Originally published at: British newsreader tries to explain what the hell is going on in Parliament | Boing Boing
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Gosh, you British are sure having a great Tory time. Stiff upper lip and all that rot.
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And a lot of stiff drinks too.
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I’ll just post this from the UK politics thread we have going on.
Remember- this is one day’s nonsense.
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It just seems so odd and unfair that conservative politicians the world over are being made to look like total ass’s just because reality keeps hosing them. Is there no respect for total slimy creep politicians anymore? I don’t get it.
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For those just tuning in - the Conservatives have ditched the PM that won them the last election, and are in the process of ditching his successor who became PM despite being opposed by most Conservative Members of Parliament.
Since taking charge Truss reversed all the economic policies that got them elected, crashed the economy, fired her best friend the Chancellor and installed a rival who was so unpopular with the MPs that he was the first to be eliminated in the recent campaign for a new Prime Minister. He promptly partially reversed the reversals in the Budget.
After spending most of Friday most assuredly ‘not hiding under a desk’ (as reported in the official Commons record); Truss has so far had to sack one of her senior advisors, is up to her neck in a scandal about another advisor consorting with a warlord who is backed by Russia, abandoned a press conference in order to deal with the resignation of the Home Secretary (who had just been emailing sensitive documents from an unauthorised device) and then had to stand up in the House of Commons to deny a cut to pensions that she had previously said was going ahead.
Almost as soon as she started speaking, the cost of borrowing for government debt began rising again.
This evening, she mandated Tory MPs voted against a bill that would have enforced one of their manifesto pledges saying it was actually a vote of confidence in the government. Her whips rebelled and there were claims of Tory MPs being abused and manhandled by members of the Cabinet to secure the vote. Immediately, every political journalist received calls from Tory MPs saying Truss was finished. Oh and that vote of confidence? The government abandoned any pretence it was one five minutes before the vote closed.
Just to push it beyond satire; neither Truss nor the Chief Whip voted in their own vote of (no) confidence.
Meanwhile, she’s just appointed a man who ran a get-rich-quick scheme under multiple names as the new Home Secretary; a man who spent much of the campaign for leadership of the Tory party saying just how unfit Liz Truss was to be Prime Minister…
…And it’s only Wednesday and I still haven’t had a chance to cover the cigar-smoking Health Secretary attempting to sabotage anti-smoking programmes and illegally distributing prescription antibiotics to friends and family.
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Parliament or the game of cricket. Same thing.
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Reading a blow by blow description of what happened in Parliament earlier* was hilarious - just the pure, idiotic chaos of it is lovely. Had that happened all on its own, that would have been outrageous enough, but it’s within the context of a PM whose rein has been pure chaos and incompetence in its most concentrated form - constant U-turns on unpopular positions (that they swore they’d not waver on), etc. It really makes me wish US Republicans were this self-destructive. I mean, in one sense, they totally are - but they never seem to reap any actual consequences from their self-destruction. I guess we’ll see in the mid-terms. (fingers crossed)
*Which, if I understand it: The Labour party decided to renew the ban on fracking. Fracking is incredibly unpopular with everyone, including the Tories - except Liz Truss. Truss decided to cleverly fall into a trap entirely of her own devising, by turning it into a confidence vote that, if the MPs didn’t follow the administration’s line, they’d be kicked out of the Tory party. Frantic Tory MPs start suddenly expressing obviously coerced support for fracking. At some point in the process, someone informs Truss that she can’t expel everyone who is against fracking, so they decide it’s not a confidence vote. Except the debate/voting is in process, and no one is quite sure what’s going on. The Tories win the vote against extending the ban, taking positions incredibly unpopular with their constituencies, but enough vote against the administration position that had it actually been a confidence vote, the administration would have been totally screwed.
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Beware the Omnishambles!
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… to be fair to Her Lettuceness the UK economy has been headed toward the event horizon since that stupid Brexit bus told its first lie 
Only the Leavers are surprised
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I found this report (possibly not factual) to be both entertaining and enlightening.
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Feels like it’s both satire and roughly correct.
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Can we lock them in a room for a few weeks with no food and some barbecue sauce?
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What’s the next stage beyond an omnishambles? I’m leaning towards hypershambles, but I’m open to other suggestions.
I’m pretty sure that the SI unit for shambles is “a truss,” as in “This is a 7 megatruss hypershambles,” or “The shambles measured 8.6 on the Truss scale.”
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The current record for shortest-serving Prime Minister is held by one George Canning, who served for 119 days in 1827 before dropping dead of pneumonia. Here’s your chance for the history books, Liz!
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She became PM on September 5, so she is at 44 days right now. At this rate she has a pretty good chance of beating the record. Go Liz go!
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I beg to differ, the game of cricket has rules you HAVE to follow.
The Tories on the other hand think rules in Parliament are only for the peasants and don’t apply to their born-to-rule set.
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I have to say the bonkers non-sensical insults are highly entertaining.
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If she gets whacked, will they bring back Boris? I saw somewhere yesterday that he’s favored over Rishi Sunak (the runner-up last time) but is that even possible? That boggles my mind.
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