UK Politics: Last Chrismas we partied so hard, now it was leaked before a repeat.

[Spockydog]

I really can't see the Blue Rinse Brigade, along with some of the more blatantly racist factions of British Torydom, entertaining the thought of an Asian PM. Not for one minute.

 

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

23 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

I really can't see the Blue Rinse Brigade, along with some of the more blatantly racist factions of British Torydom, entertaining the thought of an Asian PM. Not for one minute.

 

 

Woke political correctness gone mad!

[Spockydog]

If it has to be anyone, I hope it is Sunak. At least he gives off an appearance of being mildly competent. And after the last two disasters the Tories have foisted upon the nation, that would be something. 

 

[Maltaran]

41 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

I really can't see the Blue Rinse Brigade, along with some of the more blatantly racist factions of British Torydom, entertaining the thought of an Asian PM. Not for one minute.

 

 

Nah, the blue rinse brigade will happily vote for Sunak or Patel to prove that they're not racist and therefore all the BLM complainers are wrong and can be safely ignored.

[A wilding]

And Johnson's fightback from by-election defeat has started. The person he assigned to lead an inquiry into stories of rule breaking parties in the government has reported back that there were no breaches of the rules. Er ...

That was what was supposed to happen today. But instead the guy has been forced to remove himself from the inquiry, because it has leaked that at least one of these parties was actually held in his office.

I realise that I am just paraphrasing the news here, but really... If I thought that Johnson was not a narcissist who will just brush this off, then I might almost feel a little sorry for him.

[The Anti-Targ]

I think a lot of the old not-at-all-racist racists in the UK are quite happy to allow that the right kind of Indian can be an honorary white with all the rights and privileges that come with it. You just have to be rich, come from the right family, be more milk tea colored than black tea, have gone to the right school, think the right way, and not be Muslim. And the Muslim thing is negotiable if you're not too obvious about it. Bonus points if you're Christian.

I think Sunak ticks all the right boxes, though I don't actually know his school or religious credentials.

Some commentators seem to be surprised that a heavily Brexit electorate would elect a remainer. But the way I see it, there is no danger in electing anyone with a different view on Brexit because the Tories still have a stonking majority and Brexit is not reversible any time soon. Even a Labour-Lib Dem govt couldn't do it in its first term, or even second. The by-election was all about telling the parliamentary party to get rid of Johnson and delivering the Tories a loss was the only way to do that.

[mormont]

4 hours ago, Spockydog said:

If it has to be anyone, I hope it is Sunak. At least he gives off an appearance of being mildly competent. And after the last two disasters the Tories have foisted upon the nation, that would be something.

No, I really hope it isn't Sunak. All signs are that Sunak would run a government that would prioritise 'opening up the economy' over COVID safety, cut back on any further spending, privatise the heck out of everything in sight and generally return us to the 'free trade is the best, shame you were born poor but them's the breaks' school of conservatism. He's not the walking shambles that many other names being bruited about are, but I do not like the idea of him running things.

[Spockydog]

I dunno. The priorities of a Chancellor are very much different to those of PM. Whose to say what his agenda would be if he moved next door?

[BigFatCoward]

If you are going to say 'not Rishi' you have to say who is the better option surely? 

He, for me, is the least worst. 

[mormont]

12 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

I dunno. The priorities of a Chancellor are very much different to those of PM. Whose to say what his agenda would be if he moved next door?

Sunak has little political history and it's not very easy to find out what his views are other than being anti-Europe, economically and (to a large extent) socially conservative. This may be because he isn't particularly ideological outside those views. That's backed up by his background: he ran a hedge fund. It may be fair to assume he has the priorities of a Chancellor not just because he happened to be Chancellor, but because that was the job he wanted, because those are his most important beliefs.

6 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

If you are going to say 'not Rishi' you have to say who is the better option surely? 

He, for me, is the least worst. 

I'd rather have Gove, who would be unable to get anything done because everyone hates him and his Cabinet would be busy stabbing each other in the back. Mind you, much the same could be said of Raab. Truss would also be relatively powerless despite the fact that she doesn't engender the same hate. Give me another incompetent, is what I'm saying.

[Spockydog]

2 minutes ago, mormont said:

Give me another incompetent, is what I'm saying.

I mean, yeah, if all you care about is party politics. 

[mormont]

56 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I think Sunak ticks all the right boxes, though I don't actually know his school or religious credentials.

Private school (Winchester), practising Hindu.

5 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

I mean, yeah, if all you care about is party politics. 

Not quite sure what to make of that comment, tbqh.

A competent Tory will enact Tory policies. I do tend to the view that these are harmful for people I care about. I'll cop to that. If we have to have a Tory government, I'd prefer it be run by a moderate Tory. But there are none of those in a position to become leader, and scarcely any left in Parliament at all. So my second choice would be, a government that is run by someone who has to spend all their time and energy fighting their own party.

