think I murdered that person" vs "but you did and we have the proof"
The problem here is that it isn't true in the case of Boris Johnson. If the only infraction was the birthday cake then perhaps. But it isn't. Hard to say with any credibility "I had no idea this was a party" when you attend a BYOB event. Or pour the drinks. Or wave your can of shit lager at the camera. Or belt out The Winner Takes It All in your "we fucked up Cummings" party in your flat with music so loud they could hear it across Whitehall.
I wouldn't put it past him to try it. Its just that "I didn't know I was lying" is itself another lie.
Are the points in your last paragraph proven, or assertions at this point? If they are proven, then I absolutely agree with you, but not yet. The BYOB in the garden, assuming that’s the photos we’ve seen look little different to the coffees I shared on the uni campus during my weekly maintenance visits.
If this photo of him waving a can exists, where is it?
I’m so working this into future threads about Boris Johnson.
“At first I really liked him and felt he would be good for the country, but now he has been in power he has been one of the worst prime ministers ever… he is so out of touch and has no idea how the majority of people live their lives.”
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
They rule Scotland in a PR system.
I would like to see a similar system UK wide.
I wouldn’t. It’s a dogs dinner dreamt up by new labour to try to ensure there’s never a majority.
I’d much prefer STV with multi member seats, based on county borders.
And the LDs. Give the LDs some credit for the perverted d'Hondt system at Holyrood.
I quite like the D'Hondt system. It makes perfect sense and works out well in practice.
The downside is that it is difficult to explain to anyone so has virtually zero chance of being implemented.
I'm not sure what the best system would be for us, or what would be acceptable, but just about anything would be preferable to FPTP which is long past its sell-by date.
The d'Hondt system is not difficult to explain at all. Party X gets more votes than party Y, so they deserve the first seat. But who deserves the second? If party X has more than twice as many votes as party Y, then party X deserves a second seat before party Y gets their first. If, on the other hand, party Y had more than half as many votes as party X, then party Y would deserve their first seat before party X got their second. (and scale up for more parties and more seats).
OK, I'll try that out down my local boozer tonite.
The real issue is no longer Johnson, it is the Conservative party’s tolerance of him. Every Tory MP and member not actively and vocally seeking his removal is colluding in the dilution of our democracy. As noted previously a number of times, no genuine patriot would do that.
Where does the Tory party go from here? Where are the untainted MPs and PPCs who are at the heart of rebuilding a Party from the ashes of the Johnson cabal? It looks bleak - even more so if it is a narrow electoral defeat.
It's one of the curious things about Labour. Once Jez went, his spell over the party broke pretty rapidly and the hard left were put back in their box with a bit of noise but little else.
Some of that is down to Starmer being a better politician than many credit him for, but also the Momentum takeover was never that complete.
The Conservatives might just wake up from this nightmare, in the way that Spain collectively but wordlessly decided to just ignore Franco's plans as soon as he was dead. But it looks harder for the Conservatives.
The left is not homogenous, and there are a lot of members who like to try to win arguments but dislike all the factional maneuvering stuff (I'm one). I know that not many here share my affection for Corbyn, but an important thing about him is that he frustrated many of his allies by refusing to support mandatory reselection and imposition of like-minded candidastes from HQ. He believes you should try and discuss issues with people rather than cancel them (it's why he'll literally talk to anyone, which also gets him into trouble). As a result, most deselection attempts withered and when he resigned the centrist core of the PLP and national officers resumed control fairly easily. Many leftists like Chris Williamson think he was naive, and so perhaps he was - but it kept the party more or less intact, so that Starmer could take over without any special ructions.
By contrast, the Johnson purge of everyone from Ken Clarke to ersrwhile Brexit allies who drew the line at something has left the Conservative Party in the grip of people who think that the right thing to do with a critic is to throw them out. It's going to be harder for a successor to fix.
You can't convince people to stop believing that Boris Johnson is a liar, so all you can do is try to persuade them that it doesn't matter. Thus, the debasement of the Conservative party, its MPs and members will continue. There is no way out for them until he is gone; and even then it will be a very long way back given the culture that he has created and they have all enabled. The Anglo-Orbans control the right in the UK as they do in many other parts of the free world.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
Why are they keeping him?
They are waiting until May to see how bad the local elections and polls are before they decide whether to keep him or not
Bloody hell! You commenting on the biggest issue of the year!!!!
You are saying that right and wrong doesn't matter here. Principles don't matter. The rules? Who cares. Just see if he is a vote winner still.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Setting aside the casual conflation of immigration and asylum seeking, I thought once deported to Rwanda asylum seekers can only seek it there rather than the UK? Are you saying that’s a just punishment for ‘jumping the queue’?
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
Why are they keeping him?
An amazingly stupid tactic by the amazingly stupid Tory MPs as the people most likely to be angriest are the people who stuck by the rules. Fabricant in particular opened his stupid gob at the end of last week and annoyed essentially all teachers and healthcare professionals.
Looks to me as if the polls are slowly moving Macron's way. Latest has him on 56% to 44%. You can get 7/4 for 55%-59.99% and then 14/1 (down from 16/1) for 60-64.99%. 40/1 for 65% and above.
He might land under 55%, in which case the odds are slim pickings.
Remember: he outperformed the polls in the first round by around 4-5%.
I have taken the plunge this morning and I'm arbed on anything above 55%. I think it was worth it.
I detect a touch of hysteria in the air this morning. Yes, BoJo is a lazy, fat, good-for-nothing, with a disdain for the truth, but what really annoys some posters is that he's lucky. 'It's not fair' is what they're really saying. He has no principles we can pin him down to, because he's looking after number one all the time.
He's the exact opposite of a political activist, and that's his only saving grace. At least, he won't be exhorting others to glue their heads to pipelines in an effort to blackmail normal people. And when did the electorate gain this sense of self-importance?
