That’s depressing to watch, he’s just blithering until it’s time for the next question, then repeat until it’s over.

It’s staggering that he clearly knows absolutely no details about anything at all of the policy of a government that he’s meant to be leading. Nothing! Even on the most contentious issues of the day, he clearly didn’t even know the slightest thing about what was being discussed and was just trying to wing it.

It reminds me of being in an English Literature class and some kid being asked questions about a book he hadn’t bothered to read.

Its almost as if it was someone else who was doing all that, and he’s just a spokesman

And now he has lost Lord Keen who was hardly a rowdy rebel in the party, wheels really are falling off, can’t wait to see what boot licker will step forwards to take his place

It’s staggering that he clearly knows absolutely no details about anything at all of the policy of a government that he’s meant to be leading. Nothing! Even on the most contentious issues of the day, he clearly didn’t even know the slightest thing about what was being discussed and was just trying to wing it.

It saves him from having to have a conscience.

And now he has lost Lord Keen who was hardly a rowdy rebel in the party, wheels really are falling off, can’t wait to see what boot licker will step forwards to take his place

I think it will actually be very difficult to find anyone. Any member of the scottish bar who takes the job on is effectively ruling themselves out of any future legal career as they will never be seen as honest.

A few observations about Cummings and his role in choosing Johnson’s successor:

The backbenchers hate him and it’s mutual.
He may not actually be a Tory party member (if not, he hasn’t got a vote).
Unless his favoured candidate wins he’ll be jettisoned pretty quickly.
Only reason he hasn’t gone already is because Johnson needs him to think for him.

fadda
Full Member

I saw it was Angela Rayner’s turn today – how did it go?

From what I saw, various people asked the PM questions and he didn’t even attempt to answer any of them. And half the time, the non-answer wasn’t related to the questions. Rayner’s intro was excellent but basically pointless since this PM doesn’t do PMQs.

Apparently Johnston “won” though because he accused Starmer of dodging PMQs despite having got his corona test results. Even though he got it just before the start of PMQs, and doesn’t have a teleporter.

Genuine question – when was the last time Boris and Carrie were seen in public together? I can’t recall the last time I saw her (I think it was May) and a quick google search didn’t answer it.

Given the rumours i doubt they will be seen together again. Johnsons johnson is out of control He just cannot keep it in his trousers

You read my mind TJ!

I can’t put my finger on it but there seems to be a sense of panic at the moment. It’s not a panic to mitigate the disaster of Brexit though. As I’ve said before it strikes me almost as those frantic moments in a ram raid when everything is being grabbed before it all goes wrong. It’s like the pretence and artifice has been dropped as something is about to happen.

Certain prominent Brexiteers also seem to have evaporated from the media recently. The opposition behave like all they need to do is maintain a holding pattern for a while. Something’s up.

As I’ve said before it strikes me almost as those frantic moments in a ram raid when everything is being grabbed before it all goes wrong. It’s like the pretence and artifice has been dropped as something is about to happen.

Brilliant description, I understand it perfectly, but hadn’t been able to articulate it

Genuine question – when was the last time Boris and Carrie were seen in public together? I can’t recall the last time I saw her (I think it was May) and a quick google search didn’t answer it.

There was a photo of them in most of the papers in the last month on holiday in Scotland together and there weren’t any photos but they hosted the christening last weekend apparently

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8654271/Carrie-Symonds-32-shares-photos-PM-hiking-Wilfred-baby-sling.html

@greentricky thanks.

That’s depressing to watch, he’s just blithering until it’s time for the next question, then repeat until it’s over.

I can’t work out if he just doesn’t have the answers or he thinks so little of people “below him” he doesn’t feel like he has to give them a response.

I get a definite sense he’s spooked on a personal level.

Back in the day when he used to give a succinct answer.

I don’t read it (obviously, I see the front page when reading the BBC’s roundup of the papers) but the Daily Mail has had a number of headlines, including today’s, less than complimentary to the blustering buffoon. If your most rabid supporters are having a go at you then you are on a short lease.

