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

In my veins:

BREAKING: the latest YouGov poll puts us narrowly in the lead, once awareness is taken into account- ie once you remove the “don’t know enough about this candidate” I am now ahead of Boris and the other candidates. This is vital as we build awareness. Thank you. Let’s keep going.

— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) June 7, 2019

Can't help think that the Stewart vote is bit of wish fulfillment for a slightly less nasty, less Eurosceptic Tory to win.

Let's keep going on a long march into the desert to won over the natives

Cue swelling Maurice Jarre orchestration

once you remove the “don’t vomit enough about this candidate” i am in the lead

The two things that made Cameron a winner with people who didn’t really agree with him, wrt the grass roots, were that he was recognised as ‘one of us’ or a social superior and he was the kind of vaguely smart, successful person they would like their granddaughter to marry. Get through the first stage of selection by the party as an inoffensive anyone-but-x candidate and he has the laity locked down.

I may have picked the wrong Pashto-speaking, ex-forces, centre-right, upper-middle-class MP but I think this is still true.

Also the laity is now somehow even more extra super mental than it used to be

do people really want their granddaughters marrying that homonculus-looking mf

*reads a bunch of 19th century novels* yes, they do

NEW: Channel 4 will broadcast the first Conservative leadership debate, with a live studio audience. Apply to attend here: https://t.co/dbJl3sz72T

— Survation. (@Survation) June 7, 2019

Conservative Leadership Debate is taped in front of a live studio audience

Michael Gove admits to taking cocaine on 'several social occasions' https://t.co/0n4t4ziFoo

— Guardian politics (@GdnPolitics) June 7, 2019

loool the Stewart effect kicking in. next Jeremy Hunt talks about his accidental exposure to some M-cat in 2008.

which one did DMT

"well it said "plant food" on the label... and there was no clear warning Not to snort it like a fucking deranged greedy pig on it's last night on earth ... etc..

I can only conclude ilx doesn't have a clue

Hmmmm, not quite, mark s hasn't a clue, he's been trying to persuade the rest of us that Boris is a busted flush and unelectable for years now. Never bought into that tbh.

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.