Seriously, I would quite like a politician who admits he doesn't know everything. We're on a journey of exploration in a changing world, and we need to be free to change our minds. Unfortunately, we end up with a Boris, or a fool who thinks he knows all the answers.
You might have hit the nail on the head. If his fan base is also 'lazy fat and good-for-nothing with a distain for the truth without principles only looking out for number one' then the mystery of his and Brexit's success becomes clear...
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Setting aside the casual conflation of immigration and asylum seeking, I thought once deported to Rwanda asylum seekers can only seek it there rather than the UK? Are you saying that’s a just punishment for ‘jumping the queue’?
Its a punishment for wanting to be a foreigner living in someone else's country...
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
Does this Rwanda bollocks have "cut through"? I don't think I've ever heard a normal (ie not on here) person mention it.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
Why are they keeping him?
An amazingly stupid tactic by the amazingly stupid Tory MPs as the people most likely to be angriest are the people who stuck by the rules. Fabricant in particular opened his stupid gob at the end of last week and annoyed essentially all teachers and healthcare professionals.
Fabricant quite clearly failed to follow the rules and thus assumes no one did. He’s clearly an idiot. I think most people followed the rules as well as they could. I tried, and failed a couple of times. I walked the dog in the woods when isolating after a contact. But to make those claims about others you really ought to be able to back it up.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them.
You don't live in this country and clearly have no clue what you are on about.
I have been surprised by how even my Conservative friends (and even my loyal tory sister) are opposed to the idea: messages range from 'totally appalling' through to 'unworkable.'
Sometimes you really DO have to live here to get the mood.
Looks to me as if the polls are slowly moving Macron's way. Latest has him on 56% to 44%. You can get 7/4 for 55%-59.99% and then 14/1 (down from 16/1) for 60-64.99%. 40/1 for 65% and above.
He might land under 55%, in which case the odds are slim pickings.
Remember: he outperformed the polls in the first round by around 4-5%.
I have taken the plunge this morning and I'm arbed on anything above 55%. I think it was worth it.
Even if Le Pen gets 44% that is still 11% more than she got in 2017 and about Tories 2019 levels here.
If she gets 47% that is Trump 2016 or 2020 levels.
Looks to me as if the polls are slowly moving Macron's way. Latest has him on 56% to 44%. You can get 7/4 for 55%-59.99% and then 14/1 (down from 16/1) for 60-64.99%. 40/1 for 65% and above.
He might land under 55%, in which case the odds are slim pickings.
Remember: he outperformed the polls in the first round by around 4-5%.
I have taken the plunge this morning and I'm arbed on anything above 55%. I think it was worth it.
Even if Le Pen gets 44% that is still 11% more than she got in 2017 and about Tories 2019 levels here.
If she gets 47% that is Trump 2016 or 2020 levels.
So what?
It was a betting post but ... I repeat ... so what? Sometimes, just sometimes, pause before posting and ask yourself if there's any need to hit the comment button.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
Why are they keeping him?
An amazingly stupid tactic by the amazingly stupid Tory MPs as the people most likely to be angriest are the people who stuck by the rules. Fabricant in particular opened his stupid gob at the end of last week and annoyed essentially all teachers and healthcare professionals.
Fabricant quite clearly failed to follow the rules and thus assumes no one did. He’s clearly an idiot. I think most people followed the rules as well as they could. I tried, and failed a couple of times. I walked the dog in the woods when isolating after a contact. But to make those claims about others you really ought to be able to back it up.
I broke all the rules all of the time as is my wont so I can't get too salty over Partygate.
Looks to me as if the polls are slowly moving Macron's way. Latest has him on 56% to 44%. You can get 7/4 for 55%-59.99% and then 14/1 (down from 16/1) for 60-64.99%. 40/1 for 65% and above.
He might land under 55%, in which case the odds are slim pickings.
Remember: he outperformed the polls in the first round by around 4-5%.
I have taken the plunge this morning and I'm arbed on anything above 55%. I think it was worth it.
Even if Le Pen gets 44% that is still 11% more than she got in 2017 and about Tories 2019 levels here.
If she gets 47% that is Trump 2016 or 2020 levels.
So what?
It was a betting post but ... I repeat ... so what?
If she got the same swing in 2027 then she would be elected President and Macron cannot run again under the French constitution if he is re elected on Sunday
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
Snap!
Sometimes it really shows when someone lives abroad: in a wealthy Expat community.
I’m so working this into future threads about Boris Johnson.
“At first I really liked him and felt he would be good for the country, but now he has been in power he has been one of the worst prime ministers ever… he is so out of touch and has no idea how the majority of people live their lives.”
To be scrupulously fair, the utter anus appears to live from one paycheck to the next, depends on the generosity of others and sprays his sprog-making juice about like a garden sprinkler, so may have more in common with a certain demographic than one might think.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Maybe have a read of this and you will get a sense of the scale of it:
That's the Daily Mail. Hardly working backwards from a position of wanting the PM to resign.
You're not doing yourself justice this morning. Did you have a bad night? Or maybe Ramadan is getting to you. I have friends your way who get very tetchy at this time of year.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
Must be a decent sized pinhead for both you and Boris to be dancing on.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
Why are they keeping him?
An amazingly stupid tactic by the amazingly stupid Tory MPs as the people most likely to be angriest are the people who stuck by the rules. Fabricant in particular opened his stupid gob at the end of last week and annoyed essentially all teachers and healthcare professionals.
Fabricant quite clearly failed to follow the rules and thus assumes no one did. He’s clearly an idiot. I think most people followed the rules as well as they could. I tried, and failed a couple of times. I walked the dog in the woods when isolating after a contact. But to make those claims about others you really ought to be able to back it up.
