Ne'er get thee stitched til Booris be ditched: UK General Election 2019

seems bad idk

Boris Johnson personally warned about risks of freeing terrorists but said there was ‘no money’ to deradicalise them, ex-top prosecutor says
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-warned-london-bridge-attack-usman-khan-stabbing-terrorist-a9227681.html

I'm sure the Prime Minister will face tough questioning on this and other issues on the Andrew Marr show tomorrow.

If you’re Marr you have to be feeling pretty insulted at this point, and possibly feeling like you have something to prove.

You can't have something to prove if haven't got anything to prove it with.

what a fucking waste of space, he's no good at scrutinising pols, he's probably not made an incisive comment on politics in 20 years, yet there he is.

I've seen him up his nasty bullying game against Shami Chakrabarti once. The tough bastard he is.

would Neil be any better given their Spectator links?

https://web.archive.org/web/20071113152846/http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=32770

which says

Spectator CEO Andrew Neil said: "Boris has been a wonderful and magnificent editor of The Spectator and we are sorry to lose him; in many ways he will be irreplaceable. But we wish him every success in his political career.

"Boris leaves the magazine in better shape than it has ever been in its long and glorious history, both editorially and financially. "Sales will hit a record 70,000 this December and the magazine has recorded another healthy profit in 2005. The editorial breadth and quality under his editorship has been unrivalled.

"Though he is stepping down as editor I am delighted that Boris will continue to have a close association with The Spectator, including a new column for us in the New Year."

Yeah that was unpleasant.

Meanwhile, all polls are wrong but this is encouraging if anywhere near accurate. Raab getting through a lot of blotting paper this evening:

I don’t pay much attention to constituency polling but this absolutely accords with what I saw when reporting from Esher and Surrey more widely earlier this week. Huge anger from traditional Tory voters. Lib Dem national picture eclipsing their potential to surprise in the south. https://t.co/vIhbrWsdke

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) November 30, 2019

🛑Usman Khan was released under a sentencing regime which no longer exists

🛑Johnson’s manifesto says not a single word about current Extended Sentences.

🛑The minor changes he has proposed to automatic release would not have applied to Khan.

Exploitative, dishonest, cynical. https://t.co/DiZWehvI6S

— The Secret Barrister (@BarristerSecret) November 30, 2019

Another lie.

On a day when campaigning has supposedly been suspended, the Cabinet, from PM to Home Secretary to ministers, is out in force telling flagrant lies about the criminal justice system to score cheap points out of people’s deaths.

What a country we live in. https://t.co/84i3WJgUwu

— The Secret Barrister (@BarristerSecret) November 30, 2019

I said “that terrorists from a decade ago were due to be released still radicalised”

Him “is there anything we can do about that?”

Me “it’s resources for one to one mentoring and deradicalisation”

Him “but that’s money again”

Me “sorry nothing else will do”

Him “got to go” pic.twitter.com/yRAGk0ANka

— nazir afzal (@nazirafzal) November 30, 2019

Last time (afaik) Neil interviewed Johnson he did at least point out that under Johnson's Mayorship crime in London dropped at a slower rate than the rest of the country to the usual bumbling response.

Neil enjoys a stramash too much to let a little thing like friendship get in the way - however he was shit in the last election and I certainly don't believe the hype about his Corbyn interview.

Current Tory Lead by Pollster:

Opinium: +15
DeltaPoll: +13
Kantar: +11
Survation: +11
ComRes: +10
YouGov: +9
Panelbase: +8
ICM: +7
BMG: +6

Polls from 23rd November or later only.

— Election Maps UK (@ElectionMapsUK) November 30, 2019

TBH if I was a poor website in need of clicks I'd publish the outlier poll as well.

Emily Thornberry: *tweets a picture of an England flag*
Boris Johnson:

Boris Johnson said:

- Poorest 20% of Brits are made-up of 'chavs,' 'burglars,' 'drug addicts,' and 'losers'.
- Claimed poorer voters just want "handouts".
- Said MPs only want to ban smacking because of "revulsion when they see a chav belting her kids".https://t.co/IPx26GdXhE

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) November 30, 2019

It's funny how all these terrible things he's written in the past are dribbling out. Every journalist has access to this stuff online, it's not like you have to spend weeks in an archive poring over clippings and microfiche.

I don't see the point, his core agrees with him on most of this stuff and Brexiteers wouldn't care if he was a child molester. Four years of handwringing about Trump's character has done fuck all damage to him either. Policy policy policy.

I think they should concentrate more on recent stuff that exposes his lack of policies, like him making the cutthroat gesture (forgetting that he was on film) when his talk radio pal steers the questioning towards social care. It would be game over if Corbyn did that, but still that is something should hurt him and should concentrate some voters minds if they don't gaf about his racism.

yeh, i think of Gordon Brown's "bigoted woman" comment and how it wrecked his campaign - it just wouldn't touch Johnson.

well that's the problem isn't it, Gordon Brown's bigoted woman comment pissed off the bigots, anything Johnson says/does they agree with so it's fine

Fuck the bigots, who wants their votes anyway? It's everybody else who counts.

there seems to be an awful lot of them

I'm basically agreeing with NV. it doesn't matter how much of a scumbag Boris is, his base like that

His 'base' is not that big, he can't just roll into a town and fill an arena full of all the pond life within 10 mile radius the way Trump can.

