So some PBers actually think this letter will “help”’the Tories by showing that they are more moderate
I mean. FFS
I doubt it will help the Tories' prospects, but it does rather reveal Braverman as an embittered schemer who was probably planning all this for ages, so Rishi might even garner some sympathy on that front. The really deadly resignations are those in the manner of Sir Geoffrey Howe, who everyone thought was a good egg driven to distraction by his leader's creeping megalomania. Braverman's screed rather regurgitates what we already knew about both participants, none of it good.
Just got back in and read Suella's letter, then Alanbrooke's thread header.
I enjoyed the latter more, and must commiserate with Alan on having his excellent piece hijacked.
PtP
nothing worth worrying about as @TSE will confirm you are lucky if a header gets 10% of the below line discussion. PB stays fresh because we discuss whats current.
My favourite was always an article on Scotland during Indyref. You would have thought that would have had the Nats going but then they'd decide to discuss dress making. Whereas an article on London mayor elections would then get hijacked and we'd be mainlining porridge for 4 hours.
Are you actually claiming her letter is incoherent?
Unfortunately for Sunak it is notably coherent. Articulate, sharp, well written, scathing - and deeply hostile and destructive
I's a terrible letter. If you're going to write a letter make it good, and this is far from that.
Well you seem to be in a small minority
Everyone else is saying “bombshell”, “scathing”, “vitriolic”, “explosive”, “damning”, “excoriating” - and given that Braverman clearly wanted it to be all those things it looks she hit the target. Bullseye, even
Well you don't think it's a good letter either - I'm sure.
You can never tell with a letter. If Sunak's government falls or splits it could make Braverman's lietter as famous as Neville Chamberlain's. If it causes him nothing but a few uncomfortable moments with Nick Robinson she'll be another Sayeeda Warsi.
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
For a faction to get someone into the final round, they need about a third of the Parliamentary party. So 115 or so now, God knows how few after the election. Seems plausible that "the trouble with Rishi is he's not right wing enough" faction can get a name through to the membership. And unless they are totally rubbish, they will win.
If that name isn't Braverman, who is it? I suspect Badenoch has been a bit mugged by reality and might now be in the "steady as she sank but better" lane. More Hague than Portillo, so to speak.
With their history, it would frankly be incredible if most Jews DIDN’T care about Israel
Of course, Israel is the only nation in the world with a Jewish majority, therefore the only nation in the world Jews can truly be safe
Is the only place that members of a particular religious, ethnic or ethno-religious group can truly be safe in a nation where they are a majority? That view is both depressingly pessimistic and harks back to a some 19th-century notion of the nation state built around an ethnos that I thought we had long since abandoned.
We should make the world safe for all minorities and majorities.
What does it mean to make the world safe for majorities if you deny their right to remain majorities?
I would want to interrogate what you mean. Individuals have rights. Individuals have the right to safety and to be allowed to express their identities. What does it mean to say a group has the right to remain a majority?
Let's say you follow religion X and you live in a country that has a majority of other people who follow religion X. What happens if a bunch of your countrymen convert to a different religion or abandon any religion (as is happening with Christianity in the UK)? What does a "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean in that situation? Do you get to force your countrymen to not change religion? Do you get to expel them? What happens if your coreligionists just happen to have fewer kids and a minority group are a bit more fecund, until one day you are in the minority? Should your "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean you get to decide how many kids other people have?
It seems to be illiberal and undemocratic to state that a nation state must retain a certain religious or ethnic majority.
I guess you may be alluding to ideas around abolishing the Israeli state, subsuming it into some larger Israel/Palestine single state. That raises different questions. I think the people of Israel should get to decide what happens to them, so I would not want to see any change in the nation that is not supported by democratic majority. So, to take a different example, if Moldovans want to merge with Romania and cease to be the Republic of Moldova (and Romanians agree), then that should happen, and if Moldovans don't want to merge with Romania and they want Moldova to continue as a separate country, then that should happen.
Agree with this. I have long held that the Nation State is the best guarantee of democracy and stability for the people living within its boundaries. But that does not mean that any individual Nation State has a right to continue to exist if that is not what the people want. It can either merge into a larger nation state or split into a number of smaller ones that reflect the wishes of its communities.
I do think that a set of very basic international rules - such as those covered by the war crimes and crimes against humanity laws which have been discussing - should also exist and Nation States should be held to account against them. This should, in theory at least, offer the sorts of protection we want to see for minorities, whther they are religious, racial or gender based.
I also like a bit of Nation State but I feel it's a good thing not a bad thing if certain fundamentals (over and above those you reference regarding war and atrocities) are enshrined somewhere superior to it. An example would be the right of girls to go to school. Or (still on gender equality but more relevant to the western world) female reproductive rights - a minimum threshold there such that (eg) a country cannot outright prohibit abortion.
Of course a supranational body can't 100% enforce such principles on a recalcitrant or dissenting Nation State, nevertheless I think the more we introduce and support such structures, and the more teeth they have, the better. This should be the direction of travel imo rather than leaving them, ignoring them, defanging them, or generally giving them the proverbial finger and saying "nope, what the elected politicians of a country say goes as regards that country, end of".
One would need a world army/gendarmerie to enforce such things, and I see no appetite to create one.
Ok but ideal world direction of travel, I mean. Also even if not enforceable it's good if you can put friction in the way of elected politicians wanting to do grim things that violate fundamental human rights like outright bans on abortion.
Thought experiment: Imagine Leeds City Council wants to ban abortion in Leeds in response to voter demand in Leeds. That's democratic yes? Course it is. The people of Leeds have spoken. But what we say to Leeds City Council is: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body (Westminster) that forbids it.
Now ratchet up a notch. Westminster wants to ban abortion in the UK in response to voter demand in the UK. Democratic? Again yes. Very much so. But what we should imo be saying to Westminster is as before for Leeds: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body that forbids it. Same thing. Same principle.
In this case the 'higher body' could be national (Supreme Court) or (better) international. Course national leaders could still do shit like banning abortion at the end of the day (because like you say they control the police and the army) but we've put some friction in there. We've made it harder for them.
Lots of well intentioned nonsense here in your example. Abortion both now and historically is not an uncontested issue with a single obviously correct view - like say the use of bubonic plague in war, or torturing randomly chosen children for public entertainment.
It is therefore and excellent example of something which should be under democratic and accountable control in a democracy, exactly as it is in the UK. The USA was wrong to allow it through the courts, and would be just as wrong to ban it through the courts.
Full disclosure: I follow Bill Clinton on this one (if little else): abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
Disagree. An outright ban reduces women to chattels and is unambiguously and factually an outrage. No election can change this.
And the Clinton formulation is just a bit of clever sounding sophistry which means little in terms of actual policy.
I think that's unfair. It implies pretty obviously that abortion should be safe and legal, and by rare the implication is also pretty obvious that contraception should be made result obtainable so that women who don't want to become pregnant don't do so, and abortion is a rare backup.
Perhaps so. But the regularity with which the phrase is resorted to by US politicians or commentators who aren’t particularly interested in (say) universal healthcare suggests otherwise. Also, when would it be safe but illegal ?
So some PBers actually think this letter will “help”’the Tories by showing that they are more moderate
I mean. FFS
I doubt it will help the Tories' prospects, but it does rather reveal Braverman as an embittered schemer who was probably planning all this for ages, so Rishi might even garner some sympathy on that front. The really deadly resignations are those in the manner of Sir Geoffrey Howe, who everyone thought was a good egg driven to distraction by his leader's creeping megalomania. Braverman's screed rather regurgitates what we already knew about both participants, none of it good.
Braverman is more a bad egg driven to distraction by her own megalomania.
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
Fareham, my constituency has always been Tory, but the 2nd place has switched between Labour and the Libs. It has also altered its boundaries a number of times. That is about to happen again, the new seat of Fareham & Waterlooville has a predicted share for the Tories of 37% with 31% for Labour and 19% for the Lib Dems. So not that safe for a polarising candidate like Suella. https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Fareham and Waterlooville
It reflects well on Rishi, since the sense of her letter is that’s she’s been left in the corner with the safety scissors, glue, and glitter, and kept away from doing any real damage.
She clearly doesn’t have the self awareness to realise how idiotic she has made herself look.
The problem is not that Suella Braverman is right wing. It is that she postures, but is useless.
The letter - which of course is self serving - gives quite a convincing argument she isn’t useless - she has been thwarted
I’ve no idea if this is true. I am fairly sure it is not good news for Sunak
An almighty bust up is brewing in the Tories. Maybe they just need to split
Nah. I think the new top team- Sunak, Dowden, Cameron, Cleverley - will be pretty united and will happily face down the mutineers. There will be a battle after the election and I rather suspect Cleverley is being lined up by the party establishment with Badenoch as as the approved alternative. Braverman, or whoever the rightwing factionalists line up, will likely get squeezed out.
Braverman has rotten ratings with the public - she's no Boris - a paper tiger.
You might be right on Braverman. I’m not a fan of hers - but this letter shows she’s smart and eloquent enough to really fuck with Sunak
So she may not become PM but she can advance her cause against the left
It’s another sign of Sunak’s mistake unravelling within 24 hours of him committing jt. As some of us predicted
I think it shows that she's convinced the election is already lost, and therefore cares more about her positioning post election
She's not wrong there, is she?
If Sunak's reshuffle plan was to abandon the red wall and try to defend the blue, he may be thinking the same.
I suspect blue wall is the priority, so much for One Nation.
Are you actually claiming her letter is incoherent?
Unfortunately for Sunak it is notably coherent. Articulate, sharp, well written, scathing - and deeply hostile and destructive
I's a terrible letter. If you're going to write a letter make it good, and this is far from that.
Well you seem to be in a small minority
Everyone else is saying “bombshell”, “scathing”, “vitriolic”, “explosive”, “damning”, “excoriating” - and given that Braverman clearly wanted it to be all those things it looks she hit the target. Bullseye, even
Well you don't think it's a good letter either - I'm sure.
You can never tell with a letter. If Sunak's government falls or splits it could make Braverman's lietter as famous as Neville Chamberlain's. If it causes him nothing but a few uncomfortable moments with Nick Robinson she'll be another Sayeeda Warsi.
Are you actually claiming her letter is incoherent?
Unfortunately for Sunak it is notably coherent. Articulate, sharp, well written, scathing - and deeply hostile and destructive
You think that’s well written? You surprise me.
The key passage is this one:
“For a year, as Home Secretary I have sent numerous letters to you on the key subjects contained in our agreement, made requests to discuss them with you and your team, and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals. I worked up the legal advice, policy detail and action to take on these issues. This was often met with equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest”.
