Can Liz Truss survive her premiership?

Has he lost the support of traditional Labour voters in the North?
Didn't they think he was going to bring investment and has the time period for that to be rolled out elapsed?
Is that just water under the bridge?

 

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I think that was just one of the many pledges politicians make on the various electoral campagins that fail to survive a meeting with reality. I think the Conservatives party has lost the support of traditional Conservative voters in much of the country, let alone traditional Labour voters. Recent indications had them at something like 25% of the vote compared to 50% for Labour (from 15th October), and probably deteriorated since then.

 

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They should but it is in the gift of the government, unless it loses a vote of confidence. If an election were held 6 weeks from now the Tories would evaporate. They might even not get enough seats to be the official opposition any more. Seriously. The SNP might have more seats. So they won't volunteer for that and their majority enables them to avoid it.

So the only pressure on them - and it is considerable - is to find a leader who can do a sufficiently good job so save them from annihilation by the voters 2 years from now, when an election finally has to be held. Choosing Bozo again, when he was pitched out for mendacity only 3 months ago, would send a terrible signal to the electorate and might destroy the party. Quite a few MPs have said they will resign from the party if it happens. And then they might lose a confidence vote. Furthermore the bond markets would treat the choice of Bozo as a further demonstration of lack of economic seriousness, and would further increase the "moron premium" interest rate on government bonds, yet again. And then again, Bozo has yet to be judged by the parliamentary committee that is currently considering whether he lied to the House of Commons. If they make an adverse finding, and they very likely will, he could lose his seat. And then we'd be back to square one, but with an even more furious electorate baying for blood.

If they have any sense of what is right for the country, and of their own self-preservation, they will choose Sunak. But, as many commentators have observed, the Tory party today has acquired the habit of preferring comforting fantasies to reality. This is the result of the most able MPS being driven out or sidelined for not being Brexitty enough, and a new intake of nutters who need to believe Brexit is a success, even when the evidence of their own eyes is to the contrary. It's called "unicorn spotting".

 

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Will Boris Johnson become PM again?
What a joke?

 

But wasn't it the pledge that gave the Tories their large majority?

Even they admitted it was a "borrowed vote"

If it is gone for the medium term then they can (probably will) be voted out even if they hold on to their "own tribe"

Labour need to force an election if they can

The iron is hot.

And keep a lid on the Corbynites

 

By what mechanism could Labour force an election?

 

I know .All they can reasonably hope for (and ,if any way possible work towards) would be to persuade enough of the Tories to join them in a vote of no confidence.

That or wait for the Tories' playing for the whistle to do them even more reputational damage.

 

To a degree, yes.

Even if they held to that pledge, the sentiment is so against the Conservatives that no sensible Labour voter would vote for any other party than Labour. Corbyn is done and dusted (for the time being, at least), so there isn't that divisive element in the Labour party any longer. They will be united in their desire to throw the Tories from power.
Lib Dems may even gain significant votes from those wishing to protest, although it may also work the other way, in that Lib Dems may vote tactically - whether that be with the Tories in an effort to keep Labour out, or with Labour to ensure the Tories get kicked out.

There's no mechanism within Parliament for them to do so without a significant rebellion by the Tories, who are unlikely to jump on board as it would likely see them handed their P45. They could possibly incite the populace to anti-government protest, and demand an election that way, but that's not likely in this country.

The problem for Labour is whether they have sufficiently insulated gloves with which to pick it up when inevitably handed it, or whether they are as clueless as they often appear. Starmer is very good at shouting about how bad the Tories are, how bad this policy is, or that policy, but not great at pushing forward Labour's own plan for the future. I'm aware he wants to create a national wealth fund based on renewable tech, which seems idealistic rather than practical, but it's a start. For example, I'm not sure he, or his shadow-Chancellor, have explained how they would tackle the current economic situation. They may have done, but if so I am not aware, which speaks to how well their message is getting through.

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Well, perhaps the "Tories" should just lighten up with respect to BoJo's supposed liberal inclinations and whatever other lowering or drifting away from their "standards" he supposedly exemplifies. US conservatives got over that hump with Trump.

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("What matters is the individual's teflon rating [robust power to overcome scandals] and what their campaign supports -- not their abuses, hypocracies, personal lifestyle and outlandish antics.")

Five things that led to Boris Johnson's downfall
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-62070422

Heh.

