I notice that Rishi is gaining more votes from former Boris supporters this morning, and as I said last night I expect him to become PM early this afternoon not least because I just do not see Penny achieving nearly 50% of the undeclared mps
My MP - who is a mahooosive Boris fan has said it's time to not contest Rishi (Brendan Clarke Smith). Fabricant, Chope? and Dorries are the only three who are Boris -> Mordaunt switchers (I think). But once you get past that lot you probably won't find a bigger Boris backer than BCS and if he's saying the game is up...
In these difficult times for our country we must unite by putting public service first and work together. We care about our country and with the enormous challenges upon us we must put political differences aside to give @RishiSunak the best chance of succeeding.
I mean there's something quite funny about her quote - "put our political differences aside". Where would that leave British politics if everyone did that.
You can feel Labour searching for the right attack lines on Sunak this morning, can't you?
They are worried.
He's a harder target than Truss, for sure. I still don't understand why they chose Truss over him. The Tories should get a bounce in the polls. But "better than Truss" is a low bar. I really doubt that Labour are worried. A squillionaire finance guy pushing through brutal austerity amid an unprecedented cost of living crisis? Yeah, hard to see them landing any punches there. I think, for all his obvious faults, Johnson would have been a tougher opponent. But even the Tories seem to have tired of his bullsh*t now. General election in the spring, Labour win a two figure majority, would be my prediction.
OK, I hear a lot about this early General Election stuff when the FTPA has been repealed, and the Tories have a solid majority.
Can someone please explain the mechanism to me?
I think “solid” has a large asterisk beside it at the moment.
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
If you wish to be obsessed with me, so be it. My view is that I’m really not worth it, but if you think I am who am I to argue?
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
What I love is how you bundle the family into the car and go on holiday to Cumbria, rather than for a tour of the new housing estates in say Kent or bedfordshire.
So I guess today it comes down to whether Rishi is concerned about a ballot or not. He god lend Mordaunt names. But he might prefer not to take the risk and be appointed rather than endorsed by the members. It would not be a great look not even have an MP vote.
Given that the members' vote looks like a shambles anyway, he won't.
The last one was a real mess too for various reasons. This would be orders of magnitude worse.
In addition, the divisions within the party means he needs to be unopposed to shoot their foxes on 'we wuz robbed.'
Plus, he has only one week to sort out a financial statement which means he needs a cabinet in place on Tuesday afternoon and probably a working weekend at Chequers.
He needs a coronation, at 2pm tomorrow. In fact, so do all of us.
The conservatives have had three women as PM, one Jewish man, and are now on the verge of electing a Hindu man of Indian heritage. To be fair to Labour, Sir Keir Starmer lives in Kentish Town rather than the more traditional Islington, but they still have some way to go.
In these difficult times for our country we must unite by putting public service first and work together. We care about our country and with the enormous challenges upon us we must put political differences aside to give @RishiSunak the best chance of succeeding.
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
They have never attempted to build infrastructure or jobs etc where the space is though, they prefer to keep all that for their shooting. Apart from afew big towns once north of Stirling their is not the infrastructure or jobs to support anything other than a bit of tourism. They don't even have a dual carriagewy to Aberdeen and between Glasgow and Edinburgh they don't have a real motorway , just a dual carriageway.
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
If you wish to be obsessed with me, so be it. My view is that I’m really not worth it, but if you think I am who am I to argue?
I only invest my time in people I like and consider worthy of redemption.
I want you to come back and re-engage on debates on here like you used to, when you were an interesting poster.
Mordaunt needs to pull out tbh. Boris had the support of 60 or so in the end of his candidates, it's actually a reasonable number to take it to a contest if you like considering the noms process is secret and there are plenty of undeclared MPs. 27 is ludicrous though up against 160 or so publicly declared for Rishi. As Mordaunt (You'd hope) is a more rational actor than Boris you'd have thought she'd withdraw and save her fire for the next leadership contest. If she doesn't then she's probably out from that one too with what would be an amazing lack of self awareness.
After parrying every question from Laura K yesterday who knows where she stands, or even whether she has clear opinions on anything. Opting for her would be buying a pig in a poke.
"Another Penny Mordaunt backer, former minister Damien Green, has reiterated that she is confident of reaching the threshold needed to further contest the leadership race.
Mordaunt has until 14:00 to garner the support of at least 100 MPs and build upon her current 25 backers to get her name on the ballot paper alongside Rishi Sunak.
Green says her team are confident she'll get the 100 names she needs, adding that her supporters are actually "way, way above" the current number of public endorsements.
"Penny is now looking to make sure she's above the 100 mark of nominations needed to go forward and then we can proceed to what will be a civilised discussion between Penny and Rishi to see who wins this election," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He added: "Penny is the person best positioned to unify the party.""
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
What I love is how you bundle the family into the car and go on holiday to Cumbria, rather than for a tour of the new housing estates in say Kent or bedfordshire.
I can particularly recommend Wokingham to Barty. I dont know what the planners were on, but it looks like a libertarian deregulation paradise.
The conservatives have had three women as PM, one Jewish man, and are now on the verge of electing a Hindu man of Indian heritage. To be fair to Labour, Sir Keir Starmer lives in Kentish Town rather than the more traditional Islington, but they still have some way to go.
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
What I love is how you bundle the family into the car and go on holiday to Cumbria, rather than for a tour of the new housing estates in say Kent or bedfordshire.
Yeah, and?
I go to Penrith. In case you haven't noticed it, there are homes and businesses and people living in Penrith, and I'd have absolutely no issue with that doubling or tripling or more in size.
Its entirely possible to have wooded areas or businesses like Center Parcs, and homes and businesses or even industry, side-by-side. Especially if you let a town sprawl over more of the countryside, then you can contain more wooded etc areas within it.
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
Off Topic
I suspect we all have opinions on fellow posters, most of which are best written and deleted without being sent. Advice I will now ignore.
My opinion of you is you are an enthusiastic Conservative, which is fine. However you do get very angry when anyone else expresses an opinion contrary to your own. It might be a coincidence but some of my "off topics" arrived after I disagreed with your posts. I have subsequently avoided you like the plague, as there is no point getting involved in confrontation on a board like this.
My opinion of Southam is he remains a fantastic poster (not least because I agree with almost everything he writes). Eradication of centrist posters might cheer you immensely. It would disappoint some of the rest of us.
I think I'd favour Mordaunt over Rishi, in 'ordinary' times. But in the current situation, Rishi is probably the safer bet for the country until the next GE, Which needs to be soon.
Incidentally, as I look out of my window I'm seeing blue skies (well, and some cloud...) over the Forth. Life is good.
So I guess today it comes down to whether Rishi is concerned about a ballot or not. He god lend Mordaunt names. But he might prefer not to take the risk and be appointed rather than endorsed by the members. It would not be a great look not even have an MP vote.
Given that the members' vote looks like a shambles anyway, he won't.
