With no candidate who can come close to unifying the party one would have thought so, though it would be the parliamentary party choosing their own extrirpation.
The Tories are hardly going to to go to the country when they have no leader/PM candidate and are so far behind in the polls.
My guess would be they’ll quickly promote Hunt or install Sunak and try and brazen it out to 2024 so they can try and minimize the decimation they face at the polls
Of course there won’t be a GE! They may be as stupid as turkeys but the Conservative MPs won’t vote for Christmas.
Nah, they’ll get Sunak/Mordaunt in and after the last few years the Government will in comparison look wise & sane. Whether or not it’s enough to win the next GE in 2024 , given our electoral system, remains a moot point
boris seems to imagine himself as the white knight riding in on his charger to save the conservative party from oblivion.
Actually he’s more in this mould.
“…For several years now, pundits have been commenting upon the increasing Italianisation of British politics but surely no-one could have foreseen these images of Signor Berlusconi entering the back door of No.10… Ah, hold on, I’m told that that was just some old footage of a bunga-bunga party that’s been accidentally spliced in.
Krishnan, tell us what you can see round the front…”
If a General Election was called tomorrow, short of Keir Starmer being arrested for a very serious crime, Labour would walk it. Without even needing to produce a manifesto.
Which is why the Tories will try to struggle on with one of Mordaunt, Sunak, Wallace or (God forbid) Braverman. Hunt (ryhmes with) has ruled himself out of contention. Maybe Boris will try and get his old job back.
This is now even more fascinating for those seeking power. Truss has lowered the bar so far that the only way is up. If you take it on now you inherit a shit load of problems but if you can steady the ship and get through the next two years Labour could self destruct. Or do you distance yourself completely and hope your chance comes again? I suspect Mordant/ Sunak favour the former.
PS we had a Boyziz in Billingham when I was a kid (I watched it being built! Cranes! DIGGERS!!!) and it had, as a ‘feature’, the absolutely maddest shit you’ve ever seen in a department store aimed at C1s/C2s in the wider North East/East Riding region…
If I’m allowed one further post, after my recent excessive ubiquity, I’ll stick it up tomorrow.
The maddest shit you’ve ever seen in a budget department store was cages of monkeys.
In the Billingham store, they were at the back of the carpet department…in the basement. Those poor animals, not only incarcerated for (presumably) their entire lives but also never breathing fresh air or seeing natural daylight.
But it seems that the Billingham store was far from unique, with Boyes beginning this strange practice from their very first store onwards, in Scarborough…which hosted not only monkeys but also chipmunks and budgies. Sheesh.
I hope you enjoyed your holiday boss. Time to come back. Few issues at the office that need addressing. #bringbackboris— James Duddridge MP (@JamesDuddridge) October 20, 2022
….like not enough vomit on the walls, perhaps. And did somebody say “thank you” to one of the cleaners? sort it out, Bozzer!
Meanwhile Krishnan Guru-Murthy has been sin binned for a week for correctly identifying (off air) ERG chair Steve Baker (and self appointed “hard man of Brexit) as a cunt. Baker has graciously accepted KGM’s apology and called for him to be sacked. Thereby proving KGM’s point.
For as long as I can remember, the Tories have been a split party. You’re either a dull accountant type who likes giving sophisticated tax breaks to the most generous donors – or you are an unhinged, leather-faced, stripy blazer-wearing racist with stupid hair and an eye for the ladies/boys/tractors.
That second group had their Brexit victory and were given the leader they wanted. All good now then? No. These people are dyed-in-the-wool thick as shit twats who cannot and should not be taken seriously. The good people of Wankington-on-the-Wold can elect them and they can hold forth at the golf club but for gods sake don’t give them decisions to make or real power. They are not up to it.
Which is why I’m thinking of joining the Conservative Party. Couple of hundred thousand funsters – wokerati, if you will – should do the trick. Worked for Corbyn, after all. Time is short, though…
The more I watch this unfold I actually believe it is part of an elaborate plan to get him back. She could barely contain a smirk at the lecturn yesterday. His “hasta la vista” sign off. His complete detachment from the Truss train crash. She’ll get a seat in the Lords if he gets in again. Boris v Rishi. God help us
Not for an instant. He was squeezed out of No 10 like the bulging turd that he is only by the application of 60 odd doses of Imodium in the form of en masse resignations due to his manifest unfitness for anything.
Approximately 7 weeks ago.
How would the markets and the rest of the G7 react to that sort of lunacy?
A pharmacist writes – after 60-odd doses of Imodium, they would never have squeezed him out of No. 10. DulcoEase might have helped, but even then it might have taken “manual evacuation“…
He pretty much had to resign because he couldn’t form a government with dozens of ministerial resignations. Are all those former ministers suddenly going to decide that he’s fit to lead after all, or will he have to stuff the posts with inexperienced back benchers?
I discovered today that there’s an actual bird down here called a bazza, although the very dull call it a baza. Takes no shit from anybody, by the looks of it.
Nope. He’s got the hundred. That’s it. Two more years of photo ops with Dilyn and cleaning ladies showered with vomit by the non-thinking man’s Mr Creosote.
The levelling up secretary Simon Clarke has become the second Cabinet minister to unequivocally back Boris Johnson, the Telegraph reports.
In a joint statement with Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen, Clarke said Johnson would lead “a broad-based, inclusive Government drawing on talent from right across the Conservative Party, driven by a disciplined Downing Street”.
A disciplined Downing Street. He actually said that.
Two more years of lies, self-indulgent narcissism, trvialising of everything, bullying of everyone he has power over and flattering of those he doesn’t. Scandal after scandal brushed under the carpet, money showered on his friends and half-true statistics to pretend he’s levelling up for everyone else, repeated ad nauseam whatever the question, complete with name calling, braying, and playing to the gallery. Oh, and lots of photo ops in Ukraine and in hard hats and fluorescent jackets.
Again I say, in 2019, in a two-party dominated FPTP system, The Afterword, like the wider public, was far more scathingly critical of Corbyn than Johnson. Which is fair enough, everyone’s entitled to an opinion etc. But hearing people criticising Johnson now is rather like listening to the fishermen chappies who voted Leave moaning about Brexit.
As you are replying to me, I would say I was sceptical of Corbyn’s abilities, but seriously pissed off with Johnson’s complete being. It was a choice between a rusty old bicycle with 2 flat tyres and handlebars that continually veered to the left, vs a knackered old Wolsely, supercharged, but leaking oil with poor steering and very weak suspension – neither was what was needed, and would have been terrible for very different reasons.
Fair enough (I wasn’t taking aim at you specifically, just repeating a general observation). I just wish the all-round negativity towards Johnson had been more vocal when it counted (as I’ve said before, I don’t believe “a rusty old bicycle” could have been as bad for Britain -or me!- as a hard Brexit).
Neither would be any use on a busy motorway, but a bicycle would be easier to ignore, and would probably less of a risk of death to other road users. I could imagine it doggedly and stubbornly sticking to the central lane, forcing everyone heading in the same direction to fume and seethe while it went nowhere fast.
I fear for the place if that Fat Bastard gets back into No. 10 to rejoin his wallpaper and his Abba collection.
I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of someone living in London, aged 25 say…
…thankless job, maybe in the public sector, thousands of pounds to pay back in student fees, no freedom of movement, soaring bills to pay with more on the way, zero chance of getting on the housing ladder, tabloid headlines laughing openly from every news-stand…
How the f*** is that person meant to keep their cool?
“Dodger” is part of the language you use on here and in your own head. That doesn’t count as general usage. I don’t go round insisting that “Hurr” is a real word.
Assuming the current PM has nothing else to do this week, if I was her, I think I’d be busy scraping wallpaper off the walls and claim it was done a week ago and the decorators hadn’t had time to put the new stuff up!
My impression is the opposite: that Johnson is the only chance they have of winning an election. Like Trump, he inexplicably seems to be still popular. Who else would have a chance of winning?
Edit: Just seen a poll saying that Sunak would be his greatest threat to Starmer. So I’m probably wrong.
Emily Maitlis made the point that Boris won against Corbyn, who was the least popular Labour leader ever or something, so not really representative of his popularity.
I didn’t know who she was, but a quick search shows that she, like most of The Afterword and the British public, was more vocal in her opposition to four years of a Corbyn government (with its promise of a 2nd referendum) than she was to Johnson + Brexit. Fair enough, but does she too now moan and whinge about Johnson and Brexit as though they weren’t exactly what was expected, as though she had no role in enabling both?
Corbyn’s lasting “legacy” was the way he sat back and did nothing to stop the Leave bandwagon.
If you’re interested in reading what happened, when and why during 2016, suggest reading Tim Shipman’s excellent All Out War (assuming, of course, you’ve not already done so)
We’ve had this conversation before and as previously stated, despite his anti-EU stance (which I really, really hated) Corbyn promised a second referendum.
It’s an undeniable fact that, given the two-party dominated FPTP system, people had a choice in 2019 between 4 years of Corbyn government with a second referendum or four years of Johnson government with a hard Brexit (or, as always, not vote for either and let others decide).
I thought, then as now, that the first choice was clearly the least worst option. Most people didn’t agree and rejected it, voting for -or enabling- the second. Fair enough, but I think they should own their choice instead of whinging about it like they had no part in it.
I never got round to buying the Shipman book, I’m afraid.
With FPTP her party never stood a chance though. And especially not with her at the helm. It’s just occurred to me that I have absolutely no idea who their leader is now. Must look it up before the election. Or after.
indeed, 52% is not enough for the UK to leave the UK, but 43% for the Tories in the 2019 election means Keir “Peoples Vote” Starmer votes for hard Brexit.
I suspect you’re right about the going round in circles bit.
Sadly, given the Tories’ insane desire to bring back a toxic figure they were glad to be shot of just three months ago, it seems we’re not alone in doing so.
I didn’t know who she was, but a quick search shows that…
That’s way funnier than your other joke here, Gary.
Your quick but conclusive search didn’t get as far as the ‘Controversies over Impartiality’ section of Matlis’ Wikipedia page, which lists the complaints upheld against her for comments on Rod Liddle and Dominic Cummings, and how the BBC edited the recording of a lecture she gave after a complaint from the Prime Minister’s office. Those are the only controversies listed, unless you count her famous ‘I can’t sweat’ interview with Prince Andrew – probably the coldest, most brutal destruction of an establishment figure ever, and not I would say indicative of a right-wing bias.
I’d no idea who she was, have never seen Newsnight, and tbh am not in the slightest bit interested in her, her views or controversies. I did a 5-second search after DBP mentioned her (“Maitlis Corbyn”) and a couple of Twitter comments came up of her dissing Corbyn. If she’s not an example of someone who enabled Brexit/Johnson and now moans about it, okey-dokey, that really doesn’t make any difference to my view as there’s no shortage of other examples. Quite the opposite.
DBP cited her simply to question the notion that Johnson is as popular now as he was in 2019. I’m not sure if he and she are right or wrong about that (see YouGov article below), but I then also mentioned her because the Twitter comments seemed to reflect what I was banging on about.
Anything else?
Edit: I did read all about the Prince Andrew interview. Couldn’t have named the interviewer though.
For clarity, Maitliss retweeted Rob Ford (who he?). The gist of a long series of replies was this
“ Boris Johnson was *not* popular in 2019. He was less popular at every point of the campaign than Theresa May was in the 2017 campaign (see graph). He had the good fortune to run with two strong fair winds – a toxic opponent (Corbyn) and a winning issue (Brexit). Both gone now.”
