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VONCing Boris – politicalbetting.com
VONCing Boris – politicalbetting.com
I like this market from Smarkets because it allows you to bet on Boris Johnson’s future without getting dragged into the Boris Johnson exit markets where predicting the year of his exit which can be fraught with difficulties. This market is a simple will enough Conservative MPs write a letter to Sir Graham Brady to trigger a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson before the next general election.
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It also was a job getting Ramsey Macdonald to give up the seals of office, even after Churchill sneered at him (from the government side of the House) as "the Boneless Wonder" on the Treasury bench.
Sir Robert Walpole was equally difficult to shift, though in his case it wasn't superannuation that got to him, but rather declining support for his policies; specifically his opposition to war with Spain and continued reluctance once the War of Jenkin's Ear began.
There may be other examples, but these are the best I can conjure up after a long day of idle punditry. EDIT - And pedantry.
One thing about Johnson, he might just think that he could do what Lloyd George wanted to do: when you get chucked out, keep on fighting and get back in.
Disraeli did it, ditto Gladstone, Baldwin, Macdonald, Churchill, Wilson. Grover Cleveland and Valdimir Putin did it, and Donald Trump's working on it.
So why not Boris Johnson? So might Boris Johnson think?
Even if so, he'll tend to cling to (and yearn for) power like a lamprey. Or a magnetic mine.
I just can’t see Johnson going voluntarily, and the polling numbers are nowhere near bad enough to trigger a large rebellion. A Lib Dem by election gain would be shrugged off easily, as they so often have been before. A Hold will be spun as a BJ triumph in the current climate.
The biggest threat to Boris Johnson’s premiership is Boris Johnson. He has his fate in his own hands. He needs to simply shut up for a while, preferably several months. Lose weight, train, total alcohol abstinence. He needs to roll up his sleeves and get a grip on his work: read the paperwork, do the homework: focus single-mindedly on the job. Can he do it? I don’t know.
What he just cannot afford to do is deliver gaffe after gaffe after gaffe. Again. It’s just not funny anymore.
If I was a fan of Smarkets (I’m not) I’d be backing No.
I can see him being a limpet, but not one which reattaches.
He isn't going to become a completely different person in his late 50s. Frankly, why should he? The tories are minded to indulge his dishonesty, laziness and incompetence for a good while yet.
Alas, the title made me wonder if it had happened.
Anyway, to finish off my coffee and peruse the markets.
They should take the opportunity, if only for reasons of self-interest. I suspect they won't.
Get through the next month. Easiest option is to lockdown making that the news rather than him. Otherwise could just take the paternity leave route which might work as well.
Reframe a couple of major issues so the Tory vote feel it is Boris and them vs the enemy. France is the most obvious opportunity for this.
I just don't buy that people are surprised and just learning that the PM is a liar and cheat. They voted for him because they were quite happy with a liar and cheat as long as he was on their side. It is that feeling of being on their side he needs to restore, and past experience suggests that is one thing is he actually very good at.
It is a national misfortune that we have a man who is by far and away the worst postwar prime minister in office at the time of the worst postwar crisis. Johnson lacks any shred of integrity, is driven by ego and self-interest and has been prepared to mislead voters over and over again. He is incompetent and embodies the entitled politician who sees politics as a game rather than a duty. He is utterly unfit to govern Britain.
I agree with the header and the footnote. Got a bit at 150/1 this morning (W Hills) Harper for Next PM.
Also, I think Sunak is too short (don't) for Next PM and I've laid him a bit this morning at 3.65
‘Boris is a fair-weather PM – fine when things are going well, less so in difficult times.
‘If he is going to be a happy Captain Kirk, he needs a lot of serious Spocks around him to steer the ship away from the rocks.
‘And I don’t see many pointy-eared people in No10 just now.’
And at least some of the time, Johnson's solution to being found out is to move on to a younger, more glamorous version.
America, you've been warned.
It's a pedantic point but there will be many on this site who have learned the perils of imprecise political markets the hard way.
Timing is everything in comedy.
Betting PostF1: backed Norris to be best of the rest at 2.6. Not the most heroic of bets and may not come off but I didn't see anything that leapt out at me.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2021/12/abu-dhabi-pre-race-2021.html
And @foxy has solved the problem of the complacency-despair gap. The scriptwriters are spoiling us:
Now-December 2022: Complacency
December 2022: A VONC that BoJo survives
December 2022-3: BoJo is immune
December 2023-4: Too late, too far behind, better to rebuild in opposition...
It's all a bit unlikely, but that's how Jeffrey Archer would plot it.
May clung on to power when Cabinet big beast Brexiteers walked out, because half the parliamentary party were cheering their departure. Quite a different circumstance this time around. One pointed resignation speech and BoJo is done.
I suspect there won't be a VONC triggered until after Friday morning, and the result inn Shropshire is known. And after that Parliament won't sitting until the New Year. Over Christmas, then there won't be wars but there will be rumours of wars and when Parliament reassembles it'll be what's in those rumours and what happens in the second week of January that decides the shape of politics early in 2022.
On the one hand he’s unfit to pm and does a lot of harm an should go. We will all be better off with someone who can govern competently.
Electorally he locked the faragists into the Conservatives party. If Boris goes, I suspect they will unhook their wagon and rally around Nigel again. Short term that’s probably beneficial, we need the Conservatives to be vaguely sensible and conservative. In the long term could be catastrophic if the Faragists manage to create a movement unmoderated and extreme.
Time will tell.
Further, a new leader may find a way to reset the conversation with France and take the boat people off the front pages.
Most likely many of those voters return to political apathy and stay away. They will of course be replaced to some extent by Labour moderates who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Swinson who stayed away last time. Someone here will no doubt have the numbers to back or refute this intuition.