Pretty well all today’s papers are having a go at him, the Telegraph reckon six months if he doesn’t shape up.

the Telegraph reckon six months if he doesn’t shape up.

They’re still selling the myth that he wants to be there in six months, then?

He’s just the front man for No Deal, then he’s off.

His getting roughed over at PMQs, his Churchillian battle with the bottle, his serial trouser incontinence, his failure to deliver a policy that worked, the loss of his usual blustering bravura and that look suggests that he knows already he’s a goner. Deliver the next debacle then he’s off on health grounds. Have we now entered the Trumpian era of noble prizes, promoted and enriched family and friends, fake news, 20,000 lies and the wrong trousers? There is such a gulf between events on the ground and the moonshots and the world-beatings does anyone out there actually believe this carp?

Pretty well all today’s papers are having a go at him, the Telegraph reckon six months if he doesn’t shape up.

from what I can tell from a quick browse of the scum, they are still “pro” blowjo, no “front page” reporting at all of the testing fiasco etc. So no phone call from Mr Murdoch yet.

There is such a gulf between events on the ground and the moonshots and the world-beatings does anyone out there actually believe this carp?

Sadly a lot do for the life of me I can’t understand why. He says absolutely nothing of substance. This “moonshot” plan which isn’t a plan it’s just and idea with so much still to work out is madness.

My biggest issue with this lot of Tories is their absolute contempt for everyone that they can say what they want with zero come back. But what do you expect from a bunch of rich white males.

Today’s Daily Star front page is excellent – it’s on the BBC News “papers” section

Anyone seen good odds at the bookies on him quitting in January?
Fancy placing a wager

Anyone seen good odds at the bookies on him quitting in January?
Fancy placing a wager

Ask Cummings, he runs the show.

I doubt the bookies would offer odds as I imagine a handful of people who just happen to know Cummings personally would be in like a shot, for a cut for Dom himself, naturally…

He’s not doing the job now… why do you think he’ll take the crown off, when he’s always wanted it, and doesn’t have to worry about doing the work that would normally come with it?

Sadly a lot do for the life of me I can’t understand why. He says absolutely nothing of substance. This “moonshot” plan which isn’t a plan it’s just and idea with so much still to work out is madness.

My biggest issue with this lot of Tories is their absolute contempt for everyone that they can say what they want with zero come back. But what do you expect from a bunch of rich white males.

doesnt matter, he just has to say he’s protecting statues & getting brexit done & they all fall into line

plenty of his fans are getting upset with him, but theyre were [retty bonkers anyway

I wonder what juicy “leaks” we can expect as Dumbojo is thrown under the bus.

Toby Young and Fraser Nelson now all of a sudden realise they were ‘mistaken’ in their backing for Johnson?

**** right off.

These nasty pieces of work knew full well what a bellend he is and what a bollocks he would make of everything he touched. He was just useful for their rabid right agenda at a point in time. Now they are just distancing themselves from De Pfeffel’s car crash as they were always going to.

Now they’ve pretty much ‘secured’ a No Deal, they have a ‘Road To Damascus’ moment?

Pull the other one, it has got bells on it.

I did like the torygraphs site front page picture of Johnson in a testing lab, got me thinking where else Id seen a fat bloke with a dodgy moptop pointing at things…

Whats with the North Korea style photo ops @CCHQPress #WhereIsBoris pic.twitter.com/6sSH6QOuJa

— Chris Kimberley (@ChrisKimberley) September 18, 2020

Ooooh look, a morbidly obese, pampered upbringing, finger on a nuclear button, trump on speed dial, psychopathic despot………

……

……..

…and Kim Jong un

Thanks and good night from me

Well he wasn’t going to pull off the Putin ‘top off on a horse’ pose was he 🤣

fat bloke with a dodgy moptop pointing at things…

Is this a bit Star Wars?  White hair = good – Dark hair = Evil? Thank **** we have the good guy

Mr Jong Un should really have gloves on in a lab.

