This Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

[Zinneke]

So what realistically topples Boris within the Tory party? A more free market orientated wing with Javid coming back in the fray? A more authoritarian right with Patel and Gove?

[Zinneke]

Since there is only one Conservative on the board this is just going to be a lot of Labourites telling everyone how much they hate the Tories, like literally every other thread.

Amazing after all those years in power right wingers still have an inferiority complex online.

[Zinneke]

So was Javid drafted in in a "keep your enemies closer" logic and does that put him back in contention for eventual succession?

[Zinneke]

Reversing Cameron’s reforms feels like an express route to reliving the 8 years in the bleak, sub-200 seat wilderness that preceded his leadership. Nothing prolongs time in opposition like a purity spiral.

I just mean - vacating the centre-ground, as Labour races to claim it seems… tactically flawed.

And yet, what is different from the 2000s is that people won't stand anymore for bland Cameronite centrism. It's why Starmer's boring "I'm not the other guy" act means he isn't reaching the dizzy heights of personal approval rating as he should.

If the Tories go back to being what Cameron made them they will only win under similar circumstances to these : the alternative is so disastrous that they are just seen as a good stop gap.

But anyway there are clear contradictions between the libertarian southerners and Johnsonite northern Tory Mps with loads of subfactions. Will be interesting to see if the Tory party survives. Boris Johnson might actually have inadvertently earned himself forgiveness from God for all his sins by wiping out the disgusting institution almost single handedly.

[Zinneke]

Does she want to be fired in order to be the darling of the Tory far right?

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/NatConTalk/status/1658387633272242177

this is one of those cosplayers conferences surely?

[Zinneke]

This'll scare you: some of us on the right actually believe in and agree with most of the things said at these conferences.

Minimising the Holocaust? Believing 2/3rds of teachers are promoting political values just because they teach about critical race theory...critically?

Just accept you are an authoritarian at least. You want to impose your views on us, at the end of a barrel of a gun. Like Chairman Mao.

[Zinneke]

This has David Cameron's fingerprints all over it

[Zinneke]

I get why gambling addiction disqualifies you from being PM, but it doesn't seem to be that scandalous to merit a media blackout on the subject. Am I missing something?

[Zinneke]

Why would Payne immediately want to jump from think tank gig to MP so soon after leaving the journalistic gig? It seems like his revolving door is at maximum speed. Is he bored already?

[Zinneke]

The think tank "industry" is described as that for a reason.

I mean I don't even understand what the industry is getting out of it. I know the Institue of Economic Affairs was funded by the Tobacco industry, but like for all the insanity Liz Truss embraced I don't she even wanted to liberalize tobacco laws and move away from government policy prohibiting it.

If it's anything like the EU Bubble think tanks, then its a way to lobby without actually being labelled a lobbyist/interest group. Instead you are an "NGO/think tank".

There are actually some strict rules as to what the trade federations for example can or cannot do vs the NGOs and think tanks*. So outside of wanting to hide that you are purely profit orientated, it's actually in the interest of certain industries to fund a "fake NGO" that produces purely "think tank"-y reports in order to have much less scrutiny in terms of access to institutions, contact with policy makers ,etc.

For example, its a well known fact that most MEPs don't necessarily write amendments to legislative texts or written questions to the Commission on their own. But they cannot get caught essentially copy-pasting from an email by trade federation or major multinational lobby office in Brussels. So instead the trade federation creates a fake think tank that draft "independent" reports with "recommendations" that directly concern incoming legislation and maybe even get some independent consultants in to provide an extra layer of plausible deniability to ensure that these "recommendations" reach the required actors - and then are copy pasted as the MEP's amendment or written question.

I'm interested to hear if the above is the case with the UK. My prima facie impression is that the UK's think tank scene is vastly more inflated than the Brussels one per capita, and that is because it's also a hybrid of both the above use of think tanks and also the Washington DC beltway circuit where more ideologically-orientated interest groups outside of industries are better organised and also have almost unlimited donor power and thus need to set up think tanks as way to use the money to create a 3rd sector NGO/think tank bubble in their image. You also have the very British problem of MPs having to be the customer service of their constituents on top of mastering national-level policy so they need someone to think for them sometimes.

* and because of the above phenomenon, it actually means sometimes trade federations have less scrutiny than civil society actors. To enter the European Parliament for example they don't have to disclose who their funders are, but CSOs/think tanks absolutely do and it will get worse with Qatarigate.

[Zinneke]

The fact she isn’t doing an autobiography and her comments about the lettuce show a rather weird manner in which she is unable to actually talk about what happened in her premiership- almost as if it’s a repressed memory.

It’s almost Bushie Esque for old enough atlas users…

Was Bushie ever into BDSM symbology?

[Zinneke]

Did the breakdown in relations occur when Truss sacked Kwarteng or later?

[Zinneke]

I can see now why Coutinho is seen as continuity Sunak. Same The Apprentice candidate meets overprivileged high caste effortless superiority bitch vibes. Vacuous, careerist losers.

[Zinneke]

23 and high on your own supply you should add.

[Zinneke]

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.

Or maybe their Australian strategists are too Australiabrained to realise British private schools aren’t anything as ubiquitous as they are in Sydney.

~40% of Australians go to private school (higher in metro areas), that's why no Australian politician can touch private schools without backlash, this is not the situation in the UK

Wow 40% and they still can't deliver a proper Rugby team?

[Zinneke]

What is secretive about Johnson's private life?

Also, you forgot : gets a blowjob in his office from young staffers

[Zinneke]

Also just realised the nominative determinism curse of Tory MPs has also struck with Crispin's drug charges.

[Zinneke]

Also isn't GB News's original thing COVID trutherism and especially anti-lockdown. Johnson is seen as the ultimate high priest of those policies by them. And it's surely the main thing holding him back from being popular with the nutty Right.

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/giantpoppywatch/status/1722709351905865880

[Zinneke]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/michael-gove-kemi-badenoch-fall-out-affair-acquaintance-gxrwwl76v

Would this have been briefed by Badenoch or her team in order to rule out Gove for the Home Secretary job and also boost her image as a family values Conservative?

[Zinneke]

Truss is also on the US conservative-theocrat gravy train as well as being delusional

[Zinneke]

Ed Miliband has 2 kitchens?!

[Zinneke]

James Brokenshire's four ovens (I'm sorry, “two, normal, double ovens”) was another embarrassing kitchen faux pas.

These days having four ovens is actually achievable in a low income household given the advent of air fryer and all-in-one cookers.

[Zinneke]

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.

I'm confused, isn't this her book?