Point taken
Not without getting a jibe in though eh? 🙄
My wife also declared we are emigrating if Boris gets back in. I'm hoping he has it snatched away at the last minute but am resigned to another couple of years of chaos and stupidity.
MrsRNP and I have (for now) jokingly decided that if Boris gets back in we’ll sell up and move to Scotland anywhere except this dog shit strewn right wing dump. I don’t think she realises I’m seriously up for that.
We didn’t wait for “the second coming” of Johnstone before selling up and moving to Scotland - took that decision in December 2019 after the General Election. Up here Johnson is the preferred candidate as it’s more likely to result in Indy.
That's why we would be heading there - Johnson in Scotland's more than likely out...
If it was up to me I would rather that Gordon Brown took over as PM
I know what you mean. Last decent PM we had, got the economy growing again after the banking meltdown (check, it’s true) and a genuinely honest and decent guy according to those I know who met or worked with him. Shouldn’t have stuck to his assessment when he noted that woman was saying racist things.
We didn’t rate him at the time, but look at those since.
Gordon Brown's fate rested upon his failure to call an early election whilst his stock was high. We are all probably worse off owing to his hesitancy but history does tend to pivot around such moments.
We can each trace the origins of this s*** storm of one particular event or actor, Thatcher, Blair Cameron or whoever but I don't think it's very helpful. The truth is that the politics of the past decade has been shaped far more by reality TV than by the actions of previous leaders.
Boris comes in to lead the party and calls and immediate election with a promise to step down after the win. ( before the outcome of the investigation)
Apparently Johnson and Sunak are meeting now. So we'll find out what kind of stitch-up they are inflicting on the rest of us in due course.
What I don't get is what Johnson can offer Sunak, and vice versa. Both of them would only accept being PM. Neither of them would want another, inferior role at this point.
We would all have been very much worse off if Brown and Darling had not acted decisively in 2008/9.
I find it inconceivable - without being able to prove it - that the tories at the time could have come anywhere close to the level of economic and societal support which labour delivered at the time.
Not to mention their influence on the US Fed at the time.
Despite his short tenure, I think history is starting to look quite favourably on Gordon Brown.
Inky, my exact point.
Brown was a PM who said...the stit storm has hit us; we can mitigate the effects but it will still hurt - understand that doing nothing will be massively more painful.
IMO that demonstrated a high level of honesty and integrity.
He was from perfect but...cometh the hour, cometh the man
If johnson is that 'man' we're truly stuffed.
I find it inconceivable – without being able to prove it – that the tories at the time could have come anywhere close to the level of economic and societal support which labour delivered at the time.
Well there is some evidence to how the Tories would have acted had they been in government at the time by looking at how they behaved in previous severe economic crisis.
In the great recession of the early 1980s Thatcher poured petrol on the fire by slashing spending on everything but unemployment and doubling it to over 3 million.
In the recession of the early 1990s which saw the greatest collapse of the housing market in UK history John Major sat back and did nothing as the "market adjusted" leaving millions either homeless or prisoners of negative equity.
I was never a fan of Gordon Brown, for me he was the brains behind New Labour and Tony Blair was the poster boy with the mouth.
However imo there is no doubt that his, and Darling's, handling of the greatest global financial crisis since the 1930s was enormously successful and they deserve full credit for that.
So successful in fact in helping people keep their jobs and homes that many people failed to appreciate just how serious the situation was.
Although Gordon Brown lost the following general election, in part due to the lies told by the Tories and LibDems, the Tories themselves also failed to win and had to rely on the LibDems to prop up their right-wing austerity agenda.
Bearing in mind that Labour had been in government for 13 years by then and the electorate always eventually tires of the ruling party, and the official opposition party was unable to win a majority, that isn't too shabby by any means.
Blinkin’ Nora.
This has turned into the closest thing to a Gordon Brown love-in I can imagine. Like or loathe the methods he stood for, he was competent, honest and caring ad a PM.
Make GB great again.
PS - just spotted in my earlier post, it should have read that he should have stuck to his assessment of the racist comments - they were.
Yes, people finally (12 years too late) realising Gordon Brown was (at least as politicians go) a decent honest man who could calmly do the right thing.
If he'd been in charge st rhe start of 2020 I may suggest we'd have both had fewer than the 250,000 deaths( QUARTER OF A MILLION DEAD) related to covid, and maybe the economy not as stuffed fullnof debt by it.
