Tory leadership race

[ed fournier]

I found it on Guido Fawkes...

https://order-order.com/

 

 

[war baby]

OMGuido! We can still learn, even at my age.

[the stinking enigma]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/17/boris-johnson-support-eu-revealed-leon-brittan-widow-letter

Changed his tune a bit.

[war baby]

Yes, as did Hunt, as did I.  Didn’t you?  It’s very marginal on both sides.

[P.K.]

This is the scary bit about the tory party faction voting for the next PM:

Nearly half of Conservative party members would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister, a survey into the scale of Islamophobia in the party has suggested.

The poll, carried out by YouGov for the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, also found that more than two-thirds of Tory members believe the myth that parts of the UK are under Sharia law, and 45% think some areas are not safe for non-Muslims.

Half of the party’s members think that Islamophobia is a big issue, but only 8% believe it is a problem within the party, the survey found.

Matthew McGregor, Hope Not Hate’s campaigns director, said: “From the grassroots to the great offices of state, Conservative members buy into racist myths, with almost half unwilling to have a Muslim prime minister – and only 8% [saying they would be] proud to have one – and most denying there’s even an issue to confront.”

In the online survey of 864 Conservative members, 39% said they agreed that “Islamist terrorists reflect a widespread hostility to Britain amongst the Muslim community”, and 40% think there should be a reduction in the number of Muslims entering Britain.

The YouGov poll found 76% of members think the party is already doing “all it reasonably can” to combat Islamophobia and racism, and only 15% feel it should be doing more.

[dilligaf]

7 minutes ago, P.K. said:

This is the scary bit about the tory party faction voting for the next PM:

Nearly half of Conservative party members would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister, a survey into the scale of Islamophobia in the party has suggested.

The poll, carried out by YouGov for the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, also found that more than two-thirds of Tory members believe the myth that parts of the UK are under Sharia law, and 45% think some areas are not safe for non-Muslims.

Half of the party’s members think that Islamophobia is a big issue, but only 8% believe it is a problem within the party, the survey found.

Matthew McGregor, Hope Not Hate’s campaigns director, said: “From the grassroots to the great offices of state, Conservative members buy into racist myths, with almost half unwilling to have a Muslim prime minister – and only 8% [saying they would be] proud to have one – and most denying there’s even an issue to confront.”

In the online survey of 864 Conservative members, 39% said they agreed that “Islamist terrorists reflect a widespread hostility to Britain amongst the Muslim community”, and 40% think there should be a reduction in the number of Muslims entering Britain.

The YouGov poll found 76% of members think the party is already doing “all it reasonably can” to combat Islamophobia and racism, and only 15% feel it should be doing more.

Why the hell would anyone British (ever) want to have a Muslim leader ? Are you having a laugh ?

[P.K.]

2 minutes ago, dilligaf said:

Why the hell would anyone British (ever) want to have a Muslim leader ? Are you having a laugh ?

London voted in Sadiq Khan.

Mind you, that was to get shot of Johnson so I guess any other candidate would do.....

The point is that these tory idiots are straight out of the pages of the Daily Wail i.e. they only have a tenuous and probably coincidental grasp of reality....

[Freggyragh]

So Johnson is pointing out that a country outside the EU has to abide by the EU’s rules, which that country has no say in, if it wants to export to the EU, and that’s his reason for why the U.K. should leave the EU. 

[P.K.]

Interesting hypothesis:

Catastrophically poor national leadership lies behind Brexit and Britain's other mounting problems - and there's one factor behind it all.

Compare our four - soon to be five - prime ministers of the last 15 years with Germany's chancellor Merkel and you see it in sharpest relief.

Since Tony Blair, every prime minister has been worse than the last, and Boris Johnson is set to be worst of the lot. Add in the five leaders of the opposition who didn't/haven't made it to No.10 - Hague, Duncan Smith, Howard, Miliband, Corbyn - and you get the worst national leadership team for a 20 year period in modern British history. Hence Brexit.

What went wrong?