Both Fabricant and Johnson seem to think alcohol in the workplace is normal and unremarkeable. It says a lot about our politics and journalism that they are probably correct for these settings, and how divorced from the reality of other peoples workplaces.
Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson has told Dagens Nyheter, the leading broadsheet, that a Swedish NATO membership application in current circumstances would lead to further instability in Europe. She said: “In a situation like this, my judgment is that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we are predictable, clear and hold a steady course.”
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
I can understand reversion to status quo and a much cherished position, but it is hard at this present moment to see how Sweden joining could lead to greater instability.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
Must be a decent sized pinhead for both you and Boris to be dancing on.
As I have consistently said, I think he should go, but I also try to understand people’s opinions.
“These two extreme groups [far left and far right] are similar in surprising ways. They are the whitest and richest of the seven groups, which suggests that America is being torn apart by a battle between two subsets of the elite who are not representative of the broader society”
Following the American commentary on the Musk/Twitter saga over the past week has been enlightening, with people changing positions 180º based purely on whether Musk or Agrawal ends up running the company.
Devoted conservatives and progressive activists make up 6% and 8% of the US population respectively.
Yet they also make up the biggest users of social media, with 70% of progressive activists and 56% of devoted conservatives sharing political social media posts over the last year
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Where is your evidence? I have none other than the texts I'm getting are showing a fury that matches mine.
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
Why are they keeping him?
An amazingly stupid tactic by the amazingly stupid Tory MPs as the people most likely to be angriest are the people who stuck by the rules. Fabricant in particular opened his stupid gob at the end of last week and annoyed essentially all teachers and healthcare professionals.
Fabricant quite clearly failed to follow the rules and thus assumes no one did. He’s clearly an idiot. I think most people followed the rules as well as they could. I tried, and failed a couple of times. I walked the dog in the woods when isolating after a contact. But to make those claims about others you really ought to be able to back it up.
Both Fabricant and Johnson seem to think alcohol in the workplace is normal and unremarkeable. It says a lot about our politics and journalism that they are probably correct for these settings, and how divorced from the reality of other peoples workplaces.
Very true. Lunchtime drinking for academics was common thirty years ago, now virtually dead at my uni. Even after work drinks is hardly a thing. The Houses of Parliament have several bars don’t they, and I think there is still a considerable culture of drinking and schmoozing to get things done/get on. Bunch of dinosaurs.
Why is Andy Burnham 4/1 to be Next Labour Leader? I just can’t make head nor tail of that idiotically short price.
There is a long list of reasons why that is appalling value, but surely a new reason to add to the list is inflation. Say he does by some miracle get the job in, say, 8 years time, your tenner would have earnt you a measly 40 quid. But that’s a spring 2022 forty quid. It’d be a 2030 twenty quid.
All distant-event bets tend to be poor value for punters and terrific earners for bookmakers, but inflation has just distorted the market even further in the interests of the bad guys.
Yeah it seems nuts to me as well. I've layed a fair amount, as I imagine many others here have. I guess there's just someone out there that wanted to have a big long term bet on him, and too few people prepared to oppose it given (as you say) that it ties money up potentially for many years. (And that's bad for both sides of the bet)
Yes, that’s why I didn’t advocate laying Burnham either.
I can see the point in laying certain names on the Next Con Leader market, but you’d have to be convinced that Starmer is either about to resign or be trounced at the election to dabble in the Next Labour Leader market. Just can’t see it myself.
He is of course a mere mortal, but Starmer looks fit and healthy to me.
First Past the post is a fair system. The only people who want to change it are the perennial losers who think they might benefit
People generally want to change systems because they think they will benefit. That doesnt mean any change is unreasonable.
FPTP has strengths and weaknesses. I personally think some form of PR is fairer, but adherents do themselves no favours when acting like FPTP is inherently a corrupt system. Since it's not, it puts people off as it leads them to react as you have and dismiss any argument for change as poorly motivated.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
We have a fair voting system at the moment, whoever gets the most votes wins their constituency.
What people who call for a "fair" voting system really mean is they don't like the results and want those who aren't getting enough votes to still get elected anyway, rather than convincing more voters to vote for them.
Circa 60% of voters over the last seven years have no say. In 2005 the party of government were re elected with a majority on just 36% of votes cast, meaning 64% of voters were without a voice.
It's only a fair system because the party you want to win generally wins, 1997 to 2010 notwithstanding.
P.S. It worked OK between 2010 and 2015.
100% of voters have a say.
If you lose, then you still have your say, you just lost. Get more votes next time if you want to win.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Where is your evidence? I have none other than the texts I'm getting are showing a fury that matches mine.
I never cease to be amazed at peoples ability to dredge up others who, by a happy coincidence, share their worldview on an issue when debating the same issue.
I don’t know a single person in the real world who has even expressed a view on it.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all. The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The use of the word parties is toxic, yet from what has been reported so farthese were pathetic gatherings of work collegues at work. There is a lot of anger about a lot of things, and it’s being focussed on the wrong thing. Right now the nhs needs help. At a minimum I’d like to see hepa filter units in every ward of the nhs. I’d like a nightingale style plan for how to empty the hospitals of those who are ready for discharge but have nowhere to go without social care. I’d like substantial bonuses paid to nhs staff who are still working incredibly hard. I think the government needs to show how it will deal with the CoL crisis if prices don’t come down for power. I don’t give a fig for partygate. I know many of you see scrupulous in your observance of the rules. I tried my best but I was not perfect. A coffee at a colleagues house when dropping stuff off. My parents bubble including everyone from the family. I think people want Johnson gone and they see this as the way to do it.
A pedantic but germane PB point: the parties were not a matter of work colleagues at work. The presence of Mrs Johnson alone disproves that instantly.