Now in 2022 we'd absolutely not have the £ more volatile and devalued than the Turkish Lira or the mahoosive pension scheme losses of the past few weeks.
(Think about that - BT pension lost £11 BILLION in the past 2-3 weeks. If that scheme goes tits up, its the tax payer that has to step in to fill the gap. And the same with many more.
MoreCashThanDash
Full Member
Wife and I have (for now) jokingly decided that if Boris gets back in we’ll sell up and move to Scotland. I don’t think she realises I’m seriously up for that.
Similar conversation has occurred here too!
We also had this conversation over tea tonight. Suspect that I was being more serious about it than Zoe... Apart from my Scots dad meaning I do have roots up there, I'm really feeling pretty angry (and I'm normally very chill) about the prospect that anyone would even consider BJ coming back as PM as anything other than a REALLY stupid joke of a suggestion.
This country (well, a small but weirdly important part of me) is starting to sicken me more and more. Even though I'm a 'child of Thatcher' I feel more pessimistic about the state of things right now than I have at any other point in my life so far.
I hope johnson gets in, the government collapses again in a couple of months and Charles does what he gets paid to live in all them castles for and dissolves parliament, then the electorate decimate the tories and a center left coalition get in with a ginormous mandate to fundamentally rewire the british system.
unfortunately it'll be bullshit, bankrupt schools, powercuts and queues for bread
I voted no at the last indy ref. and also no for Brexit. But I've got to say the more this government carries on the more likely I am to vote yes if there is another indy ref. The prospect of Bojo back in, never mind any Tory is just too much.
If ever there was a time for Charles to say enough is enough and have a GE it would be now surely.It could even save 'The Union' long term if that happened.
It currently sounds like the Johnson team are publicly stating they have 100 backers, while desperately still cold calling MP's trying to rustle up support in the background. It is basically a template for his whole political career, a facade of public bravado and bullshit covering over reality.
@longdog - same here. As soon as the Brexit result was announced, I knew an independent Scotland was inevitable.
I think now the dust has settled a bit that the tories that wanted clown back in are starting to realise that he would probably wreck the party from inside. Even the right wing press that have supported him are acknowledging that, although I still suspect he will want to go forward and try and have another crack at being PM.
However imo there is no doubt that his, and Darling’s, handling of the greatest global financial crisis since the 1930s was enormously successful and they deserve full credit for that.
I'm being unashamedly lazy here so apologies, but my F.i.L (and subsequently my wife) keep trotting out statements about Gordon Brown selling off gold reserves and doing something damaging to pensions, what are they talking about exactly?
(will go Google also)
I still suspect he will want to go forward and try and have another crack at being PM.
Not against that.....
1/ answer the various standards allegations / investigations against him and let's see if he's fit to be an MP let alone PM
2/ stand again for party leader once the outcomes are known and via a proper leadership contest, not a cobbled together coronation.
3/ have that validated by a GE when the public are also appraised of the man's character (good or bad, let's find out by the appropriate standards committees, etc.)
If after all that he has another crack at being PM, he'll have got there honestly and we'll deserve it for good or bad.
independent Scotland was inevitable.
Will never happen.
Would require delicate discussions and debate between mature and reasonable government. I have some degree of faith in Nichola Sturgeon in this respect, less in the SNP as a whole. Less said about the current Westminster lot the better, could you imagine Braverman, Hunt, Johnson etc. engaging in any sort of meaningful debate? They'd probably see a robust put down as red meat for the Daily Mail and the ERG types.
Interesting article on Conservative Home website by Paul Goodman about the way the nominations and voting works. Basically suggesting that you should not take any public declaration of support by an MP as being the way they actually will vote. That cuts two ways for the candidates
even Brady won’t know how his colleagues vote in the event of an election. An MP could declare that he is supporting a candidate, nominate another…and vote for yet another. Meet “the most sophisticated electorate in the world”.
Tell him he can run if he gets a ****ing haircut and combs it every day.
TBH I don’t see why Javid Savid doesn’t get as much the love as much as Richie Sunass.
His principles to not sack his advisors cost him his job and put the tax fiddling junior on the podium.
Not that I have love for either, I can’t see either of them pulling a chicken out the hat to sort out the mess their party have presided over without joe public getting a beating.
As much as I don’t,like Savid much the only reason I think we have Richie is due to amount of Wonga he has influence over with his missuss(and appeal to the Tory party) not his stellar finance acumen.
