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Not sure who that will be though. Patel and Truss are both right-wing "Britannia Unchained"ers, Braverman is a dogmatic Brexiter, and Dorries doesn't strike me as particularly appealing. Bring back Theresa May? Not that I want another Tory government, but she could perhaps do well as an anti-sleaze candidate. But the attack on her by her own party and replacement with Johnson perhaps partly had sexist motivations, in any case. Perhaps she would do well with the general public but not with the blue-rinse dinosaurs who appear to make up the Conservative Party membership.
Theresa May was not popular with Conservative MPs because of the disastrous way in their eyes they saw her handling Brexit. As someone who voted to remain I’m not sure that what we now have got from Boris in the long term is that much better. Theresa May was certainly not perfect and made some very big mistakes in some of her previous positions in the government before becoming PM. However, to me she has always come over as a much nicer and more genuine person than Boris. I don’t think we would have the lies and sleaze we have now. I also wonder if she would have handled Covid in a more balanced and systematic way and come over as being more genuinely caring than Boris.
I think it all went wrong for the Tory’s the day they appointed there currant leader, Hopefully the electorate of this once great country will tell Boris once and for all what they think of him in the forthcoming election.
I have not been able to find the acreage of his family farm near Bridgwater, but it needs to be fairly large to justify buying a combine harvester (ooh, ar, ooh, ar). I did note that in his Declaration of Interests for the 2010 election, which is still on his website, he states, “I do not intend to take on any additional employment beyond my work as an MP if elected.” He does later state that he had a family interest in a farm business, which he intended to retain. (Whoever filled the document in has lousy handwriting and did so sloppily, considering the importance of the document.)
EDIT: It appears that he already has a combine harvester: a Claas Dominator 76. Which is coincidently the year that the Wurzels had a hit with...well, you can guess which song.
She was working towards leaving the single market and customs union, the two main things that Johnson did, so it was much closer to Johnson's final deal than to remaining. The main difference was the inclusion of the Northern Ireland "backstop" that would keep Britain within EU rules if an arrangement couldn't be agreed for the Irish border. Johnson did the same, except that he struck a "deal" with the EU that he fully expected to tear up, stabbing the DUP in the back in the process.
Theresa May was not popular with Conservative MPs because of the disastrous way in their eyes they saw her handling Brexit. As someone who voted to remain I’m not sure that what we now have got from Boris in the long term is that much better. Theresa May was certainly not perfect and made some very big mistakes in some of her previous positions in the government before becoming PM. However, to me she has always come over as a much nicer and more genuine person than Boris. I don’t think we would have the lies and sleaze we have now. I also wonder if she would have handled Covid in a more balanced and systematic way and come over as being more genuinely caring than Boris.
IMO in the end it wasn't but reached the point of ' need to get Brexit done ' and move on. Had Theresa May first created a framework that the majority of MP's approved before going into the detail it ought to have been done to the original timescale. How much money would that have saved ? The costs of the 2019 MEP election to start with. The parliamentary time could have been utilised for something else. Businesses would have not been dealing with the changes at the same time as Covid either.
A quick google search using the term "minister noisy sex office" has revealed a good few articles mentioning it that were released earlier today, so it seems credible.
I have not been able to find the acreage of his family farm near Bridgwater, but it needs to be fairly large to justify buying a combine harvester (ooh, ar, ooh, ar).
IMO in the end it wasn't but reached the point of ' need to get Brexit done ' and move on. Had Theresa May first created a framework that the majority of MP's approved before going into the detail it ought to have been done to the original timescale. How much money would that have saved ? The costs of the 2019 MEP election to start with. The parliamentary time could have been utilised for something else. Businesses would have not been dealing with the changes at the same time as Covid either.
Leaving the Single Market and Customs Union is essentially incompatible with keeping an open border in Ireland. May was honest about this but by doing so she made herself unpopular with the factions that thought the circle could be squared. Johnson simply fudged it to get a deal, apparently knowing full well that he would need to renege on it. Thereby he worsened the impact of Brexit by showing himself to be an unreliable partner and destroying much of the remaining goodwill between Britain and the EU or its members, which if it still existed might have helped us to get round problems like the channel crossings.
Leaving the Single Market and Customs Union is essentially incompatible with keeping an open border in Ireland. May was honest about this but by doing so she made herself unpopular with the factions that thought the circle could be squared. Johnson simply fudged it to get a deal, apparently knowing full well that he would need to renege on it. Thereby he worsened the impact of Brexit by showing himself to be an unreliable partner and destroying much of the remaining goodwill between Britain and the EU or its members, which if it still existed might have helped us to get round problems like the channel crossings.
