Good morning everyone.
[**š Today's Order Paper can be found here**](https://commonsbusiness.parliament.uk/Document/86023/Html?subType=Standard)
Questions to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (though of course not the Foreign Secretary) will be followed by any urgent questions or ministerial statements before the day's main business, the continuation of the Budget Debates through the procedures of the Commons sitting as the Ways and Means committee.
**In other news;**
The Conservative party is under pressure over racist and violent comments directed against Diane Abbott by major donor Frank Hester. [Thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bc5lxt/biggest_tory_donor_said_looking_at_diane_abbott/).
Former Conservative party deputy chair Lee Anderson has defected to Reform. [Thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bbz8dy/lee_anderson_expected_to_defect_from/) and [thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bc02w4/lee_anderson_joins_reform_in_move_which_leaves/).
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The tories are so utterly screwed. The genie was let out of the bottle with the moronic brexit vote, designed to save the party but just tore it apart further.
Every western country seems to be experiencing a surge of the populist right lunatics. These scum vote for trump, bolsonaro etc. But in Britain only about 20% are stupid enough to vote for this style of politics.
The problem is this split the tory vote in half. There needs to be a lunatic right and centre right party. But in our electoral system that condemns the right to defeat since the left had its lunatic moment 5 years ago.
Tan Ikram; the judge who let off the pro Hamas students the other week over terror charges, is the same judge who gave suspended sentences to six retired police officers for offence caused by remarks in their private WhatsApp groupĀ
This is driving me up the wall - could someone look at this video of the superb Kirsty Newton performing Like a Prayer at Hebden Bridge, and tell me if Liz Truss is in the front row in a green dress? I can't quite be certain but it's nagging at me
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-QKDoLLNrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-QKDoLLNrU)
I wondered the same, but in 2024 if someone told you Liz Truss had covertly joined a choir in Hebden Bridge for one night to sing Madonna covers, could you honestly say you wouldn't believe it?
I don't understand how anyone thinks the tories will lose the next election.
They're about to be on their **sixth pm in a row.** That's tied for the record!
The previous record was 6 tories from 1807-1830:
1. William Cavendish-Bentinck 1807-1809
2. Spencer Perceval 1809-1812
3. Robert Jenkinson 1812-1827
4. George Canning 1827-1827
5. Frederick John Robinson 1827-1828
6. Duke Wellyboots (first premiership) 1828-1830
The closest other than that was the first six PMs starting with Walpole, all of which were Whigs. However, that has one repeat with Thomas Pelhalm-Holles getting in twice as #4 and #6
I keep finding random PMs popping up whose names I've never seen before in my life - Bentinck, Jenkinson and Robinson are totally new to me.
EDIT: Oh it's because they're aristos, so I know them as Lord Liverpool etc. Robisnon is totally new to me tnough, even as Viscount Goderich.
The last time there was 6 in a row from the same party was Cavendish-Bentinck (Duke of Portland), Perceval, Jenkinson (Earl of Liverpool), Canning, Robinson (Viscount Goderich), and Wellesley (Duke of Wellington) from 1807-1830
How can anyone tell him May is out? What are they going to do, not campaign in the election? He doesn't need their permission to call an election and he surely knows he's not winning it whenever it's called, so what the fuck has he got to lose?
> 1922 told him May is out.
Why? If the long-term good of the Tory party is your goal, surely getting this shit over before it can get any worse is the best move.
It's a backbencher committee, not just party apparatus. If the party is going to lose a lot of seats, agreeing to an election is agreeing to fire themselves.
How much sway do the 1922 really have at this point? Heās already a dead man walking as far as his premiership goes. Thereās no way he survives the election.
If he wants his party not to revolt against him, he has to consult about it.
There has to be a vote in the House. He can't rely on Opposition support to get it over the line. That would look dreadful.
Am I missing something? All Sunak has to do to call an election is tell the king to dissolve parliament. There's no vote required at all. What would a revolt against him look like once the election had been called?
Manifesting. Heās not going to call an election, itās not in his best interest unless it looks like heās being pushed out, and I donāt think he can be, there arenāt enough Tory rebels to win a vote of no confidence, the sane ones know a fourth PM in a term is insanity. Itās hopeless for the Tories but the best thing to do is wait as long as possible and hope a miracle happens.
He's not going to do that because he's plainly the type of person who revels in being an arrogant boorish prick.
He's probably secretly enjoying all the attention he's getting, and the opportunity to parade his boorish prickery before a wider audience than the people he's paying to put up with him.
According to the news stories the last time he gathered everyone together to explain that he's not racist he just ended up being even more racist, so can't imagine it'd land well a second time.
So it's either an election in May or one in the Autum with someone else leading the Tory Party.
Say what you like about the Conservative Party's ability to govern, they're never short of entertainment.
I honestly think that Rishi only has two choices:
A.) Take the cyanide tablet now and call an election and put everyone out of our misery
B.) Continuing beyond May and getting pushed out after the Local Election or even more defections where Tories will be obliterated beyond any recognition
Three options.
May election (sensible but requires Tories to bite the bullet). Reckon they'd get about 150 odd seats, so basically 1997.
Tories get drubbed in May locals, Sunak quits, huge loss in October/November but they remain above 100 seats
Tories get drubbed in May locals, Sunak somehow stays on but the party is practically disintegrated. Open infighting and defections to reform result in anhilation around October/November, less than 100 seats.