Here’s the full article by Matthew Parris in yesterday’s Times.

author-image
Boris Johnson’s zing has well and truly zung
Like sheep without a shepherd, voters who trusted the PM have grown confused and resentful at his lack of leadership

Matthew Parris
Friday September 18 2020, 5.00pm, The Times
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‘Like a rotten mackerel by moonlight,” said the 19th-century American congressman John Randolph of another politician, “he shines and stinks.” With Boris Johnson the shine has gone.

Yet it was for the shine that we elevated him. I remember the 2019 general election campaign, and that sense of slightly unfocused excitement. It wasn’t about what Boris would actually do (except not be Jeremy Corbyn and “get Brexit done”): it was all about zing, about whizz-bang, sparkle, fizz, gusto, passion — and fun. Well zing is as zing does and Johnson’s zing has well and truly zung. The fun has gone and with it the shine. We are left with the stink.

Like their politicians, electorates need ladders to climb down; and this prime minister is ultimately our fault. So we excuse our mistake by saying he’s lost that punchy effervescence for which we chose him. But effervescence is a highfalutin word for gas. And gaiters. And talk and trousers will only get you so far. Now comes the void, a void into which nobody stares more mournfully than he.

Face it: there was never any reason for confidence in Boris Johnson’s diligence, his honesty, his directness, his mastery of debate, his people-skills with colleagues, his executive ability or his policy grip. We’d seen no early demonstration of any of these qualities but we just blanked that out. We looked hopefully into the crystal ball when we should have read the book.

Fish rot from the head down, so let me run you quickly through the huge stumbles that can only finally point back up to the boss.

First, Covid. Though I do think our government panicked at the start, I accept that a reasonably cogent case can be made for its first response. Why, then, are we in such a mess now when other countries are facing similar problems with (for instance) testing? There’s no ducking the answer. We’ve lacked any feeling of overall direction or leadership and so, like sheep without a shepherd, we’ve grown confused, divided, frightened, irritable and resentful.

Then there’s the repeated over-promising, “moonshots” and all that. Over-promising invites the law of diminishing returns and slides finally into public contempt. You can over-promise to one woman, then over-promise to another, but in this case there’s only one lady involved, and that’s us. Boris can’t move on to a new electorate.

It would help if our PM, who admitted yesterday that we are in a second wave, would tell us where we’re trying to get to in this pandemic. “Conquering” the virus? Suppressing it until a vaccine comes along? Or learning to live with it? The health secretary and perhaps his medical advisers seem to imply the first, sometimes the second. Some medical/scientific opinion (see the recent discussion by Peter Doshi in the latest edition of The BMJ) seems at least to contemplate the third.

Which, then? The public need to know before we can trust. If all we’re aiming for is to slow down transmission then the case for patchy and sometimes random and even inconsistent prohibitions can be understood, but if we’re trying to “beat” a virus then the measures look ragged, scattergun, and capricious. What and which, then, is Johnson’s overall aim? He’s in charge. As Queen Victoria’s first prime minister, Viscount Melbourne, remarked to his cabinet: “Is it to lower the price of corn or isn’t it? It is not much matter which we say, but mind, we must all say the same.”

Criticisms of leadership all risk stumbling at the final fence, in this case “if not Boris, who?” Could David Cameron, Tony Blair or John Major have proved better at taking the public with them on Covid-19? Better at explaining, at showing humility where there is uncertainty or error, at admitting failures? At persuading?

You have only to imagine any of these three in the chair at press conferences or in the Commons chamber to know the answer: an emphatic, unqualified yes.