Tell him he can run if he gets a **** haircut and combs it ever
TBH looking at the holiday pics, I don’t think he could physically run anywhere nowadays, he does seem to be enjoying the good life.
As opposed to his attempts to lose weight after covid, which were important then.
I wouldn’t normally body shame but he’s on my shit list for Brexit and handling of covid and conning a nation.
Oh no mate, it's okay, that body is shameful.
3/ have that validated by a GE when the public are also appraised of the man’s character (good or bad, let’s find out by the appropriate standards committees, etc.)
I think you're crediting the electorate with far too much intelligence. I've got colleagues at work who were practically cheering at the return of the honking pudding. They think all his "shenanigans" are a good thing!
I’m being unashamedly lazy here so apologies, but my F.i.L (and subsequently my wife) keep trotting out statements about Gordon Brown selling off gold reserves and doing something damaging to pensions, what are they talking about exactly?
Gordon Brown's gold reserve sell off is a standard line trotted out by Tory supporters to criticise him. IMO it is irrelevant to his handling of the international credit crisis.
Gordon "no return to boom and bust" Brown got a lot of things wrong imo, including his obsession with alleged wage driven inflation/government subsidies of low wage employers, the drive for private sector involvement/commitment to the free market, but to his undeniable credit he threw the neo-liberal rulebook out of the window, as many other governments also did, when the international credit crisis hit the UK.
He and Alistair Darling were highly successful in pumping money into the public sector to prop up the private sector thereby, along with other measures such as slashing VAT, saving an incomprehensible amount of jobs and unemployment never reaching the expected levels.
Despite the crises being far worse than the one inspired by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s unemployment never reached anywhere near the over 3 million which occurred under her premiership.
Gordon Brown was willing to allow socialism to once again save capitalism in a crisis, for which he was later punished. It is hard to imagine that Thatcher, Major, and Cameron, would have been so responsive - Thatcher made her crises worse by taking money away, Major sat back and did nothing during his crises when people were losing their homes and were trapped in negative equity, and Cameron decided to create his own crisis as soon as he became PM by introducing brutal austerity which caused countless misery and unnecessary deaths.
Johnson did, it has to be said, significantly allow socialism to come to the rescue during the crisis caused by the pandemic, other Tories would undoubtedly have taken a trump-like light-touch denialist attitude, but I don't think you are allow to say anything vaguely positive about Johnson on here.**
Gordon Brown's sell off of UK gold reserves whether right or wrong is pretty irrelevant in the whole scheme of things, the figure his accusers use is less than £5 billion, how does that compare with the size of the UK economy?
The previous Tory Chancellor promised to spunk £45 billion on unnecessary tax giveaways, with even more later, before being unceremoniously sacked.
Edit: ** To be clear I have no doubt whatsoever that a Labour PM, any Labour PM, would have coped with the pandemic better than Johnson. Before I get the predictable accusation that I am a Tory/Johnson supporter.
The fact that there seems to be some "senior" Tory MPs who are saying that while they're with and support Johnson, they won't do so publicly until 1. He declares he's actually in the race and 2. He's got >100 votes.
Neither which is there with about 24 hours to go.
Johnson did, it has to be said, significantly allow socialism to come to the rescue during the crisis caused by the pandemic, other Tories would undoubtedly have taken a trump-like light-touch denialist attitude, but I don’t think you are allow to say anything vaguely positive about Johnson on here.**
- Johnson's main competitor to lead the party in 2019 was Hunt. During the heights of the pandemic he consistently called for the government to do more earlier, not less later (we were less prepared for the pandemic partly because of his actions while in government.. perhaps it was guilt that led him to call out Johnson's government for not being interventionist soon enough once it had hit).
- Johnson's main competitor to lead the party in 2022 is Sunak. During the heights of the pandemic he, er, did those things you're crediting Johnson with. If the furlough scheme etc was "socialism", then it was devised and delivered by another Tory, not Johnson.
Our pandemic response was often too late because Johnson, personally, did not want interventions, and delayed and delayed 'till he could delay no more. The price was high. The price paid wasn't purely down to the conservatives being in power, Johnson was and is responsible for those delays in taking necessary action.
[ I said I'd shut up, but this continued reassessment of Johnson's pandemic response is pure hokum ]
For what its worth, the cashout figure on my bet on Johnson being the next PM has been going up continuously
Make of that what you will
I'm not cashing out.
