Boris to lead Reform UK? – politicalbetting.com
Boris to lead Reform UK? – politicalbetting.com
Assume for a moment that you are Boris, and that you would like to be Prime Minister again. What are your prospects of regaining the Tory leadership?
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The Tory Reform Group (https://www.trg.org.uk) is a ready-made vehicle for this, nominally at least
The thought that Reform has not one but two potential leaders both of whom are substantially more interesting in media/PR terms than all the other party leaders or possible candidates put together is strange.
I would bet against it however
Only problem is that it might genuinely tempt him, and it's not utterly impossible that Nick's fanciful projections actually come about.
And just about possible. If I was Boris, I’d do it for the LOLZ
However there is one ideological issue. Boris is One Nation, Big Spend, Pro Immigration. That ain’t Reform
Boeing 737 issues. An apparent whistleblowing in the comments of the Leeham News -
https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installation-inspection-procedure-at-boeing/#comment-509962
Biden-Haley 2024
Nikki as his VP pick?
It's a regular thing, and nothing to get too upset about.
(Bugger. I have to write it now.
Boris leading the Tories again is not going to happen. Regardless of whether members would vote for him or not he wouldn't get through the MPs - didn't last year, wouldn't after ELE clears so many of his remaining supporters into the gutter.
So, defect to lead the FUKers? A great narcissistic blaze of glory. Everyone in the country talking about HIM once again. And as the FUKer vote doubles overnight, the defections of doomed anyway Tory MPs begins in earnest...
Rather than a merger, in Nick’s fantasy more likely a deathmatch?
But what happens to Farage? Does he join the Tories and become their leader? What would polls show with Con leader farage, and Ref leader Boris? It would be like a reversed engineered 1980s.
Are we really destined to 18 years of Labour government with all those non entities they have as MPs and shadow cabinet 😖
"..someone else will have been made leader post-Sunak. Will they be in a hurry to welcome a rival back in a by-election?"
The way this could happen would be if a Johnson loyalist were to stand for the leadership election explicitly on the basis of engineering a by-election for Johnson to return to the Commons and then to stand down in his favour, so Johnson could become leader.
But I'm not really sure Johnson wants to be PM again. I think his position of being the King-over-the-water probably suits him.
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
Boris would maybe be interest in leading a merged Tory and Reform Party under FPTP or even Reform alone under PR, he has no interest leading Reform under FPTP
'Taint gonna happen, of course, if only because of the skill required to engineer such an outcome. You think Boris possesses it? Or Reform?
I can see it appealing to Boris. It's a stunt, that requires little hard work and would inspire a lot of column inches. Reform might even buy it. Their chances of being taken seriously would improve, although that's not saying much.
I just can't see the GBPublic buying it though.
Personal disclaimer - I once voted for Boris. You can fool some of the PtP all of the time, and all of the PtP some of the time, but.....
Hmm.
However, he doesn't do politics very well and has shot himself in the foot too many times. The biggie, for me, is HS2. Just do it. Stick with it. Keep banging on about levelling up the North and that HS2 is just the start. Show confidence in the future.
Instead it was cancelled with some mealy mouthed comments about funding other things, which turned out to be not actual things to be done, but examples of projects that could be done. I think that was when I finally had enough.
It will be refreshing to have a Labour government. Some things will get better - the NHS almost certainly, although how is not easy to see. But at least PB's horde will have someone else to moan on about.
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
The fact some of the original Jews descendants might now be secular doesn't change that.
Johnson is a fool in many ways. But not, I think, in that way.
At a similar moment in Mrs T's time as PM though things were tough we had an idea of her core non negotiable principles, some idea of her direction of travel, and a perception of her leadership capacity.
I have no idea what Sunak's core principles or political beliefs are, or his direction of travel.
This is why, it seems to me, that in tough times a sense of hope is also lacking. And Labour is, perhaps understandably, little better.
While of course the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Admittedly, May, Howard and Corbyn all became leaders in their sixties.
And they all had in common that none of them were election winners, with the sort of exception of May.
But how many candidates for seats over the age of sixty are selected unless they're already in Parliament?
Plus, it means missing out on ten years of earning lovely amounts of cash on the after-dinner circuit which he will need to pay for his young family's school fees.
I don't see him making a comeback.
Even allowing for his massive ego.
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
Delaying it is only making things worse.
