When you accept that, everything else makes sense.
The Conservative and Unionist Party was founded in 1834 and is, by some distance, the most successful political party in the history of the United Kingdom. They are the people that run the UK. The party only fails to take power when they stuff things up. If they keep things boring, steady and (small c) conservative, they remain in power.
The Tories have decided that they don’t want power at the next General Election. They want to flush out the troublesome right by democratic process rather than continually removing whips and trying to keep the oiks on message. I think they welcome the emergence of the Reform Party to gather them in, knowing that Farage and Co will only get one seat in Clacton-on-Sea.
They consider this Opposition to be palatable and will allow them to take the reins and keep things toddling along until the Tories can regroup and take over again.
We can tell that Sunak will not be brokenhearted to leave No. 10. I do not expect to hear anything from him that might sound like political vision for the country. After Johnson and Truss, he has been a solid nightwatchman. A cricketing term for a lower-order batsman put in as the light fades, to preserve the more talented players for another day when the conditions are better.
This is the only logical reason why they are not calling a May election – they want things to get worse!
There is also the attack on Angela Rayner. Over what? The possibility that she *might* owe the tax office up to TWO…THOUSAND…POUNDS (insert Dr Evil from the Austin Powers movies here).
By the way, she probably doesn’t owe anything. If she had made any improvements on her home before selling it, the cost of that can be deducted from the CGT tax bill.
The serious error of judgement that the Tories are making is that they are supposed to be the party of aspiration. This is their one remaining trump card over Labour i.e. “we want YOU to be successful too!”. These attacks are self-harming because they are putting the boot into someone who has turned her life around and become successful. She shouldn’t have nice shoes, she shouldn’t enjoy opera and that she certainly shouldn’t be making a profit on selling her house! When the Tories say that the Labour Party is the party of envy rather than aspiration – they are showing their true colours and they have lost their one remaining advantage.
I don’t expect anyone to wade in with a pro-Tory argument here because I think the true Conservatives are just keeping quiet. I know I would.
Perhaps I am crediting them with too much strategic nous here.
Inclined to think there is no viable strategy. They’ve just lost the plot and become a single-issue party.
I got a questionaire through the post from the Conservatives, the other day. Reading it, they seem to be totally obsessed with Immigration and “stopping the boats”. The vast majority of the questions were based on those two. They don’t appear to have anything else to offer at all.
I binned it and used the prepaid envelope that came with it to send them the following message:
“I’d rather shit my pants than vote Conservative. They are not on our side.”
They’ve had 14 years to pull their fingers out, but rather like cheap immigrant labour and less unionisation pushing wages down so the wealth goes upwards. It’s all been a lark for them until it all came back to bite them on the arse. Some would like that, I suspect.
I DISKARD THEM.
The 14 years point may be more than a detail. After the relative chaos of the 1979s it has been Conservatives – 1979 to 1997 (and it was a surprise to many that Major won in 1992), Labour 1997 to 2010, Conservatives 2010 to 2024 (almost certainly).
It seems that once parties’ years in government creeps into the teens they get tired and run out of ideas, or the voting public get fed up waiting to feel their lives and lives of those of them round them have improved significantly and decide that, to use the phrase which seems to be mandatory, it’s time ‘to give the other lot a go’.
*1970s – I’ve been posting before I’ve had my coffee again
You may be on to something there “Time to give the other lot a go”. I remember having conversations leading up to 1997, and that did seem the basis of many peoples decision. Not policy, not creed, just “time for a change”.
Fair enough, but was the centring. OK, it was still centre-right / centre-left division) of both parties at the time just changing the colour of the flag?
Hence the dismal 60% turnout in the 1997 election.
Actually I am wrong here. The turnout was 71.3%. It went down to 59.4% in 2001. At every General Election after 1997, the number of people not voting has been greater than the number that voted for the winning party.
I’m sure that the Brexit vote was largely due to the chance of a change… That and racism of course! I’m not sure that Brexit was the best way to get change!
I think the Brexit voters wanted a backward change though, to how things used to be (in their eyes), rather than any innovative change.
Another aspect to the 14 years thing, is that, after such time, it is no longer credible to blame the economic mess on your predecessor. By then, you own it.
It is ribtickling that the Tories still play the ‘you can’t trust Labour with the economy’ card, after the Truss fiasco.
Given that the massive problems arising from the Brexit referendum of three years earlier must have been becoming very obvious by then, the election to lose would surely have been the one in 2019.
The Tories’ problem is that it has always been the Party and its members first with the country and its people a loooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnngggggggg way behind. Just look at the mess they’re doing their best to leave behind for KS.
While they might be the most “successful” election-winning party in political history, everything that once seemed impregnable eventually reaches its end – just ask the dinosaurs. All of which brings us neatly around to those who vote for them.
Given their voter bases’s ageing demographic and the huge drubbing the boys in blue will take in Oct/Nov, it is going to be a long time before they are trusted with power again.
FWIW, I think Rayner should have had the nous to see where this council house business was going and defanged all the negative publicity by very publicly paying the couple of grand she is alleged to have owed as soon as the issue reared its ugly head
I don’t think Angela Rayner paying the money immediately would have made the slightest bit of difference. The Mail, Express etc. would have been saying
“See. Gotcha! She’s guilty, that’s why she’s paying up!”
They’re going to have a go at her matter what she does. Even if she does nothing.
But only people who are already against her actually care about a couple of thousand quid she may or may not owe when the government are squandering millions of public money on the Rwanda farce.
Our local Tory has a majority of about 5,000 in an aging population full of second home owners. These exceedingly rich Tories won’t be voting in Cheshire or Surrey, they’ll be voting in places like here.
Logic would suggest that the Libs will win, but 90% of newspapers I see bought are Mails, Expresses and the like. Admittedly, they are the ‘only’ newspapers being bought, and most people get their news elsewhere now, but I absolutely would ‘not’ lump on the Conservative Party not getting in at the next election. It seems truly incredible to type that last sentence.
In my experience, the amount of money involved in the Rayner case is largely irrelevant. The anti-Semitism/Corbyn narrative did very well in 2019, Beer-gate almost did for Starmer, and I can hear right now those Express readers saying ‘…there’s not smoke without fire’ and ‘… they’re all the same’ when comparing a £2,000 deficit next to a Tory embezzling millions and millions of public funds during the Pandemic.
