PMs change and lol we're all gonna die (but brexit will never end)

he's officially a giant *and* officially a knob

A bilateral relationship with Poland means Poland has to leave the EU as well, no? Can they take Hungary with them?

from d'ancona's latest: It was routine for those on the left to say that they hated most Conservatives with a passion but could still imagine having a pint with Boris.

waht

maybe if you extend the definition of ‘having a pint’ to include glassing

he also says Boris was the heineken tory who can reach parts other tories cannot reach. absolute bolox and always was.

more like the beerhall putsch tory, despised in the north and in some of the tory shires now.

London media bubble shite.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ED9Ic8NXkAMNRQA?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

lol

power of Chris Patten compels you

Happy Science

You wouldn’t want a pint with BJ. Not that he’d put rohypnol in it or anything, but...

Dare I scan that qr code?

a pint of BJ feels like a hell of a lot

MAH BUCKET

I mean look I'll give it a blow go

If you look at the original Boris Johnson thread here, it's full of people saying they quite like him despite his toryness. He definitely used to be the Tory that it was OK to like. But oh how times change

Old ilx was 50 Londoners talking about belle and Sebastian. Lol not exactly the wasteland provinces that mostly think boris or any of his ilk iare complete fucking arseholes since forever

I was just looking through an old Boris vs. Ken For Mayor thread and failing to see any affection on there for Boris at all.

... not much for Ken either tbf.

I think by the time the mayoral election rolled around Boris had lost his loveable rogue appeal. But a few quotes from the original Boris thread:

Since even bad Tories can be funny on the spot and really know their Classics, he's got some redeeming qualities.

― suzy (suzy), Tuesday, March 23, 2004 11:06 AM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

i quite like boris, for a tory...

― CarsmileSteve (CarsmileSteve), Tuesday, March 23, 2004 12:31 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I really want to like him, but the evil Toryness gets me every time.
― Anna (Anna), Tuesday, March 23, 2004 3:43 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

i secretly quite like him in spite of his toryness.
(i would have written that in small writing to show my shame but am not sure if we're allowed to do such html tricks anymore.)

― toby (tsg20), Tuesday, March 23, 2004 3:46 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I like him, I think he's okay.

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, March 23, 2004 6:44 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I love Boris. He made a very sensible point about people being penalised for talking on mobile phones while cycling or indeed driving - that is, one-armed people are allowed to drive and cycle, so what'd the difference? Bless him and his black-and-white thinking.
― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Tuesday, March 23, 2004 7:08 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Etc.

Tories also seemed a lot more harmless in 2004 iirc?

I think not so much harmless as the fact they were in opposition at time and not differentiated enough from Blair to be of particular consequence. Subconsiously maybe a feeling of they don't really matter.

That said, those comments are still odd

It’s probably me but I don’t recognise 99% of those usernames...and it was 15 and a half years ago. You go back 15 and a half years from any point in history, you’re going to find lots of public figures are viewed quite differently. You could probably find similar comments about Trump or whoever. But bar a couple of examples, I don’t think that the comments were all that glowing anyway...? Plenty of people even back then saw through him or at least had suspicions.

Trump as figure of harmless fun or shorthand for "we're in New York!" is legion in American media from like 1985-2015, viewing it now has the effect of strolling through a garden that is full of land mines.

Doubtful you'd find US ILXors outside of Roger Adultery praising any Republican in 2004.

Yes, he was funny on TV and had a classics degree - and at the time I lived over a pub where he used to drink and play table football with cycle couriers on his way home from editing the Spectator. Really didn’t have any idea at that time about how he treated women, and never wanted him to win an election. In 2004, nobody thought Tories would get anywhere near power.

old ilx = corny higny fuxxorz

I can't help feel that the fact that the Republicans were in power at the time would make a difference there - in the UK Michael Howard was still in charge (loosely speaking) of the Tories, and Boris was a clown who turned up on TV, without any real power at all.

(Of course he also voted for the Iraq war, of course his views have evolved since then)

Carsmile's angle iirc is that Boris represented the High Tory "the system works best when it works well for everyone" side rather than the Tebbittish "can't we just kill them all?"

boris is the acceptable face of barely-concealed priapic male rage

the rollicking fatuous desperation of the autumnal manchild

thanks, I've been Marina Hyde

So much water under the bridge since 2004 you might as well be asking for perspectives from Mars but I think it's fair to say that no one envisaged Johnson as a future PM at the time and if you asked them about the prospect the response would have been a resounding "fuck no".

Tories also seemed a lot more harmless in 2004 iirc?

No, they were still evil scum, they are always evil scum, but they were out of harm's way in 2004. By the way, I think all of the people quoted above were Belle & Sebastian fans from London, so calz wins a gold star!

It was also such a rarity for a politician at that time to have a sense of humour that it felt that this redeemed a lot (compare the grimness of Tebbit, IDS etc), and Boris was cut a lot of slack for a long time.

There's a moral here about never treating anyone in politics as a harmless comedic fringe figure but remember how we all laughed when Farage crashed his plane on election day 2010.

(Not everyone quoted up there was on the left at the time by the way, or even the centre left)

(xp) True, 'funny' politicians on the left no better tbh. Could never bear that Stephen Pound guy, for instance.

John Mann repeats, this time on national radio, his v strange belief that a majority of Labour voters in the North and Midlands voted to Leave. A belief that is hard to reconcile even with the 2016 referendum result and election result *in his own seat*. pic.twitter.com/uIANQaMxKA

— Stephen Bush (@stephenkb) September 9, 2019

I thought it sounded like Swann was pulling those labour leave voting stats out of his arse this morning. What a dickhead.

this kind of relentless commitment to facts bodes well for his role as antisemitism czar

So much water under the bridge since 2004

Didn’t manage to build his bridge but he sure spaffed a lot of money not building it.

bridges weren’t the only place he was irresponsibly spaffing iirc

Oooof at that old thread

ILX simply habe es nicht gewusst

Lol I was getting Mann's name confused with a Stephen King baddie. I still dispute that boris is or ever was liked in the north. He'll soon enough find out if he has that Heineken appeal but I think he's more like a bottle of warm stuff labelled Tory Piss up here.

As much as I hate to change the topic from what people thought of Boris when I’d barely finished school*, I passed the PCS picket this morning and was reminded how Laura Pidcock and RL-B had both been up there recently. It’s such a sea change from the way Miliband was wishy-washy on unions.

* a slight exaggeration but not by very much

how would the melts demonise Pidcock if she was the LOTO? immature communist? more hard left divisive politics - they wouldn't be able to use AS against her.

Chippy

they wouldn't be able to use AS against her.

Sure about that?

she served in the most antisemitic opposition party in uk history! she refused to condemn their disgusting behaviour! SHE CAN’T BE TRUSTED!1!!

I have been on ilx since 2001, and am a Belle & Sebastian fan who lives in London.

I would never have said anything positive about BJ, and never will. He is scum and has always been scum. He has never said anything funny or entertaining in his life, except on those occasions - like idiotically failing to recite the police caution - where he flounders and fails and this has its own entertainment value, because he is an utter scumbag.

It's not accurate to say that the Con party in 2004 seemed that they would never be in power again. Insofar as politics is somewhat cyclical, you can always assume that a major party will come back in some form. And the Con party is the most formidable and dangerous election machine in UK history. In 2005 they reduced the Labour majority by about 120. Precisely how they would eventually come back was, to be sure, unknown, as I think was Cameron.