If I was a politician aspiring to high office I would try to hire Andrew Neil to put me through an intense "boot camp" training. Failing that hire a set of smart opinionated individuals for a series of private brutal, no hold barred debates on the key topics and the left-field ones.
Failing that join PB under an alias and try out my arguments / policy positions there.
Current level of political practice (all parties) varies between barely adequate to utterly amateur and ignorant.
"Failing that join PB under an alias and try out my arguments / policy positions there."
IDS on Sky news looking very happy with himself as Truss gained 27 MPs to 19 for Rishi and 13 for Penny and goes through to the membership vote. Though his seat is very marginal
A question to my Tory friends: does it feel like Tory Corbyn is on the way
I will say many things about Liz Truss and I will not vote for a Tory Party led by her.
But she is not Tory Corbyn.
She is just a bad candidate whose policies aren’t going to appeal to the country and has zero charisma. She is no way near as… problematic… as Corbyn was in many areas.
If I was a politician aspiring to high office I would try to hire Andrew Neil to put me through an intense "boot camp" training. Failing that hire a set of smart opinionated individuals for a series of private brutal, no hold barred debates on the key topics and the left-field ones.
Failing that join PB under an alias and try out my arguments / policy positions there.
Current level of political practice (all parties) varies between barely adequate to utterly amateur and ignorant.
"Failing that join PB under an alias and try out my arguments / policy positions there."
They really should have a final round indicative MPs vote. And dare the membership to reject the choice if it is overwhelming - knowing that any PM without 50% support in the party is potentially on borrowed time.
I think we all just have to hope that Liz Truss surprises us on the upside now. There have been moments where she impressed me but a lot more moments where she's been more than a sandwich short of a picnic. I also don't think it's bad for her to go in with such low expectations, if she manages to not burn down the building it will be a win.
Boris was the charmer that somehow kept this caravan of chaos on the road, through sheer force of personality; with him gone it will now totally fall apart. Worse than before
If there are "proper" debates and hustings that go beyond sound bites and where the candidates actually have to explain their position then I think Sunak might edge this.
If I was a politician aspiring to high office I would try to hire Andrew Neil to put me through an intense "boot camp" training. Failing that hire a set of smart opinionated individuals for a series of private brutal, no hold barred debates on the key topics and the left-field ones.
Failing that join PB under an alias and try out my arguments / policy positions there.
Current level of political practice (all parties) varies between barely adequate to utterly amateur and ignorant.
"Failing that join PB under an alias and try out my arguments / policy positions there."
If MPs were voting between the two, IMO about 60% of Mordaunt's vote would have gone to Sunak, so the result would have been something like Sunak 200, Truss 155.
Its interesting how in the UK we think a shift to the right = automatic electoral defeat.
IN America, the primaries are throwing up a much bigger shift to the right, and yet the polls show the Republicans doing well in the mid terms.
The GOP did shift to the right under Trump and lost the 2018 midterms and also lost the 2020 Presidential and Congressional election.
Midterms electorally in the US are the equivalent of local elections here, mainly a backlash against the President or PM's party, though while polls show the GOP taking the House they show the Senate likely stays Democrat
If I was a politician aspiring to high office I would try to hire Andrew Neil to put me through an intense "boot camp" training. Failing that hire a set of smart opinionated individuals for a series of private brutal, no hold barred debates on the key topics and the left-field ones.
Failing that join PB under an alias and try out my arguments / policy positions there.
Current level of political practice (all parties) varies between barely adequate to utterly amateur and ignorant.
"Failing that join PB under an alias and try out my arguments / policy positions there."
As a Labour party member I am rooting for Liz Truss with everything I have. As a UK citizen with kids and a grandchild, the thought of her in charge scares the life out of me.
Why ? She wont do anything other than tinker in the 20 months left before she has to call a GE..
T May without the dance moves.
Trade war with the EU, for starters. Tax cuts funded by borrowing, for seconds. Someone always desperately seeking to prove they are the most right wing person in the room is fine if they are not Prime Minister. When they are it becomes a major concern.
Why do you expect the EU to initiate a trade war and what do you think it will mean in practice?
I expect them to do it after Truss forces the NIP legislation through Parliament and then breaks international law by implementing it. In practice, it will make an already sub-optimal trading relationship with our biggest export market even worse.