In the US, various political elite also boisterously violated their own COVID policies with parties and the like. Big deal, though that apathy was admittedly due to not involving "don't give a __ about masks and lockdowns to begin with" conservatives.

The Pincher groping incidents were at least directed at "privileged" males (population group blamed for orchestrating historical oppression slash injustice of the West). Which is to say, if he'd instead been serving the opposite political side and its drama templates, too much consternation over such misconduct might have instead triggered outcries of a homophobia-driven vendetta against him.

The "cost of living" crisis seems universal. Across the pond, Sleepy Joe certainly isn't eviscerated as the cause of it by protective mainstream journalism. (Aside from occasional, impotent token gestures to appear nonpartisan.)

Owen Paterson -- well, again, it's time to crawl out from beneath the rock and get hip -- opportunism is a native feature of American politicians.

Accusations of "lack of focus and ideas" pale besides the countless video excerpts of why Sleepy Joe has to be (or should be) propped-up by a behind-the-scenes team of crisis management for gaffes, indecipherable speech mutterings, and doze-offs.

BoJo's own licentiousness (going back further to the oral sex incident in 2018) is no more remarkable than the legendary exploits of Bill Clinton, JFK, Andrew Cuomo, Anthony Weiner (whose "embarrassed that I married this guy" wife was a political staffer of Hillary's 2016 campaign), etc.

'90s Clinton benefited from the luck of having a facilitating spouse and public who didn't give a flip. And Cuomo was unlucky collateral damage during a hypersensitive period spawned by Trump egregiousness. Much as Al Franken and renown figures like Charlie Rose, Garrison Keillor, Tavis Smiley, etc were cancelled during the original intensity spike of the #MeToo movement.

Otherwise, the 2000s version of the Establishment[1] usually forgives progressives and members of Red Rose cliques (i.e., "rehabilitated communists") for their putative misdeeds. As in the case of James Gunn, whose past jokes caught the ire of Disney's Woke presentism, before it predictably rehired him later.

- - - footnote - - -

[1] The ideology proselytizing domains of academia, the entertainment industry, mainstream journalism, progressive businesses that exploit and manipulate left-wing crusaderism for their own interests, swelling bureaucracy and its southpaw agendas, applicable political machines and think-tanks, etc.

 

We like to think we have higher standards than the US.

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If BoJo was coming in as just another MP to become leader for the first time, perhaps they'd be more forgiving. But he isn't. He was leader, and he was effectively sacked by his own party for being dishonest, and for a lack of integrity. To then turn round 4 weeks later and say "ah, well, maybe we were a bit hasty, and actually we'll forgive your dishonesty etc" would be a truly sad indictment of the state of that party that they have noone else.
His policies were never the problem for the party, unlike with Truss, but he simply was deemed unfit for office.
In many respects it would be like the Republican party asking Trump to stand for President again, and in doing so admitting that they have noone else capable. Bear in mind that the character of the leader isn't as important in UK politics as is it seems now to be in US.

To the rest, I would summarise as saying that we are somewhat more reserved as a country, and seem to hold our politicians to a higher standard than you hold yours. Breaching parliamentary code is a big deal, for example. I would like to think that we're not into any cult of personality in the UK, although BoJo is the one that has come closest.
Yeah, we're better than you! So there!

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Well, seems BoJo has declined to put his name forward. Thank f**k!
Rishi Sunak is almost certainly going to be the only name on the ballot sheet, and so be the next PM.

 

Comparative long story short: Once upon a time, the colloquial first Black president decided to pick a fight with a Black woman, but Sen. Bob Dole, his Republican opponent, went and said he would make that kind of music illegal, which was just stupid and let Bill Clinton off easy in a fight history looks unkindly upon.

Maybe it's something about the scale of England, the part of Britain that seems to matter most in this context, compared to the United States. The Democratic Party can sometimes seem existentially talentless or, at least, ambivalent and nervous enough to be only barely better than useless, but Labour apparently somehow outstrips them by a dysfunctional kilometer or three. And inasmuch as the Tory discussion might skip over a prospective Sunak catastrophe in favor of a Johnson revival, it is hard to ignore that people somehow voted for all this.

And the thing is, everyone has had decades to see this coming. It's one thing that I find the American conservative transition from tacitry and pretense to open supremacism and goonish fascism as unbelievable as it was predictable, but our special friends across the Pond have at least managed to be even more like a bad television sketch. Then again, it remains an open question whether Boris Johnson has achieved P-grade comedy verite.

