The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel - The Tory leadership elections

Grauniad are doing a poll tracker.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2019/may/28/tory-leadership-contest-odds-tracker-whos-up-and-whos-down

Or actually a not-poll tracker

"The percentages are the implied probabilities of each candidate becoming the next Conservative leader, based on the latest betting odds."

here's an idea - just show the betting odds instead, because turning into a percentage doesn't make it any more of a science!

whither nate silver in our hour of need

🚨 Tory leadership latest 🚨

Chris Grayling is *not* running for the Conservative party leadership. He will be backing "someone else".

— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) May 28, 2019

They’ll be waiting with bated breath for his endorsement.

a shocking lack of vision from one of the conservative party's most accomplished frontbenchers imo

chris grayling, go on ballot

there have been many many jokes about the lib dems receiving grayling's application to be leader, guess this works with that

He considers himself a member of the lower-upper-middle classes which means – despite this accent – he’s quite posh but not properly so. Eton and Oxford, yes, but also – if briefly – the Black Watch and, eternally, Scotland too. I suspect he thinks of himself as an outsider on the inside; a member of the club but in some vague way not quite a full, or born, one.

That’s from https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/05/the-refreshing-ridiculousness-of-rory-stewart/

ah yes, one of those classic outsiders who enjoys the patronage of the royal family

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TOsOZmznPGc/hqdefault.jpg

^^^^

Officer class. Dad posted abroad at just the right time for the government to pay his son’s school fees - no flies on Daddy, apparently.

The Auld Acquaintance Cairn, near the border at Gretna, would be, he hoped, ‘a lasting marker of our union, something that future generations will look back at and remember, with deep gratitude, the moment we chose to stay together’. This was very Stewartish: slightly unworldly, romantic, and easily mocked. But even if Rory’s Cairn has been largely forgotten now, there are reckoned to be 100,000 stones there, brought to it by people from all across the United Kingdom. And it is still there.

me: https://caleythistleonline.com/uploads/monthly_2016_08/a2dw7lawtzjtwo0ibb48cpndsr6v7h.jpeg.169b7e4592f17fe58cbb03d9d5d5979d.jpeg

can we not traduce rasputin by association with rory stewart pls

Tired: voting for Morduant in an internet poll for Tory party leader.

Wired: actually joining the Tories to vote for Rory Stewart and bring world peace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed-ARQhR9Bg

are you pretending to hold your phone?

— Matthew Champion (@matthewchampion) May 28, 2019

Yes

— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) May 28, 2019

the lower-upper-middle classes

only in England...

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5c0a7851965aa0162203f983-750-422.jpg https://e3.365dm.com/18/04/768x432/skynews-james-cleverly-mp_4296288.jpg?20180429152715

lol with Dumberly and Malthouse yesterday.. some real big beasts entering the fray. I think Malthouse needs to announce again today.. no-one noticed yesterday.. maybe 2nd time's the charm.

Malthouse raised eyebrows on Tuesday by suggesting the government could buy up lamb chops to feed to schoolchildren in the event of no deal. Malthouse told LBC: “Something like 80,000 tonnes of sheep meat is exported every year. Now if we go out with no deal, they think that will be significantly affected … could we use it in hospitals and in schools?”

and uh who's going to pay for it

quality leadership race content, featuring the most Tory Boy Tory Boy of all time
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48408025

Harry Bickling-Baker FFS

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/156DA/production/_107107778_hhb.jpg

Bradley Goodwin is also impressed by Mr Raab's intellect and grasp of policy that he says "other Brexiteers don't have".
"He has been making demands of the EU that even Theresa May has not been making," he adds.

intellectuals read "books" right?

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/87ac2b939073caab25c6e807bc77198f8d063d84/35_0_953_572/master/953.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=94f652335b55d15474fa275778221328

I mean fair play to the lad - he’s got books on his windowsill that I wouldn’t have in my toilet.

raab's intellect and grasp of policy: "“I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this,” he said. “But if you look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing.”

he clearly hadn't yet gotten around to reading the imposing hardback volume which explains the basics of modern british industry

and indeed ancient british marine geography

or Arnie's autobiography

Things you were shockingly old when you learned (cos of library consisting of readers digest book club staples - which you haven't read)

tfw you need to appear smart on tv but you don't own any bookshelves

having the time of my life with a bunch of bookshelves, they're all just out of frame, laughing too (at me)

Bookshelves obviously crammed with unsold copies of "Britannia Unchained".

at home with the Raabs

a good book is a magical portal to another world pic.twitter.com/IpfxVJ17af

— Alex Norris (@dorrismccomics) December 19, 2018

He’s the one with the injunctions involving two women, right?

Really? Never heard anything about that, but hardly matters with Boris "Family Man" Johnson in the race.

I am p. sure books should not be on windowsills, given how faded the books on my bookshelf in the vague proximity of a window which doesn't even get any direct sunlight are

but I guess they're only going to sit there for an hour and then the intern will be sent to take them back to the remainder bookshop they probably all came from an hour before the shoot

"the thickest books you've got in your £3 section, please. Arnie? sure, whatever, it's a hardback and has classy-looking shiny text"

look there's no reason to bring back up the allegations of 'inappropriate behaviour with a woman' which afflicted mr raab some two years ago, have never been conclusively proven and thus in no way are a cause for concerns about his character

nor indeed the ones which similarly bedeviled rory stewart, who did you know actually walked across afghanistan and speaks dari

i think dominic raab buys his books by the kilo

Pound, surely?

fuck you're right, i've exposed my soft latte-sipping underbelly

anyway, while we're on the subject of raab and books, here he is defending his sketchy understanding of the good friday agreement

He also admitted he hadn’t read the Good Friday Agreement – crucial to peace in Northern Ireland – start to finish.

“At various points in the negotiations, when issues have been raised, it has been an important opportunity to delve into the different aspects very carefully,” he told MPs.

“It’s not like a novel where you sit down and you say ‘do you know what, over the holidays, this is a cracking read’.”

harry bickling-baker schooled and owned

Posting for posterity: That transformer textbot today, fed something about Boris, threw up "Bozzers has a face like the scene of a crime."

i did enjoy that two of the tory boys interviewed for that piece were named harry