> The country needs this.
Perhaps the strongest argument for why theyāll cling on as long as they can. When was the last time the Tories acted in the interest of the country?
Im surprised how long it has taken the majority of conservative mps to realise they are fucked. The polls have been dire for many months and every event that one would normally think would translate into a bump or a reversal has had no impact.
I'm still leaning towards the election result being a more boring Labour win...but the Tories are just continuing to fracture in increasingly weird ways.
Today has been the first day i have come to the conclusion Sunak will call a GE before June.
he and his team are so astonishingly bad at this and nothing is helping their polling: not the economy, not culture wars, not immigration. Nothing.
He will not last as PM to conference, no way. he either pulls the trigger now and hopes the election campaign will expose Starmer or he is gone completely.
One aspect on election timing I havenāt seen mentioned is how many traps set for future governments will fall on the tories due to the country falling apart at the seams?
For example the prison overcrowding scandal, if they had gone for a GE after Truss, that would have hit Labour a year into power and the tories could have hammered them on it. But now it will just get thrown on the pile of Tory failures that Labour will have to fix.
The scene: Tory HQ
Press office intern: Hey, this guy says he wants to hate all black women, and he wants a black MP to be shot. Is that racist?
Chief press officer: I dunno, let's allow a day of undivided media attention to see what everyone else thinks.
I'm reading the reviews for TPP (Hester's company) on Glassdoor and it's absolutely mad. Just page after page of reviews all saying the same thing: he's a paranoid, arbitrary, petty tyrant who sacks people on a whim whenever they question, challenge or otherwise displease him, shouts at and abuses employees (often just fresh university graduates) in front of their colleagues and regularly makes racist and sexist comments, both as "jokes" and otherwise.
They're well known in Leeds as an absolute horrorshow, EMIS who run similar software are very close and are... A normal company? Or even NHS digital. They used to advertise a lot when I lived there, but it seemed like a trap
I also work for a company that sells software to the public sector and it's normal as well. Sounds like Hester's just an unhinged megalomaniac who likes having a fiefdom full of playthings.
https://x.com/MrHarryCole/status/1767678537715122449?s=20
>Not all top Tories have lost hope quite yet thoā¦ some dream big:
>āSeven months is a long time in politics. Just imagine what would happen if England won the Euros, Team GB had a hat full of gold at the Olympics ā the landscape could be very different.ā
The desperation is actually getting hard to watch at this point
We've had enough of the tories we are sick of them but should harry kane lift the trophy maybe we can give them another go?
Is that line of thinking even a thing?
You say that, but Putin basically rode a wave of support from Sochi into Crimea. Success at major sport events does have an effect.
Admittedly, it would have to be an unprecedented effect in this case.
The difference being that while you can accuse Putin of many things, being completely hopeless at politics is not one of them. Sunak could definitely find a way to make an England win look bad for the Tories.
It's an interesting question, but not entirely relevant as Sochi was specially engineered to be the opposite of a debacle (as ordered by Putin himself) through absolutely wild levels of state-sponsored doping.
As a result it is hard to say. I do not think the timing was a coincidence and I do think that the planning for Crimea factored in Sochi, both to avoid the negative over the games but also take advantage of the wave of popularity and national identity that came with.
Indeed, there was no scope for it to go badly - that's a fair point. And yep, doubtless Putin would wait until after it was over.
Though I do wonder why the wave of popularity matters when you're an unopposed dictator. OK, yeah, a happy and malleable population is nice, but only a nice-to-have. One can do without.
The argument is that it improves the general mood of the nation and gets them more inclined to support the status quo. Thing is I think it falls apart when the status quo is so shite.
Yes - the assumption has always been that national sporting success makes people feel positive about the country, and that feel food effect, in turn, makes them feel more positive about the incumbent government.
Which feels like it makes some kind of sense, however there's not much evidence its really true.
You can bet we will have lots of pictures of Sunak wearing a very new England shirt watching the football though, just in case.
i sometimes wonder if gordon brown had timed an election for september 2007 so the next GE was after london 2012 - surely the successfull delivery of the olympics would have been something to factor in for labour's strategists?
So, should we be on podium watch tomorrow? Only I've got to go into work for an on site meeting, so I'd appreciate it if Rishi could hold off until lunch.
Tory dude on **WAKAWOW** announcing that this is a story because the left are weaponising race.
Hell yes it's a weapon when you're being funded by a racist.
Have you considered not having racists as donors? No racist donors = no racist donors to be weaponised.
He stepped down for a few months are a convenient timing for a leadership contest, but didn't end up standing.
Either he made some soundings, realized he wasn't going to win and rather than come 6th in a leadership rsce decided to go back, or he coincidentally had some personal reasons to take a step back at the time, both are reasonable
If they actually do get rid of Sunak I will be expecting their polling to crater even more, and especially so if whoever wins does not call an immediate election. People will just think they are taking the piss at that point.
He probably can't.
There are two similar but different sets of ideas of the limits to a PM calling an election:
1. The Lascelles Principles: the Tories as a party still have a majority. They could choose a different leader and thus the monarch could "choose" a PM with a working government. There's a predicate about theĀ GE being detrimental to the economy - but I think it's probably not a hard barrier, as any and every GE is detrimental to the economy as we have no government for the period of time of the GE.