Weak. I am not Home Secretary and would not tolerate that in my job, if it was how I was treated. She is basically saying the Government is dreadful but she was willing to put up with it for £150k a year. Saying that undermines all of the rest and exposes the whole thing as a political game which she doesn’t really care about.
It’s not exactly resigning over a principle is it?
It's a hard thing to write a resignation or sacking letter, or an equivalent like this one. Several of the resignation letters to Boris, including Rishi's, were risible, full of self praise and sometimes more praise for him than indication they felt he needed to go, so just came across as confused.
And if you are sacked and you reveal a litany of reasons why the sacker is a shit and you're actually glad about this, well, you have to answer why you didn't quit, when presumably it would have made a bigger splash and been justified.
It's not impossible - team player, giving the leader a chance, tried to do as much good as I could etc - but it is just another element to address.
Is it just twitter that has made these sacking/resignation letters such a thing?
In the good old days didn't they just moan unattributed briefings to sympathetic journalists in the HoC bar?
One area I suspect the Braverman clique are right is that a steady as she goes approach is not working. If things were going better after a year Sunak would probably already be trying more radical things, in fact I assumed that was the plan - a sort of Truss 2.0 approach, once the rot had been stopped.
So while she personally might not be the best alternative (at least to me), the general thrust of a need to go big to have a shot, and that there's more fertile ground for votes on the right than the centre for them right now, seems reasonably sound, at least as far as minimising defeat.
I mean, I assume the basic plan is the obvious one. Chuck some tax cuts are people in the spring budget plus some carefully targeted Osborne style giveaways at first time buyers etc. Otherwise do what HMG can to engineer a boom, grabbing on to the coattails of the one Uncle Joe will try and engineer in the USA.
I still think the polling will tighten a lot this year, but obviously the Tories winning in Jan 25 (as opposed to denying Starmer a majority) is a 10% shot.
If things are tight after the election, and there is a prospect of a short parliament, then obviously a Braverman LoTO would be a gift to Starmer.
One area I suspect the Braverman clique are right is that a steady as she goes approach is not working. If things were going better after a year Sunak would probably already be trying more radical things, in fact I assumed that was the plan - a sort of Truss 2.0 approach, once the rot had been stopped.
So while she personally might not be the best alternative (at least to me), the general thrust of a need to go big to have a shot, and that there's more fertile ground for votes on the right than the centre for them right now, seems reasonably sound, at least as far as minimising defeat.
I mean, I assume the basic plan is the obvious one. Chuck some tax cuts are people in the spring budget plus some carefully targeted Osborne style giveaways at first time buyers etc. Otherwise do what HMG can to engineer a boom, grabbing on to the coattails of the one Uncle Joe will try and engineer in the USA.
I still think the polling will tighten a lot this year, but obviously the Tories winning in Jan 25 (as opposed to denying Starmer a majority) is a 10% shot.
If things are tight after the election, and there is a prospect of a short parliament, then obviously a Braverman LoTO would be a gift to Starmer.
The plan is probably basic, but I bet they were hoping to implement it now so they had a year to take effect and not look like a desperation move, but they cannot.
On topic, I'm not sure how I feel about politicians using props - especially LDs after local elections - but the argentine chap at least goes bold with it. I feel like other options are better for slashing bureaucracy.
With their history, it would frankly be incredible if most Jews DIDN’T care about Israel
Of course, Israel is the only nation in the world with a Jewish majority, therefore the only nation in the world Jews can truly be safe
Is the only place that members of a particular religious, ethnic or ethno-religious group can truly be safe in a nation where they are a majority? That view is both depressingly pessimistic and harks back to a some 19th-century notion of the nation state built around an ethnos that I thought we had long since abandoned.
We should make the world safe for all minorities and majorities.
What does it mean to make the world safe for majorities if you deny their right to remain majorities?
I would want to interrogate what you mean. Individuals have rights. Individuals have the right to safety and to be allowed to express their identities. What does it mean to say a group has the right to remain a majority?
Let's say you follow religion X and you live in a country that has a majority of other people who follow religion X. What happens if a bunch of your countrymen convert to a different religion or abandon any religion (as is happening with Christianity in the UK)? What does a "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean in that situation? Do you get to force your countrymen to not change religion? Do you get to expel them? What happens if your coreligionists just happen to have fewer kids and a minority group are a bit more fecund, until one day you are in the minority? Should your "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean you get to decide how many kids other people have?
It seems to be illiberal and undemocratic to state that a nation state must retain a certain religious or ethnic majority.
I guess you may be alluding to ideas around abolishing the Israeli state, subsuming it into some larger Israel/Palestine single state. That raises different questions. I think the people of Israel should get to decide what happens to them, so I would not want to see any change in the nation that is not supported by democratic majority. So, to take a different example, if Moldovans want to merge with Romania and cease to be the Republic of Moldova (and Romanians agree), then that should happen, and if Moldovans don't want to merge with Romania and they want Moldova to continue as a separate country, then that should happen.
Agree with this. I have long held that the Nation State is the best guarantee of democracy and stability for the people living within its boundaries. But that does not mean that any individual Nation State has a right to continue to exist if that is not what the people want. It can either merge into a larger nation state or split into a number of smaller ones that reflect the wishes of its communities.
I do think that a set of very basic international rules - such as those covered by the war crimes and crimes against humanity laws which have been discussing - should also exist and Nation States should be held to account against them. This should, in theory at least, offer the sorts of protection we want to see for minorities, whther they are religious, racial or gender based.
I also like a bit of Nation State but I feel it's a good thing not a bad thing if certain fundamentals (over and above those you reference regarding war and atrocities) are enshrined somewhere superior to it. An example would be the right of girls to go to school. Or (still on gender equality but more relevant to the western world) female reproductive rights - a minimum threshold there such that (eg) a country cannot outright prohibit abortion.
Of course a supranational body can't 100% enforce such principles on a recalcitrant or dissenting Nation State, nevertheless I think the more we introduce and support such structures, and the more teeth they have, the better. This should be the direction of travel imo rather than leaving them, ignoring them, defanging them, or generally giving them the proverbial finger and saying "nope, what the elected politicians of a country say goes as regards that country, end of".
One would need a world army/gendarmerie to enforce such things, and I see no appetite to create one.
Ok but ideal world direction of travel, I mean. Also even if not enforceable it's good if you can put friction in the way of elected politicians wanting to do grim things that violate fundamental human rights like outright bans on abortion.
Thought experiment: Imagine Leeds City Council wants to ban abortion in Leeds in response to voter demand in Leeds. That's democratic yes? Course it is. The people of Leeds have spoken. But what we say to Leeds City Council is: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body (Westminster) that forbids it.
Now ratchet up a notch. Westminster wants to ban abortion in the UK in response to voter demand in the UK. Democratic? Again yes. Very much so. But what we should imo be saying to Westminster is as before for Leeds: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body that forbids it. Same thing. Same principle.
In this case the 'higher body' could be national (Supreme Court) or (better) international. Course national leaders could still do shit like banning abortion at the end of the day (because like you say they control the police and the army) but we've put some friction in there. We've made it harder for them.
Lots of well intentioned nonsense here in your example. Abortion both now and historically is not an uncontested issue with a single obviously correct view - like say the use of bubonic plague in war, or torturing randomly chosen children for public entertainment.
It is therefore and excellent example of something which should be under democratic and accountable control in a democracy, exactly as it is in the UK. The USA was wrong to allow it through the courts, and would be just as wrong to ban it through the courts.
Full disclosure: I follow Bill Clinton on this one (if little else): abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
Disagree. An outright ban reduces women to chattels and is unambiguously and factually an outrage. No election can change this.
And the Clinton formulation is just a bit of clever sounding sophistry which means little in terms of actual policy.
I think that's unfair. It implies pretty obviously that abortion should be safe and legal, and by rare the implication is also pretty obvious that contraception should be made result obtainable so that women who don't want to become pregnant don't do so, and abortion is a rare backup.
Perhaps so. But the regularity with which the phrase is resorted to by US politicians or commentators who aren’t particularly interested in (say) universal healthcare suggests otherwise. Also, when would it be safe but illegal ?
It’s just a bit too glib for my taste.
when would it be safe but illegal ?
When you're exceptionally wealthy and can afford to travel or find alternative safe arrangements outside of the law.
Especially in America. The law is for "common people", not the wealthy, and law makers are in the latter category. Bans won't apply to people like them.
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
For a faction to get someone into the final round, they need about a third of the Parliamentary party. So 115 or so now, God knows how few after the election. Seems plausible that "the trouble with Rishi is he's not right wing enough" faction can get a name through to the membership. And unless they are totally rubbish, they will win.
If that name isn't Braverman, who is it? I suspect Badenoch has been a bit mugged by reality and might now be in the "steady as she sank but better" lane. More Hague than Portillo, so to speak.
Not all Tory right wingers are immune to the argument that it’s helpful to win elections. It will be someone else. But @leon is correct that she now probably has to be in the team.
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
100+ MPs wanted Boris to return a year ago, Sunak had the most support but still plenty of opponents.
I think she has an excellent chance of being the next leader, we can be pretty confident the next leader will be someone who puts the boot into the last one and that they needed to be firmer, party members will eat that up, and she has a head start on the other candidates.
I cant see her being the leader. As the saying goes the person who wields the knife doesnt win.
On topic, I'm not sure how I feel about politicians using props - especially LDs after local elections - but the argentine chap at least goes bold with it. I feel like other options are better for slashing bureaucracy.
Nukes?
100% effective in fact, is that still “slashing” or is it more “removing”?
Are you actually claiming her letter is incoherent?
Unfortunately for Sunak it is notably coherent. Articulate, sharp, well written, scathing - and deeply hostile and destructive
You think that’s well written? You surprise me.
The key passage is this one:
“For a year, as Home Secretary I have sent numerous letters to you on the key subjects contained in our agreement, made requests to discuss them with you and your team, and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals. I worked up the legal advice, policy detail and action to take on these issues. This was often met with equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest”.
Weak. I am not Home Secretary and would not tolerate that in my job, if it was how I was treated. She is basically saying the Government is dreadful but she was willing to put up with it for £150k a year. Saying that undermines all of the rest and exposes the whole thing as a political game which she doesn’t really care about.
It’s not exactly resigning over a principle is it?
It's a hard thing to write a resignation or sacking letter, or an equivalent like this one. Several of the resignation letters to Boris, including Rishi's, were risible, full of self praise and sometimes more praise for him than indication they felt he needed to go, so just came across as confused.
And if you are sacked and you reveal a litany of reasons why the sacker is a shit and you're actually glad about this, well, you have to answer why you didn't quit, when presumably it would have made a bigger splash and been justified.
