LBC suggesting the clown camp is overstating his position and Sunak has a commanding lead
Also that the clown is apparently still on holiday
Is my feeling. Hype. Froth. Will be blown away, one way or another, over the next 72 hours.
The logical mechanistic way of analysing is often the way to go - and I can see why Johnson should be short if you do that - but this is one for the impressionistic Big Picture intuition approach.
I was wrong about 'free money' laying him though. It's going to pay off in the end but there's just a teeny bit of stress now, I'll fess to that.
BREAKING: Ben Wallace rules himself OUT of the leadership race and says he "leans towards" Boris Johnson as the person who can "win elections"
How about somebody who can run the country you imbecile.
Leans towards......... is interesting.
My guess is he wants commitments from Sunak. That's the main doubt I have about him. That he is a commerce/finance person with no understanding of geopolitics.
Penny totally out of it...just talking to a guy doing my flooring and he backs Boris as he wants something done about the migrants...working people want Boris
As Boris wont be able to spend much he will appeal to the red wall by getting tough on migrants and racist dogwhistles...those oolicies will be popular there
Does anyone share a sense of despair at the notion of a Boris comeback? I don’t think this is a partisan or political thing. Who knows what a Boris II would do politically? Stable it ain’t.
It’s the human notion that it’s not a good move in life to sellout to someone so egotistical and corrupt however desperate and worried the Tories might be right now.
Yep. It would make England feel like a Banana Republic and be a 'win' for the sort of things and the sort of people the world would be better without. A ghastly prospect.
Penny totally out of it...just talking to a guy doing my flooring and he backs Boris as he wants something done about the migrants...working people want Boris
You have a Tory MP doing your flooring???
He’s just following the usual route. Start with a number of fairly harmless posts etc etc then slam in an anti-vax post and then stir dissent with “lots of racists in Britain” post.
Does anyone share a sense of despair at the notion of a Boris comeback? I don’t think this is a partisan or political thing. Who knows what a Boris II would do politically? Stable it ain’t.
It’s the human notion that it’s not a good move in life to sellout to someone so egotistical and corrupt however desperate and worried the Tories might be right now.
Yep. It would make England feel like a Banana Republic and be a 'win' for the sort of things and the sort of people the world would be better without. A ghastly prospect.
To be honest i think a lot of Boris voters just want to stick it to Hampstead liberal types....
Feedback Malhotra is getting from london hosoital cardiology departments
Regular customer of mine is a heart surgeon. He said the workload overwhelming, I cheekily said, it isn't by any chance something to do with the vax rollout is it? to which he said, very quietly. 'Yes'. I asked him another time, again, he said colleagues all talking about it.
I don't know what's more absurd. The idea that cardiologists could somehow "know" that someone had been affected by a vaccine without any actual evidence. Or the idea that if they could, they would all conspire to keep it a secret. Oh - apart from telling someone like Malhotra, of course!
Well maybe you know more than the cardiologists...its a view i suppose
Maybe you and he are not just making shit up. It's a view...
Britain is governed by a divided and unleadable party. Political instability and elevated gilt yields will persist until that central fact is changed at a general election.
Boris backers imagine that Johnson can turn this around. But you can't unburn toast. Here are Johnson's final ratings with YouGov on different characteristics: Competence: -43 Trustworthiness: -65 Decisiveness: -35 Strength: -24 Likeability: -13
That those who wanted "change" have again opted for the same person who was rejected, only to potentially see them rejected again, have only themselves to blame if they lose again.
Sometimes you have to accept that no means no.
The party membership might also wish to consider that before voting a second time for a candidate who was rejected by MPs and his cabinet and forced out of the PM's office...
Does anyone share a sense of despair at the notion of a Boris comeback? I don’t think this is a partisan or political thing. Who knows what a Boris II would do politically? Stable it ain’t.
It’s the human notion that it’s not a good move in life to sellout to someone so egotistical and corrupt however desperate and worried the Tories might be right now.
Yep. It would make England feel like a Banana Republic and be a 'win' for the sort of things and the sort of people the world would be better without. A ghastly prospect.
To be honest i think a lot of Boris voters just want to stick it to Hampstead liberal types....
Does anyone share a sense of despair at the notion of a Boris comeback? I don’t think this is a partisan or political thing. Who knows what a Boris II would do politically? Stable it ain’t.
It’s the human notion that it’s not a good move in life to sellout to someone so egotistical and corrupt however desperate and worried the Tories might be right now.
Yes.
I've been in despair since 2016, it is just another stage in that process.
I think the strategic problem is that any 'stable' technocratic government, IE that led by Sunak, will be subject to continuous rebellions, so the chaos will actually just continue. It won't be a period of 'calm and stability', far from it.
Johnson is the only person with a electoral mandate, who can keep the MP's in some sort of order. They aren't likely to bring him down again after the Truss farce. So perversely he may be the 'stable' candidate.
