In Liz We Truss

[IdleRich]

It's funny that there have been several times over the last ten or fifteen years where the party in power switches leader and thus the country gets a new prime minister who has never won a general election. And whenever that happens the other party makes a huge thing about how the country has had a new PM undemocratically foisted on them, while the party that did it points to the fact that we have a parliamentary system in which we all vote for our local MP (and their party) and the party with the most votes forms a government and so on, in other words, we don't vote for the leader cos we don't have a presidential system and so it was the Tories who won the election and who are in power and that doesn't change if the leader is Johnson or Truss or whoever.

For what it's worth, I tend to think that the second position is probably the correct one - although, there is a case to be made that loads of people didn't understand that and really did cast their vote for "Boris" rather thsan whoever their local MP was (if they even knew) - but my main point isn't which is correct but how shamelessly MPs change their position on this issue depending on which argument benefits them. I find it one of the things which is most illustrative of how little those involved in parliamentary politics care about what is actually wrong or right.

Almost the same thing comes up when an MP crosses the floor and defects to another party. In that case the party who has lost an MP almost invariably says that there should be a by-election, and I have to say that in that instance they are probably within their rights to do so. I would be pretty pissed off if I voted for - let's say - the BNP candidate and he won, but then a bit later he said "I've stopped being racist and I actually think immigration is a good thing, I'm gonna join the Lib Dems and campaign to re-join the EU". It would feel as though he won under false pretences and saying "you voted for me to be your MP regardless of my party" wouldn't really wash.

 

[version]

- but my main point isn't which is correct but how shamelessly MPs change their position on this issue depending on which argument benefits them.

The Rees-Mogg special.

 

[IdleRich]

I'm glad you mentioned him, I don't actually specifically remember him having two stances on this but as I was writing that post his evil smug face swam up through the murk of my memory and l wondered if he was one of the offenders. Do you have links by any chance to the exact things he said? Thanks in advance.

 

[version]

The example that sprung to mind with him wasn't this specific issue, it was him saying we'd need a general election to give Johnson the boot despite him being perfectly fine with ousting May without one.

 

[IdleRich]

I see Pritti Patel has stepped down... not really sure why. Patel and Dorries (to name but two) were particularly mindlessly loyal to Johnson - often to the point that they would completely deny reality to protect him from criticism over whatever the latest stupid or terrible thing he'd said or done was - and it was often argued that their careers were entirely dependent on him.This argument was based on the idea that surely there was nobody else in the world who would give such a pair of cretins a job in their cabinet. Especially Dorries, it's completely unbelievable that she could be culture secretary... she is manifestly unsuitable for that rule (maybe she can read but I'm sure she doesn't) and so the only thing she had to offer was blind devotion to Johnson.

In a twisted kind of way it made sense; Johnson surrounded himself with people too useless to have a career if he left, which meant that they had to fight to keep him in power as though their political lives depended on it, cos they did. I say a twisted kind of sense, by which I mean that it makes sense if your only aim is to cling on to power at all costs and for as long as possible, but if you want to achieve anything while you are in power, then it's not such a good strategy. Someone that has been selected for a role for the precise reason that they are too stupid to be given that role by anyone else is obviously unlikely to perform it well.

I suppose this is just another example of Johnson wanting power for power's sake. He always had the ambition to be PM but why? When finally he got what he wanted, what did he do with it? He didn't attend important meetings and he holidayed all the time. The thing he repeatedly says was his biggest achievement - getting Brexit done - was something which he was originally going to campaign against (and of course he didn't really get it done). He wanted to be PM cos he wanted to be PM, he didn't want to do the day-to-day work and he didn't have any ideology or even policy that he believed in so much he needed to be PM to achieve it. Even when forced to step down he begged to be PM until the new one came in... and then when granted that extra time he did nothing but go on holiday... again. So weird, I mean, why didn't he try and do something for his legacy, even if it was nuke France or whatever, I really cannot fathom why he begged for a few more weeks as PM and when he got them did nothing.

Anyway, my original point. Patel and Dorries etc must have known that the chances of there being another PM moronic enough to give them a job was minimal... you would have thought that they couldn't believe their luck when Truss hoved into view. In normal times it's inconceivable that they could be deemed cabinet material... how could there be a party so lacking in talent and brains that they are even in the picture? How could there be a PM foolish enough to consider them? But these are not normal times, that is the situation we face, and given that, I'm surprised that Patel didn't at least try and keep her job

 

[IdleRich]

The example that sprung to mind with him wasn't this specific issue, it was him saying we'd need a general election to give Johnson the boot despite him being perfectly fine with ousting May without one.