The last one was a real mess too for various reasons. This would be orders of magnitude worse.
In addition, the divisions within the party means he needs to be unopposed to shoot their foxes on 'we wuz robbed.'
Plus, he has only one week to sort out a financial statement which means he needs a cabinet in place on Tuesday afternoon and probably a working weekend at Chequers.
He needs a coronation, at 2pm tomorrow. In fact, so do all of us.
I need my winnings to get some decent wine in, for one.
Christopher Chope may have suddenly become popular with the left this morning. He's described the Conservative party as ungovernable and called for a general election.
You can feel Labour searching for the right attack lines on Sunak this morning, can't you?
They are worried.
He's a harder target than Truss, for sure. I still don't understand why they chose Truss over him. The Tories should get a bounce in the polls. But "better than Truss" is a low bar. I really doubt that Labour are worried. A squillionaire finance guy pushing through brutal austerity amid an unprecedented cost of living crisis? Yeah, hard to see them landing any punches there. I think, for all his obvious faults, Johnson would have been a tougher opponent. But even the Tories seem to have tired of his bullsh*t now. General election in the spring, Labour win a two figure majority, would be my prediction.
OK, I hear a lot about this early General Election stuff when the FTPA has been repealed, and the Tories have a solid majority.
Can someone please explain the mechanism to me?
Defections, byelections, breakdown in discipline, confidence vote on some particularly unpopular plank of austerity, troublemaking by Johnsonites, economic and markets turmoil, I think can all combine to force an election. Sunak has no mandate, will have to do a lot of very difficult and unpopular stuff, and lots of his party don't like him. I think it is rather unlikely his government lasts full term. Paradoxically, if the polls do narrow materially he becomes much more vulnerable.
OK, so it hinges on him losing his effective majority in Parliament.
That's about 40 MPs he's got to lose and John Major still managed to soldier on for the last year from 1996-97 without really having one.
It's possible but I wouldn't want to be backing spring 2023.
Isn't the majority about 70 now? So loss of about 35 seats. Major didn't have to contend with any real economic problems after about 1994. Sunak is inheriting a party that looks incredibly divided and he has a hugely ambitious rival waiting in the wings who really doesn't care about the party at all and will create all kinds of trouble. And the economic mess he has to deal with is the worst since the 70s at least. He can't claim a mandate. He's only been an MP for a few years and has never really been tested - and in his brief stint as Chancellor he made some big mistakes. I just can't see him making it through to late 2024 and I suspect the whole thing crashes sooner rather than later. But of course I could be completely wrong.
So I guess today it comes down to whether Rishi is concerned about a ballot or not. He god lend Mordaunt names. But he might prefer not to take the risk and be appointed rather than endorsed by the members. It would not be a great look not even have an MP vote.
It would be a great look - the Tory membership should be nowhere near the appointment of a new PM.
After all their choice is the reason we have to find £65bn in extra interest costs - personally I think there should be an August 2022 Tory membership tax of 100% of assets. to cover those costs.
Harsh on those of us who voted Rishi. But Truss's 80k of voters? You make a fair point....
The conservatives have had three women as PM, one Jewish man, and are now on the verge of electing a Hindu man of Indian heritage. To be fair to Labour, Sir Keir Starmer lives in Kentish Town rather than the more traditional Islington, but they still have some way to go.
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
Off Topic
I suspect we all have opinions on fellow posters, most of which are best written and deleted without being sent. Advice I will now ignore.
My opinion of you is you are an enthusiastic Conservative, which is fine. However you do get very angry when anyone else expresses an opinion contrary to your own. It might be a coincidence but some of my "off topics" arrived after I disagreed with your posts. I have subsequently avoided you like the plague, as there is no point getting involved in confrontation on a board like this.
My opinion of Southam is he remains a fantastic poster (not least because I agree with almost everything he writes). Eradication of centrist posters might cheer you immensely. It would disappoint some of the rest of us.
That's not true. I just don't like naked or transparent partisan spin and nothing else.
It insults our intelligence. We are better than that.
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
They have never attempted to build infrastructure or jobs etc where the space is though, they prefer to keep all that for their shooting. Apart from afew big towns once north of Stirling their is not the infrastructure or jobs to support anything other than a bit of tourism. They don't even have a dual carriagewy to Aberdeen and between Glasgow and Edinburgh they don't have a real motorway , just a dual carriageway.
I can't think of anywhere else as highlandy as the highlands which isn't basically a wilderness, till you get as far E and S as Nepal. Geography is your enemy, not the English.
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
What I love is how you bundle the family into the car and go on holiday to Cumbria, rather than for a tour of the new housing estates in say Kent or bedfordshire.
Yeah, and?
I go to Penrith. In case you haven't noticed it, there are homes and businesses and people living in Penrith, and I'd have absolutely no issue with that doubling or tripling or more in size.
Its entirely possible to have wooded areas or businesses like Center Parcs, and homes and businesses or even industry, side-by-side. Especially if you let a town sprawl over more of the countryside, then you can contain more wooded etc areas within it.
I think I'd favour Mordaunt over Rishi, in 'ordinary' times. But in the current situation, Rishi is probably the safer bet for the country until the next GE, Which needs to be soon.
Incidentally, as I look out of my window I'm seeing blue skies (well, and some cloud...) over the Forth. Life is good.
We’ve had so much rain the last 12 hours that there must be flooding about, and the park will be like a marsh. A muddy dog day.
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
What I love is how you bundle the family into the car and go on holiday to Cumbria, rather than for a tour of the new housing estates in say Kent or bedfordshire.
Yeah, and?
I go to Penrith. In case you haven't noticed it, there are homes and businesses and people living in Penrith, and I'd have absolutely no issue with that doubling or tripling or more in size.
Its entirely possible to have wooded areas or businesses like Center Parcs, and homes and businesses or even industry, side-by-side. Especially if you let a town sprawl over more of the countryside, then you can contain more wooded etc areas within it.
How about telling us where you are on the Kwasi Kwarteng budget now instead? How many u-turns have you performed? What would YOU be doing to stabilise the pound, bring down inflation, keep interest rates lower?
Once we know all that, then maybe an election will the right call.
The issue with demanding a GE, without the mechanism to secure it, is that eventually you end up looking weak. A bit like endlessly calling VONC.
Lady Nugee was on R5 this morning doing exactly this. I was most upset that the presenter, despite doing a good job of rebutting her calls, didn't just say Gordon Brown didn't have a GE after he took over. The idea that parties cannot change leader when in majority power in parliament is new. If we want a system like that then fine, change the law. But I bet it won't happen whoever is in power. Just like a labour majority government won't vote for PR - the current system works for them too.
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
What I love is how you bundle the family into the car and go on holiday to Cumbria, rather than for a tour of the new housing estates in say Kent or bedfordshire.
Yeah, and?
I go to Penrith. In case you haven't noticed it, there are homes and businesses and people living in Penrith, and I'd have absolutely no issue with that doubling or tripling or more in size.