Many of them simply don’t care. I don’t know why, but there were legions of stories about grandparents voting Brexit when it directly affected members of their own family. I think they watch too much ‘Dad’s Army’ and have never heard of Capt. Beefheart.
Here’s hoping for change… this country has NEVER needed it more.
Surely the one thing the British electorate (applies to other countries too) fear more than anything is any real change? That’s the source of the Conservative Party’s main strength. Starmer won’t worry anyone in that respect.
When you look at how toxic the London mayoral campaign has become, with Khan actually in danger of losing (or so he seems to think) for all the usual racist and Islamphobic reasons against a deranged Con candidate, I wouldn’t bet the house on Labour winning. We fondly imagine the Reform vote will split the Tory vote, but I wouldn’t bet on that either – the political landscape is so volatile that they could easily take votes away from Labour instead, particularly in Red/Blue wall constituencies which Labour are hoping to win back.
Starmer’s caution and determination not to put a foot wrong in case it brings a right-wing shitstorm down on his head is understandable, if intensely frustrating. A Labour leader with the gravitas of Starmer and a smattering of the radicalism of Corbyn would be just the ticket, I reckon. Maybe it’ll happen after the election.
My modest proposal is that all political parties are banned from social media, at least until after the election. The constant stream of lies and demented bollocks from the right, even unto the actual Conservative Party, is worrying in the extreme, because we know people believe this shit, however demented. No doubt it’s coming from the left as well, but I’m not seeing it.
I just don’t think they’re clever enough to even come up with imploding intentionally.
Politics has become business. And in business, we see inapt individuals, with unwavering confidence, work together to reach the top of the pile. Then they make disastrous decisions, screw folk over and move on elsewhere.
Slight flaw in the argument, even if conceded in your conclusion, that being this strategy requires cogent thought. The people providing that, in think tanks, central conservative HQ, pms office etc are awkward oxbridge autistics with no understanding of health: too young, education: privately educated, money: daddy’s or some bloody bank daddy got them into. Or at least the 2 or 3 I know are, all promised safe seats. When there was such a thing.
PS I dare say the think tank political graduate idealists, world expert on socialism at 21, aren’t much more packed with anything resembling a clue, over at Islington.
Cynical? Probably, but I just know and know of some scary young people.
it’s interesting that when they got in last time, it was frequently pointed out that no party with such a big majority (85 seats IIRC) had ever been kicked out at the next election. And here we are after 5 years of the worst UK government I can remember in my 68 years with them facing the very real prospect of being out of power for a long, long time.
Let’s just pray that none of the three or four existential-threat-level crises (Climate Change, Russia/Ukraine, China/S China Sea and Taiwan, Trump – blimey, it;s the four horsemen of the Apocalypse!) that currently threaten our world reach tipping point.
There’s a fifth horseman – Israel/Hamas/Iran
A sixth in Artificial Intelligence perhaps?
666666
The inflation-adjusted number of the Beast
The only young person I know currently working in number 10 is the daughter of a single parent who spent long periods in care.
Ah! The token voice from the estates, alongside all the others!
I think maybe the most widespread way people in the internet age are wrong is the “it’s on purpose” way. It’s the ur-error which underlies all the really massive errors.
It’s not on purpose. They’re just really really bad at this.
This government’s very like the Ur-Hamlet. Fraudulent, inadequate and ultimately confusing.
The Tories are very committed to the Bad Quarto(er* of voters who might still consider voting for them)
*it’s actually 19% on today’s polling, but I couldn’t make even the weakest Hamlet pun on “under a fifth”
Me neither, but it looks like this government it’s gonna get its ass imponed.
To quote the bad quarto: “To be, or fuck this”
@Moose-the-Mooche
Ur-Hamlet?
Close but no cigar
I’m more Ur-Will-that-do?
And incapable of making a decision without immediately changing its mind.
Kind of: there is a lot of Baldrick – like “cunning plans”, and the traps laid often lead their own side to fall into them, IMHO.
I don’t see any method at all, sir.
No method in their madness, just pride about their manner.
There’s madness in their method though.
….shade too white.
There’s no deliberation here. It’s simply a consequence of the hard right of the party getting more traction, and the more moderate elements getting culled by Johnson, or just walking away. The hard right never recovered from Thatcher being ousted, but Brexit and immigration have given them the boost they needed and a platform for charlatans like Jonson and Anderson to advance their ambitions.
A poll conducted by The Rest Is Politics showed that the bedrock of Tory support is now mobilized around immigration / boat crossings, standing against ‘woke’ culture, and tackling islamist extremism. Labour are ahead on everything else, including growing the economy, reducing inflation and cutting crime rates. Tories would typically have been more trusted on crime and the economy, but they’ve lost vital support here not least because they’ve become increasingly reliant on popularist dogwhistling and seem to be incapable of considering more mainstream, balanced views.
It’s also telling that Starmer is now the most popular politician in the UK and Sunak the least.
https://mailchi.mp/295a66ff527b/dear-reader-a-newsletter-from-alastair-and-rory-17585785
Interesting article in (where else?) today’s The Guardian about Starmer appealing to Sun readers:.
“Labour converting Conservative voters is, by definition, a necessity for winning elections. And yet it is noticeable that Labour’s strategy to achieve this is to bend to rightwing narratives rather than making the case for leftwing (or even centre-left) ideas.
The issue is not that Starmer is interested in attracting Tory voters, it’s that he often appears uninterested in keeping Labour ones. Indeed, at times, the party seems actively keen to lose them.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/12/starmer-tory-voters-the-sun-coup-selling-out
And of course the police, bounced into it by Daily Mail and social media outrage, are now investigating Angela Rayner.
And when, as seems all but inevitable, the police find there is no case to answer the usual commentators will say it’s a cover up just as they did with ‘Beergate’.
I haven’t followed this Angela Rayner thing at all (I don’t even know who she is, tbh) but talking of law and order and the police, it does make me a tad cynical-face emoticon when any party boasts about law and order. Has any UK government ever effectively reduced crime? Seems to me my whole life I’ve been reading or hearing about murderers being let out of prison after serving a few years of their “life sentence”. (I suppose one could argue that the Tories have effectively increased the crime rate, if one takes their own criminal activities into account.)
