brexit negging when yr mandate is is trash: or further chronicles of a garbage-fire

sun story claiming fallon suggested leadsom warm her hands on his balls

I wonder to what extent Williamson's apparent oikishness fuels his colleagues' hatred. Everything I read and see about him makes him look the worst kind of climber

there is a 2nd list flying about apparently #justHookItToMyVeins

and this is a resignation matter: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41853561

At this rate Tory MPs will only need to ask nicely for a Cabinet position in order to get one.

Or in Hunt's case don't even need to ask.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/03/tory-mp-charlie-elphicke-has-whip-suspended-after-serious-allegations

Not be mistaken with Boon ... nor a boon to humanity.

Williamson is one of them fun hippocrates that vote for austerity and then campaign against it in their own constituency. I think much of the hatred of him in the parliamentary party will be from MP's who previously found it galling enough to have one of Cameron's former bag carriers telling them to get in line and no queue jumping, showing his own 'go anywhere do anything attitude' towards party discipline. Creepy Nick Robinson was talking him up as future leader, because of his "Labour voting parents" + comprehensive school background.

Good grief that's completely moronic of Robinson who surely should understand how Tory leadership elections play out by now. Williamson has clearly and self-evidently shot his load too early here, it's not Machiavellian if everyone can see full well what you're up to, and I'd guess that he has about as much chance of getting the requisite number of Tory nominations as a hippo does.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/863880635722612736/CM7No5F_.jpg

just on initial impressions he gives out such a creepy vibe, i can't see the electorate warming to him at all. add in the tarantula and the owls and he just makes me think of ann widdecombe's famous quote about michael howard: "he has something of the night about him"

pic.twitter.com/smwlKB0Def

— tom (@malaiseforever) November 2, 2017

lol my auto spelling correction fucked me!

love dat hippo

Standing at the murder scene, with bloody knife in hand isn't good Machiavellian long game practise. But I think the sense of defeatism and impending doom in the party is very strong and perhaps Williamson thinks it is now or never. And maybe he never watched the og House of Cards.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNyv97sVwAMvoc1.jpg

I like how the picture captures his look of fear as he dreads being crushed by the Godzilla-like boot of matriarchy

Indeed. He looks genuinely terrified, but ever so slightly aroused.

The Times, I think, are running a story on Damien Green having been caught with teen pornography on his work computer.

Green claims a former Met AC is trying to defame him.

What I don't understand is that senior politicians surely need to have security clearance, in which case all of this would have been found out (as I understand it one reason why they check up on your past is to test how likely you can be blackmailed).

MPs don’t need security clearance. Their staff do.

aiui

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DN0fT_oWsAAVtq6.jpg

"it is understood Quick intended to report the discovery of pornographic material to parliamentary authorities, but was forced to quit his job before the leaks inquiry was completed.." Definitely no love lost between these two. I'm not even sure how serious this is, as in porn described as "extreme" and "legal" in the same paragraph. But if it brings down this odious tosser it'll do for me.

there’s a thread on problematic use of extreme (from a legal pov) here:

The use of the term "extreme" by the police here is problematic and a bit confusing (brief thread). https://t.co/GHwQQzt1wQ

— James Chalmers (@ProfChalmers) November 4, 2017

"Extreme pornography" has a narrow legal meaning which you can find set out in this legislation: https://t.co/GYtLEHIdNH

— James Chalmers (@ProfChalmers) November 4, 2017

But that legislation did not come into force until early 2009, and could not apply here.

— James Chalmers (@ProfChalmers) November 4, 2017

The suggestion is apparently that it was legal then and now but specialist police officers had to be drafted in to verify that as it wasn’t immediately obvious.

Green is right that these rumours have been circulating for nine years and no newspapers have printed them for lack of evidence. This obviously raises the question of why they are being printed now. The options are probably that they have been corroborated by other police officers and the ST has been sitting on the story for maximum impact or that there isn’t anything to substantiate the story but there is a pretty good chance that Green won’t sue given the other allegations against him. It could be open season on a number of MPs either way.

