Politics

[Sonatine 11391]

 

 

[PaddockLad 17281]

Alex Massie in today’s Sunday Times...

 

 

 

So, I asked a prominent Scottish Tory, what’s your reaction to the results of the first round of voting in the Tory leadership contest? “Oh f****** hell,” came the response. Nor was this an outlier. “Buckle-up for Boris,” said another influential Tory, in the tones of a man who knows only too well this is a rollercoaster that has never earned a safety certificate and, in a more sensibly regulated world, would not be allowed to operate.

This is Boris Johnson’s contest to lose and most of the leading figures in the Scottish party are convinced the Tory membership is about to make a hideous blunder. “He’s the SNP’s candidate of choice. That fact alone is a serious worry,” says one senior Tory MSP. And yes, it is true that the prospect of Prime Minister Johnson has SNP politicians breaking out all the heart emojis. Perhaps they are mistaken about this; perhaps Johnson can once again be a Heineken candidate, who refreshes the parts other candidates cannot reach, even in Scotland. But it is worth observing that neither the Scottish Tories nor the SNP think he is.

If joy is confined in the Scottish party, there are plenty of English Tories who look on the prospect of Johnson as prime minister with dismay. “I think it leads to three elections in two years and the break-up of the United Kingdom,” says one thoughtful up-and-coming Tory MP who despairs of the turn that the party is taking.

First things must come first, however. That means seeing off the mortal threat posed by Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party. Unionism, to the minor extent it’s ever a true concern for home counties Tories, is not a priority. The SNP is a danger to be confronted another day, if indeed it ever comes to that. However much Scottish Tories might despair of this, there is at least some logic here.

Unfortunately, the essential message sent by cuddling the Brexit Party is a simple one: “Nigel Farage is right, please don’t vote for him.” The Tories are in this mess partly because, in the end, successive prime ministers have preferred to pander to the Tory right than muster the courage to tell them they’re wrong.

The dirty secret about Johnson is that not even his supporters actually think he can do the job. Hell, he can’t even answer the simple question, how many children do you have? That explains all the talk about surrounding him with good people, making sure he is given some guidance and direction, trusting that he will, in time, grow into the job. If he were ready for it, there’d be no need to talk about him as though he were a gifted but hopelessly erratic and moody teenager.

However, as Matt Hancock lamented, “making the argument for being the candidate for the future is not where the party is at the moment”. Better, by far, to indulge the party’s worst instincts and retreat into a comfort zone where all that’s required is some sub-Wodehousian language and heroic dollops of wishful thinking and nonsense about “believing in ourselves”. This is a Tory party shipwrecked by its own delusions.

Lurking somewhere, you suspect, there’s an awareness this is all their fault. Almost no kind of planned, or agreed, Brexit is plausible or possible by the October 31 deadline. That means just three options are left: accept the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Theresa May; plead for yet another extension to the article 50 process; or crash out with no deal.

Johnson has been unequivocal: we are leaving come hell or high-water, or if necessary both — on October 31. That leaves little wiggle room, even by his standards, for pretending he has not, in fact, said what everyone has heard him saying.

The party must “deliver” Brexit but many Tory voters are no longer in the mood to accept the kind of Brexit promised in 2016. Or, indeed, any kind of Brexit that could be delivered in 2019. May’s parting gift is a poisoned apple for it turns out that, if you spend years suggesting “no deal is better than a bad deal”, people will start to believe you. Her deal may not be a great one but there was never any good deal available, or at least none that would leave the United Kingdom in a better economic position than remaining an EU member state.

If not Johnson then who? If Rory Stewart could meet every Tory member — and as he walks around the country, he must be meeting plenty — he could do well. But few people in Westminster believe his candidacy will survive the next eviction from the race.

Sajid Javid’s personal story is a good one but there’s not yet much evidence there is enough to him beyond that. Nor is it clear that this iteration of the Conservative Party considers Javid’s story an inspirational one. Dominic Raab? No thanks, with knobs on. Michael Gove could do the job — even his critics might allow that he’s been a reforming minister at every department he’s run — but that, in the present circumstances, must count against him. I don’t know if he’s the opponent Johnson most fears but the contrast between a candidate with a plausibly coherent set of ideas and one with none save personal advancement would risk revealing the truth about Johnson. Namely, that he’s not good enough to do the job.

That leaves some Tories suspecting that Johnson will use some of his votes to help prop up the rival he’d most like to face in the run-off. If some of his foot soldiers must vote for Jeremy Hunt to keep him in second place then so be it. This too makes some sense, since there is no question to which Jeremy Hunt is a compelling or vote-winning answer.

But this is not a leadership election about policy or even, really, about Brexit. It is about surviving the next election, which few people at Westminster think can be delayed for long. The risk of a Jeremy Corbyn government is so acute, even Tories who know Johnson is no good will vote for him because he might help them keep their seats. They will discover that’s a Faustian pact, and the thing about such arrangements is they always end badly.

[Gemmill 44900]

Fuck me that is depressing. 

[Rayvin 5223]

We have a problem - Tory/BP electoral pact:

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7148119/Tory-donors-secret-talks-Nigel-Farage-Conservative-Brexit-party-election-pact.html

Edited June 17, 2019 by Rayvin

[Rayvin 5223]

Political values test, 70 questions but only took 5 mins:

 

https://8values.github.io/index.html

 

I'm a Social Democrat apparently.

 

https://8values.github.io/results.html?e=79.9&d=78.7&g=59.2&s=74.7

Edited June 17, 2019 by Rayvin

[ewerk 30620]

Social liberalism for me.

[Monkeys Fist 42459]

Catts for me, like. 

[Christmas Tree 4725]

[NJS 4386]

Communist, internationalist, libertarian, very progressive -  libertarian socialism. 

[Rayvin 5223]

Actually that's a good way of depicting it. My breakdown into 4 categories was:

 

Socialist, Internationalist, Moderate, Progressive

Edited June 17, 2019 by Rayvin

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

[Renton 21627]

3 hours ago, Rayvin said:

Political values test, 70 questions but only took 5 mins:

 

https://8values.github.io/index.html

 

I'm a Social Democrat apparently.

 

https://8values.github.io/results.html?e=79.9&d=78.7&g=59.2&s=74.7

 

I'm pretty much identical to that. 

[Monkeys Fist 42459]

https://8values.github.io/results.html?e=85.4&d=84.0&g=76.5&s=86.8

 

 

[Sonatine 11391]

[Kid Dynamite 7030]

[Rayvin 5223]

So this is basically a socialist echo chamber

 

I mean, I guess that was obvious. Nice to see CT being as 'down the middle' as it's possible to be as well.

[Dr Gloom 21924]

Another in the social liberal crew, always considered myself a democratic socialist but whatevs

 

[Andrew 4762]

https://8values.github.io/results.html?e=78.0&d=84.6&g=70.4&s=87.6

 

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3894]

https://8values.github.io/results.html?e=87.2&d=84.6&g=70.8&s=84.9

[TheGingerQuiff 2412]

Tbf mine might be wrong because I didn't understand some of the questions 

[Howmanheyman 33245]

[Anorthernsoul 1221]

[PaddockLad 17281]

 

[ewerk 30620]

I heard those rumours yesterday. Entirely unethical and undemocratic so likely to be true.

[ewerk 30620]

 

I'm not sure that painting Johnson's rival as an internation man of mystery is going to have the negative effect that the Telegraph intended.