As I recall the crimes most people are concerned about, including violent crimes and burglary, have show steady and significant decreases since the 90s regardless of the party in power.
Here are the murder stats, which are fairly steady (a note in the graph explains that the spike in 2021 is due to murders for which Harold a shipman was convicted, though the actual killings were of course spread out over a much longer time).
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2023#:~:text=Compared%20with%20most%20other%20crimes,9.3))%20(Figure%201).
Gary, I’m surprised you haven’t heard of Angela Rayner. She’s the Sharon Stone of the front bench, who* put Boris Johnson off by crossing and uncrossing her legs.
(*) according to the Mail on Sunday, i.e. total bollocks.
Cool! I’ve heard of her, noticed her name, but wouldn’t have been able to say which party she belonged to. I don’t follow British politics anywhere near as much as I used to before Brexit. After Brexit I cut all financial ties with Britain and became an Italian (“Mamma mia!” – see?) so I don’t feel as invested as I used to and don’t pay quite as much attention.
Not paying quite as much attention to British politics? I suspect that you’re better for it…
She’s a bolshie, funny, working class northern woman who got pregant when she was at school, left without any qualifications and nonetheless has applied herself and worked herself up to the position where she is likely to be a senior government minister in the near future. And she once went had the temerity to go to Glyndebourne and drink champagne in the interval. The Tories must REALLY hate her.
They hate her because they are scared of her, especially the ones who have had to face her over the dispatch box. Some cringing male Eton/Oxbridge PPE grad against Ange in full flight? No contest. Also she’s popular which scares them even more.
She gets under their skin because obviously they hate her for what she is (woman, working class, northern, single mother… er probably woman again) but they know they have to come up with other reasons for hating her. Forcing them to be imaginative. They hate that.
A woman making a success of her life after such a difficult beginning is exactly the sort of thing the Conservative politics since Thatcher are supposed to be about, but strangely they’re less enthusiastic to see it in practice.
@gatz is completely spot on. This is their only remaining advantage over Labour but they are throwing that away now too.
Because when they’ve pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, got on their bike etc, they’re supposed to vote conservative.
Has immigration etc ever been a decisive issue in a general election? Genuine question.
The English right look hungrily at the culture wars in the US as a way of getting and keeping power, but part of the reason it can work over there is widespread Christian fundamentalism, which we haven’t had in this country for a long time (one of the few things that we have going for us)
If there is hope, it lies in the proles saying “Up yours, God-botherer”
I have come to think of it as Christian gundamentalism, since the two always seem to go hand in hand.
Boneheads have their sympathisers all over, but without PR, they can’t get anywhere. With it, UKIP would have got up to 80 seats in their most popular showing. One reason to not be too idealistic about it as an alternative form of democracy
Racism is and always has been mainstream in the USA. What race/skin colour you are is very important there.
That’s not the case in the UK. It’s here, but it’s never been mainstream.
If immigration was the reason people voted to “Get Brexit Done” at the last election (and it’s even harder to consider that it was voters thinking Rees-Mogg was talking Everyman sense) then maybe nothing much has changed. The main thing is that people now know that the Tories were lying and they might take three chances that Labour isn’t, however far fetched some of their schemes might be.
Immigration has won two things: Brexit and the 2019 election (the last of which was essentially a victory for the Get Brexit Off My Fkin Television Party). Both of those issues are now dead politically, so I think the Right’s belief that immigration is the magic key to electoral success shows them living in the past – the recent past maybe, but still a time that has gone.
No, not on purpose. I doubt if they have the wit or the consensus to do anything that coordinated. Sunak’s doing an excellent impression of a drowning man, but he has been mortally wounded by the sheer incompetence of Johnson and Truss. I’m sure the history of British politics is littered with the corpses of incompetent governments, but the Tory shower that has presided over disaster after disaster of their own making for the past 14 years is surely the most atrocious and venal government I have witnessed in my lifetime. My fear is that Starmer has nothing much to offer apart from not being a Tory – which frankly may well be enough. At least Tony Blair gave the impression of having a vision, even if it only consisted of soundbites and grinning a lot.
I see that in a completely un-politically motivated move that His Majesty’s constabulary is now investigating Angela ‘Tory Scum’ Rayner for her alleged crimes against humanity. It’s enough to make you feel sorry for her.
She gives quote in good company.
Aneurin “Nye” Bevan at the Bellvue Hotel on 3 July 1948, two days before the National Health Service came into being at Park Hospital in Manchester:
“(That is why) no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through.
But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.”
Everything will be explained where we went wrong when liz truss ‘drops*’ her book** soon. We await her intellectual mind and thoughts.
* preferably on her head.
**”Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons from the only conservative in the room.”
That other intellectual giant Vladimir Putin has advance ordered his copy.
Having impoverished the country through austerity in their pursuit of keeping the neoliberal plates spinning undisturbed and wasted billions on futile projects set up by their mates during Covid, they seem to have run out of scapegoats – yes, immigrants, but just as significantly, the disabled, the unemployed, Europe, international law, experts, etc. I think Johnson was bad enough, but Truss destroyed any economic credibility they might have had and Sunak is just so out of touch, it’s pathetic.
Their wrecking ball has reached too far up the class structure, leaving practically just a top tier, sustained by the wobbly pillars of a crumbling Commons majority, a media losing readership, and a rump of ageing boomers.
That it’s still standing is quite remarkable. The crash when the election comes, I hope won’t destroy all beneath it.
“they seem to have run out of scapegoats – yes, immigrants, but just as significantly, the disabled, the unemployed, Europe, international law, experts, etc.”
I’m disabled (if deaf counts), sort of unemployed-ish (if lazy counts), in Europe, expert (if Pink Floyd counts), immigrant etc myself. No wonder the right-wing of the AW pick on me.
@salwarpe
Your otherwise impressive list of scapegoats missed out
the most powerless group of them all –
The homeless.
A group the Tories now seem intent on fining up to £2,500
for the “lifestyle choice” of not having sufficient funds to pay
for a deposit on a flat that would enable them to sleep at home
rather than In a shop doorway
I love your open verse poetry. Far better than H.P. Saucecraft’s. You should do the obituary poems instead of him.