I do suspect we would have got a rather softer version with May. Also I suspect May would have accepted the EU's offer to extend the transition period, and of course, without a majority, the Tories might have had to moderate their post-Brexit decisions to appeal to Labour and the Lib Dems.
In retrospect the replacement of May by Johnson, and the replacement of a hung parliament by a majority which shuts out opposing points of view, was very bad for those who do not subscribe to the Johnson/Patel/Raab/ERG take on things.
The ERG lot are incredibly arrogant and filled with their own self-importance, wield far too much power, and seem to think that what they say goes. While I am neither a Tory nor a fan of May (rather I consider her one of the 'least-worst' Tories), I do think the way they bullied May and forced her out was pretty bad.
Crispin Blunt is rhyming slang and has been for a while.
A truly monumental own goal. He claims that his paedo mate was the victim of some unsavoury homophobic tropes during the trial, which may or may not be true. But the optics of a gay paedophile being defended immediately on conviction by another gay man are terrible, and will only fuel the most virulent forms of homphobia.
Blunt has been having a personal ethical crisis for some time and one can only hope he is removed at the next election.
While the list of likely candidates for PM in place of Johnson is dire I would hope May gets seen as being too isolated from the real world. First she called an election expecting to get a bigger majority but had to get the DUP in bed to just scrape past the post. Second she worked to deliver a Brexit that was so close to Bremain which many of her party could not agree with so became her downfall.
But that might not have angered remainers so much. If not May, then who else? Serious question. All the candidates I would consider perhaps superior to May (Grieve, Gauke, Stewart, Gyimah, Phillip Hammond, Letwin) have gone and some are not even Tories anymore. We (the electorate, not Conservative Party members) really need someone better than Johnson or a hard Brexiter. Perhaps Hunt is the only other person that springs to mind - that shows how bad things are!
And if the Tories want to win the next election (disclaimer: I personally don't want them to) then they need to put up someone moderate, not an ERGer, Brexit enthusiast, or "Britannia Unchained"-er.
But that might not have angered remainers so much. If not May, then who else? Serious question. All the candidates I would consider perhaps superior to May (Grieve, Gauke, Stewart, Gyimah, Phillip Hammond, Letwin) have gone and some are not even Tories anymore. We (the electorate, not Conservative Party members) really need someone better than Johnson or a hard Brexiter. Perhaps Hunt is the only other person that springs to mind - that shows how bad things are!
And if the Tories want to win the next election (disclaimer: I personally don't want them to) then they need to put up someone moderate, not an ERGer, Brexit enthusiast, or "Britannia Unchained"-er.
Starmer being the favourite implies two things, the most obvious is current projections are that Labour would form a Government at the next election, either on their own or with other support, but as the largest party in any case. Second is that they think Johnson will remain in office until the election; earlier this year potential Tory successors were ahead of Starmer, which was while Johnson looked like a dead man walking and thus it was likely they thought he'd be going before an election.
That would depend on who he was against I'd have thought in the members vote. Assuming it gets that far. We could always have a re-run of the 2016 leadership election where May won by default as the others withdrew before it got to the wider membership.
Every Tory leader makes his/her predecessor look not so bad. I despised May for bribing the DUP in order to form a government after her disastrous miscalculation in 2017. But Johnson has been even worse, and I despise him even more for his whipping the Tory MPs into voting for a new law specifically aimed at letting the creep Owen Patterson escape punishment for his corrupt conduct. A few Tory MPs had enough moral compass to refuse to support that, but nearly all of them put their career before honour.
Whenever Johnson farts, nearly all Tory MPs say, "ooh, what a fragrant smell". Contemptible.
'exploiting the labour of others' is pretty loaded term and I'm not sure exactly what you mean by it. But it doesn't seem hard to me to imagine how some people could quite ethically and legitimately earn over £200K:
You set up a business providing some useful goods/services to people. This may involve you taking substantial risks with your own income/savings. But the business grows sufficient for you to take on staff, which means you have not only enhanced the lives of your customers in some way, but also created jobs that would otherwise not exist. And after some years, the business has become successful enough that you are earning over £200K from it. Obviously not many people manage to achieve that, which is precisely why not many people earn over £200K: Most people who try to set up businesses either ultimately fail or end up earning a modest to reasonable living on small businesses. But some do succeed and by their success create jobs for others - and it seems to me totally unethical for the Government to do to what you seem to want to them to do: In effect, say to those entrepreneurs, 'we're taking away all your income above a certain level. Besides, the economic effects of doing that would be very harmful since it means lots of those people who would've set up new businesses would either emigrate and pursue their business dreams abroad, or just not bother.