But I entirely agree re HEPA filters in hospitals (and a wider review of ventilation and disease control, so we don't get a repeat of a former minister for health trashing the pandemic planning).
The point about Mars Johnson is less significant than that. Firstly No 10 is the home of the PM and family, and secondly does she no longer work for the party?
That’s not how the architecture of No. 10 works. It’s not like the Johnsons live there and the Government just happens to be meeting in their living room, so Carrie has to squeeze past to get to the washing machine. There is a clearly delineated flat in which the Sunaks were living, with the Johnsons living in a clearly delineated flat in No. 11.
I live in a house split into 2 flats. The COVID rules didn’t let me go hang out in the downstairs flat because it’s all the same building. Likewise, Carrie had no reason to go wandering around the offices of No. 10.
Carrie may work for the Conservative Party, but she doesn’t work for the Government. She didn’t bring cake to a Conservative Party meeting.
The real issue is no longer Johnson, it is the Conservative party’s tolerance of him. Every Tory MP and member not actively and vocally seeking his removal is colluding in the dilution of our democracy. As noted previously a number of times, no genuine patriot would do that.
Where does the Tory party go from here? Where are the untainted MPs and PPCs who are at the heart of rebuilding a Party from the ashes of the Johnson cabal? It looks bleak - even more so if it is a narrow electoral defeat.
It's one of the curious things about Labour. Once Jez went, his spell over the party broke pretty rapidly and the hard left were put back in their box with a bit of noise but little else.
Some of that is down to Starmer being a better politician than many credit him for, but also the Momentum takeover was never that complete.
The Conservatives might just wake up from this nightmare, in the way that Spain collectively but wordlessly decided to just ignore Franco's plans as soon as he was dead. But it looks harder for the Conservatives.
The left is not homogenous, and there are a lot of members who like to try to win arguments but dislike all the factional maneuvering stuff (I'm one). I know that not many here share my affection for Corbyn, but an important thing about him is that he frustrated many of his allies by refusing to support mandatory reselection and imposition of like-minded candidastes from HQ. He believes you should try and discuss issues with people rather than cancel them (it's why he'll literally talk to anyone, which also gets him into trouble). As a result, most deselection attempts withered and when he resigned the centrist core of the PLP and national officers resumed control fairly easily. Many leftists like Chris Williamson think he was naive, and so perhaps he was - but it kept the party more or less intact, so that Starmer could take over without any special ructions.
By contrast, the Johnson purge of everyone from Ken Clarke to ersrwhile Brexit allies who drew the line at something has left the Conservative Party in the grip of people who think that the right thing to do with a critic is to throw them out. It's going to be harder for a successor to fix.
I am not a huge Jeremy Corbyn fan, to put it mildly, but even I would accept he was never in it for himself. That makes him very different to Johnson, whose sole focus is what is in his personal interests.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
We have a fair voting system at the moment, whoever gets the most votes wins their constituency.
What people who call for a "fair" voting system really mean is they don't like the results and want those who aren't getting enough votes to still get elected anyway, rather than convincing more voters to vote for them.
Circa 60% of voters over the last seven years have no say. In 2005 the party of government were re elected with a majority on just 36% of votes cast, meaning 64% of voters were without a voice.
It's only a fair system because the party you want to win generally wins, 1997 to 2010 notwithstanding.
P.S. It worked OK between 2010 and 2015.
100% of voters have a say.
If you lose, then you still have your say, you just lost. Get more votes next time if you want to win.
Or split the vote of everyone else in your seat. It’s possible to win a seat with a minority of people having voted for you. Justify that
Why is Andy Burnham 4/1 to be Next Labour Leader? I just can’t make head nor tail of that idiotically short price.
There is a long list of reasons why that is appalling value, but surely a new reason to add to the list is inflation. Say he does by some miracle get the job in, say, 8 years time, your tenner would have earnt you a measly 40 quid. But that’s a spring 2022 forty quid. It’d be a 2030 twenty quid.
All distant-event bets tend to be poor value for punters and terrific earners for bookmakers, but inflation has just distorted the market even further in the interests of the bad guys.
Yeah it seems nuts to me as well. I've layed a fair amount, as I imagine many others here have. I guess there's just someone out there that wanted to have a big long term bet on him, and too few people prepared to oppose it given (as you say) that it ties money up potentially for many years. (And that's bad for both sides of the bet)
Yes, that’s why I didn’t advocate laying Burnham either.
I can see the point in laying certain names on the Next Con Leader market, but you’d have to be convinced that Starmer is either about to resign or be trounced at the election to dabble in the Next Labour Leader market. Just can’t see it myself.
He is of course a mere mortal, but Starmer looks fit and healthy to me.
Yes, the only way Starmer goes (apart from unexpected mortality) is losing the next election badly. In such circumstances it is hard to see where the fallout lands. If he wins, then no contest until at least 2029, and hard to see that going Burnham's way.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
He's mentally ill? Seriously. You're basically saying there is somethiong really wrong with him.
Did you see what I wrote above? I think he was foolish, but lots of people bent the rules. I know most didn’t, but a lot did. They convinced themselves that as they were at work it was ok. It wasn’t the Wannsee meeting, to go full invocation of the Nazis.
How do you gloss over his throwing his spokesperson under the bus, as he told Parliament he shared the country’s outrage at this talk of parties, and that he was righteously angry to think that rules might have been broken ?
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
We have a fair voting system at the moment, whoever gets the most votes wins their constituency.
What people who call for a "fair" voting system really mean is they don't like the results and want those who aren't getting enough votes to still get elected anyway, rather than convincing more voters to vote for them.
Circa 60% of voters over the last seven years have no say. In 2005 the party of government were re elected with a majority on just 36% of votes cast, meaning 64% of voters were without a voice.
