I wonder if Crispin Blunt, Jamie Wallis and other LGBTQ+ Tories are considering their futures in the Conservative party, now that the new leader is openly and obsessively hostile to their existence. I doubt they’ll join Labour (despite Sir Keith’s efforts to become the New Party of the centre right), but they would fit into the LibDem right.
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A newspaper in France has described Liz Truss as the Iron weathervane (or weathercock), in a reference to her Thatcherite pretensions and changing position on Brexit
(Guardian liveblog)
They seem to have her number!
Blunt is stepping down as an MP at the next election. So he probably doesn’t care whether he has any future in the party. I look forward to wasting my vote by voting against whichever new turd-on-a-stick-with-a-blue-rosette they put up in his place.
But on another tack… Suella Braverman as Home Secretary? Someone even thicker than Priti Vacant but probably as toxically vicious. Good grief! I very much doubt she will last - she is incapable of running a department let alone one as sprawling, complex, visible and gaffe-prone as the Home Office.
And Rees-Mogg as Business Secretary? Seriously, Lobotomy Liz is t-rolling us with that one. But in reality R-M will immediately ignite his bonfire of regulations, starting with workers’ rights (what little is left of them). Which will, of course, boost the value of that private capital fund he really does not continue to have a direct interest in, oh no.
ETA
The good thing about riots, of course, is that in winter they keep people warm for a while. /s
I bet a lot of commercial property insurance underwriters are getting a bit nervous about now. If not, they should be.
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The Guardian’s Martin Rowson has nailed on the horror of the emergence of a fully-fledged Truss premiership.
#img-1
And yes - it can get worse. Tomorrow she will appoint her Cabinet which will consist of various retreads from the Johnson regime, some dyed-in-the-wool culture warriors and some who weren’t considered good enough for the shitshow we’ve just been through. And it’ll all be sold as a completely new government made up from unprecedented numbers of women and minorities.
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I joke, but there really is no good outcome for the UK right now. I feel sorry for those of you living through this.
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My Tory MP is openly gay and said nothing about the open baiting of LGBTQ+ people by both candidates.
In fact, he’s not posted anything about politics since Johnson was deposed (he was not one of those who called for Spaffer to go), nor is he responding to any comments and questions from his constituents.
He has however, been very excitedly tweeting about a competition to find the best cafe in the city.
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As has been noted, there are red flags all over the law though, meaning that it hasn’t been implemented and the Electoral Commission (neutered though it is becoming) seemingly thinks that there is no hope of doing so before the next election even if that’s not for two-and-a-bit years.
In passing, I’m pretty sure that even a radical energy freeze (currently posited as being a long-term ‘loan’ to consumers that will be repaid over a decade or more) won’t actually improve the Tory position now; as was commonly commentated over Johnson, that’s already been ‘priced in’ by the electorate who know that whoever was in charge would have to do something more than the current policies.
What’s more concerning to me is the prospect of Labour successfully colonising the centre-right, as they were able to do prior to 1997, meaning that they may be able to get an absolute majority right off (by winning both in their old seats and in solid Tory territory, helped by the LibDems sniping some heavyweight seats in the southeast), and that will kill any hopes of constitutional reform because, as with 1997, they will say ‘see, the Tories can be beaten under the current system.’
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Sadly, the Grauniad already has you covered there.
They’re gushing at the prospect of being ruled by right-wing demagogues, because they’re so diverse. I’m sure the people who freeze to death this winter will feel very comforted by this fact.
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6 grim minutes of truth.
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My sympathies!
And all the laughing while crying gifs.
(What a shame that his talent is at its best with shit like that for material.)
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I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field, in stubbled colour.
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Pretty much.
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How the fuck Labour have managed to not take advantage of the last few years of Tory fuck-ups, I don’t know.
The Tories have spent the last four years fucking up everything in sight, and the best Labour have to show for it is that they’ve not lost too many votes.
Still, I hear Scotland’s nice this time of year, and maybe soon they’ll have left the UK and rejoined Europe.
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They’re hobbled by a Third-Way party establishment that’s as a hapless and wishy-washy as the American DNC, plus their progressive wing was led for far too long by a nostalgia-addled old man. There’s no competent, cohesive and forward-looking leadership there.
Between a successful referendum, exit negotiations, and the wait for EU membership we’re at least eight years out from that. It can’t hurt to use that time to move up there and establish yourself if you’re so inclined.
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However, if you could move that schedule forward and be here in time for the vote, that would be great. I get that this is a moving target at this point, but we need all the help we can get.
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Isn’t it great that the UK is now free from the clutches of the evil EU and their “unelected” mandataries so the new PM can be chosen by a selected minority of presumably very wealthy individuals living mostly on the south of England and take the highest office of the country without a “popular mandate”, an election manifesto or even the confidence of the majority of the MPs?
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That’s a bit optimistic, expecting the wealthy Tory party members to spend more than the bare minimum time living in the UK.
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This.
Labour will do this.
They are in it for preservation of the party and possible future majorities, not for the good of the country in the long-run - which needs electoral reform more than almost anything. Electoral reform would, once implemented, see an almost immediate end to many of the fuckwitted, spiv-oriented, self-serving policies of the Tories, as well as some of those of other parties.
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He hits the nail - hard and repeatedly - every time.
It’s a shame he’s now doing dedicated stuff behind a NYT paywall, though. I could not get to it the other day without giving them my data. So thanks for winkling it out. It does not appear on his YouTube channel as fas as I can see. But I note it is now on Twitter (somewhere else that I do not go and which does not get my data, but for him I’ll go there).
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I think Good Queen Bess 2.0 is just shrinking… she is in her late 90s, now, after all.
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