UK Political Thread, part the second

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And now the serpents start to writhe.
Bye Bye BJ

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To possibly clarify, the Beeb says he’s finally jumped:

Though he’ll still be in place until the Tories can pick the next awful person to replace him.

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TL;DR
They are all Tories, they are all bastards. The least worst MPs in that list were remainers, so they probably have no chance.

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All the Daily Mash headlines today are very funny, but this one is right on the nose:

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THE prime minister is to resign today, unless he is lying.

Resign as what, exactly?

What are the chances that he tries to do a Ramsay MacDonald?

Although there was a narrow majority in the Cabinet for drastic reductions in spending, the minority included senior ministers such as Arthur Henderson who made it clear they would resign rather than acquiesce in the cuts. With this unworkable split, on 24 August 1931, MacDonald submitted his resignation and then agreed, on the urging of King George V, to form a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals. With Henderson taking the lead, MacDonald, Snowden, and Thomas were quickly expelled from the Labour Party.

/s, in case it isn’t obvious

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A government of all the no-talents

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Any government in which Michael Gove becomes the paragon of competence has long reached that point.

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Suella Braverman genuinely thinks she can credibly stand for the leadership of the Tories.

[Lets that sink in.]

I know!

In 2020, I reported on the false account she gave of her life. She ingratiated herself with the readers of the ConservativeHome website by claiming that, when she started as a barrister in London: “I was the shy Tory in my chambers of ‘right-on’ human rights lawyers. Despite the social stigma, I was inspired by Conservative values of freedom from an interventionist state.”

But the chambers that she joined after leaving Cambridge University were anything but “right on”. She worked at 2-3 Gray’s Inn Square, which was filled with regular barristers fighting disputes about the licensing of pubs and betting shops, not human rights law. One of the supposed “right-on” lefties was a former Tory MP.

The political advantages of posing as a victim of a snotty liberal elite were obvious. But cynical careerism does not explain every move. Vanity can matter as much. Braverman had an ordinary career at the bar, which she tried to make sound grander than it was by claiming to have contributed to authoritative legal textbooks. On inspection they bore no trace of her name.

Her bravado suggests that at some level she may think that a shadowy liberal elite had stymied her rise in the law.

And Braverman Bull Shit is apparently a ‘thing’

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At this point a duck in a fez is a credible candidate

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I think you mean a turd on a stick with a blue rosette. :wink:

ETA apparently the rules say a candidate must have the support of 8 other Tory MPs in order to stand.

It will be interesting to see if she can find 8 and, if so, who they are.

Also from the same Guardian article quoted above
Screen Shot 2022-07-07 at 13.42.41

…proven by the fact that her principled stand consisted of telling Johnson to go but not resigning herself - happy to cling on to her job in his cabinet - at the same time as declaring her candidacy for next leader.

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And since this is the tory leadership we’re talking about, when the duck is inevitably found to be a racist, that’s actually a plus point for the job.

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I wonder how the party would react if the final 2 came down to Sunak and Javid? Would they properly embrace a brown leader, or tolerate them until they could get a white saviour?

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No, I think Javid/Sunak have made a Blair/Brown pact myself - one of them will drop when the other shows they can reach the last two, and in return, they get the chancellorship. Either of them would fancy their chances against, say, Truss or Mordaunt. And if it gets to the membership, any of them would crush the currently popular Wallace because the membership don’t realise that he’s not an ultraBrexiter but hustings would see to that.

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bill hader laughing GIF by Saturday Night Live

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They will tolerate anyone who (a) wins elections and (b) cuts taxes, hates the EU, makes the right noises about immigration and (c) keeps increasing their pensions.

When it comes to naked self-interest the Tory party is a remarkably equal opportunities sort of party.

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Mrs May having a thoroughly justified dig with some not at all blatant subtext, today.

Also, the real reason he would not vacate the job immediately - Carrie would NOT tolerate THAT!

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:weary:

Just give me this one! I’ll worry about that later…

Dance Dancing GIF by Soul Train

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