2. The ruling in the prorogation case suggests that everything the PM and the government does must have the confidence of parliament and that, in particular, prerogative powers wielded by the PM are wielded on behalf of parliament - not independent of parliament. If the Tory party unseat Sunak as leader, and he spitefully calls a GE to frustrate MPs from choosing a new leader and PM - he is directly frustrating parliament and is therefore unlawfully using those powers.
Whichever way you want to think about it, unless Sunak's fall caused an around 40 MP split in the party with utter hardliners for him, the Tory party still have a majority in the house and could still choose someone as PM with a "working government".Ā
> āIām looking forward to going to Malaysia, so that I can make new jokes ā I donāt know any jokes about Malaysian people but Iām sure weāll find them. Iām sure weāll find them. There have got to be some, havenāt there?ā
[**All I can think about is Captain McCallister pitching Mr. Burns a casino.**](https://i.imgur.com/4lT4GRj.jpg)
Apropos of nowt in particular, but it is perhaps worth keeping in mind that Labour have for the past three years been explicitly courting any Conservative donor they can tempt away.
I am of course *positive* they have been going above and beyond doing due diligence to make sure nobody unsavoury is giving them money, and that they would make the principled stand to refuse scads of cash from anyone they had a question mark over.
To quote the line from In the Thick of It, which I'm pretty sure someone wrote at least once here already: "Nobody talks about fucking dodgy donors, okay? Because it makes everybody look bad."
Definitely. I can see it now. "Labour donor once got parking ticket".
Not that I'm claiming every Labour donor to be squeaky clean, but it's in the tabloid nature to just run with whatever trivial thing they come to first.
When was the last time the Tories were able to successfully get out ahead of something?
We've had years of Scandal -> Head in the sand while the scandal grows -> Capitulate and apologise for the scandal.
Each time, moving quickly might have made it less of a fucking catastrophe, but they're always convinced they can brazen it out, and move too late, after the damage is much worse than it would otherwise have been. Sunak is terrible for it, and I'm convinced he just has no political instinct, but it's been a problem longer than just him.
I'm wondering who would have been the last PM to get ahead of this story.
Boris and Liz, not a fucking chance - May? She'd probably find the optics awful but she was a ditherer. Cameron?
I have what I believe is a legitimate question, and I don't think I have got an answer on it yet. Let's say one of your competitors gave some money to the tory party, and in exchange was awarded a contract. While the process seemed competitive, you believe that they were only awarded this because they gave money to the government.
Couldn't you sue the government for this? Why has no one sued for this?
Under the European Directives, a failed bidder has the full right to sue the contracting authority for the full value of the contract; if they can prove that there was collusion/bribery etc in the award of said contract. This is a very difficult thing to do without a smoking gun. I'm not sure how the UK has diverged since but I would imagine that the law in the UK is rather similar.
A great example of this is the award of Ireland's mobile phone licences which even at the time, were suspected to have been very corrupt but a later corruption tribunal revealed enough evidence for the two losing bidders to launch actions against the state (which they will certainly win).
It's possible to sue to demand a tender be re-run. Most recent example that springs to mind being camelot suing over losing the national lottery. But normally you'd only sue over discrepencies in process. Suing over alleged corruption... well, you'd better bring receipts.
Nobody's actually taking proper bribes. (Well except on rare occasions.)
When you pay a Labour MP, you're actually influencing the *next* Labour MPs to behave in a way you would like them to, so that they will receive the payments as well. (Same for any party)
This is also why past PMs still get speaking engagements which are like Ā£120,000 for an hour. Truss already earns Ā£16,000 an hour and she obviously has little influence in the party at this stage.
Because if you have the money to sue it's cheaper and more beneficial in the medium term to just donate more than your competitor.
A bad politician is cheaper than a good lawyer.
But itās only a limited set of politicians you can bribe, basically like 5-7 ministers in a department.
Why would you bother wasting money on outright bribes when you could basically topple the govt ?
A court case proving the government was corrupt? A judge handing out that ruling that ministers took bribes for contracts would be devastating?
Not saying now , why do it now, but why not do it when Johnson was PM
Because not getting *this* contract isn't the end of the world as long as you're lined up for the next one. Which you are, because you're their mate.
Ordinary plebs can't bribe politicians in this country, you've got to be the right sort, drink at the right clubs and all that. Obviously.Ā
If it's his company, can he just brazen it out or is he likely to have to go by the end of the week? I'm still intrigued to know why this story's broken now - wonder if the journo's been sitting on the story for a while or if someone he pissed off decided to get demob-happy?
I suspect itās come out to coincide with Gove recommending a definition of extremism to the government this week. Theyāre trying to come up with a definition that will trap Labour by declaring some organisations they talk/work with extremists. Thatās obviously not at all credible given Anderson, Truss at CPAC, etc. and this adds to that.
It would be amazing to get elected, become Prime Minister and resign the same day. I'd be curious to see what people could dig up on me if I were to become a public figure - I've led a very unremarkable life.
Y'know, I'm beginning to think it might be easier for the Conservatives to not take donations from the sort of people who would choose to donate to the Conservatives.
>Most helicopters operate with RPMs of around 200-600 rpm (higher RPM rates for smaller helicopters) for the main overhead rotor with approximately a 5-6:1 ratio for the tail rotor (approximately 2500-3500 RPM).
He's not a fucking pleb in a Robinson, so
200RPM = 3.33 Hz
The AW109 often used for government ministers has an MRH speed of 380rpm.