@Gary
Spacing comes from years of writing ad copy.
As newly anointed AW Obits Laureate, here is a brieft
tribute to my immediate predecesso
So farewell then H.P. Saucecraft
Your obituaries were not to everyone’s liking.
Especially those whose lives they were
supposed to celebrate.
“Did I ever tell you about the time Stephen King
Ripped off one of my books?”
That was your catchphrase
signed E J Jaygee (64 1/2)
Just got back from three days in London and the number of rough sleepers and people asking for money is worse than I have ever seen as a frequent visitor.
The concept of this being a life style choice is beyond pathetic.
I fucking hate the Tories.
It’s a growing problem, as I understand it as people are priced out of property that has ever-increasing mortgages and/or rents attached to it.
The Party that presents functional policies to tackle the crisis that affects BOTH those in and out of housing will avoid the scapegoating trap by recognizing its a sliding scale on which large parts of UK society share the experience of falling down and dropping off.
By just targetting those at the bottom of the property ladder, the Tories comfortably ignore those squatting at the top.
“a rump of ageing boomers”…. Sounds oddly familiar 😲
This ageing boomer no longer has a rump to speak of.
I disagree with the idea that any party in government would seek its own demise. Political parties are tribal. The most important thing to them is their continuing success and hold on power, regardless of what it takes to get them there. Manifestos, principles, ethics, responsibilities, all go out the window in the service of retaining power; expect more divisive culture wars, promises to go it alone, internationally, etc.
I can think of exceptions to this. At least one Labour MP urged his constituents to vote against his party in 2019. But there is no way that this Tory party is voluntarily letting go of the levers of power, the control of recruitment to positions of influence, the control of valuable contracts. This is happening to the Tory party as a result of seeds sown over many years. They are not doing this to themselves on purpose; they would, and will try, anything to hold on.
Having seen the writing on the wall, they are doing their best to shit the bed for Labour by bringing in long term policies/commitments that will make life hard for SKS et al.
The Tories’ pledge to retain the pensions triple lock is perhaps the most cynical example of how they are banjaxing Labour.
Their doing so not only ties up funds our new masters will need to implement their policies, but also make the next govt hugely unpopular should they try to remove it
The triple lock on pensions is a good thing. I’m all in favour of universal benefits. If you start limiting pensions to “those who can afford it”, where does that lead you? Paying for health, education, higher charges for social housing or care homes perhaps.
I agree that they do it to get the vote out. If that improves all pensioners’ lives then it’s fine by me.
*can’t *
Broadly agree with you, @Alias
UK Pensions are amongst the worst in Europe
Happily, I have other sources of income so am
not solely reliant on that £800-odd a month
to scape by.
Other OAPs aren’t so lucky
The problem is with people living longer and longer,
it is becoming increasingly apparent that the
pension system as it stands is not sustainable and
young people are not going to be terribly happy
about once again having to subsidize the old
Shantih shantih shantih
I agree Cat. They will fight like cornered rats and it’s going to be a nasty election. As Jaygee says though, they think they’re going to lose so they’re doing as much as they can to make life difficult for Labour. I will be staying up to watch the whole thing and rejoicing every time another one of them shuffles out with their head down.
Who will provide the greatest “Portillo” moment, @twang? How long does North Somerset take to count in?
I’m hoping for the lamb juggler’s departure.
Yes the sight of the worthless Mogg getting the bum’s rush will be great. Redwood, excellent. Sunak would be perfect but seems unlikely though theoretically he could lose twice which would be fab. Truss of course. Braverman, Badenoch, that slug Daly, 30p Lee. There are so many.
Feinstein over Starmer for Holborn and St Pancras? I’d vote Feinstein (natch) but I’d bet on Starmer.
It would be brilliant to see so many of these scumbags from all parties get their comeuppance by being voted out at the next election. Personally I want a hung parliament with the balance of power being held by MPs who demand PR is introduced or no deal.
As a nurse PR means something completely different. I’d love to say that I’d like to see this happen, but I wouldn’t want to see it at all
Well, just to confound me, we now have a sitting Tory MP advising voters in a nearby constituency to vote Reform.
Thanks for the responses. I was searching for order among the chaos but it seems that it’s good ol’ fashioned incompetence. Nothing more.
I wouldn’t take Afterworders’ responses as indicative of truth. Most of them are certifiably insane.
Not unlike certain members of our ‘government ‘.
You’re telling me that certain members of your government prefer Eliot Sumner as Freddie Miles over Philip Seymour Hoffman? No wonder the country’s in such deep shit!
No. But some prefer the series to the movie and don’t mind the casting of Freddie.
Insanity, I tells ya. A friend of mine made an interesting point about the series the other day: why would Dickie Greenleaf want a fairly charmless, slightly creepy man in his late 40’s staying in his house after the “clothes incident”? It’s easy to understand why Dickie would want Matt Damon’s Ripley: young, charming, fun, full of enthusiasm and flattery but not threatening to his vanity (not as good looking as him), gets on well with Marge, plus he begins to like him a lot less after the “clothes incident”. What does Dickie see in Andrew Scott’s Ripley that he wants him to stay?
I think it all goes back to Brexit, or rather the aftermath of the result. The Tories seemed to have won big time and had a big majority to enact whatever they wanted. Labour was in turmoil and it looked like at least 10 more years out of power, but Brexit was a poisoned chalice. The coalition of voters who voted to ‘Get Brexit Done’ was atypical and included non leavers as well as leavers – there was a real sense that people just wanted it over with. Brexit also meant many things to different people – I know many who voted Leave but now say that this isn’t the Brexit they voted for, and, of course, it hasn’t delivered what people imagined that it would do (i.e. the Brexit they wanted).
Of course, the May/Johnson/Truss omnishambles hasn’t helped the cause, but Sunak is now in that bind of trying to appeal to the odd coalition of the Brexity people who voted Tory, maybe for the first time, who are in danger of voting Reform, and traditional voters who are more socially liberal and don’t like the rightwards lurch. Sunak is also not that popular with Tory members and sympathisers – remember, they voted for Truss over Sunak in the leadership election, and many blame him for Johnson’s fall from grace.
