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

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That was a strange tweet from him, though maybe not quite as strange as Karen Buck's.

What did Karen Buck tweet?

An Ayn Rand quote…

A Labour MP?

Yep.

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Hilarious procession of Tory backbench MPs tweeting literally identical expressions of support for him.

Reminiscent of when they all sent the exact same letter in response to constituents complaining about Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle. It seems that the government can coordinate certain things, just not the ones that matter.

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From that video you can tell he is not a true aristocrat. Far too materialistic. I must say that I find Rees-Mogg quite vacuous, though sometimes rather amusing.

You can also hear it in his accent. Certain syllables have a more humble twang.

He actually sounds posher now, which makes me think that his current accent is to a certain extent affected to keep in the character that he has created for himself.

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Trying to take off my partisan hat here, but is it just me or is this conference one of the most sh*tshowy in recent memory? The messaging has been utterly all-over-the-place with several ministers dropping absolute clangers (Javid forgetting he’s the Health Secretary and not the Chancellor and spending his entire speech talking about shifting responsibility from the state to communities and families particularly comes to mind), and of course the head-in-the-sand attitude to shortages.

But, as Blair points out, the media doesn’t really seem to be picking up on this, despite the Torygraph and the Mail having somewhat turned on the government in recent weeks.

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This is utterly dreadful and, above all, just so, so shocking. I think the fact that the killing took place in a Methodist church on a quiet, leafy residential street and that, as Al said, the life and career of an incredibly long-tenured MP has ended in such a horrific manner just adds to the air of incredulity surrounding it.

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Even from an amoral, politically-motivated point of view, this really makes very little sense. The Tories are taking a potentially huge risk in wasting a lot of political capital and causing public perceptions to shift against them, all as a favour to one backbencher.

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The current expectation is for a final two between Truss & Sunak- ironically Truss who was the Cameronite remainer appears to be playing for the lane further to the right. (See her work as Women & Equalities around trans rights & the fact it was briefed that she opposed the tax hike)

Truss may have been a Remainer, but she has always been considered pretty far to the economic right within the party. She was part of that section of the 2010 intake who were much more openly economically libertarian/Thatcherite than the image Cameron was trying to project; she, along with Raab, Kwarteng, Patel and Skidmore, was one of the authors of the 2012 polemic Britannia Unchained, which infamously asserted that “the British are among the worst idlers in the world.”

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The blackmail accusations are totally unsurprising considering this government’s general approach to allocating local funds.

And yes, Johnson surviving for now would put the Tories in a really awful, bizarre limbo and be great news for Labour.

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Calm down guys, it’s just another work event. On his birthday. With cake.

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Lost among everything else today, but the Supreme Court made a really awful decision allowing a really awful policy, namely the Home Office imposing a fee of £1012 to register children as UK citizens, to go ahead.

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Interesting thread suggesting that the education divide at the last two elections was not merely a function of age, but was in fact still very much present even once you control for age (and indeed, the causation between age and education may actually be the other way around).

https://twitter.com/benwansell/status/1493892181051990019?cxt=HHwWhoCzhcLBr7spAA...

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I think it’s worth noting that Con/Lib voters are a pretty small proportion overall of the Lib Dems’ electorate (see Blair’s point about transfers in the Cambridgeshire mayoral election); but where they do exist, they happen to be important in giving the Lib Dems that final push over the top in a number of their key targets.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/DuncanWeldon/status/1507038079554568196

Fascinating graph. Thatcher-Major and Blair’s first term speak for themselves, I think, while it’s interesting that the second half of the 2010s is more a story of lower middle incomes doing relatively well, rather than the simplistic narrative of rising inequality often seen.

More pressingly, the 2019-2025 stats are incredibly alarming — this is the first time on this graph that every single income brackets has seen earnings fall, with the poorest of course being hit hardest. The truth is that this government simply does not care about economic growth, because, in between their economic policies, Brexit and culture wars rhetoric, they have calculated that to win they only need to pander to lower middle class homeowners and pensioners. Of course, with the way things are going right now, that strategy may end up rather backfiring for them…

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If this isn’t resignation material, what is? But we all know this government doesn’t adhere to any sort of conventional standards, and regards the ministerial code as a minor background annoyance.

