Who will be the next permanent manager of the Conservatives?

[BFTD]

4 minutes ago, Boo Khaki said:

I'm bemused at this idea that the law somehow changes if the person practicing it is a 'lefty'.

Terms like 'lefty', 'socialist', and 'Marxist' have changed radically in recent years. They don't seem to have much to do with views on the political spectrum now, but are used to denigrate people who are perceived as being capable of empathy. The worrying part is that people on the right believe that's a winning strategy, and that they might be correct.

We've been slowly morphing into a society that worships psychopathy.

[Boo Khaki]

3 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Terms like 'lefty', 'socialist', and 'Marxist' have changed radically in recent years. They don't seem to have much to do with views on the political spectrum now, but are used to denigrate people who are perceived as being capable of empathy. The worrying part is that people on the right believe that's a winning strategy, and that they might be correct.

We've been slowly morphing into a society that worships psychopathy.

Yeah, it's quite clear what they actually mean by 'exploited by lefty lawyers' is 'c***s with the temerity to stand up to our legally dubious policies'.

I was just saying that no matter the politics of any lawyer who challenges it, the law remains the same, so if the policy fails due to a legal challenge it was the policy that was flawed in the first place, not the motivations of the lawyer challenging it.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Boo Khaki

[Left Back]

2 minutes ago, Boo Khaki said:

Yeah, it's quite clear what they actually mean by 'exploited by lefty lawyers' is 'c***s with the temerity to stand up to our legally dubious policies'.

I was just saying that no matter the politics of any lawyer who challenges it, the law remains the same, so if the policy fails due to a legal challenge it was the policy that was flawed in the first place, not the motivations of the lawyer challenging it.

The written law might remain the same but the interpretation of it can change.  Law isn't always a black and white thing.

[Boo Khaki]

Just now, Left Back said:

The written law might remain the same but the interpretation of it can change.  Law isn't always a black and white thing.

Sure, but the jist of it is that it's a ridiculous attempt to smear the person for a failure of policy which is entirely on them.

The entire point of a government is to make law and govern. If you can't do that without your policies being pulled apart in court then you are failing as a government on a fundamental level. It's not something unique to this Tory crew, New Labour had an enormous problem with it as well despite Bliar returning enormous majorities, the only difference being that they struggled to get poorly conceived and badly written legislation through the Lords before it even got to the point of being challenged in court, but still, it's a blatant attempt to smear individuals doing absolutely nothing wrong in order to deflect from your own inadequacy and penchant for shithouse legislation.

[carpetmonster]

1 hour ago, RiG said:

So much for levelling up...

 

Isn’t that what ‘leveling up’ has mostly been anyway? I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve read in the Graun that the divestment of funds to Tory constituencies vs anyone else is something like 90/10. 
 

ETA - 80/20 apparently 

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-06-08/nearly-80-of-towns-getting-share-of-725m-of-government-funding-represented-by-conservative-mps

Edited August 5, 2022 by carpetmonster

[RiG]

34 minutes ago, Boo Khaki said:

I'm bemused at this idea that the law somehow changes if the person practicing it is a 'lefty'.

I feel like it's a similar thing to being "woke" (an utterly atrocious word) which now seems to mean no more than "You're doing / saying something I don't like."

[Clown Job]

1 hour ago, RiG said:

So much for levelling up...

 

From the guy who didn’t have any working class friends growing up 

Im shocked 

But lets be honest, the majority of Tories think the same 

[ICTJohnboy]

1 hour ago, Clown Job said:

From the guy who didn’t have any working class friends growing up 

Im shocked 

But lets be honest, the majority of Tories think the same 

 

Of course they do, and Sunak's simple statement will help win him the leadership contest.

[Gordon EF]

4 hours ago, Caledonian1 said:

I am still not convinced that Truss will win the leadership election (although to be fair I have probably under estimated the inherent racism of your average Tory party member)

Another four weeks of her looking glackit and unstable?  I am sure voters have still have the ability to change their minds...i simply can't see her being PM....as others have pointed out, with the incompetence of Johnson without any of the percieved charm or personality.  If I was still a betting man I would be tempted to have a punt on Sunak.