Edit - I'm not longing for Johnson to come back. But I am trying to guess what MP's and party members are thinking.
The case for Johnson was always that none of that stuff — this said gesturing airily to the bulging cupboard marked “obvious huge character flaws” — mattered because the public loved him. They did, and they proved it at the ballot box. But it turned out that Johnson’s character did matter.
It was his character that led him to break his own laws, his character that saw him value loyalty over competence, his character that meant he was unable to get on with the tedious business of running the country. When the public understood his character, they stopped loving him.
Boris’ character also resulted in him being on a nice expensive holiday instead of working during a period where his constituents might have needed to speak to their MP and is only cutting short his holiday for self-interest.
Any enterprising journalist had the wit yet to ask who paid for it?
Its funny how politics or politicians can be viewed completely differently by those who don't pay as much attention as we do to the subject.
Someone said to me yesterday that they thought that Boris should come back and that his problem was that he was too "loyal" and not "selfish" enough. That most of the problems under Boris - partygate, Patterson (not said by name) etc - were caused by Boris being loyal to those who worked with him or his friends and trying to get them out of trouble. That if he'd been more selfish and cut them loose, he wouldn't have got into trouble himself.
First time I've ever heard someone suggest Boris isn't selfish enough, or is too loyal, but there's a kernel of truth in it.
Never seen "a kernel" used to mean "not one iota" before.
Britain is governed by a divided and unleadable party. Political instability and elevated gilt yields will persist until that central fact is changed at a general election.
Feedback Malhotra is getting from london hosoital cardiology departments
Regular customer of mine is a heart surgeon. He said the workload overwhelming, I cheekily said, it isn't by any chance something to do with the vax rollout is it? to which he said, very quietly. 'Yes'. I asked him another time, again, he said colleagues all talking about it.
Feedback Malhotra is getting from london hosoital cardiology departments
Regular customer of mine is a heart surgeon. He said the workload overwhelming, I cheekily said, it isn't by any chance something to do with the vax rollout is it? to which he said, very quietly. 'Yes'. I asked him another time, again, he said colleagues all talking about it.
I don't know what's more absurd. The idea that cardiologists could somehow "know" that someone had been affected by a vaccine without any actual evidence. Or the idea that if they could, they would all conspire to keep it a secret. Oh - apart from telling someone like Malhotra, of course!
Semi numerate delusion that something isn't evidence unless it is in a spreadsheet derived from a dweebish controlled study. We knew years in advance of any spreadsheets that AIDS was on the horizon, simply from LA doctors saying to each other Seeing a lot of gay blokes with some pretty strange ailments all of a sudden.
OTOH the gay aspect led to some in hindsight downright wrong suggestions as to the cause (inevitably), as I recall, and not least that it was specifically something to do with male homosexuals alone (admittedly partly because of the way in which it presented being quite strongly controlled by such lifestyle habits, KS being an example of a gay male-specific saymptom). Analogously, Heart problems at a time of covid could be covid viral or long covid or vaccine or some completely temporally coincidental factor such as vaping or a new contaminant on the drug market.
As Boris wont be able to spend much he will appeal to the red wall by getting tough on migrants and racist dogwhistles...those oolicies will be popular there
Boris never spends much anyway. He only PROMISES to, and that’s free.
Penny Mordaunt's price continues to drift. As Richard Nabavi says if Boris doesnt run she could yet win. Or might she and Boris have done a deal explaining their price moves?? We live in interesting times!
As Boris wont be able to spend much he will appeal to the red wall by getting tough on migrants and racist dogwhistles...those oolicies will be popular there
Boris never spends much anyway. He only PROMISES to, and that’s free.
That's not fair, he's quite good at spending other people's money, on wallpaper for example.
Britain is governed by a divided and unleadable party. Political instability and elevated gilt yields will persist until that central fact is changed at a general election.
It does seem that Britain is cursed and whatever you do politics always turns out for worse. Boris has been instrumental to that trend. He is our Trump.
At some point someone is going to have to defeat him properly.
I think Boris will want to come back. He stands back and thinks "legacy...history books..." And in some dark recess of his mind he also things "save the world".
That is what motivates politicians - not the lecture circuit, but being there making decisions, implementing their world view. Boris on the lecture circuit would now be a failure, the guy who bottled it. That is not Boris imo. He sees himself as a political giant and political giants don't get frit.
He will run and get the 100 endorsements in a canter.
The question therefore becomes are the membership still furious enough with Rishi to propel him, Boris, back to No.10. Difficult to say. As I reported, many red-corded Cons members preferred Rishi to Liz but to the man himself?
It's going to be the nearest-run thing. I will develop a view over the coming days.
Penny Mordaunt's price continues to drift. As Richard Nabavi says if Boris doesnt run she could yet win. Or might she and Boris have done a deal explaining their price moves?? We live in interesting times!