* refer to the biggest South African sundays today and compare and contrast the coverage / prominence given to omicron to here.
Enter stage left: Matt Hancock
https://twitter.com/thesundaytimes/status/1469921031905329152?s=20
https://twitter.com/nihargrave/status/1469663533356965889
The only backbencher with a serious chance is Hunt.
Do they really believe that that would be the limit of Downing St security's measures to deal with cameras in the office - "Just cover 'em all in bin bags, that'll do the trick lovely"?
For another thing; it's a curtain, not a bin bag.
Firstly I think he would be better off not being prime minister. This is both literally, and he would welcome the chance to make vast sums on the back of his time as PM and figuratively in as much as his skills seem better suited elsewhere. I think this gives him a less desperate edge than May who seemed to be unable to move in any direction
Secondly he is lucky and is able to take paternity leave over the quieter Christmas period, which could take some of the sting out and let other serious stories come to the fore
Finally I think he is capable of describing the 'parties' in a way that means people would understand. I don't know much about these so called parties as it seems fairly dubious to me, and much less serious than the flat refurbishment fraud, but I work in the civil service and in my wider team there are people who have had to be on site for the entire pandemic. Do I think that they might have took in some mince pies and worn Christmas jumpers and done something a bit fun whilst it was quieter just before Christmas? I can easily see how it would happen and I think Boris could easily spin the story in a positive light provided that only people who would normally be working were there. I think this is much more explicable than going to Barnard Castle.
Resigning today forces BoZo out which creates a vacancy...
It really looks from the outside as if the problem at No.10 is fundamentally rooted in his relationship with his wife. She appears to have forced him in to a potential major scandal over the flat, is calling the shots over who the advisors are in No.10, and has her own agenda that is driving a lot of government policy.
It doesn't seem like he can correct this, and the lack of decent advisors and chaos in No.10 seems to be leading to mistake after mistake - the corruption stuff was avoidable, so was this thing about the staff parties. If the polls don't recover and fall further, then the way it ends is through him being removed by Conservative MPs. I can't see him going of his own accord.
sane and intelligentelse is PM?https://twitter.com/chrismiller_uk/status/1469809976822706182?t=3uBF_tqMEoEXcEkcXGAFVg&s=19
Enacted Brexit can't do that- maybe nothing can. So the next question is what the next target will be.
I want to say Lloyd George 1916.
https://twitter.com/REWearmouth/status/1469950628344569856
Dominic Cummings, who quit as the Prime Minister’s top adviser last year, has suggested Nicola Sturgeon “just wants to be boss up there and whinge” instead of being serious about holding a re-run of the 2014 vote on independence.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19777184.dominic-cummings-claims-nicola-sturgeon-doesnt-want-indyref2-2024/
But today is Odd Shoes Day
How often did ostensibly pro-EU politicians blame it for things?
Not to mention our politicians willingly throwing away things like vetoes, half the rebate, and a referendum promise on Lisbon. Had they, and the EU, not treated the electorate with contempt the favour would not have been returned (still amazed we voted to leave at all).
If BoZo loses the vote on Tuesday, he doesn't have the support of his party.
If he loses on Thursday, he doesn't have the support of voters.
If Truss quits, he doesn't have the support of his cabinet.
How could he stay in post?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnbL0vdUnzM
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/f1-stars-including-lewis-hamilton-back-covid-19-vaccine-drive
Bear in mind what it takes me to write something positive about an individual who is both RAF AND a tory.
Things really haven't changed in the last 25 years, have they?
I have to say that Sarah Poulson is absolutely brilliant as Linda Tripp. The most repulsive, vile and self interested character I have seen since GoT.
Remember, karma's only a bitch if you are.
@joannaccherry
It’s not for any politician to tell the police how to do their job but it seems to me that the black bin bag over the security camera in this photo is highly suggestive that someone knew what was going on was wrong & not within some spurious legal exception.
https://twitter.com/joannaccherry/status/1469947203389120512
A first response of "At number 10 we were all working incredibly hard last year, often staying late into the evening and eating here. We apologise if any intended business meetings progressed into what others could understand as a party, and will make sure we do better in future", would have made it a one or two day story instead of the enduring one it is due to the lying and taking us for fools.
But if you consider the things that people dislike about their lives that drove the 2016 vote (public services, loss of industrial jobs, feeling of powerlessness), they're not solved by what's happened since.
"The public demands politicians comply with the rules they impose on people, and that they are seen to comply with their spirit. It’s pretty obvious now that hasn’t happened."
https://twitter.com/NatashaC/status/1469956852507201539
Our view at the Observer: Boris Johnson is unfit to govern Britain.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/12/observer-view-boris-johnson-national-crisis-omicron?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Is that a bin bag covering a CCTV camera in the corner?
When Steve Baker is the one talking sense, we're all fucked.
What we need are not the handwringing aperitif drinkers of the Guardian/Observer but leader writers of the Sun and Mail, and more importantly their readers, to grasp this.
As far as I can see it the only alternative leader who would get any real sort of bounce v Starmer is Rishi Sunak. There is also therefore no point having a leadership election unless sure he could win it, or even with a Sunak coronation a la Gordon Brown or Michael Howard after Blair and IDS' departures. Tory leadership contests are unpredictable, you could even end up with Priti Patel as PM if she pitches herself firmly against more restrictions and hardens her line on the boats across the channel, who knows
It's been an interesting month. Events, eh!
In fairness it has been suggested to me this is actually a curtain above a recessed window. I’m sure all will be revealed in a full & frank resignation speech by
@BorisJohnson in @HouseofCommons tomorrow…….
This is my favourite reply
@rosieandrews22
Replying to
@joannaccherry @BorisJohnson and @HouseofCommons
But it goes a long way towards the argument that we all easily believe it to be a camera covered by a bin bag.