[Spockydog]

12 minutes ago, mormont said:

Not quite sure what to make of that comment, tbqh.

At any other time, yeah bring on the clowns. But right now, at this moment, the country needs a bit more than that.

[Werthead]

16 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I think Sunak ticks all the right boxes, though I don't actually know his school or religious credentials.

Sunak is Hindu and his parents are from Kenya and Tanzania. His grandparents are Punjabi. He went to Winchester College, Oxford and Stanford, which could be a bonus since he can draw a line at not having gone to Eton and under no circumstances having had congress with a porcine corpse, nor had the opportunity to do so. He's a tee-totaller, which will appeal to the Tories who fear electing Gove and having him stagger out of #10 one morning in just his powder-covered pants after an all-night rager to announce he's legalising bestiality.

The question here is what do people want from a replacement for Boris. The best thing for the country and for all of us is someone who takes the pandemic fucking seriously, who isn't completely deranged and who is practical/realistic enough to work out a fudge with Europe which they can then sit on for years and say it's been fixed and we can all move on. That person might have been (but probably wasn't) Hancock if he hadn't been caught in flagrante (and unfortunately for him, it's at least six months to a year too early for him to mount a slow-burn, contrite comeback), possibly Hunt, and maybe on an extremely generous day Gove when he's in plugged in to reality. Sunak would only be in that category if he wasn't so committed to free market horseshit, and would probably be willing to inject Omicron directly into the eyeballs of every child in Britain to get it over and done with ASAP so people can go back to eating at Nandos.

If, on the other hand, you want someone who's a total fucking incompetent to get in so Labour (or a Labour-LibDem coalition) can make mincemeat of them at the election and get into power, then yes, Raab or Truss might feel like a good bet, though the idea of "Dominic Raab, Prime Minister" probably makes eve most Tories instinctively vomit in revulsion. The fear is someone who's a total fucking lunatic incompetent and fully capable of making horrific decisions causing mass protest and social disorder (that'd be Patel or Baker) getting in, but they're so fundamentally loatheable that I think even their strongest supporters would hesitate at them leading the fight to the country.

The nightmare scenario is getting someone like that in, giving Labour a 450-mile-wide open goal and Labour crashing and burning and the lunatic brigade getting another five years to sell the NHS on eBay. This is, tragically, a not-unlikely scenario.

[mormont]

One thing Patel is not, is competent. She got caught out trying to arrange Super Secret Backdoor Spy Missions, remember. She's been promoted above her ability already. But she could do a lot of damage if appointed leader, despite that.

And yeah, a PM who was competent and would focus on COVID would be nice but Wert is correct: that's not Sunak. Right now he seems to be the main brake on taking steps to actually bear down on Omicron. We don't actually have anyone who has those characteristics among the runners and riders, as far as I can see.

[Spockydog]

17 minutes ago, mormont said:

And yeah, a PM who was competent and would focus on COVID would be nice but Wert is correct: that's not Sunak. Right now he seems to be the main brake on taking steps to actually bear down on Omicron. We don't actually have anyone who has those characteristics among the runners and riders, as far as I can see.

If only they hadn't treated Rory Stewart the way they did. 

[Which Tyler]

48 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

If only they hadn't treated Rory Stewart the way they did. 

Or Grieve, for that matter.

 

Obviously though, they both committed the ultimate Tory sin.
I'll let readers decide if that was saying nice things about the EU, or looking more competent than Bojo

[Derfel Cadarn]

Laurence Fox’s Reclaim party got about 375 votes in Shropshire - another deposit lost!

[A Horse Named Stranger]

3 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

Or Grieve, for that matter.

 

Obviously though, they both committed the ultimate Tory sin.
I'll let readers decide if that was saying nice things about the EU, or looking more competent than Bojo

Nah, Grieve was proper competent and hasn't turned into some sorta joke post his Westminster career. Stewart is now basically the weirdo with the camera, who didn't run for London Mayor afterall. 

14 hours ago, Werthead said:

The nightmare scenario is getting someone like that in, giving Labour a 450-mile-wide open goal and Labour crashing and burning and the lunatic brigade getting another five years to sell the NHS on eBay. This is, tragically, a not-unlikely scenario.

Don't worry, Corbyn is biding his time waiting for Starmer to get ousted and to be readmitted into Labour to lead Labour into a new age.  

[Werthead]

5 hours ago, mormont said:

One thing Patel is not, is competent. She got caught out trying to arrange Super Secret Backdoor Spy Missions, remember. She's been promoted above her ability already. But she could do a lot of damage if appointed leader, despite that.

And yeah, a PM who was competent and would focus on COVID would be nice but Wert is correct: that's not Sunak. Right now he seems to be the main brake on taking steps to actually bear down on Omicron. We don't actually have anyone who has those characteristics among the runners and riders, as far as I can see.

Sorry, total incompetent. The "in" got lost in an edit.