Playing devils advocate, at the time, he gambled on the public being bright enough to vote to remain in the EU

The counterargument is he was as deluded about his talents as Johnson is. He brought into the myth of his background in PR making him a genius at it (when in reality it was a sabbatical job from politics arranged by his mum) after winning the AV referendum and then the Scottish one.
Both times with the odds heavily stacked in his favour with a united party and mostly united media.

So he thought it would be easier enough to win number three and cement his legacy only to find without being propped up he was way out of his depth.

And forgot that he is there for the good of the country not for the benefit of the Tory party

That’s a condition of being a tory member isn’t it? party before country? I jest (sadly).

Reports that he wants to stay on, in part, because he has a wedding do planned at chequers.

EXCL: Boris Johnson and wife Carrie are planning big wedding bash at Chequers within weeks – with sources saying it's part of reason he wants to stay as caretaker. https://t.co/oUSLeGs4Ed

— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) July 7, 2022

That’s a condition of being a tory member isn’t it? party before country? I jest (sadly)

It’s a precondition of being a member of any party. You’re there because you think their vision is better than any other for the country (or you) and therefore the betterment of that party is the betterment of the country. You may personally agree with the labour/green/libdem/ukip or what ever but ultimately you make decisions in the interests of the party and the country because you think they’re one and the same.

It’s very rare people are given the option to do something very clearly against the national interest or not and choose not.

Good lord @tomhoward are you getting your news from the actual papers?

Is anyone else concerned that if he’s not gone within a week, he’ll not go? Come up with some national emergency that means he ‘has’ to stay?

Got there in the end, but yeah…

EXCL: Boris Johnson and wife Carrie are planning big wedding bash at Chequers within weeks – with sources saying it's part of reason he wants to stay as caretaker. https://t.co/oUSLeGs4Ed

— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) July 7, 2022

Hard to believe he’s clinging on until the last.

Gauss. I believe that is his plan

The people that get to decide who the next leader and PM is, are the paid up conservative party members, not the electorate.

The conservative party only has 200,000 members (vs labour 430,000).

Now imagine people who are so tory they pay to be a member of the party. These are the people choosing.

Well you say that, but I am a fully paid up member of the Tory party. It cost me a whole Scottish pound but it does mean I get to vote for the next leader. Obviously not being a complete xxxx I’d never vote Tory in a million years.

I do appreciate that I am breaking their rules, but I’m only doing so in a very limited and specific way, so that’s OK, right?

So, do I vote for the candidate that will do the least damage to the country, or the one who will do the most damage to the party?

Could be the same person. You want an incompetent so Raaaaaab or Truss as their incompetence means they will achieve nothing so not making the situation worse.

Wallace an Tugboat seem to br vaguely competent so avoid.

Johnson has no ideology so cannot be put on a rught left scale and under his premiership we have had brexit an act of folly so huge it has caused more damage to the people of Britain than anything imagined by any other tory and a vile racist immigration policy which again is more right wing than anything from any other tory and breaks international law

‘Brexit: Bad’ ‘Racist’ and ‘Right Wing’ all in one paragraph! You just missed ‘Gammons’ for the full-house 🤣

You want an incompetent so Raaaaaab

thankfully Raab ruled himself out this afternoon, please keep up.

Crikey … looking the potential candidates for PM everyone knows they have no leadership quality whatsoever.

Based on the list from your favourite non-bias factual newspaper DailyXXX something …

Sunak … nope. Zero quality leadership. Will be a disaster PM.
Javid … nope. Zero quality leadership. Will be disaster PM.
Hunt … nope. Zero quality leadership and probably become UK dear leader with string pulled by you know who.
Wallace … Probably 1st Deputy PM. Not brilliant but can do. His current role suits him fine.
Truss … nope. Not disaster but weak.
Mordaunt … She should be the next PM so long as she can stand strong.
Zahawi … Probably close as 1st Deputy but his background put him at a disadvantage with the public. Politically he might be slightly better than Wallace and perhaps many more.

Bottom line none of the list above can handle true leadership but that’s the best there are for now.

Let’s face it, whatever the tory replacement for johnson is, it ain’t gonna be nice. Could be slightly more moderate, could be slightly more insane.