It's not impossible - team player, giving the leader a chance, tried to do as much good as I could etc - but it is just another element to address.
Is it just twitter that has made these sacking/resignation letters such a thing?
In the good old days didn't they just moan unattributed briefings to sympathetic journalists in the HoC bar?
No. Public exchanges of letters have always been a thing. Randolph Churchill to Salisbury. Devonshire to Balfour. Selwyn Lloyd to Macmillan.
The difference now is we get to see them at once, straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.
On topic, I'm not sure how I feel about politicians using props - especially LDs after local elections - but the argentine chap at least goes bold with it. I feel like other options are better for slashing bureaucracy.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
On topic, I'm not sure how I feel about politicians using props - especially LDs after local elections - but the argentine chap at least goes bold with it. I feel like other options are better for slashing bureaucracy.
Nukes?
100% effective in fact, is that still “slashing” or is it more “removing”?
Given my recent experiences with the DfE, I am supremely relaxed about that distinction.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Badenoch, Hyufd? Really?
She's become invisible.
The Theresa May strategy... and not a bad one given the complete shit show that is HMG, IMO.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Badenoch, Hyufd? Really?
She's become invisible.
Cleverly's been a good senior minister so far, I would say, arguably the standout performer in the Sunak government. He's clearly a capable administrator and no fool.
But I cannot think of anything he's said (rather than done) in any of his roles, even though I must have seen him making speeches and pieces to camera.
So however good he is at running a department, I wonder whether he would be a good Leader of the Opposition.
Shameful and all the Tories on here doubt we're a racist country!
How do you think the French would poll on the issue?
They would NEVER vote Le Pen and even countries who have considered it have never suggested the asylum seeker never having the chance to enter their country.
Suella knows her market
42% voted Le Pen, last time I looked, a majority where you live. Do you actually interact with French people?
They have not released the ruling in advance and won’t . The government has no idea what the ruling is . Not releasing in advance the ruling to the parties involved is unusual but has happened in the past .
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
Are you actually claiming her letter is incoherent?
Unfortunately for Sunak it is notably coherent. Articulate, sharp, well written, scathing - and deeply hostile and destructive
I's a terrible letter. If you're going to write a letter make it good, and this is far from that.
Well you seem to be in a small minority
Everyone else is saying “bombshell”, “scathing”, “vitriolic”, “explosive”, “damning”, “excoriating” - and given that Braverman clearly wanted it to be all those things it looks she hit the target. Bullseye, even
It's written with all the brilliance I would expect from a Cambridge educated lawyer.
It is blistering.
She’s a lawyer - and this is pounding the table. You know what that means.
With their history, it would frankly be incredible if most Jews DIDN’T care about Israel
Of course, Israel is the only nation in the world with a Jewish majority, therefore the only nation in the world Jews can truly be safe
Is the only place that members of a particular religious, ethnic or ethno-religious group can truly be safe in a nation where they are a majority? That view is both depressingly pessimistic and harks back to a some 19th-century notion of the nation state built around an ethnos that I thought we had long since abandoned.
We should make the world safe for all minorities and majorities.
What does it mean to make the world safe for majorities if you deny their right to remain majorities?
I would want to interrogate what you mean. Individuals have rights. Individuals have the right to safety and to be allowed to express their identities. What does it mean to say a group has the right to remain a majority?
Let's say you follow religion X and you live in a country that has a majority of other people who follow religion X. What happens if a bunch of your countrymen convert to a different religion or abandon any religion (as is happening with Christianity in the UK)? What does a "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean in that situation? Do you get to force your countrymen to not change religion? Do you get to expel them? What happens if your coreligionists just happen to have fewer kids and a minority group are a bit more fecund, until one day you are in the minority? Should your "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean you get to decide how many kids other people have?
It seems to be illiberal and undemocratic to state that a nation state must retain a certain religious or ethnic majority.
I guess you may be alluding to ideas around abolishing the Israeli state, subsuming it into some larger Israel/Palestine single state. That raises different questions. I think the people of Israel should get to decide what happens to them, so I would not want to see any change in the nation that is not supported by democratic majority. So, to take a different example, if Moldovans want to merge with Romania and cease to be the Republic of Moldova (and Romanians agree), then that should happen, and if Moldovans don't want to merge with Romania and they want Moldova to continue as a separate country, then that should happen.
Agree with this. I have long held that the Nation State is the best guarantee of democracy and stability for the people living within its boundaries. But that does not mean that any individual Nation State has a right to continue to exist if that is not what the people want. It can either merge into a larger nation state or split into a number of smaller ones that reflect the wishes of its communities.
I do think that a set of very basic international rules - such as those covered by the war crimes and crimes against humanity laws which have been discussing - should also exist and Nation States should be held to account against them. This should, in theory at least, offer the sorts of protection we want to see for minorities, whther they are religious, racial or gender based.
I also like a bit of Nation State but I feel it's a good thing not a bad thing if certain fundamentals (over and above those you reference regarding war and atrocities) are enshrined somewhere superior to it. An example would be the right of girls to go to school. Or (still on gender equality but more relevant to the western world) female reproductive rights - a minimum threshold there such that (eg) a country cannot outright prohibit abortion.
Of course a supranational body can't 100% enforce such principles on a recalcitrant or dissenting Nation State, nevertheless I think the more we introduce and support such structures, and the more teeth they have, the better. This should be the direction of travel imo rather than leaving them, ignoring them, defanging them, or generally giving them the proverbial finger and saying "nope, what the elected politicians of a country say goes as regards that country, end of".
One would need a world army/gendarmerie to enforce such things, and I see no appetite to create one.
Ok but ideal world direction of travel, I mean. Also even if not enforceable it's good if you can put friction in the way of elected politicians wanting to do grim things that violate fundamental human rights like outright bans on abortion.
Thought experiment: Imagine Leeds City Council wants to ban abortion in Leeds in response to voter demand in Leeds. That's democratic yes? Course it is. The people of Leeds have spoken. But what we say to Leeds City Council is: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body (Westminster) that forbids it.
Now ratchet up a notch. Westminster wants to ban abortion in the UK in response to voter demand in the UK. Democratic? Again yes. Very much so. But what we should imo be saying to Westminster is as before for Leeds: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body that forbids it. Same thing. Same principle.
In this case the 'higher body' could be national (Supreme Court) or (better) international. Course national leaders could still do shit like banning abortion at the end of the day (because like you say they control the police and the army) but we've put some friction in there. We've made it harder for them.
Why would I wish to do so? I’m not my brother’s keeper.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
Fareham, my constituency has always been Tory, but the 2nd place has switched between Labour and the Libs. It has also altered its boundaries a number of times. That is about to happen again, the new seat of Fareham & Waterlooville has a predicted share for the Tories of 37% with 31% for Labour and 19% for the Lib Dems. So not that safe for a polarising candidate like Suella. https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Fareham and Waterlooville
It's slightly surprising she didn't go for Hamble Valley- a decent chunk of old Fareham and probably the safer seat;
(Worth recalling that the Spec has often been pro-Sunak - onetime editor James Forsyth was Sunak’s best man etc)
“Braverman’s letter is an evisceration of the Prime Minister’s brand of Silicon Valley liberalism as elitist, soft-bellied, driven by status, and too squeamish for a dangerous world. When she concludes with a vow to continue supporting ‘an authentic conservative agenda’, she is telling the Prime Minister and, more importantly, the voters that he’s not only clueless, out-of-touch and ineffectual, but that he’s not a Conservative.”
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
It isn't failing for those who voted to end free movement and get higher wages.
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
For a faction to get someone into the final round, they need about a third of the Parliamentary party. So 115 or so now, God knows how few after the election. Seems plausible that "the trouble with Rishi is he's not right wing enough" faction can get a name through to the membership. And unless they are totally rubbish, they will win.
If that name isn't Braverman, who is it? I suspect Badenoch has been a bit mugged by reality and might now be in the "steady as she sank but better" lane. More Hague than Portillo, so to speak.
And what if the result turns out like one of Electoral Calculus's more pessimistic projections for the Tories? Supposing they are down to 100? Who leads then?
EC gives a good indication of which Tory MPs might survive such a meltdown (I believe Sir Christopher Chope is one of them) but I don't know the names well enough to hazard a guess as to whether it would a pro-Suella rump.
Of course, Israel already exists, so it's a different situation. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Zionism/Bundism debates of the early 20th century, Israel has been a nation state for three quarters of a century and I don't think that should change (unless so desired by the people of Israel). It seems likely that Israel will remain a majority Jewish nation for many decades. However, I don't believe that being so is the only way to protect Jews worldwide or that the rights of individual Israelis to be who they want to be should be overridden. My own country has come from being Christian majority to Christian minority in my lifespan. If Israel changes in similar ways, it changes.
You keep repeating the same points, HYUFD. You have not made clear what you want to happen. How would you maintain Israel as evermore a Jewish majority nation? If many Israelis converted to Christianity and threatened that majority, what measures would you want taken? If non-Jewish Israelis have more kids and the population shifts over time, what measures would you want taken?
You seem to be making an unstated assumption that the direction of travel will always be towards greater multiculturalism.
What if the decline of one majority were instead replaced by another that wanted to establish a different kind of state?
I'm not assuming the direction of travel will always be towards greater multiculturalism. It might be, it might not be.
I am a democrat. If the population changes and people want a "different kind of state", then they should get a different kind of state. Isn't that how democracy works?
Of course, it's not always quite that simple. If a majority wants to kill everyone called "William", then, no, that should be stopped! There is a (difficult) balance between basic human rights and democracy. A majority in Israel, by some polling, want Jews to have more rights than non-Jews, and I think that would be a mistake. If the situation changed and some future majority wanted to have more rights than Jews, that would also be wrong.
Democracy is about more than voting, it requires respect for minorities.
The idea that Jews* can only be safe from genocide in their own ethnostate is absurd. Certainly there is anti-semitism in many or even all countries, but that doesn't mean genocide. There is no risk of the Shoah being repeated anywhere in Europe.
*or Sikhs, Kurds, Rohingya, Yazedi, Afrikaaners, etc etc.
Well, they *could* depend on foreign governments to protect them from persecution, but I don’t think that would be very prudent.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Apparently Cleverly addressed his civil servants in the home office today and received applause at the end
Are you actually claiming her letter is incoherent?
Unfortunately for Sunak it is notably coherent. Articulate, sharp, well written, scathing - and deeply hostile and destructive
I's a terrible letter. If you're going to write a letter make it good, and this is far from that.
Well you seem to be in a small minority
Everyone else is saying “bombshell”, “scathing”, “vitriolic”, “explosive”, “damning”, “excoriating” - and given that Braverman clearly wanted it to be all those things it looks she hit the target. Bullseye, even
It's written with all the brilliance I would expect from a Cambridge educated lawyer.