As for Labour, not giving the Tories any easy targets is the obvious way to go for now, as frustrating as it seems, but under promising and some expectation management is crucial. As for those who say that Starmer is some sort of Tory in disguise miss the point – elections are always won from the centre (although I do think 2019 was an exception, skewed by Brexit), and if the working class historically had always voted only for Labour then we would never have had Tory governments – working people have always voted both Tory and Labour.
“I know many who voted Leave but now say that this isn’t the Brexit they voted for, and, of course, it hasn’t delivered what people imagined that it would do (i.e. the Brexit they wanted).”
Anyone who voted for Brexit was an idiot. We weren’t allowed to say that at the time without getting told off. But in hindsight, I think it’s undeniably true. Not because Brexit was a bad idea (though I think it was) but because no details or plans were provided or thought about. Voting for it was like opting to move into a new house (yay!) without insisting on being told or even asking whether the new house would be a palace or a caravan. (Of course, lots of people voted for it only because they felt safe in the certainty it would never happen.)
Of course some people aren’t happy with ‘their’ brexit.
Of course the biggest act of unnecessary self-harm was Brexit itself.
I think that the metropolitan liberal elite saying that Brexit supporters were thick racists confirmed to many how out of touch they were with the lives of working class people and thus entrenched their desire to stick one to them by voting Brexit.
Which was in itself a stupid and childishly reactionary way of thinking and therefore confirmation of the “metropolitan liberal elite” opinion.
Notwithstanding that: you have to admire a cunning plan which allows millionaire newspaper owners, millionaire tv channel owners, millionaire business owners and the Mogg/Truss wing of the Tory party to label the left/liberals as “the elite”, while convincing the working class voters that they have LOTS in common with them and they really ARE working on their behalf against said “elite” – that really is the old switcheroo, straight from the populist/Trump playbook.
That struck me again the other day when Sunak desperately tried to burnish his “man of the people” credentials by claiming he enjoyed breakfast at ‘Spoons.
Was it on one of the days when he fasts?
Agree with @Alias here.
Here’s a fantastic clip of Steve Coogan arrogantly adding a couple of
hundred thousand voters to the Conservative vote in the last election
https://www.facebook.com/thesun/videos/steve-coogan-brands-tory-pro-brexit-voters-ignorant/1020319751662533/
Exactly the same thing happened to Hilary Clinton in the States three years
earlier when she condescendingly dismissed large numbers of voters in the
so-called flyover states as ‘deplorables”
Insulting people is always counter-productive, of course. But not recognising a stupid action for what it is, is dangerous.
Aha. When Trump is re-elected we’ll hear it all again from the Dems:
“But…. we made memes where we put in LOTS OF BIG CAPITAL LETTERS HOW AWFUL TRUMP IS and shared them with people who agree with us, . We called everyone who supports him an idiot and a fascist, and that somehow didn’t persuade them. How did such a perfect strategy fail?”
@Gary
It’s no more dangerous or counter-productive than dismissing
people whose point of view you disagree with as stupid
Two different things, I think @Jaygee.
If I dismissed someone as “stupid” for buying their house in England rather than Italy that would pretty offensive, based on my opinion and my ignorance of their personal situation and hardly likely to persuade them. Counter-productive, if anything. Whereas if I said someone would be “stupid” to buy a house -in either country- without seeing it or knowing anything about the house first, I think that would be perfectly reasonable and -I believe without reservation- that not recognising it as such would be dangerous.
Big difference between having an opinion and buying a house,G.
I’m off to watch Fallout so suggest we call it a draw
As mentioned above, I think voting for Brexit was very much like buying a house without being told or even enquiring as to whether it would be a palace or a caravan.
Even Jacob Rees-Mogg (Minister for Brexit Opportunities) seems unsure about the situation
https://www.thepoke.com/2024/04/12/rees-mogg-new-brexit-checks-unnecessary-act-of-self-harm/
Talking of the joys of Brexit, this article in today’s The Guardian is very true. Prior to Brexit, going to England was a “rite of passage” for young Italians. They’d get their parents to pay for it claiming, quite justifiably, that the language practice would be good for their future. Now all I seem to hear about is younger Italians going to Ireland and Malta and people (especially those who worked in UK hospitality or health industries) returning to live in Italy. So sad, so very unnecessary.
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/apr/14/its-catastrophic-italian-restaurants-in-london-struggle-to-find-staff-post-brexit
On the plus side, many people in the UK working in hospitality, retail, driving and construction jobs are earning far more than they did just a few years ago. I suspect w will soon see a similar increase in the care sector. Whether that proves to be good for the economy remains to be seen, but i doubt that those who have seen substantial increases into their wages will be troubled by the thought that they can’t easily go and work in Europe.
Interesting. I’ve often wondered about the healthcare industry in Britain. People claim that it’s very dependent on immigrants. The healthcare system in Italy is, imho, excellent (used to be terrible a few decades ago and I always thought I’d have to go back to UK if ever seriously ill, but it’s improved so much and now I have no complaints) yet I’ve never seen or heard of a single immigrant who works in Italian healthcare. Perhaps the reliance on immigrants is merely due to the low wages paid?
The notion that the Tories are deliberately failing is as cerdible as the conspiracy theories that UK governments are party to elaborate and cunning schemes of any description. ( Anyone who has spent time working in the civil service will know that departments are barely capable of communicating and agreeing with one another about anything, let alone conspiring in secret schemes to enslave the population).
Anyway, the Tories demise is, it seems to me, a combination of two things. Firstly, the torpor that comes after any party has been in power for extended period., allied to what a significant minority, largely the 1/3rd who voted against Brexit, see as a lack of competence, particulalry during the Johnson years.
Secondly, many of its MPs and supporters do not think the current leadership and policies reflect what they consider to be true Conservative principles. In particular they are critical of the increase in public spending as a proportion of GDP, what they perceive as a failure to lower taxes sufficiently, likeswise what they see as a lack of will to tackle the NHS, and what they think is a damaging adherence to the current Net Zero timetable. Throw in the pressures that come from having gained support from the Red Wall from people who don’t like immigrants, but do like a large welfare state and everything starts to unravel.
In truth, this doesn’t seem any different to what has happened elsewhere in Europe, with parties that once represented a broad church collapsing. It will just take longer in the UK because of the FPTP system.