The big take home from this, for me is that at least even the tories won’t tolerate a pure hard right dictatorship.
But the worry is, they technically could if they wanted to.

The premiership for him is all about party central and maximising the inlets of pleasure. All the people suffering from falling incomes can look on and in like peasants in a Breughel painting. He just wants to empty the cellars and coffers before his bio is ghostwritten and he sails off to sunlit uplands. Utter scum.

because he has a wedding do planned at chequers.

Is this with Carrie or is there going to be another vacancy for a mistress?

The big take home from this, for me is that at least even the tories won’t tolerate a pure hard right dictatorship.

Generally speaking they are all poor quality political candidates including those unicorn riding oppositions.

Anyone that wants to show some guts will be labeled as “dictator”.

At the end of the day most are just mediocre quality who cannot really lead other than maintaining the system. The system will punish them for trying …

Therefore, we are heading in the direction of unicorn world.

@ Klunk
That bloke is always angry …LOL!

He gambled the future of the country out of fear of losing a few tory votes.

That is beyond reckless, it’s the height of fear/stupidity.

Cameron was as concerned about his place in history and legacy as Boris is, he wanted to been the PM that healed a 40 year rift in the Tory party, shutting the “Euro-skeptics” up once and for all (remember when we called them that?).

He was as full of Hubris as Boris ever was (is). But of course he didn’t count on aligned funding from various RW groups, , concerted targeted messaging, Cambridge Analytica, Russian bot farms, weak support from the Labour leader, etc, etc…

The thing is the Brexit referendum was a conservative party internal issue that spilled over and dragged the whole nation in too. It’s cast such a long shadow that it’s still affecting our political landscape today and a candidates support for or lack thereof can still be the deciding factor for voters long after the deal was done.

The common thread in all of this is the conservative party, they’ve stayed in power throughout, they’ve torn the country apart and ruined our international reputation. Worst of all they’re still a divided, in-fighting, backstabbing bunch that can’t go 3 years without knifing their leaders…

Cameron’s folly will last a decade plus, it’s his ‘greatest’ legacy and really it should have triggered a spell in opposition for the Tories already, if this latest episode in that chain of events doesn’t cost them the next GE, then frankly it’s the voting public that are the problem. We get the government we deserve that’s how democracy works…

We’re a first world country with working people so poor that they have to rely on foodbanks, all because we’ve spent half a decade fixated on how much 52% of our population dislike foreigners. We should be bloody ashamed and kick the **** that have lead us throughout this period out of office at the first opportunity…

Boris leaving is fine, but I just want the whole venial, self serving nest of vipers out ASAP, nobody can trust a Tory, not even another Tory…

Therefore, we are heading in the direction of unicorn world.

https://goo.gl/maps/p8VyR95zp3a7cGxr5

Supplies available here.

The big take home from this, for me is that at least even the tories won’t tolerate a pure hard right dictatorship that makes them look bad.

FTFY

They were happy with him when he was winning. The whole lot* were complicit in everything he did, until they smelt blood and threw him to the dogs. He gets no sympathy from me, but his comments about “the herd” were accurate.

* Basically all of them except a select few tories who actually publicly opposed the clown in chief before this latest saga.

EDIT: What Mr Pie said 😀

We’re a first world country with working people so poor that they have to rely on foodbanks, all because we’ve spent half a decade fixated on how much 52% of our population dislike foreigners. We should be bloody ashamed and kick the **** that have lead us throughout this period out of office at the first opportunity

The root cause is 40 years of excessive neoliberalism that has failed so much of the country, that populist lies offer more hope than the continued abandonment by mainstream politics.

Marvellous – same old same old. We seem to be in a game of Boris Says – Boris didn’t say resign. A round of enemy of the people – conservative MPs. Three months is a decent enough time for him to be on manoeuvres and try to wriggle out of it. He’s set out his agenda and no new policies just means nothing to see here move along; anything floated already will be fair game. He seems to already have the narrative and is no doubt running to the front ready to shout follow me. I expect he’ll try to interfere with the selection of the new leader as much as possible. No one could do it better / thin pickings for a replacement. Depressingly we could have decades of him trying to get back into power and a re-set of the Boris and Donald show.