It is blistering.
She’s a lawyer - and this is pounding the table. You know what that means.
Pause.
No. No, I don't, sorry.
When you have facts, pound the facts.
When you don't have the facts, pound the law.
When you don't have facts or the law, pound the table.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Apparently Cleverly addressed his civil servants in the home office today and received applause at the end
Compare that to the toxic Braverman
Cleverly has some charisma and is in the middle of the party, however Braverman is brighter than him, just more divisive
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Apparently Cleverly addressed his civil servants in the home office today and received applause at the end
Compare that to the toxic Braverman
She may have been a bad boss, but I'm not sure we want to judge ministers by whether they can make their department officials applaud them.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Apparently Cleverly addressed his civil servants in the home office today and received applause at the end
Compare that to the toxic Braverman
Cleverly has some charisma and is in the middle of the party, however Braverman is brighter than him, just more divisive
A very interesting country Argentina. Buenos Aires is a terrific city. People dancing the tango on every street corner and in the parks. It reminded me of Madrid on a grander scale. A lot of Germans there. I never thought it appropriate to ask how this German colony had originated! I shot a Repsol commercial there.
When were you there? I traveled widely in Argentina in 2019. Buenos Aires is a faded dump - you can still see the glimpses of its once-gilded architecture - the Barcelona of South America etc - but now it is overwhelmed by poverty and new migrants, outside some rare lush suburbs
In places it is seriously dangerous
Paradoxically, everywhere else I went in Argentina seemed pleasant to properly pleasant. In much of the country the climate is kind. Malbec wine flows like water. There are spectacular landscapes. Yes they are quite poor but not obviously poorer than their neighbours - and not obviously poorer than, say, Sicilians - where I have just been
It has such great potential, too. Don’t write it off
A hundred years back didn’t it have a GDP/standard of living comparable with much of Europe?
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
Except, sadly, the revised economic stats offer no support for your verdict on Brexit, where the only notable difficulty caused appears to have been to force Roger to wait to get his passport checked in a queue with some people from Bangladesh.
And those excellent economic outcomes happened with a full handbrake applied on any meaningful post-Brexit reforms or liberalisations.
Are you actually claiming her letter is incoherent?
Unfortunately for Sunak it is notably coherent. Articulate, sharp, well written, scathing - and deeply hostile and destructive
I's a terrible letter. If you're going to write a letter make it good, and this is far from that.
Well you seem to be in a small minority
Everyone else is saying “bombshell”, “scathing”, “vitriolic”, “explosive”, “damning”, “excoriating” - and given that Braverman clearly wanted it to be all those things it looks she hit the target. Bullseye, even
It's written with all the brilliance I would expect from a Cambridge educated lawyer.
It is blistering.
She’s a lawyer - and this is pounding the table. You know what that means.
Pause.
No. No, I don't, sorry.
When you have facts, pound the facts.
When you don't have the facts, pound the law.
When you don't have facts or the law, pound the table.
When you dont have a table go to the dockside and ask for @TSE
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Apparently Cleverly addressed his civil servants in the home office today and received applause at the end
Compare that to the toxic Braverman
That’s a bad sign. They’re all flipping lefties
When Caudillo Braverman seizes power in the pop up bubble tea cafe putsch of 2026, she needs to sack every single person in the civil service, and replace them with AI trained on the works of Margaret Thatcher
Are you actually claiming her letter is incoherent?
Unfortunately for Sunak it is notably coherent. Articulate, sharp, well written, scathing - and deeply hostile and destructive
I's a terrible letter. If you're going to write a letter make it good, and this is far from that.
Well you seem to be in a small minority
Everyone else is saying “bombshell”, “scathing”, “vitriolic”, “explosive”, “damning”, “excoriating” - and given that Braverman clearly wanted it to be all those things it looks she hit the target. Bullseye, even
It's written with all the brilliance I would expect from a Cambridge educated lawyer.
It is blistering.
She’s a lawyer - and this is pounding the table. You know what that means.
Pause.
No. No, I don't, sorry.
Let's not probe too deeply into Nigel's thoughts on pounding the table.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Badenoch, Hyufd? Really?
She's become invisible.
Cleverly's been a good senior minister so far, I would say, arguably the standout performer in the Sunak government. He's clearly a capable administrator and no fool.
But I cannot think of anything he's said (rather than done) in any of his roles, even though I must have seen him making speeches and pieces to camera.
So however good he is at running a department, I wonder whether he would be a good Leader of the Opposition.
That's why he has a decent chance in the 2025 leadership election.
He is a bit "the GE defeat was a temporary aberration, we need to continue looking like a government" candidate (see Hague, MiliEd). When they lose, that's when you get the nutter (IDS, Corbz), before the "LotO who looks Prime Ministerial" candidate (Cameron, Starmer).
The advantage for the Conservatives in choosing Braverman sooner is to get the insanity out of the way, because it's probably necessary.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Apparently Cleverly addressed his civil servants in the home office today and received applause at the end
Compare that to the toxic Braverman
She may have been a bad boss, but I'm not sure we want to judge ministers by whether they can make their department officials applaud them.
Can you imagine how the DfE would react if I were their boss?
Yet I'd be an awesome Secretary of State. I'd actually give schools the chance to do some fucking teaching rather than whatever drunken bollocks emanates from the fetid skulls of loons like Spielman and Gibb.
Are you actually claiming her letter is incoherent?
Unfortunately for Sunak it is notably coherent. Articulate, sharp, well written, scathing - and deeply hostile and destructive
I's a terrible letter. If you're going to write a letter make it good, and this is far from that.
Well you seem to be in a small minority
Everyone else is saying “bombshell”, “scathing”, “vitriolic”, “explosive”, “damning”, “excoriating” - and given that Braverman clearly wanted it to be all those things it looks she hit the target. Bullseye, even
It's written with all the brilliance I would expect from a Cambridge educated lawyer.
It is blistering.
She’s a lawyer - and this is pounding the table. You know what that means.
Pause.
No. No, I don't, sorry.
When you have facts, pound the facts.
When you don't have the facts, pound the law.
When you don't have facts or the law, pound the table.
When you dont have a table go to the dockside and ask for @TSE
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Apparently Cleverly addressed his civil servants in the home office today and received applause at the end
Compare that to the toxic Braverman
Cleverly has some charisma and is in the middle of the party, however Braverman is brighter than him, just more divisive
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
Fareham, my constituency has always been Tory, but the 2nd place has switched between Labour and the Libs. It has also altered its boundaries a number of times. That is about to happen again, the new seat of Fareham & Waterlooville has a predicted share for the Tories of 37% with 31% for Labour and 19% for the Lib Dems. So not that safe for a polarising candidate like Suella. https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Fareham and Waterlooville
It's slightly surprising she didn't go for Hamble Valley- a decent chunk of old Fareham and probably the safer seat;
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Apparently Cleverly addressed his civil servants in the home office today and received applause at the end
Compare that to the toxic Braverman
Cleverly has some charisma and is in the middle of the party, however Braverman is brighter than him, just more divisive
Braverman is toxic and 70% agree with her sacking
Despite obvious disagreements, I am very glad you're feeling well enough to be the hammer of the ERG once more.
Looking at the Cabinet now it is an eclectic mix of old experienced ministers, newbies, and old timers who never got a shot until recently. Mel Stride stands out quite a bit
Not that different to Truss I don't think, though he did keep a lot of the same people initially.
With their history, it would frankly be incredible if most Jews DIDN’T care about Israel
Of course, Israel is the only nation in the world with a Jewish majority, therefore the only nation in the world Jews can truly be safe
Is the only place that members of a particular religious, ethnic or ethno-religious group can truly be safe in a nation where they are a majority? That view is both depressingly pessimistic and harks back to a some 19th-century notion of the nation state built around an ethnos that I thought we had long since abandoned.
We should make the world safe for all minorities and majorities.
What does it mean to make the world safe for majorities if you deny their right to remain majorities?
I would want to interrogate what you mean. Individuals have rights. Individuals have the right to safety and to be allowed to express their identities. What does it mean to say a group has the right to remain a majority?
Let's say you follow religion X and you live in a country that has a majority of other people who follow religion X. What happens if a bunch of your countrymen convert to a different religion or abandon any religion (as is happening with Christianity in the UK)? What does a "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean in that situation? Do you get to force your countrymen to not change religion? Do you get to expel them? What happens if your coreligionists just happen to have fewer kids and a minority group are a bit more fecund, until one day you are in the minority? Should your "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean you get to decide how many kids other people have?
It seems to be illiberal and undemocratic to state that a nation state must retain a certain religious or ethnic majority.
I guess you may be alluding to ideas around abolishing the Israeli state, subsuming it into some larger Israel/Palestine single state. That raises different questions. I think the people of Israel should get to decide what happens to them, so I would not want to see any change in the nation that is not supported by democratic majority. So, to take a different example, if Moldovans want to merge with Romania and cease to be the Republic of Moldova (and Romanians agree), then that should happen, and if Moldovans don't want to merge with Romania and they want Moldova to continue as a separate country, then that should happen.
Agree with this. I have long held that the Nation State is the best guarantee of democracy and stability for the people living within its boundaries. But that does not mean that any individual Nation State has a right to continue to exist if that is not what the people want. It can either merge into a larger nation state or split into a number of smaller ones that reflect the wishes of its communities.
I do think that a set of very basic international rules - such as those covered by the war crimes and crimes against humanity laws which have been discussing - should also exist and Nation States should be held to account against them. This should, in theory at least, offer the sorts of protection we want to see for minorities, whther they are religious, racial or gender based.
I also like a bit of Nation State but I feel it's a good thing not a bad thing if certain fundamentals (over and above those you reference regarding war and atrocities) are enshrined somewhere superior to it. An example would be the right of girls to go to school. Or (still on gender equality but more relevant to the western world) female reproductive rights - a minimum threshold there such that (eg) a country cannot outright prohibit abortion.
Of course a supranational body can't 100% enforce such principles on a recalcitrant or dissenting Nation State, nevertheless I think the more we introduce and support such structures, and the more teeth they have, the better. This should be the direction of travel imo rather than leaving them, ignoring them, defanging them, or generally giving them the proverbial finger and saying "nope, what the elected politicians of a country say goes as regards that country, end of".
One would need a world army/gendarmerie to enforce such things, and I see no appetite to create one.
Ok but ideal world direction of travel, I mean. Also even if not enforceable it's good if you can put friction in the way of elected politicians wanting to do grim things that violate fundamental human rights like outright bans on abortion.