I did a 5-second search (“Maitlis Corbyn”) and a couple of Twitter comments came up of her dissing Corbyn.
I know this is how most political opinions are formed, but I’ve never seen anyone admit to it quite so boldly.
If she’s not an example of someone who enabled Brexit/Johnson and now moans about it, okey-dokey, that really doesn’t make any difference to my view as there’s no shortage of other examples. Quite the opposite.
You appear to be saying “I admit I was wrong but that just proves I’m right.”
I would dearly love to know what “political opinion” it is that you think I formed on the basis of quickly searching Maitlis.
I’m perfectly happy to accept that I was wrong about Maitles and her views on Corbyn, if you tell me so, but I don’t see how that relates to my view that people who refused to vote for him enabled Brexit/Johnson. Again, I would love an explanation. If you can.
I’ll take that as a no then, shall I Chiz? Does make me wonder what possesses you to address my comments with such nonsensical criticism. Makes me wonder if you have “issues”.
Oh Gary. So far you’ve used the ‘lighten up it’s just a joke’ defence, the ‘personal slight’ defence, and the ‘do you have issues’ defence. Why on Earth would I want to engage with someone like that?
You’re now going to reply with “Please tell me where I used the exact phrase ‘lighten up it’s just a joke.'” And so on, and on.
Ha! And there was me thinking our problematic relationship on political threads has only ever been about you “engaging” with me and never, ever the other way round. (Your mode of “engagement” only ever being to criticise or ridicule my comments.)
I don’t see discussions in terms of “defence”. Or attack come to that. I think we have a very different approach to discussion. To life, probably. But I’d be happy for you not to “engage” with me with meaningless criticism that you’re unwilling to explain.
Oh and btw, I’ve have never, ever said “lighten up” to anybody ever, not here not anywhere. Simply not part of my vocabulary or mentality. (And accusing me of “pretending” to not understand in order to avoid a question -rather than simply asking me for an explanation- is, I think, personal slight by any definition.)
Could that be Chiz employing the ‘personal slight’ tactic? My comment to you was, clearly I thought, in jest. (But if not clear enough, I’ll explain: I didn’t really think you believed that the people who want Johnson back are the same people who want Corbyn back, because that wouldn’t make sense.)
What substance do you want addressed? That the people who want Corbyn back (whoever they are) are similar in their level of delusion to the people who want Johnson back? At this point I think the people who want Corbyn back must be far more delusional, because I think Johnson actually has a chance.
Let’s imagine a returning Boris Johnson to no 10. By the end of next weekend, dozens of Tory MPs will feel unable to cross the floor in the House because they would lose their jobs. So they can’t do anything about it. They will be silent on the matter.
On the following Friday it’s 5 November. A hugely symbolic day for people to express their feelings about a broken, dysfunctional, corrupt government. Yes there will be fireworks.
This can be avoided by not having Boris Johnson back as PM. People are still pissed off, but having Johnson back will be an almighty signal that the Government doesn’t give a shit about the people.
I think I’ve decided that I want Boris to come back so that we can see him finally finished off at the polls. As it stands, he still believes that every single citizen in the UK voted for him personally in 2019, they all still love him more than they love their own families and it’s only the treachery of the herd* that has stopped him. Imagine when he has to own defeat the way he has owned victory. I want to see him destroyed and utterly humiliated. Not to lose his own seat though, no – I’d like him to have to return to the commons with about 90 MPs and to feel their rage and hate burning into his great fat back. Oh, and can we fix it for him to go bald as well? That would really flatten him. And Carrie shags someone else, that’s another bit of karma he’s well overdue.
* Thoroughly unfair, From the Underworld was a bloody good single
From someone not motivated entirely by hatred, this:
The thought occurs that maybe the Conservative Party no longer cares. Perhaps the sum of its ambition is to become the provisional wing of the right-wing entertainment industry: happy to preach to a diminishing band of true believers, and good for a newspaper column or fringe TV turn, while Keir Starmer gets on with the tiresome business of actually running the country.
If so, it can look forward to a Prime Minister staffing his government with fifth raters, since the bulk of the 66 Ministers who resigned in the summer will refuse to serve. If a by-election forced by a Commons suspension doesn’t get him first. If the Tory benches don’t first vote down the report into his conduct that would trigger it, thus speeding the spiral of decline.
The Germans have a word for it: Totentanz – a dance of death. Conservative MPs, peers, donors, hacks and activists caper onwards an open grave, with Death himself – sorry, Johnson – leading the procession. The dance possesses them; it has a momentum of its own; they are powerless to stop.
John Crace? Marina Hyde?
Nope. Paul Goodman, editor of Conservative Home – a website by and for members of the Conservative party.
Discussing the possible Johnson scenarios with a friend yesterday I said that I was probably unwisely allowing myself to hope for:
– he gets <100 noms
– he finally realises that he's never going to be King of the World again
– Sunak gets the job
– Sunak absolutely does not offer him a place in the Cabinet
– his ego (and greed) will not allow him to be a backbencher (and he's already mindful of the upcoming Privileges Ctte and its potential jeopardies)
– he resigns his seat pronto and leaves front line politics altogether
– he accepts a sinecure in the Lords
– we effectively see the back of him in public life
Over-optimistic, probably…but I'm very encouraged by Goodman's comments, above, along with those of North etc.
He may or may not be able to get 100 MPs delusional enough to put him in the game (though I suspect not) but I don’t think he’ll stand, and the media chatter about him is all a bit of a sideshow. People like Charles Moore are clearly counselling him to play the long game. If he gets in now all the scandal of the last couple of years will still be fresh in people’s minds. He has the parliamentary scrutiny panel to get though. Doing that as a backbencher is one thing; doing it in the full glare of being prime minister when you’re supposed to be dealing with the economic crisis is another altogether. Clearly that crisis isn’t going to be turned around anytime soon, so frankly whoever comes in now has every chance of leading the Tories into defeat. So, better, surely, for Booster Boris to let Rishi take the rap for that, then come back in glory, lead the Tories in opposition and blame everything on Labour, and then, when everyone’s forgotten what a complete shyster he is, win the next election four or five years later. Simples.
Do you think he has the patience/maturity/ability to defer his need for gratification for that long?
I’m just trying to forestall my own disappointment, of course; yes, I’d *love* to see him accept the counsel of Moore et al…I just don’t think he would/will. That’s why I think he needs to be definitively and unequivocally despatched by the PCP come 2pm Monday afternoon.
You’re probably right. With Johnson it is ALL about him. He couldn’t give a shot what’s right for the country or even the party.
But he does have enough of a self interest survival instinct to know when the game is up, for now. It doesn’t look like he’s going to get the PLP votes; when that’s clear to him he will magnanimously say that now is not the time to stand, and that he’s backing Rishi. I wonder if he’ll extract a cabinet place as his price, or whether he’d prefer to be on the backbenches sniping form outside and keeping himself clean from any potential election loss.The latter I suspect.
To be honest there is a bit of me that would like to see him stand and get the Tory membership vote, and come back. If that does happen I think it will be a catastrophe for him and the Tories. . He’ll be crap at it. It will once and for all finish off any remaining sliver of a reputation the Tory party may have for decency competence and probity. From a purely political point of view I honestly think it is the best thing that could happen for Labour. Trouble is there is every chance it’ll take the country even further down than it already is.
I think most Tory MPs do know this. They know they need someone with a vague semblance of competence and maturity now, and that’s why I think they will crown Sunak early next week. God knows he has his issues politically but compared to Johnson or Truss he does at least appear to resemble a normal functioning human being.
Yes I saw elsewhere online that he was supposed to be having a meeting with Sunak earlier this evening, presumably to try and inveigle some sort of deal for himself, the assumption being that he wasn’t going to top 100 noms. The last I read, that meeting had been postponed.
The thought of him getting some sort of access to the CA scares the bejasus out of me though, as I’m getting the impression it does many of the MPs.
I don’t know anything about politics, really, but I do feel certain, like you, that he’s not going to get the PLP votes…
Headlined ‘Put a stake through this vampire’s heart now’
I’ll see If I can find a text version that isn’t behind the paywall.
It’s a clear eyed and lyrical call to the parliamentary party to skewer the bastard for now and evermore.
Thankyou, yes I did see the headline and was heartened by it; I don’t have a subscription so if you were to find a text version I’d be really grateful.
I’ll also take this opportunity to correct my mistake in my post above; rather than saying ‘North’, I should have said ‘Frost’, ie David.
I heard the other day that clowns were sent in when things were going really badly and the ringmaster needed a distraction while the grown ups fixed things behind the scenes.
In the current political climate, a better phrase might be ‘the lunatics have taken over the asylum’, as there seems to have been no sign of grown ups, front or backstage since at least 2016.
It’s likely if he gets to the final 2, the party membership would vote for him in the online poll that will follow. He’s unlikely to get a majority from the MPs, though he might scrape the necessary 100. With any luck he won’t. If only one of the candidates gets the required 100 nominations then they get installed straight away without a membership vote.
Looks like there’s only loonies left in the Conservative Associations out there.
If it’s anything like what I heard about Watford’s local branch in the rest of the country, the moderate supporters have all been bullied out by the headbanger contingent.
Bloody hell, The Times sure makes it hard to copy & paste…
“Boris? Again? That charlatan? They cannot be serious. Kipling was not wrong: “The Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire/ And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.”
Can Tory MPs really be contemplating supporting the scoundrel who only weeks ago they rightly dumped? Have they so quickly forgotten why they dumped him? The rascal whose short second administration mislaid 80 ministers, 55 of them within three days only this summer, more than tripling parliament’s previous record for mass resignations?
The hedgies’ poodle who first proposed the idea that helped to kill his successors’ budget: slashing taxes for the rich? The dissimulator charged with lying to parliament and now at risk of being suspended as an MP by the privileges committee, and even kicked out in a by-election.
A return for the “king over the water” (in this case the Caribbean)? I say again, really? Boris, the impostor who just before his fall earned (in a YouGov poll) a public approval rating of minus 53 per cent? Has his party already forgotten its drubbing under Boris Johnson’s leadership at the local government elections in May this year? Or the by-elections lost in Chesham & Amersham and Tiverton & Honiton?
Johnson was never a crowd pleaser except as an entertainer. He was never a notably popular prime minister. All the polling says the same: he carries no conviction and isn’t even widely liked.
How, then, are his supporters persuading colleagues to take him seriously? Two linked efforts are afoot this weekend. They mirror the tactics that pushed Liz Truss over the line.
Momentum is being manufactured through creating an impression that Johnson is already on his way to victory. Mysterious reports on social media suggest he’s surging ahead among those MPs who are declaring — but the identities of some of these are undisclosed. They will (we’re assured) reveal themselves “later”. The sense of movement this creates is giving those many Conservative MPs who still keep their own counsel the idea that this man is a winner, and (say quieter MPs to themselves), “we’d better declare for him early, as we know he rewards supporters and freezes out the rest”.
Exaggerating his progress then swells his declared support, giving Tory activists the (false) idea that Johnson is popular among MPs — thus influencing their own vote because they rightly wish to back someone the parliamentary party wants as its leader. This is precisely what happened when Truss ran for the leadership, and MPs who I know thought her useless started issuing statements praising her to the skies. Tory activists saw and digested this praise. It is not certain she would have won without that skilful creation of a self-reinforcing loop of prediction, careerist flattery, and gullible activists. Sir Graham Brady and his 1922 committee have done the nation no favours by missing the opportunity this crisis presented to sidestep the party membership.