A question to my Tory friends: does it feel like Tory Corbyn is on the way
I will say many things about Liz Truss and I will not vote for a Tory Party led by her.
But she is not Tory Corbyn.
She is just a bad candidate whose policies aren’t going to appeal to the country and has zero charisma. She is no way near as… problematic… as Corbyn was in many areas.
Corbyn was never PM though. So she has the potential to be much more problematic.
As a Labour party member I am rooting for Liz Truss with everything I have. As a UK citizen with kids and a grandchild, the thought of her in charge scares the life out of me.
Why ? She wont do anything other than tinker in the 20 months left before she has to call a GE..
T May without the dance moves.
Trade war with the EU, for starters. Tax cuts funded by borrowing, for seconds. Someone always desperately seeking to prove they are the most right wing person in the room is fine if they are not Prime Minister. When they are it becomes a major concern.
Why do you expect the EU to initiate a trade war and what do you think it will mean in practice?
I expect them to do it after Truss forces the NIP legislation through Parliament and then breaks international law by implementing it. In practice, it will make an already sub-optimal trading relationship with our biggest export market even worse.
What specifically do you expect them to do?
Who knows?
If you don't know, why do you keep asserting that they will start a trade war?
Boris was the charmer that somehow kept this caravan of chaos on the road, through sheer force of personality; with him gone it will now totally fall apart. Worse than before
He was a twat.
Oh, and totally unsuited to be PM. He has totally fucked the Conservative Party. You just love him because you thought he allowed an article through that no other editor would. What you probably haven't worked out is that he almost certainly didn't fine the time to read it. that is how shit he is. At everything.
Boris was the charmer that somehow kept this caravan of chaos on the road, through sheer force of personality; with him gone it will now totally fall apart. Worse than before
No way Starmer can win a landslide. 10-30 seat majority at best. Con will still be in the game after the next election but they'll have to choose their leader wisely.
Boris was the charmer that somehow kept this caravan of chaos on the road, through sheer force of personality; with him gone it will now totally fall apart. Worse than before
I doubt it will be a landslide. Liz Truss has got an operating window of around a year to win back a lot of votes Boris lost on competency and trust, that alone may be enough to limit the damage. Not burning down the building every few days with yet another scandal is probably worth 5 points in 2024.
Its interesting how in the UK we think a shift to the right = automatic electoral defeat.
IN America, the primaries are throwing up a much bigger shift to the right, and yet the polls show the Republicans doing well in the mid terms.
Ah, would this be the same Senate polls that have the Democrats winning:
Nevada Georgia Pennsylvania Arizona New Hampshire
and possibly even
Wisconsin and Ohio
The 538 "polls only" forecast has the Dems actually gaining Senate seats.
Now, I grant you that the Republicans are essentially certain to gain the House. But no-one knows who their House candidate is. And everyone knows who their Senate candidate is.
---
Edit to add: and this ignores the fact the Republicans might also lose Utah to an Independent
If there are "proper" debates and hustings that go beyond sound bites and where the candidates actually have to explain their position then I think Sunak might edge this.
The membership...the membership.
Dear god there was an "Add Boris to the Ballot" petition yesterday amongst Cons members...
Boris was the charmer that somehow kept this caravan of chaos on the road, through sheer force of personality; with him gone it will now totally fall apart. Worse than before
Undoubtedly, but there is no point anyone repining about it. If he had died nobody would suggest that his rotting corpse be propped up and wheeled out to PMQs and committee hearings until GE2024. Keeping him on really was that impractical. So impractical that even his party eventually noticed.
The Tory Party was dying before Johnson came in, he just temporarily stopped it. All the fundamental issues of 2016 onwards are still there as is becoming clear.
I think we all just have to hope that Liz Truss surprises us on the upside now.
You know she won't... She can't even string a coherent sentence together. In fact she'll be so bad I think there's likely to be one final leadership change between now and Jan 25 as I can't see Con daring to go into an election with her as leader.
Does he not realise the next round of voting is with the members?
Yes he did, he said he would be voting as a member. Liam Fox also being much nicer about Penny than anyone has been for a while too. She can have a fair bit of influence in this if she is minded to use it and both camps will be courting her.
Rishi Rishi Rishi, you could have put Truss out if you handed some votes over...