Thought experiment: Imagine Leeds City Council wants to ban abortion in Leeds in response to voter demand in Leeds. That's democratic yes? Course it is. The people of Leeds have spoken. But what we say to Leeds City Council is: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body (Westminster) that forbids it.
Now ratchet up a notch. Westminster wants to ban abortion in the UK in response to voter demand in the UK. Democratic? Again yes. Very much so. But what we should imo be saying to Westminster is as before for Leeds: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body that forbids it. Same thing. Same principle.
In this case the 'higher body' could be national (Supreme Court) or (better) international. Course national leaders could still do shit like banning abortion at the end of the day (because like you say they control the police and the army) but we've put some friction in there. We've made it harder for them.
Lots of well intentioned nonsense here in your example. Abortion both now and historically is not an uncontested issue with a single obviously correct view - like say the use of bubonic plague in war, or torturing randomly chosen children for public entertainment.
It is therefore and excellent example of something which should be under democratic and accountable control in a democracy, exactly as it is in the UK. The USA was wrong to allow it through the courts, and would be just as wrong to ban it through the courts.
Full disclosure: I follow Bill Clinton on this one (if little else): abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
Disagree. An outright ban reduces women to chattels and is unambiguously and factually an outrage. No election can change this.
And the Clinton formulation is just a bit of clever sounding sophistry which means little in terms of actual policy.
This could go on a long time, but just to point out that in the world of responsible and accountable educated adults, and accessible contraception there is actually no very good reason why abortion should not be quite rare. Not all policies are legislated ones.
No, it’s the same as saying I believe in motherhood and apple pie. It’s just political pabulum.
‘The world of responsible and educated adults ‘ sounds great, too - but it’s not political reality.
I'm not quite sure what your point is, though the implication is that we can't have social improvements if we are thoughtful about it. Not very aspirational. And politics exists to protect motherhood and the making of apple pie and the communities which they are part of.
The thought that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare is not pabulum at all but, if thought through would be a highly progressive step in social policy. It would add hugely to the sum of human happiness. A bit like the thought that the National Sickness Service we have should instead be a National Health Service.
(Worth recalling that the Spec has often been pro-Sunak - onetime editor James Forsyth was Sunak’s best man etc)
“Braverman’s letter is an evisceration of the Prime Minister’s brand of Silicon Valley liberalism as elitist, soft-bellied, driven by status, and too squeamish for a dangerous world. When she concludes with a vow to continue supporting ‘an authentic conservative agenda’, she is telling the Prime Minister and, more importantly, the voters that he’s not only clueless, out-of-touch and ineffectual, but that he’s not a Conservative.”
This is starting to remind me of the Corbyn/Starmer schism with your man there as the Right's equivalent of Owen Jones. If the Tories start squandering all their energies venerating ideologically pure cranks then it's going to be a long descent into oblivion I'm afraid.
There’s clearly been a misunderstanding. I’ve no doubt they’ll sort it out over a cup of tea in the next couple of days and the Good Ship Tory will sail on!
Looking at the Cabinet now it is an eclectic mix of old experienced ministers, newbies, and old timers who never got a shot until recently. Mel Stride stands out quite a bit
Not that different to Truss I don't think, though he did keep a lot of the same people initially.
Looking at the ages it is way too young. Probably because the previous two generations of Tory MPs have been incompetent, factional obsessives who were over promoted and failed. Gove and Shapps the only consistent survivors and they are both weird in their own ways.
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
For a faction to get someone into the final round, they need about a third of the Parliamentary party. So 115 or so now, God knows how few after the election. Seems plausible that "the trouble with Rishi is he's not right wing enough" faction can get a name through to the membership. And unless they are totally rubbish, they will win.
If that name isn't Braverman, who is it? I suspect Badenoch has been a bit mugged by reality and might now be in the "steady as she sank but better" lane. More Hague than Portillo, so to speak.
And what if the result turns out like one of Electoral Calculus's more pessimistic projections for the Tories? Supposing they are down to 100? Who leads then?
EC gives a good indication of which Tory MPs might survive such a meltdown (I believe Sir Christopher Chope is one of them) but I don't know the names well enough to hazard a guess as to whether it would a pro-Suella rump.
We also need to see the map with all the new selections.
To return to South Hampshire, at the moment Flick Drummond (harmless moderate) is MP for the insanely safe Meon Valley. She now has Winchester to fight on the new boundaries, which looks like Losechester for the Conservatives.
Looking at the Cabinet now it is an eclectic mix of old experienced ministers, newbies, and old timers who never got a shot until recently. Mel Stride stands out quite a bit
Not that different to Truss I don't think, though he did keep a lot of the same people initially.
Her Cabinet was pretty shit, and so is his. Theresa's wasn't much to write home about but I feel it was Boris who started the trend of rewarding loyalty over capability, and Truss and Sunak went even further.
(Worth recalling that the Spec has often been pro-Sunak - onetime editor James Forsyth was Sunak’s best man etc)
“Braverman’s letter is an evisceration of the Prime Minister’s brand of Silicon Valley liberalism as elitist, soft-bellied, driven by status, and too squeamish for a dangerous world. When she concludes with a vow to continue supporting ‘an authentic conservative agenda’, she is telling the Prime Minister and, more importantly, the voters that he’s not only clueless, out-of-touch and ineffectual, but that he’s not a Conservative.”
This is starting to remind me of the Corbyn/Starmer schism with your man there as the Right's equivalent of Owen Jones. If the Tories start squandering all their energies venerating ideologically pure cranks then it's going to be a long descent into oblivion I'm afraid.
Sometimes I start reading your comments but then I remember you are completely insane and I stop
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
Except, sadly, the revised economic stats offer no support for your verdict on Brexit, where the only notable difficulty caused appears to have been to force Roger to wait to get his passport checked in a queue with some people from Bangladesh.
And those excellent economic outcomes happened with a full handbrake applied on any meaningful post-Brexit reforms or liberalisations.
If you believe in the multiverse, there is a world in which the UK is missing out on Europe’s economic boom.
Cleverly shortening. Looks increasingly likely the Final will be Badenoch v Cleverly.
There isn’t even a race.
Yes it is plainly ridiculous to start predicting the “two candidates now”. Especially when there is a chance the Tories will be reduced to 8 and a half MPs
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
For a faction to get someone into the final round, they need about a third of the Parliamentary party. So 115 or so now, God knows how few after the election. Seems plausible that "the trouble with Rishi is he's not right wing enough" faction can get a name through to the membership. And unless they are totally rubbish, they will win.
If that name isn't Braverman, who is it? I suspect Badenoch has been a bit mugged by reality and might now be in the "steady as she sank but better" lane. More Hague than Portillo, so to speak.
And what if the result turns out like one of Electoral Calculus's more pessimistic projections for the Tories? Supposing they are down to 100? Who leads then?
EC gives a good indication of which Tory MPs might survive such a meltdown (I believe Sir Christopher Chope is one of them) but I don't know the names well enough to hazard a guess as to whether it would a pro-Suella rump.
We also need to see the map with all the new selections.
To return to South Hampshire, at the moment Flick Drummond (harmless moderate) is MP for the insanely safe Meon Valley. She now has Winchester to fight on the new boundaries, which looks like Losechester for the Conservatives.
Knock it off, Stuart.
You are not really kidding us there is a person, let alone an MP, called Flick Drummond.
Looking at the Cabinet now it is an eclectic mix of old experienced ministers, newbies, and old timers who never got a shot until recently. Mel Stride stands out quite a bit
Not that different to Truss I don't think, though he did keep a lot of the same people initially.
Looking at the ages it is way too young. Probably because the previous two generations of Tory MPs have been incompetent, factional obsessives who were over promoted and failed. Gove and Shapps the only consistent survivors and they are both weird in their own ways.
Shapps was a bit of a surprise to me - it took him 9 years of Tory government to get a Cabinet post, but it feels like he has been everywhere since.
Whereas others of the 2005 gang have been in or around the top since the beginning, with a few gaps. Only Gove and Hunt have been there at the beginning and, now, the end.
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
It isn't failing for those who voted to end free movement and get higher wages.
Most of the richest, certainly if they were graduates and the big corporations backed Remain
It turns out that Stuart Rose was right. Cut off from a pool of biddable labour, British employers had to raise wages for the lowest paid and start investing.
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Remind me who said this a two days ago?
Thatcher, May, and Johnson won votes of confidence (de facto and de jure) and were gone with days/weeks/months of the confidence vote.
Contradicting my thoughts yesterday, HYU has suggested that even if vonked, Sunak would face it down and limp on. Perhaps he has even less dignity than I thought?
There’s clearly been a misunderstanding. I’ve no doubt they’ll sort it out over a cup of tea in the next couple of days and the Good Ship Tory will sail on!
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Remind me who said this a two days ago?
Thatcher, May, and Johnson won votes of confidence (de facto and de jure) and were gone with days/weeks/months of the confidence vote.
Contradicting my thoughts yesterday, HYU has suggested that even if vonked, Sunak would face it down and limp on. Perhaps he has even less dignity than I thought?
Depends if anyone really wants it - May lasted half a year, and it wasn't really down to her stubborness or lack of shame so much as apparently the group not quite ready to put the knife all the way in.
I’m wondering how Truss war-gamed all this in her comeback strategy?
Truss is yesterday's news, Braverman is the candidate for ERG ideologues now, Cleverly and Barclay the established Cabinet candidates if and when Sunak goes
With their history, it would frankly be incredible if most Jews DIDN’T care about Israel
Of course, Israel is the only nation in the world with a Jewish majority, therefore the only nation in the world Jews can truly be safe
Is the only place that members of a particular religious, ethnic or ethno-religious group can truly be safe in a nation where they are a majority? That view is both depressingly pessimistic and harks back to a some 19th-century notion of the nation state built around an ethnos that I thought we had long since abandoned.
We should make the world safe for all minorities and majorities.
What does it mean to make the world safe for majorities if you deny their right to remain majorities?
I would want to interrogate what you mean. Individuals have rights. Individuals have the right to safety and to be allowed to express their identities. What does it mean to say a group has the right to remain a majority?
Let's say you follow religion X and you live in a country that has a majority of other people who follow religion X. What happens if a bunch of your countrymen convert to a different religion or abandon any religion (as is happening with Christianity in the UK)? What does a "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean in that situation? Do you get to force your countrymen to not change religion? Do you get to expel them? What happens if your coreligionists just happen to have fewer kids and a minority group are a bit more fecund, until one day you are in the minority? Should your "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean you get to decide how many kids other people have?
It seems to be illiberal and undemocratic to state that a nation state must retain a certain religious or ethnic majority.