No conspiracist in normal times, I have become convinced Johnson and his gang promoted Truss’s candidacy not because they thought she was any good but because they knew she wasn’t. Her failure was to be the launchpad for his return. I cannot disclose what has persuaded me Johnson thought she’d fail, but it confirmed all my suspicions. He knew that only against the backdrop of total mess could he look good.
I’m a Midlander whose own former constituency is almost surrounded by red-wall seats. To new Tory MPs from such seats — the 2019-ers — I would earnestly advise this: don’t let the recent shudder of sellers’ remorse among Tory activists unbalance your judgment. “I miss Boris” is more nostalgic than future-facing, but we do hear it widely repeated, especially from committed Tories and (I’m afraid to say) the posher sort who think Boris “fun”.
He may be; but talk to the uncommitted. You’ll hear the view, of course, that we can imagine having a beer with him, but listen harder and you’ll pick up the deep suspicion that he’s a scamp and a rogue. In easy times a scamp in Downing Street is good theatre. But easy times do not lie ahead, and to voters beginning to agonise about whether their mortgage lender might repossess, politics is about more than drinking companions. Johnson may seem funny now but he won’t this winter. Rishi Sunak may lack comedy genius, but we’ll appreciate his seriousness, his intelligence and grasp when power cuts threaten.
As for Johnson, he’s just playing with us again. If he loses, or withdraws, it’s only a game. But if he wins, it’s still a game. Whatever, we’ll be talking about him, and for Johnson that’s the thrill. Failure would be a pity but obscurity would be worse. Fame or infamy — it’s all in the mix for Johnson because both bring what Johnson most wants: attention. There’s a part of this man that would enjoy the walk to the scaffold: centre stage to the last. Weighed against the horror of being forgotten, Johnson sees the upside of a car crash.
For his party, however, and for the country, the downside is scary indeed. The last thing Britain needs now is a leader who doesn’t know or care about business, economics or even simple book-keeping. That Rishi Sunak, the (quite close) runner-up to Truss, is vastly, incomparably better placed not only to take Britain’s finances through the awful storm ahead but (achingly absent from today’s politics) to impart a sense of seriousness to the running of a country seems so obvious that I have to pinch myself to believe I’m even writing about a possible forthcoming Johnson administration.
In his wake, Johnson leaves only political death or injury. His victory next week could kill the party and would wound the country. Except temporarily, nobody prospers from their association with this man. List all those who’ve been drawn into his close association, personal or political, and ask yourself who among them has found in his company a springboard to their own political success or personal happiness. He has the quality of a vampire: he must kill to live.
“With Boris it isn’t over until it’s over . . . it is now up to his party to see to that,” I wrote here three months ago. “Not,” (I said) “until there’s a stake through his heart can we be sure he’s gone.”
I write it again today, with greater urgency. Sometimes in history we read of an obvious deceiver who just kept cheating his way upwards into fame and power, and say to ourselves, “How shameful we were fooled!” Well, my Tory backbench friends, save yourselves that shame. Stop him now.”
Many thanks Lodey, I’m assuming this is the Parris piece?
He’s right, of course, but I’ve got to say…
…that this country’s politics will really only step into the C21st when its politicians, journalists, Twatterati, and sundry hangers-on come to understand that what the country, its people, its economy, and its self-esteem (by which I mean its international credibility) do NOT need is its affairs being debated and decided by unsuitably-‘educated’ men of letters quoting Cincinnatus, Kipling, Shakespeare, and whatever Classical shite is oozing languidly out of JRM’S mouth this weekend.
To them, it’s all a droll game, merely an amusing little fastness in which to over-winter whilst on The Grand Tour of Life, an experience to be ticked off and later ruminated upon in one’s memoirs, with oh-so-becoming but simply far-too-late legacy-burnishing regrets and newly-acquired humility.
We just need intelligent, grounded, accomplished, non-egotistical, Real World- experienced and Real World-facing adults who have the maturity, intelligence, humanity, humility, and intellectual sophistication to engage with the problems of mind-bending complexity that this country and this planet are facing.
So, thanks, Matthew, but say it bluntly and non-elliptically in a short, single paragraph that the thickest of Tory mouth-breathers can understand, absorb, and act upon.
Superb stuff. Several people on social media have also posted an article about Truss that Parris wrote back in the summer that is so on the money that it’s positively Nostradamus like (if Nostradamus was in any way accurate of course). Amongst other things he described her as a ‘planet sized mass of over confidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain’. ‘She’s crackers’ he concluded ‘It isn’t going to work’. Brilliant.
Surely there is room in all this for both, for example, Jonathan Pie’s “Fuck off dogshit” and Matthew Parris who whilst quoting Shakespeare actually stuck the knife in deeper?
And,as noted above, his article August 20th demolishing Truss was so spot-on it’s uncanny.
I disagree with most of Matthew’s politics but he’s a proper old-fashioned one-nation Tory with actual intelligence and actual morals.
You’re absolutely right of course, Lodey, there is room for both of these voices and the many in between. And I also concur with your description of Parris, and I like and admire those perspectives and qualities in him.
Nonetheless, I raged about him (and his ilk) a bit last night because it’s that legacy ‘Wykehamist Fallacy’ mindset (wherein a decent, honourable and upstanding chap assumes that the chap sat across the negotiating table from him is also decent, honourable, and upstanding…when in fact
he very much is not) that allows a devious, scheming, narcissist like Johnson to rise unchecked, as long as he has a firm handshake and can spool out a euphonious paragraph at will.
As we all know on this board, Johnson is simply a con-man, and so, in my humble opinion, he needs to be called out on that at every possible opportunity in direct, unambiguous terms which maximise connectivity with, and understanding by, the hard-of-thinking. I just felt that Parris’s piece softened its blows by wrapping them up in literary references.
I know I’m somehow both overthinking and underthinking this, to be honest, I’m just genuinely extremely worried about the possibility that Johnson may scrape through here.
I see that it’s about 24hrs since I posted my thoughts last night, and I’ve been asleep most of today and have barely seen the news, so it’s possible that the situation is very different as I write this. I’m desperate to see not only the back of Johnson himself but also an end to the brand of charlatanism in public life that he personifies.
A racist caller to LBC cut to the chase. Sunak isn’t English enough for most Tory members and they would not support a candidate who doesn’t reflect “85% of English people”. We all know what he means by that. Liz Truss was elected over Sunak to be palatable to this now-very-powerful faction within the Tory party. They don’t want to piss about with Farage and UKIP – they want actual power and under Johnson they have someone to get behind.
It’s not necessarily where they’re from for racists, it’s what they represent to them.
I’m not sure the sort of people who call in to LBC for a rant are actually active party members, though. Rich Asians they can do business with are very welcome in the party. Especially if the business done is in cash.
Tax cuts would override racism for a lot of them. If Rishi had supported tax cuts and Truss hadn’t, I think a majority would have swallowed their racism for the sake of greed and voted for Sunak.
Yes, he was. It doesn’t matter though, he’s not going to suddenly change his outlook.
Very interesting that such people when challenged often cave in completely. “Hey, I’m not talking about ME …I’m just telling you what a lot of people I know are saying….”
Sangita Myska eviscerates this racist caller who says Tory party member won't vote for Sunak because 'he doesn't represent Britain'.@SangitaMyskapic.twitter.com/xowtWAYTPk
It has been a long, slow, drawn-out process, but 50 years of racism (some overt, most as plain as the nose on your face) via the tabloid press has worked wonders.
I have to say that although I hate Fat Boy, it is the general public I have the most contempt for. I’m going to start calling some of them out.
I agree with you. I’m certain the reason Rishi Sunak wasn’t voted for by the Tory membership in the first place, in favour of someone completely useless and incompetent, was that huge swathes of the membership are Little Englanders for whom Rishi Sunak would have been an unpalatable face of their party.
Kemi Badenoch was the preferred candidate of the Tory membership last time. They love Suella Braverman too.
I don’t think they’re fussy about skin colour, so long as their ideology is reflected. In the same way that Sunak being Prime Minister won’t be celebrated as a triumph for “diversity” by many on the left (or indeed on this blog), because he has the wrong views. In neither case does the candidate’s ethnicity appear to be the major concern, and rightly so.
Never forget that a lot of CAs are now dominated by people who were in UKIP and/or the Brexit Party before 2019, who let’s say aren’t the biggest multiculturalists in the world. It’s the most successful instance of entryism* in political history. Hence (pace Kinnnock on Militant) all this “grotesque chaos”.
Seeing as he been on holiday for the last few months how come Johnson looks like he’s hanging out of his arse in the thumbs-up-on-the-phone pictures? I’ve had a few hedonistic days and nights in my time, but I don’t think I’ve ever looked as comprehensively fucked as he did today,
I’m sure his constituents will be well satisfied that he is earning his £80,000 plus a year salary. Having all those holidays, which let’s face it he won’t have paid a penny of his own money for, must be bloody hard work. All that wine to drink, carpets to be sick on, interns to fuck.
As of this morning (who knows what will happen this afternoon) it looks like Sunak is going to win. An intelligent PM, who would have thunk?
Unfortunately, he’s also a hard-right squillionaire, has never wavered from being pro-Brexit and will have no problem taking “tough decisions”. In the long run (ie till 2024) he may even turn out to be worse than Boris ….
Could be that Boris was just blowing smoke with that “King Across the Water” malarkey he pulled yesterday. Given the size of the shit show awaiting the next incumbent of No 10, his notorious laziness and desperate attention to be liked, think he is biding his time in the hope that, like Truss, Sunak will eventually crash and burn
As one fairly senior Tory told the Times’ hack “come June next year, they’ll be begging for him to come back”.
While they have no relevance to an election, current polls showing KS would only get a 26 seat majority if facing Johnson versus a 124-seat rout against Sunak would seem to bear the unnamed Tory grandee out
I think fatso lying on his sun lounger thought “Blimey and cor, like Napoleon here I come”. Back in Blighty, somebody has taken his hand and said “1. Not enough fools yet. 2. Wait till near the next GE”
At four o’clock this afternoon I may well be proved Wrong (again)
If Johnson really did calculate that if he backed Truss she’d blow herself and the country up and he’d sail back in as our saviour, that’s proper Bond villain levels of evil masterminding. You have to wonder what someone with the vision to pull that off could do if they used their powers for good.
On the other hand, Truss was obviously hopeless to all except 80,000 Tory party members. Even during the endless campaign, she came across as vacuous and dimwitted. So much so that I found it hard to believe that it was claimed she was doing so well, let alone be capable of winning.
And Johnson is out, presumably leaving a Sunak coronation giving Mordaunt’s relatively poor showing (great hair can only take you so far). Johnson does however claim to have over 100 nominees, but they go to a different parliament and you wouldn’t know them.
Apparently, standing would not be ‘the right thing to do’. I doubt if ethical considerations have really factored in Johnson’s decision. More likely he knows he would lose, and there are other far more lucrative options open to him.
Good. I don’t care what the reason may have been but I speculate some of his hedge fund pals have told him to wind his chins in. It’s too soon. They need an economy to take advantage of and if that scrotal sac was the hand on the tiller until his next hounding out they wouldn’t have one.
I wonder if, in their meetings with him, Sunak and/or Mordaunt put the thumbscrews on him – you may win the Tory membership vote, but you’ll be toast in the Commons, lose the next election, and go down in history for destroying the Tory Party. Something like that.
“No no no no, blerrr blerrr blerr wifflewaffle piffle paffle mangled Latin quotation booster doomster spaff not my children etc ” were his exact words.
Much more simple than that. Sunak already had almost double the required nominations and Mordaunt refused point blank to drop out of the race and support him.