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
You've just admitted that, up front. Some don't, in your own freely expressed words. Therefore the descendants of Jews at time = t can't all belong to the Jewish religion just because of their birth and ancestry.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68082750
https://twitter.com/TahirAliMP/status/1750173546913939494
1. You spend more than half the year away and often travel to poorer countries than us. Your perspective on services in the UK not being that bad whilst sat in Vietnam doesn't really reflect the lived reality of people living in Vange*
2. You lean to the right politically so put a glass half full spin on things when the right are in office
Sunak is not a corrupt liar like Boris, nor an idiotic gambler like Truss. So he is better than them. The problem is that being better than Truss or Johnson doesn't make him any good. He is incompetent but not as much so. He is a liar but not as brazenly. He has tanked the economy but not as quickly.
The Tories main problem now is that they and their shills are selling that the sky is green. Taxes are being cut, services are being improved, people are being empowered. None of it is true - and lived reality for most is the opposite. But they keep insisting that the sky is green and anyone pointing out that it is blue is a leftie woke no plan Britain-hating liar.
The primary reason why the Tory vote share keeps sliding and sliding and sliding is that more and more people watch and listen to Sunak and his ministers, and say, "yeah but the sky is blue isn't it".
Compare and contrast.
1992: YES IT HURT. YES IT WORKED.
2024: No, it didn't hurt. But it worked fantastically. And is more fantastic every day actually. Don't go back to square one.
You can't sell people unreality. Own the thing like Major did and you can unexpectedly win.
What Justice Scalia Thought About Whether Presidents Are “Officers of the United States”
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-justice-scalia-thought-about-whether-presidents-are-officers-of-the-united-states
...It turns out, though, that there is now highly persuasive empirical evidence that at the time the Appointments Clause was drafted and ratified (1787-1788), the words “appointed” and “elected” were used interchangeably. This is one of the conclusions reached in a recent article by James A. Heilpern, a senior fellow at Brigham Young University Law School and Michael T. Worley, a Provo, Utah, attorney. Their study relies on both conventional legal research techniques and “corpus linguistics” research, in which computer searches are performed on databases of documents or congressional records or newspapers to determine how words and phrases were used at a certain time in history. (BYU Law School is one of the nation’s leading centers for legal corpus linguistics research, along with Northern Arizona University.)
Heilpern and Worley reach a number of interesting conclusions, but one is particularly pertinent here. They assert that the semantic distinction Tillman, Blackman, and several others have tried to make between “appointed” and “elected” positions
didn’t exist at the time of the Founding. It’s a linguistic anachronism. The words appear to have been used interchangeably, at least to the extent that an election was considered a mode of appointment...,/i>
Whereas some who were nowhere Siniai have converted to Judaism.
Koestler wrote an interesting book about it.
The fact two politicians are essentially establishment figures looking to work within existing constitutional structures to achieve policy objectives, as opposed to populist outsiders promising to blow sh1t up, doesn't mean they have a lot in common beyond that.
Haley and Biden disagree on nearly everything. They would probably privately agree Trump is dangerously unhinged. But she'd not say even that publicly, and certainly it isn't a platform for a functional four years.
If I want to get from London to Manchester tomorrow for 9 o'clock, it's £224.70 for a standard single. Another £234.70 to add a return after 6pm.
That's a gobsmacking four hundred and sixty quid I'd be out if, say, someone rang me now and asked me to pop up to their office to talk about some new business (yes, I know there's Teams et al, but sometimes people want to, I dunno, actually meet you in person before hiring you).
Round trip in my car, petrol probably about seventy quid.
That she isn't Nancy Pelosi.
Everyone, it seems, seems to want to move somewhere else. The grass is always greener etc.
Where I disagree with Leon is that I think that Starmer, while not having any brilliance, nor showing many ideas, at least has a degree of control over his party that means he won't be distracted by lunatic schemes to keep the lunatic wing in check.
Labour say this was inappropriate language.
Well they would say that, wouldn't they, because if the PM has blood on his hands so does SKS
That's a good £200 including petrol, insurance, maintenance, depreciation and so on.
Even if you go with the Treasury's parsimonious allowance it's £190.
Not including any parking fees. Not including having to drive for seven or eight hours (and even for that, add the toll on the M6 Toll).
I agree with you it should be cheaper. Much cheaper. But driving isn't quite so ridiculously a cheaper option when you weigh it all up.
