How 'bout a “Someone tries to lead the UK omnibus thread”?
Bit of both, really, Labour didn’t have a clear stance on Brexit (because, like every party, they were divided on the issue), whereas Boris stood as the great flag bearer of Brexit.
Corbyn was also seen as a dusty old leftie who felt like a throw back to the 1970s, and nobody wanted to go back there. The Tories have often done well in elections by painting Labour as hard left, even if many of them aren’t. Blair, of course, was fantastically successful at shedding the old ‘leftie’ tag, but he had to literally rebrand Labour as New Labour to do it.
Yeah. I don’t really think for a minute that they would call a general with intent to lose as a long term tactic, because there are monumental egos at play.
Yep. Looks like my crazy hypotheses was wrong.
unless…
Yeah, unless he plans on sealioning from the wings continually until the party runs out of alternative leaders and he has to make a show of magnanimously coming back even though he really didn’t think he should.
I think this really is curtains for Al. Sunak will stay until the next election. If he somehow wins, then there’s no opening. If he loses, is Johnson really going to want to be Leader of the Opposition for four whole years? That is actual work. You have to know your brief and stuff, and you get hardly any of the prestige or trappings of power. And after all that he’d be 64 years old the next time he could be PM. Sod that.
On one level, this would be a popular position. As others point out, the view that Brexit was a mistake has been the majority view for some time. A poll published this week suggests that in a rejoin/stay out referendum, 54% would vote to remain and 34% to stay out.
But it would be a bitterly divisive position, and Labour are not going to adopt it. Labour’s current position is “make Brexit work” and, while they don’t go into detail, most people already understand that that means “less performative divergence from the EU purely for the sake of it; more dispassionate analysis of whether and where continued alignment is in UK’s interest”. Unlikely that they’ll go into much more detail before the election, but after the election they’ll move strongly in that direction, as the obvious and only way of alleviating the economic and political harms of Brexit. They won’t move to rejoin - that’s a long-term project, at best.
AI?
[more text for Discourse.]
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. He reportedly is known as Al rather than his middle name of Boris to family and close friends.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is, and has always been, “Al” within his family. It was when he was in secondary school that he began to use “Boris”. Thus those who have known him from childhood call him “Al”; everyone else calls him “Boris”.
“Cleanser”, I think you mean.
(Christ, that’s disturbingly close to reality these days…)
I believe at one point he welcomed our new insect overlords.
Oh ye of little faith…
She’s just given her farewell speech outside No. 10, basically saying she was right all along.
Rather brought to mind this Wodehouse quote:
“It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.”
No blubs this time? I’d feel much more sorry for the likes of May blubbing if it was something selfish rather than her having been stabbed in the back by the ERG and Johnson.
We all know Johnson is incapable of any form of sorrow so it was no surprise he didn’t blub.
And now this from the person who almost wrecked the UK’s pension plans:
From today’s Sacramento Bee: “The good news for her is that for her trouble, Truss will receive a pension and an annual $130,000 expense account, the Washington Post reported. The irony is that her premiership ended largely because her botched plan to cut taxes on the wealthiest individuals and corporations and hike spending on energy subsidies and other programs ballooned public debt and threatened to destroy the country’s pension system, as the Associated Press explained.”
Sooo – y’all think she will turn it down???
I don’t get how that’s “ironic.”
Because within hours of the mini-budget being announced, there was a very real risk of major private pension schemes going broke as a result of the effect of the market’s reaction on government bond markets, until the Bank of England rushed in to buy up their bond holdings, at staggering levels. But her pension and allowances are guaranteed.
She gets a pension for ruining the rest of the countries pensions.
What kind of ongoing “expenses” did she incur as a result of being Prime Minister for 45 minutes or whatever?
There’s the solution to Britain’s economic woes. Give everyone a turn at being Prime Minister, and then they can collect the pension and have an expense account. I’m sure that’s enough to live comfortably, even in London.
The UK government explains the reason for the Public Duty Costs Allowance:
The costs are a reimbursement of incurred expenses for necessary office costs and secretarial costs arising from their special position in public life. The allowance is not paid to support private or parliamentary duties. The PDCA is in addition to any constituency office which they may maintain as a Member of Parliament. The PDCA allowance is paid from the Cabinet Office vote and administered by the Cabinet Office Finance Team.
I think most former PMs served for a good deal longer than Liz Truss.