He was faced with the choice of ploughing on and failing to get his 100 nominations, which would have necessitated publicly eating a small portion of humble pie, or retiring from contention with a bit of bluster and monstrous ego intact.
Showing a clearly befuddled Jin Tzun being lead away by comrades Lees Mok and Zha Wi as smirking rival Soo Nak looks on, Mainland Chinese TV has done an interesting recreation of the moment our former PM’s latest leadership campain imploded.
Lots of dang fool Brit peeps be saying “we want a PM who has been elected by us”, when Britain’s last decent PM (Gordon Brown) and Italy’s first ever decent PM (Mario Draghi) were living proof that elections are a complete waste of everyone’s time and we’d all be better off concentrating on the footie or Love Island and leaving politics to the experts.
I’ve read Boris Johnson’s statement now and it seems:
• He got 102 nominations
• Those nominations would have enabled him to stand for leader/PM
• He would have had a good chance of winning the members’ vote
• Him winning is the only way to avoid a General Election
• A general election would be a further disastrous distraction’
• So he withdrew
Boris, Boris, wake up! It was 102 DALMations – the rather poor sequel you watched with Wilf in Casa de Campo on Saturday. Remember? It was supposed to remind you NOT to stand again.
Those “102” nominations in full:
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Chris Pincher
Stanley Johnson
Downing Street’s various puff photographers
Whoever paid for the wallpaper
The kid who got rugby-tackled years ago
The woman next to me on the flight from Dominican Republic
Darius Guppy
Lord Lucan
I like the quote in the Mail – “a gesture of wisdom and statesmanship”. In fact “a remarkable gesture of magnanimity from a remarkable politician – perhaps the most brilliant of his generation”.
Essentially, who’s a good boy, didn’t you do well? If we shower praise on you, will you shut up and go away?
Uh? What kind of 17-year old reads The Mail? It’s not even sold to anyone under the age of 55. At least the redtops have the excuse of tits. If you’re that age. (ahem)
Not sure if it was the The Sun but one of them had an incredibly creepy day-by-day countdown to a model’s 16th birthday. Over a few days, the clothing eventually disappeared until the big day came and ta-daa!
The basic flaw with this that the photo session must have taken place when she was 15.
Depends who he has promised a job to,
Bound to really, usually a new Leaders first action – surround themselves with their mates and those they rate highly in the Party
He’s supposed to appoint a cabinet of all the talents, not just his mates, like Truss and Johnson did.
2 things
– it’ll be a small cabinet.
– that’s what Theresa May did – went well for her…
Does Marsham St still exist? I thought it’d been demolished/redeveloped donkeys’ years ago.
I remember being invited in to do some training there for Environment managers, before they were regionalised out into the boonies (so I’m guessing post-’97) and thinking it looked like a location from The Sweeney.
seanioio says
There has to be a GE now. Shirley!
Gatz says
With no candidate who can come close to unifying the party one would have thought so, though it would be the parliamentary party choosing their own extrirpation.
Moose the Mooche says
Turns out that ‘wanting to be prime minister’ isn’t the only qualification you need to be prime minister. I wonder if this lesson will be learned?
Cue a load of Brexiters saying, “I’ll cut taxes and I hate nearly everybody. Vote for me!”
seanioio says
To clarify. I do not think there will be one, but common sense dictates that there should be one.
Basically I had a chance to ‘do a Shirley’ on the site so I took it!
Jeff says
Lettuce invited to Palace.
Seen as snub to Truss.
Jaygee says
The Tories are hardly going to to go to the country when they have no leader/PM candidate and are so far behind in the polls.
My guess would be they’ll quickly promote Hunt or install Sunak and try and brazen it out to 2024 so they can try and minimize the decimation they face at the polls
Jeff says
“Wild, go wild, go wild in the country
Where snakes in the grass are absolutely free”
Moose the Mooche says
We’ll have no perving on this thread. Until Boris appears, anyway.
Jeff says
*re-cages snake*
Jeff says
@jaygee
When you say ‘…brazen it out to 2024’, you mean until around 8.30pm this evening, right?
Not sure that’s realistic though, tbh.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Of course there won’t be a GE! They may be as stupid as turkeys but the Conservative MPs won’t vote for Christmas.
Nah, they’ll get Sunak/Mordaunt in and after the last few years the Government will in comparison look wise & sane. Whether or not it’s enough to win the next GE in 2024 , given our electoral system, remains a moot point
Jeff says
Going by Truss’s own promise, yesterday was effectively Christmas.
So perhaps they did vote for it?
Dave Ross says
The Lodestone of Rightness has spoken.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
I spoke before Boris seems to have announced “I’m back, baby!”
All bets off, like everyone else I have no effing idea what will happen next.
Taylor Swift has a new album out Friday
hubert rawlinson says
boris seems to imagine himself as the white knight riding in on his charger to save the conservative party from oblivion.
Actually he’s more in this mould.
seanioio says
Taylor Swift & Carly Rae Jepsen albums on the same day. The pop gods are smiling on us
Black Type says
Ordered both, and True North by a-ha.
I bet CRJ’s a bit miffed, tho.
Black Type says
Yay! for Tay!
chiz says
IDS. You heard it here first.
fentonsteve says
No thanks, I have enough troublesome shits already.
Jeff says
“…For several years now, pundits have been commenting upon the increasing Italianisation of British politics but surely no-one could have foreseen these images of Signor Berlusconi entering the back door of No.10… Ah, hold on, I’m told that that was just some old footage of a bunga-bunga party that’s been accidentally spliced in.
Krishnan, tell us what you can see round the front…”
Mike_H says
If a General Election was called tomorrow, short of Keir Starmer being arrested for a very serious crime, Labour would walk it. Without even needing to produce a manifesto.
Which is why the Tories will try to struggle on with one of Mordaunt, Sunak, Wallace or (God forbid) Braverman. Hunt (ryhmes with) has ruled himself out of contention. Maybe Boris will try and get his old job back.
Boneshaker says
Boris for PM.
Jeff says
Do you think Carrie will agree to go back into *that* flat?
And for them to go back to scraping by on a PM’s pittance rather that the £300,000 per hour he’s currently trousering for after-dinner speeches?
Black Type says
According to The Times, he is planning to put himself forward. Beyond satire.
Jeff says
(Cons +5)
Mike_H says
Post Mortem?
Rigid Digit says
Michael Gove … hasn’t said anything yet, but Pob for PM
Moose the Mooche says
What will be Pob’s Programme for government?
Rigid Digit says
Gobbing at the Opposition, and the legalisation of cocaine
Dave Ross says
This is now even more fascinating for those seeking power. Truss has lowered the bar so far that the only way is up. If you take it on now you inherit a shit load of problems but if you can steady the ship and get through the next two years Labour could self destruct. Or do you distance yourself completely and hope your chance comes again? I suspect Mordant/ Sunak favour the former.
Smudger says
Cloughie only lasted 44 days at Leeds but I can’t see Truss performing miracles in a few years time.
Moose the Mooche says
Dirty Tories….won everything by cheating.
Especially Boris Bremner.
Black Type says
The Damned Disunited.
Rigid Digit says
With Michael Sheen as Liz Truss and Timothy Spall as Boris
Mike_H says
I think we should do this.
The Comic Strip Presents Brexit
I’ll start
Steven Merchant as Charles Hawtrey playing Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Diane Morgan as Barbara Windsor playing Theresa May
seanioio says
I’d be impressed if she went to Stormont & got them into Europe next year a la Cloughie!
Jaygee says
Tommy Doc lasted 16 days less at QPR in the late 60s – probably due to his having no medical qualifications
paulwright says
Apparently the Clown is coming back from his holiday in the Caribbean (during Parliamentary time too!).
Moose the Mooche says
He’ll probably arrive on a galleon sailing up the Thames, a la Michael Jackson’s statue, only less tasteful.
Where are Al Qaeda when you need them? Lazy basturts
fentonsteve says
Anyone got Chris Grayling’s number?
Vulpes Vulpes says
eBay, lunchtime today:
Jeff says
“Strippers in Downing St? Oh go on then!”
– Johnson, probably
Moose the Mooche says
I think brining Yoko into this farrago is a bit tasteless.
Jeff says
Brine enhances the taste.
Anyone who knows their cockle from their winkle knows that.
Moose the Mooche says
ewww, fishy
Jeff says
“We’ll always have Hessle Rerd…”
Moose the Mooche says
They don’t sell tofu in Boyziz.
Jeff says
Boyziz tofu snafu.
Film at 11.
Jeff says
PS we had a Boyziz in Billingham when I was a kid (I watched it being built! Cranes! DIGGERS!!!) and it had, as a ‘feature’, the absolutely maddest shit you’ve ever seen in a department store aimed at C1s/C2s in the wider North East/East Riding region…
If I’m allowed one further post, after my recent excessive ubiquity, I’ll stick it up tomorrow.
Moose the Mooche says
….”excessive ubiquity”….? Oh swipe me, no wonder he’s too good for Boyziz!
Jeff says
??
Not too good for Boyziz; we were solidly target-demographic.
Jeff says
The maddest shit you’ve ever seen in a budget department store was cages of monkeys.
In the Billingham store, they were at the back of the carpet department…in the basement. Those poor animals, not only incarcerated for (presumably) their entire lives but also never breathing fresh air or seeing natural daylight.
But it seems that the Billingham store was far from unique, with Boyes beginning this strange practice from their very first store onwards, in Scarborough…which hosted not only monkeys but also chipmunks and budgies. Sheesh.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyes_(retailer)
Arthur Cowslip says
What about Trump? Could he fly over and join the conservative party?
Moose the Mooche says
….like not enough vomit on the walls, perhaps. And did somebody say “thank you” to one of the cleaners? sort it out, Bozzer!
fortuneight says
Meanwhile Krishnan Guru-Murthy has been sin binned for a week for correctly identifying (off air) ERG chair Steve Baker (and self appointed “hard man of Brexit) as a cunt. Baker has graciously accepted KGM’s apology and called for him to be sacked. Thereby proving KGM’s point.
thecheshirecat says
Pleasing, almost Suntastic, headline in the i today.
“Back frack or sack”
Moose the Mooche says
Phew, that’ll cause tremors
thecheshirecat says
Today, the i told me that it’s Julian Cope’s 65th birthday.
Freddy Steady says
I found that out today too but I read it in books.
Edith. I’ve realised I’ve made a terrible mistake. It was my responsibility. I resign.
retropath2 says
I hate it rock stars are younger than me. Especially when they had their hits and I liked them.
mikethep says
I’m awake. Did I miss anything?
Moose the Mooche says
If it’s first thing in the morning I tend to miss things…
hubert rawlinson says
Well I hope you mop up after.
Rigid Digit says
A lot of reports saying Liz Truss is the shortest serving Prime Minister – she’s 5′ 3″ so they do have a point
Moose the Mooche says
I thought it meant that when she pours you a whiskey you only get 20mls and a lot of ice….
…and your grandchildren have to pay for it, bdum and peradventure tishhhh
Sewer Robot says
Ben Elton’s back on Friday Night Live – are you writing his “little bit of politics” parts?
mikethep says
I’m thinking of joining the Conservative Party.
Moose the Mooche says
You’re not old enough, pint-size.
Jeff says
“What time can you get here?
Oh, and bring your own boots”.
davebigpicture says
Doing the rounds on FB among my theatre tech chums
“Truss moving”
Junior Wells says
Black Celebration says
For as long as I can remember, the Tories have been a split party. You’re either a dull accountant type who likes giving sophisticated tax breaks to the most generous donors – or you are an unhinged, leather-faced, stripy blazer-wearing racist with stupid hair and an eye for the ladies/boys/tractors.
