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

DJ Nihal on Five Live - whose lightweight celebrity gossip steez i normally avoid like the plague - doing an excellent "why are Tory MPs supporting career racist Boris Johnson?" bit at the moment

Be good to get a dynamic operator behind the wheel of the flaming car

we need Lorraine Kelly to go off on Johnson now. Save us Lorraine!

Can't believe the Tories have walked right into Labour's trap.

A taste of the new regime

NEW: Ballot closed and I’m told by sources on ‘22 that it was decided to disallowed phones in room because of an aggressive whipping operation from Team Johnson. Told had been instructed to take photo of their ballot paper to prove they’d backed Johnson.

— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) June 13, 2019

after being so secretive for years they have disclosed they have 160000 ish members left now - because it will come out in the wash anyway, and every dead vote for boris will count as well.

kinda looking forward to the more pie-eyed end of the FBPE massive getting to see what a Tory party in full self-preservation mode looks like tbh

the boris project: slouching blond beast who can or shrunken cowardly lump who was never going to

also i think it will be hunt #bantz #huntz #secretweapon #weapon

― mark s, Friday, May 24, 2019 12:59 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When you think about it, the dead should count for more, they have so much to teach us.

agree that Boris can still be stopped

Boris will not be stopped

Nothing quite says ‘Tory leadership contest’ like #politicslive recollecting Thatcher only won the nomination because the frontrunner suggested “very poor people should be sterilised”.

— Frances Ryan (@DrFrancesRyan) June 13, 2019

Worth emphasising that the frontrunner in question was her mentor and she was effectively standing in his place.

also she probably agreed with him

I think at this stage boris could probably say the same and get away it by saying he merely misspoken.

the bloke on the radio this morning said exactly that for the 'fuck business' comment - 'he probably didn't mean it'

Why would he need to ‘get away with it’? Seems like a solid vote-winning platform

He got away with:

- Made up articles about how 'orrible the EU is when still a journo
- A blatant lie on the side of a bus
- Racism
- Xenophobia
- Doing 180s on "where he stands", promises etc

He's very much like the 'mini-Trump' mentioned in today's Graun article abt Europe being mortified about the prospect of PM Bozzers.

this one https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/13/mini-trump-across-the-channel-european-media-on-boris-johnson-as-british-pm

I didn't think thatcher had any positive qualities but actually she would have been even worse if she'd gone in for bantz, so perhaps that's something in her favour

What is it that especially outrages people about Johnson? We've just had May as PM who is also racist, xenophobic, did 180s on a weekly basis, has blatantly lied to us (and the Queen lol). She wasn't a journo but she would totally had a symbiotic relationships with the gutter press.

At the moment Johnson is walking over like May did with very, very little scrutiny and on his record as London Mayor - as if his tenure at the Foreign Office never happened.

hitler

billy bremner ..

May lied more and just as seriously as Boris. Let’s also not forget that she made him foreign secretary during a period pretty much most other PMs would have let him slink away

Anyway

Jess Phillips saying Boris Johnson's "authenticity rubs off with even the slightest brushing" pic.twitter.com/0lrz4BLZTJ

— Dan Howdon (@danielhowdon) June 13, 2019

Thought it was very cool how most journalists expressed some concern at his MP supporters booing one of their number yesterday - only presumabley to go back to breathlessly devoting pages of coverage to him like that never happened.

jess is the gold standard authentocrat, so that's such a very serious burn!

You don't have to like May to think Boris is a cunt.

We should probably stop baiting Andrew F

Johnson's 'I was a great mayor' schtick is entirely aimed at people who have never lived in London but are nevertheless convinced Sadiq Khan has 'ruined it'

— Jack Saundrs (@jack_saundrs) June 13, 2019

expecting a dead cat poll bounce for CONs once he is installed + a summer of LAB infighting -> BJ will fall into same trap as TM and drink his own look aid. will then try to crush the saboteurs, pivoting to NDB to put nigel back in his box. october election will probably return a LAB (minority?) govt on a derisory share of the vote

in the meantime we’ll have liz truss chancellor

Ah, an optimist

Gove chancellor imo.

give it tugendhat

what annoys me abt BJ is i said "boris is over" a lot so i look bad and foolish not good and smart if actually he isn't over, also tom d gets to clown me

however him being "apparently in charge" doesn't mean he's no longer shrunken and hunched, the air was already out of may's balloon long before the 2017 election

I googled “Tom Tugendhat Boris” and this was the second result, which was timely as fuck for this thread!
https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/conservative-party/house/house-magazine/102726/unparliamentary-language

I was mostly commenting on LBI's post. Johnson hasn't done any worse than May. This is also true for most of the crowd in this contest and if it isn't its because they haven't been put in charge of something for long enough (thinking of Rory here, but then again Rome wasn't built in a day and all that).

I mean May was a kind of absent PM in a lot of ways and that came from the non-debate in the last conservative leader non-contest. The contest so far is aping what happened then.

Johnson is crasser and people who are paid to publish their shit political opinions think he’s clownish. That’s why he is perceived as so much worse than May (who’s going to get dewy-eyed shite written about her before the year is out).

Both are terrible but Boris doesn't pretend he's not, and having someone in charge who is upfront about that will embolden racists further.

Boris is much more dangerous than a fearful maintain and meander, plodding type of evil tory like May. Because he's more likely to have more new ideas and implement them more forcefully + more often to add to to all the other bad policies that are already in place is how i see it.

Rory bodied from beyond the grave by Seamus Heaney

Been re-reading Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy:

Human beings suffer
They get hurt and get hard…

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) June 13, 2019

“Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done”
Seamus Heaney

— Daniel (@franeyd1) June 13, 2019

xp I think this is overly pessimistic, he’s lazy as fuck and would rather leave the hard stuff to others. May was awful because she never let go of the goal to just keep hurting immigrants.

May was a kind of absent PM in a lot of ways

i mean this was her shtick yes, in terms of public affect, but this is not my reading of her effect on the institutions (see long post here: Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread. )

other differences: may has a grasp of the concept of duty, which she hugs to herself and deploys to push her promised policy ends (which are very bad) through; BJ has no such sense

this is mid-life crisis boris with his big shot being an immortal ledge - it'll be different to when he was mayor.

although he probably still was in mid-life crisis mode as mayor tbf!

Both are terrible but Boris doesn't pretend he's not, and having someone in charge who is upfront about that will embolden racists further.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 13 June 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not sure how much a few crass comments here and there will do that having three years of the Brexit shitshow hasn't - as well as the hostile environment before that. xps

it will be lit bantz, you'll see the flames from space

xxp Johnson, the Tory party and certain sections of Britain are all going through prolonged midlife crises with no end in sight

Not sure how much a few crass comments here and there will do that having three years of the Brexit shitshow hasn't - as well as the hostile environment before that.

The hostile environment didn't really embolden racists in any way because racists weren't paying attention to it, they were being fed propaganda about how the UK's too nice to immigrants instead.

It's going to be considerably more than "a few crass comments here and there", btw.

I would say the things Boris has said and continues to defend have a damaging effect on society, even if May may harbour views that aren't alien to those more crass outbursts. Having a scattergun populist as your PM corrodes things in a different way to May. They certainly aren't the same.

Daniel otm.

Plus supporting no deal brexit also might have an effect on this country - we prob should start a brexit thread.

I could do picking the brains of chemistry ILX with a "How to manufacture homemade sodium valproate in yr kitchen" thread before the brexit one.