She may well have already won it. Tory members have been voting for weeks. If enough of them voted early for Truss, it won't matter whether she breaks down on screen, shits herself and begins crying right before the close of voting.

[CambieBud]

3 minutes ago, Gordon EF said:

She may well have already won it. Tory members have been voting for weeks. If enough of them voted early for Truss, it won't matter whether she breaks down on screen, shits herself and begins crying right before the close of voting.

Apparently they can change their vote right up to the deadline!

[O'Kelly Isley III]

21 minutes ago, CambieBud said:

Apparently they can change their vote right up to the deadline!

No they can't - that facility was cancelled earlier this week due to fears over hacking.

[welshbairn]

21 minutes ago, Gordon EF said:

She may well have already won it. Tory members have been voting for weeks. If enough of them voted early for Truss, it won't matter whether she breaks down on screen, shits herself and begins crying right before the close of voting.

The ballot papers are supposed to be going out this week , GCHQ warned them about a security flaw in their system so they delayed it.

[CambieBud]

5 minutes ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

No they can't - that facility was cancelled earlier this week due to fears over hacking.

Fair enough. I hadn’t read any update 

[Boo Khaki]

55 minutes ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

No they can't - that facility was cancelled earlier this week due to fears over hacking.

"Robert Mugabe wins Conservative Leadership race"

[Dons_1988]

Watching the announcement from the Bank of England yesterday in conjunction with the Tory leader debate is frankly depressing and very frightening.

Ive always thought there’s a lot of hysteria in political debate but I’ve never felt so uneasy about the future. 

[SJFCtheTeamForMe]

3 hours ago, Day of the Lords said:

Thinking back to when quite a few folk felt sorry for Amess with a wry smile. 

They're ALL c***s. 

 

I don't claim to be some perfect special nice person but it's apparent there's people who are next level in terms of greed and selfishness than the likes of you and I could even comprehend. To have the attitude they have is absolutely disgusting and I genuinely don't understand how they can sleep at night with the level of distain they have for what's actually the real people living in the real world.

It's genuinely "f**k poor people. If they die so be it. Peasants" 

Indeed they're all c***s.

Edited August 5, 2022 by SJFCtheTeamForMe

[Antlion]

3 hours ago, RiG said:

I feel like it's a similar thing to being "woke" (an utterly atrocious word) which now seems to mean no more than "You're doing / saying something I don't like."

It seems to be the replacement for “PC gawn mad”, which was always just a euphemism for “anything that stops me being racist/homophobic/transphobic/misogynistic”.

[Salt n Vinegar]

3 hours ago, Clown Job said:

From the guy who didn’t have any working class friends growing up 

Im shocked 

But lets be honest, the majority of Tories think the same 

Hmm.. The New Statesman could make a few bob here. I wonder how much they could charge the SNP, Labour, the LibDems and Plaid Cymru for that clip, which should be the first few seconds of every party political/election broadcast for the next 10 years? 

Edited August 5, 2022 by Salt n Vinegar

[scottsdad]

The sad thing now is looking at both Johnson and these two candidates, I get the feeling we have lost the idea of a serious and thoughtful prime minister. 

Growing up, prime ministers seemed like very proper and very serious people. Growing up in the 80s that was Thatcher - who wouldn't give any of these lunatics the steam off her pish. Some folk loved her, some hated her, but I doubt anybody doubted she was serious and committed to what (she thought) was the best for the country. 

Even lightweights like John Major, Theresa May and David Cameron were grounded with some sense of duty. Can anyone doubt Gordon Broon was a serious politician? Or Tony Blair (for his faults)? For these people, being PM carried a sense of duty and obligation. 

It's like we have gone from having serious people to having cartoon characters running the country. The desperation coming off Sunak is palpable. Truss is just a hand grenade - Johnson without the personality. 