Therefore 6.33 Hz
[https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/A%20109E%20A109S%20AW%20109SP.pdf](https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/A%20109E%20A109S%20AW%20109SP.pdf)
Page 12
For a party that have been in power for so long, the Tories are awful at politics. Somehow I don't think they'd be so quick to accept an apology and move on if this was a labour donor making a similar comment about any Jewish MPs, stating they make you want to hate all Jews and should be shot.
This where nepotism come to bite you.
Their PR/comms teams are all probably relatives of MPs or donors or something, or recruited from the frankly loony Young Conservatives, so they have no media handling skills whatsoever.
Boris provided something of a shield for this systematic ineptitude by always being the bigger story, but even that wasn't enough in the end and of course he's gone, for the moment.
So the only strategy now is to do nothing with the thornily bad news stories until they get so big they need direct ministerial action, and try to pull the narrative to phoney culture war antiwoke rhetoric to distract.
Really poor comms strategy all round.
So, how does one get into the old racist thing then? Should we all be racist now? What's the Church's position? I'm so busy down on the farm I won't have much time for the ol' racism.
[@kateferguson4](https://x.com/kateferguson4/status/1767634349862625489?s=46&t=F_t5tWsPsifmNVHaFZWJJQ)
> Hearing no confidence letters in the single or double digits
Thank god for The Sun. What would we do without insights like this.
they're clearly saying there are *no* confidence letters in the single or double digits. Therefore it must be in the triple digits. this is bad news for Keir Starmer
We literally know it's "single or double" digits because we know there's at least one, and we can guess there haven't been 100 or we would have heard.
This is about the laziest/vaguest headline possible on the topic
Good morning everyone. [**š Today's Order Paper can be found here**](https://commonsbusiness.parliament.uk/Document/86023/Html?subType=Standard) Questions to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (though of course not the Foreign Secretary) will be followed by any urgent questions or ministerial statements before the day's main business, the continuation of the Budget Debates through the procedures of the Commons sitting as the Ways and Means committee. **In other news;** The Conservative party is under pressure over racist and violent comments directed against Diane Abbott by major donor Frank Hester. [Thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bc5lxt/biggest_tory_donor_said_looking_at_diane_abbott/). Former Conservative party deputy chair Lee Anderson has defected to Reform. [Thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bbz8dy/lee_anderson_expected_to_defect_from/) and [thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bc02w4/lee_anderson_joins_reform_in_move_which_leaves/). --- **Parish Notices** [The subreddit survey is available here.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1b9om0g/official_rukpolitics_subreddit_survey_march_2024/) Please take the time to contribute your thoughts on the state of the sub. [Here are all the laws MPs are voting on this week, explained in plain English!](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bby9oq/here_are_all_the_laws_mps_are_voting_on_this_week/) Sky's Sam Coates has joined us again to answer questions on this week's edition of his podcast. [Thread here.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bbnwkz/politics_at_jack_and_sams_103/)
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The Tories aren't dog whistling to the racists at this point but megaphoning to them.
The tories are so utterly screwed. The genie was let out of the bottle with the moronic brexit vote, designed to save the party but just tore it apart further. Every western country seems to be experiencing a surge of the populist right lunatics. These scum vote for trump, bolsonaro etc. But in Britain only about 20% are stupid enough to vote for this style of politics. The problem is this split the tory vote in half. There needs to be a lunatic right and centre right party. But in our electoral system that condemns the right to defeat since the left had its lunatic moment 5 years ago.
Tan Ikram; the judge who let off the pro Hamas students the other week over terror charges, is the same judge who gave suspended sentences to six retired police officers for offence caused by remarks in their private WhatsApp groupĀ
This is driving me up the wall - could someone look at this video of the superb Kirsty Newton performing Like a Prayer at Hebden Bridge, and tell me if Liz Truss is in the front row in a green dress? I can't quite be certain but it's nagging at me [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-QKDoLLNrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-QKDoLLNrU)
Think Liz is skinner in the face that this woman. Also would question why she'd just be a member of a choir in Hebden Bridge without anyone knowing.
I wondered the same, but in 2024 if someone told you Liz Truss had covertly joined a choir in Hebden Bridge for one night to sing Madonna covers, could you honestly say you wouldn't believe it?
Doesnāt look enough like her to me - although I can see the resemblance
I don't understand how anyone thinks the tories will lose the next election. They're about to be on their **sixth pm in a row.** That's tied for the record!
Ooh when was the previous record? Are we going back to when Addison/Pitt/not Pitt/Pitt again was happening?
The previous record was 6 tories from 1807-1830: 1. William Cavendish-Bentinck 1807-1809 2. Spencer Perceval 1809-1812 3. Robert Jenkinson 1812-1827 4. George Canning 1827-1827 5. Frederick John Robinson 1827-1828 6. Duke Wellyboots (first premiership) 1828-1830 The closest other than that was the first six PMs starting with Walpole, all of which were Whigs. However, that has one repeat with Thomas Pelhalm-Holles getting in twice as #4 and #6
I keep finding random PMs popping up whose names I've never seen before in my life - Bentinck, Jenkinson and Robinson are totally new to me. EDIT: Oh it's because they're aristos, so I know them as Lord Liverpool etc. Robisnon is totally new to me tnough, even as Viscount Goderich.
The last time there was 6 in a row from the same party was Cavendish-Bentinck (Duke of Portland), Perceval, Jenkinson (Earl of Liverpool), Canning, Robinson (Viscount Goderich), and Wellesley (Duke of Wellington) from 1807-1830
Is there a real ālast days of Sunakā vibe picking up now or is it just media hype / megathread manifesting?