I expect Labour will win the next election on their “We are not the Tories” manifesto. Here in Darlington they have reintroduced car parking charges having regained control of the council at the last by-election. Though all is well as they have promised to abolish them if they win the upcoming Mayoral election.
@kalamo
The cheeky monkeys!
The Angela Rayner issue is, quite nakedly, designed to deflect, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be true. Her former neighbours – not exactly red trouser-clad Tories – seem pretty sure of her living arrangements.
That said, I don’t think it would turn anyone against her: if true, it’s the sort of thing many people would do if they could get away with it. In contrast to the offshore trust a certain D. Cameron benefitted from, it’s not exactly revelatory.
The fact she hasn’t published anything that evidences her position isn’t helping her, and it’s sustaining speculation. She’s trying to just tough it out, and wait for something else to become of more interest.
Most of us make it through life without having to worry about the rules on stamp duty on second properties or buy to let properties. There’s a 3% surcharge if you are buying something that isn’t your primary residence, all thanks to Gorgeous George Osborne. Naturally that only applies if you are buying 5 or less. But buy six and the surcharge simply goes away.
Something Jeremy Hunt is well aware of having saved c.£100k in stamp duty by buying 7 “luxury” flats in Southampton. And so busy was he signing cheques and chasing the conveyancer that he forgot register his interest in the company he was using to make the purchases, both with parliament and Companies House. As you’d expect a toothless investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner is in full swing, we can expect lessons to be learned and Hunt will fire his accountant.
Curiously MP James Daly (you may recall him as the keen social commenter who said that “most struggling children in his constituency are the “products of crap parents” – seems not to have reported the governments favorite spoonerism to Plod. I’m sure it’s on his to do list, but there’s so little time when you are fighting the culture wars and trying to arrest the tide of wokeism (wokism?) that threatens our very being.
This leaves me wondering if we should have more concerns about Rayner possibly dodging £1,500 in stamp duty, or simply failing to think big enough like millionaire Hunt.
It depends on if you worry that having a simpleton at the top of government will be an issue or not.
I wonder if you have any substantive points to make about her rather than cheap jibes about her mental capacity.
Yes, I think we should continue on the intellectual highway of Fat Boy C., Fat Boy J., Liz Truss and Pint Size.
Better still, let’s get Rees-Smug as P.M., he talks posh and everyfink.
Heremy Junt?
I’ve confused me spoonerism with me malapropism.
I think we should be concerned about both: if a politician, particularly a politician who currently has or may shortly have their paws on the lever of power, hasn’t paid their taxes I would quite like to know about it.
Whether that’s the case for Rayner remains to be seen; it’s quite possible she’ll prove to be entirely innocent of the charge(s) being made against her.
For me, and I’m sure a lot of others, it speaks to integrity. Perhaps this is unfair, but that’s even more so the case if the person in question is a self-professed Socialist, in the same way that I would be particularly interested to know if a law and order Tory was out mugging grannies (I suspect most are).
£1,500 isn’t a lot of money in the grand scheme, but it’s certainly a lot of money to most people in this country and there shouldn’t be a de-minimis threshold. It’s not like the rest of us get to lop a bit off our tax bill and get away with it.
Ultimately, for people who consider paying your taxes a civic duty, this is a legit issue. I would certainly be less likely to vote for someone who’d failed to pay what they owe, unless they had a very good excuse.
To the point you make very well above, what you’d like to see here is Rayner evidencing her position. Whatever your views of her, she doesn’t strike me as someone who’d be fiddling the books, so you’d think she’d be able to be relatively transparent. Perhaps she’s doing so with the authorities behind closed doors? I’m sure the truth will come out in the wash soon enough.
Angela Rayner has shown to be affected by a level of class envy which I feel is unhealthy and not rational to my thinking, so I don’t mind throwing a few stones in her direction. Anyway as pointed out above cheap jibes against politicians are part of site life, and Labour supporters will need to grow thicker skins.
Good for you.
Do you have any comments on Mark Menzies, allegedly trousering party funds, or is it mainly “class envy” that gets you going?
Mark Menzies is another politician for the stoning.
Had anyone outside of his constituency ever heard of Mark Menzies before this morning?
Does anyone believe a word he says about being held by bad men?
Will he ever be heard from/of again after his 15 minutes of tabloid notoriety are up?
Nay, nay and thrice nay as the late great Kenneth Williams used to say
As the late great KW also might have said (adopts suitably fruity KW-type tone):
MM has now apparently been stripped of the whip
Only mentioned by me because he was this morning’s Tory financial scandal – there’ll be another one along in a minute. No wonder they have to keep the Rayner story going.
Oh, come on! Give the guy a break.
Which of us can honestly say we haven’t submitted an unreceipted expense claim after paying five grand cash to a Brazilian rent boy at 3am after being locked in a sex dungeon following a night of taking illegal drugs?
Eh?
Well, I suppose…when you put it that way…
Come to think of it – I wonder when James Daly intends to report Menzies to the police for further investigation?
“He is currently a prime ministerial trade envoy to Colombia” makes you wonder where the source of the illegal drugs is, doesn’t it?
Is Menzies one of those names pronounced “Minglies” or something? That’s what I want to know.
Oh and also why he contacted a constituent at 3 in the morning, urgently demanding money. And then paid it back using the party donations fund.
The news broadcasts are pronouncing it as written, but I think him being unable to pronounce his own name is another black mark against him (more like Mingus, as in Charles, but with a softer ‘g’ than Minglies, btw). Still, so far as I know he has not as yet said that he ‘refutes’ the allegations, so that’s something to his credit.
Pronounced ˈmɪŋɪs/ MING-iss as I recall from my then Scottish girlfriend.
I think it’s written as “Menzies” but pronounced “Thieving Git”.
Menzies has decided not to stand as a candidate at the next election.
He obviously lacks a bit of vim, or perhaps has already snorted too much.
I’d never warmed to Rayner previously, so I listened to her interview on Rest Is Politics and separately on Political Thinking. No hint of “class envy” – but then that’s a lazy epithet routinely trotted out by the right to try and smear people who are articulate about the inequality and threaten the status quo that the right live in perpetual fear of losing.