[Boo Khaki]

15 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

The sad thing now is looking at both Johnson and these two candidates, I get the feeling we have lost the idea of a serious and thoughtful prime minister. 

Growing up, prime ministers seemed like very proper and very serious people. Growing up in the 80s that was Thatcher - who wouldn't give any of these lunatics the steam off her pish. Some folk loved her, some hated her, but I doubt anybody doubted she was serious and committed to what (she thought) was the best for the country. 

Even lightweights like John Major, Theresa May and David Cameron were grounded with some sense of duty. Can anyone doubt Gordon Broon was a serious politician? Or Tony Blair (for his faults)? For these people, being PM carried a sense of duty and obligation. 

It's like we have gone from having serious people to having cartoon characters running the country. The desperation coming off Sunak is palpable. Truss is just a hand grenade - Johnson without the personality. 

It's gone full Trump. The basic concept that who gives a f**k about how offensive or outrageous you are, provided you other your opponent to the point whereby there's enough of 'us' to ensure victory over 'them', why the f**k would you give a single shiny shite about the 'them' or how repulsive your behaviours and actions towards them are?

I totally get what you are saying about politicians of the past as I was going to post something similar myself. The difference is often put down to 'convictions' versus the current lot just being a load of self-serving charlatans who are entirely out for themselves, but I don't think that adequately covers it. Ambitious politicians have always had a streak of ruthless self-interest, but that was tempered by an understanding that when you govern you are governing an entire electorate, not just pandering to the ones you know will back you. 

Trump showed that no matter how ridiculous you are as a human being, no matter how ridiculous your policies, provided enough of the electorate are ridiculous enough themselves to agree with you and vote for you, you're on pretty steady ground. I know it's not as simple as 'the people who elect these idiots are fucking reprehensible idiots themselves', but there is undoubtedly a degree of that at play both in the US with Trump and with the Tories of the past 5 years.

Remember when Cameron went to lengths to try to rehabilitate the Conservatives reputation as being the 'nasty' party? Well all of that has gone out of the window and we're now at a point where they have surpassed anything that happened under the 'bad old years' of Thatcherism. The inherent right-leaning tendencies of the English electorate have encouraged and emboldened the swivel-eyed right in the party of governance, to the point whereby they've managed to convince England and Wales to commit and egregious act of self-harm by voting to leave the EU, they've managed to legitimise complete fucking morons as PM candidates by indulging in continual dead-cat ruses, lying to the point of ridiculousness, and telling a sizeable minority of thick, bigoted morons exactly what they want to hear. The problem is that minority is enough to permit the Tories to hang on to absolute power, which they then use not to govern the UK in it's own best interest, but to abuse for their own ends. 

I'm genuinely surprised that none of the original candidates in the Tory leadership race attempted to open up a discourse on the return of Capital punishment, because as unpopular a position that is with the wider electorate, it's exactly the sort of thing that goes down a storm with the people these folk are pandering to. I mean, who gives a f**k about a policy that is overwhelmingly unpopular if you are talking about the electorate as a whole if it's still hugely popular with a minority that is still large enough to get you elected thanks to a totally broken system you can abuse?

These politicians are caricatures. Vacuous ideologues that would have been ridiculed as joke-figures even ten years ago, but that's another stunt the right of the Tory party pulled. They made the environment and debate so toxic and idiotic that every last one of the 'decent' moderates thought 'f**k this' and either left the party or left politics altogether. It's not even unique to the Tory party. Look at how the Labour Party has completely imploded and self-immolated since the New Labour farce. That's not because New Labour isn't really a thing any more, it's because Blair abused the same cult of personality shite to dumb-down politics himself, abandoned everything that actually held the Labour party together in the first place, filled it with the same vacuous, self-serving careerists that the Tory party is now full of, and left it a pointless, directionless husk when he finally fucked-off into the sunset to do the lucrative speaking tours. 

This omnishambles didn't start with Johnson, or even May or Cameron. It started with Blair, and it's most of the reason why I despise the c**t with a fire that I can't even work up for Thatcher.