Penny is a bigger risk than Liz, IMO. Her tax and spend plan was simply unhinged.
She's much less experienced, of course, so, yes, in that sense she's a bigger risk. She also seems to be pretty thick.
OTOH we know that Liz Truss is an unexploded bomb in terms of NI and the EU. Not clear at this stage whether she can be defused.
I think once Boris is out of the picture and she's in No 10 a deal will be done. It suits her to get it out of the way quickly and move on to CoL stuff rather than have it dominate the agenda for months while people are unable to afford to fill up.
It helps as well that she's already thought through the problem and come up with a reasonable compromise that she's prepared to implement unilaterally if need be, but has always held out an olive branch to the EU over it.
Even @Gardenwalker and others here have said that her proposals on the subject were actually good, despite hating the way it was being done.
Brits aren't the only ones who don't want a trade war, the EU don't want a trade war while facing real war in Europe and a potential gas crisis this winter either. She's holding out an olive branch and they'll take it and a deal will be done before the gas crisis reaches its peak this winter.
If MPs were voting between the two, IMO about 60% of Mordaunt's vote would have gone to Sunak, so the result would have been something like Sunak 200, Truss 155.
Rishi Rishi Rishi, you could have put Truss out if you handed some votes over...
Penny is a bigger risk than Liz, IMO. Her tax and spend plan was simply unhinged.
She's much less experienced, of course, so, yes, in that sense she's a bigger risk. She also seems to be pretty thick.
OTOH we know that Liz Truss is an unexploded bomb in terms of NI and the EU. Not clear at this stage whether she can be defused.
I think once Boris is out of the picture and she's in No 10 a deal will be done. It suits her to get it out of the way quickly and move on to CoL stuff rather than have it dominate the agenda for months while people are unable to afford to fill up.
It's certainly true that her record on the trade deals is one of conceding everything to get any deal she can. The Australian and NZ deals she did were just extraordinarily one-sided, and not in our favour:
However, I'm sceptical that this means she'll do anything to get a new deal with the EU. Caving in to Australia and NZ and screwing British farmers gets you plaudits in the modern Conservative Party. The opposite seems to be true of trying to reach a sensible relationship in the case of our former European friends and our biggest trading partners; the totally irrational and pathological dislike of anything with the name 'European' in it which infests the party may mean that she calculates that further wrecking of the economy in the name of ideological purity is what she should do. Certainly the rhetoric so far, and her commitment to the utterly brain-dead NI Protocol Bill, is not exactly encouraging.
As a Labour party member I am rooting for Liz Truss with everything I have. As a UK citizen with kids and a grandchild, the thought of her in charge scares the life out of me.
Why ? She wont do anything other than tinker in the 20 months left before she has to call a GE..
T May without the dance moves.
Trade war with the EU, for starters. Tax cuts funded by borrowing, for seconds. Someone always desperately seeking to prove they are the most right wing person in the room is fine if they are not Prime Minister. When they are it becomes a major concern.
Why do you expect the EU to initiate a trade war and what do you think it will mean in practice?
I expect them to do it after Truss forces the NIP legislation through Parliament and then breaks international law by implementing it. In practice, it will make an already sub-optimal trading relationship with our biggest export market even worse.
What specifically do you expect them to do?
Who knows?
If you don't know, why do you keep asserting that they will start a trade war?
What they are, yet I know not, but they shall be. The terrors of the earth!”
As a Labour party member I am rooting for Liz Truss with everything I have. As a UK citizen with kids and a grandchild, the thought of her in charge scares the life out of me.
Why ? She wont do anything other than tinker in the 20 months left before she has to call a GE..
T May without the dance moves.
Trade war with the EU, for starters. Tax cuts funded by borrowing, for seconds. Someone always desperately seeking to prove they are the most right wing person in the room is fine if they are not Prime Minister. When they are it becomes a major concern.
Why do you expect the EU to initiate a trade war and what do you think it will mean in practice?
I expect them to do it after Truss forces the NIP legislation through Parliament and then breaks international law by implementing it. In practice, it will make an already sub-optimal trading relationship with our biggest export market even worse.
What specifically do you expect them to do?
Who knows?
If you don't know, why do you keep asserting that they will start a trade war?
Because they have made it clear they will retaliate when the NIP legislation is implemented.
I think we all just have to hope that Liz Truss surprises us on the upside now.