Rachel Johnson is sticking the knife into Andrea Leadsom atm:

This intra-Tory warfare on men’s right to be lechers is genuinely mind-boggling. pic.twitter.com/6goOBOqBon

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) November 5, 2017

The war within the party isn’t going to blow over any time soon.

imagine being on that rota. you'd need a thick skin and a wicked sense of humour. xpost

They might have thought they'd discovered a cache of extreme cannibalism porn when they saw his Half Man Half Biscuit folder.

if there's a counterforce within the tory party that is keen enough to respond to public disgust on this topic that it defies the tory whips and mobilises to demonise them (risking all the dangers of the party being out of power for a long time as actual real socialism is being brought back) then i would maybe start to bet against the whips, as the crew that rides this out

i still think this is a pretty big if -- but there are now two quite distinct lines of fracture opening up (brexit being the other), and that's lot for a party without a proper majority

actually i was slow-witted on this: of course the counterforce within toryism that has emerged (fingers x-ed to pull it apart) is a viciously reactionary counterstrike against the widened role of women as independent judges of morality and political value (in the world but more immediately in the tory movement, the tory party being the oldest extant political party in the world*, with an unmatched fvckton of experience of devious manoeuvre, adaptive rebadging and etc) (hence of course unleashing women against women) -- and some of it is kraken-wakes ideology in its perceived moment of high danger (which can make it dangerous bcz desperate, but can also make it unpredictably self-destructive)

but yes: two distinct lines of fracture is too many easily to manage -- panicked and "well they would say that" is an intensely nagl combo, leaving the usual-suspect newspapers right on the lip of being an actual media and cultural irrelevance look like drunks pulling on a lever that stopped working the way it used to a significant time ago

*1678: there was still a stuart on the throne

"drunks pulling on a lever that stopped working the way it used to a significant time ago"

We've all been there before!

Also a good summary of the UK productivity crisis.

good chris dillow piece making the same point (calzino's productivity point) at greater length

the photo of Ken Branagh and Michele Pfieffer on this page o_O

This intra-Tory warfare on men’s right to be lechers is genuinely mind-boggling. pic.twitter.com/6goOBOqBon

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) November 5, 2017

... aaaaand another one...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-whip-chris-pincher-quits-11473554

The Queen’s private estate has invested about £10m offshore, #ParadisePapers reveal https://t.co/mJlCewkM8b pic.twitter.com/o84by0LJhh

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) November 5, 2017

It's just so unexpected

"Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge says she is furious with those who advise the Queen"

lol

^ that's delightfully old school; the monarch can never be wrong, but their advisors may be

I'm sure when Brenda is swilling brandy and cackling like a Bond villain in her secret antechamber, where she is surrounded by nazi memorabilia and skulls and the impending spector of her own death. She will be crying real tears about who to leave the Brighthouse/Soylent Green shares to rather than WTF!

Great clip on BBC of Lord Ashcroft walking around dodging a reporter's questions for over two minutes just muttering "dear dear dear..." before finally ducking into the gents.

before finally ducking into the gents.

aka the Livingstone Manoeuvre

Queen must apologise or else amirite etc.

http://www.trust.org/contentAsset/raw-data/a0a48cc4-60d3-4c02-886b-6414a03594a3/document

Shit like this is not fucking funny and if Johnson still hasn't corrected his remark and apologised then he should be fired immediately. There's shooting your mouth off and then there's actively endangering people.

Imagine getting into trouble abroad and depending on that arrogant prick to work the diplomatic channels, you'd be terrified.

One of the things that people who know him have always criticised is his lack of attention to detail and then sort of laughed it off, presumably in the belief that no one would give him a job that actually mattered, and even then there'd probably be someone around to do all the heavy lifting. That quote is an obvious example of why that matters, he didn't even bother to understand the basics of what he was talking about and thought he could wing it in what is clearly a highly perilous and delicate situation.

Priti Patel having to eat humble pie, will no doubt survive, but the knives seem to be out for her.

she had 12 meetings under the radar of the foreign office with her lobbyist pal during the trip, including with Netanyahu. Even Hilary Clinton is wondering why she isn't toast already!

had been blithely assuming that the gov surely cannot blunder itself into a (catastrophically bad) no deal situation.... however have been reading “the blunders of our governments” and it is doing nothing for my confidence on this

the poll tax, the CSA, the ERM, pensions misselling.... these were all eminently avoidable foot shootings