Boris Johnson!

Seven years old in 1945? When Atlee won the election for labour, first chance people got to vote for a pm after the war. And Churchill campaigned on ‘the fight starts now’.

(Churchill’s popularity has become somewhat exaggerated.)

Lest I be mistaken. I was not acknowledging any personal admiration for Churchill. I was just questioning the claim, that anyone voting in the forthcoming election for Tory leader, could not remember Churchill.

According to Peston it is now reasonably possible that Rishi Sunak could be declared Prime Minister on Monday.

https://www.itv.com/news/2022-10-22/how-sunak-could-be-crowned-pm-on-monday

I guess his assessment that Johnson can only win if it goes to the membership is probably correct. With that in mind I can imagine some of Penny Mordaunt’s potential supporters switching to Sunak to avoid it going to the membership.

According to Peston it is now reasonably possible that Rishi Sunak could be declared Prime Minister on Monday.

What happens with Sir Boris in the case of him losing?
Does he **** off on holiday / to the after-dinner speaking circuit again or does he once again become a good and dutiful* backbencher representing Uxbridge & South Ruislip?

*it’s sarcasm…

I reckon he will be waiting in the wings for Sunak to lose the next general election.

He will then step forward into the limelight to rapturous applause and offer himself as the Tory Party’s saviour to his adoring audience.

His ego demands it.

You don’t think things have got worse since Johnson resigned, are you for real?

I have never said that, have I? Pretty sure I and others have already gone on at too much length about why we Johnson is so much to blame for the sorry state of his party that led to Truss as PM. That his party is now utterly unsuitable for government, no matter how they shuffle around the MPs in the ministerial roles, is down to him. This slide for his party and our country is down to him. Anyway, keep defending Johnson. Looks like you could get plenty of opportunity if the Tory members give him another shot at the top job again. It’s going to get even messier whatever, now that he’s made this leadership contest all about him. Ego before all else.

I can imagine some of Penny Mordaunt’s potential supporters switching to Sunak to avoid it going to the membership

It doesn’t matter if Mardaunt and Sunak supporting MPs join together… if Johnson can get his 100 MPs… and refuses to stand aside for the good of [ insert anything other than his name here ] …then the members get a vote. If it’s Sunak and Johnson that are put to the party members… well… division is guaranteed, a Johnson win far from ruled out. If it doesn’t go to members… the betrayal narrative grows. If he’d just stayed out of the way… they might have found a way to sort this… there’s no good resolution for them now.

Why would he cut short his jolly and come back if not to inflate his already overinflated ego to be our country’s saviour ? 🙄🙄🙄🙄
Watching people on TV this morning saying ok so he “ misbehaved” ? Really is that what you call it ? As for the slimy back stabbing , self serving toady MPs who want him back they seriously need to have a word with themselves 😡😡😡😡I did hear that if he gets to run the shit show again he would be in a position to make the outstanding investigation “ go away “ Give me strength !

Anyway, keep defending Johnson.

How about you stop repeating the same bollocks and actually explain why you were celebrating the Tory Party’s removal of Johnson when the alternative was very clearly more right-wing than him?

It would appear that you don’t mind right-wing as long as they are competent. Many Tory MPs and Tory supporters would agree with you.

Looks like you could get plenty of opportunity if the Tory members give him another shot at the top job again.

It actually looks like it might be you who could get plenty of opportunity to tell everyone why you think Rishi Sunak makes such a great Tory prime minister. I look forward to you defending his right-wing thatcherite economic policies.

If you had actually read the Peston link whose reference you were commenting on you would have seen that Peston was suggesting that Sunak might reach 179 nominations by Monday – more than half of all Tory MPs.

The Chairman of the 1922 Committee, Graham Brady, has made it clear that if one leadership candidate wins an overwhelming number of MPs votes on Monday then the other candidates will be expected to drop out, and it is therefore quite possible that the new PM will be declared on Monday.

You might disagree with Peston’s assessment and believe that Johnson will likely refuse to step aside but I suspect that Peston has his finger on the Tory Party’s pulse better than you have.

But we will see what actually happens soon enough.

Ernie, i really think you should step away from the forum for a while 😁

Anyway, Richard Holden MP who was a key figure in Johnson’s first leadership campaign says the 100 MPs claimed to support Johnson this time round “don’t exist”

How about you stop repeating the same bollocks and actually explain why you were celebrating the Tory Party’s removal of Johnson when the alternative was very clearly more right-wing than him?

Because he is utterly unfit to be PM. Fullstop. He’s shown us that. Doesn’t mean I want Sunak, or Truss, or any other members of the team he surrounded himself with filling his shoes. That they supported him in government while he lied and laughed in our faces means for me that they shouldn’t be in the role as PM either. We need rid of the lot of them.

Graham Brady, has made it clear that if one leadership candidate wins an overwhelming number of MPs votes on Monday then the other candidates will be expected to drop out

Sounds like that’s relying on the honour of whoever the other candidates are. If it’s Johnson, and he has those 100+ MPs supporting him (let’s hope he doesn’t)… why would he step back? Whether he does or doesn’t, what happens to all these MPs saying that either it must be him… or that it should be anyone but him? The party keeps fighting… their chance to unite is blown… all so that Johnson can feel wanted. There’s no good option for them now… he’s made sure of that. They’ll be no party unity. Roll on the election…

Doesn’t mean I want Sunak, or Truss, or any other members of the team

Yes it does because that is what the alternative is.

If it was up to me I would rather that Gordon Brown took over as PM, but that isn’t option. The option is Johnson, Patel, Sunak, Truss, Braverman, etc

Even someone like Ben Wallace has no realistic of becoming PM, and not least because he won’t stand.

You have to accept how things are and what the realistic choices are, not what you might wish for.

What “I want”, is for Johnson to become PM again for the briefest of time, against the wishes of the vast majority of his MPs, and for the fallout of the following month or so to remove the Conservatives’ working majority, forcing a General Election to happen before the end of the year… and I want him taking them into that election and facing a huge electoral failure that eclipses the success he had in 2019. That’s how I want him remembered… many in his party know full well he is unfit to govern, and have said so, but want him back because he is a “winner”… I want them looking back next year and accepting he is both unfit to govern AND a loser. The public have seen what he is like as PM… they won’t be giving him another win. Will there be 100+ MPs shortsighted enough to deliver that…? Doubt it… but then they let Truss go to a vote of the membership, and that was as obviously insane move..! We’ll see Monday.

Kelvin, Ernie, I generally appreciate your contributions to these threads, but not when you are tearing chunks out of each other for little to no reason. Could you both consider maybe just not rising to each other’s bait in the future? It’d make everything so much nicer here.

Fair. I’ll shut up.

Yup, I certainly find the whole process tedious. Although I do actually avoid raising to the bait probably more than you might imagine. I generally tend to avoid reading Kelvin’s post and at best scan them.

But yeah childish taunting about “defending Boris” and other such bollocks should perhaps be ignored more diligently. Point taken.

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.

An ernie kelvin truce?
I’ll give it 24 hours.

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!

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…

@ernielynch

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.