Is anyone else concerned that if he’s not gone within a week, he’ll not go? Come up with some national emergency that means he ‘has’ to stay?

I’d say it’s a fair bet he’ll at least try. Probably more than once.

working people so poor that they have to rely on foodbanks, all because we’ve spent half a decade fixated on how much 52% of our population dislike foreigners.

Food banks first appeared in the UK when we had a Labour government and the UK was a full EU member.

Food banks are not the result of anything which has happened on the last 5 years, including UK attitude to foreigners.

It is supremely ironic that on a thread in which alleged dishonesty is a reoccurring theme that something so blatantly untrue should be said purely for political gain.

The Tories clearly don’t have a monopoly on that tactic!

Maybe if they introduced mandatory random drug testing for all MPs he would **** off sharpish.

Food banks have always existed in some form or other.

Use of food banks has escalated dramatically during the last 12 years of Tory rule. That fact can’t be denied.

The fact that food banks are needed at all in a G7 nation should be a worry both morally and economically. Massive inequality in wealth distribution.

Food banks are not the result of anything which has happened on the last 5 years, including UK attitude to foreigners.

The exponential increase in food bank use can be laid quite squarely at this governing party’s feet. The Blair years allowed them to get started.

I’m of the German way of thinkings. We don’t need charity in this country we need to pay progressive taxes across the whole of society and the state needs to care for it’s citizens without profits for shareholders. There is and never was the ability to do more with less at any time in the recent past and now the bills are going to be huge to put it right.

Food banks are not the result of anything which has happened on the last 5 years, including UK attitude to foreigners.

The weak pound caused by brexit has certainly helped increase prices

The slow down in growth hut UK finances, we missed out on the recovery the rest of the world saw, as we were trapped in uncertainty & stagnation & that allowed the Tories to keep on with their austerity too

It’s not the only factor, but it is a factor

which alleged dishonesty is a reoccurring theme that something so blatantly untrue should be said purely for political gain.

The Tories clearly don’t have a monopoly on that tactic!

Pretending Brexit has had no effect on the UK economy is really quite dishonest

https://www.cer.eu/publications/archive/policy-brief/2022/cost-brexit-so-far

That lost growth has undoubtedly contributed

Food banks first appeared in the UK when we had a Labour government and the UK was a full EU member.

Disingenuous nonsense Ernie. Food poverty has rocketed under the Tories. Pretending that has anything to do with past Labour governments, because there were some food banks then as well, is you doing your perfect Conservative dissembling impression.

As for leaving the EU… all that time and money we are wasting… talk about wrong priorities at the wrong time. Still, worth it to… er…

Disingenuous nonsense Ernie

Isn’t that a given?

It is supremely ironic that on a thread in which alleged dishonesty is a reoccurring theme that something so blatantly untrue should be said purely for political gain.

It is true that the use of food banks have dramatically increased since 2010.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/382695/uk-foodbank-users/

Use of food banks has escalated dramatically during the last 12 years of Tory rule. That fact can’t be denied.

Of course they have – they are the result of right-wing government policies!

They have nothing to do with attitude to foreigners or something which has uniquely occurred in the “last half a decade”.

It is precisely that sort of deliberate and obvious distortion of the truth which alienates voters. All sides are responsible for it, as this thread proves.

Quite. Labour is definitely the safe-but-boring option right now

I’d be happy to go with that right now. It matches my retirement investments.

It is true that the use of food banks have dramatically increased since 2010.

12 years is not the same as “half a decade”.

Half a decade was obviously used to distort the truth and make a political point.

Everything is going just fine! Brexit isn’t hitting people. And it didn’t happen because of anything to do with attitudes to foreigners. Everything is going swell. And if it isn’t, it can’t be to do with Brexit in any way, because only good things result from Brexit, like…

Half a decade was obviously used to distort the truth and make a political point.

It had actually started to flatten after the early days of the Tory Gov, and now has returned to rapid growth

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8585/

Brexit has cost the country huge sums. No doubt at all it contibutes to tje rise in poverty