I’ve got little doubt The Clown is running now. Only thing that could stop him is a Hunt intervention IMHO, and for reasons of market stability I suspect Hunt will stay quiet.
The case for Johnson was always that none of that stuff — this said gesturing airily to the bulging cupboard marked “obvious huge character flaws” — mattered because the public loved him. They did, and they proved it at the ballot box. But it turned out that Johnson’s character did matter.
It was his character that led him to break his own laws, his character that saw him value loyalty over competence, his character that meant he was unable to get on with the tedious business of running the country. When the public understood his character, they stopped loving him.
Boris’ character also resulted in him being on a nice expensive holiday instead of working during a period where his constituents might have needed to speak to their MP and is only cutting short his holiday for self-interest.
Any enterprising journalist had the wit yet to ask who paid for it?
He could have gone on a puppy-murder safari and accepted the money from Putin himself, and the deranged Bozzophiles (who exist in the media as well as the Tory party) would think it just another jolly wheeze.
Imo its over for the Tory party as is. The only question is how they split - Boris wins and there is a centrist split away under Rishi/Hunt (even though BJ is a centrist economically himself). Rishi/Penny wins and a Farage, Johnson, Spartan vehicle emerges. The latter is slightly less likely but still imo the most likely outcome
Not under FPTP, with PR maybe
I think you are almost certainly correct, but we are in new territory. My view is the Tory vote won't be this low (but I could be wrong) and also even if they do get wiped out they will have the organisation and money to recover (but again I could be wrong).
It is very, very hard to break the two main parties under FPTP, but it has happened in Scotland. As you say with PR a realignment is not only possible, but in my opinion likely for all parties.
The 2 main parties haven't even broken in Scotland, just they are now the 2 main Unionist parties with the SNP taking almost all nationalist votes
No no no, the Tories haven’t been broken in Scotland.
It does seem that Britain is cursed and whatever you do politics always turns out for worse. Boris has been instrumental to that trend. He is our Trump.
At some point someone is going to have to defeat him properly.
He is so like Trump. His colleagues know he is unfit to govern but back him anyway because the party members are taken in by him. Depressing.
I think the current declared levels of support shows the two wings of the party - Rishi on one and Boris on the other. Mordaunt is the moderate middle. I don't see how the Tories can unite around either Rishi or Boris. Neither side will compromise and so they will destroy themselves. Penny is the unity candidate but the Tories in their current state can't do unity. Reasonable odds now of a General Election this year where they get wiped out.
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 4m Obviously things could change if he was actually to win. But a significant number of Tory MPs are now telling me they simply will not serve as Conservative MPs if Boris returns. Not clear if that would be enough to bring down the government. But an early election is now viable.
the majority of them would just bite the pillow and take it.
That's disgusting. Kindly edit it.
The majority of them with a sufficient amount of lube would just bite the pillow and take it?
Imo its over for the Tory party as is. The only question is how they split - Boris wins and there is a centrist split away under Rishi/Hunt (even though BJ is a centrist economically himself). Rishi/Penny wins and a Farage, Johnson, Spartan vehicle emerges. The latter is slightly less likely but still imo the most likely outcome
Not under FPTP, with PR maybe
I think you are almost certainly correct, but we are in new territory. My view is the Tory vote won't be this low (but I could be wrong) and also even if they do get wiped out they will have the organisation and money to recover (but again I could be wrong).
It is very, very hard to break the two main parties under FPTP, but it has happened in Scotland. As you say with PR a realignment is not only possible, but in my opinion likely for all parties.
The 2 main parties haven't even broken in Scotland, just they are now the 2 main Unionist parties with the SNP taking almost all nationalist votes
No no no, the Tories haven’t been broken in Scotland.
Feedback Malhotra is getting from london hosoital cardiology departments
Regular customer of mine is a heart surgeon. He said the workload overwhelming, I cheekily said, it isn't by any chance something to do with the vax rollout is it? to which he said, very quietly. 'Yes'. I asked him another time, again, he said colleagues all talking about it.
A doctor that hangs out on America fever swamp right wing news. This is not a serious man.
Its also very relevant that one of the sequalae of covid infection is heart inflammation and potential damage. Given 90% or more of the population have now had covid, that might be significant.
Imo its over for the Tory party as is. The only question is how they split - Boris wins and there is a centrist split away under Rishi/Hunt (even though BJ is a centrist economically himself). Rishi/Penny wins and a Farage, Johnson, Spartan vehicle emerges. The latter is slightly less likely but still imo the most likely outcome
Not under FPTP, with PR maybe
I think you are almost certainly correct, but we are in new territory. My view is the Tory vote won't be this low (but I could be wrong) and also even if they do get wiped out they will have the organisation and money to recover (but again I could be wrong).
It is very, very hard to break the two main parties under FPTP, but it has happened in Scotland. As you say with PR a realignment is not only possible, but in my opinion likely for all parties.
