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

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A good day to remind ourselves of...

https://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1445711840378511360

[CumbrianLefty]

There's a similarly deathless Twitter take even more recent than that (the "Gunnersaurus" one)

[beesley]

Being 'pro-LGBT' is just a vibe or policy stance now?

[Cassius]

Wo ist Fegelein?

[Torrain]

Can I pause this discussion about Johnson's recreation of the fall of Rome to bring you a ridiculous local government story?

FMQs: Nicola Sturgeon defends proposal to chop bottom off school doors for ventilation
SNP ministers plan to spend £300,000 chopping the bottoms off hundreds of classroom doors to try to stop the spread of Covid in schools.

Shirley Anne-Somerville, the Scottish Education Secretary, wrote to MSPs informing them that around 2,000 doors could be “undercut to increase airflow”.

In a letter to Holyrood’s education committee, she said between two and four per cent of rooms across Scotland’s schools and nurseries had been identified as having “problematic” carbon dioxide levels because of inadequate ventilation.

She said this was the equivalent of around 2,000 classrooms and £5 million would now be spent trying to improve their airflow using filtration units, extraction fans and by chopping off the bottoms of doors.

Each door is expected to cost around £150 to rectify, she said, resulting in a total cost to the public purse of around £300,000.

The implications for fire safety (which relies on closing doors to prevent airflow and slowing the O₂ supply) alone are wild. I think we invented windows for this very purpose. Obviously the addition of air filtration systems is welcome, but it's embarrassing that the rest of this proposal got this far.

[Torrain]

And back to the fall of Rome...

https://twitter.com/hzeffman/status/1489322969721618439

Either this is the most comprehensive "cleaning house" move ever, or the entirety of Johnson's senior staff basically just gave up this evening. Wild either way.

[Middle-aged Europe]

And suddenly Boris Johnson has run out of people to have those Downing Street parties with. Poor fellow.

[Blair]

It is funny how short Westminsters memory is but this is actually the second clear out of Downing Street. The first one happened in November 2020 when a whole host of people were sacked and replaced.

It followed with about 3-4 months of better management before even worse results.

Who will they blame after May when the new host quits?

It will also be harder to recruit people- the first wave was a clear out of people who were not popular and was seen as outsiders- Boris is trying to recruit to a number 10 on its last legs and which has a very public track record of publicly blaming staff for any problems.

[Blair]

What I love is that this sort of brown nosing thas gone on for decades in Westminster among new MPs but it’s quite nice to see it now having to play out in public.

https://mobile.twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1489337562921684995

[urutzizu]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/03/bank-of-england-raises-interest-rates-to-05

Interesting that despite the current situation UK is opting for going ahead with not one but two tax increases (NI and Corporation tax) and is raising interest rates a second time. It seems that in the rest of Europe this sort of strategy is seen as economic suicidal, many countries are actually cutting taxes further eg. France, Italy, or at least freezing them at current level eg. Germany and the idea of raising Interest rates seems to be dismissed out of hand as ineffective and even totally counterproductive, because inflationary pressures are linked to supply issues.

It seems that UK strategy is more of a return to Thatcher first term (1979-1983) monetarism. Is going to involve a lot more short term pain for yozu, but long term makes perhaps a lot of sense actually when you consider the constant carousel European electoral cycles, whereas the British only has to take place in January 2025 (once FTPA repeal is passed).

[TheTide]

Another resignation - Elena Narozanski of the Policy Unit. That makes it five in about eighteen hours.

[Torrain]

In addition to the above - reporting from the Telegraph says that Tory whips are being briefed to prepare for ministerial resignations.

Currently three are thought to be wavering. The only public name is Alex Chalk - the Solicitor General. 

[CumbrianLefty]

What I love is that this sort of brown nosing thas gone on for decades in Westminster among new MPs but it’s quite nice to see it now having to play out in public.

https://mobile.twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1489337562921684995

Almost makes me nostalgic for the early Blair years and their fabled "pagers".

[afleitch]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Jefflez/status/1489573009354641410

It gets worse

Absolute government capture of the human rights body.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

To the suprise of nobody it seems like "Operation Save Big Dog" which was supposed to be Boris throwing his underlings overboard to save himself has not exactly been a spectacular succses

[Blair]

To the suprise of nobody it seems like "Operation Save Big Dog" which was supposed to be Boris throwing his underlings overboard to save himself has not exactly been a spectacular succses

It’s become a very obvious attempt to show and remind everyone how good Pincher and Shapps are- the best political operations imo don’t need to brief newspapers about their skills all the time.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://twitter.com/stephenkb/status/1489701907043999745

[Pericles]

At this point, Boris Johnson should be sacked not for the parties but because he is clearly too stupid to be Prime Minister.

[CumbrianLefty]

Looks like Dishy Rishi is implicated in this one, too. Its not been a great few days for him.

[Blair]

At this point, Boris Johnson should be sacked not for the parties but because he is clearly too stupid to be Prime Minister.

The fundamental problem is that his successive failures and sackings in life (from the Times for inventing quotes, from the Spectator as editor, from his second term as Mayor, his 2016 leadership bid & his awful stint as Foreign Sec) have never resulted in anything more than a very temporary hiatus.

It is part of the reason, despite his electoral liability, I want him to be removed from office quite quickly.

[Blair]

An unrelated question but why does Stanley Baldwin seem so forgotten in British history?

I've just been reading about him recently and it's remarkable how little there is written about someone who lead their party for what nearly 15 years?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

An unrelated question but why does Stanley Baldwin seem so forgotten in British history?

Conservatives don't like to remember him because he's an embarrassment: despite being objectively one of the most electorally successful politicians in British democratic history, his governments will be forever associated with a series of gigantic policy failures on almost all possible fronts. And this is doubly problematic because while Chamberlain serves as a useful punching bag to contrast with Churchill, it happens that one of the worst domestic policy failures that Baldwin presided over - the disastrous return to the Gold Standard in 1925 - was one that Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, was implemented in as well. Which means it is more convenient to let him fade into the background.

Meanwhile, he's not a crucial figure in Labour memorialisation of the period because The Tragedie of MacbethDonald dominates all narratives about its general politics and because while the General Strike and the Jarrow Crusade loom large over the wider picture (and you'd think Baldwin would be a perfect villain here, and indeed he is), the emphasis on their memorialisation has always been on the heroism of those involved - a perspective issue, essentially.

[afleitch]

A very early example in Labour Party history of it beating itself up rather than the Tories.

[MABA 2020]

Looks like Dishy Rishi is implicated in this one, too. Its not been a great few days for him.

I see Sunaks fate as becoming one of those "prime ministers we never had" as opposed to prime minister.

[TheTide]

Looks like Dishy Rishi is implicated in this one, too. Its not been a great few days for him.

I see Sunaks fate as becoming one of those "prime ministers we never had" as opposed to prime minister.

Vastly less interesting than Portillo, Heseltine, Butler, Benn, Bevan, Bevin, Mosley, Powell, Corbyn, Clarke, Healey...