You know she won't... She can't even string a coherent sentence together. In fact she'll be so bad I think there's likely to be one final leadership change between now and Jan 25 as I can't see Con daring to go into an election with her as leader.
Hate to say it GIN but I think they have to stick with her.
They’ve lost one PM this Parliament, are they really going to lose two? And present that to the country as some sort of stable and viable form of government?
Whoever becomes leader will lead the Tories into the next election, mark my words. And the cards will fall as they will.
Boris was the charmer that somehow kept this caravan of chaos on the road, through sheer force of personality; with him gone it will now totally fall apart. Worse than before
I doubt it will be a landslide. Liz Truss has got an operating window of around a year to win back a lot of votes Boris lost on competency and trust, that alone may be enough to limit the damage. Not burning down the building every few days with yet another scandal is probably worth 5 points in 2024.
I suspect that Ms Truss is a lot less doctrinaire and a lot more pragmatic than she appears. So, I don't expect a trade war with the EU. Indeed, I suspect that while she'll be firm, she's also going to piss people off a whole lot less. That - history suggests - is often a better way of achieving one's goals.
I also expect her to be firm in her support for Ukraine.
She'll probably cut taxes next year when she shouldn't, and the UK will probably not sort out its underlying issues on her watch.
But the economic cycle is a powerful thing, and - so long as Ukraine is resolved - then the cost of living crisis could well have long gone by the next election. Indeed, she might have the good fortune to have an election boosted by both tax cuts and falling commodity prices.
In which case, a 40 or 50 seat majority is far from impossible.
By contrast Boris got 51% of Con MPs in the final MPs round in 2019, May got 60% of Con MPs in the final MPs round in 2016, Cameron got 45.5% of Con MPs in the final MPs round in 2005 and even Hague got 56% of Con MPs in the last round in 1997 and Major 49% of Con MPs in the final round in 1990.
Today Sunak got 38% of Con MPs and Truss got 31% of Con MPs, so whoever wins they will have the lowest percentage of Con MPs backing them since the 32.5% IDS got in 2001, indeed Truss even less than IDS
Rishi Rishi Rishi, you could have put Truss out if you handed some votes over...
Penny is a bigger risk than Liz, IMO. Her tax and spend plan was simply unhinged.
She's much less experienced, of course, so, yes, in that sense she's a bigger risk. She also seems to be pretty thick.
OTOH we know that Liz Truss is an unexploded bomb in terms of NI and the EU. Not clear at this stage whether she can be defused.
I think once Boris is out of the picture and she's in No 10 a deal will be done. It suits her to get it out of the way quickly and move on to CoL stuff rather than have it dominate the agenda for months while people are unable to afford to fill up.
It's certainly true that her record on the trade deals is one of conceding everything to get any deal she can. The Australian and NZ deals she did were just extraordinarily one-sided, and not in our favour:
However, I'm sceptical that this means she'll do anything to get a new deal with the EU. Caving in to Australia and NZ and screwing British farmers gets you plaudits in the modern Conservative Party. The opposite seems to be true in the case of our former European friends; the totally irrational and pathological dislike of anything with the name 'European' in it which infests the party may mean that she calculates that further wrecking of the economy in the name of ideological purity is what she should do. Certainly the rhetoric so far, and her commitment to the utterly brain-dead NI Protocol Bill is not exactly encouraging.
If the EU ultimately acquiesces to a solution along the lines that Truss has proposed in the NI Protocol Bill, will you still say that it/she is brain-dead?
The Tory Party was dying before Johnson came in, he just temporarily stopped it. All the fundamental issues of 2016 onwards are still there as is becoming clear.
The Tory party did a shit in the corner of the room in 2016 and have spent the last six years desperately spraying Lynx around the room in the hope that nobody will notice, while all the while the smell just keeps getting worse.
If there are "proper" debates and hustings that go beyond sound bites and where the candidates actually have to explain their position then I think Sunak might edge this.
He's far more articulate and far more in control of where the government is and needs to go. As of course Ken Clarke was than IDS but that was in opposition and all we can hope is that the party is less self indulgent in government.
Wonder what the chances are of Tory MPs forcing another leadership vote before the end of 2022?
One assumes at least half of the MPs will be, at best, displeased with Truss as PM and will be nervously looking at the polls, and events.