It's only a fair system because the party you want to win generally wins, 1997 to 2010 notwithstanding.
P.S. It worked OK between 2010 and 2015.
100% of voters have a say.
If you lose, then you still have your say, you just lost. Get more votes next time if you want to win.
This is true, but it’s also flawed as in many seats the size of the majority means your vote against the winner has no chance. In my constituency the Tory vote is massive, in many inner cities the same is true of labour. Voters in more marginal seats have votes that are ‘worth’ more. FPTP is not perfect, and neither is PR, in any of its myriad forms.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
It's an 'I'm an idiot' defence, no more and no less. Its incredible someone can pull that and still insist there is no one better to be PM.
Seriously, the argument is he didn't understand the rules even after people made the accusations, since he dug his heels in and denied it all making any contrition now phony, and yet also is best placed to govern on far more complex matters?
His defence is not credible if we credit him with intelligence enough to be PM. Ergo, he is lying.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Maybe have a read of this and you will get a sense of the scale of it:
That's the Daily Mail. Hardly working backwards from a position of wanting the PM to resign.
You're not doing yourself justice this morning. Did you have a bad night? Or maybe Ramadan is getting to you. I have friends your way who get very tetchy at this time of year.
LOL, I’m in a great mood this afternoon, thanks for asking. Was away with the missus at the weekend celebrating our wedding anniversary, and thanks to Ramadan, which I am not observing, we work six hour days this month. 150 minutes until beer o’clock, cheers!
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
We have a fair voting system at the moment, whoever gets the most votes wins their constituency.
What people who call for a "fair" voting system really mean is they don't like the results and want those who aren't getting enough votes to still get elected anyway, rather than convincing more voters to vote for them.
Circa 60% of voters over the last seven years have no say. In 2005 the party of government were re elected with a majority on just 36% of votes cast, meaning 64% of voters were without a voice.
It's only a fair system because the party you want to win generally wins, 1997 to 2010 notwithstanding.
P.S. It worked OK between 2010 and 2015.
100% of voters have a say.
If you lose, then you still have your say, you just lost. Get more votes next time if you want to win.
Or split the vote of everyone else in your seat. It’s possible to win a seat with a minority of people having voted for you. Justify that
Everyone had a say and the most popular candidate got elected. Perfectly justifiable, that is what people chose.
Votes for losing parties aren't "split" the voters knowingly chose to vote for different parties. They didn't want the same thing, they didn't vote for the same thing, so they can't be added up together. And its not possible for one party or one voter to split another party's or other voters votes.
If the Opposition all want the same thing they can come together as a united front and vote accordingly. If they don't, they don't have to. Its their choice, nobody elses.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
It's an 'I'm an idiot' defence, no more and no less. Its incredible someone can pull that and still insist there is no one better to be PM.
Seriously, the argument is he didn't understand the rules even after people made the accusations, since he dug his heels in and denied it all making any contrition now phony, and yet also is best placed to govern on far more complex matters?
Well he’s clearly not the best person to govern, and the sooner we are shot the better. Personally I think he knew exactly what had gone on, that it shouldn’t have done, but that he could just about convince himself they weren’t parties. But yes, that’s pretty thin.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Where is your evidence? I have none other than the texts I'm getting are showing a fury that matches mine.
I never cease to be amazed at peoples ability to dredge up others who, by a happy coincidence, share their worldview on an issue when debating the same issue.
I don’t know a single person in the real world who has even expressed a view on it.
Isn’t saying all the people you know don’t have a view on something similar to saying all the people you know have a particular view? Certainly both are expressed by randoms on the internet and are utterly unverifiable.
First Past the post is a fair system. The only people who want to change it are the perennial losers who think they might benefit
People generally want to change systems because they think they will benefit. That doesnt mean any change is unreasonable.
FPTP has strengths and weaknesses. I personally think some form of PR is fairer, but adherents do themselves no favours when acting like FPTP is inherently a corrupt system. Since it's not, it puts people off as it leads them to react as you have and dismiss any argument for change as poorly motivated.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Pathological liars DO convince themselves they are telling the truth when they lie.
It's the best defence he has and I look forward to him using it.
Why is Andy Burnham 4/1 to be Next Labour Leader? I just can’t make head nor tail of that idiotically short price.
There is a long list of reasons why that is appalling value, but surely a new reason to add to the list is inflation. Say he does by some miracle get the job in, say, 8 years time, your tenner would have earnt you a measly 40 quid. But that’s a spring 2022 forty quid. It’d be a 2030 twenty quid.
All distant-event bets tend to be poor value for punters and terrific earners for bookmakers, but inflation has just distorted the market even further in the interests of the bad guys.
Yeah it seems nuts to me as well. I've layed a fair amount, as I imagine many others here have. I guess there's just someone out there that wanted to have a big long term bet on him, and too few people prepared to oppose it given (as you say) that it ties money up potentially for many years. (And that's bad for both sides of the bet)
Yes, that’s why I didn’t advocate laying Burnham either.
I can see the point in laying certain names on the Next Con Leader market, but you’d have to be convinced that Starmer is either about to resign or be trounced at the election to dabble in the Next Labour Leader market. Just can’t see it myself.
He is of course a mere mortal, but Starmer looks fit and healthy to me.
Indeed.
I quite like the long term markets anyway though - sort of fun to slowly build up a (hopefully) profitable book, and interesting to look back at the bets and how they reflect the political changes. For example in the BF next PM market I've historically layed Corbyn at 4.2, Beckett at 10, Swinson at 16, and Bercow at 23! There are also some less wise bets in the mix.
When that opinion of fence sitter appeared in polling in 2018 I think it was, that was the beginning of the end. Johnson’s version of that is people calling him a liar.