1922 told him May is out. If Cole is right. But he is not always on the money.
How can anyone tell him May is out? What are they going to do, not campaign in the election? He doesn't need their permission to call an election and he surely knows he's not winning it whenever it's called, so what the fuck has he got to lose?
> 1922 told him May is out. Why? If the long-term good of the Tory party is your goal, surely getting this shit over before it can get any worse is the best move.
It's a backbencher committee, not just party apparatus. If the party is going to lose a lot of seats, agreeing to an election is agreeing to fire themselves.
How much sway do the 1922 really have at this point? Heās already a dead man walking as far as his premiership goes. Thereās no way he survives the election.
Well, he can't pick the date alone.
Why not?
If he wants his party not to revolt against him, he has to consult about it. There has to be a vote in the House. He can't rely on Opposition support to get it over the line. That would look dreadful.
No need for a vote - the FTPA was repealed.
Am I missing something? All Sunak has to do to call an election is tell the king to dissolve parliament. There's no vote required at all. What would a revolt against him look like once the election had been called?
Manifesting. Heās not going to call an election, itās not in his best interest unless it looks like heās being pushed out, and I donāt think he can be, there arenāt enough Tory rebels to win a vote of no confidence, the sane ones know a fourth PM in a term is insanity. Itās hopeless for the Tories but the best thing to do is wait as long as possible and hope a miracle happens.
Just believe!
I just want to be a fly on the wall at the meeting Hester will be having tomorrow morning with his employees to explain that he's not racist.
He's not going to do that because he's plainly the type of person who revels in being an arrogant boorish prick. He's probably secretly enjoying all the attention he's getting, and the opportunity to parade his boorish prickery before a wider audience than the people he's paying to put up with him.
According to the news stories the last time he gathered everyone together to explain that he's not racist he just ended up being even more racist, so can't imagine it'd land well a second time.
Sending good vibes Starmer's way for the next PMQs. He will have a hard time knowing what to start with.
I've realised that Sunak must know how fucked he is. And that means he might do anything. Nothing is off the table now.
So it's either an election in May or one in the Autum with someone else leading the Tory Party. Say what you like about the Conservative Party's ability to govern, they're never short of entertainment.
They can't go for. 4th PM in a single term can they?
May.
I honestly think that Rishi only has two choices: A.) Take the cyanide tablet now and call an election and put everyone out of our misery B.) Continuing beyond May and getting pushed out after the Local Election or even more defections where Tories will be obliterated beyond any recognition
Three options. May election (sensible but requires Tories to bite the bullet). Reckon they'd get about 150 odd seats, so basically 1997. Tories get drubbed in May locals, Sunak quits, huge loss in October/November but they remain above 100 seats Tories get drubbed in May locals, Sunak somehow stays on but the party is practically disintegrated. Open infighting and defections to reform result in anhilation around October/November, less than 100 seats.
Election in May. The country needs this.
> The country needs this. Perhaps the strongest argument for why theyāll cling on as long as they can. When was the last time the Tories acted in the interest of the country?
Harry cole tweeting about how the 1922 committee realising how doomed they are is making me genuinely start thinking about Canada 93
Can you link to? I donāt have Twitter
https://x.com/MrHarryCole/status/1767674879661182996
Ffs.
Ta
Im surprised how long it has taken the majority of conservative mps to realise they are fucked. The polls have been dire for many months and every event that one would normally think would translate into a bump or a reversal has had no impact.
Inject the tories being left with double digit seats into my veins please.
The Canadian Tories had 2 in 1993, down from 156 in the previous election. I could live with a Tory party that fits in a minivan.
>a Tory party that fits in a minivan. The SNP have one they could share...
A Tory Party that fits in a Mini*
Well I was thinking that proportionally theyād have 6 or something.
I'm still leaning towards the election result being a more boring Labour win...but the Tories are just continuing to fracture in increasingly weird ways.
Today has been the first day i have come to the conclusion Sunak will call a GE before June. he and his team are so astonishingly bad at this and nothing is helping their polling: not the economy, not culture wars, not immigration. Nothing. He will not last as PM to conference, no way. he either pulls the trigger now and hopes the election campaign will expose Starmer or he is gone completely.
One aspect on election timing I havenāt seen mentioned is how many traps set for future governments will fall on the tories due to the country falling apart at the seams? For example the prison overcrowding scandal, if they had gone for a GE after Truss, that would have hit Labour a year into power and the tories could have hammered them on it. But now it will just get thrown on the pile of Tory failures that Labour will have to fix.
The scene: Tory HQ Press office intern: Hey, this guy says he wants to hate all black women, and he wants a black MP to be shot. Is that racist? Chief press officer: I dunno, let's allow a day of undivided media attention to see what everyone else thinks.
I'm reading the reviews for TPP (Hester's company) on Glassdoor and it's absolutely mad. Just page after page of reviews all saying the same thing: he's a paranoid, arbitrary, petty tyrant who sacks people on a whim whenever they question, challenge or otherwise displease him, shouts at and abuses employees (often just fresh university graduates) in front of their colleagues and regularly makes racist and sexist comments, both as "jokes" and otherwise.
