Bojo

[IdleRich]

Feels as though soon we won't be needing this thread doesn't it?

David Davies telling him "In the name of God go!" in parliament was pretty funny.

Dorries seems to be the only one sticking up for him, I guess even she has grasped that there is no chance of there existing another person in the world mad enough to give her a cabinet role so she might as well go all in for the lying wanker. It's truly frightening that she is the culture secretary! Nadine Dorries has a cabinet position... she is in charge of culture for the UK! Nadine Dorries is culture secretary! How is this possible? No matter how many times I write that down it doesn't make any kind of sense, my mind simply cannot comprehend it.

Anyway, I didn't think that Johnson could get more pathetic than "I didn't realise it was a party" but when he changed his line to "Nobody told me it was illegal" I realised that I was wrong. Maybe he could ask the person who made the rules? With this and the Northern Ireland Protocol there seems to be a pattern of Johnson not knowing anything about stuff he himself is completely responsible for...

I wonder who will be next. They won't be any better as PM I'm sure but I probably won't feel such a visceral, personal hatred towards them* which I suppose is something.

*Unless it's Liam Fox.. or Dorries come to think of it, or Gove in fact... or, well, there are a few of them I guess.

 

[craner]

He won't fall on his sword, so unless the Tory sharks bite in the next few days, I reckon he's safe.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I'm hoping he hangs on as long as possible, partly just for the pleasure of seeing him squirm like an earthworm on a fishing hook, but also because the longer he stays the more reputational damage he'll do to the government in general.

For me, the worst possible outcome is that he gets replaced by someone who can be sold to the public as a "safe pair of hands", this scotches Labour's chances by fooling enough numpties in swing seats that "lessons have been learned" and all that crap, and then they carry on gutting the state, stoking culture wars and lining their own pockets, but with someone more basically competent in charge.

 

[IdleRich]

Obviously that will be the aim of the party as a whole. The thing that can prevent that though is personal ambition with people wanting to seize their moment when they think they see it, regardless of whether they would be the best person to help get the party (sorry, work event) back on its feet.
Also, there is the question of whether there are any people among the potential leadership candidates who fit that description - lately the requirements for promotion have become simple loyalty to Johnson with ability or talent way way below that in importance.

The cabinet is filled with idiots who were selected cos they were prepared to defend the indefensible when it was in the shape of Boris and had no compunction about prevaricating and lying their way out of tough questions on tv instead of giving a straight answer. This was a deliberate strategy with the aim of strengthening Johnson's position within the party and for protecting this government's policies and actions which tended towards the vicious incompetent when they weren't simply dishonest.

Surrounding yourself with yes men and thugs is not a great long-term strategy for the party or the country though - or anything really except keeping Johnson as PM for as long as possible. You've got to think that now he's gone a lot of them will not be particularly useful to whoever does replace him as I can't think of any of them who are any good at their job.

 

[shakahislop]

Obviously that will be the aim of the party as a whole. The thing that can prevent that though is personal ambition with people wanting to seize their moment when they think they see it, regardless of whether they would be the best person to help get the party (sorry, work event) back on its feet.
Also, there is the question of whether there are any people among the potential leadership candidates who fit that description - lately the requirements for promotion have become simple loyalty to Johnson with ability or talent way way below that in importance.

The cabinet is filled with idiots who were selected cos they were prepared to defend the indefensible when it was in the shape of Boris and had no compunction about prevaricating and lying their way out of tough questions on tv instead of giving a straight answer. This was a deliberate strategy with the aim of strengthening Johnson's position within the party and for protecting this government's policies and actions which tended towards the vicious incompetent when they weren't simply dishonest.

Surrounding yourself with yes men and thugs is not a great long-term strategy for the party or the country though - or anything really except keeping Johnson as PM for as long as possible. You've got to think that now he's gone a lot of them will not be particularly useful to whoever does replace him as I can't think of any of them who are any good at their job.

one who i think is 'good' at her job on what i think i'm right to call a semiotic level is priti patel. as a kind of symbol i think she's very effective, in terms of what she looks like, how well calculated she is in winding people up, that base kind of fascist appeal that i think really moves some people's souls, her smirk, etc, and her race and gender play into it as well (would not be as effective coming from a white geezer i think). she's really good at imagery as well i think.

rees-mog has that cartoon harry potter character appeal as well, i think he's also pretty great at that. i am a bit surprised that it works but obviously it does. gove and rishi sunak are also 'good' at what they do i think. it says nothing about what they're like outside of their media mediated forms, but that is really the key thing isn't it with a cabinet minister, their communications value.

 

[Leo]

dumb question: do you have independent voters there, or does everyone have to be affiliated with a party in order to vote? if you do have independents, is there current polling on how they feel about Boris and the Tories?

 

[IdleRich]

one who i think is 'good' at her job on what i think i'm right to call a semiotic level is priti patel. as a kind of symbol i think she's very effective, in terms of what she looks like, how well calculated she is in winding people up, that base kind of fascist appeal that i think really moves some people's souls, her smirk, etc, and her race and gender play into it as well (would not be as effective coming from a white geezer i think). she's really good at imagery as well i think.

rees-mog has that cartoon harry potter character appeal as well, i think he's also pretty great at that. i am a bit surprised that it works but obviously it does. gove and rishi sunak are also 'good' at what they do i think. it says nothing about what they're like outside of their media mediated forms, but that is really the key thing isn't it with a cabinet minister, their communications value.

Well, with an MP "good" or talented as I stated it is such a vague term. I suppose I was thinking about their general capabilities beyond communications - but then again, a lot of my thoughts on their competence are based on the embarrassing public gaffes almost all of them have made... which is a part of communications as well.