The 2 main parties haven't even broken in Scotland, just they are now the 2 main Unionist parties with the SNP taking almost all nationalist votes
No no no, the Tories haven’t been broken in Scotland.
It does seem that Britain is cursed and whatever you do politics always turns out for worse. Boris has been instrumental to that trend. He is our Trump.
At some point someone is going to have to defeat him properly.
He is so like Trump. His colleagues know he is unfit to govern but back him anyway because the party members are taken in by him. Depressing.
Strangely he may be even more kamikaze in office this time...he owns the party now...Boris is the tory party
Penny Mordaunt's price continues to drift. As Richard Nabavi says if Boris doesnt run she could yet win. Or might she and Boris have done a deal explaining their price moves?? We live in interesting times!
If any of the runners have their own proxy cash in the market then the obvious one is Sunaks camp to lay Mordaunt. (Much cheaper than Boris and defines it as a h2h vs someone unpalatable to many).
This used to be enjoyable but now I’m finding it increasingly anxiety inducing. There are no good outcome for the country in all of this. It’s hard to find anything funny about it anymore.
There hasn't been a good outcome for the country since everyone agreed that Covid meant we needed lockdown, furlough, and borrowing insane amounts of money to pay for it. The chickens were always going to come home to roost.
You mean there hasn't been a good outcome for the country since a devastating pandemic spread around the world and the UK found itself insufficiently prepared.
Hong kong flu in the 60s was as bad...no hysteria or lockdowns
Hong Kong flu killed around 1-4 million. We're not really certain, in part because of the Cultural Revolution in China. China handled the pandemic very poorly, increasing deaths.
COVID-19 is at over 6.5 million and that's with more having been done to combat it. COVID-19 is the more dangerous disease.
Probably but not necessarily, because demographics are very different between now and 1968. There's a lot more "low hanging fruit" that were exposed to Covid19 than there were of the same demographic in 68.
There are well over twice as many over 65s in the world today than there were in 1968.
Given the way that Covid strikes based on age, it would have been far less deadly in 1968 than now.
Treatment is far better now than in 1968. if you needed ventilation in the 1960s you most likely had to use an iron lung. I think you're right that there would have been far less seriously ill with a Covid in 1968 but if you were seriously ill you would have been far more likely to have died.
Astonishing to think that just four days ago the Conservative Party was beginning to inch towards returning to sanity by uniting around Jeremy Hunt's financial plans.
Do you remember when European football was an occasional televisual treat? Standard fare was whatever ITV gave you on a Sunday afternoon - QPR against Manchester United, say - didn't get the senses tingling, but steady and reliable and, through familiarity, interesting. Or you'd get an FA Cup match on the BBC every few weeks: Nottingham Forest against Blackburn. Fun, in its moderate way. But from time to time you'd get something out of the ordinary - Liverpool might play Borussia Monchengladbach - and that would have a frisson of novelty and excitement. And then some berk thought - well if European football is the icing on the cake which gets people interested, lets give people more of it. Much more. So much icing it makes them sick. And my interest in European football - and with it, all football - waned as a result. Too much icing, no appetite for the nutritional stuff. That's how I feel about politics at the moment. It's exhausting. It's far too dramatic. There is too much of it. The scriptwriters have gone mad with excess. It has jumped the shark. Oh for the days when little really happened, and we could get madly interested in the unchangeability of the daily poll at 10.30pm, or wildly excited about whether or not the CoE would push through with raising VAT on pasties.
I suspect I’m not alone in having a sense of deep deep internal relief, knowing that The Boris is returning to the throne of Fair England
I imagine many churches will toll bells out of sheer jubilation, lofty maypoles will be erected in our towns, and the children will play their most joyous games, the king’s Jews will bake celebratory matzos in Stokey, and gays will embrace Muslims in the boulevards of Birmingham
Rachel Wearmouth @REWearmouth Hearing Laura Pidcock, once viewed as a successor to Jeremy Corbyn as leader, has quit the Labour Party. It's not clear why.
That's how I feel about politics at the moment. It's exhausting. It's far too dramatic. There is too much of it. The scriptwriters have gone mad with excess. It has jumped the shark. Oh for the days when little really happened, and we could get madly interested in the unchangeability of the daily poll at 10.30pm, or wildly excited about whether or not the CoE would push through with raising VAT on pasties.
Somebody said the other day, when Starmer becomes PM they don't want to see him on TV for weeks at a time...
Its funny how politics or politicians can be viewed completely differently by those who don't pay as much attention as we do to the subject.
Someone said to me yesterday that they thought that Boris should come back and that his problem was that he was too "loyal" and not "selfish" enough. That most of the problems under Boris - partygate, Patterson (not said by name) etc - were caused by Boris being loyal to those who worked with him or his friends and trying to get them out of trouble. That if he'd been more selfish and cut them loose, he wouldn't have got into trouble himself.