Ah ok, more enormous hypocrisy. I still can't get over the way that Mitch McConnell said that Obama couldn't appoint judges cos he was a lame duck president at that point, but Trump could because... he was a different type of lame duck was it?

 

[IdleRich]

I think she may end up even worse than Boris.

View attachment 12763

I don't think so. Of course she will be bad, that's obvious, it's all just relative degrees of awful at this point. I think she's very stupid and, while she may not be as evil as Boris, I think she is quite capable of doing the same sort of evil things as him if she thinks that it is what the party wants or if she thinks it will make her look tough - which I reckon is probably one of the dumb aspirations she has.

I don't think that she will be as lazy as Johnson though. I think she will at least try to look as though she is doing some prime ministering, I don't think she has as many rich and dodgy mates and so I don't think she will be so easily tempted into corruption.

And I don't think that she possesses what is possibly Johnson's worst trait, his arrogance, certainly not to the same degree - it was that which allowed him to really just do what he wanted all the time with no real fear of any consequences. Having got away with so much throughout his life he had just come to expect it and so he had no problems with breaking rules and then just insisting that he hadn't done so. It combined with all his other flaws, such as his laziness, to exacerbate them - he didn't want to go to the Cobra meeting so, fuck it, he didn't go. Some guy offered him wallpaper in exchange for influence, it was against the rules but who was gonna stop him?

It felt as though he saw everyone as tiny little people who had never even been to Eton and so any criticisms they made were of no moment. He could lie so easily to the people cos they didn't deserve his honesty, they were just pygmies yapping at his heels and biting his ankles, to be shaken off as he strode confidently forward, getting on with the important tasks of decorating his home and making his mates richer. Johnson intrinsically believed that he was better than almost everyone and his inferiors had no right to try and stop him from doing whatever he wanted.

It was a repeating pattern; he said he didn't go to any parties and that should be the end of it, regardless of whether he actually did or didn't. How dare people not take his word and move on? When he sent people out on his behalf to repeat that lie, as far as he was concerned that was their duty. He swore to his underlings that he didn't know about Pincher (or whatever) and they repeated it - and then were upset to discover he had made them into his lying accomplices, but I'm certain he doesn't feel bad about that, just annoyed that people had the effrontery to check up on him and angry that his colleagues felt able to judge him.

And this lasted right up to the end. You could see this when he resigned, there was no remorse at all, he felt betrayed. And when you think about what that means it can only lead to one conclusion. Ultimately he has been caught in his lies and he is no longer denying them. He is fully admitting that he knew about Pincher and promoted him anyway, and then lied about knowing about it, and then made all his colleagues lie for him too. So.. he admits all of that, but feels aggrieved at being forced out, and so the only explanation for that stance is that he truly thinks it was unfair to expect him to obey the same rules as everyone else.

 

[version]

She's more of an ideologue though. Apparently there are policies she's looking to implement which Boris thought went too far. That and an evil but lazy person is preferable to an evil and driven one.

 

[IdleRich]

Your latter point is certainly a valid one.

I'm not saying that your first one isn't, I have to say that I don't know much about her ideology, in fact I don't know much about her. The leadership contest dragged on so ridiculously long that even I - who has a much higher tolerance for the kinda trivial party-politics (or maybe personality politics) than most - switched off aaaaages ago. I know that she was a lib dem when she was younger so I quite possibly assumed that she was driven more by ambition than by any particular set of political beliefs.

But you are a hundred percent right about the laziness thing. When you think about it, Johnson (again much like Trump in this respect) didn't do as much damage as he might have done. With Trump and Johnson, when people read about them in the history books it will be striking how little they achieved, just how little they did. Johnson had this huge majority that he never shut up about but what did he do with it? OK, you could argue that cos Johnson came to power midway through Brexit and his time as PM was dominated by Covid, that did have an effect on how much he was able to do. But really, the main problem (as with Trump) was that he was constantly fighting fires of his own making. Trump was impeached cos of that stupid phone-call to Ukraine, Johnson spent ages arguing about wallpaper... to mention two examples. At least Trump managed to serve the full four years, what I find hilarious about Johnson is the extent to which he sabotaged himself - he came to power with a massive majority and his "oven ready deal" and, if he wanted to do anything, the only thing that could prevent him was himself.