Are you talking about potential PMs? Cos I would have thought - or at least a few years ago I would - that the fact that she was sacked from May's cabinet for secret meetings with another government despite being explicitly forbidden from doing so and then compounding the offence by lying about it, would be a serious obstacle to that. Her opponents could - without too much hyperbole - call that treason. If you mean as a Home Secretary then... I mean, she was promoted cos she was prepared to be as awful and racist as Johnson required her to be - I guess those skills are transferable in as much as, if the new PM requires an enforcer with no conscience or human feeling she could certainly continue to do that job.

As for JRM I hate him too much to offer any coherent thoughts before I start frothing at the mouth with rage so I'll not attempt any sensible response if you'll forgive me.

 

[IdleRich]

dumb question: do you have independent voters there, or does everyone have to be affiliated with a party in order to vote? if you do have independents, is there current polling on how they feel about Boris and the Tories?

You don't need to be affiliated with a party to vote (or to stand for that matter). And even if you are a member of the Labour Party you could still vote Tory. But polling independents... if you just mean people who aren't members of a party then that would be most people. For the poll you are talking about to be interesting then you would need to make a distinction between someone like me who is not a Labour Party member but always votes Labour, and genuine independents who approach every election as a blank sheet. You would need to define what you mean really but I think you're talking about floating voters basically right? And those are polled. A lot. I guess it's the most important group to find out about.

 

[Leo]

yeah, was talking about the floaters. although I read once how most people who are technically independents (like you) tend to almost always vote for the same party (again, like you). the number of people who truly go into an election as a blank sheet is small in number, that's why political parties spend much more time and effort trying to rally their base as opposed to trying to convince the floaters.

there are some people who will crossover -- like reliable republican voters who went for Biden because trump was so horrible -- but it's apparently not a substantial portion of the electorate, and they most likely voted for republicans in every other race on the ballot last November.

 

[shakahislop]

@Leo to give you an idea of how few people are affiliated with a particular party, the Tory membership is something like 60,000 people, and that's the only kind of affiliation you can have. they got something like 13 million votes in the last election.

 

[Leo]

wow. apparently in the US, it's 31% republicans; 27% democrats; 41% independent.

 

[IdleRich]

yeah, was talking about the floaters. although I read once how most people who are technically independents (like you) tend to almost always vote for the same party (again, like you). the number of people who truly go into an election as a blank sheet is small in number, that's why political parties spend much more time and effort trying to rally their base as opposed to trying to convince the floaters.

there are some people who will crossover -- like reliable republican voters who went for Biden because trump was so horrible -- but it's apparently not a substantial portion of the electorate, and they most likely voted for republicans in every other race on the ballot last November.

Yes. I said I always vote the same which isn't really the case but I intended it as an illustration. The point is that it's not the "non party members" that decide it, but it's the so-called floating voters. But actually it's worse than that, because each constituency gets one seat and many of the constituencies are "safe" in that they will always select a certain party. So, if we consider that a large portion of the electorate will always vote Labour and another large portion will always vote Tory and so are taken for granted AND a lot of the undecideds who might change are in safe seats and can be disregarded then who does leave? Basically undecideds in marginal seats will decide the election and it makes sense for campaigners to target them.

 

[Leo]

sounds almost as bad as our electoral college, which due to gerrymandering of districts does not always produce national election results that represent the majority of voters.

 

[IdleRich]

It's pretty much the same. In the last election the Tories got 40 percent of the vote which somehow gave them a huge 80 seat majority meaning that they could do what they wanted - they immediately started trying to override democratic norms and on the occasions where they were blocked they set about dismantling the bodies or rules that had thwarted them.

 

[Leo]

that's what the trump administration wanted to do but luckily were too incompetent, plus trump has the attention span of a 5-year old.

 

[Leo]

I get that a one-person/one-vote system is unfair to rural areas, every election winner would be who London or NY/California voters wanted.

 

[IdleRich]

that's what the trump administration wanted to do but luckily were too incompetent, plus trump has the attention span of a 5-year old.

When people say Johnson is like Trump in miniature they don't just mean that he's a fat wanker with stupid blond hair.

Thing is the UK is, I think, more dependent on its leaders following conventions that are basically toothless rather than actual rules. My feeling is that both Trump's Republicans and Johnson's Tories had a good go at seeing "what happens if we just fucking ignore this rule that everyone else has simply accepted and followed?" - and sometimes nothing happened and they got away with it, and other times there was pushback or even consequences, but (without having rigorously compared) my feeling is it turned out there were more effective obstacles to that in the US - although Trump and his minions got away with an awful lot while the Torirs were blocked from creating an artificial recess in parliament to prevent debate of their proposals so don't quote me on that.

 

[IdleRich]

I get that a one-person/one-vote system is unfair to rural areas, every election winner would be who London or NY/California voters wanted.

It seems to me that the rules put in place to prevent the natural overweighting of some places in the US mean that they suffer an artificial underweighting - which is arguably worse.

In the UK the reasons and the treatment are not the same but our ultimate result feels like a kind of gerrymandering and certainly just... isn't just.

 

[Mr. Tea]

yeah, was talking about the floaters. although I read once how most people who are technically independents (like you) tend to almost always vote for the same party (again, like you). the number of people who truly go into an election as a blank sheet is small in number, that's why political parties spend much more time and effort trying to rally their base as opposed to trying to convince the floaters.

In my last job I had a colleague who told me he'd voted - in general elections, I think - for Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Green and UKIP candidates.

I was like, mate, what are you even like.

 

[Mr. Tea]

When people say Johnson is like Trump in miniature they don't just mean that he's a fat walker with stupid blond hair.

The sad truth is that he doesn't even do that much walking.