First time I've ever heard someone suggest Boris isn't selfish enough, or is too loyal, but there's a kernel of truth in it.
Complete nonsense. It's true that Johnson can be very nice to people... when it's convenient to Johnson. And then, when it's convenient to Johnson, he will chuck them under a bus.
So he marched his MPs up to the top of the hill over Paterson to avoid a by-election and then, just as they'd all debased themselves for him, he realised he'd struggle to get away with it without severe damage to himself, he chucked all of them (and Paterson) under a bus.
Same on Partygate - he was Mr Conviliality in order to be popular with staff until the story started coming out. Then he denied knowing anything about it and threw them under the bus one by one to try to save himself. Remember Allegra Stratton? Thrown under the bus in a heartbeat for indicating what Johnson always knew to be true.
Ditto with every wife and lover he's ever had, and colleague after colleague in job after job.
Appalling, selfish people like Johnson aren't unpleasant all the time. They are tremendously nice to you until the moment that it's no longer convenient.
The case for Johnson was always that none of that stuff — this said gesturing airily to the bulging cupboard marked “obvious huge character flaws” — mattered because the public loved him. They did, and they proved it at the ballot box. But it turned out that Johnson’s character did matter.
It was his character that led him to break his own laws, his character that saw him value loyalty over competence, his character that meant he was unable to get on with the tedious business of running the country. When the public understood his character, they stopped loving him.
Boris’ character also resulted in him being on a nice expensive holiday instead of working during a period where his constituents might have needed to speak to their MP and is only cutting short his holiday for self-interest.
Any enterprising journalist had the wit yet to ask who paid for it?
He could have gone on a puppy-murder safari and accepted the money from Putin himself, and the deranged Bozzophiles (who exist in the media as well as the Tory party) would think it just another jolly wheeze.
Putin will be laughing his socks off. He is watching the political disintegration of the uk
Astonishing to think that just four days ago the Conservative Party was beginning to inch towards returning to sanity by uniting around Jeremy Hunt's financial plans.
The thing is the Tory party are a coalition of four or five groups who hate each other, each led by numpties. Your vision of returning to sanity is seen as giving in to the remainer establishment to a couple of those groups. It might be sanity but it was never stable.
We get an election early next year and the Tories will pay the price. Boris would do the best of the Tory candidates in that election but still would do well to keep 250 seats from here.
Boris seems unstoppable to me. Ridiculous to think that the membership will go for slippery old Remainer and assassin Rishi, and Penny, despite her 'global phenomenon' good looks, would likely be Truss II. No, Boris it has to be - a proven winner and the only one Labour fears.
Labour MP Chris Matheson has quit over allegations of "serious sexual misconduct" which is said to have taken place on a "sexually-motivated" trip to Gibraltar.
The Independent Expert Panel - an independent body on MPs' conduct - recommended the MP for the City of Chester be suspended for four weeks.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards upheld two allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr Matheson by a former member of his staff.
He allegedly invited her on a private trip abroad and "the invitation was sexually motivated, unwanted, and had placed the complainant under pressure and intimidated her", according to the report.
In December 2019 he invited her on the "private trip which he asked her to keep secret, even from her close family" which the inquiry concluded was "sexually motivated".
In the end the trip did not go ahead.
During a work event outside Parliament, he also "linked arms with her; made personal comments about her appearance while looking at her suggestively; made her hold his hand as they left and insisted on accompanying her to her bus stop - and once there invited her back to his flat, kissed her twice on the forehead and attempted to kiss her on the mouth.
Up to the bold bit, I was left thinking (putting aside a married man trying to instigate an affair) seems a bit harsh and some of it very open to interpretation i.e. what is "looking at somebody suggestively"...then it gets weird.
I suspect I’m not alone in having a sense of deep deep internal relief, knowing that The Boris is returning to the throne of Fair England
I imagine many churches will toll bells out of sheer jubilation, lofty maypoles will be erected in our towns, and the children will play their most joyous games, the king’s Jews will bake celebratory matzos in Stokey, and gays will embrace Muslims in the boulevards of Birmingham
GOD BE PRAISED
Oh dear. Leon has had too much sugar again. We're for a noisy BLOCK CAPS afternoon.
Jesse Norman @Jesse_Norman · 35m There are several very good potential candidates for Conservative leader. But choosing Boris now would be — and I say this advisedly — an absolutely catastrophic decision.
I suspect I’m not alone in having a sense of deep deep internal relief, knowing that The Boris is returning to the throne of Fair England
I imagine many churches will toll bells out of sheer jubilation, lofty maypoles will be erected in our towns, and the children will play their most joyous games, the king’s Jews will bake celebratory matzos in Stokey, and gays will embrace Muslims in the boulevards of Birmingham
GOD BE PRAISED
Free drink on the journos' train again today? Complete with mescal cactus and caterpillars in it?
