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

So you're saying that you voted for Boris previously but Mark hacked the poll?

the current betting market is totally not concerned with stupid fucking latest ClickbaitGov poll: BJ is red hot fav @ 8/15 and Opium boy is 33's.

can boris get to be prime minister by the new* tory means of not bothering to stand for election: possibly (tho i'd still bet against it)
can boris win a GE: nope

*as in developed largely since i last noted that boris is over

S Bush reckons Boris would be perfect tory leader for Corbyn to run against and beat, can't remember his working out but agree with him. Having him as leader would be effectively signalling that have given up on a significant chunk of their voters - specifically the "moderate" remain voting lot.

SB's reasoning is iirc largely based on careful attention to polling -- including polling negatives (as well as patiently sceptical familiarity with the attitudes of MPs)

adapting my two startling post-baldrick political insights so that they actually interact with one another: if it's true that mnay's intransigence has enormously damaged the "normal" working of the various intersecting institutions she was embedded in (claim made up uthread), then that certainly includes their ability to protect themselves against long-term self-harm (which has to date been the tory party's secretest and yet most public weapon: it is after all by far the oldest political party still extant, even counting globally). which means its protections against the massive harm of bojo -- whatever they actually are -- are also reduced: so yes, he may stumble through… but the state of said institutions if/when he does will be such that they will immediately just wreck him

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/83/d5/4d/83d54d6d5ee7c71773f1da13b8bd4ad8.gif

.@sajidjavid: I like a cigarette, I punched bullies first and I love a cheeky Nando'shttps://t.co/ZfKC4OkpEZ

— Telegraph Politics (@TelePolitics) June 7, 2019

when is one of these authentocrat jokers going to try a solemn + respectful Nandos ffs.

wtf is a cheeky motherfucking Nandos?

lol i typed out the phrase "as a tory i always insist on a dignified and respectful nandos" and then deleted it bcz the bufton-tufton telegraph is long dead and there is no benefit to pretending otherwise

To go back to Tom D's point on Boris its kinda surpising that he hasn't pulled any stunts or said shit (or too much of it anyway) or admitted to drug taking. So far anyway.

And to square with Mark's point its true that Boris is unlikely to win a GE, but I think that's true for any Tory winning this. I mean what we are seeing is Nandos, cocaine/youthful (at 31, which is young for Tory I suppose) indiscretion, walks and chats about *stuff* on the street and shitty social media. Anything but policy apart from: a) who is going to be hardest brexity on brexit or b) Raab's Unchained stuff which would be under the spotlight in a GE should he win and something I don't see playing that well at the doorstep. Its the total lack on the policy front that is fucking these Tories up.

that Graun piece on the Peterbrough by-election result yesterday highlighted that campaigning on policies (rather than degrees of brexit or brexit betrayed) is still doing the biz with the electorate and all is not lost.

Its always going to be that. Often you get one of those back bench Tories saying Brexit today Jerusalem tomorrow but people want them to show some working and the Tory party is too exhausted for coherent bullshit rn.

tory leadership hopefuls scramble before all the good drug confessions get taken and they're left having to confess to misguided teenage nutmeg binges and attempts to huff pritt-stick https://t.co/sTqICTlTEg

— Ben (@cinemashoebox) June 8, 2019

Crack or gtfo

drug abuse has totally been tapped out now.. maybe the masturbation confessions next?

Gove outs himself as much loved ILM poster Turrican

Frighteningly plausible.

lol talking of masturbation.

Pretty sure Turrican has never regretted anything. But then neither has Gove.

Raab's Unchained stuff which would be under the spotlight in a GE should he win and something I don't see playing that well at the doorstep.

c'mon workers do want to test themselves in Victorian sweatshop conditions - you get to make fat oligarchs richer and find out if you're as nailz as your ancestors were .. it's a total winner on the doorsteps!

PETER HITCHENS: The truth is Britain's entire elite has been corrupted by drug abuse for decades

lool!!

I have to say Mr Gove’s confession comes as no great surprise to me. Our entire political and media elite, across all major parties, have long been corrupted by drug abuse. I am not talking about the teenage follies they sometimes confess to. Legions of them have taken illegal drugs far more recently than they care to admit, and even more of them, idiotically, allow their teenage children to do so.

I ain't takin' no shorts,
whether for the rap or the dope game,
bitch, I'm still a man

Peter Hitchens

By the nature of the crime, they probably cannot remember all the occasions when they broke the law.

tbf he's fucking nailed it there!

Well, we’ve had caners as PM and as Chancellor already; I have good gossip about the former’s antics at Notting Hill wedding receptions.

no doubt about that degen! PH reminds me of my dad accusing me of being a "glue sniffer" when I was dabbling with the bad stuff!

like we don't these pig fucking degenerates are strangers bacchanalian excess!

know

hmm .... shouldn't have smoked that drug before typing during a dizzy spell.

PH as ever the only person actually sticking to the horrible principles tories affect to stand for, for this he has my grudging, um, still not respect tbh but relative lack of contempt at least

I like him much more than most terrible professional politicians of the Labour and Conservative parties as well fwiw tbh.

media lens seem to love him unconditionally

are they like novara media? not heard of them before g/s I just did.

hardcore pilger / chomsky stans, they do letter writing campaigns to any media figure who isn't ideologically pure, which works out as everyone. I agree with them 90% of the time, but their blindspot regarding anyone who isn't USA/UK establishment is ridiculous, and they have spent way too much time defending wikileaks

PH is high on himself anyway etc etc

He's wrong and not exactly perceptive but he has the principled consistency thing going on, and I guess he's not a grifter?

his Grenfell piece was absolutely spot on. Obv I'm not saying give the cunt a medal, but when you compare the vile apologist responses of people like Nick Robinson or just about anyone in the current Con party at the time - then you realise he is a different type of conservative beast. Still an arrogant, pompous, bigoted, 1914 declinist bore but he'd only have bad crims strung up by their neck!

I've mentioned before but I've had cause to encounter Peter Hitchens at my place of work and he was extremely polite, pleasant and respectful - whereas Kwasi Kwarteng is a dick, though not as much as Andrew Gilligan, truly an obnoxious toad of a man.

got to give him some credit; of the Britannia Unchained crew he's only slightly less thick as pigshit as Liz Truss is .. but only slightly... I love it when R4 gives him half an hour slots to make anodyne programs about the Empire that have the effect of leaving you feeling like you know less about a subject after wasting your fucking time listening to it.

When he was Secretary of State, Michael Gove brought in a lifetime ban for teachers who used cocaine. pic.twitter.com/DYuGCOTZqb

— Steve Lapsley (@stevelapsl) June 9, 2019

what a loathsome little twat.

Yes, but they weren’t ‘experimenting’.

Chemistry teachers maybe

Someone has to show the kids how to manufacture crack-cocaine in your kitchen, vital life skillz!

Mildly interesting skim on Boris' operation this time around.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/09/boris-johnson-kept-from-media-in-ruthlessly-organised-campaign

No mistakes this time. If he gets there he'll save it for his negotiations with the EU.

there is only so long you can hide the cunt in a box or as the The Graun would have it a "ruthlessly organised" campaign of great professionalism!

Maybe now would be the time for journalists to closely scrutinize Johnson's financial supporters and allies rather than next year after we're in Mad Max world

https://www.ft.com/content/8d7d7e0e-8719-11e9-a028-86cea8523dc2?segmentId=5b3cb929-a23e-88ae-662f-4cae036b0dee

Well this is brutal...

Could non-subscribers have a few paras of that?