Now Rishi is gone, who can win the Tories a majority again?
Tory MPs (apart from a handful) seem now to be basically busy saying it doesn't matter he broke the covid rules because everyone was breaking the rules and having little parties here and there.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
Why are they keeping him?
An amazingly stupid tactic by the amazingly stupid Tory MPs as the people most likely to be angriest are the people who stuck by the rules. Fabricant in particular opened his stupid gob at the end of last week and annoyed essentially all teachers and healthcare professionals.
Fabricant quite clearly failed to follow the rules and thus assumes no one did. He’s clearly an idiot. I think most people followed the rules as well as they could. I tried, and failed a couple of times. I walked the dog in the woods when isolating after a contact. But to make those claims about others you really ought to be able to back it up.
I broke all the rules all of the time as is my wont so I can't get too salty over Partygate.
You could if you like, since I doubt you were very publicly demanding others do what you would not.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
We have a fair voting system at the moment, whoever gets the most votes wins their constituency.
What people who call for a "fair" voting system really mean is they don't like the results and want those who aren't getting enough votes to still get elected anyway, rather than convincing more voters to vote for them.
Circa 60% of voters over the last seven years have no say. In 2005 the party of government were re elected with a majority on just 36% of votes cast, meaning 64% of voters were without a voice.
It's only a fair system because the party you want to win generally wins, 1997 to 2010 notwithstanding.
P.S. It worked OK between 2010 and 2015.
100% of voters have a say.
If you lose, then you still have your say, you just lost. Get more votes next time if you want to win.
This is true, but it’s also flawed as in many seats the size of the majority means your vote against the winner has no chance. In my constituency the Tory vote is massive, in many inner cities the same is true of labour. Voters in more marginal seats have votes that are ‘worth’ more. FPTP is not perfect, and neither is PR, in any of its myriad forms.
And in Glasgow the Labour vote is so massive, nobody else has a chance of ever winning, right?
Everyone starts the election from zero votes. If many people in your area are voting Tory that's their choice they're entitled to make, but they're equally entitled to change their minds next time.
Everyone's vote is worth the same, 1, the fact that some seats many voters are not changing their mind is just how it is today but they're all entitled to do differently. If they choose not to, that's their choice.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Do you think it would be ‘right’ and ‘fair’ if Holyrood converted solely to FTP and the SNP having 90%+ of elected representatives?
I don’t have a problem with a constituency model. It would undermine some of the games that the Greens play for instance.
I’m not sure it would play out as you suggest (assuming you keep the same number of MSPs you’d have small constituencies so presumably the other parties would benefit in some areas). But if the Scottish voters want 90%+ SNP MSPs then that’s up to them.
It’s very simple. A candidate should put forward a manifesto as why they are the best individual to represent an area. If they persuade the most voters to support them then they are elected
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
The one poll with the interesting wording in the pro-Boris newspaper that completely misrepresented what the policy does and how it works?
Other coverage has been less supportive. I know you chose to render yourself to be an economic migrant in someone else's country but contrary to what you posted there hasn't been a universal "oh thats a good idea" response. Barely even the Tory core vote in support of it and so many others responding "eugh".
Remember that this is not a policy, its a headline. Patel did this behind the back of the immigration minister, worked out what headlines she wanted and crafted a "policy" which her own department have described as about as close to malfeasance as you can get. Which is why they required here to provide them with a written instruction to proceed.
As the details come out when they try to make it into more than just a headline, the "eugh" will just get louder. The reaction of leading Tory ramper Iain Dale live on air was instructive.
It always did make me curious why British economic migrants living in enclaves abroad were so often so against economic migrants living in enclaves in Britain.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
We have a fair voting system at the moment, whoever gets the most votes wins their constituency.
What people who call for a "fair" voting system really mean is they don't like the results and want those who aren't getting enough votes to still get elected anyway, rather than convincing more voters to vote for them.
Circa 60% of voters over the last seven years have no say. In 2005 the party of government were re elected with a majority on just 36% of votes cast, meaning 64% of voters were without a voice.
It's only a fair system because the party you want to win generally wins, 1997 to 2010 notwithstanding.
P.S. It worked OK between 2010 and 2015.
100% of voters have a say.
If you lose, then you still have your say, you just lost. Get more votes next time if you want to win.
This is true, but it’s also flawed as in many seats the size of the majority means your vote against the winner has no chance. In my constituency the Tory vote is massive, in many inner cities the same is true of labour. Voters in more marginal seats have votes that are ‘worth’ more. FPTP is not perfect, and neither is PR, in any of its myriad forms.
And in Glasgow the Labour vote is so massive, nobody else has a chance of ever winning, right?
Everyone starts the election from zero votes. If many people in your area are voting Tory that's their choice they're entitled to make, but they're equally entitled to change their minds next time.
Everyone's vote is worth the same, 1, the fact that some seats many voters are not changing their mind is just how it is today but they're all entitled to do differently. If they choose not to, that's their choice.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Where is your evidence? I have none other than the texts I'm getting are showing a fury that matches mine.
I never cease to be amazed at peoples ability to dredge up others who, by a happy coincidence, share their worldview on an issue when debating the same issue.
I don’t know a single person in the real world who has even expressed a view on it.
Isn’t saying all the people you know don’t have a view on something similar to saying all the people you know have a particular view? Certainly both are expressed by randoms on the internet and are utterly unverifiable.
Saying someone hasn’t expressed a view on something isn’t the same as them not having a view on it. I just think people saying there is widespread anger about this, or widespread support, are missing the mark.
There’s a tendency to think every political story breaks through and people obsess over stories the same way political anoraks and hacks do. While,the Tories held a lead there were several stories people,thought would cut through. Cummings revelations, second jobs and others. They didn’t in spite of people getting worked up over them. It wasn’t until partygate that the Tories ratings tanked and labour took a lead.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Do you think it would be ‘right’ and ‘fair’ if Holyrood converted solely to FTP and the SNP having 90%+ of elected representatives?
