I put a few quid on Liam Fox. Brexiter, solid grassroot support, cabinet experience, not insane like Crabb, safe pair of hands. I think he timed it well and has a chance.
A May cabinet will have to sustain brexiteers’ attacks from day 1, not the position you want to be in. And I keep thinking she’d prefer to win a general election and have a clear mandate to rule for two Parliaments. Then again, we might not get a GE for another 3 years…
I really, really don’t think Boris will be PM, and even if he does, he won’t last until Christmas.
I honestly didn’t get all the furore over Werrity, tbh. Sure he’s a crony, but this is the UK government! Having cronies is basically a requirement for high office! They’d probably take your Tory membership if you couldn’t produce a crony on demand; all those trebles are not going to drink themselves, y’know.
I really don’t have a feel for what on earth the Labor party is. I get that they used to be about representing labor and when the UK used to have more of that they had a base, and I think post-Thatcher they were steadily decimated as the jobs vaporized, maybe(?). Now, they seem like they’re still Blair’s business-friendly party for white collar people who couldn’t live with being a Tory - is that fair? It feels like that’s why the leadership hates Corbyn, he’s not one of those business-friendly centrists, but an old-school democratic socialist, though I can’t keep up with the UK’s politics.
I don’t think the Labour Party knows either. And hasn’t done since at least 1997. Which is the problem.
But this is starting to feel like an SNP / Gang of Four situation again writ large.
Problem with FPTP systems, I guess. The parties have to be broad coalitions, and that doesn’t really work. A coalition of smaller parties would be able to represent their own views more clearly and the compromises would be more visible.
Eh, I dunno. I’m just depressed really. This is an awful mess of the Conservative’s making, but it’s the left that will eat itself.
Although, if May does win she’ll find it hard going.
More or less. Like all leftist parties in Europe, they had to deal with the end of working-class utopias (and the better-educated children of such working class, who demanded careers rather than factory jobs). Blair replaced them with a vague mixture of aspirational meritocracy and basic redistribution, which is in constant tension between the careerist element and traditional blue-collar values. Because of FPTP, the two have to work together or the entrenched Tory vote will forever rule.
Unfortunately, we are at a point in time when the system is so messed up, you can’t slap a coat of red paint on it and call it progressive.
Conservatives core skill set involves creating awful messes. The left’s core skill set involves infighting and squandering every opportunity. This seems to be an endless cycle.
Not now. Gove has done a Widdecombe* on Johnson and forced him to have to skip this round. He may be back, but it’s a big knock.
*Historical note: in 1997, Anne Widdecombe killed Michael Howard’s chances of being Tory leader. He did eventually become leader some years later, but he never really recovered.
What the average Lab MP does these days: she fucks things up royally. She’s trying to sell herself as the unity candidate when even her constituency doesn’t back her and she clearly doesn’t even have the full support of PLP backstabbers. I think she triggered too early, which is entirely in-character.
Well, it seems he fell off it.
It looks as if the battle for Conservative leadership was between Dacre (Daily Mail) on the one hand - Gove’s wife writes for the Mail - and the Barclay Brothers (Telegraph) on the other. Johnson is paid by the Telegraph.
I suspect that Murdoch as well as Dacre got cold feet over somebody who has long been paid by the Telegraph becoming PM - and scuppered it via Mrs. Gove. The famous email uses the word “Michael” suggesting that some of the text came from elsewhere.
And now we have May suddenly appearing. I have no brief for any of them, but there is just one thing. Johnson wanted water cannon. May stopped him. That is a small good thing, but a good thing all the same.
I wonder if Johnson has just decided that being the next PM is too much of a poisoned chalice and is biding his time? I suspect that’s giving him far too much credit, though.
I wonder if Johnson has just decided that being the next PM is too much of a poisoned chalice and is biding his time? I suspect that’s giving him far too much credit, though.
Too much credit?
While Johnson may be an obnoxious, narcissistic, populist blowhard, I’ve never seen much evidence that he himself is actually stupid (his supporters, OTOH…). He knew his ploy backfired when Leave won, he knew Cameron was trying to fuck his successor over by resigning immediately. It’s almost kind of admirable for an egomaniac like him to do the intelligent thing, retreat and cut his losses rather face another potential pyrrhic victory.