But maybe that's the thing. The strangeness with Rog, these days, is actually the same as it ever was, but he might not have been wrong; in the end, the species might well be amused to death, and damn straight, Britain will do its part to lead the way. Or something like that.

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Bonus: via Twitter, The Daily Show↱ on FOX Business analysts and Liz Truss.

Below: Click to be amused to death.

Spoiler

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first semi black UK prime minister
im sure that is on the minds of many conservative party members who dont want a dark skinned prime minister
it will make the party look too multi cultural which doesn't sell well.

 

Bringing a dose of reality to the conversation really isn't helpful!

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Yep, we voted for it all. We voted for Brexit, we voted for the Conservative party, although we (all of Joe Public) didn't really vote for Truss or her nonsense economic plans, as that was just 80k members of the 150k-strong Conservative Party, but, yeah, on the whole we get what we deserve. We have this system that rewards a Conservative party that 60% of the country didn't want with an 80-seat majority. And the same is generally true of any election victory. Bring in proportional representation, I say! But neither Tory nor Labour will vote for it as it will ensure they never have an outright majority.

We like to think of it more as a bad soap-opera... one where the writers come up with the most absurd antics as if trying to outdo each other.

Of course we will! We're Britain (still... just...)! We have an empire... to remember! We once ruled the world, don't you know!

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I love his stuff. As soon as I read those words when you wrote them above I was humming it.

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Is that how you would label someone of Indian heritage? "Semi black"? "South Asian" would be more geographically descriptive, if not going to simply refer to his Indian roots. Otherwise we might say BAME or person of colour. Not "semi black", though.

No, I wouldn't have thought so. There may be a small minority that hold such racist views, but a non-white PM has been an inevitability for a while, and always more likely under the Tories than Labour.

I think you're somewhat misinformed. The Conservatives have done better than any of the other parties with ethnic diversification. The Cabinet under Johnson had Savid Javid as Chancellor, who was succeeded by Rishi Sunak, and then by Nadhim Zahawi, and then by Kwasi Kwarteng (albeit these last 2 for not very long at all!). It had Priti Patel as Home Secretary, before Suella Braverman (since resigned). James Cleverly - Foreign Secretary; Ranil Jayawardena as Environment Minister; Alok Sharma as COP26 President.
There are more in the back benches, although it is true that there are fewer as a % than in the country as a whole. Labour actually have far more minority ethnic MPs than the Conservatives, but fewer have so far made it to their top table.
So I'm not sure that race is an issue within the Conservative party these days, especially for the top jobs. They were, after all, the first to have a female PM. And the 2nd. And the 3rd.

 

You've left out Kemi Badenough.

 

And there we are. We get to witness a Sunak catastrophe.

This, at least, isn't quite as stupid as Johnson the Second.

Still, the question of what it means is actually beyond me, except it's hard to imagine Tory solutions solving anything.

Spoiler

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Hopefully not. Although he has seemingly consigned himself to half a term as PM, as the Conservatives won't keep him after they lose the next election (at which point Johnson will make his comeback). Sunak seems to have sensible policies for the economy - but to be fair, after Truss the idea of selling farts to fuel the economy would be more sensible, so it's a low bar that's been set there - and will be typically Conservative in his desire to balance the books, get the economy steering away from the cliff edge, before trying to go all out for growth.
The alternative, Labour, would look to borrow their way out, similar to Truss in that regard but focussed very differently (scrapping VAT on fuel, helping small businesses etc, promoting "buy/use British" etc). I have no idea which would work best, as long as something does. Eventually.

On hold for, I reckon, about 7 to 8 years.

They've solved the problem of Truss. I'm sure they'll throw up another problem of their own making and try to sell us the solution.

Ah, such a wonderful country this is. I wonder what new fun tomorrow will bring?

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& the winner is sunak

is anyone publicizing how many billions lizz truss cost the country with her failed economics

i think he is too foriegn looking for uk conservative leadership popularity which is why i think he lost in the first round before they set fire to billions of pounds

it all makes boris look like a real gem
but he has had his turn & the music has started again

 

I don't believe Bozo will lead the party again. He won't be interested in being a leader in opposition, nor will the party want him by then. The show will have moved on. He'll earn a better living as a columnist and after dinner speaker.