This Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

[YL]

The revenge of the membership on the wets who installed Rishi over our voted choices of Boris and Liz continues.

Damian Green fails to be selected as a candidate for Weald of Kent. Good riddance.

Regardless of the overall result of the 2024 election (I predict a 2005-sized Labour majority), it will continue the trend from 2019 where wet moderates (like Claire Perry) are replaced by populist right-wingers (like Danny Kruger).

The Cameron days are long gone

Can Green still go for the revised Ashford?

[YL]

One other interesting tid-bit on the electoral front - a couple of journalists have poked around the news that marginal seat MPs are increasingly looking towards safe seats, and it appears that there's been a formal process set up for those who are looking to participate in the "chicken run". Initially, this seems to have been set up by CCHQ to assist MPs who have been "displaced" by boundary reviews, but there's a sense that some MPs are exploiting the system in an attempt to survive.

We already knew Nicola Richardson (West Bromwich East) and Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) were looking to take that route, but Keiran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) sounds like he'll flee to Chester South and Eddisbury. Scott Benton (Blackpool South) is being very cagey about whether he'll stay in Blackpool or try elsewhere (*insert joke about what a great loss to politics Benton will be here*). And Eddie Hughes looks likely to leave Walsall to try for Chris Pincher's seat of Tamworth - assuming there isn't a by-election in the next 18 months...

Some of those seats are quite marginal, but only Eddie Hughes can really claim to have been "displaced" by the boundary review.

The nomination in Sajid Javid's safe Bromsgrove seat seems like it'll be a brawl between several incumbents. And a three-way fight for a safe Hampshire seat between Suella Braverman, Paul Holmes and Flick Drummond seems inevitable.

I think there are two safe Hampshire seats between those three.  The obvious thing to do would be for Holmes to take the revised Eastleigh, Braverman to take Hamble Valley and Drummond to take Fareham & Waterlooville.  But Eastleigh will be a Lib Dem target again and Holmes apparently wants Hamble Valley, and the view seems to be that he's likely to get it, leaving the other two fighting over Fareham & Waterlooville.

[YL]

I might be wrong but I can't remember any Labour MPs using the 2010 boundary change to jump ship; there's something rather undignified about a junior minister or random backbencher moving across the country for a safer seat.

The culture in Labour for a while has been that if the Boundary Commission screws you over, you're expected to suck it up. This is a relatively new development in historical terms and reflects various things that happened in the 70s and 80s.

Oh yes it was only after this I remembered Benn irrc got screwed over in '83 and choose to fight his altered seat rather than the safe seat he was offered in Scotland. An act of courage it must be said.

This is a myth: his old seat (Bristol South East) had been quite close in 1979 and would surely have been doomed.  I think the new East was actually a bit better for Labour than the old South East had been; after all it included Easton and Lawrence Hill.

Several of the "displaced" Tories are not in fact particularly affected by the current boundary proposals.  One person who it has been suggested may be on the list actually has a constituency which has no changes proposed at all.

[YL]

Solihull is (in)famous for the Greens winning in areas that previously voted BNP.

Not in Solihull constituency though.  There is some Green strength there, in Shirley, but I would be surprised if the Lib Dems fail to establish themselves as the challengers in the event that there does end up being a by-election there.

The BNP/Green ward in Solihull council area is Chelmsley Wood, which is in Meriden constituency and is part of the heavily deprived Birmingham fringe estate also called Chelmsley Wood.  It's not unique.

[YL]

Phillip Dunne (Ludlow, majority of 23k) also standing down. Seat was Lib Dem 1997-2005, and has been safely Conservative (with scattered opposition) ever since.

2001.  Al will be able to say more about how the Tories managed to lose it.

The seat is currently proposed to be renamed South Shropshire in spite of only minor boundary changes.  Those boundary changes, although minor, do add a couple of rural wards from Shrewbury & Atcham, and I've seen a suggestion that that constituency's incumbent might now want to follow those wards.

[YL]

Is this actually a significant group of MPs, or is it a small group of troublemakers who happen to have the ear of some sympathetic journalists?

[YL]

And note that reports from those who actually appear to have looked into the matter indicate that no pupil at Rye College identifies as a cat.

[YL]

So. Emails. About weddings. Emails.

I suppose this is something we can't talk about at the moment.

[YL]

The seat is currently proposed to be renamed South Shropshire in spite of only minor boundary changes.  Those boundary changes, although minor, do add a couple of rural wards from Shrewbury & Atcham, and I've seen a suggestion that that constituency's incumbent might now want to follow those wards.

We are going to be absolutely deluged with creeps and I hate it.

And Stuart Anderson, sitting MP for Wolverhampton SW, is on the South Shropshire shortlist, according to Michael Crick.

[YL]

I believe a Conservative MP has done the chicken run across the border! Tories have selected a Welsh MP for somewhere in Shropshire so at least it’s close!

For North Shropshire as well. Yes. I know. Yes.

Somewhat astonishingly he's not the only chicken runner they're standing for a Shropshire constitency: they've just selected Stuart Anderson (Wolves. S.W.) to run for Ludlow (sorry 'South Shropshire'). This is... a... a... brave... combination of selections.