I guess you may be alluding to ideas around abolishing the Israeli state, subsuming it into some larger Israel/Palestine single state. That raises different questions. I think the people of Israel should get to decide what happens to them, so I would not want to see any change in the nation that is not supported by democratic majority. So, to take a different example, if Moldovans want to merge with Romania and cease to be the Republic of Moldova (and Romanians agree), then that should happen, and if Moldovans don't want to merge with Romania and they want Moldova to continue as a separate country, then that should happen.
Agree with this. I have long held that the Nation State is the best guarantee of democracy and stability for the people living within its boundaries. But that does not mean that any individual Nation State has a right to continue to exist if that is not what the people want. It can either merge into a larger nation state or split into a number of smaller ones that reflect the wishes of its communities.
I do think that a set of very basic international rules - such as those covered by the war crimes and crimes against humanity laws which have been discussing - should also exist and Nation States should be held to account against them. This should, in theory at least, offer the sorts of protection we want to see for minorities, whther they are religious, racial or gender based.
I also like a bit of Nation State but I feel it's a good thing not a bad thing if certain fundamentals (over and above those you reference regarding war and atrocities) are enshrined somewhere superior to it. An example would be the right of girls to go to school. Or (still on gender equality but more relevant to the western world) female reproductive rights - a minimum threshold there such that (eg) a country cannot outright prohibit abortion.
Of course a supranational body can't 100% enforce such principles on a recalcitrant or dissenting Nation State, nevertheless I think the more we introduce and support such structures, and the more teeth they have, the better. This should be the direction of travel imo rather than leaving them, ignoring them, defanging them, or generally giving them the proverbial finger and saying "nope, what the elected politicians of a country say goes as regards that country, end of".
One would need a world army/gendarmerie to enforce such things, and I see no appetite to create one.
Ok but ideal world direction of travel, I mean. Also even if not enforceable it's good if you can put friction in the way of elected politicians wanting to do grim things that violate fundamental human rights like outright bans on abortion.
Thought experiment: Imagine Leeds City Council wants to ban abortion in Leeds in response to voter demand in Leeds. That's democratic yes? Course it is. The people of Leeds have spoken. But what we say to Leeds City Council is: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body (Westminster) that forbids it.
Now ratchet up a notch. Westminster wants to ban abortion in the UK in response to voter demand in the UK. Democratic? Again yes. Very much so. But what we should imo be saying to Westminster is as before for Leeds: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body that forbids it. Same thing. Same principle.
In this case the 'higher body' could be national (Supreme Court) or (better) international. Course national leaders could still do shit like banning abortion at the end of the day (because like you say they control the police and the army) but we've put some friction in there. We've made it harder for them.
Lots of well intentioned nonsense here in your example. Abortion both now and historically is not an uncontested issue with a single obviously correct view - like say the use of bubonic plague in war, or torturing randomly chosen children for public entertainment.
It is therefore and excellent example of something which should be under democratic and accountable control in a democracy, exactly as it is in the UK. The USA was wrong to allow it through the courts, and would be just as wrong to ban it through the courts.
Full disclosure: I follow Bill Clinton on this one (if little else): abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
Disagree. An outright ban reduces women to chattels and is unambiguously and factually an outrage. No election can change this.
And the Clinton formulation is just a bit of clever sounding sophistry which means little in terms of actual policy.
I think that's unfair. It implies pretty obviously that abortion should be safe and legal, and by rare the implication is also pretty obvious that contraception should be made result obtainable so that women who don't want to become pregnant don't do so, and abortion is a rare backup.
Perhaps so. But the regularity with which the phrase is resorted to by US politicians or commentators who aren’t particularly interested in (say) universal healthcare suggests otherwise. Also, when would it be safe but illegal ?
It’s just a bit too glib for my taste.
Sorry I started this. I have no views on the USA situation except that they are right, now, to make it, as we are, a matter for voters and legislators.
'Safe, legal and rare' exactly describes my aspiration and is a perfectly reasonable goal for a nation's social policy. 'Safe but illegal' would of course be for example, medically conducted terminations in jurisdictions where this was illegal.
I struggle to imagine the mindset of anyone who would not like a society in which abortion is much rarer than it is.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Badenoch, Hyufd? Really?
She's become invisible.
Cleverly's been a good senior minister so far, I would say, arguably the standout performer in the Sunak government. He's clearly a capable administrator and no fool.
But I cannot think of anything he's said (rather than done) in any of his roles, even though I must have seen him making speeches and pieces to camera.
So however good he is at running a department, I wonder whether he would be a good Leader of the Opposition.
That's why he has a decent chance in the 2025 leadership election.
He is a bit "the GE defeat was a temporary aberration, we need to continue looking like a government" candidate (see Hague, MiliEd). When they lose, that's when you get the nutter (IDS, Corbz), before the "LotO who looks Prime Ministerial" candidate (Cameron, Starmer).
The advantage for the Conservatives in choosing Braverman sooner is to get the insanity out of the way, because it's probably necessary.
Doesn't mean the nutter can't give the liberal centrist establishment a fright though, as Corbyn did in 2017.
If the economy is in a poor state all bets are off
Cleverly shortening. Looks increasingly likely the Final will be Badenoch v Cleverly.
There isn’t even a race.
Yes it is plainly ridiculous to start predicting the “two candidates now”. Especially when there is a chance the Tories will be reduced to 8 and a half MPs
Is Cleverly shortening?
I backed him (and modesty prevents me from mentioning I posted that this looked like value) on 13th at 5.7.
Saw that earlier. Truly shocking. What has this country become?
Yeah, bit of a gut punch. Not so much a never-happen, so much a oh-for-fux-sake-thats-ridiculous. Something has gone badly wrong. Next week: "neonatal intensive care units: do we really need them?", the National Conservative conference 2023, sponsored by Legatum.
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
It isn't failing for those who voted to end free movement and get higher wages.
Most of the richest, certainly if they were graduates and the big corporations backed Remain
It turns out that Stuart Rose was right. Cut off from a pool of biddable labour, British employers had to raise wages for the lowest paid and start investing.
Except immigration is higher than ever in the last 2 years, nearly a million. So that pool of biddable Labour is rapidly growing.
Indeed it looks more like more immigration spurs more employment!
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
For a faction to get someone into the final round, they need about a third of the Parliamentary party. So 115 or so now, God knows how few after the election. Seems plausible that "the trouble with Rishi is he's not right wing enough" faction can get a name through to the membership. And unless they are totally rubbish, they will win.
If that name isn't Braverman, who is it? I suspect Badenoch has been a bit mugged by reality and might now be in the "steady as she sank but better" lane. More Hague than Portillo, so to speak.
And what if the result turns out like one of Electoral Calculus's more pessimistic projections for the Tories? Supposing they are down to 100? Who leads then?
EC gives a good indication of which Tory MPs might survive such a meltdown (I believe Sir Christopher Chope is one of them) but I don't know the names well enough to hazard a guess as to whether it would a pro-Suella rump.
We also need to see the map with all the new selections.
To return to South Hampshire, at the moment Flick Drummond (harmless moderate) is MP for the insanely safe Meon Valley. She now has Winchester to fight on the new boundaries, which looks like Losechester for the Conservatives.
Knock it off, Stuart.
You are not really kidding us there is a person, let alone an MP, called Flick Drummond.
Not just that, but her husband is called Hereward.
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
It isn't failing for those who voted to end free movement and get higher wages.
Most of the richest, certainly if they were graduates and the big corporations backed Remain
It turns out that Stuart Rose was right. Cut off from a pool of biddable labour, British employers had to raise wages for the lowest paid and start investing.
Quelle surprise. One Brexit disaster after the next. At this rate national productivity will start improving.
Saw that earlier. Truly shocking. What has this country become?
Poor and broken.
It's not at all poor. What it has become is nasty and uncaring.
But that's the country, not the population - most of whom would abhor the way this man has been treated.
The country has become what it is because it's been led by small-minded zealots who are only worried about their own, their family's and their friends' wealth accumulation.
With their history, it would frankly be incredible if most Jews DIDN’T care about Israel
Of course, Israel is the only nation in the world with a Jewish majority, therefore the only nation in the world Jews can truly be safe
Is the only place that members of a particular religious, ethnic or ethno-religious group can truly be safe in a nation where they are a majority? That view is both depressingly pessimistic and harks back to a some 19th-century notion of the nation state built around an ethnos that I thought we had long since abandoned.
We should make the world safe for all minorities and majorities.
What does it mean to make the world safe for majorities if you deny their right to remain majorities?
I would want to interrogate what you mean. Individuals have rights. Individuals have the right to safety and to be allowed to express their identities. What does it mean to say a group has the right to remain a majority?
Let's say you follow religion X and you live in a country that has a majority of other people who follow religion X. What happens if a bunch of your countrymen convert to a different religion or abandon any religion (as is happening with Christianity in the UK)? What does a "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean in that situation? Do you get to force your countrymen to not change religion? Do you get to expel them? What happens if your coreligionists just happen to have fewer kids and a minority group are a bit more fecund, until one day you are in the minority? Should your "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean you get to decide how many kids other people have?
It seems to be illiberal and undemocratic to state that a nation state must retain a certain religious or ethnic majority.
I guess you may be alluding to ideas around abolishing the Israeli state, subsuming it into some larger Israel/Palestine single state. That raises different questions. I think the people of Israel should get to decide what happens to them, so I would not want to see any change in the nation that is not supported by democratic majority. So, to take a different example, if Moldovans want to merge with Romania and cease to be the Republic of Moldova (and Romanians agree), then that should happen, and if Moldovans don't want to merge with Romania and they want Moldova to continue as a separate country, then that should happen.
Agree with this. I have long held that the Nation State is the best guarantee of democracy and stability for the people living within its boundaries. But that does not mean that any individual Nation State has a right to continue to exist if that is not what the people want. It can either merge into a larger nation state or split into a number of smaller ones that reflect the wishes of its communities.
I do think that a set of very basic international rules - such as those covered by the war crimes and crimes against humanity laws which have been discussing - should also exist and Nation States should be held to account against them. This should, in theory at least, offer the sorts of protection we want to see for minorities, whther they are religious, racial or gender based.
I also like a bit of Nation State but I feel it's a good thing not a bad thing if certain fundamentals (over and above those you reference regarding war and atrocities) are enshrined somewhere superior to it. An example would be the right of girls to go to school. Or (still on gender equality but more relevant to the western world) female reproductive rights - a minimum threshold there such that (eg) a country cannot outright prohibit abortion.
Of course a supranational body can't 100% enforce such principles on a recalcitrant or dissenting Nation State, nevertheless I think the more we introduce and support such structures, and the more teeth they have, the better. This should be the direction of travel imo rather than leaving them, ignoring them, defanging them, or generally giving them the proverbial finger and saying "nope, what the elected politicians of a country say goes as regards that country, end of".