I used to be great friends with an IT expert. He was just an employee and was closing in on that kind of money just over twenty years ago. Probably some investment bankers etc.
From a competency point of view he would, but I doubt he would be appealing to the wider public, as outside of the party membership and those paying closest attention, most people don't know who he is.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
The Daily Mail have published an article in the continuing Saga about Starmer's Durham curry and drinks where they're demanding evidence, which Nadine Dorries has retweeted, that includes a picture of Starmer eating with the late Frank Dobson. Dobson was the former MP who occupied Holborn and St Pancras before Starmer was elected to it in 2015, and Dobson died in November 2019, thus there is no way that photo (believed to be from 2015), could have been taken during any covid restrictions.
Regardless of the legalities around this gathering in April 2021, the use of that photo in an article to try and backup their story is a new level of lying/misinformation, and if I was Starmer I'd be looking at legal action:
We are expected to believe that a curry and beers arrived for about 30 people at 10pm, and this was a break for a work meeting? No reasonable person believes Labours story, so why do Durham police and what were they told?
he Daily Mail have published an article in the continuing Saga about Starmer's Durham curry and drinks where they're demanding evidence, which Nadine Dorries has retweeted, that includes a picture of Starmer eating with the late Frank Dobson. Dobson was the former MP who occupied Holborn and St Pancras before Starmer was elected to it in 2015, and Dobson died in November 2019, thus there is no way that photo (believed to be from 2015), could have been taken during any covid restrictions.
Are you sure you're not pushing double standards here? The impression I'm getting from much of this thread is something like:
Evidence emerges that Boris Johnson broke lockdown restrictions, and it subsequently emerges that Boris made statements that about it that were not true: Everyone jumps on it and shouts about how this proves how evil and corrupt the Tories are.
Similar evidence emerges that Keir Starmer broke lockdown restrictions, and it subsequently emerges that Labour made statements about it that were not true: Everyone jumps on the messenger and shouts about how the messenger shouldn't be pushing the story.
Now I appreciate the Downing Street parties appear to represent a much more serious breach in terms of numbers of people/events, but even so you can't have one rule for the Tories and a different rule for Labour. Personally I think the Daily Mail are over-egging this story a bit, but no more so than the stories about Partygate have been over-egged by people/media on the left.
In terms of the photo: The Daily Mail article does make it clear that it's a stock photo. I'm inclined to agree with you that they possibly shouldn't have chosen that particular photo. But then, how many stories about Downing Street parties have been accompanied by stock photos of Tory politicians that were taken at completely different times, with no-one raising any objection? It's a fairly standard thing that if you're running a story about someone, you might use a stock photo of that person if you can't get hold of a good photo taken from whatever event you're reporting. The Daily Mail have published only the portion of the photo that shows Keir Starmer eating, so it's not like his reputation is likely to be damaged in any way by it.
'exploiting the labour of others' is pretty loaded term and I'm not sure exactly what you mean by it. But it doesn't seem hard to me to imagine how some people could quite ethically and legitimately earn over £200K:
You set up a business providing some useful goods/services to people. This may involve you taking substantial risks with your own income/savings. But the business grows sufficient for you to take on staff, which means you have not only enhanced the lives of your customers in some way, but also created jobs that would otherwise not exist. And after some years, the business has become successful enough that you are earning over £200K from it.
The term Marx would use in this case is "surplus value" the value that your workers create which does not go towards their wages, but towards the company profits. It is fair for a percentage to be taken, to reward someone for taking risks and building a business, but a lack of progressive taxation when the individual earning more than the Prime Minister of the country seems unreasonable. To put this into context, this is over 6 times the median wage.
Obviously not many people manage to achieve that, which is precisely why not many people earn over £200K: Most people who try to set up businesses either ultimately fail or end up earning a modest to reasonable living on small businesses. But some do succeed and by their success create jobs for others - and it seems to me totally unethical for the Government to do to what you seem to want to them to do: In effect, say to those entrepreneurs, 'we're taking away all your income above a certain level.
It's interesting how you perpetuate this appealing myth of the "self made entrepreneur" despite the majority of people in this situation being the management and leadership teams of large companies. It feels like over recent years we've imported this American "everyone's a millionaire waiting to happen" ethos, which bears little resemblance to reality.
