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

He’s gone, remember “oh no Nick don’t go?” I know it was a century ago but still.

oops yeah..

"I would have been very unhappy if the chart show was used to make a political point" Tory MP John Whittingdale. So ban all political songs?

— Neil Harding (@NeilHarding) April 12, 2013

btw Hunt's comments were a lot to take for Aaro, which is amusing:

Been busy most of the day. I've just now read Jeremy Hunt's comments about Auschwitz and Corbyn. They manage to be demeaning to everyone involved, including the Jewish community. Through naivete or calculation He's managed to make the profoundest issue into a cheap partisan jibe.

— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) July 3, 2019

We’ll be waiting forever for that penny to drop.

re the fox hunting, In 'normal' times it might make sense to try outflank Boris, he's a rank outsider and needs a roll of the dice. But Brexit has taken over to such an extent, do the members have eyes for anything else?

I'd say the fact he obviously doesn't gaf about it himself mutes its appeal, totemic or not, it doesn't make him one of them. Suspicion already high that politicians don't 'believe', think his lack of authenticity on this will count against. As Matt DC says, a desperate move, but don't blame him, he has to come up with something. Think he'll fling a bunch more things at the wall and see what sticks

But Brexit has taken over to such an extent, do the members have eyes for anything else?

I think they do? Brexit the topic on which both candidates can barely explain what they want, let alone position themselves differently to the other. So we get dice rolls: tax cuts, sugar taxes, fox hunting, guillotines etc

Brexit is the one thing in which the mostly comfortably off membership aren't going to be affected by. They have time for issues like foxhunting and anything to guillotine the poor.

They're not going to be affected by it, but they want it real bad

I don't understand this really - like at what point did small business owners and corporate managerial types stop joining the Conservative Party? Serious question. Because they certainly aren't going to be unaffected and a lot of them are implacably opposed to Hard Brexit.

"They have nowhere else to go", I guess??

Also re the fox hunting thing, the leadership ballots should be on their way out now, the vast majority are expected to be on their way back by Monday afternoon, so you might expect a few more random swings of the pike by Hunt over the next few days.

Tory Summer ball yesterday, including the auction:

One rich Tory donor bid £15,000 for a hunting trip to Scotland, where they and seven pals will be allowed to shoot 200 pheasants on a grand estate. The lot was described as “an opportunity to take a 200-bird, high-quality pheasant shoot in Dumfriesshire,” with the lucky winner staying at “the splendid Raehills House (here it is), with dinner, accommodation and breakfast included for eight guns.”

Boris in the Spectator:

"For three years, we have failed to get across why we believe in free markets," he says. "We have failed to articulate the case for enterprise. In fact, it's been a massive missed opportunity — we've failed to make the case for business."

so much for ‘fuck business’ eh boris

Make the case for free markets by pushing our biggest free trade arrangement out of the window.

Or to put it another way, these people don't actually care about free markets out of principle, they favour them for as long as they facilitate the flow of wealth in their direction and for no longer.

I guess small business types probably think/hope the party will turn around and they will give them until 11:59pm to do so. When you've believed in a thing forever I think you often stay in it till the bitter end and the reveal -- that Tories only ever gave crumbs to those people -- is not something they will ever manage to process.

both Boris + Hunt of have pro EU histories that are in the archives for all to see. But Hunt's disadvantage is he turned sides later and members are more likely to have selective amnesia for a "big character" like Boris. But obv their commitment to their own careers will always supersede any ideological classic tory beliefs. It is pretty hard to make an argument for anything when politicians are so shamefully self serving and your policies are the cause of rampant poverty, homelessness, the dying of social mobility etc.

Boris's advantage is that he is (or was) the Tory That Regular People Like - the Bufton Tufton set hold onto this (which probably isn't true any more, but Conservatives are not that bothered about noticing the passing of time) and the newer UKIP / TBP members don't trust him but don't trust Hunt any more, and reckon they can influence Boris.

Make the case for free markets by pushing our biggest free trade arrangement out of the window.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 4 July 2019 6:35 PM (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

If you need a case study in this pick just about anyplace anytime ever.

"Boris's advantage is that he is (or was) the Tory That Regular People Like"

"Or was" could do without brackets around it.

It is, if you will, a parenthetical.

I unwillingly got into a discussion about all this with the strongly pro-Brexit owners of a (as far as I can tell) moderately successful small business the other month. I found their views to be fairly incoherent* (also **) but I surmised their irritation with "red tape" like health and safety, monitoring employees' passports, accounting requirements and so on and in their head they'd managed to place the blame for all these annoyances squarely at the door of "Europe".

The business supplies other local companies, and has no customers from outside the county, let alone the UK. It's conceivable that they might be able to get supplies more cheaply than at present if those goods originate from outside the EU***, but I am also fairly sure that the business will be properly knackered by a recession in the UK.

*TBF we were both getting busy with our respective bottles of wine, I can't imagine I was a model of coherence
** One of the arguments I heard for leaving the EU was "just go to Italy, their Police have got guns and they'll shoot you if you step out of line, why can't we do that?" which was a treat, and TBF when I pointed out the various glaring stupidities in this line, they did accept it was "a bad example"
***This was not the stated argument, they took more of a standard "there's a whole world out there for us to trade with" Brexity line

this is kind of the least important point to make -- also i am ILL and possibly FEVERISH -- but actual real bufton tufton types are quite thin on the ground these days (the telegraph stopped paying them mind some years ago)

tufton victor hamilton beamish, latterly baron chelwood, mp until 1974 for lewes (obv), himself departed this vale of tears in 1989

Hunt is already rowing back over the fox hunt, apparently.