Rachel Wearmouth @REWearmouth Hearing Laura Pidcock, once viewed as a successor to Jeremy Corbyn as leader, has quit the Labour Party. It's not clear why.
Won't she just be on a common or garden party political perambulation?
Dr Rachel Clarke, who is also a sleb Doctor, thinks Malhotra spread anti-vax propaganda.
Personally, I tend not to trust any mini-me-media proclamations by such as either of them.
When ex-NHS doctor Aseem Malhotra spread anti-vax disinformation in the House of Comms this week, he sought to bolster his credentials by citing his FRCP - screenshot below. Please can you urgently address this, @RCPhysicians ? Your name is being dragged through mud here. https://twitter.com/doctor_oxford/status/1583027735911608321
I think the ONS estimate the the UK's COVID-19 vaccination programme has saved around 200,000 lives, so calling a halt for what even the moonbats admit is a very small risk, would be completely insane.
'Proposals to honour one of Edinburgh’s most famous feminists with a statue on the Royal Mile have been put on hold after a bitter row about the choice of sculptor.
The anger erupted after the trustees suspended their open call for designs and instead commissioned Stoddart, the King’s sculptor in ordinary in Scotland, even though he had not originally applied. The competition was intended to promote an emerging artist who was inspired by Inglis’s life and work.'
Apparently all because of QE2's funeral, so they wanted something to suit for the royal mile or something, without even seeing what folk had to offer.
More than a bit shit for the folk who have been working up designs, and somewhat unfair IMO as Mr Stoddart has already bagged the previous Hume and Smith commissions on the RM (which I like actually).
What a weird article. Nowhere does it name the commissioning organisation. It simply states “the trustees”, six times. The trustees of what? Elementary journalistic skills are almost nonexistent in Scotland these days.
Rachel Wearmouth @REWearmouth Hearing Laura Pidcock, once viewed as a successor to Jeremy Corbyn as leader, has quit the Labour Party. It's not clear why.
Won't she just be on a common or garden party political perambulation?
Just like say Siobhan Benita has been.
She’s going to throw her hat in for the Tory leadership
I suspect I’m not alone in having a sense of deep deep internal relief, knowing that The Boris is returning to the throne of Fair England
I imagine many churches will toll bells out of sheer jubilation, lofty maypoles will be erected in our towns, and the children will play their most joyous games, the king’s Jews will bake celebratory matzos in Stokey, and gays will embrace Muslims in the boulevards of Birmingham
GOD BE PRAISED
They will be partying in wigan and sunderland and crying in hampstead and islington
Rachel Wearmouth @REWearmouth Hearing Laura Pidcock, once viewed as a successor to Jeremy Corbyn as leader, has quit the Labour Party. It's not clear why.
It's not clear why she quit, or not clear why she was once viewed as a potential Labour leader? Or both?
So Wallace rules himself out of the leadership, leaning towards Boris but waiting to see what Sunak has to say on defence.
With Johnson and Sunak well ahead on MP nominations now and Mordaunt trailing well behind it looks like a Johnson v Sunak race.
If Sunak ends up with most MPs support I would hope he would offer Boris a top job, eg Foreign Secretary again (Mordaunt could be Deputy PM). Boris could then take it and let Sunak lead the party to defeat but a respectable defeat rather than the humiliating defeat they were heading for.
Boris would then be in prime position to be Leader of the Opposition to PM Starmer if he holds his seat or finds a safer seat.
Do you remember when European football was an occasional televisual treat? Standard fare was whatever ITV gave you on a Sunday afternoon - QPR against Manchester United, say - didn't get the senses tingling, but steady and reliable and, through familiarity, interesting. Or you'd get an FA Cup match on the BBC every few weeks: Nottingham Forest against Blackburn. Fun, in its moderate way. But from time to time you'd get something out of the ordinary - Liverpool might play Borussia Monchengladbach - and that would have a frisson of novelty and excitement. And then some berk thought - well if European football is the icing on the cake which gets people interested, lets give people more of it. Much more. So much icing it makes them sick. And my interest in European football - and with it, all football - waned as a result. Too much icing, no appetite for the nutritional stuff. That's how I feel about politics at the moment. It's exhausting. It's far too dramatic. There is too much of it. The scriptwriters have gone mad with excess. It has jumped the shark. Oh for the days when little really happened, and we could get madly interested in the unchangeability of the daily poll at 10.30pm, or wildly excited about whether or not the CoE would push through with raising VAT on pasties.
You know how the plot lines in House of Cards always felt over the top? How one thing might happen but not all at once? Yeah, not any more.
Astonishing to think that just four days ago the Conservative Party was beginning to inch towards returning to sanity by uniting around Jeremy Hunt's financial plans.