If they do, one suspects the 1922 Exec might be already thinking of changing the rules on how it all works, assuming the membership do vote as everyone seems to think they will.
If I was a politician aspiring to high office I would try to hire Andrew Neil to put me through an intense "boot camp" training. Failing that hire a set of smart opinionated individuals for a series of private brutal, no hold barred debates on the key topics and the left-field ones.
Failing that join PB under an alias and try out my arguments / policy positions there.
Current level of political practice (all parties) varies between barely adequate to utterly amateur and ignorant.
"Failing that join PB under an alias and try out my arguments / policy positions there."
As a Labour party member I am rooting for Liz Truss with everything I have. As a UK citizen with kids and a grandchild, the thought of her in charge scares the life out of me.
Why ? She wont do anything other than tinker in the 20 months left before she has to call a GE..
T May without the dance moves.
Trade war with the EU, for starters. Tax cuts funded by borrowing, for seconds. Someone always desperately seeking to prove they are the most right wing person in the room is fine if they are not Prime Minister. When they are it becomes a major concern.
Why do you expect the EU to initiate a trade war and what do you think it will mean in practice?
I expect them to do it after Truss forces the NIP legislation through Parliament and then breaks international law by implementing it. In practice, it will make an already sub-optimal trading relationship with our biggest export market even worse.
What specifically do you expect them to do?
Who knows?
If you don't know, why do you keep asserting that they will start a trade war?
Because they have made it clear they will retaliate when the NIP legislation is implemented.
They previously made it clear that the wouldn't ratify the trade deal until the protocol was implemented, then they made it clear that they would retaliate if the grace periods were unilaterally extended, then they made it clear that they would retaliate if legislation were introduced, then they made it clear that they would retaliate if it actually becomes law, etc, etc...
Despite having an ‘interesting’ communication style, if it’s any consolation to Tory diehards as a Labour supporter Truss is the candidate I have concerns about. She is about the only one that can keep the Tories together and potentially has a coherent ideology, which will be required to ride the economic storm.
Would love for one of the spoiled ballots to have been from St Theresa. With her fruity description of the candidates scrawled across the paper.
Snake, lightweight, Bitch? Poor Theresa, I expect she reluctantly voted for Mordaunt and would vote against both of Sunak and Truss if she could. In the end I suspect she votes for Sunak with huge reservations
I think we all just have to hope that Liz Truss surprises us on the upside now.
You know she won't... She can't even string a coherent sentence together. In fact she'll be so bad I think there's likely to be one final leadership change between now and Jan 25 as I can't see Con daring to go into an election with her as leader.
Hate to say it GIN but I think they have to stick with her.
They’ve lost one PM this Parliament, are they really going to lose two? And present that to the country as some sort of stable and viable form of government?
Whoever becomes leader will lead the Tories into the next election, mark my words. And the cards will fall as they will.
We'll see how the polls are looking in October 24... Never underestimate panic stricken Conservative MP's ability to throw their leader under the bus to save their sorry hides...
Boris was the charmer that somehow kept this caravan of chaos on the road, through sheer force of personality; with him gone it will now totally fall apart. Worse than before
I doubt it will be a landslide. Liz Truss has got an operating window of around a year to win back a lot of votes Boris lost on competency and trust, that alone may be enough to limit the damage. Not burning down the building every few days with yet another scandal is probably worth 5 points in 2024.
I suspect that Ms Truss is a lot less doctrinaire and a lot more pragmatic than she appears. So, I don't expect a trade war with the EU. Indeed, I suspect that while she'll be firm, she's also going to piss people off a whole lot less. That - history suggests - is often a better way of achieving one's goals.
I also expect her to be firm in her support for Ukraine.
She'll probably cut taxes next year when she shouldn't, and the UK will probably not sort out its underlying issues on her watch.
But the economic cycle is a powerful thing, and - so long as Ukraine is resolved - then the cost of living crisis could well have long gone by the next election. Indeed, she might have the good fortune to have an election boosted by both tax cuts and falling commodity prices.
In which case, a 40 or 50 seat majority is far from impossible.