Despite the party grandees desperately trying to avoid it, this looks like a Rishi/Johnson run off being put to the membership and theres only going to be one winner there
At which point I'll put another bet on Johnson being out before Christmas
At which point I’ll put another bet on Johnson being out before Christmas
Wish someone had given me odds on two new PMs before the year is out during the period of mourning.
The gold reserve sell off was massively overstated. He did sell at exactly the wrong time for gold, but then invested in US securities at exactly the right time, so it ended up overall bad, but as Ernie says in the grand scheme of things it was peanuts. By current chancellor standards (pick any of the recent ones) the losses were tiny.
In fact the size of the gold loss pales in comparison to the pension fund tax he introduced (or rather tax break he got rid of). That cost pension funds a lot of money but they were already a house of cards ready to collapse, he just didn't see it - his tax took a lot of money out of the system and precipitated the curtailment of final salary pensions (which to be honest were always a bad idea) as well as help create some black holes in some pension funds. The reality was though that the intention was he was taxing the 'excess' which it turns out wasn't really there, but because of the way they were leveraged with so many complex finance deals, it looked like they were in rude health, but when 2008 came along I suspect it would have unravelled either way as it all fell apart.
It's worth noting on that while it was generally bad idea in hindsight, the size of the pensions hole completely dwarves the tax raid from Gordon Brown. They were totally inadequately capitalised to cope with the increasing life expectancy of their defined pension recipients, nor were they protected against the wild fluctuations in the market we've seen in the last 20 years. Further, subsequent to the pension tax increase, they (the funds, the gov, companies, individuals) have done very little to increase contributions, and the UK still lags miles behind everyone else in that regard.
So in conclusion, yes GB did some stupid stuff, yes he shouldn't have done it, no in the grand scheme of things its not that important, even for pension holders.
I didn't vote Labour in 2010... looking back on the fallout of Brown leaving government... a big mistake.
I’m not cashing out.
For what it's worth, I'd cash out now. What can you get at the moment? What will you get if he becomes the next PM?
Johnson’s main competitor to lead the party in 2022 is Sunak. During the heights of the pandemic he..
Outrage as prime ministerial hopeful says science advisers failed to acknowledge trade-offs of Covid restrictions
Conservative leadership contender Rishi Sunak has come under fire for claiming it was a mistake to “empower scientists” during the Covid-19 pandemic—sparking outrage from academics.
According to the former chancellor, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies—which provided the government with scientific advice during the pandemic—had too much influence on decision-making.
Graham Medley, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the government had the power, “so if one member of cabinet thinks that scientific advice was too ‘empowered’ then it is a criticism of their colleagues rather than the scientists”.
Yes, when trying to get the votes off of Conservative members Sunak played that game, as did Truss. We've been over that already. I suppose the only way to avoid this endless circle is for me to shut up, and leave you to keep up the fluffing of Johnson's reputation in peace. Carry on...
For what it’s worth, I’d cash out now. What can you get at the moment? What will you get if he becomes the next PM?
I stuck a fiver on it at 7/1 (in March). Its up to a tenner cashout at the moment. If he gets the hundred nominations and it goes to the members, he'll walk it
In the meantime, good old Mad Nads campaign/love affair the the flytipped sofa provides a constant source of amusement. Looks like she's been on the gin nice and early today
https://twitter.com/NadineDorries/status/1584096059621797888?s=20&t=iq63S6VM89uTgtHloWazFA
Is there much to be gained 'arguing' over which of these dreadful bunch are the better or worse? It's like deciding which of the four horsemen you'd prefer. None of us have any say in who it will be anyway.
If he gets the hundred nominations and it goes to the members, he’ll walk it
Part of me hopes that 100+ have promised him their nominations, but then when it comes to it loads don't submit them. It's secret after all. There must be plenty of MPs who have heard him promise them support, only for it not to materialise. The chance for a bit of payback is there. Push him into declaring he's standing, only to then get less than 100 nominations.
At which point I’ll put another bet on Johnson being out before Christmas
Nah, if he wins he'll be in for two years imo. The whole point of MPs throwing their weight behind Johnson is that him becoming PM again instantly bats away the growing call for an early general election, Ben Wallace made that point a couple of days ago.
Sunak would simply increase the call for an early general election to a deafening pitch, so if he wins Starmer might possibly be PM by Christmas, as the government losses all authority and legitimacy.
If Johnson is reinstalled no one (Tory) will dare to attempt to remove him from office.
I still think Sunak will win though. And I am leaning towards the hope that he does, but only because of the suggested scenario.
