UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[Lumine]

From this evening's audience:
Truss: Your majesty, it's lovely to see you again.
Charles: So you've come back again
Truss: It's a great pleasure.
Charles: Dear oh dear. Anyway...

https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/1580264025648431105

To think his mother got Churchill as her first Prime Minister and, out of all the flawed mediocrities that have been PM's recently, he gets Truss out of all people. On the bright side, he gets to be the charming one for however short those audiences last.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

From this evening's audience:
Truss: Your majesty, it's lovely to see you again.
Charles: So you've come back again
Truss: It's a great pleasure.
Charles: Dear oh dear. Anyway...

https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/1580264025648431105

To think his mother got Churchill as her first Prime Minister and, out of all the flawed mediocrities that have been PM's recently, he gets Truss out of all people. On the bright side, he gets to be the charming one for however short those audiences last.

Yeah, even lost-his-mojo postwar Churchill who was only good at housing policy looks like his mid-1940 self compared to this clown.

[DINGO Joe]

From this evening's audience:
Truss: Your majesty, it's lovely to see you again.
Charles: So you've come back again
Truss: It's a great pleasure.
Charles: Dear oh dear. Anyway...

https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/1580264025648431105

I wonder if Truss has a humiliation kink. From weeks of record low poll ratings, to her cabinet nearing the point of revolt, to being openly dissed by the King in front of the cameras, how has she not stepped down yet? Most people probably would’ve called it quits by now.

I will say, you have to at least admire her mental fortitude.

She is known to be into BDSM, as a thread on this board goes into.

Well, if all of this is BDSM,  someone should remind her the safe word to make it stop--I resign.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I wonder if Truss has a humiliation kink.

Didn't know Popbitch had a Transatlantic audience.

[Blair]

Truss is obviously charisma free and an ideologue but looking at the Conservative parliamentary party, the seats they need to hold and the economic decisions they’re going to have to make I’m not even sure there is a leader who could give them a respectable loss at this stage with the direction of travel.

I suspect the rush will be to get Sunak or Wallace but equally they’d risk a Braverman type getting elected- the Parliamentary party is not as moderate as people believe!

[Torrain]

On this - There’s probably some rough decisions ahead for Graham Brady. Assuming we see Truss forced out in the next 6 months (which sure seems likely at the minute), he’ll have to decide a nomination threshold with the 1922 Executive.

If most of the party favours a coronation, he could set an arbitrarily high nomination threshold (like, 100 MPs), in the hopes that a Wallace/Sunak/Gove/Mordaunt emerges who can unite the party. Problem is that there will probably be dissenters.

If the threshold is too high, the Right will probably accuse him of freezing them out, and if the threshold is too low, he risks someone like Braverman getting nominated too, and then wooing the membership with red-meat policy (which would probably be the final straw for a number of centre-right MPs).

And all this, aware that his own seat (with his 6,000 vote majority) is almost certainly lost.

[Cassius]

Thing is, Suella Braverman would be a better choice for leader than Truss, because at least she can deliver a sentence coherently and comes across as a (admittedly eccentric) human being, as opposed to a child's doll animated by the power of voodoo, as is the case for the latter. Plus, going full bore on anti-"wokeness", whilst it won't save the party from being taken to the woodshed at the next general election, is still probably less electorally cancerous than the Bride of Chucky's quarter-baked libertarianism.

The only argument I can think of for not getting ride of Truss is that it would be embarrassing to junk a leader so soon after the party junked the last one. Whilst that is true, on the other hand Truss' presence at Number 10 will be embarrassing for the party every single day that she remains there, so I think getting rid of her is a no-brainer. She's not going to change and become a well-briefed, charismatic leader with her finger on the pulse of public opinion, so the party may as well roll the dice again as its hard to think of anyone in the party who could be worse.

[DINGO Joe]

https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1580257195567955968

I guess the Labor number is most telling as they were pretty much reduced to their base in 2019.  The willingness to destroy all Tories will be the factor that determines how much tactical voting there is.

[DINGO Joe]

A little discussion on saying bollocks on British TV.  Apparently it was too much for the CCTV typist

https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1580282141329719296

[Joe Republic]

I guess I would count myself as one of the 11% of Labour supporters who approve of Liz Truss' job performance. 

[Badger]

From this evening's audience:
Truss: Your majesty, it's lovely to see you again.
Charles: So you've come back again
Truss: It's a great pleasure.
Charles: Dear oh dear. Anyway...

https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/1580264025648431105

I wonder if Truss has a humiliation kink. From weeks of record low poll ratings, to her cabinet nearing the point of revolt, to being openly dissed by the King in front of the cameras, how has she not stepped down yet? Most people probably would’ve called it quits by now.

I will say, you have to at least admire her mental fortitude.

She is known to be into BDSM, as a thread on this board goes into.

?

Wut?

For real?

[Torrain]

When the Foreign Secretary has to go on Radio 4, and bring up, unprompted, that we shouldn’t change PM, things must be pretty febrile within the party.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1580468411175665664
Worth noting that the rest of the interview is dire. Cleverly won’t let the interviewer finish a single sentence, and keeps telling her that we have to ‘stay the course’. When she told him people didn’t understand the budget, he gave a patronising response about how we just need to believe in economic growth.