Now he's gone the right keep repeating this weird lie that Johnson was somehow brought down by the media but anyone paying attention knows that he was really brought down by Boris Johnson. He didn't attend the Cobra meetings about covid and he played down the threat then acted way too late, he spent millions on wallpaper and refused to admit who paid him (same for his holiday villa in fact), he attended loads of illegal parties and lied about them, he tried to change the rules when his mate (Patterson?) was found to have broken them, he promoted Pincher despite knowing about the allegations and then lied about that. It would have been so so easy not to do any of those things and he could have stayed in power and passed whatever rules he liked with his thumping great majority. And best of all is, he doesn't understand that it was him, he didn't learn his lesson at all, he thinks he is hard done by!

The main damage that Trump and Johnson did cause was to standards in public and political life - they normalised lying and ignoring conventions and so on, and these are terrible things don't get me wrong, but they didn't manage to bring through any policies, they didn't put their stamp on the country. They were just dickheads playing at being king.

Hmmm... I'm coming round to your way of thinking a little now Versh. She can't be as ineffective as her predecessor so maybe she will be worse. The only thing is, she will be fucking useless and she faces an election relatively soon so that might limit the damage she can do.

 

[version]

Yeah, my view's Johnson's personal conduct is likely to be far worse than Truss' but she'll be worse in terms of policy.

 

[IdleRich]

As Jonathan Pie put it... "rather than resign and spending a relaxing summer on holiday, Johnson decided to stay on as prime minister and spend a relaxing summer on holiday". I really, truly don't understand that... why did he want to stay on as PM? I wonder if he thought that, as long as he kept a grip on the position, he might just - while relaxing on a Greek beach, trying to come at the problem from a different angle - think of a way to wriggle out of his resignation.

Perhaps you're right, certainly it's something worth thinking about. But with Trump, his personal conduct, specifically his brutal (successful) war on truth has been devastating, I feel that the extent of it can't be exaggerated. It affected me personally far more than any domestic policy he could have enacted. Also his normalising of breaking the rules, which was something Johnson gleefully copied. I feel that that genie can't be put back in the box and I fear the consequences of his ignoring of rules on parliamentary standards.

 

[version]

As Jonathan Pie put it... "rather than resign and spending a relaxing summer on holiday, Johnson decided to stay on and spend a relaxing summer on holiday". I really, truly don't understand that... why did he want to stay on as PM? I wonder if he thought that, as long as he kept a grip on the position, he might just - while relaxing on a Greek beach, trying to come at the problem from a different angle - think of a way to wriggle out of his resignation.

That and he wanted a couple more months salary, time to milk the office and connections a little longer and to outlast May.

 

[IdleRich]

I read that Dorries has also resigned now.

 

[IdleRich]

As Truss succeeds Johnson, I am reminded of a time I had norovirus on holiday. I had been wracked by vomiting until I wished I was dead, and when it finally subsided, along came a merciless onslaught of diarrhoea.

 

[version]

I read that Dorries has also resigned now.

I'm glad she's gone, but the rumour is she's going to be made a peer.

 

[Sectionfive]

Has there ever been a new PM arrive to so little enthusiasm?

And the same sentiment is certain to play out during the imminent handover of the monarchy.

Britain's new era of underdelivery is sure bedding in at the top!

 

[version]

She apparently won the leadership by the narrowest margin since Tory members got the vote, so even the membership aren't particularly keen on her.

 

[WashYourHands]

wonderful days, these, wonderful

using energy prices as form of will they won’t they intervene doing something (anything), before serving another copycat bowl of shite up as a Fresh Leadership Solutions For Fresh Problems Quagmire

 

[IdleRich]

Has there ever been a new PM arrive to so little enthusiasm?

There is a rumour going around that twelve MPs have already written their letter of no confidence.

 

[IdleRich]

I find it extraordinary that the government spent months where the acting PM was on holiday and the rest of the party was doing nothing but choose between two people - surely that could have been done more quickly - as the country faced several crises at once. They literally just let the country drift along rudderless with nobody at the controls. Whatever you think of Tory leadership that seems like an absolutely shocking dereliction of duty which you would expect to be punished next time there is an election. Did their manifesto include a clause at the bottom saying "We'll do all that unless we need to pause to pick a new leader (again) in which case you're on your own for a bit, good luck".