As an aside, I am not aware of anywhere that I suggested taking 100% taxation.
Besides, the economic effects of doing that would be very harmful since it means lots of those people who would've set up new businesses would either emigrate and pursue their business dreams abroad, or just not bother.
Who exactly do you think would Emmigrate? I would daresay that Tescos will not shut up shop if the taxes for their CEO change. And even if they did, it would create an opportunity in the private sector, I'd daresay that most people starting small businesses (to go back to your original suggestion) wouldn't be too put off by the idea that they might "only" earn 200 grand a year. To most people, this is an inconceivably large amount of money.
I feel if anything, the lack of a progressive tax system, and proper safety net in case of a business failure is more of a barrier to people starting businesses, than the idea that they might make "only" six times the median wage.
From a competency point of view he would, but I doubt he would be appealing to the wider public, as outside of the party membership and those paying closest attention, most people don't know who he is.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
The Daily Mail have published an article in the continuing Saga about Starmer's Durham curry and drinks where they're demanding evidence, which Nadine Dorries has retweeted, that includes a picture of Starmer eating with the late Frank Dobson. Dobson was the former MP who occupied Holborn and St Pancras before Starmer was elected to it in 2015, and Dobson died in November 2019, thus there is no way that photo (believed to be from 2015), could have been taken during any covid restrictions.
Regardless of the legalities around this gathering in April 2021, the use of that photo in an article to try and backup their story is a new level of lying/misinformation, and if I was Starmer I'd be looking at legal action:
Apart from anything else, Starmer looked a lot younger in that photo than anything taken since he became leader. There should certainly be a complaint to the toothless body that 'supervises' complaints against the press, plus a legal 'desist or else' letter to the paper threatening legal action.
Are you sure you're not pushing double standards here? The impression I'm getting from much of this thread is something like:
Evidence emerges that Boris Johnson broke lockdown restrictions, and it subsequently emerges that Boris made statements that about it that were not true: Everyone jumps on it and shouts about how this proves how evil and corrupt the Tories are.
Boris denied that there was ever a party, Starmer said that he'd had that drink and had a takeaway. Whilst Starmer didn't apologise, be didn't stay off by covering it up.
Similar evidence emerges that Keir Starmer broke lockdown restrictions, and it subsequently emerges that Labour made statements about it that were not true: Everyone jumps on the messenger and shouts about how the messenger shouldn't be pushing the story.
What statements have Labour made about this which turned out not to be true?
Now bearing in mind that the police have completed their investigation (presumably with the video evidence which kicked the story off) and found that there was no law breaking and the current news stories relates to the fact that an MP has put in a FOI request to the police (if there's new evidence, that's a different matter, but I've but seen reference to any so if you have feel free to share) then it's unlikely there's going to be a change in the outcome.
Compare this with Boris where we don't know the doll extent of the outcome of the several times that it's been alleged that parties happen in lockdown, however we know that there were two events which have resulted in fines (whilst only one resulted in fines for Boris, that's still at least one more than Starmer).
Now I appreciate the Downing Street parties appear to represent a much more serious breach in terms of numbers of people/events, but even so you can't have one rule for the Tories and a different rule for Labour. Personally I think the Daily Mail are over-egging this story a bit, but no more so than the stories about Partygate have been over-egged by people/media on the left.
If someone in my office (and we don't do anything in the public sphere) had suggested that we had a party on the evening before a prominent royal's funeral it's likely that I wouldn't be the only one to question of we should continue.
Now that's regardless at to if we were in lockdown or not.
However I would also highlight that there's also evidence that Boris was in stages photo ops which also included alcohol in the same election campaign, these have mostly come to light from the left in response to the claims that Starmer broke the rules. However few appear to be asking for them to be investigated for being a beach.
In terms of the photo: The Daily Mail article does make it clear that it's a stock photo. I'm inclined to agree with you that they possibly shouldn't have chosen that particular photo. But then, how many stories about Downing Street parties have been accompanied by stock photos of Tory politicians that were taken at completely different times, with no-one raising any objection? It's a fairly standard thing that if you're running a story about someone, you might use a stock photo of that person if you can't get hold of a good photo taken from whatever event you're reporting. The Daily Mail have published only the portion of the photo that shows Keir Starmer eating, so it's not like his reputation is likely to be damaged in any way by it.
We are aware of an issue with emails from the Forum to Microsoft-based email accounts (hotmail/outlook/live.com email addresses). This is being looked into currently, thanks for your patience meanwhile.