That second group had their Brexit victory and were given the leader they wanted. All good now then? No. These people are dyed-in-the-wool thick as shit twats who cannot and should not be taken seriously. The good people of Wankington-on-the-Wold can elect them and they can hold forth at the golf club but for gods sake don’t give them decisions to make or real power. They are not up to it.
mikethep says
Which is why I’m thinking of joining the Conservative Party. Couple of hundred thousand funsters – wokerati, if you will – should do the trick. Worked for Corbyn, after all. Time is short, though…
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Minimum three months membership before you can vote.
Hearing this morning on Radio 4 that BJ may already have 140 nominations felt like a Brexit-result-rerun moment.
Rigid Digit says
And that is probably why they’re trying to conclude the next Leadership race without recourse to the membership.
Just in case they fuck it up again
Moose the Mooche says
On really shouldn’t laugh but BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
hubert rawlinson says
johnson is on holiday and parliament is sitting, surely that should disbar him from standing.
Moose the Mooche says
He’s on holiday? How can you tell?
hubert rawlinson says
True every day’s a holiday for him.
Mostly from reality.
Dave Ross says
The more I watch this unfold I actually believe it is part of an elaborate plan to get him back. She could barely contain a smirk at the lecturn yesterday. His “hasta la vista” sign off. His complete detachment from the Truss train crash. She’ll get a seat in the Lords if he gets in again. Boris v Rishi. God help us
Jaygee says
There seems to be an idea being floated that Bojo’s return would result in a GE.
Can’t quite visualize it myself.
Anyone here willing to put up with Bojo’s – hopefully brief – return to No 10 as the price for getting shot of the Tories?
Beezer says
Not for an instant. He was squeezed out of No 10 like the bulging turd that he is only by the application of 60 odd doses of Imodium in the form of en masse resignations due to his manifest unfitness for anything.
Approximately 7 weeks ago.
How would the markets and the rest of the G7 react to that sort of lunacy?
He’s a shoe in, isn’t he?
Fuck my life.
fitterstoke says
A pharmacist writes – after 60-odd doses of Imodium, they would never have squeezed him out of No. 10. DulcoEase might have helped, but even then it might have taken “manual evacuation“…
Beezer says
That’s what I meant. Yes. Not Imodium.
Imagine. Oof.
Moose the Mooche says
You say that like we have a choice.
Gatz says
He pretty much had to resign because he couldn’t form a government with dozens of ministerial resignations. Are all those former ministers suddenly going to decide that he’s fit to lead after all, or will he have to stuff the posts with inexperienced back benchers?
Jaygee says
If it’s that or the loss of his family seat since the days of the Rump Parliament, the Right Hon member for Del Monte, he say “Aye!”
Jeff says
Greece, Slovenia, Caribbean…
…them’s the breaks.
Moose the Mooche says
Hasta la vista, sunlounger.
Junior Wells says
I’m running out of popcorn down here.
Jaygee says
First forest fires, now floods and a yawning popcorn chasm, Oz doesn’t sound like an an especially “Lucky Country” to me
Moose the Mooche says
Being 10,000 miles away from anywhere that could be governed by Boris would make any amount of privation bearable.
Plus the excellent word “boofhead” is in everyday use down there.
Jaygee says
Bludger (pronounced “Bladjah” with a sky high Aussie interrogative on the end) is another one Bazza McKenzie would have been proud of
mikethep says
I discovered today that there’s an actual bird down here called a bazza, although the very dull call it a baza. Takes no shit from anybody, by the looks of it.
Martin Hairnet says
Fascinating. Looks like a mash up between a sparrowhawk, a cuckoo and a cockatiel.
Moose the Mooche says
Nope. He’s got the hundred. That’s it. Two more years of photo ops with Dilyn and cleaning ladies showered with vomit by the non-thinking man’s Mr Creosote.
The levelling up secretary Simon Clarke has become the second Cabinet minister to unequivocally back Boris Johnson, the Telegraph reports.
In a joint statement with Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen, Clarke said Johnson would lead “a broad-based, inclusive Government drawing on talent from right across the Conservative Party, driven by a disciplined Downing Street”.
A disciplined Downing Street. He actually said that.
Disciplined.
salwarpe says
Two more years of lies, self-indulgent narcissism, trvialising of everything, bullying of everyone he has power over and flattering of those he doesn’t. Scandal after scandal brushed under the carpet, money showered on his friends and half-true statistics to pretend he’s levelling up for everyone else, repeated ad nauseam whatever the question, complete with name calling, braying, and playing to the gallery. Oh, and lots of photo ops in Ukraine and in hard hats and fluorescent jackets.
Gary says
Again I say, in 2019, in a two-party dominated FPTP system, The Afterword, like the wider public, was far more scathingly critical of Corbyn than Johnson. Which is fair enough, everyone’s entitled to an opinion etc. But hearing people criticising Johnson now is rather like listening to the fishermen chappies who voted Leave moaning about Brexit.
Jaygee says
@Gary
To continue your nautical metaphor, I think HMS It-would-be-worse-under-Corbyn sailed and sank about 18 months ago
Gary says
True. But his way in as PM was paved by voting choices in 2019, and his way in now was paved by that previous victory.
salwarpe says
As you are replying to me, I would say I was sceptical of Corbyn’s abilities, but seriously pissed off with Johnson’s complete being. It was a choice between a rusty old bicycle with 2 flat tyres and handlebars that continually veered to the left, vs a knackered old Wolsely, supercharged, but leaking oil with poor steering and very weak suspension – neither was what was needed, and would have been terrible for very different reasons.
Gary says
Fair enough (I wasn’t taking aim at you specifically, just repeating a general observation). I just wish the all-round negativity towards Johnson had been more vocal when it counted (as I’ve said before, I don’t believe “a rusty old bicycle” could have been as bad for Britain -or me!- as a hard Brexit).
salwarpe says
Neither would be any use on a busy motorway, but a bicycle would be easier to ignore, and would probably less of a risk of death to other road users. I could imagine it doggedly and stubbornly sticking to the central lane, forcing everyone heading in the same direction to fume and seethe while it went nowhere fast.
fentonsteve says
A punctured bicycle on a hillside motorway?
hedgepig says
He… hasn’t got the hundred? 36 so far, Sunak on 54.
fitterstoke says
deramdaze says
Something has to give soon.
I fear for the place if that Fat Bastard gets back into No. 10 to rejoin his wallpaper and his Abba collection.
I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of someone living in London, aged 25 say…
…thankless job, maybe in the public sector, thousands of pounds to pay back in student fees, no freedom of movement, soaring bills to pay with more on the way, zero chance of getting on the housing ladder, tabloid headlines laughing openly from every news-stand…
How the f*** is that person meant to keep their cool?
Moose the Mooche says
Doesn’t it serve him or her right for being a “dodger”?
deramdaze says
You mean dodger – no speech marks in dodger.
Thing is, this is a dodger without a house, who can’t travel, with bills through the roof.
But, heh, you’re right, if you don’t give a shite neither will I.
Moose the Mooche says
“Dodger” is part of the language you use on here and in your own head. That doesn’t count as general usage. I don’t go round insisting that “Hurr” is a real word.
fentonsteve says
Hurr is wot people from ‘ull grow on thur ‘eads, innit?
Moose the Mooche says
No, wrong end of the M63. It’s err ere. (Or ere err. Consonant please Carol)
David Kendal says
So they’re not jammy dodgers.
Jaygee says
Just the ones whose scratch cards come up
johnw says
Assuming the current PM has nothing else to do this week, if I was her, I think I’d be busy scraping wallpaper off the walls and claim it was done a week ago and the decorators hadn’t had time to put the new stuff up!
Jaygee says
@johnw
Well she’ll have finished writing her political memoirs (Working title: Truss Me!” Not that anyone will serialize, buy or read them
Blue Boy says
They won’t bring Johnson back. It would be an absolute gift for Labour and the end for the Tories. Even that shower couldn’t be that stupid. Oh….
Gary says
My impression is the opposite: that Johnson is the only chance they have of winning an election. Like Trump, he inexplicably seems to be still popular. Who else would have a chance of winning?
Edit: Just seen a poll saying that Sunak would be his greatest threat to Starmer. So I’m probably wrong.
chiz says
People who think Johnson should come back = people who think Corbyn should come back
davebigpicture says
Emily Maitlis made the point that Boris won against Corbyn, who was the least popular Labour leader ever or something, so not really representative of his popularity.
Gary says
I didn’t know who she was, but a quick search shows that she, like most of The Afterword and the British public, was more vocal in her opposition to four years of a Corbyn government (with its promise of a 2nd referendum) than she was to Johnson + Brexit. Fair enough, but does she too now moan and whinge about Johnson and Brexit as though they weren’t exactly what was expected, as though she had no role in enabling both?
Jaygee says
Corbyn’s lasting “legacy” was the way he sat back and did nothing to stop the Leave bandwagon.
If you’re interested in reading what happened, when and why during 2016, suggest reading Tim Shipman’s excellent All Out War (assuming, of course, you’ve not already done so)
Gary says
We’ve had this conversation before and as previously stated, despite his anti-EU stance (which I really, really hated) Corbyn promised a second referendum.
It’s an undeniable fact that, given the two-party dominated FPTP system, people had a choice in 2019 between 4 years of Corbyn government with a second referendum or four years of Johnson government with a hard Brexit (or, as always, not vote for either and let others decide).
I thought, then as now, that the first choice was clearly the least worst option. Most people didn’t agree and rejected it, voting for -or enabling- the second. Fair enough, but I think they should own their choice instead of whinging about it like they had no part in it.
I never got round to buying the Shipman book, I’m afraid.
fentonsteve says
There was also, lest we forget, Jo Swinson with her Bollocks to Brexit campaign. Spoiler alert: she lost.
Gary says
With FPTP her party never stood a chance though. And especially not with her at the helm. It’s just occurred to me that I have absolutely no idea who their leader is now. Must look it up before the election. Or after.
Moose the Mooche says
52% of you are idiots and can fuck off. How was that not a vote winner?
Alias says
indeed, 52% is not enough for the UK to leave the UK, but 43% for the Tories in the 2019 election means Keir “Peoples Vote” Starmer votes for hard Brexit.
Jaygee says
@Gary
I suspect you’re right about the going round in circles bit.
Sadly, given the Tories’ insane desire to bring back a toxic figure they were glad to be shot of just three months ago, it seems we’re not alone in doing so.
Gary says
Look to the Daily Mail for clarity, say I.
chiz says
I didn’t know who she was, but a quick search shows that…
That’s way funnier than your other joke here, Gary.
Your quick but conclusive search didn’t get as far as the ‘Controversies over Impartiality’ section of Matlis’ Wikipedia page, which lists the complaints upheld against her for comments on Rod Liddle and Dominic Cummings, and how the BBC edited the recording of a lecture she gave after a complaint from the Prime Minister’s office. Those are the only controversies listed, unless you count her famous ‘I can’t sweat’ interview with Prince Andrew – probably the coldest, most brutal destruction of an establishment figure ever, and not I would say indicative of a right-wing bias.
Gary says
I’d no idea who she was, have never seen Newsnight, and tbh am not in the slightest bit interested in her, her views or controversies. I did a 5-second search after DBP mentioned her (“Maitlis Corbyn”) and a couple of Twitter comments came up of her dissing Corbyn. If she’s not an example of someone who enabled Brexit/Johnson and now moans about it, okey-dokey, that really doesn’t make any difference to my view as there’s no shortage of other examples. Quite the opposite.