I'd love to believe that but I think the UK is through an INFLECTION POINT
The voters are done with the Tories the way they were done with them around 1995, nothing the Tories do now can stop defeat. Even tho the Labour leader is naff
They are a sad old dog with mange waiting for the coup de grace
I will now be voting for Sunak as the most electable of the last 2, though I fear the membership will vote for Truss
160,000 voters, the majority must back Rishi, he is not just electable, he is economically literate whilst Truss is six levels or more of rubbish.
The membership can’t get this wrong HY, it’s like a simple choice between sane and insane. Its stark.
They can’t get it wrong.
I don't seem to remember the Starks doing particularly well when they played the GoT.
LOL.
But they did kind of win in the end, it ended with Brandon Stark as Bran the Broken, the First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Six Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
Boris was the charmer that somehow kept this caravan of chaos on the road, through sheer force of personality; with him gone it will now totally fall apart. Worse than before
He could paper over cracks better. They need someone to actually repair the cracks to have a decent chance.
But 1992 remains in reach given that big majority.
If the EU ultimately acquiesces to a solution along the lines that Truss has proposed in the NI Protocol Bill, will you still say that it/she is brain-dead?
Well, it is true that there is a potential landing zone, along the lines of what the EU has already suggested. If she withdraws the bill and actually engages in a positive sense with the practical issues, then that would be great, but it doesn't mean that the bill will have helped reach that position, it will have made it harder to reach it. We could already have de-dramatised this whole thing if we hadn't been issuing stupid threats and insulting our trading partners.
As a Labour party member I am rooting for Liz Truss with everything I have. As a UK citizen with kids and a grandchild, the thought of her in charge scares the life out of me.
Why ? She wont do anything other than tinker in the 20 months left before she has to call a GE..
T May without the dance moves.
Trade war with the EU, for starters. Tax cuts funded by borrowing, for seconds. Someone always desperately seeking to prove they are the most right wing person in the room is fine if they are not Prime Minister. When they are it becomes a major concern.
Why do you expect the EU to initiate a trade war and what do you think it will mean in practice?
I expect them to do it after Truss forces the NIP legislation through Parliament and then breaks international law by implementing it. In practice, it will make an already sub-optimal trading relationship with our biggest export market even worse.
What specifically do you expect them to do?
Who knows?
If you don't know, why do you keep asserting that they will start a trade war?
Because they have made it clear they will retaliate when the NIP legislation is implemented.
They previously made it clear that the wouldn't ratify the trade deal until the protocol was implemented, then they made it clear that they would retaliate if the grace periods were unilaterally extended, then they made it clear that they would retaliate if legislation were introduced, then they made it clear that they would retaliate if it actually becomes law, etc, etc...
You are making it up from the second line onwards.
The Tory Party was dying before Johnson came in, he just temporarily stopped it. All the fundamental issues of 2016 onwards are still there as is becoming clear.
The Labour Party has been exhumed and is undergoing CPR! I think they might make it out alive!
One brought up in Yorkshire, the other representing a Yorkshire seat.
Channel 5 will be able to do a documentary "The Yorkshire Prime Minister". To go with the Yorkshire Vet, Yorkshire Farm, Yorkshire Steam Railway, Our Great Yorkshire Life, and a dozen other shows about bloody Yorkshire!
Comments
But his Chingford seat in the far north London suburbs is surely gone.
Hardly a fresh start.
(not that’s it is really news)
IN America, the primaries are throwing up a much bigger shift to the right, and yet the polls show the Republicans doing well in the mid terms.
Over time I've laid off ~ £300 of the £5k at an average of ~ 3, so as things stand I'm either +£4705 for Rishi or + £110 for Truss.
Not sure whether I should lay off the balance or not.
Boris was the charmer that somehow kept this caravan of chaos on the road, through sheer force of personality; with him gone it will now totally fall apart. Worse than before
Midterms electorally in the US are the equivalent of local elections here, mainly a backlash against the President or PM's party, though while polls show the GOP taking the House they show the Senate likely stays Democrat
Clearly the Maggie clone would be miles behind if they did that .
So she has the potential to be much more problematic.
Oh, and totally unsuited to be PM. He has totally fucked the Conservative Party. You just love him because you thought he allowed an article through that no other editor would. What you probably haven't worked out is that he almost certainly didn't fine the time to read it. that is how shit he is. At everything.
No way Starmer can win a landslide. 10-30 seat majority at best. Con will still be in the game after the next election but they'll have to choose their leader wisely.