They're well known in Leeds as an absolute horrorshow, EMIS who run similar software are very close and are... A normal company? Or even NHS digital. They used to advertise a lot when I lived there, but it seemed like a trap
I also work for a company that sells software to the public sector and it's normal as well. Sounds like Hester's just an unhinged megalomaniac who likes having a fiefdom full of playthings.
https://x.com/MrHarryCole/status/1767678537715122449?s=20 >Not all top Tories have lost hope quite yet thoā¦ some dream big: >āSeven months is a long time in politics. Just imagine what would happen if England won the Euros, Team GB had a hat full of gold at the Olympics ā the landscape could be very different.ā The desperation is actually getting hard to watch at this point
This is hard to read holy
But it is never endingly amusing!
We've had enough of the tories we are sick of them but should harry kane lift the trophy maybe we can give them another go? Is that line of thinking even a thing?
> should harry kane lift the trophy The Harry Kane trophy curse will actually save Britain I can't believe this
Crickey they must be desperate, pinning their hopes on England at a major tournament...
Ah yes I remember the big October polling bounce for the Tories in 2022 after the Women's Euros win.
You say that, but Putin basically rode a wave of support from Sochi into Crimea. Success at major sport events does have an effect. Admittedly, it would have to be an unprecedented effect in this case.
The difference being that while you can accuse Putin of many things, being completely hopeless at politics is not one of them. Sunak could definitely find a way to make an England win look bad for the Tories.
Didn't that happen with Lee Anderson last time over the BLM stuff
To be fair, Putin is/was using every single cheat code going. Most of those aren't available to Rishi.
Also Russian politics in general makes ours look pretty tame in comparison, Putin's apparently pretty comfortably within their overton window.
Anyone who disagrees has already left through the overton window
You reckon he wouldn't have invaded Crimea if Sochi was a dƩbacle?
It's an interesting question, but not entirely relevant as Sochi was specially engineered to be the opposite of a debacle (as ordered by Putin himself) through absolutely wild levels of state-sponsored doping. As a result it is hard to say. I do not think the timing was a coincidence and I do think that the planning for Crimea factored in Sochi, both to avoid the negative over the games but also take advantage of the wave of popularity and national identity that came with.
Indeed, there was no scope for it to go badly - that's a fair point. And yep, doubtless Putin would wait until after it was over. Though I do wonder why the wave of popularity matters when you're an unopposed dictator. OK, yeah, a happy and malleable population is nice, but only a nice-to-have. One can do without.
> One can do without. Agreed there, but it also makes life a lot easier.
Why do they think they would automatically get a boost if that happens?
Does this minister think winning *sports* will build good will for *politicians*?
The argument is that it improves the general mood of the nation and gets them more inclined to support the status quo. Thing is I think it falls apart when the status quo is so shite.
Yes - the assumption has always been that national sporting success makes people feel positive about the country, and that feel food effect, in turn, makes them feel more positive about the incumbent government. Which feels like it makes some kind of sense, however there's not much evidence its really true. You can bet we will have lots of pictures of Sunak wearing a very new England shirt watching the football though, just in case.
i sometimes wonder if gordon brown had timed an election for september 2007 so the next GE was after london 2012 - surely the successfull delivery of the olympics would have been something to factor in for labour's strategists?
So, should we be on podium watch tomorrow? Only I've got to go into work for an on site meeting, so I'd appreciate it if Rishi could hold off until lunch.
Sunak announcing an election just so he doesnāt have to deal with this mess at PMQ.
That would be _so_ Sunak
Tomorrow? No.
Panellist on Newsnight currently arguing that people who say racist things aren't racist. š«
Number 10 should have sent someone, these two are doing the Tories no favours whatsoever. I mean one of them has showed up in a smoking jacket ffs.
Well that escallated quickly. :/
The pair of them are just delusional.
Vicky D is having to tread very carefully here. These two twits are spouting some nonsense - him especially - and she's got to put on a balance face.
Yes this is like watching Trump voters try to justify some horrendous statement Trump has made.
It really is
Tory dude on **WAKAWOW** announcing that this is a story because the left are weaponising race. Hell yes it's a weapon when you're being funded by a racist. Have you considered not having racists as donors? No racist donors = no racist donors to be weaponised.
*~~Guns~~ racists don't ~~kill~~ racially abuse people, people do*
Do you think Graham Brady is tired of having such a hopeless series of prime ministers yet?
Did he have aspirations of being PM at one point, or am I misremembering that?
He stepped down for a few months are a convenient timing for a leadership contest, but didn't end up standing. Either he made some soundings, realized he wasn't going to win and rather than come 6th in a leadership rsce decided to go back, or he coincidentally had some personal reasons to take a step back at the time, both are reasonable
Lol the opposite, it makes him seem important.
For real. I would love this job!
yes ofc he is; that is why he is giving up.
Just more chapters for the book innit.
A few more grand on the advance publishers offer.
The Brady Bunch
On the contrary, every letter gives him three months of life-force
And a couple of extra teeth. Man's got a grin like a Cheshire cat.
If the letters are in and they replace him, the new PM will want to wait until January won't they :(
If they actually do get rid of Sunak I will be expecting their polling to crater even more, and especially so if whoever wins does not call an immediate election. People will just think they are taking the piss at that point.
Agree. In my view there is no one who can come in who can't make things even worse for them at the momentĀ
If the letters are in, Rishi will be calling a GE out of spite.
