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

[Continential]

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

A Labour-SNP coalition is fine!

If you want to kill Scottish Labour’s recovery and hurt Labour elsewhere, yes.

[MillennialModerate]

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

A Labour-SNP coalition is fine!

Yeah No… aligning with the SNP in a coalition is akin to treason to voters in Wales and England. It would ruin Labours appeals to moderates

[Silent Hunter]

A supply and consent arrangement might be best.

[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.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

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

[Frodo]

Liz Truss Holds Commanding Lead Over Rishi Sunak In Race To Be Prime Minister
YouGov poll gives foreign secretary a 24-point advantage among Tory party members, who will choose their next leader.

[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"?

[lfromnj]

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-law-in-place-to-allow-businesses-to-hire-agency-workers-to-plug-staffing-gaps-caused-by-strike-action

Finally the Tories actually enact a good policy.

[Blair]

I look forward to G4S running the cross channel ferry.

[Continential]

https://mobile.twitter.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1550854259754811399 Why are the Lib Dems secretive on matters like this?

[Storr]

Never change, Tories.

https://twitter.com/Kaizey/status/1550444514816450563?s=20&t=HLaVU0QvdxEHasP...

[CumbrianLefty]

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

[EastAnglianLefty]

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-law-in-place-to-allow-businesses-to-hire-agency-workers-to-plug-staffing-gaps-caused-by-strike-action

Finally the Tories actually enact a good policy.

It's a dumb policy, but it's also an entirely ineffective one - the major employment agencies have made it very clear that they don't want this, because their workers would rather work in jobs where they don't have to cross picket lines and most of the industries where strike activity causes widespread disruption do not have a reserve army of labour which is willing and able to do those jobs - people who are qualified to be train drivers are either employed as train drivers or they've decided they don't want to work in the industry any more, they aren't contracted to employment agencies.

[CumbrianLefty]

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

[GoTfan]

What could be more electable than not importing two thirds of the UK's cheese?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Well, there are schools as well, but there aren't enough supply teachers to fill the gaps in the event of a teacher's strike (also the idea of a school mainly relying on agency supply teachers for even a day is ... ambitious).

[afleitch]

https://mobile.twitter.com/CovidRadicals/status/1551516857500327938

So this happened. Protestors storm a library and film and shoot obscenities at children. It was only a matter of time. Much of the TERF online chatter had been moving in this direction for a number of months.

[YL]

So, about Boris Johnson's meeting with former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev at a party near Perugia hosted by Alexander's son Evgeny [1], owner of the Evening Standard, in 2018, when Johnson was Foreign Secretary:

https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1551890281313837057

I guess the obvious interpretation of "as far as I am aware" here is that Johnson has very little memory of the event due to copious alcohol consumption at it, which would be consistent with his reported condition at Perugia airport the following day.

See also David Allen Green's take.

[1] Also known, thanks to Johnson, as Lord Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation.

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

So this happened. Protestors storm a library and film and shoot obscenities at children. It was only a matter of time. Much of the TERF online chatter had been moving in this direction for a number of months.

Wow. Absolutely horrifying that the rise in Anti-LGBT violence is happening even over there. The worst among us are absolutely being emboldened.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/07/26/the-conservative-party-is-ridiculing-part-of-its-electorate
Fairly boring article about the Blue wall with not much new about it but one particulary curious bit is it's coined a new name for the blue wall voters, naming them after the radio presented Timn Harford. I'm a listiner to his podcasts but it's an incredibly weird name to coin for a group of voters.

A rising sense of alienation is driving an electoral realignment. The Liberal Democrats made big gains in Woking, and a swathe of neighbouring towns, in local elections in May. Modelling by YouGov, a pollster, in July projected that the party would seize 26 Tory constituencies in what it calls the “blue wall” of southern England, and turn 11 more into marginal seats. “A lot of Conservative voters are pretty alarmed,” says Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader. “They think this government is incoherent, inconsistent and chaotic.” A colleague of Sir Ed’s dubs their target the “Tim Harford voter,” after fans of the presenter of “More or Less”, a cerebral Radio 4 programme about statistics.

[CumbrianLefty]

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

[GenerationTerrorist]

So this happened. Protestors storm a library and film and shoot obscenities at children. It was only a matter of time. Much of the TERF online chatter had been moving in this direction for a number of months.

Wow. Absolutely horrifying that the rise in Anti-LGBT violence is happening even over there. The worst among us are absolutely being emboldened.

We really do have a nasty, vile undercurrent at times. Something that Americans may not get to see very often. I love this country but,  me, some stuff makes me weep.

[YL]

We really do have a nasty, vile undercurrent at times. Something that Americans may not get to see very often. I love this country but,  me, some stuff makes me weep.

If they want to see it, they just need to look at some of our newspapers.

[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.

[NewYorkExpress]

Prince Charles's charitable fund got a million pound donation from Osama Bin Laden's half-brothers in 2013.

Britain’s Prince Charles is facing more questions over his charities after a newspaper reported that one of his funds accepted a 1 million pound ($1.2 million) donation from relatives of Osama bin Laden.

The Sunday Times reported that the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund received the money in 2013 from Bakr bin Laden, patriarch of the large and wealthy Saudi family, and his brother Shafiq. Both are half-brothers of the former al-Qaida leader, who was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan in 2011.

The newspaper said advisers had urged the heir to the throne not to take the donation.

Charles’ Clarence House office disputed that but confirmed the donation had been made. It said the decision to accept the money was taken by the charity’s trustees, not the prince, and “thorough due diligence was undertaken in accepting this donation.”

The fund’s chairman, Ian Cheshire, also said the donation was agreed “wholly” by the five trustees at the time, and “any attempt to suggest otherwise is misleading and inaccurate.”