Be it PPE, Ofqual, or (now) test-and-trace, with Johnson and his team it’s always somebody else’s fault — in the latest instance, ours, the public’s, whose anxiety to know if we’re infected is entirely natural given the government’s scare campaign. The problem with Johnson is that he so often doesn’t appear to know his own mind and struggles to take a position and stick to it. This is a mind (and I borrow the phrase) “not so much open as vulnerable to a succession of opposing certainties”.

As someone who, like me, has watched him for years and seen him at close quarters put it yesterday: “I don’t think Johnson has any clear view as to what is intended. I think he often speaks without having any really serious intent as to outcome.” Any tribe finds this unsettling in the chief.

And who, anyway, is the chief? Johnson has allowed the impression to arise that Dominic Cummings is his Svengali. Cummings has a usefully sharp intelligence but people hate the whole idea of Svengalis. Cummings’s Barnard Castle episode, with Johnson apparently in thrall to his adviser, was a political catastrophe.

If it were just over Covid, where uncertainty is the norm, some would sympathise with our PM: some still do. But take this summer’s row about A-levels and Ofqual. It’s fashionable to sneer at Gavin Williamson and mock his accent, but if the education secretary should have seen this coming, so should the prime minister. What steer, what support, did Johnson give? My guess is that he will have whistled and looked the other way. And how could a PM who knew or cared about the quality of his cabinet have shrugged shoulders at the rank inadequacy of his home secretary, Priti Patel? People do get the message. Like many weak bosses, Johnson is frightened of competition or discord.

Finally, the Internal Market Bill. Posturing is common enough in politics but to attempt a David-and-Goliath confrontation with Brussels and then sling-shoot yourself in the foot is a fiasco. The whole shaming episode was entirely predictable, as is its conclusion. The bill will sink.

And so we end up with this rancid shambles of a government. The confusion is inseparable from the character of its leader. Is it, then, too late for Johnson? Could he yet wind back and start again? I end as I began, with the words of John Randolph, reflecting on his own career, and how “. . . time misspent and faculties mis-employed, and senses jaded by labour, or impaired by excess, cannot be recalled any more than that freshness of the heart, before it has become aware of the deceits of others, and of its own.”

I’d rather he stayed tbh.

He will stay. He’ll keep “relaunching” and taking “personal control” in fits and starts, only lasting a week at best each time before fizzling out when he hides away again, hoping people have the memory of goldfish. Which, politically, many do.

I never thought he would stay the course and it’s becoming increasingly clear he won’t; there’s another recent Times article which refers to his concerns about money (really?), personal matters, pressures of job.
No sympathy from me.
A salutary reminder to be careful what you wish for.
Will post it when I find the link.

Like their politicians, electorates need ladders to climb down; and this prime minister is ultimately our fault

**** off Parry you pompous windbag, you and your other right wing cheerleader journalist friends lied to the electorate about him, you covered up his many weakness’s, bumbling incompetence and narcissism, you glorified his character flaws as Churchillian leadership and promoted him to the highest office in the land. You can’t now hide in the crowd of victims, and pretend you were not in a privileged position of knowledge. You were front and centre in playing the con that has brought down the country, you are not one of us, you are just another Boris, blustering and conning a far too ample pay packet without talent, morals or application.

Think you’ll find it’s Parris…

**** off Parry you pompous windbag, you and your other right wing cheerleader journalist friends lied to the electorate about him, you covered up his many weakness’s, bumbling incompetence and narcissism, you glorified his character flaws as Churchillian leadership and promoted him to the highest office in the land.

The fact that Parris and toby young are now putting the boot in is a clear sign that tories are turning against johnson.
In isolation, that’s positive but the concern is who will replace him and can the
gove-cummings inter-dependent relationship be permanently shattered; johnson is yesterday’s man – he’s finished. It’s only a matter of when he either walks or is pushed.

Here’s the link to the ‘overburdened, underpaid PM’ article in the Times.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/overburdened-underpaid-and-misery-on-his-face-boris-johnson-gets-the-blues-r9jl63m2q
If it appears to be behind a paywall, post to let me know and I’ll paste the text.