Its entirely possible to have wooded areas or businesses like Center Parcs, and homes and businesses or even industry, side-by-side. Especially if you let a town sprawl over more of the countryside, then you can contain more wooded etc areas within it.
Says a person who doesn’t live in Penrith
Young people in Penrith probably do want somewhere to be able to live.
Old NIMBYs in Penrith are no better than NIMBYs anywhere else.
Christopher Chope may have suddenly become popular with the left this morning. He's described the Conservative party as ungovernable and called for a general election.
So have others on the hard right.
If they don't let Rishi Sunak get on with the job then the waters are going to remain chopey.
I think 2023 for a General Election is good value and I've had a bet this morning. Thanks for the hat tip @TSE. It's not something I'd bet my house on but there's a better than evens chance imho, and the odds are c. 3-1 (with a boost).
The constitutionalists will point out the absence of mechanism for a GE next year but that's not really how the constitution works in this country. There needs to be a certain amount of honour, good will, and lassitude.
How about telling us where you are on the Kwasi Kwarteng budget now instead? How many u-turns have you performed? What would YOU be doing to stabilise the pound, bring down inflation, keep interest rates lower?
Once we know all that, then maybe an election will the right call.
The issue with demanding a GE, without the mechanism to secure it, is that eventually you end up looking weak. A bit like endlessly calling VONC.
Lady Nugee was on R5 this morning doing exactly this. I was most upset that the presenter, despite doing a good job of rebutting her calls, didn't just say Gordon Brown didn't have a GE after he took over. The idea that parties cannot change leader when in majority power in parliament is new. If we want a system like that then fine, change the law. But I bet it won't happen whoever is in power. Just like a labour majority government won't vote for PR - the current system works for them too.
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
They have never attempted to build infrastructure or jobs etc where the space is though, they prefer to keep all that for their shooting. Apart from afew big towns once north of Stirling their is not the infrastructure or jobs to support anything other than a bit of tourism. They don't even have a dual carriagewy to Aberdeen and between Glasgow and Edinburgh they don't have a real motorway , just a dual carriageway.
1. There is dual carriageway to Aberdeen - the A90. Which is signed as motorway between Edinburgh and Perth and is legally motorway on the Aberdeen bypass. 2. There is continuous motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow - the M8
It is time now for the Conservative party to unite behind @RishiSunak - there are big challenges ahead and the national interest requires us to show resolution and fortitude under new leadership
The conservatives have had three women as PM, one Jewish man, and are now on the verge of electing a Hindu man of Indian heritage. To be fair to Labour, Sir Keir Starmer lives in Kentish Town rather than the more traditional Islington, but they still have some way to go.
I think if Boris had declared on Saturday evening he would have actually got the numbers. As the nominations were a pseudo-vote and secret.
It would have been tight, perhaps he'd have squeaked through on 102 even and he didn't fancy the gamble (And governing afterwards) though.
Yes, and he'd then have lost.
He correctly calculated that a humiliation would finish him off.
I still think he's finished, by the way, but he now has a theoretical option to come back again in future and an immediate one to farm a betrayal (and anti-democratic) narrative that will play to his ego and his base.
So I guess today it comes down to whether Rishi is concerned about a ballot or not. He god lend Mordaunt names. But he might prefer not to take the risk and be appointed rather than endorsed by the members. It would not be a great look not even have an MP vote.
It would be a great look - the Tory membership should be nowhere near the appointment of a new PM.
After all their choice is the reason we have to find £65bn in extra interest costs - personally I think there should be an August 2022 Tory membership tax of 100% of assets. to cover those costs.
Christopher Chope may have suddenly become popular with the left this morning. He's described the Conservative party as ungovernable and called for a general election.
So have others on the hard right.
If they don't let Rishi Sunak get on with the job then the waters are going to remain chopey.
I think 2023 for a General Election is good value and I've had a bet this morning. Thanks for the hat tip @TSE. It's not something I'd bet my house on but there's a better than evens chance imho, and the odds are c. 3-1 (with a boost).
The constitutionalists will point out the absence of mechanism for a GE next year but that's not really how the constitution works in this country. There needs to be a certain amount of honour, good will, and lassitude.
Fair enough, I'm not betting on that one at current odds.
"Half of all primary schools in England are trying to feed children in poverty who are ineligible for free school meals because their parents’ income does not meet the threshold. But there are 800,000 of them. It can be hard sometimes to grasp the scale of the problem through bare statistics, but vivid and haunting details can flesh them out. Children are eating school rubbers to line their stomachs and dull the ache and nausea of hunger. Others are bringing in empty lunchboxes then pretending to dine on their phantom food away from classmates, too ashamed to reveal that they have nothing to eat."
I think if Boris had declared on Saturday evening he would have actually got the numbers. As the nominations were a pseudo-vote and secret.
It would have been tight, perhaps he'd have squeaked through on 102 even and he didn't fancy the gamble (And governing afterwards) though.
Ironically. If he had been at Westminster doing his job, he'd have probably been able to surf the early momentum. But he wasn't. Because he's Boris Johnson.
R4 9am news leading with “the value of the pound has risen and the cost of government borrowing fallen after Boris Johnson dropped out of the leadership race.”
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
Off Topic
I suspect we all have opinions on fellow posters, most of which are best written and deleted without being sent. Advice I will now ignore.
My opinion of you is you are an enthusiastic Conservative, which is fine. However you do get very angry when anyone else expresses an opinion contrary to your own. It might be a coincidence but some of my "off topics" arrived after I disagreed with your posts. I have subsequently avoided you like the plague, as there is no point getting involved in confrontation on a board like this.
My opinion of Southam is he remains a fantastic poster (not least because I agree with almost everything he writes). Eradication of centrist posters might cheer you immensely. It would disappoint some of the rest of us.
That's not true. I just don't like naked or transparent partisan spin and nothing else.
It insults our intelligence. We are better than that.
But you are one of the most egregious partisan posters. What's sauce for the goose...
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
Off Topic
I suspect we all have opinions on fellow posters, most of which are best written and deleted without being sent. Advice I will now ignore.
My opinion of you is you are an enthusiastic Conservative, which is fine. However you do get very angry when anyone else expresses an opinion contrary to your own. It might be a coincidence but some of my "off topics" arrived after I disagreed with your posts. I have subsequently avoided you like the plague, as there is no point getting involved in confrontation on a board like this.
My opinion of Southham is he remains a fantastic poster (not least because I agree with almost everything he writes). Eradication of centrist posters might cheer you immensely. It would disappoint some of the rest of us.
Yes Casino_Royale can appear pleasant a lot of the time and then goes apeshit if someone takes a contrary view, with some really nasty personal invective. Especially from anyone to the left of him, even if they are in fact rather moderate. It's really quite odd.