DBP cited her simply to question the notion that Johnson is as popular now as he was in 2019. I’m not sure if he and she are right or wrong about that (see YouGov article below), but I then also mentioned her because the Twitter comments seemed to reflect what I was banging on about.
Anything else?
Edit: I did read all about the Prince Andrew interview. Couldn’t have named the interviewer though.
davebigpicture says
For clarity, Maitliss retweeted Rob Ford (who he?). The gist of a long series of replies was this
“ Boris Johnson was *not* popular in 2019. He was less popular at every point of the campaign than Theresa May was in the 2017 campaign (see graph). He had the good fortune to run with two strong fair winds – a toxic opponent (Corbyn) and a winning issue (Brexit). Both gone now.”
Gary says
I think the tweets I came across were her retweets too.
chiz says
I did a 5-second search (“Maitlis Corbyn”) and a couple of Twitter comments came up of her dissing Corbyn.
I know this is how most political opinions are formed, but I’ve never seen anyone admit to it quite so boldly.
If she’s not an example of someone who enabled Brexit/Johnson and now moans about it, okey-dokey, that really doesn’t make any difference to my view as there’s no shortage of other examples. Quite the opposite.
You appear to be saying “I admit I was wrong but that just proves I’m right.”
Gary says
I would dearly love to know what “political opinion” it is that you think I formed on the basis of quickly searching Maitlis.
I’m perfectly happy to accept that I was wrong about Maitles and her views on Corbyn, if you tell me so, but I don’t see how that relates to my view that people who refused to vote for him enabled Brexit/Johnson. Again, I would love an explanation. If you can.
Gary says
I’ll take that as a no then, shall I Chiz? Does make me wonder what possesses you to address my comments with such nonsensical criticism. Makes me wonder if you have “issues”.
chiz says
Oh Gary. So far you’ve used the ‘lighten up it’s just a joke’ defence, the ‘personal slight’ defence, and the ‘do you have issues’ defence. Why on Earth would I want to engage with someone like that?
You’re now going to reply with “Please tell me where I used the exact phrase ‘lighten up it’s just a joke.'” And so on, and on.
Gary says
Ha! And there was me thinking our problematic relationship on political threads has only ever been about you “engaging” with me and never, ever the other way round. (Your mode of “engagement” only ever being to criticise or ridicule my comments.)
I don’t see discussions in terms of “defence”. Or attack come to that. I think we have a very different approach to discussion. To life, probably. But I’d be happy for you not to “engage” with me with meaningless criticism that you’re unwilling to explain.
Oh and btw, I’ve have never, ever said “lighten up” to anybody ever, not here not anywhere. Simply not part of my vocabulary or mentality. (And accusing me of “pretending” to not understand in order to avoid a question -rather than simply asking me for an explanation- is, I think, personal slight by any definition.)
Lodestone of Wrongness says
I’ve no idea what you two are arguing about but just to say I agree with Gary (although chiz does have a point)
Gary says
Nonsense. He’s clearly insane.
Gary says
@chiz
That surprises me. I thought they’d be different people.
Jaygee says
@Gary
Different people afflicted with frighteningly similar delusions
Gary says
Are there people who want Corbyn back? I suppose there must be. Clearly not gonna happen though. Whereas Boris… I wouldn’t rule it out.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/10/18/most-tory-members-say-liz-truss-should-resign
chiz says
I think Gary was employing the “I’ll pretend not to understand the comment so I don’t have to address the substance of it” tactic here.
Gary says
Could that be Chiz employing the ‘personal slight’ tactic? My comment to you was, clearly I thought, in jest. (But if not clear enough, I’ll explain: I didn’t really think you believed that the people who want Johnson back are the same people who want Corbyn back, because that wouldn’t make sense.)
What substance do you want addressed? That the people who want Corbyn back (whoever they are) are similar in their level of delusion to the people who want Johnson back? At this point I think the people who want Corbyn back must be far more delusional, because I think Johnson actually has a chance.
Black Celebration says
Let’s imagine a returning Boris Johnson to no 10. By the end of next weekend, dozens of Tory MPs will feel unable to cross the floor in the House because they would lose their jobs. So they can’t do anything about it. They will be silent on the matter.
On the following Friday it’s 5 November. A hugely symbolic day for people to express their feelings about a broken, dysfunctional, corrupt government. Yes there will be fireworks.
This can be avoided by not having Boris Johnson back as PM. People are still pissed off, but having Johnson back will be an almighty signal that the Government doesn’t give a shit about the people.
Moose the Mooche says
I think I’ve decided that I want Boris to come back so that we can see him finally finished off at the polls. As it stands, he still believes that every single citizen in the UK voted for him personally in 2019, they all still love him more than they love their own families and it’s only the treachery of the herd* that has stopped him. Imagine when he has to own defeat the way he has owned victory. I want to see him destroyed and utterly humiliated. Not to lose his own seat though, no – I’d like him to have to return to the commons with about 90 MPs and to feel their rage and hate burning into his great fat back. Oh, and can we fix it for him to go bald as well? That would really flatten him. And Carrie shags someone else, that’s another bit of karma he’s well overdue.
* Thoroughly unfair, From the Underworld was a bloody good single
Nick L says
How perfectly expressed. Best thing I’ve read about Johnson in ages.
Moose the Mooche says
From someone not motivated entirely by hatred, this:
The thought occurs that maybe the Conservative Party no longer cares. Perhaps the sum of its ambition is to become the provisional wing of the right-wing entertainment industry: happy to preach to a diminishing band of true believers, and good for a newspaper column or fringe TV turn, while Keir Starmer gets on with the tiresome business of actually running the country.
If so, it can look forward to a Prime Minister staffing his government with fifth raters, since the bulk of the 66 Ministers who resigned in the summer will refuse to serve. If a by-election forced by a Commons suspension doesn’t get him first. If the Tory benches don’t first vote down the report into his conduct that would trigger it, thus speeding the spiral of decline.
The Germans have a word for it: Totentanz – a dance of death. Conservative MPs, peers, donors, hacks and activists caper onwards an open grave, with Death himself – sorry, Johnson – leading the procession. The dance possesses them; it has a momentum of its own; they are powerless to stop.
John Crace? Marina Hyde?
Nope. Paul Goodman, editor of Conservative Home – a website by and for members of the Conservative party.
Jeff says
Discussing the possible Johnson scenarios with a friend yesterday I said that I was probably unwisely allowing myself to hope for:
– he gets <100 noms
– he finally realises that he's never going to be King of the World again
– Sunak gets the job
– Sunak absolutely does not offer him a place in the Cabinet
– his ego (and greed) will not allow him to be a backbencher (and he's already mindful of the upcoming Privileges Ctte and its potential jeopardies)
– he resigns his seat pronto and leaves front line politics altogether
– he accepts a sinecure in the Lords
– we effectively see the back of him in public life
Over-optimistic, probably…but I'm very encouraged by Goodman's comments, above, along with those of North etc.
Blue Boy says
He may or may not be able to get 100 MPs delusional enough to put him in the game (though I suspect not) but I don’t think he’ll stand, and the media chatter about him is all a bit of a sideshow. People like Charles Moore are clearly counselling him to play the long game. If he gets in now all the scandal of the last couple of years will still be fresh in people’s minds. He has the parliamentary scrutiny panel to get though. Doing that as a backbencher is one thing; doing it in the full glare of being prime minister when you’re supposed to be dealing with the economic crisis is another altogether. Clearly that crisis isn’t going to be turned around anytime soon, so frankly whoever comes in now has every chance of leading the Tories into defeat. So, better, surely, for Booster Boris to let Rishi take the rap for that, then come back in glory, lead the Tories in opposition and blame everything on Labour, and then, when everyone’s forgotten what a complete shyster he is, win the next election four or five years later. Simples.
Jeff says
Do you think he has the patience/maturity/ability to defer his need for gratification for that long?
I’m just trying to forestall my own disappointment, of course; yes, I’d *love* to see him accept the counsel of Moore et al…I just don’t think he would/will. That’s why I think he needs to be definitively and unequivocally despatched by the PCP come 2pm Monday afternoon.
Blue Boy says
You’re probably right. With Johnson it is ALL about him. He couldn’t give a shot what’s right for the country or even the party.
But he does have enough of a self interest survival instinct to know when the game is up, for now. It doesn’t look like he’s going to get the PLP votes; when that’s clear to him he will magnanimously say that now is not the time to stand, and that he’s backing Rishi. I wonder if he’ll extract a cabinet place as his price, or whether he’d prefer to be on the backbenches sniping form outside and keeping himself clean from any potential election loss.The latter I suspect.
Blue Boy says
To be honest there is a bit of me that would like to see him stand and get the Tory membership vote, and come back. If that does happen I think it will be a catastrophe for him and the Tories. . He’ll be crap at it. It will once and for all finish off any remaining sliver of a reputation the Tory party may have for decency competence and probity. From a purely political point of view I honestly think it is the best thing that could happen for Labour. Trouble is there is every chance it’ll take the country even further down than it already is.
I think most Tory MPs do know this. They know they need someone with a vague semblance of competence and maturity now, and that’s why I think they will crown Sunak early next week. God knows he has his issues politically but compared to Johnson or Truss he does at least appear to resemble a normal functioning human being.
Jeff says
Yes I saw elsewhere online that he was supposed to be having a meeting with Sunak earlier this evening, presumably to try and inveigle some sort of deal for himself, the assumption being that he wasn’t going to top 100 noms. The last I read, that meeting had been postponed.
The thought of him getting some sort of access to the CA scares the bejasus out of me though, as I’m getting the impression it does many of the MPs.
I don’t know anything about politics, really, but I do feel certain, like you, that he’s not going to get the PLP votes…
[suitable emoji here]
Black Celebration says
CA?
Gary says
Comfy armchair?
Canned ale?
Crusty aardvark?
Jeff says
Conservative Association (s).
They don’t have anything as remotely plebian as ‘Comstituency Parties ‘ like the *shudder* Socialists.
Jeff says
@Blue-Boy
‘He may or may not be able to get 100 MPs delusional enough to put him in the game (though I suspect not) but I don’t think he’ll stand…’
You were absolutely spot-on; great reading and forecasting of a very complex and fluid situation. Congratulations.
Blue Boy says
Too kind, @Jeff, but you give me too much credit. Basically, if I make enough uneducated guesses I’m bound to be right occasionally.
Jeff says
@Blue-Boy
Ah, a hedge-fund manager then!
I’m joking, of course…
Credit where it’s due though chum, that was fine entrail-reading.
Beezer says
I refer you to Matthew Parris in today’s Times.
Headlined ‘Put a stake through this vampire’s heart now’
I’ll see If I can find a text version that isn’t behind the paywall.
It’s a clear eyed and lyrical call to the parliamentary party to skewer the bastard for now and evermore.
Jeff says
Thankyou, yes I did see the headline and was heartened by it; I don’t have a subscription so if you were to find a text version I’d be really grateful.
I’ll also take this opportunity to correct my mistake in my post above; rather than saying ‘North’, I should have said ‘Frost’, ie David.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
@jeff
See below
hubert rawlinson says
https://inews.co.uk/news/boris-johnson-booed-by-passengers-as-he-joins-bemused-tourists-on-flight-back-to-uk-for-leadership-race-1927998
salwarpe says
Re the OP
salwarpe says
I heard the other day that clowns were sent in when things were going really badly and the ringmaster needed a distraction while the grown ups fixed things behind the scenes.
