The correct answer is Gove, but I doubt any of the contenders would trust him in the job.
This is a bit like the Arsenal fans wondering why they don't give Jack Wilshere another go. Gove was overrated in the first place, seems to have had/be having a breakdown since and has been anonymous in all his recent roles.
No not really. What he has been is quietly efficient and effective. Which is exactly what I would want in a Minister.
I don't like him, but I admire his professionalism.
I have something of a soft spot for him. He reminds me of Keith Joseph. He knows he is not popular and he knows he probably doesn't have what it takes for the top job - even if his ex wife used to think otherwise. But he also has a cracking brain on him and exactly the sort of attention to detail that Johnson lacks. I also get the impression he genuinely wants to get on with people across the political spectrum. A policy man rather than a leader and we could do with more of them in Parliament and in Government.
Absolutely. I've always got on well with him and found him positively interested in new ideas.
Today's local by-elections may not tell us much about the effects of the events of the last 24 hours. There is only one Con defence - in Mole Valley. There are Lab defences in Camden, Hackney, Milton Keynes, and Welwyn Hatfield. Finally a Resident defence in Epsom and Ewell and an Ind defence in Chesterfield. I believe Camden and Milton Keynes are counting tomorrow.
England: Jason Roy, Jos Buttler, Dawid Malan, Moeen Ali, Liam Livingstone, Harry Brook, Sam Curran, Chris Jordan, Tymal Mills, Reece Topley, Matt Parkinson.
Salt not getting in the team seems strange. Do England need 3 left arm seam bowlers?
Was it considered cheating to use Bairstow again ?
This morning? If so that’s awesome for the Tories.
Anecdote - a Tory/LD switcher who I know says she feels sorry for poor Boris. I wonder how widespread that feeling is?
Perhaps more than we'd think. I've heard people say it is not fair Boris taking the fall for Pincher's offences. Partygate had more cut-through to the general public sfaict. It is ministers and MPs who got fed up of day after day being sent out to defend the Prime Minister with lies that unravelled inside 24 hours.
Most people aren't massively partisan. Most people can see the human beneath the politician. I felt very sorry for Boris when the suggestion was that Carrie had left him. Happily that appears not to be the case. I also felt very sorry for Gordon Brown, who I have liked less than any other PM, both with bigoted-womangate and when he and his family finally left No. 10.
I really didn't like Brown, but I felt real sadness for him when he walked down the street with his young family. Although I was (at that time) a Tory voter one always could tell Brown was a decent human being. I feel very little empathy for Johnson. He is an egotist who has trashed the traditions of this country and squandered his privileges, and treated people as fools. We should not feel at all sorry for him. It is all Karma.
Clive James had a good line on Richard Nixon- something like "they were right to throw him down, but they weren't entirely wrong to raise him up in the first place".
That is how most political failures go- whatever the flaws, there was a point, a substantial human to go with the flaws. True of Brown, May, Major... arguably even true of Corbyn, for all he would have been a terrible PM and has a lot of culpability for where the country now is.
Johnson, like Trump, is in a different circle of Hell. They both failed hideously, with bad consequences for democracy, and in ways that were utterly predictable.
This morning? If so that’s awesome for the Tories.
Anecdote - a Tory/LD switcher who I know says she feels sorry for poor Boris. I wonder how widespread that feeling is?
Rule of thumb: think of some unimaginably mad opinion, and ask twenty random people about it. One of them will agree. That's your baseline for views that can only be the result of Foaming Dog Fever. If you find more than 5% who hold that view, you're onto a real phenomenon.
The BBC found a number of people feeling sorry for Johnson in Chichester and Cheltenham.
Sure.
Johnson's Conservatives won 58% of the vote in 2019 in Chichester and 48% in Cheltenham. Support for the Conservative Party will have fallen quite a bit since then, and support for Johnson even more. But it's not going to be hard to find people for a vox pop who liked him in 2019, like him now, and are sorry he's leaving.
Even in a by-election like Tiverton and Honiton, with a huge anti-Tory swing and reduced turnout, 16k voted Tory, which is only a little under half the number in 2019, and a lot of people in absolute terms and as a percentage (not far short of 40%). It was abysmal given the starting point... but you're not going to struggle to find Conservatives.
For comparison, John Major went from 42% of the vote in 1992 to just under 31% in 1997. It was a disaster for the Conservatives, but it means around three-quarters of 1992 supporters stuck with him (roughly - I know turnout changes, there's churn, and some people move to the great electoral roll in the sky etc).
There are also people who aren't politically engaged and just say "well, he's lost his job - that's sad for him and I sympathise". Which is quite a nice way to be, I suppose.
I'm always hugely sceptical about TV/radio vox pops for that reason. Even if a by-election or whatever is apocalyptic for the incumbent party, about one in three of the people the journo talks to will be supporting them.
Judging from the vox pops his core supporters are boomers in sunglasses wandering around provincial high streets during the daytime.
WHY in hell should The Caretaker be allowed ANY privileges or whatever that are NOT expressly provided for by statute law? That can and should be changed pronto to tighten the leash if need be.
Screw what's customary, traditional, expected - BJx2 has forfeited ANY right to such consideration.
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limping on in a caretaker role
That is how most political failures go- whatever the flaws, there was a point, a substantial human to go with the flaws. True of Brown, May, Major... arguably even true of Corbyn, for all he would have been a terrible PM and has a lot of culpability for where the country now is.
Johnson, like Trump, is in a different circle of Hell. They both failed hideously, with bad consequences for democracy, and in ways that were utterly predictable.
Nicola Sturgeon has seen out three Tory prime ministers.