However, when I was on the receiving end of something similar the other morning I reflected further and realised that it was because he stood to lose a stack of money and was very twitchy. Which I do understand. The last time I rolled the dice big time on spreads was nerve-wracking. I won big betting against the markets but it did make me irascible. That's my excuse for his intemperate morning rant.
So what sort of a lead would cause Mordaunt to gracefully throw in the towel? If she scrapes 100 and Rishi has 260 odd does she accept that he is the overwhelming choice of the PCP and that it would be impossible to govern if she ignored that? Surely she does, so the question is how many make it legitimate to go to the mattresses, I mean membership?
How about telling us where you are on the Kwasi Kwarteng budget now instead? How many u-turns have you performed? What would YOU be doing to stabilise the pound, bring down inflation, keep interest rates lower?
Once we know all that, then maybe an election will the right call.
The issue with demanding a GE, without the mechanism to secure it, is that eventually you end up looking weak. A bit like endlessly calling VONC.
Lady Nugee was on R5 this morning doing exactly this. I was most upset that the presenter, despite doing a good job of rebutting her calls, didn't just say Gordon Brown didn't have a GE after he took over. The idea that parties cannot change leader when in majority power in parliament is new. If we want a system like that then fine, change the law. But I bet it won't happen whoever is in power. Just like a labour majority government won't vote for PR - the
current system works for them too.
Good post except for your calling Emily Thornberry by her husband’s name, which is just weird.
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
Off Topic
I suspect we all have opinions on fellow posters, most of which are best written and deleted without being sent. Advice I will now ignore.
My opinion of you is you are an enthusiastic Conservative, which is fine. However you do get very angry when anyone else expresses an opinion contrary to your own. It might be a coincidence but some of my "off topics" arrived after I disagreed with your posts. I have subsequently avoided you like the plague, as there is no point getting involved in confrontation on a board like this.
My opinion of Southham is he remains a fantastic poster (not least because I agree with almost everything he writes). Eradication of centrist posters might cheer you immensely. It would disappoint some of the rest of us.
Yes Casino_Royale can appear pleasant a lot of the time and then goes apeshit if someone takes a contrary view, with some really nasty personal invective. Especially from anyone to the left of him, even if they are in fact rather moderate. It's really quite odd.
However, when I was on the receiving end of something similar the other morning I reflected further and realised that it was because he stood to lose a stack of money and was very twitchy. Which I do understand. The last time I rolled the dice big time on spreads was nerve-wracking. I won big betting against the markets but it did make me irascible. That's my excuse for his intemperate morning rant.
p.s. but this place would be awful without contrary viewpoints. It's one of things which makes this place so good: to have multiple perspectives across the spectrum. And we can all learn from one another. I know I certainly do.
You can feel Labour searching for the right attack lines on Sunak this morning, can't you?
They are worried.
He's a harder target than Truss, for sure. I still don't understand why they chose Truss over him. The Tories should get a bounce in the polls. But "better than Truss" is a low bar. I really doubt that Labour are worried. A squillionaire finance guy pushing through brutal austerity amid an unprecedented cost of living crisis? Yeah, hard to see them landing any punches there. I think, for all his obvious faults, Johnson would have been a tougher opponent. But even the Tories seem to have tired of his bullsh*t now. General election in the spring, Labour win a two figure majority, would be my prediction.
OK, I hear a lot about this early General Election stuff when the FTPA has been repealed, and the Tories have a solid majority.
Can someone please explain the mechanism to me?
Defections, byelections, breakdown in discipline, confidence vote on some particularly unpopular plank of austerity, troublemaking by Johnsonites, economic and markets turmoil, I think can all combine to force an election. Sunak has no mandate, will have to do a lot of very difficult and unpopular stuff, and lots of his party don't like him. I think it is rather unlikely his government lasts full term. Paradoxically, if the polls do narrow materially he becomes much more vulnerable.
OK, so it hinges on him losing his effective majority in Parliament.
That's about 40 MPs he's got to lose and John Major still managed to soldier on for the last year from 1996-97 without really having one.
It's possible but I wouldn't want to be backing spring 2023.
Isn't the majority about 70 now? So loss of about 35 seats. Major didn't have to contend with any real economic problems after about 1994. Sunak is inheriting a party that looks incredibly divided and he has a hugely ambitious rival waiting in the wings who really doesn't care about the party at all and will create all kinds of trouble. And the economic mess he has to deal with is the worst since the 70s at least. He can't claim a mandate. He's only been an MP for a few years and has never really been tested - and in his brief stint as Chancellor he made some big mistakes. I just can't see him making it through to late 2024 and I suspect the whole thing crashes sooner rather than later. But of course I could be completely wrong.
The counter argument is that an election now leads to almost certain Conservative defeat. An election postponed... Something might turn up. And even if it doesn't, there are a few more months in office.
Even the dimmest MPs can grasp that, which is why doomed administrations tend to go for five years.
In these difficult times for our country we must unite by putting public service first and work together. We care about our country and with the enormous challenges upon us we must put political differences aside to give @RishiSunak the best chance of succeeding.
Football's looking like two bad results in a row for me (one bet still to come). Hmm. First season trying this (I did dabble earlier but not in quite the same way). Think I might be neglecting recent form too much in favour of considering overall results, might be leading me astray.
Football is tricky. My favourite gambling approach used to be my brother in laws. He always bet on Southampton winning 3-2. A tenner on this, every home game. He was a season ticket holder. Rarely came up, but when it did often picked up 200 to 250 quid. Then went to the casino and usually blew the lot.
Lost money every time, but boy, when it came up, that was some night!
Update: Sunak racing ahead this morning as his support jumps to 163 MPs against just 25 for Mordaunt. If he hits 178, he’s won half of the parliamentary party. But there’s still 169 MPs who haven’t declared
The conservatives have had three women as PM, one Jewish man, and are now on the verge of electing a Hindu man of Indian heritage. To be fair to Labour, Sir Keir Starmer lives in Kentish Town rather than the more traditional Islington, but they still have some way to go.
Christopher Chope may have suddenly become popular with the left this morning. He's described the Conservative party as ungovernable and called for a general election.
Do your bit Christopher - resign and go for a by-election.
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
What I love is how you bundle the family into the car and go on holiday to Cumbria, rather than for a tour of the new housing estates in say Kent or bedfordshire.
Yeah, and?
I go to Penrith. In case you haven't noticed it, there are homes and businesses and people living in Penrith, and I'd have absolutely no issue with that doubling or tripling or more in size.
Its entirely possible to have wooded areas or businesses like Center Parcs, and homes and businesses or even industry, side-by-side. Especially if you let a town sprawl over more of the countryside, then you can contain more wooded etc areas within it.
Says a person who doesn’t live in Penrith
Young people in Penrith probably do want somewhere to be able to live.
Old NIMBYs in Penrith are no better than NIMBYs anywhere else.
I think I'd favour Mordaunt over Rishi, in 'ordinary' times. But in the current situation, Rishi is probably the safer bet for the country until the next GE, Which needs to be soon.