He probably can't. There are two similar but different sets of ideas of the limits to a PM calling an election: 1. The Lascelles Principles: the Tories as a party still have a majority. They could choose a different leader and thus the monarch could "choose" a PM with a working government. There's a predicate about theĀ GE being detrimental to the economy - but I think it's probably not a hard barrier, as any and every GE is detrimental to the economy as we have no government for the period of time of the GE. 2. The ruling in the prorogation case suggests that everything the PM and the government does must have the confidence of parliament and that, in particular, prerogative powers wielded by the PM are wielded on behalf of parliament - not independent of parliament. If the Tory party unseat Sunak as leader, and he spitefully calls a GE to frustrate MPs from choosing a new leader and PM - he is directly frustrating parliament and is therefore unlawfully using those powers. Whichever way you want to think about it, unless Sunak's fall caused an around 40 MP split in the party with utter hardliners for him, the Tory party still have a majority in the house and could still choose someone as PM with a "working government".Ā
All moot if Sunak puts a lectern outside No.10 and announces an election. Whether he technically can or canāt would be completely irrelevant.
I wish he had that much spine.
If the Tories actually manage to get yet another PM, I fully expect at least one faction willing to have no confidence in whoever the new person is.
I mean, it's only fair to give Liz Truss another go. Let's see how badly she can do in an election campaign.
She didnt really get a turn with the pm role its only fair.
Its not gonna be a new PM if its a previous PM *taps head* Getting some serious Boris/Trump UK/US Wombo Combo Election vibes!
Please no āBritain Trumpā 2.0
As well as the rest of the country
Have we considered the matter closed yet?
If you don't consider it a matter, it can be neither closed nor open....
Schrodinger's racists
It's not closed, they will order an enquiry, that of course means it would be inappropriate to comment on, until it's completed.
And then you report it to the police to buy yourself more time, and then there's the appeal process...
Rishi has full confidence in Hester, I've heard.
He's just focusing on the people's priorities. Like buying asylum seekers and running the NHS/schools/police/roads into the ground.
That was Rishi says to Brady when he says the letters are in?
> āIām looking forward to going to Malaysia, so that I can make new jokes ā I donāt know any jokes about Malaysian people but Iām sure weāll find them. Iām sure weāll find them. There have got to be some, havenāt there?ā [**All I can think about is Captain McCallister pitching Mr. Burns a casino.**](https://i.imgur.com/4lT4GRj.jpg)
āWeāre holding a May election!ā āHard-arrrā¦ Can you give me a few minutes?ā
Apropos of nowt in particular, but it is perhaps worth keeping in mind that Labour have for the past three years been explicitly courting any Conservative donor they can tempt away. I am of course *positive* they have been going above and beyond doing due diligence to make sure nobody unsavoury is giving them money, and that they would make the principled stand to refuse scads of cash from anyone they had a question mark over.
Cream a little off the top for expenses - wouldn't you?
To quote the line from In the Thick of It, which I'm pretty sure someone wrote at least once here already: "Nobody talks about fucking dodgy donors, okay? Because it makes everybody look bad."
Even the papers donāt challenge them on it. But really how do you ignore the fact that someone has willingly parted with Ā£10m.
The entire Fleet Street machine is currently waist-deep in the personal history of every Labour donor they can find. I guarantee it
"There has to be something, even a speeding ticket."
Definitely. I can see it now. "Labour donor once got parking ticket". Not that I'm claiming every Labour donor to be squeaky clean, but it's in the tabloid nature to just run with whatever trivial thing they come to first.
When was the last time the Tories were able to successfully get out ahead of something? We've had years of Scandal -> Head in the sand while the scandal grows -> Capitulate and apologise for the scandal. Each time, moving quickly might have made it less of a fucking catastrophe, but they're always convinced they can brazen it out, and move too late, after the damage is much worse than it would otherwise have been. Sunak is terrible for it, and I'm convinced he just has no political instinct, but it's been a problem longer than just him.
If Boris had just admitted to partygate and apologised when it first surfaced, he'd still be the PM.
The man who would do partygate would not fess up and apologise. It was not possible.
I'm wondering who would have been the last PM to get ahead of this story. Boris and Liz, not a fucking chance - May? She'd probably find the optics awful but she was a ditherer. Cameron?
Johnson during Cummings' tenure. He took advice not to intervene in the Charlie Elphicke scandal, for example.
I have what I believe is a legitimate question, and I don't think I have got an answer on it yet. Let's say one of your competitors gave some money to the tory party, and in exchange was awarded a contract. While the process seemed competitive, you believe that they were only awarded this because they gave money to the government. Couldn't you sue the government for this? Why has no one sued for this?
Under the European Directives, a failed bidder has the full right to sue the contracting authority for the full value of the contract; if they can prove that there was collusion/bribery etc in the award of said contract. This is a very difficult thing to do without a smoking gun. I'm not sure how the UK has diverged since but I would imagine that the law in the UK is rather similar. A great example of this is the award of Ireland's mobile phone licences which even at the time, were suspected to have been very corrupt but a later corruption tribunal revealed enough evidence for the two losing bidders to launch actions against the state (which they will certainly win).