In the current political climate, a better phrase might be ‘the lunatics have taken over the asylum’, as there seems to have been no sign of grown ups, front or backstage since at least 2016.
Moose the Mooche says
I see a clinic full of cynics….
Jeff says
At the time of posting, Johnson has <100.
Mind you, that's only the children we know about, of course.
Mike_H says
It’s likely if he gets to the final 2, the party membership would vote for him in the online poll that will follow. He’s unlikely to get a majority from the MPs, though he might scrape the necessary 100. With any luck he won’t. If only one of the candidates gets the required 100 nominations then they get installed straight away without a membership vote.
Looks like there’s only loonies left in the Conservative Associations out there.
If it’s anything like what I heard about Watford’s local branch in the rest of the country, the moderate supporters have all been bullied out by the headbanger contingent.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Bloody hell, The Times sure makes it hard to copy & paste…
“Boris? Again? That charlatan? They cannot be serious. Kipling was not wrong: “The Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire/ And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.”
Can Tory MPs really be contemplating supporting the scoundrel who only weeks ago they rightly dumped? Have they so quickly forgotten why they dumped him? The rascal whose short second administration mislaid 80 ministers, 55 of them within three days only this summer, more than tripling parliament’s previous record for mass resignations?
The hedgies’ poodle who first proposed the idea that helped to kill his successors’ budget: slashing taxes for the rich? The dissimulator charged with lying to parliament and now at risk of being suspended as an MP by the privileges committee, and even kicked out in a by-election.
A return for the “king over the water” (in this case the Caribbean)? I say again, really? Boris, the impostor who just before his fall earned (in a YouGov poll) a public approval rating of minus 53 per cent? Has his party already forgotten its drubbing under Boris Johnson’s leadership at the local government elections in May this year? Or the by-elections lost in Chesham & Amersham and Tiverton & Honiton?
Johnson was never a crowd pleaser except as an entertainer. He was never a notably popular prime minister. All the polling says the same: he carries no conviction and isn’t even widely liked.
How, then, are his supporters persuading colleagues to take him seriously? Two linked efforts are afoot this weekend. They mirror the tactics that pushed Liz Truss over the line.
Momentum is being manufactured through creating an impression that Johnson is already on his way to victory. Mysterious reports on social media suggest he’s surging ahead among those MPs who are declaring — but the identities of some of these are undisclosed. They will (we’re assured) reveal themselves “later”. The sense of movement this creates is giving those many Conservative MPs who still keep their own counsel the idea that this man is a winner, and (say quieter MPs to themselves), “we’d better declare for him early, as we know he rewards supporters and freezes out the rest”.
Exaggerating his progress then swells his declared support, giving Tory activists the (false) idea that Johnson is popular among MPs — thus influencing their own vote because they rightly wish to back someone the parliamentary party wants as its leader. This is precisely what happened when Truss ran for the leadership, and MPs who I know thought her useless started issuing statements praising her to the skies. Tory activists saw and digested this praise. It is not certain she would have won without that skilful creation of a self-reinforcing loop of prediction, careerist flattery, and gullible activists. Sir Graham Brady and his 1922 committee have done the nation no favours by missing the opportunity this crisis presented to sidestep the party membership.
No conspiracist in normal times, I have become convinced Johnson and his gang promoted Truss’s candidacy not because they thought she was any good but because they knew she wasn’t. Her failure was to be the launchpad for his return. I cannot disclose what has persuaded me Johnson thought she’d fail, but it confirmed all my suspicions. He knew that only against the backdrop of total mess could he look good.
I’m a Midlander whose own former constituency is almost surrounded by red-wall seats. To new Tory MPs from such seats — the 2019-ers — I would earnestly advise this: don’t let the recent shudder of sellers’ remorse among Tory activists unbalance your judgment. “I miss Boris” is more nostalgic than future-facing, but we do hear it widely repeated, especially from committed Tories and (I’m afraid to say) the posher sort who think Boris “fun”.
He may be; but talk to the uncommitted. You’ll hear the view, of course, that we can imagine having a beer with him, but listen harder and you’ll pick up the deep suspicion that he’s a scamp and a rogue. In easy times a scamp in Downing Street is good theatre. But easy times do not lie ahead, and to voters beginning to agonise about whether their mortgage lender might repossess, politics is about more than drinking companions. Johnson may seem funny now but he won’t this winter. Rishi Sunak may lack comedy genius, but we’ll appreciate his seriousness, his intelligence and grasp when power cuts threaten.
As for Johnson, he’s just playing with us again. If he loses, or withdraws, it’s only a game. But if he wins, it’s still a game. Whatever, we’ll be talking about him, and for Johnson that’s the thrill. Failure would be a pity but obscurity would be worse. Fame or infamy — it’s all in the mix for Johnson because both bring what Johnson most wants: attention. There’s a part of this man that would enjoy the walk to the scaffold: centre stage to the last. Weighed against the horror of being forgotten, Johnson sees the upside of a car crash.
For his party, however, and for the country, the downside is scary indeed. The last thing Britain needs now is a leader who doesn’t know or care about business, economics or even simple book-keeping. That Rishi Sunak, the (quite close) runner-up to Truss, is vastly, incomparably better placed not only to take Britain’s finances through the awful storm ahead but (achingly absent from today’s politics) to impart a sense of seriousness to the running of a country seems so obvious that I have to pinch myself to believe I’m even writing about a possible forthcoming Johnson administration.
In his wake, Johnson leaves only political death or injury. His victory next week could kill the party and would wound the country. Except temporarily, nobody prospers from their association with this man. List all those who’ve been drawn into his close association, personal or political, and ask yourself who among them has found in his company a springboard to their own political success or personal happiness. He has the quality of a vampire: he must kill to live.
“With Boris it isn’t over until it’s over . . . it is now up to his party to see to that,” I wrote here three months ago. “Not,” (I said) “until there’s a stake through his heart can we be sure he’s gone.”
I write it again today, with greater urgency. Sometimes in history we read of an obvious deceiver who just kept cheating his way upwards into fame and power, and say to ourselves, “How shameful we were fooled!” Well, my Tory backbench friends, save yourselves that shame. Stop him now.”
Beezer says
Thank you, Lodes
Jeff says
Many thanks Lodey, I’m assuming this is the Parris piece?
He’s right, of course, but I’ve got to say…
…that this country’s politics will really only step into the C21st when its politicians, journalists, Twatterati, and sundry hangers-on come to understand that what the country, its people, its economy, and its self-esteem (by which I mean its international credibility) do NOT need is its affairs being debated and decided by unsuitably-‘educated’ men of letters quoting Cincinnatus, Kipling, Shakespeare, and whatever Classical shite is oozing languidly out of JRM’S mouth this weekend.
To them, it’s all a droll game, merely an amusing little fastness in which to over-winter whilst on The Grand Tour of Life, an experience to be ticked off and later ruminated upon in one’s memoirs, with oh-so-becoming but simply far-too-late legacy-burnishing regrets and newly-acquired humility.
We just need intelligent, grounded, accomplished, non-egotistical, Real World- experienced and Real World-facing adults who have the maturity, intelligence, humanity, humility, and intellectual sophistication to engage with the problems of mind-bending complexity that this country and this planet are facing.
So, thanks, Matthew, but say it bluntly and non-elliptically in a short, single paragraph that the thickest of Tory mouth-breathers can understand, absorb, and act upon.
Moose the Mooche says
“There’s a part of this man that would enjoy the walk to the scaffold” says Parris. Let’s indulge him that, then.
hubert rawlinson says
Here’s a tune for the walk
hubert rawlinson says
Indeed thank you.
Kaisfatdad says
Well said @Jeff.
¨
Your penultimate paragraph “We just need….” was right on the money.
Jeff says
Thankyou very much @Kaisfatdad, that means a lot to me.
Blue Boy says
Superb stuff. Several people on social media have also posted an article about Truss that Parris wrote back in the summer that is so on the money that it’s positively Nostradamus like (if Nostradamus was in any way accurate of course). Amongst other things he described her as a ‘planet sized mass of over confidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain’. ‘She’s crackers’ he concluded ‘It isn’t going to work’. Brilliant.
Moose the Mooche says
One person who had her right from the off was, er, Dominic Cummings.
Hand Grenade he called her – would that she had caused as little damage as a hand grenade.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
@jeff
Surely there is room in all this for both, for example, Jonathan Pie’s “Fuck off dogshit” and Matthew Parris who whilst quoting Shakespeare actually stuck the knife in deeper?
And,as noted above, his article August 20th demolishing Truss was so spot-on it’s uncanny.
I disagree with most of Matthew’s politics but he’s a proper old-fashioned one-nation Tory with actual intelligence and actual morals.
Jeff says
@Lodestone_of_Wrongness
You’re absolutely right of course, Lodey, there is room for both of these voices and the many in between. And I also concur with your description of Parris, and I like and admire those perspectives and qualities in him.
Nonetheless, I raged about him (and his ilk) a bit last night because it’s that legacy ‘Wykehamist Fallacy’ mindset (wherein a decent, honourable and upstanding chap assumes that the chap sat across the negotiating table from him is also decent, honourable, and upstanding…when in fact
he very much is not) that allows a devious, scheming, narcissist like Johnson to rise unchecked, as long as he has a firm handshake and can spool out a euphonious paragraph at will.
As we all know on this board, Johnson is simply a con-man, and so, in my humble opinion, he needs to be called out on that at every possible opportunity in direct, unambiguous terms which maximise connectivity with, and understanding by, the hard-of-thinking. I just felt that Parris’s piece softened its blows by wrapping them up in literary references.
I know I’m somehow both overthinking and underthinking this, to be honest, I’m just genuinely extremely worried about the possibility that Johnson may scrape through here.
I see that it’s about 24hrs since I posted my thoughts last night, and I’ve been asleep most of today and have barely seen the news, so it’s possible that the situation is very different as I write this. I’m desperate to see not only the back of Johnson himself but also an end to the brand of charlatanism in public life that he personifies.
Black Celebration says
A racist caller to LBC cut to the chase. Sunak isn’t English enough for most Tory members and they would not support a candidate who doesn’t reflect “85% of English people”. We all know what he means by that. Liz Truss was elected over Sunak to be palatable to this now-very-powerful faction within the Tory party. They don’t want to piss about with Farage and UKIP – they want actual power and under Johnson they have someone to get behind.
Gatz says
Was the caller asked about how the US-born Boris Johnson measures on that scale against the Southampton born Rishi Sunak?
Mike_H says
It’s not necessarily where they’re from for racists, it’s what they represent to them.
I’m not sure the sort of people who call in to LBC for a rant are actually active party members, though. Rich Asians they can do business with are very welcome in the party. Especially if the business done is in cash.
Tax cuts would override racism for a lot of them. If Rishi had supported tax cuts and Truss hadn’t, I think a majority would have swallowed their racism for the sake of greed and voted for Sunak.
Black Celebration says
Yes, he was. It doesn’t matter though, he’s not going to suddenly change his outlook.
Very interesting that such people when challenged often cave in completely. “Hey, I’m not talking about ME …I’m just telling you what a lot of people I know are saying….”
salwarpe says
This guy?
So the country´s leader is being decided by people like this, (and a tortoise, of course).
deramdaze says
It has been a long, slow, drawn-out process, but 50 years of racism (some overt, most as plain as the nose on your face) via the tabloid press has worked wonders.
I have to say that although I hate Fat Boy, it is the general public I have the most contempt for. I’m going to start calling some of them out.