How active are the Lib Dems in South Shropshire at the moment?  IIRC their base tends to be the hill country close to the Welsh border: Clun, Bishop’s Castle and so on.

[YL]

Stephen Hammond, MP for Wimbledon and one of the few of the 21 MPs who lost the whip in September 2019 to have been given it back and to have stood again as a Tory, has announced he is not standing again.  He only narrowly won and some calculations suggest his seat has already been notionally flipped to the Lib Dems by the boundary review.

[YL]

Did the breakdown in relations occur when Truss sacked Kwarteng or later?

They’ve never reconciled from the firing - by all accounts they haven’t spoken since. Kwarteng was summoned back to London from New York, but wasn’t formally told what was in store. His story is that he found out he would be fired via a journalist’s tweet, while in the car to Downing Street.

He views it as a futile attempt to save her own skin, six days before she was forced to resign herself.

That could be because it was...

[YL]

https://twitter.com/joss_prior/status/1708837819588722863

Who could have foreseen 😶😏

Why does she say Labour will back it?

That list isn't even Tory policy (yet); it's a list of proposals from the "New Conservatives", who seem to be a similar grouping to the "National Conservatives" but have possibly realised that a name which could easily be abbreviated to "NatC" was a poor choice.

[YL]

Step 1: Inherit a majority built on northern seats.
Step 2: Go to Manchester
Step 3: Announce you’re cancelling the flagship transport link to Manchester, while saving the link to London Euston
Step 4: ??
Step 5: Profit

One of the few things mentioned in the "Network North" document which actually does involve Manchester is extending the Metrolink to Manchester Airport, which should be an easy commitment for even this government to achieve given that the line opened in 2014.  Did Sunak not notice those yellow things going in and out of the Airport station from his helicopter?

(And of course stuff like this reduces confidence in the rest of the document.)

[YL]

Anderson is clearly in love with me the bright shiny object of attention.

The strange thing is that his seat is very marginal- even in a hung Parliament he would struggle.

Though it has very strange local politics and might behave oddly. You will note who actually came second in 2019.

[YL]

A bit of blue on blue action between the MP for Eastleigh and the former MP for Mid Bedfordshire

https://twitter.com/NadineDorries/status/1715677041582891454

[YL]

Meanwhile the Bridlington & the Wolds shortlist includes two sitting MPs, Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) and Richard Holden (North West Durham), neither of whose current seats is especially close to Bridlington.

Sebastian Payne is "reserve".

[YL]

Which "chicken runners" have actually found new seats?  Not counting those where there's an overlap with their existing seat, I'm aware of Eddie Hughes (Walsall N), who I assume is now the candidate again in Tamworth, Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton SW), selected in South Shropshire, and Simon Baynes (Clwyd S), selected in North Shropshire.

And who is trying but hasn't found a new seat yet?  There's Stuart Andrew (Pudsey), Richard Holden (NW Durham), Andy Carter (Warrington S) and Jamie Wallis (Bridgend); any others?

Of course some of these have genuinely taken a hit from the relevant Boundary Commission, though barring a big Tory recovery most of them would be heading for defeat boundary changes or not.

[YL]

Andrea Jenkyns has tweeted her letter to Graham Brady.

https://twitter.com/andreajenkyns/status/1724124983843045539

LOL

[YL]

Proper boomer Facebook post that

Which makes it even more tragic that she misses actually being a boomer by a decade.

I remember Obama (born in 1961) being described as the first post-'Boomer' president when he was first elected. It's almost as if these categories are not immune to being tweaked in order to fit certain narratives and prejudices. Or, perhaps more to the point, in order to fill the pockets of marketing companies.

I am not a fan in general of drawing arbitary lines between "generations" and giving them silly names, but in particular I have no idea how anyone can think that someone born in 1961 can be seen as the same generation as someone born in the immediate post-war years, certainly in a UK context.

[YL]

They can't even do a competent resignation.

[YL]

"Allies of Liz Truss"?  Who are these people?

[YL]

It seems like there's another fevered story about bringing Johnson back.  I haven't seen the details, so I don't know how the people pushing it intend to get round the rather obvious obstacle that he's not an MP any more.

[YL]

It seems like there's another fevered story about bringing Johnson back.  I haven't seen the details, so I don't know how the people pushing it intend to get round the rather obvious obstacle that he's not an MP any more.

The article proposes two options:

1. Priti Patel becomes “acting PM”, while Johnson is appointed party leader. They then win a glorious election victory, and she graciously stands aside for Johnson, who’s been elected in the snap election.

LOL

2. A Tory grandee stands down from a safe seat in the next month, and Johnson runs in the by-election. Which would be a choice, after Mid Beds…

Not only is there the question of whether there is such a thing as a safe seat in that sort of by-election, but wouldn't Sunak and his allies be able to block Johnson from being the Tory candidate?

[YL]

Second reading vote:
Ayes - 313
Noes - 269

No Tories voted against.  37 did not vote; only 8 Labour MPs didn't, suggesting about 29 genuine abstentions with the others being paired.