Nevada
Georgia
Pennsylvania
Arizona
New Hampshire
and possibly even
Wisconsin
and
Ohio
The 538 "polls only" forecast has the Dems actually gaining Senate seats.
Now, I grant you that the Republicans are essentially certain to gain the House. But no-one knows who their House candidate is. And everyone knows who their Senate candidate is.
---
Edit to add: and this ignores the fact the Republicans might also lose Utah to an Independent
Dom is less than impressed I see..
Dear god there was an "Add Boris to the Ballot" petition yesterday amongst Cons members...
No one could say his interview answer was full off b*****t, even though it was!
Not only WINS but laps the field. Also saves me having to work out all the others.
I got 91 btw. Top quartile but blown away by somebody who if he wasn't a good solid Labour man I'd suspect of being in the 22 committee room.
Leon plumb last.
Well done all.
https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1549772971585245184
Even @Gardenwalker and others here have said that her proposals on the subject were actually good, despite hating the way it was being done.
Brits aren't the only ones who don't want a trade war, the EU don't want a trade war while facing real war in Europe and a potential gas crisis this winter either. She's holding out an olive branch and they'll take it and a deal will be done before the gas crisis reaches its peak this winter.
I'm not convinced. It's not a slam dunk like it was between Boris and Hunt; Rishi could run her close and, in certain circumstances, win.
So it’s FPN, mega inflation Sunak or cheese fanatic, woman of the people Truss.
https://www.politico.eu/article/liz-truss-uk-food-sector-australia-new-zealand-trade-deal/
They verge on being totally irresponsible.
However, I'm sceptical that this means she'll do anything to get a new deal with the EU. Caving in to Australia and NZ and screwing British farmers gets you plaudits in the modern Conservative Party. The opposite seems to be true of trying to reach a sensible relationship in the case of our former European friends and our biggest trading partners; the totally irrational and pathological dislike of anything with the name 'European' in it which infests the party may mean that she calculates that further wrecking of the economy in the name of ideological purity is what she should do. Certainly the rhetoric so far, and her commitment to the utterly brain-dead NI Protocol Bill, is not exactly encouraging.
They’ve lost one PM this Parliament, are they really going to lose two? And present that to the country as some sort of stable and viable form of government?
Whoever becomes leader will lead the Tories into the next election, mark my words. And the cards will fall as they will.
I also expect her to be firm in her support for Ukraine.
She'll probably cut taxes next year when she shouldn't, and the UK will probably not sort out its underlying issues on her watch.
But the economic cycle is a powerful thing, and - so long as Ukraine is resolved - then the cost of living crisis could well have long gone by the next election. Indeed, she might have the good fortune to have an election boosted by both tax cuts and falling commodity prices.
In which case, a 40 or 50 seat majority is far from impossible.
Today Sunak got 38% of Con MPs and Truss got 31% of Con MPs, so whoever wins they will have the lowest percentage of Con MPs backing them since the 32.5% IDS got in 2001, indeed Truss even less than IDS
Sunak: 340
Truss: 0
Mordaunt: 1.2
was towards the back of the pack?? Fie!
I'm tempted to have a cheeky pre-gin gin and blame it on you
Perhaps with Harold Wilson, Jr as his Deputy PM?
One assumes at least half of the MPs will be, at best, displeased with Truss as PM and will be nervously looking at the polls, and events.
If they do, one suspects the 1922 Exec might be already thinking of changing the rules on how it all works, assuming the membership do vote as everyone seems to think they will.
I am not sure if that’s relevant, but it would be a new departure for a PM.
Unless there’s more to come out about Anthony Eden.
Edit: Ha, forgot about John Major.
He did have some good ideas, but no-one near power will touch him with a bargepole any more.
He's not so obviously better, under the criteria they are after, to be so sure.
The voters are done with the Tories the way they were done with them around 1995, nothing the Tories do now can stop defeat. Even tho the Labour leader is naff
They are a sad old dog with mange waiting for the coup de grace
But 1992 remains in reach given that big majority.
One brought up in Yorkshire, the other representing a Yorkshire seat.
Channel 5 will be able to do a documentary "The Yorkshire Prime Minister". To go with the Yorkshire Vet, Yorkshire Farm, Yorkshire Steam Railway, Our Great Yorkshire Life, and a dozen other shows about bloody Yorkshire!