Yes.
If that's how the voters vote, that's their choice.
However I expect you'd very rapidly find that the voters would react accordingly and the SNP wouldn't end up with 90%+ of representatives, however if the voters vote that way that's their choice.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
Comments
We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
This is in itself a lie.
There are no depths they will not sink to. And for what? To defend a lying scoundrel who can no longer win elections, as we will see in May.
Why are they keeping him?
I can (just about) believe that BoJo didn't intend to flout the rules, or flaunt his flouting of them. And to Boris, that's more important than the objective reality that he socialised in ways that he shouldn't have, and that the majority of us worked much harder to stick to the rules properly and had a rotten 2020 as a result.
And if Boris thinks in his heart that he didn't break any rules, who are we to disabuse him of that notion?
According to some unconfirmed sources, 42 Russian sailors from the crew had been killed from the Neptune missile strikes https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1515955042423087114/photo/1
Yet they also make up the biggest users of social media, with 70% of progressive activists and 56% of devoted conservatives sharing political social media posts over the last year
Once they stop messing about there will need to be a solution. They are in simple principle against red tape and petty bureaucracy. Because it is bad for business and makes us uncompetitive. So something will have to give...
But I entirely agree re HEPA filters in hospitals (and a wider review of ventilation and disease control, so we don't get a repeat of a former minister for health trashing the pandemic planning).
Party X gets more votes than party Y, so they deserve the first seat.
But who deserves the second?
If party X has more than twice as many votes as party Y, then party X deserves a second seat before party Y gets their first.
If, on the other hand, party Y had more than half as many votes as party X, then party Y would deserve their first seat before party X got their second.
(and scale up for more parties and more seats).
If he wants to be a narcissist journalist, author, celeb or businessman fine. If he wants to lead us then a minimum expectation is to live in a shared reality, not his own narcissistic imaginative one.
The problem here is that it isn't true in the case of Boris Johnson. If the only infraction was the birthday cake then perhaps. But it isn't. Hard to say with any credibility "I had no idea this was a party" when you attend a BYOB event. Or pour the drinks. Or wave your can of shit lager at the camera. Or belt out The Winner Takes It All in your "we fucked up Cummings" party in your flat with music so loud they could hear it across Whitehall.
I wouldn't put it past him to try it. Its just that "I didn't know I was lying" is itself another lie.
SNP
Alba "no, I don't need planning permission for the massive YES sign permanently erected in my garden anyone saying I do is part of the evil Sturgeon's plot against me" Party
Scottish Green Party
Scottish Family "well we say family but its more like we want to beat your deviant family with a stick for all their SINS! You SINNERS! DEVIANTS! BURN THE HERETICS! Party
And there will be others whose leaflets I have not received.
FPTP gives the SNP 81% of the seats on 45% of the vote. PR would be a boon for the Unionist parties. Starmer would be mad to miss this opportunity.
How else do you explain that nonsense with the fridge for the wine? They just thought it was a laugh, and they were immune because of Boris's protection. It's a self-serving little clique at the heart of Government.
It wasn’t the Wannsee meeting, to go full invocation of the Nazis.
But who is going to tell dare him that? Part of his imagined reality is that he can say and do whatever he damn well pleases because he's World King.
And so it continues.
PB is indebted to you for a consistently clear and level-headed view from the front line.
PR benefits the LDs, the Greens, ReformUK, the UUP, SDLP and Alliance and probably the Cameroon wing of the Tories and the Starmer/Blairite wing of Labour (as they would be more likely to lead coalition governments).
So its effects on Unionist parties are mixed
(And I can’t recall ever “squealing about gerrymandering” in my life, so not sure where you’re inventing that from.)
I wouldn't describe Boris as lucky. He is calculating. We know this - he considers both sides of the debate before choosing which gives him best prospects. He didn't accidentally come down on the side of Brexit he calculated that was the best choice in his mission to become PM.
Nor is it luck that he is surrounded by a similar cast of crooks, bullies, liars and idiots. The party is prone to infestation with these sort of people. Remember the Major government was riddled with them and then Redwood presented a challenge with what looked like the cast of The Munsters as his supporters. Redwood himself - who declares that he works a 50-hour week in his side job - is still an idiot, attacking state run train companies on Twitter this weekend for doing the things that the state (his government) tell them to do.
Boris the act just makes sure he thinks about who is the disposable idiot, or the chaff he can use to lure the chasing press pack away, and calculatingly lines them up. The Number 10 operation against Number 11 even more scheming than the reverse operation had been previously. So lucky, no.
If this photo of him waving a can exists, where is it?
“At first I really liked him and felt he would be good for the country, but now he has been in power he has been one of the worst prime ministers ever… he is so out of touch and has no idea how the majority of people live their lives.”
“Utter anus”
https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1515936776556265475?s=21&t=7-0kmmupiK7nWtyqCK6ldQ
'Now, who deserves the first pint.....?'
By contrast, the Johnson purge of everyone from Ken Clarke to ersrwhile Brexit allies who drew the line at something has left the Conservative Party in the grip of people who think that the right thing to do with a critic is to throw them out. It's going to be harder for a successor to fix.
You are saying that right and wrong doesn't matter here. Principles don't matter. The rules? Who cares. Just see if he is a vote winner still.
I bow to your morality sir, it is a tower.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
Looks to me as if the polls are slowly moving Macron's way. Latest has him on 56% to 44%. You can get 7/4 for 55%-59.99% and then 14/1 (down from 16/1) for 60-64.99%. 40/1 for 65% and above.
