In the newsroom at Sky News, with microphones still attached. 
I’m not talking about his age, I’m talking about how he resembles Sir Les Patterson
At that age, if you’re still living you’re doing alright.
It’s quite an impressive shade of ruddy he’s got going on though, you must admit.
That’s true only if that’s the only, or dominant, issue to decide on, right? Which, under the circumstances, maybe it is.
Would any other platform items matter? And will it even be possible to vote UKIP without Farage?
Well, no. If a party wins a majority of the seats in a general election, it has a mandate for every explicit commitment in its published manifesto.
But, as you say, it’s academic. I don’t think there’s going to be an early general election, but if there is it will absolutely positively definitely be an election about the EU, and the UK’s relationship thereto.
As long as they run candidates, it will be possible to vote for them. It doesn’t matter who the party leader is.
And, if either or both of the major parties is running on a campaign to seek a mandate to supersede the referendum outcome, it’s a racing certainty that UKIP will be running candidates.
He’s still an MEP. And an embarassment to this country, as his recent grandstanding demonstrated.
I must admit that Ken Clarke’s “slip” amused me greatly, although the fact that his views on the candidates and mine largely align certainly helped. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one filled with horror at the prospect of Gove as PM.
And it’s worth noting that the UK is on the cusp of getting its second female Prime Minister (probably May but possibly Leadsom), just ahead of the US’s likely election of its first female President. Again - I’m not a fan of May but the only way women can rise to that level these days is by being “difficult”. Here’s to “difficult women”. 
May also has charm and steel and talent and judgement.
The same criteria, though, also apply to men.
As an aside, this seems to be a fundamental difference between Left and Right over here: the Right believe in equality of opportunity whereas the Left believe in equality of result.
Did I just eulogise Teresa May? I feel dirty.
By gender, perhaps, but certainly not by many other factors, unless you mean in the sense popularised by a certain Anatole France quote.
I disagree. Look at Margaret Thatcher, daughter of a grocer. Look at Michael Gove, adopted son of a fish processor. Look at Stephen Crabb, brought up by parents on benefits. John Major was a bank clerk. Teresa May was largely state-educated. And so on. The Cameron era was a throw-back to the grandees of old.
My point exactly. The era where the welfare state supported the working class enough to allow social mobility is over, thanks to those “grandees” who have been setting fire to every ladder out of poverty (unless you’re a footballer or pop star). And they’re following in the footsteps of Mrs Thatcher who actively scorned the poor and worked hard to make their lot harder.
Umm… Stephen Crabb is a modern example.
Anyway, would Dopers care to consider the Scottish angle? No, not Sturgeon, but that Blair, Brown, and Cameron are all Scots; so would a fourth Scot in the form of Gove be one Scot too far?
Cameron has a Scottish name and is of Scots descent, but he’s not a Scot and doesn’t identify as such.
He also allowed qualified US and Australian teachers apply for QTS in an effort to increase the number of teachers in the UK.
And so? As I said, the Cameron era was a throw-back to the grandees of old.
A flashback to Gove with his Education hat on this week, as the media rolled footage of him touting the excellence of Durand Academy back in 2014, the first government-funded boarding school under the new academies system as part of a story about “serious concerns” about the governance and money management of said Durand Academy.
Short version: the Durand people set up separate corporate entities to provide various services to the school, then effectively used the school to funnel public money earmarked for education to the private entities in a rather dubious manner. Who could have seen that happening? Certainly not Gove!
Yes, let’s talk about Stephen Crabb. From his Wiki page:
It’s a good story, true. Of course, now that benefits have been cut back dramatically, would there have been enough of a safety net for his mother to have hung on long enough to work her way out of poverty? Or would they have been made homeless and dependent on food banks, as hundreds of thousands now are? When his father was injured and went on invalidity benefit, would their situation have been improved by having an independent private contractor decide he was skiving and cut off his benefit? Would the family have climbed out of poverty faster while working on zero-hour contracts? As I said before, the Conservatives have made it much harder to be poor in this country, and that includes those who started out poor themselves.
No one is saying that hard work isn’t required, but throwing up more obstacles on the path out of poverty is not promoting “equality of opportunity”.
Given that they were caught, someone obviously did foresee the possibility of fraud.
And I do not disagree. Remember that I had a period of extended poverty myself. But he’s still a self-made man.
Here’s the NYT on how the Brexit aftermath has revealed the fault lines of the incestuous British political class: British Politics Gives a Sense of Government by Old School Chums - The New York Times