Boneshaker says
I agree with you. I’m certain the reason Rishi Sunak wasn’t voted for by the Tory membership in the first place, in favour of someone completely useless and incompetent, was that huge swathes of the membership are Little Englanders for whom Rishi Sunak would have been an unpalatable face of their party.
Bingo Little says
Kemi Badenoch was the preferred candidate of the Tory membership last time. They love Suella Braverman too.
I don’t think they’re fussy about skin colour, so long as their ideology is reflected. In the same way that Sunak being Prime Minister won’t be celebrated as a triumph for “diversity” by many on the left (or indeed on this blog), because he has the wrong views. In neither case does the candidate’s ethnicity appear to be the major concern, and rightly so.
Moose the Mooche says
Never forget that a lot of CAs are now dominated by people who were in UKIP and/or the Brexit Party before 2019, who let’s say aren’t the biggest multiculturalists in the world. It’s the most successful instance of entryism* in political history. Hence (pace Kinnnock on Militant) all this “grotesque chaos”.
*hurrr
Gatz says
Seeing as he been on holiday for the last few months how come Johnson looks like he’s hanging out of his arse in the thumbs-up-on-the-phone pictures? I’ve had a few hedonistic days and nights in my time, but I don’t think I’ve ever looked as comprehensively fucked as he did today,
Tiggerlion says
Jet lag
Moose the Mooche says
I’m sure his constituents will be well satisfied that he is earning his £80,000 plus a year salary. Having all those holidays, which let’s face it he won’t have paid a penny of his own money for, must be bloody hard work. All that wine to drink, carpets to be sick on, interns to fuck.
Poor man.
Tiggerlion says
Plus £115,000 allowance for being an ex Prime Minister. Will be get double that if he is PM twice?
Moose the Mooche says
Oh he will.
Jeff says
“10lbs of shite in a 9lb bag”.
– Herodotus, probably.
Jaygee says
Or 4.536 kgs of shit in a 4.082 kgs bag in pre-Brexit dividend terms
hubert rawlinson says
Or as johnson would have it.
“decem libras in novem libras in stercore sacculi “
Jaygee says
Get you and your 50-denarii words!
Gary says
I thought this was a pretty good, concise summary of the past 12 years:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/22/austerity-brexit-and-44-days-in-purgatory-the-key-stages-of-tory-rule?
Lodestone of Wrongness says
As of this morning (who knows what will happen this afternoon) it looks like Sunak is going to win. An intelligent PM, who would have thunk?
Unfortunately, he’s also a hard-right squillionaire, has never wavered from being pro-Brexit and will have no problem taking “tough decisions”. In the long run (ie till 2024) he may even turn out to be worse than Boris ….
Jaygee says
@Lodestone_of_Wrongness
Could be that Boris was just blowing smoke with that “King Across the Water” malarkey he pulled yesterday. Given the size of the shit show awaiting the next incumbent of No 10, his notorious laziness and desperate attention to be liked, think he is biding his time in the hope that, like Truss, Sunak will eventually crash and burn
As one fairly senior Tory told the Times’ hack “come June next year, they’ll be begging for him to come back”.
While they have no relevance to an election, current polls showing KS would only get a 26 seat majority if facing Johnson versus a 124-seat rout against Sunak would seem to bear the unnamed Tory grandee out
Lodestone of Wrongness says
I think fatso lying on his sun lounger thought “Blimey and cor, like Napoleon here I come”. Back in Blighty, somebody has taken his hand and said “1. Not enough fools yet. 2. Wait till near the next GE”
At four o’clock this afternoon I may well be proved Wrong (again)
Jaygee says
Looks like Johnson is struggling to get to 100 votes and Penny Dreadful has just declined his request that she stands down.
Perhaps he might break the habit of a lifetime by doing the decent thing and “pulling out” himself.
Moose the Mooche says
Nope. The Johnson camp are now saying they have the numbers.
He’ll declare in the morning. It will go to the members* and on Friday it’s King Bozo once more. Then the fun really begins:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/23/four-reasons-why-a-boris-johnson-conservative-party-return-could-end-in-disaster
(*the unsound of the suburbs)
Lodestone of Wrongness says
The Johnson Camp have been saying they’ve got the numbers since Friday. Nope (not yet anyway)
Moose the Mooche says
But they’re ‘celebrating’….
Oh hang on, that means they’re all getting pissed and snorting coke off prozzies’ arses. Which they do all the time anyway.
Who’s up for offering Boris a “waffer thin mint”?
salwarpe says
Jacob Rees Cleese?
hubert rawlinson says
It was pointed out to me that truss is the first pm in 67 years to ‘serve’ under two monarchs. Truly a remarkable achievement.
Moose the Mooche says
I am usually averse to using the word insane….
Rawnsley in today’s Observer:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/23/if-tory-party-brings-back-boris-johnson-fit-only-for-straitjacket
chiz says
If Johnson really did calculate that if he backed Truss she’d blow herself and the country up and he’d sail back in as our saviour, that’s proper Bond villain levels of evil masterminding. You have to wonder what someone with the vision to pull that off could do if they used their powers for good.
Jaygee says
He does use his powers for good – his own good
davebigpicture says
On the other hand, Truss was obviously hopeless to all except 80,000 Tory party members. Even during the endless campaign, she came across as vacuous and dimwitted. So much so that I found it hard to believe that it was claimed she was doing so well, let alone be capable of winning.
Jaygee says
Good to see AR elevated to that select group of people known only by one name – Miles, Picasso, Sooty…
Gatz says
And Johnson is out, presumably leaving a Sunak coronation giving Mordaunt’s relatively poor showing (great hair can only take you so far). Johnson does however claim to have over 100 nominees, but they go to a different parliament and you wouldn’t know them.
Boneshaker says
Apparently, standing would not be ‘the right thing to do’. I doubt if ethical considerations have really factored in Johnson’s decision. More likely he knows he would lose, and there are other far more lucrative options open to him.
thecheshirecat says
You have to admire his devotion to duty that he flew back across the Atlantic in order to make that profound and entirely selfless decision.
Beezer says
Good. I don’t care what the reason may have been but I speculate some of his hedge fund pals have told him to wind his chins in. It’s too soon. They need an economy to take advantage of and if that scrotal sac was the hand on the tiller until his next hounding out they wouldn’t have one.
hubert rawlinson says
“Let someone else try to sort it then in a few years I shall return like a colostomy risen from the deep to lead this country once again. “
Jeff says
Oh thank God for that.
Rigid Digit says
“Johnson pulls out”
something he rarely did in the bedroom
salwarpe says
I wonder if, in their meetings with him, Sunak and/or Mordaunt put the thumbscrews on him – you may win the Tory membership vote, but you’ll be toast in the Commons, lose the next election, and go down in history for destroying the Tory Party. Something like that.
Moose the Mooche says
“No no no no, blerrr blerrr blerr wifflewaffle piffle paffle mangled Latin quotation booster doomster spaff not my children etc ” were his exact words.
Mike_H says
Much more simple than that. Sunak already had almost double the required nominations and Mordaunt refused point blank to drop out of the race and support him.
He was faced with the choice of ploughing on and failing to get his 100 nominations, which would have necessitated publicly eating a small portion of humble pie, or retiring from contention with a bit of bluster and monstrous ego intact.
Jaygee says
Showing a clearly befuddled Jin Tzun being lead away by comrades Lees Mok and Zha Wi as smirking rival Soo Nak looks on, Mainland Chinese TV has done an interesting recreation of the moment our former PM’s latest leadership campain imploded.
Moose the Mooche says
No wonder the Tories love China so much. None of this inconvenient democracy nonsense.
Gary says
Lots of dang fool Brit peeps be saying “we want a PM who has been elected by us”, when Britain’s last decent PM (Gordon Brown) and Italy’s first ever decent PM (Mario Draghi) were living proof that elections are a complete waste of everyone’s time and we’d all be better off concentrating on the footie or Love Island and leaving politics to the experts.
Jaygee says
@Gary
Give it a few years, G, and Xi (or a cloned version of him) will be ruling over the UK if he has his way
Gatz says
I’ve read Boris Johnson’s statement now and it seems:
• He got 102 nominations
• Those nominations would have enabled him to stand for leader/PM
• He would have had a good chance of winning the members’ vote
• Him winning is the only way to avoid a General Election
• A general election would be a further disastrous distraction’
• So he withdrew
Just so we understand.
hubert rawlinson says
102 nominations!
After all he’s never been known to lie.
salwarpe says
Boris, Boris, wake up! It was 102 DALMations – the rather poor sequel you watched with Wilf in Casa de Campo on Saturday. Remember? It was supposed to remind you NOT to stand again.
hubert rawlinson says
102 damnations on his soul (should he find he has one)
Boneshaker says
He commissioned Diane Abbott to conduct the count.
Jaygee says
@Boneshaker
Unfortunate typo at the end there, B
Moose the Mooche says
God Knows Boris Won.
Rigid Digit says
Those “102” nominations in full:
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Chris Pincher
Stanley Johnson
Downing Street’s various puff photographers
Whoever paid for the wallpaper
The kid who got rugby-tackled years ago
The woman next to me on the flight from Dominican Republic
Darius Guppy
Lord Lucan
Moose the Mooche says
The photographers – are you sure you’re still allowed to say that?
salwarpe says
I like the quote in the Mail – “a gesture of wisdom and statesmanship”. In fact “a remarkable gesture of magnanimity from a remarkable politician – perhaps the most brilliant of his generation”.
Essentially, who’s a good boy, didn’t you do well? If we shower praise on you, will you shut up and go away?
Jaygee says
@salwarpe
Wish The Male and The Mail would both go away…
salwarpe says
Something I’ve wished since the early 80s when it was the paper of choice in our school common room.
Moose the Mooche says
Uh? What kind of 17-year old reads The Mail? It’s not even sold to anyone under the age of 55. At least the redtops have the excuse of tits. If you’re that age. (ahem)
salwarpe says
I went to a Quaker school that was full of non-Quaker kids of typical Tory stock – very weird.
Moose the Mooche says
“You’ve got the rest of your life to be middle-aged. Have a Viz!”
dai says
Didn’t The Sun used to have 16 yr olds on page 3? Different times or maybe they still do?
Black Celebration says
Not sure if it was the The Sun but one of them had an incredibly creepy day-by-day countdown to a model’s 16th birthday. Over a few days, the clothing eventually disappeared until the big day came and ta-daa!
The basic flaw with this that the photo session must have taken place when she was 15.
Beezer says
I wonder if our new Overlord will re shuffle.
I could do without Shapps at the HO.
Rigid Digit says
Depends who he has promised a job to,
Bound to really, usually a new Leaders first action – surround themselves with their mates and those they rate highly in the Party
salwarpe says
He’s supposed to appoint a cabinet of all the talents, not just his mates, like Truss and Johnson did.
2 things
– it’ll be a small cabinet.
– that’s what Theresa May did – went well for her…
thecheshirecat says
We don’t want him back at Transport, thankyou very much.
Beezer says
The Graun speculates Shappers will be hoofed onto Marsham Street to let Raab in.
Jeff says
Does Marsham St still exist? I thought it’d been demolished/redeveloped donkeys’ years ago.
I remember being invited in to do some training there for Environment managers, before they were regionalised out into the boonies (so I’m guessing post-’97) and thinking it looked like a location from The Sweeney.
But not in a good way.
thecheshirecat says
You mean, there will still be a Department for Levelling Up?
mikethep says
Not Hat Mancock, possibly…