UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

[CumbrianLefty]

Liz Truss and "pork" can form a few unfortunate double entendres too.

(especially given some of the rumours about her private life - Morduant has a relatively "interesting" one by usual Tory standards too)

[CumbrianLefty]

Liz Truss and "pork" can form a few unfortunate double entendres too.

(especially given some of the rumours about her private life - Morduant has a relatively "interesting" one by usual Tory standards too)

Please give us the tea

Well, there are limits to what can be said in a public forum. But the reported comment of one off the record Tory MP - "we don't need another sexually incontinent blonde as leader" - maybe sums it up.

[CumbrianLefty]

Johnson is a bit of an extreme outlier even amongst male political leaders in this regard tbh.

(I think you might have to go back to Lloyd George to get a comparable senior figure)

[CumbrianLefty]

It has to be said that an MP not attending a VONC without prior agreement from the whips (or some other unforeseen compelling reason) has always been regarded as a serious transgression by all the major parties, and has certainly been punished in the past.

Its only because Johnson has so effectively toxiified everything that it is an issue now (and yes, the contrast with Pincher is simply one of the many facets of this)

[CumbrianLefty]

Didn't Ellwood get delayed coming back?

That is what he claimed, yes.

[CumbrianLefty]

Ellwood is going to be allowed to vote in today's MPs ballot, after which the Tory whip will be taken away again. I don't want to see Tories criticising Labour's internal arrangements ever again

[CumbrianLefty]

So the top 2 choices for PM are Truss & Sunak? Wow, the UK is in an even worse shape than I thought.

Horrible choices.

Yikes. I think Penny would’ve been formidable in the next election.

And Sunak will almost certainly be the next PM. Electability argument will spook some hard right voters away from Truss.

Beautiful, thank you Britain!

https://twitter.com/oprosuk/status/1549698310113755137?s=21

https://twitter.com/oprosuk/status/1549697979602305024?s=21

Sadly - it take enormous margins like this to get a half decent Labour majority because of Scotlands silly SNP fetish. And even more sad is I can’t see these margins holding till the next election

Well, it depends if strategic voting is still all the rage at that point

As things stand currently, I see absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be.

And whatever happens with the Tory leadership, that's unlikely to change in the near future.

[CumbrianLefty]

At least Corbyn isn't in charge of Labour right now. Jews in the UK would be at risk.

To the extent this is true in the first place, its as irrelevant to current affairs as can be imagined

You might even call it "whataboutery"?

[CumbrianLefty]

Meanwhile, our outgoing PM seems to be spending much of his remaining time in office cosplaying.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, but its DOING SOMETHING. And that's increasingly all that matters these days.

[CumbrianLefty]

Still haven't forgiven the Economist for some of its truly deranged stuff in the Corbyn years tbph.

[CumbrianLefty]

We do have maybe the worst "free press" anywhere. And this ties in with our outgoing PM being not just a "journalist" in that same press but a *columnist* - maybe the lowest lifeform of all.

[CumbrianLefty]

And there are the "assume the opposite of whatever they say" scribes, eg Simon Jenkins.

[CumbrianLefty]

No photo-op of BoJo with the Lionesses yet? That's not really like him......

[CumbrianLefty]

I don't have a very high opinion of the Tory membership, but this clearly isn't true and Sunaks ethnicity isn't a factor in why he's probably going to lose.

I find it pretty interesting, this total denial in thinking that Sunak’s ethnicity could play a role in both his leadership campaign and the general election. I saw a similarity in the Brexit referendum, where British pundits analysis was that the British xenophobia extended to East European but not to Commonwealth citizens, while I think it was pretty clear that normal British xenophobes extend their views to all foreigners not just to acceptable targets like white foreigners.

Racism - in all its forms - *was* a significant driver of Brexit support (though equally, racists weren't enough alone for them to actually win) but I remain sceptical it is a major factor in Sunak bombing. Indeed, in the absence of anything else many Tories would see the first ever non-white PM as another very useful stick to beat Labour with (whereas they have already had 2 female premiers)

[CumbrianLefty]

In mitigation though, its easily forgotten not only how badly Labour lost in 2019 but just how epochal it seemed at the time (all the confident proclamations about "realignment" and so on) and few would have given them much hope of returning to power in just one election then.

It is also far from impossible that what may well be to come breaks the underlying faith that many still have in the Tories as the "default" party of government, as happened after Black Wednesday (or indeed the Winter of Discontent for Labour) In fact, widespread voter enthusiasm for an incoming government was maybe only really seen once post-war - in 1997 -  and the way that ultimately turned out arguably shows that such a thing is not an unalloyed boon in the longer run.