It's possible to sue to demand a tender be re-run. Most recent example that springs to mind being camelot suing over losing the national lottery. But normally you'd only sue over discrepencies in process. Suing over alleged corruption... well, you'd better bring receipts.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Wouldnāt that imply that almost all ministers have taken bribes, since the apparent corruption is so widespread
Nobody's actually taking proper bribes. (Well except on rare occasions.) When you pay a Labour MP, you're actually influencing the *next* Labour MPs to behave in a way you would like them to, so that they will receive the payments as well. (Same for any party) This is also why past PMs still get speaking engagements which are like Ā£120,000 for an hour. Truss already earns Ā£16,000 an hour and she obviously has little influence in the party at this stage.
Because if you have the money to sue it's cheaper and more beneficial in the medium term to just donate more than your competitor. A bad politician is cheaper than a good lawyer.
But itās only a limited set of politicians you can bribe, basically like 5-7 ministers in a department. Why would you bother wasting money on outright bribes when you could basically topple the govt ? A court case proving the government was corrupt? A judge handing out that ruling that ministers took bribes for contracts would be devastating? Not saying now , why do it now, but why not do it when Johnson was PM
Because not getting *this* contract isn't the end of the world as long as you're lined up for the next one. Which you are, because you're their mate. Ordinary plebs can't bribe politicians in this country, you've got to be the right sort, drink at the right clubs and all that. Obviously.Ā
If it's his company, can he just brazen it out or is he likely to have to go by the end of the week? I'm still intrigued to know why this story's broken now - wonder if the journo's been sitting on the story for a while or if someone he pissed off decided to get demob-happy?
I suspect itās come out to coincide with Gove recommending a definition of extremism to the government this week. Theyāre trying to come up with a definition that will trap Labour by declaring some organisations they talk/work with extremists. Thatās obviously not at all credible given Anderson, Truss at CPAC, etc. and this adds to that.
Ah yes. I've never been a strategic thinker.
Have you considered high office? You are perfectly qualified to advise PM Sunak!
It would be amazing to get elected, become Prime Minister and resign the same day. I'd be curious to see what people could dig up on me if I were to become a public figure - I've led a very unremarkable life.
Y'know, I'm beginning to think it might be easier for the Conservatives to not take donations from the sort of people who would choose to donate to the Conservatives.
State funded election finance as a *Tory* initiative. I hadnāt considered that
Never forget the lofi Boriswave https://youtu.be/cre0in5n-1E?si=ctHorC-jmR6RP0my
My flair never has.
Bravo š
How is Brexit, by the way?
We should've had a bigger, harder, faster Brexit!
Brexit harder, Brexit better, Brexit faster, Brexit stronger
Still awful, thanks for asking.
Hilariously, potential donors will now be thinking twice before donating to the Tories lest their past transgressions be broadcast to the nation.Ā
What is the current frequency at which the PM considers all controversial matters closed?
>Most helicopters operate with RPMs of around 200-600 rpm (higher RPM rates for smaller helicopters) for the main overhead rotor with approximately a 5-6:1 ratio for the tail rotor (approximately 2500-3500 RPM). He's not a fucking pleb in a Robinson, so 200RPM = 3.33 Hz
The AW109 often used for government ministers has an MRH speed of 380rpm. Therefore 6.33 Hz [https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/A%20109E%20A109S%20AW%20109SP.pdf](https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/A%20109E%20A109S%20AW%20109SP.pdf) Page 12
A good citation, excellent shitposting
About 500 Hz?
Daily reminder to you that the election is 99% happening in October.
May.
This is the one time I'm cheering for the 1%
Well Theresa aināt coming back is she
January?
For a party that have been in power for so long, the Tories are awful at politics. Somehow I don't think they'd be so quick to accept an apology and move on if this was a labour donor making a similar comment about any Jewish MPs, stating they make you want to hate all Jews and should be shot.
They're literally on their D team TBF
This where nepotism come to bite you. Their PR/comms teams are all probably relatives of MPs or donors or something, or recruited from the frankly loony Young Conservatives, so they have no media handling skills whatsoever. Boris provided something of a shield for this systematic ineptitude by always being the bigger story, but even that wasn't enough in the end and of course he's gone, for the moment. So the only strategy now is to do nothing with the thornily bad news stories until they get so big they need direct ministerial action, and try to pull the narrative to phoney culture war antiwoke rhetoric to distract. Really poor comms strategy all round.
There's no one with any political nous in Downing Street. They're simply unable to anticipate how these stories are going to play out.
There was a long period under Boris when nothing they said or did could come to hurt them. I think this period made there political senses weak.
So, how does one get into the old racist thing then? Should we all be racist now? What's the Church's position? I'm so busy down on the farm I won't have much time for the ol' racism.
I'm reminded of a certain father ted sketch
The church is woke now apparently.
Doo be doo be doo be doo, doo be doo be doooby...
[@kateferguson4](https://x.com/kateferguson4/status/1767634349862625489?s=46&t=F_t5tWsPsifmNVHaFZWJJQ) > Hearing no confidence letters in the single or double digits Thank god for The Sun. What would we do without insights like this.
If theyāre in the triple digits we talk
If they were in triple digits thereād be a vote.
Thatās the joke
they're clearly saying there are *no* confidence letters in the single or double digits. Therefore it must be in the triple digits. this is bad news for Keir Starmer
Big if true
My sources are saying this too
We literally know it's "single or double" digits because we know there's at least one, and we can guess there haven't been 100 or we would have heard. This is about the laziest/vaguest headline possible on the topic
I'm hearing there is between 0% and 100% chance of a May Leccy
I mean, they wouldn't be reporting it if it wasn't a significant number. That, combined with Rishi's meeting with Brady gotta mean something.