It’s a reminder about the z-list MPs Truss has been left with, between those purged by Johnson, those who back Sunak and made her an enemy, and those who just refused to serve under her.

Also noteworthy that his ‘stay the course’ rhetoric is ringing pretty hollow this morning, when both Conservative backbenchers, and even the editor of Conservative Home are all implying that a complete rejection of the mini-budget may now be on the cards:
https://conservativehome.com/2022/10/12/its-now-more-likely-than-not-that-the-mini-budget-will-be-withdrawn-and-that-the-chancellor-may-have-to-go/

[Blair]

The fact he is foreign secretary is damning.

The fact he isn’t even in the top 5 worse cabinet Ministers is even more damning.

[CumbrianLefty]

The only argument I can think of for not getting ride of Truss is that it would be embarrassing to junk a leader so soon after the party junked the last one. Whilst that is true, on the other hand Truss' presence at Number 10 will be embarrassing for the party every single day that she remains there, so I think getting rid of her is a no-brainer. She's not going to change and become a well-briefed, charismatic leader with her finger on the pulse of public opinion, so the party may as well roll the dice again as its hard to think of anyone in the party who could be worse.

Getting rid of her *this* soon would make the Tories look utterly ridiculous, though.

(they do already, I know - but its still a consideration even so)

Ideally, she should be given enough time* for her total failure to be indisputable even to the most dim hack at the Barclaygraph - the question is if reality will allow that relative luxury.

(*which still doesn't mean *that* long, either - next summer at the latest)

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/nicholaswatt/status/1580517767299547136?s=20&t=qOJZLCKrh...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On a lighter note, a former Deputy Prime Minister has been accused of taking bribes from OnlyFans.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

On a lighter note, a former Deputy Prime Minister has been accused of taking bribes from OnlyFans.

To blacklist other adult entertainment websites

[Silent Hunter]

Christina Rees (Lab, Neath) has had the party whip suspended over bullying allegations.

[Illiniwek]

How exactly did Truss win the leadership election?

[Torrain]

Ed Balls

[Torrain]

How exactly did Truss win the leadership election?

She had been the darling of the Right for a while - throughout partygate, it was assumed that we were headed towards a Truss-Sunak runoff if/when Johnson fell on his sword.

Sunak was the most popular politician in the country during the first half of 2020, and actually achieved a net positive approval rating (nigh unheard of for a modern Conservative chancellor), but suffered a number of damaging stories in 2021 (see the greencard, his wife's tax status), largely assumed to be encouraged by Johnson, who saw him as a threat.

Sunak was still seen as the most viable alternative to Johnson among MPs, aside from a brief flirtation by some backbenchers with Penny Mordaunt. But Truss managed to consolidate support amongst the Right of the party, as well as those who thought Johnson had been unfairly pushed out, and eased past Mordaunt to clinch a spot in the run-off.

At that point, all she had to do was throw red meat to the party base, and let Sunak's reputation as the man who ended Johnson's career linger in the air.

[It's Perro Sanxe wot won it]

Is this the first government in history to attempt to apply madman theory in the field of economics?

https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1580554837900791808?s=20&t=CprNPHqg-D...

[Torrain]

Bit of an odd Westminster day. Some big names in Conservative politics have come out against Truss, with direct criticism from George Osbourne, and a call for her resignation from ConservativeHome founder Tim Montgomerie.

There’s been even more anonymous sniping from Conservative MPs (including a former cabinet minister saying Truss has ‘unleashed hell’ since becoming PM - because hyperbole seems to be baked into Tory politics now), but no one has made a public move or statement on the record against the leadership. Hard to tell whether we’re building up to open rebellion, or just starting a new, even less stable phase of the Truss premiership.

[Cassius]

The only argument I can think of for not getting ride of Truss is that it would be embarrassing to junk a leader so soon after the party junked the last one. Whilst that is true, on the other hand Truss' presence at Number 10 will be embarrassing for the party every single day that she remains there, so I think getting rid of her is a no-brainer. She's not going to change and become a well-briefed, charismatic leader with her finger on the pulse of public opinion, so the party may as well roll the dice again as its hard to think of anyone in the party who could be worse.

Getting rid of her *this* soon would make the Tories look utterly ridiculous, though.

(they do already, I know - but its still a consideration even so)

Ideally, she should be given enough time* for her total failure to be indisputable even to the most dim hack at the Barclaygraph - the question is if reality will allow that relative luxury.

(*which still doesn't mean *that* long, either - next summer at the latest)

Better to do it now when everything’s going to p*** in a kettle than to let her limp on into the middle of next year, fatally wounded and still fatally herself. Given that she appears to have fallen out even with Jacob Rees-Mogg, whilst other cabinet ministers are anonymously briefing against her, I don’t see how the party can possibly let her go on.

[Torrain]

https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianSmithUK/status/1580574612030517249

Former chief whip and key Truss opponent fires the starting gun.