One would need a world army/gendarmerie to enforce such things, and I see no appetite to create one.
Ok but ideal world direction of travel, I mean. Also even if not enforceable it's good if you can put friction in the way of elected politicians wanting to do grim things that violate fundamental human rights like outright bans on abortion.
Thought experiment: Imagine Leeds City Council wants to ban abortion in Leeds in response to voter demand in Leeds. That's democratic yes? Course it is. The people of Leeds have spoken. But what we say to Leeds City Council is: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body (Westminster) that forbids it.
Now ratchet up a notch. Westminster wants to ban abortion in the UK in response to voter demand in the UK. Democratic? Again yes. Very much so. But what we should imo be saying to Westminster is as before for Leeds: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body that forbids it. Same thing. Same principle.
In this case the 'higher body' could be national (Supreme Court) or (better) international. Course national leaders could still do shit like banning abortion at the end of the day (because like you say they control the police and the army) but we've put some friction in there. We've made it harder for them.
Lots of well intentioned nonsense here in your example. Abortion both now and historically is not an uncontested issue with a single obviously correct view - like say the use of bubonic plague in war, or torturing randomly chosen children for public entertainment.
It is therefore and excellent example of something which should be under democratic and accountable control in a democracy, exactly as it is in the UK. The USA was wrong to allow it through the courts, and would be just as wrong to ban it through the courts.
Full disclosure: I follow Bill Clinton on this one (if little else): abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
Disagree. An outright ban reduces women to chattels and is unambiguously and factually an outrage. No election can change this.
And the Clinton formulation is just a bit of clever sounding sophistry which means little in terms of actual policy.
I think that's unfair. It implies pretty obviously that abortion should be safe and legal, and by rare the implication is also pretty obvious that contraception should be made result obtainable so that women who don't want to become pregnant don't do so, and abortion is a rare backup.
Perhaps so. But the regularity with which the phrase is resorted to by US politicians or commentators who aren’t particularly interested in (say) universal healthcare suggests otherwise. Also, when would it be safe but illegal ?
It’s just a bit too glib for my taste.
Sorry I started this. I have no views on the USA situation except that they are right, now, to make it, as we are, a matter for voters and legislators.
'Safe, legal and rare' exactly describes my aspiration and is a perfectly reasonable goal for a nation's social policy. 'Safe but illegal' would of course be for example, medically conducted terminations in jurisdictions where this was illegal.
I struggle to imagine the mindset of anyone who would not like a society in which abortion is much rarer than it is.
I’m wondering how Truss war-gamed all this in her comeback strategy?
Truss is yesterday's news, Braverman is the candidate for ERG ideologues now, Cleverly and Barclay the established Cabinet candidates if and when Sunak goes
They are quite different though. Braverman is a Culture Warrior with a cursory interest in economics, Ms Truss the opposite. They represent different factions.
Not sure at all what faction Sunak represents, which is perhaps why he struggles so much.
So some PBers actually think this letter will “help”’the Tories by showing that they are more moderate
I mean. FFS
Well I was just speculating. But generally scything off extremists is helpful in British politics, as most people are decent folk and elections won in the centre ground. Suella is a loon. It’s true that Sundance was stupid to hire her in the first place but I doubt he’ll lose much sleep over her whining tonight.
Since he got the FO job, he’s proved cannier that he ever showed previously.
After all the brouhaha within the Tory party - pirouetting narcissists et al - there may be a market in the Tory Party for a solid, sensible, tough, loyal, experienced old-style politician as leader. Cleverley, if he makes a reasonable job of the Home Office, will prove difficult to beat in any future leadership contest.
He is a bit lightweight but will be a contender as will Barclay, I would make one of those 2 the favourite with Tory MPs certainly when Sunak goes but if Braverman or Badenoch got to the membership then they would also have a chance
Badenoch, Hyufd? Really?
She's become invisible.
Cleverly's been a good senior minister so far, I would say, arguably the standout performer in the Sunak government. He's clearly a capable administrator and no fool.
But I cannot think of anything he's said (rather than done) in any of his roles, even though I must have seen him making speeches and pieces to camera.
So however good he is at running a department, I wonder whether he would be a good Leader of the Opposition.
That's why he has a decent chance in the 2025 leadership election.
He is a bit "the GE defeat was a temporary aberration, we need to continue looking like a government" candidate (see Hague, MiliEd). When they lose, that's when you get the nutter (IDS, Corbz), before the "LotO who looks Prime Ministerial" candidate (Cameron, Starmer).
The advantage for the Conservatives in choosing Braverman sooner is to get the insanity out of the way, because it's probably necessary.
Doesn't mean the nutter can't give the liberal centrist establishment a fright though, as Corbyn did in 2017.
If the economy is in a poor state all bets are off
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
It isn't failing for those who voted to end free movement and get higher wages.
Most of the richest, certainly if they were graduates and the big corporations backed Remain
It turns out that Stuart Rose was right. Cut off from a pool of biddable labour, British employers had to raise wages for the lowest paid and start investing.
Except immigration is higher than ever in the last 2 years, nearly a million. So that pool of biddable Labour is rapidly growing.
Indeed it looks more like more immigration spurs more employment!
With their history, it would frankly be incredible if most Jews DIDN’T care about Israel
Of course, Israel is the only nation in the world with a Jewish majority, therefore the only nation in the world Jews can truly be safe
Is the only place that members of a particular religious, ethnic or ethno-religious group can truly be safe in a nation where they are a majority? That view is both depressingly pessimistic and harks back to a some 19th-century notion of the nation state built around an ethnos that I thought we had long since abandoned.
We should make the world safe for all minorities and majorities.
What does it mean to make the world safe for majorities if you deny their right to remain majorities?
I would want to interrogate what you mean. Individuals have rights. Individuals have the right to safety and to be allowed to express their identities. What does it mean to say a group has the right to remain a majority?
Let's say you follow religion X and you live in a country that has a majority of other people who follow religion X. What happens if a bunch of your countrymen convert to a different religion or abandon any religion (as is happening with Christianity in the UK)? What does a "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean in that situation? Do you get to force your countrymen to not change religion? Do you get to expel them? What happens if your coreligionists just happen to have fewer kids and a minority group are a bit more fecund, until one day you are in the minority? Should your "right to remain [a] majorit[y]" mean you get to decide how many kids other people have?
It seems to be illiberal and undemocratic to state that a nation state must retain a certain religious or ethnic majority.
I guess you may be alluding to ideas around abolishing the Israeli state, subsuming it into some larger Israel/Palestine single state. That raises different questions. I think the people of Israel should get to decide what happens to them, so I would not want to see any change in the nation that is not supported by democratic majority. So, to take a different example, if Moldovans want to merge with Romania and cease to be the Republic of Moldova (and Romanians agree), then that should happen, and if Moldovans don't want to merge with Romania and they want Moldova to continue as a separate country, then that should happen.
Agree with this. I have long held that the Nation State is the best guarantee of democracy and stability for the people living within its boundaries. But that does not mean that any individual Nation State has a right to continue to exist if that is not what the people want. It can either merge into a larger nation state or split into a number of smaller ones that reflect the wishes of its communities.
I do think that a set of very basic international rules - such as those covered by the war crimes and crimes against humanity laws which have been discussing - should also exist and Nation States should be held to account against them. This should, in theory at least, offer the sorts of protection we want to see for minorities, whther they are religious, racial or gender based.
I also like a bit of Nation State but I feel it's a good thing not a bad thing if certain fundamentals (over and above those you reference regarding war and atrocities) are enshrined somewhere superior to it. An example would be the right of girls to go to school. Or (still on gender equality but more relevant to the western world) female reproductive rights - a minimum threshold there such that (eg) a country cannot outright prohibit abortion.
Of course a supranational body can't 100% enforce such principles on a recalcitrant or dissenting Nation State, nevertheless I think the more we introduce and support such structures, and the more teeth they have, the better. This should be the direction of travel imo rather than leaving them, ignoring them, defanging them, or generally giving them the proverbial finger and saying "nope, what the elected politicians of a country say goes as regards that country, end of".
One would need a world army/gendarmerie to enforce such things, and I see no appetite to create one.
Ok but ideal world direction of travel, I mean. Also even if not enforceable it's good if you can put friction in the way of elected politicians wanting to do grim things that violate fundamental human rights like outright bans on abortion.
Thought experiment: Imagine Leeds City Council wants to ban abortion in Leeds in response to voter demand in Leeds. That's democratic yes? Course it is. The people of Leeds have spoken. But what we say to Leeds City Council is: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body (Westminster) that forbids it.
Now ratchet up a notch. Westminster wants to ban abortion in the UK in response to voter demand in the UK. Democratic? Again yes. Very much so. But what we should imo be saying to Westminster is as before for Leeds: Sorry, you can't do that. There's a higher body that forbids it. Same thing. Same principle.
In this case the 'higher body' could be national (Supreme Court) or (better) international. Course national leaders could still do shit like banning abortion at the end of the day (because like you say they control the police and the army) but we've put some friction in there. We've made it harder for them.
Why would I wish to do so? I’m not my brother’s keeper.
Jesus didn't annoint the Nation State as the boundary of a person's desire for a better world.
FWIW - I do expect a vote of confidence in Sunak soon but that the rebels will struggle to muster a maximum of 80 votes.
Then the Tories are fools, staying on board the Titanic even after the iceberg was struck and with an available lifeboat.
Not because of Braverman, the government is well shot of her, but they'd be well shot of Sunak too. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
If the ERG have the numbers to remove Sunak now then Braverman would be the likely favourite to replace him as PM
Bullshit.
Braverman would not make the top 2 in the MP choice. She'd barely have the numbers to be nominated.
Quite right too.
Judging by TwiX she’s rallied the right to her cause. Question is - how big is that faction in the PCP?
Whatever happens, she has made herself a significant voice in Toryism. When Sunak goes - as he will - she will be extremely hard to ignore. And her large majority means she is highly likely to survive a bad defeat
The next leader will have to placate her
For a faction to get someone into the final round, they need about a third of the Parliamentary party. So 115 or so now, God knows how few after the election. Seems plausible that "the trouble with Rishi is he's not right wing enough" faction can get a name through to the membership. And unless they are totally rubbish, they will win.
If that name isn't Braverman, who is it? I suspect Badenoch has been a bit mugged by reality and might now be in the "steady as she sank but better" lane. More Hague than Portillo, so to speak.
And what if the result turns out like one of Electoral Calculus's more pessimistic projections for the Tories? Supposing they are down to 100? Who leads then?
