The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[Xann]

Quote

 

At Christmastime last year, the only cloud on Boris Johnson’s horizon was how he was going to pay for a winter break with Carrie on Mustique. The answer, rather typically, was that someone else would pick up the tab. The opposition later raised a complaint, but few Tories begrudged their leader his getaway in the Caribbean. He had just delivered a “stonking” election victory, their best since Margaret Thatcher was at her zenith. He was, in the words of one senior Tory, “lord of all he surveys”. Celebratory Christmas receptions at Number 10 were pungent with the scent of hubris.

Being a student of the classics, the prime minister should have known that the gods will punish arrogance. Nemesis came in the shape of an invisible microbe. The pandemic has tested the mettle of leaders around the planet, but among the mature democracies few were as singularly ill-equipped to handle a crisis of this nature and magnitude as Britain’s prime minister. He has looked good only when benchmarked against Donald Trump.

The coronavirus crisis could not have been more cunningly engineered to expose Mr Johnson’s flaws. He was made prime minister not because anyone thought that he was a cool and decisive head with the leadership skills and moral seriousness required to handle the gravest public health emergency in a century. He was put there because he was a successful representative of the entertainer branch of populist leadership that prospered in the pre-virus era. “We elected him to be a ‘good times’ prime minister,” comments one senior Tory. “His curse is to be prime minister in bad times.”

Few of his strengths as a politician have been of much utility in this emergency. All of his weaknesses have been searingly exposed. A man who spent his career ducking responsibility was suddenly confronted with a challenge that could not be run from, though that didn’t stop him vanishing at the outset when he went missing from critical meetings. In the coronavirus, he met an opponent impervious to glib slogans and empty promises. Here was a disease posing hideous and inescapable dilemmas that confounded the “have your cake and eat it” philosophy by which he had lived his life.

 

Grauniad

But thank god you didn't get Joo hater Jez, mugs.

[bickster]

For information only

[markavfc40]

It was actually Shapps who said there were 174. They just can't help themselves can they. 

 

[Genie]

Just now, markavfc40 said:

It was actually Shapps who said there were 174. They just can't help themselves can they. 

 

174 lorries + 771 “trucks”.

 

[Genie]

Just spotted there’s a yougov.chat thing, I assume it’s the legit yougov but not 100%. Anyway I answered a couple of the questions.

 

[StefanAVFC]

Just endless cronyism.

[StefanAVFC]

2 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

Just endless cronyism.

Response threasd from the Speaker of the Lords

[HanoiVillan]

Reminder: it is the second-largest parliamentary chamber in the entire world, and the largest in any "democracy".

(Only the Chinese National People's Congress is larger. China a] is not a democracy, and b] has a population of 1.4 billion people.)

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EDITED to add scare quotes around the word 'democracy', since the very existence of the House of Lords in itself calls into question the extent to which the UK can be considered fully democratic.

Edited December 22, 2020 by HanoiVillan

[chrisp65]

Westminster isn’t working. It’s as simple as that.

Broken, and they know it, but they don’t give a shit they’re just stuffing their pockets whilst staring at us through the windows wondering how long they can get away with it. If the country is going down the toilet, you’ll need cash not to suffer, so they’re all making sure they’ve all given each other everything they need to lessen the impact of the crime on themselves.

Very high riot threshold in this country.

 

[Xann]

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, Xann said:

That’s @blandy f***ed

[bickster]

This and other bits were on CH5 last night.

Did anyone know Michael Gove did stand-up comedy? Well attempted it at least. Possibly the worst stand-up ever. There's more where this came from

 

[HanoiVillan]

For a backbench Tory MP, this guy seems dangerously independent-minded:

The whole Twitter thread is him linking to 'covid-skeptic' articles in the Telegraph (which has become the main home for this shit in the media, even more than the Mail).

This isn't the first time he's done something like this, and I was sure that the last time he did he was gonna get his collar felt, but here he is winding up the right-wing media (and let's not forget, his boss's employer). He's in danger of looking too deeply into the unholy alliance between the party he represents in Parliament and the biggest liars and grifters in the country; it might start causing cognitive dissonance if he's not careful.

Luckily his colleague is on hand in the replies to fire a warning shot:

 

[snowychap]

 

[Chindie]

It might be easier to leave Priti Patel on a volcanic island in the Atlantic alone, rather than her longer term plans to make herself lonely.

[OutByEaster?]

So if the government says schools must open, but the teachers and their unions and some parents and some councils and local authorities say no, and then the schools don't open - what happens next? 

 

[chrisp65]

4 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

So if the government says schools must open, but the teachers and their unions and some parents and some councils and local authorities say no, and then the schools don't open - what happens next? 

 

Well, I guess they get the Pritser to say it’s always been their intention to close the schools and anyone saying otherwise is being deliberately misleading.

Then suggest deportation for union membership.

 

[darrenm]

I said to the wife. We basically have no government at the moment. The schools are having to make their own decisions and ignore the government. It's a dangerous situation to be in.

[OutByEaster?]

I'm trying to think of when this has happened before - when a government has said 'this must happen' and the country has just said no.

it's weird.

[Xann]

We're just feeling our way through our new banana constitutional monarchy.