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

At 10.15pm, Boris Johnson was sitting on the sofa on his laptop, reading a spot of Tory election news...

Scenario calls for Lanchester tbh.

This whole incident is gonna be sensitively dramatised in a 2-part drama sooner than later isn’t it

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/22/boris-johnson-neighbour-interview-call-police

A follow up with the neighbours.

If the guy I saw interviewed earlier on Sky was the neighbour then they're Muslims - which should provoke some interesting responses from Boris supporters.

... I should say he was of South Asian appearance with a name which would normally indicate a Muslim background.

pic.twitter.com/an4gd5X6dP

— Matt Cartoons (@MattCartoonist) June 22, 2019

That’s it then. Johnson is finished

it's not ok to mock me, just bcz he's reached the highest office of the land doesn't mean he's not also over

Wasn’t mocking you so much as acknowledging kingmaker Matt

It is ok to mock you tho

was listening to someone on R4 talking about old Oxford and Empire customs and he framed the contest as head boy vs the bounder, and said in days past someone like Cunt would have been a colonial governor. I'm turning the radio off and going swimming, had enough of this depressing shitshow already!

This piece is amazing and terrifying:

https://www.ft.com/content/85fc694c-9222-11e9-b7ea-60e35ef678d2?fbclid=IwAR2TKDF0DXz9y6AcxRCYEZKeJaPjQdayoXs1z69bcnHxnok31LJCNRlZkak

I think you need to google "How Oxford university shaped Brexit — and Britain’s next prime minister" and click on the FT link for that.

That’s the direct copy from going to Google :-))

infuriatingly they've found some way of preventing the links working, unless you google them yourself.. the fuckers!

Also infuriating: NS and NYT now do ‘you’re in PRIVATE MODE’ if you’re trying to read over your allocation in the dark browser.

Gove, who wore a kilt in debates, was such a gifted speaker that he could even make a compelling case to a student audience against free choice in sexual behaviour. He was unusually ideological by Union standards, a Thatcherite meritocrat. As Union president in 1988, he wrote a paean to elitism in the Union’s house magazine: “I cannot overemphasise what elitism is not. It is not about back-slapping cliques, reactionary chic or Old Etonian egos. It is a spirit of unashamed glamour, excitement and competition . . . We are all here, part of an elite. It is our duty to bear that in mind.”

time to start talking about gulags again.. real gulags.

Just another Saturday night then

ffs @ these Boris stans all over the media. Tim Montgomerie repeatedly telling us to forget about the police being called because no action was taken and both parties were safe and well, like anyone gives a fuck whether Boris was safe, unless he was the one screaming and shouting, "Get off me!"

Also infuriating: NS and NYT now do ‘you’re in PRIVATE MODE’ if you’re trying to read over your allocation in the dark browser.

i've been known to view source, save as a local file and edit out the overlay code

/clearly insane

Also re FT piece:

The @FT is pretty stingy on letting you read behind the firewall, so only three of you will be able to successfully hit this link to the single best explainer of Brexit and Boris Johnson -- Oxford culture & how the ruling class is groomed there. https://t.co/rhTxQxP6X3

— Quentin Hardy (@qhardy) June 22, 2019

That's an excellent piece - I hadn't quite made the connection between growing up in an antiquated fantasy world, the will to power as birthright for power's sake, and the refusal to share that power with anyone least of all Brussels.

Or at least I had but I hadn't quite appreciated how ingrained it was and how far back the roots of Brexit stretched. It does explain why they've been so inadequate in delivering it though.

When did you become this person, Allison? Because you seemed relatively sane when you were a subeditor back in the day. Now you appear willing to say anything to defend a crass, racist, chaotic, shambling, lying, carnival huckster. Does the notion of PM Johnson really thrill you?

— Jay Rayner (@jayrayner1) June 22, 2019

Obviously Jay Rayner hasn't been reading any of her columns over the last 10 years or more.

I am a bit interested in her, in that I never picked up her being so full of bile and froth when she was reviewing things on TV. I don't know if I was just a poor judge of character or if she's been somehow radicalised since then.

That was a long time ago she was on TV reviewing things.

also she was bad

Awful but my friend David fancied her like mad.

I had no idea jay rayner and claire rayner were related

if this week has taught us anything it’s that the discourse can always get worse

Exposed.. “the neighbours from hell” pic.twitter.com/3T19KaKlhH

— MoS_Politics (@MoS_Politics) June 22, 2019

between the monstering of aman and the remain neighbours, it’s not worrying at all that our nation’s respected journalists have chosen “know your place serfs” as their guiding philosophy over “holding the powerful to account”

Ah, I see Carrie Symonds’ ex Harry Cole is one of the four dickheads with a byline on that story.

In retrospect, things haven't turned out well for the four core regulars of the Late Show. Mark Lawson got sacked for bullying, Allison Pearson became the new Melanie Phillips, and Tony Parsons became Tony Parsons. Only Tom Paulin seems to have emerged untainted, though I suppose he did have that indiepop band named after him.

xxp otfm. Like there’s a photo of the house, map of the inside, rabble-rousing language about the couple - it’s fucking disgusting.

xp yeah it’s extremely odd that he’s still enthusiastically pushing Boris like his life depends on it lol

xp
amazing that Pearson wasn't the worse thing about the Late Show in my memory. Lawson always did seem like a complete scummy piece of shit, and he's a Leeds Utd fan. Parsons doing his strained attempt at being thoughtful and middle-brow was so painful - you could hear the cogs grinding and clicking.

Minor public schoolboy bullshit, I reckon.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/22/boris-johnson-steve-bannon-texts-foreign-secretary-resignation-speech

"For the ‘One Nation’ Tories who have backed Johnson, the video may make uncomfortable viewing."

One nation tories my arse, ooh how uncomfortable it makes us that our right wing headcase takes counsel from the klan-man.

*cough* called it

How much one-nation toryism has there really been in the last 40 odd years? but Boris has learned from Cameron that you can do all sorts of ruthless social engineering murder policies and still pay lip service to it, and that's all that really matters to the press who will constantly parrot it as a credential without any analysis or thought.

I think "one nation" means not publicly calling for the murder of LGBTQ+ people and keeping your racism on the down low oh hang on

I'm still lost here, who are these one nation tories? Michael Heseltine? Gary Lineker?

That's just a video of Bannon chatting shit isn't it? Unless they can get evidence of recent contact...just unsure how seriously to take anything Carole Cadwalladr writes about.

Even New Labour were only half-arsed One Nation Tories, cos after the crash they were forced to show their true Thatcherite colours.

xp you are so dementedly anti-Cadwalladr that that's your take? Jesus wept

although I guess we did already know that he was in cahoots with the neofascist vanguard

Right, it just adds nothing extra. Its not as if the guy wouldn't be racist if he hadn't met Bannon. Or as if the UK is a wonderful place for migrants and its now under threat because of it.

I'm not see whats so damning in the Bannon clip?

And what is damning in any future General Election is not the same thing as damning his bid for leadership. its all so intangible. Trump talking about the NHS? Thats tangible, and enough to have had an effect

There's probably a cumulative effect to all this stuff, but I don't know how significant - beyond a certain point it ceases to become a story

the point is that Boris has repeatedly claimed that he didn't meet with Bannon nor solicit any advice. But Bannon certainly has form in exaggerating his own importance.

Even Trump talking about the NHS is a side-show - he'll see it as a deal like anything else if its ever put in front of him. What about the state of it today in many parts of the country, or its ongoing privatization?