Rachel Wearmouth @REWearmouth Hearing Laura Pidcock, once viewed as a successor to Jeremy Corbyn as leader, has quit the Labour Party. It's not clear why.
The case for Johnson was always that none of that stuff — this said gesturing airily to the bulging cupboard marked “obvious huge character flaws” — mattered because the public loved him. They did, and they proved it at the ballot box. But it turned out that Johnson’s character did matter.
It was his character that led him to break his own laws, his character that saw him value loyalty over competence, his character that meant he was unable to get on with the tedious business of running the country. When the public understood his character, they stopped loving him.
Boris’ character also resulted in him being on a nice expensive holiday instead of working during a period where his constituents might have needed to speak to their MP and is only cutting short his holiday for self-interest.
Any enterprising journalist had the wit yet to ask who paid for it?
He could have gone on a puppy-murder safari and accepted the money from Putin himself, and the deranged Bozzophiles (who exist in the media as well as the Tory party) would think it just another jolly wheeze.
Putin will be laughing his socks off. He is watching the political disintegration of the uk
The Russians hated Truss and welcomed her departure
Jesse Norman @Jesse_Norman · 35m There are several very good potential candidates for Conservative leader. But choosing Boris now would be — and I say this advisedly — an absolutely catastrophic decision.
Boris should return by boat so the humble people of Britain can organise a welcome home regatta. Just thousands and thousands of ordinary Brits, in sailboats and skiffs, expressing their love for the Big B
I suspect I’m not alone in having a sense of deep deep internal relief, knowing that The Boris is returning to the throne of Fair England
I imagine many churches will toll bells out of sheer jubilation, lofty maypoles will be erected in our towns, and the children will play their most joyous games, the king’s Jews will bake celebratory matzos in Stokey, and gays will embrace Muslims in the boulevards of Birmingham
GOD BE PRAISED
Oh dear. Leon has had too much sugar again. We're for a noisy BLOCK CAPS afternoon.
The market is hypersensitive to anything vaguely positive for Johnson.
Penny totally out of it...just talking to a guy doing my flooring and he backs Boris as he wants something done about the migrants...working people want Boris
Boris likes migrants. Your flooring guy has mixed him up with Suella Braverman.
So Wallace rules himself out of the leadership, leaning towards Boris but waiting to see what Sunak has to say on defence.
With Johnson and Sunak well ahead on MP nominations now and Mordaunt trailing well behind it looks like a Johnson v Sunak race.
If Sunak ends up with most MPs support I would hope he would offer Boris a top job, eg Foreign Secretary again (Mordaunt could be Deputy PM). Boris could then take it and let Sunak lead the party to defeat but a respectable defeat rather than the humiliating defeat they were heading for.
Boris would then be in prime position to be Leader of the Opposition to PM Starmer if he holds his seat or finds a safer seat.
Johnson couldn’t afford to limit his earnings by taking a job in the Cabinet. Anyway he will have to be sacked for misleading the House in a few weeks anyway.
Imo its over for the Tory party as is. The only question is how they split - Boris wins and there is a centrist split away under Rishi/Hunt (even though BJ is a centrist economically himself). Rishi/Penny wins and a Farage, Johnson, Spartan vehicle emerges. The latter is slightly less likely but still imo the most likely outcome
Not under FPTP, with PR maybe
I think you are almost certainly correct, but we are in new territory. My view is the Tory vote won't be this low (but I could be wrong) and also even if they do get wiped out they will have the organisation and money to recover (but again I could be wrong).
It is very, very hard to break the two main parties under FPTP, but it has happened in Scotland. As you say with PR a realignment is not only possible, but in my opinion likely for all parties.
The 2 main parties haven't even broken in Scotland, just they are now the 2 main Unionist parties with the SNP taking almost all nationalist votes
No no no, the Tories haven’t been broken in Scotland.
No siree! Not broken at all. The Tories are soaring… like a… stealthy capercaillie.
A temporary aberration due to the Truss disaster, even Boris got 25% in Scotland in 2019 and both he or Sunak would see an SCON bounce at least into double figures
Comments
I'm gonna have me £10 of SKS 4 PM at 150.
My guess is he wants commitments from Sunak. That's the main doubt I have about him. That he is a commerce/finance person with no understanding of geopolitics.
It's a view...
We're back to the 1970s as I've been saying.
Competence: -43
Trustworthiness: -65
Decisiveness: -35
Strength: -24
Likeability: -13
https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1583377763465326593
Crossover imminent?
I think the strategic problem is that any 'stable' technocratic government, IE that led by Sunak, will be subject to continuous rebellions, so the chaos will actually just continue. It won't be a period of 'calm and stability', far from it.
Johnson is the only person with a electoral mandate, who can keep the MP's in some sort of order. They aren't likely to bring him down again after the Truss farce. So perversely he may be the 'stable' candidate.
Edit - I'm not longing for Johnson to come back. But I am trying to guess what MP's and party members are thinking.