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A Labour-LibDem government is more attractive than one dependent on the SNP, this is the opposite of a scare campaign lol.

The Telegraph's goal is to scare Con-LibDem swing voters surely?

Probably, though I doubt it will be successful at all. If you’re going to vote Lib Dem these days at a general election, it’s almost certainly because of an at least implicit wish that you want the Tories out, even if you can’t quite bring yourself to actually vote Labour.

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It's quite funny that a lot of Tories are forgetting what happens after you call an election- you have to have one!

An early election during a time with high inflation, stagnant wages & where your Government has not really done much would be very brave!

It's been forgotten very quickly just how bad 2017 was for Theresa May because ordinary voters did not understand why there was any need for an election- which built the assumption that it was to give her a majority to bring back fox hunting & grammar schools.

People do not like early elections that are triggered without a good reason!

Indeed, and considering that the economic situation is likely to be better by 2024/25 (or at least I think it’s very unlikely it will be much worse; wage growth is more up in the air, but inflation will almost surely be back to much more normal levels), it would be frankly insane for the interests of the Tory Party as a whole — which, of course, Boris does not necessarily view as synonymous with his own interests — not to wait until then.

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4.) Hunt- I wonder if he gets coverage purely because he came 2nd & because he's not in the cabinet. I very much struggle to see his appeal outside of ex-Cameron & May era Ministers and those worried about the Lib-Dems- but like Tugendhat he will become more attractive the more it looks like HMS Tory is sinking badly...

I think the other big reason Hunt’s spoken about as a potentially strong candidate in the media is that he is generally regarded to have done an impressive job as Health Select Committee chair, getting in some good jabs against the government’s more egregious failures on Covid. Now, this is of course makes him a relative Covid ‘hawk’ when compared to a lot of Tory backbenchers, but it could help him with the ‘One Nation primary’ you mention.

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Just a really terrible, awkward situation for Tory MPs on both sides of the divide. Amazing stuff!

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Imagine being in such a bubble that you think the Rwanda disgrace was a ‘success’ in the court of public opinion. The delusion is strong with this one.

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Imagine being in such a bubble that you think the Rwanda disgrace was a ‘success’ in the court of public opinion. The delusion is strong with this one.

Even more striking when you consider how well anti-migrant stuff *usually* polls.

Although it’s worth noting that public attitudes to immigration have actually got a lot more positive in recent years.

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My great grandfather was a Tory who basically came from the pages of Remains of the Day, given he was a footman of some sort who strongly identified with the house he represented. His wife was a radical leftist who forced him to resign to take up a respectable working mans job in a factory, to which he did, but he would always show up to work in the spats etc that he did in service. For her part, although she was involved in radicalism, his wife apparently never voted either because she didn't care about electoralism or even because she was ambivalent to women's suffrage.

There was supposedly a tale in my family (which originally hails from a very humble Staffordshire background) that a female ancestor of mine, while working as a lowly domestic servant to some great family, had been impregnated by the lord (naturally he would never have acknowledged such a baby, lending the story its unfalsifiable allure) and that consequently we were of aristocratic blood. The rumour is highly unlikely to be true, but despite its scurrilous nature was flaunted with great pride by a number of individuals in the family! Certainly goes to show the complex nature of such class identities.

I actually know disappointingly little about the English side of my family’s politics, despite them coming from one of the 20th century’s most politically infamous towns (no points for guessing which based on the county mentioned above!).

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Have to say, never thought I’d see him (semi-)voluntarily resign. The staying on until the autumn thing is interesting; I’m sure the official reason is summer recess, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the real motive was Johnson beating the length of May’s tenure, perversely odd man he is.

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https://www.twitter.com/PedderSophie/status/1544962473815580673

Ah yes the same Economist who backed him in 2019 and - arguably even more unforgivably - told people to vote Tory in 2015 (along with the FT and, incredibly, the Independent)

We are still paying a big price for that latter folly, and will do so for a while yet.

The Economist endorsed the Lib Dems in 2019. But yes, you are absolutely right about 2015.

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Its actually a mildly interesting trivia question - Sunak would be the shortest PM since when exactly?

Well Thatcher was shorter. If you limit it to shortest male PM, then I’m not sure.