It’s interesting to compare people like Rayner with Tories like Nadine Dorries. Superficially they seem similar. Both come from working class backgrounds, both worked very hard to change the arc of their life, and have overcome significant disadvantages to reach positions of importance (Rayner particularly so).
For Rayner it’s made her passionate about wanting to tackle the inequalities that she’s experienced first hand, and ensure others don’t endure them With Dorries, she didn’t just want to pull up the ladder now that she was OK, she wanted to make sure no one else could even buy a ladder.
This ⬆️ – with knobs on.
@fitterstoke
A rope ladder
I’m nodding vigorously in my best Centrist Dad style.
It was what she said about Boris Johnson -Eton educated Tory posh boy -or something along those lines. It’s quite easy to criticise Johnson without bringing his privilege into it
I can’t find any examples of that. She made an ill advised slur about Tories being “racist, homophobic scum” that I felt did her no favours but since then we’ve seen the refusal to return the money donated to Frank Hester.
The most frequent user of the posh boy claim was Dorries. Threw it numerous times at Cameron, Osborne and Sunak. But (obviously) never at Johnson. Logically that would make her subject to class envy too, but I can’t see it in either case. It seems fairly reasonable to question the ability to govern a nation when those in charge have such limited life experience.
I think Raynor referred to ‘Tory scum’?
I think she called the Tory cabinet “a bunch of scum” at a Labour conference side meeting, and when challenged by Johnson doubled down calling him (based on his prior newspaper columns) a “racist, homophobic misogynist”.
She subsequently apologized. She has the passion and occasional belligerence of Prescott, although I think she’s a great deal brighter, and has since said accepts she went too far.
I like her. I heard that interview too, and various others. The point which seems to be consistently missed is that she has published the tax details – to HMRC, who so far appear to be content. As far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it other than the RW press banging on about it daily.
And then you have this. File under friendly fire, or utterly deranged?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68821646
PS She has a book out soon, you know.
@fentonsteve
As most of the things she believes in/wants to see/thinks will happen inevitably
crash and burn, hopefully the same will apply to Trump’s presidential hopes
Fingers crossed!
Off to a good start.
Wait a couple of seconds for the Indo blurb to fade off screen
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/liz-truss-makes-hilarious-book-152249551.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAL0wa57_G1i05y6y9kdf-QkKo098aJ9hmdJprfIvlT3k5nAyUrHP_4x5GWknOn4wT7EZu-YR1QDSPHB5qhLBAq2z9ScZoHvdscT7Wnm2DekGxOBi9i_qTNeaprZC20Df6q7mLp2c8ykpYsJteB25zoBAHteFw856W1NhQsBXGklV
Hardly the worst or most stupid thing she’s ever done.
True.
But then it’s also hardly the best way to relaunch herself
as a serious figure worthy of trousering the huge sums
available to international speakers who feather their retirement
nests on the US lecture circuit
You say relaunch ..
Very good. There’s a joke about an iceberg lettuce that could be made I’m sure.
Cos when she hit the iceberg it was hopefully the endive of her career.
Salad days…(wistful emoji)
Filed where it belongs.
Caution contains truss.
Poor ord Liz. She might have been one of our greatest Prime Ministers.
That’s true – but then I might have been one our greatest footballers/brain surgeons/round the world racers/billionaire philanthropists…
Yebbut Liz was there. She had that fabulous mini budget when she reduced all those taxes. But the money market went scatty and The Bank of England retaliated with sticking it to the hard pressed borrower-why are borrowers always hard pressed? And Rishi at The Treasury seized his chance and Liz was carted off to the nuthouse.
Ok, then… (steps away)
The money market didn’t go “scatty”. It reacted to £45bn of unfunded tax cuts. Market reactions were strongly conditioned by Truss and Kwarteng deliberately not sharing the tax cuts with the OBR, and then magnified the instability by refusing to publish the OBRs forecast, which it’s obliged to do twice a year. By refusing to share their plans and calculations (assuming they did any) they were fully and wholly responsible for the chaos. Kwarteng at least acknowledges this.
The BoE “response wasn’t “retaliation” – it had to act to prevent the UK economy going into freefall, and had to respond to pressure emerging from the IMF and other major economies. Given the choice of acknowledging her failure or just trying to push it on to others, she’s doubled down on her delusions of her own competence.
She is aligned to the “fuck around and find out” branch of strategic thinking. I don’t think she understands why it went wrong. I don’t fully understand either but then again if I was going to make a decision like that I would cover my arse with so much official and independent advice that I’d look like I was wearing a bustle.
I think it was less “fuck around” and more naked ideology, although it otherwise amounted pretty much to your version. Her hypothesis was a radical reduction in taxes would kick start the economy into higher productivity and growth. However, as any fule kno, if you slash taxes you basically forgo most of your income, and global markets immediately thought that the UK was another Greece in the making (i.e. a nation about to go bankrupt).
If a country is seen as a risk, no one wants it’s currency (so the value drops) and the only way it can borrow money is by paying higher and higher levels of interest. Trussenomics immediate proved both these things. The pound dropped like a stone to an all time low in just 2 days, and the BoE had to hike interest rates, which fucked over mortgage holders and pension funds amongst others.
This all happened within days, so she naturally maintains that had her approach been given time to work and deep state and the BoE not so woke, the tax cuts would have sent us all out on a giddy spending spree, companies would have gone bonkers investing and employing, we’d have all lived happily ever after and Truss would have been a multiple Nobel prize winner and latter day saint.
Unfortunately it’s a fantasy world where she’s allowed to ignore how quickly markets move, how real and immediate the fear of sovereign debt default actually is and how cuts like hers – even when the funding is transparent and credible – have no track record of improving investment. It’s also been clear for years and years that with trickle down economics the only thing that runs downhill is shit and poverty.
When you suffer the global humiliation of almost wrecking a so called First World economy and being fired after 49 just days (and it would have been even shorter had Brenda not popped her clogs just 2 days after Truss was anointed) you can either be contrite, bank your handsome ex PM’s pension and take up basket weaving. Or you double down, blame anyone but yourself, and live on in your own delusional dreamworld. If it hadn’t been so expensive it would be quite funny.
The inflation rate had been way above target for months, bank rates should have been rising too. And yet BoE instead raised rates dramatically and hid their own failings behind those of Truss.