The consensus was smashed and it would take some time for a new one to emerge.
Six and a half years on, it’s still all up for grabs.
Great stuff.
Boris 2.1
Edit: I mean people who want him to be PM, not people who are just betting on him winning.
Farage…..?
At some point someone is going to have to defeat him properly.
I’m leaning into it now. Boris it is. Just rejoice at that news
The great but exiled and rightful king is finally returning after literally several days of not being king
His Time Returns
BORISTORATION
Financially, yes. He made me money overnight as his odds came in and I thank him for it?
Do I think he’ll win? Still no. Events. Hence I cashed out.
Do I want him as PM? LOL
Highlight of the day:
SNP 58%
SLab 22%
SLD 7%
Grn 3%
Ref 3%
SCon 3%
oth 3%
(People Polling/GB News; 20 October)
No siree! Not broken at all. The Tories are soaring… like a… stealthy capercaillie.
That's ridiculous. He's a clear lay now.
https://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/archive/2011-16/controlling-weeds-pests-and-diseases/new-zealand-flatworm
Edit: No reference to Gardenwalker intended at all, implicit or otherwise. Strictly different phylum.
And then some berk thought - well if European football is the icing on the cake which gets people interested, lets give people more of it. Much more. So much icing it makes them sick.
And my interest in European football - and with it, all football - waned as a result. Too much icing, no appetite for the nutritional stuff.
That's how I feel about politics at the moment.
It's exhausting. It's far too dramatic. There is too much of it. The scriptwriters have gone mad with excess. It has jumped the shark.
Oh for the days when little really happened, and we could get madly interested in the unchangeability of the daily poll at 10.30pm, or wildly excited about whether or not the CoE would push through with raising VAT on pasties.
I imagine many churches will toll bells out of sheer jubilation, lofty maypoles will be erected in our towns, and the children will play their most joyous games, the king’s Jews will bake celebratory matzos in Stokey, and gays will embrace Muslims in the boulevards of Birmingham
GOD BE PRAISED
@REWearmouth
Hearing Laura Pidcock, once viewed as a successor to Jeremy Corbyn as leader, has quit the Labour Party. It's not clear why.
So he marched his MPs up to the top of the hill over Paterson to avoid a by-election and then, just as they'd all debased themselves for him, he realised he'd struggle to get away with it without severe damage to himself, he chucked all of them (and Paterson) under a bus.
Same on Partygate - he was Mr Conviliality in order to be popular with staff until the story started coming out. Then he denied knowing anything about it and threw them under the bus one by one to try to save himself. Remember Allegra Stratton? Thrown under the bus in a heartbeat for indicating what Johnson always knew to be true.
Ditto with every wife and lover he's ever had, and colleague after colleague in job after job.
Appalling, selfish people like Johnson aren't unpleasant all the time. They are tremendously nice to you until the moment that it's no longer convenient.
We get an election early next year and the Tories will pay the price. Boris would do the best of the Tory candidates in that election but still would do well to keep 250 seats from here.
The Independent Expert Panel - an independent body on MPs' conduct - recommended the MP for the City of Chester be suspended for four weeks.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards upheld two allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr Matheson by a former member of his staff.
He allegedly invited her on a private trip abroad and "the invitation was sexually motivated, unwanted, and had placed the complainant under pressure and intimidated her", according to the report.
In December 2019 he invited her on the "private trip which he asked her to keep secret, even from her close family" which the inquiry concluded was "sexually motivated".
In the end the trip did not go ahead.
During a work event outside Parliament, he also "linked arms with her; made personal comments about her appearance while looking at her suggestively; made her hold his hand as they left and insisted on accompanying her to her bus stop - and once there invited her back to his flat, kissed her twice on the forehead and attempted to kiss her on the mouth.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/21/labour-mp-chris-matheson-quits-sexually-motivated-trip-gibraltar/
Up to the bold bit, I was left thinking (putting aside a married man trying to instigate an affair) seems a bit harsh and some of it very open to interpretation i.e. what is "looking at somebody suggestively"...then it gets weird.
@Jesse_Norman
·
35m
There are several very good potential candidates for Conservative leader. But choosing Boris now would be — and I say this advisedly — an absolutely catastrophic decision.
Just like say Siobhan Benita has been.
With Johnson and Sunak well ahead on MP nominations now and Mordaunt trailing well behind it looks like a Johnson v Sunak race.
If Sunak ends up with most MPs support I would hope he would offer Boris a top job, eg Foreign Secretary again (Mordaunt could be Deputy PM). Boris could then take it and let Sunak lead the party to defeat but a respectable defeat rather than the humiliating defeat they were heading for.
Boris would then be in prime position to be Leader of the Opposition to PM Starmer if he holds his seat or finds a safer seat.
Because it’s about to win an election?
I think that's irrational.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63340725
Has anyone actually declared yet?