He might land under 55%, in which case the odds are slim pickings.
Remember: he outperformed the polls in the first round by around 4-5%.
I have taken the plunge this morning and I'm arbed on anything above 55%. I think it was worth it.
BORIS... BORIS JOHNSON HE'S ONE OF OUR OWN!!
I have been surprised by how even my Conservative friends (and even my loyal tory sister) are opposed to the idea: messages range from 'totally appalling' through to 'unworkable.'
Sometimes you really DO have to live here to get the mood.
If she gets 47% that is Trump 2016 or 2020 levels.
It was a betting post but ... I repeat ... so what? Sometimes, just sometimes, pause before posting and ask yourself if there's any need to hit the comment button.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Sometimes it really shows when someone lives abroad: in a wealthy Expat community.
I'm afraid Sandpit just made an arse of himself.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10726049/No-10-fears-Boris-Johnson-pictured-drinking-Partygate-events-face-fines.html
That's the Daily Mail. Hardly working backwards from a position of wanting the PM to resign.
You're not doing yourself justice this morning. Did you have a bad night? Or maybe Ramadan is getting to you. I have friends your way who get very tetchy at this time of year.
We asked a nationally representative sample of the British public what they think about Boris Johnson.
Of all 2,000 responses, 72% were negative, with 16% positive. The words most commonly used are in the image below. (1/13)
https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1515936769841242122
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1515794287082053645
The Houses of Parliament have several bars don’t they, and I think there is still a considerable culture of drinking and schmoozing to get things done/get on. Bunch of dinosaurs.
I can see the point in laying certain names on the Next Con Leader market, but you’d have to be convinced that Starmer is either about to resign or be trounced at the election to dabble in the Next Labour Leader market. Just can’t see it myself.
He is of course a mere mortal, but Starmer looks fit and healthy to me.
FPTP has strengths and weaknesses. I personally think some form of PR is fairer, but adherents do themselves no favours when acting like FPTP is inherently a corrupt system. Since it's not, it puts people off as it leads them to react as you have and dismiss any argument for change as poorly motivated.
If you lose, then you still have your say, you just lost. Get more votes next time if you want to win.
I don’t know a single person in the real world who has even expressed a view on it.
I live in a house split into 2 flats. The COVID rules didn’t let me go hang out in the downstairs flat because it’s all the same building. Likewise, Carrie had no reason to go wandering around the offices of No. 10.
Carrie may work for the Conservative Party, but she doesn’t work for the Government. She didn’t bring cake to a Conservative Party meeting.
FPTP is not perfect, and neither is PR, in any of its myriad forms.
Seriously, the argument is he didn't understand the rules even after people made the accusations, since he dug his heels in and denied it all making any contrition now phony, and yet also is best placed to govern on far more complex matters?
His defence is not credible if we credit him with intelligence enough to be PM. Ergo, he is lying.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
Votes for losing parties aren't "split" the voters knowingly chose to vote for different parties. They didn't want the same thing, they didn't vote for the same thing, so they can't be added up together. And its not possible for one party or one voter to split another party's or other voters votes.
If the Opposition all want the same thing they can come together as a united front and vote accordingly. If they don't, they don't have to. Its their choice, nobody elses.
They will nearly always vote for a winner, hence why they voted for Blair, Smith and Starmer.
Labour is a lot less ideological than people actually think.
It's the best defence he has and I look forward to him using it.
I quite like the long term markets anyway though - sort of fun to slowly build up a (hopefully) profitable book, and interesting to look back at the bets and how they reflect the political changes. For example in the BF next PM market I've historically layed Corbyn at 4.2, Beckett at 10, Swinson at 16, and Bercow at 23! There are also some less wise bets in the mix.
When that opinion of fence sitter appeared in polling in 2018 I think it was, that was the beginning of the end. Johnson’s version of that is people calling him a liar.
Now Rishi is gone, who can win the Tories a majority again?
Everyone starts the election from zero votes. If many people in your area are voting Tory that's their choice they're entitled to make, but they're equally entitled to change their minds next time.
Everyone's vote is worth the same, 1, the fact that some seats many voters are not changing their mind is just how it is today but they're all entitled to do differently. If they choose not to, that's their choice.
I’m not sure it would play out as you suggest (assuming you keep the same number of MSPs you’d have small constituencies so presumably the other parties would benefit in some areas). But if the Scottish voters want 90%+ SNP MSPs then that’s up to them.
It’s very simple. A candidate should put forward a manifesto as why they are the best individual to represent an area. If they persuade the most voters to support them then they are elected
Other coverage has been less supportive. I know you chose to render yourself to be an economic migrant in someone else's country but contrary to what you posted there hasn't been a universal "oh thats a good idea" response. Barely even the Tory core vote in support of it and so many others responding "eugh".
Remember that this is not a policy, its a headline. Patel did this behind the back of the immigration minister, worked out what headlines she wanted and crafted a "policy" which her own department have described as about as close to malfeasance as you can get. Which is why they required here to provide them with a written instruction to proceed.
As the details come out when they try to make it into more than just a headline, the "eugh" will just get louder. The reaction of leading Tory ramper Iain Dale live on air was instructive.
It always did make me curious why British economic migrants living in enclaves abroad were so often so against economic migrants living in enclaves in Britain.
There’s a tendency to think every political story breaks through and people obsess over stories the same way political anoraks and hacks do. While,the Tories held a lead there were several stories people,thought would cut through. Cummings revelations, second jobs and others. They didn’t in spite of people getting worked up over them. It wasn’t until partygate that the Tories ratings tanked and labour took a lead.
If that's how the voters vote, that's their choice.
However I expect you'd very rapidly find that the voters would react accordingly and the SNP wouldn't end up with 90%+ of representatives, however if the voters vote that way that's their choice.
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.