The line in the Telegraph was "I would soon as there's a majority in parliament that would be likely to repeal the fox hunting back I would support a vote in parliament." which is a bit of a masterclass in promising and not promising.

It does make me wonder (and this I think is covered by mark s's concerns about difficult-to-repair damage) - if he brought this for a whipped vote on the first day and 30% of the tories said "Nah", what then?

Obviously there are a number of unlikely things in this scenario.

it be clear i'm entirely fine with damage to the tories and pleased if it can't be repaired

it be

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51yL023V6kL._SX425_.jpg

120,000+ people killed by austerity, Great British Public = ok fair enough

unban fox hunting, Great British Public = TOO FAR YOU MONSTERS

Was going to make that exact point, ecofashy state of mind that.

has always been the case as far as i can tell

So I’m reading CH and dying at this Jeremy Hunt encounter

“Wotcha!” The Foreign Secretary’s greeting yesterday morning was genial, but strangely reminiscent of The Sun’s famous “Gotcha” headline during the Falklands War.

We were hurrying along on the 8.24 from Waterloo to Alton, in Hampshire, and Jeremy Hunt, last encountered in the splendour of his official residence at Carlton Gardens, approached me from behind, and took me by surprise.

He followed up his one word greeting with an extremely firm handshake.

So Hunt can do self-deprecation. He is an admirably English candidate, a sensitive and prudent man who can be relied on to behave like an officer and a gentleman, and who fortifies himself with swigs from a bottle of Evian water.

“Boris is a great character and I don’t want to say anything against Boris,” he said.

He is in favour of fox-hunting, wants a Commons vote if there is any prospect of success, and would vote for it, but “I don’t hunt myself. It’s not particularly my thing. But I think it’s part of the countryside.”

He added, in a wry reference to his name, that perhaps one of his ancestors hunted.

When ConHome asked Hunt if his view of Boris “has improved or worsened as the campaign has continued”, he replied: “It hasn’t changed, actually, because the great thing about Boris is we all feel we know him.”

ConHome: “I think there’s something imponderable about Boris, actually.”

Hunt is certainly less known to the general public than Johnson, but is, in principle, more knowable. He is a fine representative of his class, public-spirited, energetic, reliable, intelligent, a pleasure to deal with.

He is not as exciting or original as his rival, but not all Conservatives want a Prime Minister who is exciting or original. As he speeds round the country, he is bending every sinew to make this a two-horse race. We shall know soon enough whether he has succeeded.

There's always something dickish about blokes who go for the crushing handshake

Now reminded of the 'great porn parody names' - An Orifice and a Gentleman - can also be used to caption any number of photos of two (or one) tories.

the CH definition of what fortifying oneself with swigs from a bottle is, is doing it totally wrong.

Can’t believe Tory leadership candidates take in fluid, truly unbelievable

Johnson falling back on the old racist 'immigrants must speak English within our earshot at all times' gibberish now.

xp it's an evian bottle but it's full of replenishing reptile serum made from the crushed dreams of poor people

Truly no language has ever been threatened as much as the English language.

xp

It's not so much that the English language is threatened but that paranoid racist weirdoes feel threatened when someone talks another language in front of them so they can't tell if they're talking about them - and that's our next Prime Minister.

He added, in a wry reference to his name, that perhaps one of his ancestors hunted.

^thus speaks a man from a noble lineage of plumbers

"can't even speak the language" a classic trope of racist cunt Jack Straw iirc

paranoid racist weirdoes feel threatened when someone talks another language in front of them

Tbf the only time this happened to me so far involved a couple of American tourists seated at the table next to ours at a pub in London, 'subtly' mocking my French wife's typical pronunciation of certain anglophone actors' names. It can indeed be amusing, and neither of us has any qualms with it in a friendly setting, but in this instance it was clearly intended to demean. The upside, of course, is that once you catch on to it you can openly discuss their idiocy in the very language they are belittling. Anyhow, my sole xenophobic run-ins with Brits have been of the 'racist unbeknownst to themselves' variety, such as utterly tanked students asking for my name in addition to a light and immediately expressing bewilderment at my 'lack of accent', which is quite amusing since I sound North American af.

worth a read 4 years on
http://theconversation.com/theresa-mays-hidden-british-value-monolingualism-39258

I'll probably regret this, but what should I search to find this view of Boris's?

I was in Paris waiting in the queue for the Eurostar and there was an American family in front of me, and one of the Eurostar employees asked them which train they had tickets for (in order to make sure they were in the right queue) and they couldn't understand him at first and had to ask him to repeat, and once they did understand, and after he had started moving away, they smirked to each other and began mimicking the guy's accent and rolling their eyes, all very much "can you believe how bad this guy's English is" and I'm just boiling inside. DO YOU REALISE YOU'RE IN PARIS RIGHT NOW MOTHERFUCKERS? HOW'S YOUR FRENCH???

which is quite amusing since I sound North American af.

lol the NA accent can be quite scathing when it needs to be, although I concede that its Canadian variant further dulls the edge.

Yeah but you don’t have the scathing rolled R though, francophone version is no substitute.