Incidentally, as I look out of my window I'm seeing blue skies (well, and some cloud...) over the Forth. Life is good.
We’ve had so much rain the last 12 hours that there must be flooding about, and the park will be like a marsh. A muddy dog day.
It was a bit wet on the walk to the Loch Fyne restaurant last night. Dry for my morning run though, along the Forth. I've forgotten my headtorch, so the run needed a bit more concentration than usual...
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
Large parts of the country are empty. There is plenty of room.
Especially in Malcolm's part of the world! But even in England too.
Restricting house-building and infrastructure development in general is the problem. Open immigration should be the policy, but combined with open construction, unfortunately the potentially sane pro-migration parties like the Lib Dems tend to whore themselves out to attract NIMBY voters.
What I love is how you bundle the family into the car and go on holiday to Cumbria, rather than for a tour of the new housing estates in say Kent or bedfordshire.
Yeah, and?
I go to Penrith. In case you haven't noticed it, there are homes and businesses and people living in Penrith, and I'd have absolutely no issue with that doubling or tripling or more in size.
Its entirely possible to have wooded areas or businesses like Center Parcs, and homes and businesses or even industry, side-by-side. Especially if you let a town sprawl over more of the countryside, then you can contain more wooded etc areas within it.
Says a person who doesn’t live in Penrith
BTW the people of Penrith, the great border town of Cumberland, with barbarous Westmorland just across the Eamont, are about to discover that it is to be in Westmorland and Furness from 2023, and that it's local capital is no longer Carlisle but Barrow, a town which most people (apart from those who want to buy a nuclear submarine) are unaware that it exists. It's down one of Europe's longest cul de sacs and most people give up the will to live well before getting there.
So what sort of a lead would cause Mordaunt to gracefully throw in the towel? If she scrapes 100 and Rishi has 260 odd does she accept that he is the overwhelming choice of the PCP and that it would be impossible to govern if she ignored that? Surely she does, so the question is how many make it legitimate to go to the mattresses, I mean membership?
Unpopular this may be but we NEED immigration. Brexit and covid drove away workers who helped our country function. Right now there's a labour shortage.
It goes deeper than that. Whatever some nasty white Brits might like to believe, this country has been an island nation with an outward facing attitude. For good or ill we have been a global nation, not an insular one. This country has benefitted phenomenally from the rich legacy of that outlook, right down to having our first Asian heritage Prime Minister.
I celebrate that fact. We all should.
The reason immigration is unpopular isn't the "furriners", it's the infrastructure.
Yes, you're right. Britain needs immigration, we're an ageing population and we need young people to wipe bottoms, and we need people to do the jobs us Brits are either too lazy or feckless or simply think it's beneath us to do.
The problem is we also need the infrastructure support that immigration. We need new houses built. New schools. New hospitals. People see expanding class sizes, inability to get a GP's appointment for weeks, rents going up and up and semi-correctly diagnose immigration as the problem. The problem isn't the immigration, it's the lack of infrastructure to keep up with immigration.
Can’t speak for the rest of it, but immigration isn’t the cause of increasing class sizes. Funding not keeping pace with costs is the cause.
Far too many people in the country is the problem.
I thought a key plank of Scottish independence is so that Scotland can throw open its doors to the dispossessed of the world and gift them all a free umbrella?
I was talking about England, we have plenty of space in Scotland just not the powers to enable immigration and be able to spend money planning it properly.
Malc - the UK has had huge immigration, yet most have not moved to Scotland. Why is that? On the whole, most don't want to go there. I know a friend of a friend of Egyptian heritage. Took a job in Glasgow. Moved away in short order - his wife couldn't stand the weather.
What has stopped the migrants who settled in the old mill towns of the North of England moving north to Scotland?
Re: Braverman. Doesn’t the fact that only a week ago she had to resign as Home Secretary in disgrace for breaching the ministerial code (remember that?) rather mitigate against being let back in…? Especially when Sunak has made “restoring honesty and integrity in Govt” as part of his pitch…
How about telling us where you are on the Kwasi Kwarteng budget now instead? How many u-turns have you performed? What would YOU be doing to stabilise the pound, bring down inflation, keep interest rates lower?
Once we know all that, then maybe an election will the right call.
The issue with demanding a GE, without the mechanism to secure it, is that eventually you end up looking weak. A bit like endlessly calling VONC.
Lady Nugee was on R5 this morning doing exactly this. I was most upset that the presenter, despite doing a good job of rebutting her calls, didn't just say Gordon Brown didn't have a GE after he took over. The idea that parties cannot change leader when in majority power in parliament is new. If we want a system like that then fine, change the law. But I bet it won't happen whoever is in power. Just like a labour majority government won't vote for PR - the current system works for them too.
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
Off Topic
I suspect we all have opinions on fellow posters, most of which are best written and deleted without being sent. Advice I will now ignore.
My opinion of you is you are an enthusiastic Conservative, which is fine. However you do get very angry when anyone else expresses an opinion contrary to your own. It might be a coincidence but some of my "off topics" arrived after I disagreed with your posts. I have subsequently avoided you like the plague, as there is no point getting involved in confrontation on a board like this.
My opinion of Southam is he remains a fantastic poster (not least because I agree with almost everything he writes). Eradication of centrist posters might cheer you immensely. It would disappoint some of the rest of us.
That's not true. I just don't like naked or transparent partisan spin and nothing else.
It insults our intelligence. We are better than that.
But you are one of the most egregious partisan posters. What's sauce for the goose...
It is time now for the Conservative party to unite behind @RishiSunak - there are big challenges ahead and the national interest requires us to show resolution and fortitude under new leadership
Update: Sunak racing ahead this morning as his support jumps to 163 MPs against just 25 for Mordaunt. If he hits 178, he’s won half of the parliamentary party. But there’s still 169 MPs who haven’t declared
I watched the highlights of Scotland v Zimbabwe. The difference between the teams was Zimbabwe's catching, which was phenomenal. The catches of each of the Scotland top 4 were chances you would miss more often than not but they took the lot. They have some tidy bowling too but I don't see their batting holding up against SA.
You can feel Labour searching for the right attack lines on Sunak this morning, can't you?
They are worried.
He's a harder target than Truss, for sure. I still don't understand why they chose Truss over him. The Tories should get a bounce in the polls. But "better than Truss" is a low bar. I really doubt that Labour are worried. A squillionaire finance guy pushing through brutal austerity amid an unprecedented cost of living crisis? Yeah, hard to see them landing any punches there. I think, for all his obvious faults, Johnson would have been a tougher opponent. But even the Tories seem to have tired of his bullsh*t now. General election in the spring, Labour win a two figure majority, would be my prediction.
OK, I hear a lot about this early General Election stuff when the FTPA has been repealed, and the Tories have a solid majority.
Can someone please explain the mechanism to me?