Yeah that’s true w/r/t inflation, and the BoE may not have been doing a great job up to that point, but Truss’s budget compelled them to act. With the pound tanking, gilts escalating and the IMF on their backs, they had to act.
The position w/rt inflation and rates was known to her at the time. Her determination to ignore that, her refusal to work with the OBR, and worse her petulant sacking of Tom Scholar were own goals of her own making.
As opposed to own goals of … er …. someone else’s making ….
Kwartang also announced on TV that night that there was more to come. There’s a good Politico podcast about the fall of Truss for anyone who would like to relive it, and a superb New Statesman interview with the bloke who looked after the lettuce which is marvellous.
[The New Statesman Podcast] BONUS: How the lettuce became Liz Truss’s nemesis, with Jon Livesey #theNewStatesmanPodcast
https://podcastaddict.com/the-new-statesman-podcast/episode/146888315
More of what to come?
Unsupported unregulated tax cuts etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/25/kwarteng-uk-economy-must-expect-more-tax-cuts-and-deregulation
A friend who used to own the Holt Bookshop in Norfolk told me people putting books in the wrong
sections for supposedly satirical effect was the bane of a bookseller’s life
Luz Truss is a walking definition of Dunning Kruger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect?wprov=sfla1
Was going to mention the Peter Principle, but the very fact that Truss ever learned the tricky skills of walking and talking (though she would almost certainly struggle to do both at same time) would seemingly disprove that.
Peter Principle sadly disproved by incompetent managers being creatively removed by promotion to achieve similar/greater incompetence at a higher level.
Fail again, fail better…
incidentally, given the rolling nature of the Tory implosion, would it not make sense to pin this post to the top of the forum until October?
@salwarpe
AKA “Falling up”
October, you say? Do you know something the rest of us don’t?
Just talk – politics podcasts mainly.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/general-election-2024-date-rishi-sunak-b2513281.html
The FT does a weekly column where it interviews someone over lunch. Last week it was Michael Douglas. This week is Truss. The paywall prevents me from linking and it’s too long to paste in. It was unintentional comedy gold, as she goes the full Alan Partridge.
Just a week or so before she was on a stage with Steve “Bonkers” Bannon and Tommeh Robinson waving the FT around and claiming it was an agent of the deep state. But it’s a free lunch and she’s got a book to sell. As a flavour of what follows – “There are no woke hostelries in South West Norfolk, I can tell you” . Luckily for her it’s not woke to sell foreign white wine.
“The most popular member of Boris Johnson’s government.” How are the mighty fallen. Low bar, though…
They talked about it on this week’s FT Politics podcast and contrasted it with an interview with Gordon Brown.
I see that the Tories solution to a decimated mental health service (destroyed by them) is to declare that mental illnesses don’t exist.
And to remove the inconvenience of an informed clinical assessment of a highly trained professional by outsourcing the responsibility to a remote private firm with no relevant experience and a target-based bonus financial structure, because that never fails.
Unfortunately, existing GPs are essentially mental illness believers. They need a new lot who can cheerfully ignore it.
@Tiggerlion
The big question is how will they cope with the hundreds of clearly delusional individuals who are set to be released into the community sometime between now and the end of the year
Max Azzarello seems to be such a delusional chap. Over in America though. Who he? I don’t know. It seems someone has set himself on fire outside Trump’s trial in protest.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fire-trump-trial-1235007624/
Who and in protest at what? Well some sources are saying it’s Max Azzarello and he wrote this:
https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside
Kinda wow! His manifesto takes in a massive global conspiracy involving (I musty admit, I skimmed quite a bit) The Simpsons and the Grateful Dead and is evocatively titled “Dipshit Secrets of our Rotten World”:
https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/dipshit-secrets-of-our-rotten-world:
And he has, allegedly, self immolated such is his conviction. Horrific and sad but grotesquely fascinating.
Does this mean that any right minded Tory (oxymoron, probably) cannot/shouldn’t now see their GP, should they become overcome with guilt/conscience/ennui and become ill? (I guess the problem with psychoses, which may be rather more prevalent amongst their ranks, seldom does the individual exhibiting instantly appreciate the problem……..)
Stick a capital R on “right-minded Tory” and it could almost be tautology, rather than oxymoron…
More evidence that my OP is on the right track. Sunak has proposed that assessments of sick people’s ability to work is not made by GPs but a separate body of assessors*. This is political suicide and Labour are going to butcher them on this at the election.
“This is the party that doesn’t believe your GP when your GP says you are too sick to work…”
The PM is listening to the right of his party again, just as he is with the Rwanda policy.
*I suspect he has a private firm, run by a chum, in mind for the contract.
Not suicidal at all.
They’ve known the election has been lost for some time and are now
just initiating policies that Labour will have to live with for so long they’ll eventually be seen as being responsible for.
Another day, another shovel load of Tory shit with which to undermine
an incoming Labour government.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13330045/Benefits-axed-year-stop-lifestyle-choice-Prime-Minister.html
Is it a shovel load of shit? Absolutely. Will it be in place by the next election? No. It’s just chaff being fired out to pandering to the hard right of the party in the increasingly desperate hope of stemming the loss of votes in the red wall seats. It’s guaranteed column inches in the Tory press who won’t invest any time in interrogating the likelihood of it actually being implemented.
It’s dismal rhetoric that is anchored in nothing of substance other than vague intentions of consultation or promises of inclusion in their next manifesto.
Whatever else you say about the Tories, they’ve certainly cornered the market in coining new “lifestyle” choices for folk to aspire to
An update on the Rayner story:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/28/angela-rayner-cleared-of-criminal-wrongdoing-over-sale-of-home
To save you the bother of clicking, the police have said it’s outside their jurisdiction and the tax authorities are not taking any action.
With due acknowledgement to The Trawl podcast:
When the Tories were shouting about Angela Rayner, most people were thinking –
yeah, but:
Menzies
Wragg
Mone
Johnson
Truss
Gibb
Ashcroft
Sunak
Hancock
Zahawi
Hunt
McVey
Pinscher
Bone
Jenrick
Braverman
Patel
Benton
Peerages
Donors
Expenses
Non-doms
Contracts
Apologies if I missed anyone’s favourite…