[CumbrianLefty]

Starmer is not doing "far" worse than Cameron, or "about as bad" as Miliband - unless, of course, you are going to do that time honoured online thing of selectively cherry picking your polls.

Yes, he is nowhere near where Blair was - but so what? I'm coming to the conclusion that mention of him in this context should be banned - he was a one off that we will likely never see again.

[CumbrianLefty]

Braverman may actually be a downgrade on Patel, incredible though that does (quite rightly) seem.

[CumbrianLefty]

Truss sticking to the "no handouts when I become PM" line, despite increasingly desperate attempts by some suckers supporters to claim she is being "misinterpreted".

When there are mass deaths from cold/starvation and serious social unrest, what then?

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, and you might have thought Zahawi might be saying stuff along those lines as least.

What did he actually become Chancellor (however short lived it may be) *for*?

Apart from going on holiday, obviously.

[CumbrianLefty]

And if the worst happens, our FREE PRESS will still tell its captive boomer readership that trans people and "wokeness" are to blame (just look at today's ludicrous splash from the "paper of record")

There is no solution to our problems that doesn't involve burning our media to the ground, salting the earth, and starting again.

[CumbrianLefty]

Not being a ‘boomer’ I don’t have a Times subscription, but do share the article where the Times blamed the possibility of Winter blackouts on wokeness and transgender people.

I'm not convinced it matters (in terms of public opinion) what any news service with a subscription model has to say about anything. Some politicians might give too much credence to them, but that's more of a problem with said politicians than with the news services in question.

I used to believe this - not least because of the way their actual dead tree sales are on an inexorable downward trend (you rarely see anybody younger than about 50 actually buying or reading a paper) But the sheer scale - and effectiveness - of the job they did on Corbyn's Labour in 2019 has made me reconsider that, unfortunately. They still have the broadcast news channels totally under their thumb, and their often both lurid and totally dishonest headlines still scream out at people from supermarkets and petrol station forecourts - and just those *do* influence many people.

Thinking back, this was always a no brainer. Why would megalomaniac plutocrats still invest so much in such apparently doomed causes, otherwise?

They know how public opinion is moulded and manipulated.

[CumbrianLefty]

Not being a ‘boomer’ I don’t have a Times subscription, but do share the article where the Times blamed the possibility of Winter blackouts on wokeness and transgender people.

I'm not convinced it matters (in terms of public opinion) what any news service with a subscription model has to say about anything. Some politicians might give too much credence to them, but that's more of a problem with said politicians than with the news services in question.

I used to believe this - not least because of the way their actual dead tree sales are on an inexorable downward trend (you rarely see anybody younger than about 50 actually buying or reading a paper) But the sheer scale - and effectiveness - of the job they did on Corbyn's Labour in 2019 has made me reconsider that, unfortunately. They still have the broadcast news channels totally under their thumb, and their often both lurid and totally dishonest headlines still scream out at people from supermarkets and petrol station forecourts - and just those *do* influence many people.

Thinking back, this was always a no brainer. Why would megalomaniac plutocrats still invest so much in such apparently doomed causes, otherwise?

They know how public opinion is moulded and manipulated.

My thought is that the newspaper's attitudes towards Corbyn did not substantially changed between 2017 and 2019, and in the former election the newspaper caterwauling had very little effect.

Yes and no - the media was just as hostile attidudinally in 2017, but with much less actual intensity. It is as if after being caught napping then, they ensured they didn't make the same mistake again.

2017 never had insanity such as blithely quoting verbatim actual alt-right websites, for example.

And it had the desired effect on the public. Whilst initially apprehensive Labour people were frequently pleasantly surprised by their actual reception in the first Corbyn GE, it was a very different story two years later. Quite apart from the actual instances of assault against party workers (almost unknown in 2017, and pretty much omerta'ed by the media who did so much to cause it) it was almost routine for canvassers to be greated with streams of invective that were quite often the latest bit of nonsense in that morning's papers almost word for word save for added expletives.

The media decided collectively (and this very much includes its "liberal" part) that a left wing Labour party had no legitimacy - and if they had anything to do with it, they would not be allowed to exist. I also think this is an underrated factor in why Starmer's version is so crushingly cautious now.

[CumbrianLefty]

Some people getting very excited that the Tories scraped a distant (and maybe never to be repeated) second place in his seat last time round. God bless

[CumbrianLefty]

Some people getting very excited that the Tories scraped a distant (and maybe never to be repeated) second place in his seat last time round. God bless

I mean I wouldn’t be getting excited about a potential by-election if I were them, but they did get close in 2019 - the majority is under 2,000 (only around 4%).

I genuinely did not realise it was that close!

All other comments in this thread still apply, though.