Given the length of time and the sheer collective inadequacy of this group of 10, there must surely be a structural cause. And I think I have worked it out: it was the fateful decision taken by both Labour (in 1983) and the Tories (in 1997) to move from parliamentary democracy to activist democracy in choosing their leaders.

This turned out to be a fundamental constitutional change, and a bad one. The rise of weak leadership is the mirror image of the decline of parliament.

The critical turning points were 2001 for the Tories and 2010 for Labour, when for the first time party activists overruled their own MPs and imposed leaders who were not the choice of parliamentarians.

Party leaders, and thereby prime ministers, are now chosen by a tiny, unrepresentative minority of the electorate, and an essentially arbitrary, self-selecting one. Who counts as a party member has no stable or clear meaning, and rule changes can make a decisive difference, as with the £3 members who flooded the Labour selectorate in 2015.

We now have what the political scientist Robert Saunders perfectly describes as "a private, members-only democracy that you have to pay to join".

[manxman1980]

On 7/17/2019 at 10:57 PM, Freggyragh said:

So Johnson is pointing out that a country outside the EU has to abide by the EU’s rules, which that country has no say in, if it wants to export to the EU, and that’s his reason for why the U.K. should leave the EU. 

What he has actually managed to point out is;

1.  That the legislation dictating that Manx Kippers must be accompanied by an ice pillow in fact originates in the UK (enforced by the Food Standards Agency) and not the EU.  EU regulations focus on fresh fish not smoked fish;

2.  That he is willing to take a tale told to him by a third party (newspaper editor in this case) as truth and not fact check it before speaking on the subject in public;

3.  That he is a persistent liar (bendy bananas?) and should not be trusted to run the UK;

But yes, he also managed to demonstrate that a country external to the UK has to comply with EU regulations in order to import to the EU (albeit the example given was wrong); 

[manxman1980]

FFS Boris Johnson just used "dude" in his speech...  Down with the kids eh? 

[Rog]

Great news for real British people!  Now let's have a hard cold BREXIT as should have been the case years ago.

Probably very bad news for the island though ----

[Rog]

On 7/17/2019 at 11:24 PM, P.K. said:

Interesting hypothesis:

Catastrophically poor national leadership lies behind Brexit and Britain's other mounting problems - and there's one factor behind it all.

Compare our four - soon to be five - prime ministers of the last 15 years with Germany's chancellor Merkel and you see it in sharpest relief.

Since Tony Blair, every prime minister has been worse than the last, and Boris Johnson is set to be worst of the lot. Add in the five leaders of the opposition who didn't/haven't made it to No.10 - Hague, Duncan Smith, Howard, Miliband, Corbyn - and you get the worst national leadership team for a 20 year period in modern British history. Hence Brexit.

What went wrong?

Given the length of time and the sheer collective inadequacy of this group of 10, there must surely be a structural cause. And I think I have worked it out: it was the fateful decision taken by both Labour (in 1983) and the Tories (in 1997) to move from parliamentary democracy to activist democracy in choosing their leaders.

This turned out to be a fundamental constitutional change, and a bad one. The rise of weak leadership is the mirror image of the decline of parliament.

The critical turning points were 2001 for the Tories and 2010 for Labour, when for the first time party activists overruled their own MPs and imposed leaders who were not the choice of parliamentarians.

Party leaders, and thereby prime ministers, are now chosen by a tiny, unrepresentative minority of the electorate, and an essentially arbitrary, self-selecting one. Who counts as a party member has no stable or clear meaning, and rule changes can make a decisive difference, as with the £3 members who flooded the Labour selectorate in 2015.

We now have what the political scientist Robert Saunders perfectly describes as "a private, members-only democracy that you have to pay to join".

Good innit!

But payment with morality, nationalism, national pride, and ability.

Bring it on!

[mojomonkey]

I predict at least one more extension to Brexit.

 

Why oh why didn't they have something worked out before having the referendum in the event of a leave result I will never understand. Failure to prepare is preparation for failure and all that.

[P.K.]

So thanks to the brexiteers the UK now has narcissistic, lying, serial philanderer Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.

After the Brexit referendum and the worst Government and Oppostion in living memory I didn't think our standing on the world stage could sink any lower.

 

I was wrong....