Defections, byelections, breakdown in discipline, confidence vote on some particularly unpopular plank of austerity, troublemaking by Johnsonites, economic and markets turmoil, I think can all combine to force an election. Sunak has no mandate, will have to do a lot of very difficult and unpopular stuff, and lots of his party don't like him. I think it is rather unlikely his government lasts full term. Paradoxically, if the polls do narrow materially he becomes much more vulnerable.
OK, so it hinges on him losing his effective majority in Parliament.
That's about 40 MPs he's got to lose and John Major still managed to soldier on for the last year from 1996-97 without really having one.
It's possible but I wouldn't want to be backing spring 2023.
Isn't the majority about 70 now? So loss of about 35 seats. Major didn't have to contend with any real economic problems after about 1994. Sunak is inheriting a party that looks incredibly divided and he has a hugely ambitious rival waiting in the wings who really doesn't care about the party at all and will create all kinds of trouble. And the economic mess he has to deal with is the worst since the 70s at least. He can't claim a mandate. He's only been an MP for a few years and has never really been tested - and in his brief stint as Chancellor he made some big mistakes. I just can't see him making it through to late 2024 and I suspect the whole thing crashes sooner rather than later. But of course I could be completely wrong.
The counter argument is that an election now leads to almost certain Conservative defeat. An election postponed... Something might turn up. And even if it doesn't, there are a few more months in office.
Even the dimmest MPs can grasp that, which is why doomed administrations tend to go for five years.
Yes that's a powerful counterargument. I guess the question is whether the party has the discipline to hold together now and do a whole load of really difficult and unpopular stuff, while Johnson is still on the scene spouting his seductive populist nonsense. My gut tells me it can't, based on what we've seen in the last few months. But I can't claim to have any great certainty about that.
How about telling us where you are on the Kwasi Kwarteng budget now instead? How many u-turns have you performed? What would YOU be doing to stabilise the pound, bring down inflation, keep interest rates lower?
Once we know all that, then maybe an election will the right call.
The issue with demanding a GE, without the mechanism to secure it, is that eventually you end up looking weak. A bit like endlessly calling VONC.
Lady Nugee was on R5 this morning doing exactly this. I was most upset that the presenter, despite doing a good job of rebutting her calls, didn't just say Gordon Brown didn't have a GE after he took over. The idea that parties cannot change leader when in majority power in parliament is new. If we want a system like that then fine, change the law. But I bet it won't happen whoever is in power. Just like a labour majority government won't vote for PR - the
current system works for them too.
Good post except for your calling Emily Thornberry by her husband’s name, which is just weird.
I have a weird thing about her. It's a bit like those who refuse to call Tommy Robinson by that name.
10% negative is a drop on your foot proportion of people. One in ten. Look around you everywhere you go/walk/play and one in ten of them dislikes an Asian as PM because they are Asian. A cricket/football/rugby team = at least one member. Your office of 200 people? 20 of them.
Maybe I'm having a glass half empty Monday morning but I find that quite depressing.
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
Off Topic
I suspect we all have opinions on fellow posters, most of which are best written and deleted without being sent. Advice I will now ignore.
My opinion of you is you are an enthusiastic Conservative, which is fine. However you do get very angry when anyone else expresses an opinion contrary to your own. It might be a coincidence but some of my "off topics" arrived after I disagreed with your posts. I have subsequently avoided you like the plague, as there is no point getting involved in confrontation on a board like this.
My opinion of Southham is he remains a fantastic poster (not least because I agree with almost everything he writes). Eradication of centrist posters might cheer you immensely. It would disappoint some of the rest of us.
Yes Casino_Royale can appear pleasant a lot of the time and then goes apeshit if someone takes a contrary view, with some really nasty personal invective. Especially from anyone to the left of him, even if they are in fact rather moderate. It's really quite odd.
However, when I was on the receiving end of something similar the other morning I reflected further and realised that it was because he stood to lose a stack of money and was very twitchy. Which I do understand. The last time I rolled the dice big time on spreads was nerve-wracking. I won big betting against the markets but it did make me irascible. That's my excuse for his intemperate morning rant.
Yes, I can get particularly stressed at election time and sometimes attack political opponents (it's usually about fear of the result, not the money, by the way) but that wasn't what Saturday morning was about.
"Another Penny Mordaunt backer, former minister Damien Green, has reiterated that she is confident of reaching the threshold needed to further contest the leadership race.
Mordaunt has until 14:00 to garner the support of at least 100 MPs and build upon her current 25 backers to get her name on the ballot paper alongside Rishi Sunak.
Green says her team are confident she'll get the 100 names she needs, adding that her supporters are actually "way, way above" the current number of public endorsements.
"Penny is now looking to make sure she's above the 100 mark of nominations needed to go forward and then we can proceed to what will be a civilised discussion between Penny and Rishi to see who wins this election," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He added: "Penny is the person best positioned to unify the party.""
Penny seems like a completely empty vessel. If even Boris is suggesting that 102 MPs isn't enough to take it to a members vote then she needs to take a step back from her situation and think about whether it would be worth it. She doesn't command a majority in the parliamentary party and therefore can't lead it. Whoever is blowing smoke up her arse suggesting that she can should give it a rest.
10% negative is a drop on your foot proportion of people. One in ten. Look around you everywhere you go/walk/play and one in ten of them dislikes an Asian as PM because they are Asian. A cricket/football/rugby team = at least one member. Your office of 200 people? 20 of them.
Maybe I'm having a glass half empty Monday morning but I find that quite depressing.
It's probably a lower proportion than the number of people who dislike him as PM because he went to a private school.
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
Off Topic
I suspect we all have opinions on fellow posters, most of which are best written and deleted without being sent. Advice I will now ignore.
My opinion of you is you are an enthusiastic Conservative, which is fine. However you do get very angry when anyone else expresses an opinion contrary to your own. It might be a coincidence but some of my "off topics" arrived after I disagreed with your posts. I have subsequently avoided you like the plague, as there is no point getting involved in confrontation on a board like this.
My opinion of Southam is he remains a fantastic poster (not least because I agree with almost everything he writes). Eradication of centrist posters might cheer you immensely. It would disappoint some of the rest of us.
That's not true. I just don't like naked or transparent partisan spin and nothing else.
It insults our intelligence. We are better than that.
But you are one of the most egregious partisan posters. What's sauce for the goose...
Oh, incoming "off-topic".
Except I'm not. And nor do I "off topic" you!
We'll have to agree to disagree, on both counts. Unless of course you have a defensive stalker off topicing me after we disagree. In which case I can only apologise.
10% negative is a drop on your foot proportion of people. One in ten. Look around you everywhere you go/walk/play and one in ten of them dislikes an Asian as PM because they are Asian. A cricket/football/rugby team = at least one member. Your office of 200 people? 20 of them.
Maybe I'm having a glass half empty Monday morning but I find that quite depressing.
It's probably a lower proportion than the number of people who dislike him as PM because he went to a private school.
So what? It's still 10%. I wonder how representative PB is on this one.