EC gives a good indication of which Tory MPs might survive such a meltdown (I believe Sir Christopher Chope is one of them) but I don't know the names well enough to hazard a guess as to whether it would a pro-Suella rump.
We also need to see the map with all the new selections.
To return to South Hampshire, at the moment Flick Drummond (harmless moderate) is MP for the insanely safe Meon Valley. She now has Winchester to fight on the new boundaries, which looks like Losechester for the Conservatives.
Knock it off, Stuart.
You are not really kidding us there is a person, let alone an MP, called Flick Drummond.
Not just that, but her husband is called Hereward.
Not so much Woke as Wake.
And she was born in Yemen so she's just the sort of person Braverman wants on an early flight to Rwanda.
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
It isn't failing for those who voted to end free movement and get higher wages.
Most of the richest, certainly if they were graduates and the big corporations backed Remain
It turns out that Stuart Rose was right. Cut off from a pool of biddable labour, British employers had to raise wages for the lowest paid and start investing.
Except immigration is higher than ever in the last 2 years, nearly a million. So that pool of biddable Labour is rapidly growing.
Indeed it looks more like more immigration spurs more employment!
Post-Brexit, according to Jonathan Portes, the skill level of immigrants has been higher.
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
It isn't failing for those who voted to end free movement and get higher wages.
Most of the richest, certainly if they were graduates and the big corporations backed Remain
It turns out that Stuart Rose was right. Cut off from a pool of biddable labour, British employers had to raise wages for the lowest paid and start investing.
In 2021 and 2022, I got a new job in less than a month and since then turned down three offers of better paid (by £10-15k) jobs because the new job rocks. In late 2023 I can't get arrested.
That upsurge was shot dead when they turned the immigration taps back on.
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
It isn't failing for those who voted to end free movement and get higher wages.
Most of the richest, certainly if they were graduates and the big corporations backed Remain
It turns out that Stuart Rose was right. Cut off from a pool of biddable labour, British employers had to raise wages for the lowest paid and start investing.
Except immigration is higher than ever in the last 2 years, nearly a million. So that pool of biddable Labour is rapidly growing.
Indeed it looks more like more immigration spurs more employment!
Another Brexit success.
So increased immigration has driven up wages, and that is a Brexit success?
(Worth recalling that the Spec has often been pro-Sunak - onetime editor James Forsyth was Sunak’s best man etc)
“Braverman’s letter is an evisceration of the Prime Minister’s brand of Silicon Valley liberalism as elitist, soft-bellied, driven by status, and too squeamish for a dangerous world. When she concludes with a vow to continue supporting ‘an authentic conservative agenda’, she is telling the Prime Minister and, more importantly, the voters that he’s not only clueless, out-of-touch and ineffectual, but that he’s not a Conservative.”
I did tell you that the Speccie was a shitrag espousing toxic, outdated, bigoted, bollocks, now, didn't I. But oh no you wouldn't listen and yet here we are.
- the team is ALWAYS bigger than the individual - it's always important to go with dignity, even if you don't think it's your fault
A bit late for that. I would imagine that she considers herself loyal to the true conservative team and it is dignified to challenge a usurper PM.
Yes I think that’s right. And she has a point. Sunak is unelected and has no mandate - his only mandate is from the winning manifesto of 2019
She’s arguing that the manifesto is bigger than him
As I said yesterday all Sunak has done is bring forward the Tory civil war so it now happens before the election, in public, and meanwhile his asinine promotion of Cameron is likewise unraveling - and will only get worse as people scrutinise his finances as he squats, unelected, in the Lords
Sunak made a howling error - despite all the praise he got oh here
it all dates back to the fault line created by Brexit. It's incurable
Brexit is not a fault line, its history. Its done, we've moved on.
Even Keir Starmer has moved on, its only diehards like you and Scott that haven't.
The next election will not be decided by Brexit..
I appreciate you’re a pugnacious, dogmatic libertarian, pouring thousands of words out a day on here of your simplistic sub-Randian ‘solutions’ to the most complex and intractable problems that have baffled minds far greater than ours, and if that floats your boat then fair enough. You crack on.
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
It isn't failing for those who voted to end free movement and get higher wages.
Comments
nothing worth worrying about as @TSE will confirm you are lucky if a header gets 10% of the below line discussion. PB stays fresh because we discuss whats current.
My favourite was always an article on Scotland during Indyref. You would have thought that would have had the Nats going but then they'd decide to discuss dress making. Whereas an article on London mayor elections would then get hijacked and we'd be mainlining porridge for 4 hours.
Its joyous in its own way.
A tiny bump in the road.
If that name isn't Braverman, who is it? I suspect Badenoch has been a bit mugged by reality and might now be in the "steady as she sank but better" lane. More Hague than Portillo, so to speak.
But the regularity with which the phrase is resorted to by US politicians or commentators who aren’t particularly interested in (say) universal healthcare suggests otherwise.
Also, when would it be safe but illegal ?
It’s just a bit too glib for my taste.
It has also altered its boundaries a number of times. That is about to happen again, the new seat of Fareham & Waterlooville has a predicted share for the
Tories of 37% with
31% for Labour and
19% for the Lib Dems.
So not that safe for a polarising candidate like Suella.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Fareham and Waterlooville
In the good old days didn't they just moan unattributed briefings to sympathetic journalists in the HoC bar?
I still think the polling will tighten a lot this year, but obviously the Tories winning in Jan 25 (as opposed to denying Starmer a majority) is a 10% shot.
If things are tight after the election, and there is a prospect of a short parliament, then obviously a Braverman LoTO would be a gift to Starmer.
When you're exceptionally wealthy and can afford to travel or find alternative safe arrangements outside of the law.
Especially in America. The law is for "common people", not the wealthy, and law makers are in the latter category. Bans won't apply to people like them.
The difference now is we get to see them at once, straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.
She's become invisible.
But I cannot think of anything he's said (rather than done) in any of his roles, even though I must have seen him making speeches and pieces to camera.
So however good he is at running a department, I wonder whether he would be a good Leader of the Opposition.
They have not released the ruling in advance and won’t . The government has no idea what the ruling is . Not releasing in advance the ruling to the parties involved is unusual but has happened in the past .
But to look at the shit show that your precious Brexit has made of the country, the lies that were told to get the referendum won and the associated catastrophic decline in the quality of governance we have been unfortunate to witness since 2016, and deny that it is a fracture is simply insanity.
Brexit will never go away. Because you can’t deny the reality that it is failing everyone except the super rich - for whom you are a most enthusiastic useful idiot - who lied so hard to barely get it over the line so they can more successfully pilfer the country. Which is precisely what they have done and are doing.
No. No, I don't, sorry.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/14/uk-signs-agreement-to-boost-trade-with-florida
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Hamble Valley
Unless she really hates Flick Drummond for some reason.
(Worth recalling that the Spec has often been pro-Sunak - onetime editor James Forsyth was Sunak’s best man etc)
“Braverman’s letter is an evisceration of the Prime Minister’s brand of Silicon Valley liberalism as elitist, soft-bellied, driven by status, and too squeamish for a dangerous world. When she concludes with a vow to continue supporting ‘an authentic conservative agenda’, she is telling the Prime Minister and, more importantly, the voters that he’s not only clueless, out-of-touch and ineffectual, but that he’s not a Conservative.”
Ouch
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/suella-braverman-hit-sunak-where-it-hurts/
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-sees-fastest-wage-rises-sectors-most-reliant-eu-workers-indeed-2022-02-25/
Most of the richest, certainly if they were graduates and the big corporations backed Remain
EC gives a good indication of which Tory MPs might survive such a meltdown (I believe Sir Christopher Chope is one of them) but I don't know the names well enough to hazard a guess as to whether it would a pro-Suella rump.
Compare that to the toxic Braverman
When you don't have the facts, pound the law.
When you don't have facts or the law, pound the table.
And those excellent economic outcomes happened with a full handbrake applied on any meaningful post-Brexit reforms or liberalisations.
When Caudillo Braverman seizes power in the pop up bubble tea cafe putsch of 2026, she needs to sack every single person in the civil service, and replace them with AI trained on the works of Margaret Thatcher
He is a bit "the GE defeat was a temporary aberration, we need to continue looking like a government" candidate (see Hague, MiliEd). When they lose, that's when you get the nutter (IDS, Corbz), before the "LotO who looks Prime Ministerial" candidate (Cameron, Starmer).
The advantage for the Conservatives in choosing Braverman sooner is to get the insanity out of the way, because it's probably necessary.
Yet I'd be an awesome Secretary of State. I'd actually give schools the chance to do some fucking teaching rather than whatever drunken bollocks emanates from the fetid skulls of loons like Spielman and Gibb.
Just sayin’
Not that different to Truss I don't think, though he did keep a lot of the same people initially.
The thought that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare is not pabulum at all but, if thought through would be a highly progressive step in social policy. It would add hugely to the sum of human happiness. A bit like the thought that the National Sickness Service we have should instead be a National Health Service.
Yesterday was 8. Now 11.
Cleverly shortening. Looks increasingly likely the Final will be Badenoch v Cleverly.
To return to South Hampshire, at the moment Flick Drummond (harmless moderate) is MP for the insanely safe Meon Valley. She now has Winchester to fight on the new boundaries, which looks like Losechester for the Conservatives.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-67410207
Thatcher, May, and Johnson won votes of confidence (de facto and de jure) and were gone with days/weeks/months of the confidence vote.
You are not really kidding us there is a person, let alone an MP, called Flick Drummond.
Whereas others of the 2005 gang have been in or around the top since the beginning, with a few gaps. Only Gove and Hunt have been there at the beginning and, now, the end.
We all know she will surprise on the upside.
'Safe, legal and rare' exactly describes my aspiration and is a perfectly reasonable goal for a nation's social policy. 'Safe but illegal' would of course be for example, medically conducted terminations in jurisdictions where this was illegal.
I struggle to imagine the mindset of anyone who would not like a society in which abortion is much rarer than it is.
If the economy is in a poor state all bets are off
I backed him (and modesty prevents me from mentioning I posted that this looked like value) on 13th at 5.7.
He's now 5.6.
(BF price)
Indeed it looks more like more immigration spurs more employment!
"Family reunited with pet emu caught on doorbell camera"
Not so much Woke as Wake.
But that's the country, not the population - most of whom would abhor the way this man has been treated.
The country has become what it is because it's been led by small-minded zealots who are only worried about their own, their family's and their friends' wealth accumulation.
Not sure at all what faction Sunak represents, which is perhaps why he struggles so much.
Asking for an incredulous friend on his third pint.
That upsurge was shot dead when they turned the immigration taps back on.
The same list that made Charlotte Owen a peer.
Tough to sell on the doorstep.