To take just one point, how has Sunak “tanked the economy”?
All major western nations face tough economic challenges, particularly on energy and migration. America is, conspicuously, doing best (in terms of growth) - it just happens to be the world’s biggest energy producer. Meanwhile Europe is heavily reliant on imported hydrocarbons, at the same time as we are virtually at war with Russia, and the Middle East is roiled with violence
Sunak has not personally “tanked the economy”. The UK is experiencing very sluggish growth, which is dismaying, but the UK is probably growing faster than France and certainly faster than Germany
We’re all in a bind. Sunak is managing a mess as best he can. Specifically, he has not “tanked the economy”. Get a grip
I am reminded of John Major, who was also dealt a bad hand, although not as bad as Sunak's. JM was also a much better politician, but that doesn't alter the substance of what The Flintknapper is saying, nor the inevitability of the voters getting sick to death with Starmerism - in pretty short order, I expect.
Trump is on the caucus ballot which will determine who gets the delegates, and Haley is on a state-run primary ballot which is purely symbolic.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/explaining-nevadas-dueling-2024-primary-system-matters/story?id=104127101
When I take trains abroad in countries with roughly similar wealth-levels as the UK the price of a train ticket is often a third of that in the UK. How do they manage it? Where have we gone wrong?
So far they appear to have outlasted the IDF, insofar as Hamas are still in Gaza and haven't been driven from it, although that survival has been at savage cost to the people of Gaza (not that Hamas care).
Unless the Israelis want to leave themselves vulnerable to incursion from the north, there are limits to how long they can keep up this level of fighting.
Not sure where the obscene salaries of train drivers factor in, or if they do.
Chris Havergal
@CHavergalTHE
·
6h
University of York posts £24m deficit (£14m operating deficit) after 16% drop in international student numbers,
Column, on the Trump revival forcing more candid recognition of quite how bad the Brexit deal really is
https://t.co/xfnqg2hG0m
@DavidGauke
The implications of a Trump presidency on the UK's relationship with the EU is a fascinating question. I think this is right - it will be easier to make the case for a European Britain if Trump is in the White House.
In 2024, this difference may be larger than 2008 - we have been reducing subsidies (before covid, anyway).
Example: 15 years ago or so, the Government decided to move towards electrification (which pretty much everywhere else in Europe has been doing for ages). So they started electrifying a load of lines and ordered a load of electric trains.
The electrification cost more and took longer than expected (like I say, insane prices) so the Government abandoned it halfway. The Oxford electrification only got as far as Didcot. The Bristol electrification only got as far as Chippenham. And so on.
But they'd already ordered the trains. So we now have fleets of electric trains sitting around and nowhere to run them. (@Sunil_Prasannan can tell you the numbers.) One bunch of electric intercity trains had to be expensively fitted with diesel engines. Another set of comfortable 1990s electric trains - not that old in railway terms - got carted to the scrap yard.
This is just one example. There are loads. Like the fleet of Transpennine trains that's been sent back into store after three years because no-one added to the specification "the engines should not wake up the entire town of Scarborough when starting up at 5am". The entire industry is dysfunctional. Every five years the Government wakes up and notices this and thinks "ah, what we need is another reorganisation and a STRATEGY". You can fill in the rest yourself.
At least now he has the ambition fulfilled, and has the not insignificant excuse of having his premiership waylaid by the pandemic as fig leaf for his failure. Giving the job another shot would simply prove that the rest of us were right all along.
The next shock which hasn't yet kicked in is that shipping anything here from Asia - and that's an awful lot of things - is now 3x more expensive than it was because of the Huthi thing. Hasn't yet hit prices. But it's coming.
Please feel free to deny it all you like from your immediate vantage point in Vietnam. The more the Tories deny it the lower they get in the polls.
And it’s not entirely untrue.
But he has no strategy or foresight. The marbles episode was foolish. Cancelling HS2 up north (and then having your party in London campaigning that potholes were being mended with the savings) was foolish. This whole Rwanda nonsense is foolish.
And he should have understood that his USP, after three PMs increasingly inadequate in their different ways, was being the sensible, moderate, practical guy who would restore us to sensible politics. That was his mission, but he buckled at the first hurdle and is now doing all this nutty stuff, trashing his own brand.
Of course therefore the religious must be protected from discrimination as much as any other protected characteristic, as was the original argument I was making