I proposed last night that Rishi simply leave the Cabinet unchanged.
Let them get on with their jobs.
The only tweak he might make is to put Mordaunt into FS; perhaps giving Cleverly BEIS in compensation.
That way, Rishi avoids needing to give Braverman, Patel etc jobs “in the interest of stability”.
Rees-Mogg does need to go. He’s toxic, and indeed he said during the previous leadership race that he’d refuse to serve under “socialist” Rishi anyway!
10% negative is a drop on your foot proportion of people. One in ten. Look around you everywhere you go/walk/play and one in ten of them dislikes an Asian as PM because they are Asian. A cricket/football/rugby team = at least one member. Your office of 200 people? 20 of them.
Maybe I'm having a glass half empty Monday morning but I find that quite depressing.
Talking of which... Was speaking to a friend who knows and they said that footie violence is back to the 80s/90s levels. All or most down to cocaine and it is consuming a lot of police resource (was one reason why the football was cancelled on the weekend of the Queen's death).
10% negative is a drop on your foot proportion of people. One in ten. Look around you everywhere you go/walk/play and one in ten of them dislikes an Asian as PM because they are Asian. A cricket/football/rugby team = at least one member. Your office of 200 people? 20 of them.
Maybe I'm having a glass half empty Monday morning but I find that quite depressing.
I thought similarly - and given that these people were the ones willing to admit their racism to pollsters, the real figure is presumably higher.
"Half of all primary schools in England are trying to feed children in poverty who are ineligible for free school meals because their parents’ income does not meet the threshold. But there are 800,000 of them. It can be hard sometimes to grasp the scale of the problem through bare statistics, but vivid and haunting details can flesh them out. Children are eating school rubbers to line their stomachs and dull the ache and nausea of hunger. Others are bringing in empty lunchboxes then pretending to dine on their phantom food away from classmates, too ashamed to reveal that they have nothing to eat."
So, basically, if you are on any form of benefit, including in work benefits, you qualify. As these people clearly have at least 1 child they will qualify for those unless their income is quite considerable (the taper will not affect eligibility to FSM).
What I would accept is that there are dysfunctional families who do not prioritise feeding their kids over other wants but 800k? Nah.
He'll just do what he thinks is right for the country and ignore the nutters. He can do nothing else and there is no advantage in trying to do otherwise. We should see a bounce in Tory poll ratings now. My guess is they will get back to within 20 points of Labour immediately. After that he could, given a fair wind, carry the Tories to an honourable defeat at the next GE, retaining something like 200/250 Parliamentary seats.
Will he get a fair wind? Well we know the economic storms that are coming but he should be able to ride them on the not unreasonable basis that they were not of his making and most other countries are suffering them too. The home-brewed political storms are a different matter though.
Boris's curmudgeonly withdrawal letter and the angry noises from The Defeated suggest that civil strife within The Party will continue. In that case I downgrade my prediction to less than 100 seats, and an Extinction Event far from possible. If the dissidents manage to contrive a 2023 GE, then the EE becomes more likely than not.
I didn't think the eliminaton of the Conservative Party was possible in my lifetime, but the fact it can even be sensibly discussed now is an indication of the pass things have come to.
Sunak’s disastrous budget earlier this year helped to create the conditions for where we are now. But I think you’re right that he is by far the Tories’ best hope. That said, if we end up with any of Patel, Braverman or Rees Mogg in the Cabinet, we’ll know Sunak is not putting the country first.
Sunak has to unite all wings of the party if he is going to be able to govern. Therefore, he will absolutely have to bring some in from the cold from that wing of the party - and Braverman is a strong likelihood.
No, I'd rather he didn't either but it's the sensible thing to do. It's politics. It does not mean he's got "no integrity" or is "not putting the country first". It means he is trying to be magnanimous and unite all wings of the parliamentary party to form a stable government.
You're simply trying to set up an attack line for what you know is probably inevitable and, if he doesn’t do what he asks, the party risks splitting so there's an unstable government and you can then call for an immediate GE and Labour due to the chaos. Either way, you've got a great spin angle.
I can read you like a book.
This is an internet message board, not Parliament. What any of us anonymous posters says on here is not of the slightest consequence to the national discourse. We’re all just people of no import who happen to have opinions. My opinion is you can’t claim to have integrity and be focused on the national interest and then put people like Braverman, Patel and Rees Mogg in your Cabinet. You disagree. That’s all that’s happening here. The world turns.
Bollocks. I will continue to call you out for those who do read the comments here who do have influence in the national discourse.
You're a transparent spinner. It's a shame because you'd be much more interesting if you engaged objectively with the subject, rather than seagulling in here two or three times a day, dropping your spin, and then leaving again.
Like you used to do before you went off the rails.
Off Topic
I suspect we all have opinions on fellow posters, most of which are best written and deleted without being sent. Advice I will now ignore.
My opinion of you is you are an enthusiastic Conservative, which is fine. However you do get very angry when anyone else expresses an opinion contrary to your own. It might be a coincidence but some of my "off topics" arrived after I disagreed with your posts. I have subsequently avoided you like the plague, as there is no point getting involved in confrontation on a board like this.
My opinion of Southham is he remains a fantastic poster (not least because I agree with almost everything he writes). Eradication of centrist posters might cheer you immensely. It would disappoint some of the rest of us.
Yes Casino_Royale can appear pleasant a lot of the time and then goes apeshit if someone takes a contrary view, with some really nasty personal invective. Especially from anyone to the left of him, even if they are in fact rather moderate. It's really quite odd.
However, when I was on the receiving end of something similar the other morning I reflected further and realised that it was because he stood to lose a stack of money and was very twitchy. Which I do understand. The last time I rolled the dice big time on spreads was nerve-wracking. I won big betting against the markets but it did make me irascible. That's my excuse for his intemperate morning rant.
Yes, I can get particularly stressed at election time and sometimes attack political opponents (it's usually about fear of the result, not the money, by the way) but that wasn't what Saturday morning was about.
10% negative is a drop on your foot proportion of people. One in ten. Look around you everywhere you go/walk/play and one in ten of them dislikes an Asian as PM because they are Asian. A cricket/football/rugby team = at least one member. Your office of 200 people? 20 of them.
Maybe I'm having a glass half empty Monday morning but I find that quite depressing.
It's probably a lower proportion than the number of people who dislike him as PM because he went to a private school.
"Half of all primary schools in England are trying to feed children in poverty who are ineligible for free school meals because their parents’ income does not meet the threshold. But there are 800,000 of them. It can be hard sometimes to grasp the scale of the problem through bare statistics, but vivid and haunting details can flesh them out. Children are eating school rubbers to line their stomachs and dull the ache and nausea of hunger. Others are bringing in empty lunchboxes then pretending to dine on their phantom food away from classmates, too ashamed to reveal that they have nothing to eat."
So, basically, if you are on any form of benefit, including in work benefits, you qualify. As these people clearly have at least 1 child they will qualify for those unless their income is quite considerable (the taper will not affect eligibility to FSM).