I admire your optimism

I don't think that's being optimistic. There are as nowhere near enough out-and-out bigots and fanatical Brexiteers out there for the Tories to win a majority, as they well know. I don't know how many Tory voters out there people are preparing to hold their noses and voting for a party led by Boris Johnson, but drawing attention to his fetid stench can't do any harm, in my opinion.

it seems like they're everywhere but maybe I've just been unlucky with the people that happen to be around me, tbh I've been fairly shut in this year. I come from a Brexit town and live in one now so maybe that's it. even people I work with in London seem to hate Corbyn as much as Johnson. although tbf I think they might be voting Labour anyway at this point

I live in Corbyn's constituency, so I suppose I'm part of the Islingtonian elite who wouldn't know a legitimate concern if I fell over one tbf.

what's the point of andrew marr

omg there is so much relentless repeating of out-and-out lied that have been "fact-checked" until the cows come home elsewhere but are not challenged when repeated here it is quite frustrating.

should’ve got jeremy kyle to do this with his lie detector tbh

could have used a few shock paternity reveals as well tbh

I'm enjoying music too much rn to interrupt it to watch that spineless sycophant who would be out of a job if the bbc political dept had any integrity or self respect.

i don't know why i'm watching this its basically nothing

marr totally let him slide after reading boris back some of his blatantly islamophobia shite, fucking shameful

I don't see the point, his core agrees with him on most of this stuff and Brexiteers wouldn't care if he was a child molester. Four years of handwringing about Trump's character has done fuck all damage to him either. Policy policy policy.

Yes and no - policy matters a lot but one of the key thought processes that goes through people's minds when they choose not to vote for someone is "they hate people like me". That's as true for Corbyn as it is for Johnson and my feeling is that the latter is going to do badly with working-class female voters (not to mention Muslims and black people but we all knew that anyway).

It doesn't hurt to pile this stuff up - as much as we might want it to be about a groundswell of enthusiasm for Labour's programme, this election is going to hinge over whether the electorate in key places decides that Johnson is more toxic than Corbyn. That means dissuading enough voters in the Midlands and parts of the North from switching from red to blue (policy plays a huge part here too), persuading enough Southern voters to switch from the Tories to the LibDems in key seats, and dissuading would-be LibDems in Labour marginals than Johnson is too big a risk.

It does appear that focusing on Corbyn's personality and past dodgy statements are working better for the Tories and their enablers this time round than they were in 2017. By all means keep talking about policy (particularly the holes in Johnson's Brexit policy) but there has to be a fightback on the personal level as well.

TLDR - there are clearly a lot of people who will vote for Johnson regardless of what he does, but there are also a lot of people who won't, and the key to avoiding disaster is to ensure those voters are peeled away from the Tories from as many angles as possible.

Came in about halfway through to find Johnson, following the Tories now standard interview procedure, of relentlessly talking over the interviewer so reducing everything to a kind of aural mush. Marr meanhwile was reduced to whimperingly pleading with him to allow him to ask the next question and had olainly been so unable to control the cunt that he was forced to cram about a dozen questions into the last 5 minutes, obviously ticking them off as he went along. Horrible all round.

We're reaching the stage now where interviewing Tory ministers is almost as waste of time - which is obviously their goal.

reading other people's summaries of how terribly Boris "answered questions" and how spineless Marr was>>>>actually watching that shite.

... my fingers aren't working this morning.

Good morning, John. I wonder if you could take a look at the use of what I think is an alt-Right trope: 'cheerleader for Soros'. From your researches into antisemitism, can you say that insult is part of the Steve Bannon, Victor Orban rhetoric? Thanks @LordJohnMann

— Michael Rosen (@MichaelRosenYes) December 1, 2019

one of my favourite new things is seeing if our anti-Semiticism tsar ever replies to genuine Micheal Rosen questions that ought to concern him rather than doing blanket retweets of dodgy Rachel Riley posts.

If Corbyn gets in, it’ll be great to see Mann, Woodcock and Austin all booted and replaced with people who are actually Jewish, Turkish and Israeli and not just factional shithousers.

yeah, rosen’s been great

LOL @ Johnson's approach of claiming the Conservative Party he leads is an entirely different animal from Conservative governments of the last 10 years while holding the Labour Party Corbyn leads resposnsible for the actions of the Labour Party of Blair/Brown.

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I don't see the point, his core agrees with him on most of this stuff and Brexiteers wouldn't care if he was a child molester. Four years of handwringing about Trump's character has done fuck all damage to him either. Policy policy policy.

I'm generally a policy policy policy person over personal character stuff but agree with Matt DC here. We're still in a super early stage of Boris time and while some things like the letterbox comments are well known, a lot aren't. "Fuck the 7/7 families"? I had never heard of this until the other day. Quite a few things that have come out about Boris I'd never heard of before. There's a weird undercurrent in Britain too where we "don't deserve" good policies due to deference and hatred of the pope. So character stuff is important but it has to be what Matt DC says, centred all around "they hate people like me"

Marr won't make a difference because Neil is a boss and Marr is a weasel that makes peoples skin crawl before he's even said anything. The fact that Tesco value ham sandwich Marr has been able to find employment of any kind just doesn't add up.

Speaking of Rachel Riley, I notice celeb countdown has been quietly dropped from the schedule after two episodes.

Caught / could only bear 2 minutes of Boris talking and it seemed to come down to 'vote for us and we'll fix all the stuff that broke when we didn't keep the last lot of promises we made. And Corbyn is worse, based on no evidence'

I caught about 30 secs of that hellish thing while channel surfing one night .. yeesh

LOL @ Johnson keenness to distinguish the Conservative Party he leads from the Conservative Party that's been in government for the last decade while still yoking the Labour Party Corbyn leads to the Labour governments of Blair/Brown. What an ass.

still hammering on the fucking ‘there’s no money left’ note too - like yes, new labour were def complicit in the 2008 crisis but it was a fucking global collapse you disingenuous goon, and a Tory government would have been just as bad if not worse

Running as though in opposition while actually in power makes a cynical kind of sense though, how else could he really run?