This Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

[Pericles]

Wait Gavin Williamson was whining about not attending the Queen's funeral? What a hilariously petty drama this is. It does also remind us how Wendy Morton was not a good Chief Whip.

[Pericles]

Boris must have had a reverse Midas touch to so completely alienate the committee, even the Tory MPs must be furious at him.

[Pericles]

She can try elsewhere, but it's hard to see what she has to offer that would appeal to other associations. South Shropshire (currently known as Ludlow) will be an open seat but I doubt she'll have a shot at that. Maybe she could try for North Shropshire and hope for a swingback?

It was such a safe seat before the by-election that it could plausibly be like Christchurch in 1997-the seat had the biggest by election swing against the government in modern history but it was regained by the Tories despite the landslide.

[Pericles]

The Tory Party is clearly already in its comfort zone as a disorganised rabble starting a decade in Opposition, it's just a shame for the British people that they're still technically in government.

[Pericles]

Very tetchy Sunak interview for Sky News. Lots of talking over the interviewer.

He suggested Nigel Farage could be readmitted to the Conservatives - he’s attending his first Conservative conference this year, since he left the party, in 1993. Which is perhaps the most “abandon swing voters, throw red meat to an imagined base” move possible.

The whole thing builds to this fairly unconvincing pronouncement:
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1709182436465062380

An underdiscussed point. Farage is just really unpopular, and polls have found him net negative even among Leave voters. The fact he got 1/3 of the vote on a very low turnout should not have been taken as a personal endorsement of him by the British people. Some of his ideas and focus could be a lot more electorally potent should they be framed correctly and delivered on by the government (so not what they’re currently doing).

I remember Dominic Cummings said Farage was a big vote-loser for Leave in the referendum, but I'm not sure if he provided any data on that.

[Pericles]

Please give us a repeat of this absolute classic from last year.
https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/1582855807816720385

[Pericles]

“You either think this country needs to change, or you don’t. And if you do, you should stand with me and every person in this hall, you should stand with the Conservatives.” Sunak really said this!

[Pericles]

Also did Liz Truss seriously sign a copy of the mini-budget at that conference (source)? That really takes the cake for shamelessness.

[Pericles]

The issues a party chooses to fight on are indicative of its priorities, and the Tories picking this one just shows how out of touch they are.

[Pericles]

Peter Bone suspended from commons for six weeks for bullying and indecent exposure

Who knew Mr Bone was a creep lmao

[Pericles]

The Jenrick resignation really gives me the same vibes as Raab's resignation against May's deal. It's amazing how no matter what this party just keeps reverting to the same instability.

[Pericles]

Jeez the BoJo fanclub really had to pick the week of his inquiry testimony for their latest hype session.

[Pericles]

IMF seems to be warning the Tories against big tax cuts in the coming budget, which is interesting.

The Tories being too extreme for the IMF really makes me feel like we're back in the Truss premiership. Another market crash is absurd surely but this makes it feel like the adults aren't back in charge after all.

[Pericles]

A tight result in North Shropshire, maybe.

[Pericles]

He's right, but perceptions of competence and credibility are also extremely important. The public just don't trust the Tories anymore, it almost doesn't matter what they say their policies are.

[Pericles]

Great Yarmouth will be an interesting case study of this election. It has had a huge trend to the Tories in the 2010s (especially of course in 2019), and is one of the most Leave voting seats in the whole UK. As you pointed out though, it was much more friendly to Labour in the not too distant past. If non-graduate Leave voters are coming back to Labour more than other demographics, we could see that in this seat.

[Pericles]

Oddly most of the Red Wall seats like Grimsby won't be that interesting. Unless Labour's lead shrinks a lot it's such a big swing that we already know the outcomes there.

[Pericles]

If anything Clarke saying this kind of stuff suggests that not many letters have been submitted at all. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed.

[Pericles]

Would calling for a new election (late May/early June perhaps) "stop the clock" on a possible VoNC?

Or is the process of going thru a VoNC completely separate from the dissolution of Parliament?

I'm not sure if it's the same in the UK, but in Australia their Labor Party once pulled off a leadership coup on the day the election was called. The Prime Minister actually called the 1983 snap election hoping to run against the weaker Labor leader, but Labor made the change faster than he expected and then won the election comfortably.

[Pericles]

I wonder if some of these Red Wall seats are so marginal that their MPs are calculating that they're better off taking their chances as a Reform candidate than as a Tory?

[Pericles]

https://twitter.com/FinnBaker3/status/1779914781584921086?t=GAjZcPwvugZG-8Fyuljq...

Here's something that I missed yesterday: he was retirement number 100 overall for this parliament.

The correlation with 97 and 2010 strongly implies it's a way to jump ship when your party is heading to a defeat

The 2010 election was actually quite close though, I wonder if the Labour retirements changed the result in a meaningful way.

[Pericles]

An anonymous senior minister on their own party's caucus-

A senior minister was more despairing of the “utter madness” on display. “Do we really reflect society as a whole? I hope not for the sake of humanity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/20/you-cant-rule-out-a-complete-panicked-meltdown-tories-fear-wipeout-after-another-disastrous-week

Good luck going out in public and saying you deserve re-election.

[Pericles]

Lmao, keep failing Liz-
Liz Truss's book sells just 2,228 copies

By comparison, David Cameron managed to sell about 21,000 copies of his memoir in its first week, while Tony Blair’s autobiography sold 92,000 in the same timeframe. Although Truss’s figures pale in comparison, she beat both on a copies-sold-per-day-in-Downing-Street basis.

Nielsen sales data puts Truss’s effort in 70th place on last week’s bestsellers’ list, outsold by titles such as the Ultimate Air Fryer Cookbook and More Confessions of a Forty-something F**k Up.

[Pericles]

Nadhim Zahawi’s standing down. Very… Zahawi retirement statement, lots of awkwardly inserted Shakespeare references, and some odd head-shaving anecdotes to pivot to his childhood in Baghdad.

Wonder whether the open seat is more favourable to the local Lib Dems, or if they’d have rather run against Zahawi, post tax-scandal. They’ve got a hefty majority on the local council, but have had to tussle with Labour (who don’t hold a single council seat) for second place at the constituency level.

That is someone who really did not live up to the hype.