What I would accept is that there are dysfunctional families who do not prioritise feeding their kids over other wants but 800k? Nah.
On UC the limit is just £7,400 for some reason, when it was £16k on other benefits that are now unavailable to apply for.
£7,400 is not a lot of money.
I agree with you that some will be due to dysfunctional families, but £7,400 is an absurdly low figure for a safety net.
Comments
Fabricant, Chope? and Dorries are the only three who are Boris -> Mordaunt switchers (I think).
But once you get past that lot you probably won't find a bigger Boris backer than BCS and if he's saying the game is up...
Though likely has insuffficient sense to do so.
The last one was a real mess too for various reasons. This would be orders of magnitude worse.
In addition, the divisions within the party means he needs to be unopposed to shoot their foxes on 'we wuz robbed.'
Plus, he has only one week to sort out a financial statement which means he needs a cabinet in place on Tuesday afternoon and probably a working weekend at Chequers.
He needs a coronation, at 2pm tomorrow. In fact, so do all of us.
https://twitter.com/RupertMyers/status/1584444448980684800
In for a Penny, in for a pound.
They don't even have a dual carriagewy to Aberdeen and between Glasgow and Edinburgh they don't have a real motorway , just a dual carriageway.
I want you to come back and re-engage on debates on here like you used to, when you were an interesting poster.
You still can. It's possible to be left-wing and Labour supporting and still do that (@Gardenwalker @Heathener @Jonathan @OnlyLivingBoy)
Please have a think about it.
Bozo really ruined the chances of other candidates as his faffing about helped Sunaks momentum and by the time he pulled out it was too late .
Ironically Bozo who clearly thinks Sunak is a backstabbing Judas actually helped him win !
It would have been tight, perhaps he'd have squeaked through on 102
I go to Penrith. In case you haven't noticed it, there are homes and businesses and people living in Penrith, and I'd have absolutely no issue with that doubling or tripling or more in size.
Its entirely possible to have wooded areas or businesses like Center Parcs, and homes and businesses or even industry, side-by-side. Especially if you let a town sprawl over more of the countryside, then you can contain more wooded etc areas within it.
I suspect we all have opinions on fellow posters, most of which are best written and deleted without being sent. Advice I will now ignore.
My opinion of you is you are an enthusiastic Conservative, which is fine. However you do get very angry when anyone else expresses an opinion contrary to your own. It might be a coincidence but some of my "off topics" arrived after I disagreed with your posts. I have subsequently avoided you like the plague, as there is no point getting involved in confrontation on a board like this.
My opinion of Southam is he remains a fantastic poster (not least because I agree with almost everything he writes). Eradication of centrist posters might cheer you immensely. It would disappoint some of the rest of us.
Incidentally, as I look out of my window I'm seeing blue skies (well, and some cloud...) over the Forth. Life is good.
It insults our intelligence. We are better than that.
Even his supposed support for Badenoch was always patently a Machiavellian plot to spike Truss.
Lady Nugee was on R5 this morning doing exactly this. I was most upset that the presenter, despite doing a good job of rebutting her calls, didn't just say Gordon Brown didn't have a GE after he took over. The idea that parties cannot change leader when in majority power in parliament is new. If we want a system like that then fine, change the law. But I bet it won't happen whoever is in power. Just like a labour majority government won't vote for PR - the current system works for them too.
Old NIMBYs in Penrith are no better than NIMBYs anywhere else.
If they don't let Rishi Sunak get on with the job then the waters are going to remain chopey.
I think 2023 for a General Election is good value and I've had a bet this morning. Thanks for the hat tip @TSE. It's not something I'd bet my house on but there's a better than evens chance imho, and the odds are c. 3-1 (with a boost).
The constitutionalists will point out the absence of mechanism for a GE next year but that's not really how the constitution works in this country. There needs to be a certain amount of honour, good will, and lassitude.
2. There is continuous motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow - the M8
Apart from that, you are spot on.
https://twitter.com/michaelgove/status/1584450954275196930
He correctly calculated that a humiliation would finish him off.
I still think he's finished, by the way, but he now has a theoretical option to come back again in future and an immediate one to farm a betrayal (and anti-democratic) narrative that will play to his ego and his base.
£ million, not billion! Thankfully.
But he wasn't.
Because he's Boris Johnson.
Oh, incoming "off-topic".
However, when I was on the receiving end of something similar the other morning I reflected further and realised that it was because he stood to lose a stack of money and was very twitchy. Which I do understand. The last time I rolled the dice big time on spreads was nerve-wracking. I won big betting against the markets but it did make me irascible. That's my excuse for his intemperate morning rant.
I would suggest at least 150.
xx
Even the dimmest MPs can grasp that, which is why doomed administrations tend to go for five years.
Bangladesh has beaten Netherlands.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/63370237
South Africa v Zimbabwe is about to begin.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/60118530
Lost money every time, but boy, when it came up, that was some night!
https://twitter.com/bethrigby/status/1584453710561697793
The British centrist in me doesn't and I'm afraid that wins out. We need some stability after the chaos. For all our livelihoods.
No? You disappoint me...
What has stopped the migrants who settled in the old mill towns of the North of England moving north to Scotland?
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1584454247542030337
Cue niggles about Disraeli…..
Newcastle in an automatic Champion's League spot.
What makes this country great is that almost all of us usually gravitate back here.
Maybe I'm having a glass half empty Monday morning but I find that quite depressing.
The only hundred she'll see.
https://twitter.com/hzeffman/status/1584455804416970753
Let them get on with their jobs.
The only tweak he might make is to put Mordaunt into FS; perhaps giving Cleverly BEIS in compensation.
That way, Rishi avoids needing to give Braverman, Patel etc jobs “in the interest of stability”.
Rees-Mogg does need to go.
He’s toxic, and indeed he said during the previous leadership race that he’d refuse to serve under “socialist” Rishi anyway!
10% is getting low enough that you shouldn't take it too much to heart, even if its depressing that any think that way.
Grim.
She might be the one person who watches The Hundred on TV.
So, basically, if you are on any form of benefit, including in work benefits, you qualify. As these people clearly have at least 1 child they will qualify for those unless their income is quite considerable (the taper will not affect eligibility to FSM).
What I would accept is that there are dysfunctional families who do not prioritise feeding their kids over other wants but 800k? Nah.
@PennyMordaunt
New polling shows that I’m the one that can deliver a fresh start for our party.
#PM4PM
https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1584453936349532160
Guido Fawkes aka Paul Staines: https://order-order.com/2022/10/24/bbc-presenter-asks-whether-she-can-be-this-gleeful-after-boris-pulled-out/
If this sees a return to sensible governance across a broad centrist spectrum then hallelujah.
£7,400 is not a lot of money.
I agree with you that some will be due to dysfunctional families, but £7,400 is an absurdly low figure for a safety net.