Boris leadership 2019

Yes and no.... Members of the Tory Party? Yes...People who vote Tory? Mostly.

He was a member of the Labour Party as a teenager.

On the radio some months back he said that according to an opinion poll 80% of the population supported Brexit. When asked what poll he was referring to he said that he made it up. So definite Tory material for PM...a liar and like the rest, not to be trusted. Look at his voting record on austerity as proof.

Not any more!

Too right! Wonder what the odds would have been for her crashing out in the first round. Damn - missed out on some beer monies there!

I was speaking to someone who's met him a fair few times and knows people who know him well and his summation was basically - "He's too intelligent. He has an incredibly ability to successfully wing it in pretty much any situation - and has essentially done just that."

Which is an interesting perspective to take... and doesn't bode well for having a fulltime job as PM.

On the radio some months back he said that according to an opinion poll 80% of the population supported Brexit.

I think that was in reference to Mays WA, it was outstanding car crash TV,

Yeah, sorry I just made that up!

Radio 5 Live interview:

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/conservative-party/news/99883/watch-top-tory-rory-stewart-forced-apologise

Stewart or Johnson?

Harold MacMillan would be a better choice.

I stand corrected...thank you. Though the essence of it was correct.

The same could be said for Tigger, aka Hancock. He is now on record as saying, if elected, Corbyn would be the first anti-Semitic PM of the UK. Has Hancock never heard of Clement Attlee (who was probably the best prime minister of the 20th century) but was somewhat anti-Semitic. Hancock also conveniently glossed over Churchill. He may not have been anti-Semitic but most definitely racist with regard Asians and Africans. Very selective knowledge of recent history.

Very selective knowledge of recent history

Or indeed any history at all: The Duke of Wellington strongly opposed Jewish emancipation. But some probably wouldn't class him as a 'Prime Minister' as we know it.

Isn’t he the inverse Tony Blair - aiming to bring the Tories towards a sort of more middle ground? A sheep in wolf’s clothing?

He's too intelligent

So many people think that this is a reasonable measure of intelligence. "He's so smart that they don't need to try, and are able to just get stuff straight away".

That's not close to my definition of intelligence, it's closer to laziness or inattentiveness. Most intelligent achievers I've ever met wouldn't accept that definition at all.

Absolutely agree. Moreover, it shows our innate bias toward verbal intelligence. But I thought it was an interesting insight / anecdote. A bit like the one from fox (iirc) of him ruffling his hair and getting into character before the cameras started rolling again on HIGNFY.

@marxist_vulcan - need to go away and double check this, but I'm very sure I remember reading statements from Churchill in the HoC on "the Jewish Question", which wouldn't have got an Owen Jones retweet.

A bit like the one from fox (iirc) of him ruffling his hair and getting into character before the cameras started rolling again on HIGNFY.

That's excellent. It must be exhausting (or pschopathic?) to fake your character 24/7 if true.

Churchill was a racist but seemed to have some sympathy for Jews due to the Holocaust.

You are correct...on two counts... Wellington was also opposed to Catholic Emancipation too....UCL was the first university that was not aligned to the church... Wellington's reply was to support the creation of King's College, London.

Technically, the first Prime Minister was Campbell-Bannerman (1906)....before then they could be more correctly called the 'First Minister' but most holders going back to Robert Walpole in the mid 18th century are often regarded as prime minister.

Should he become leader, de Pfeffels first target is 120 days
With the winner to be announced on the 22nd July,
to avoid being the shortest tenured PM he will have to get past the 31st October,
one way or another.

The PM with the shortest time in office was George Canning, a dedicated anti European

'Our foreign policy cannot be conducted against the will of the nation.'

At least he had the decency to die in office before putting his policy into practice.

That's not close to my definition of intelligence, it's closer to laziness or inattentiveness. Most intelligent achievers I've ever met wouldn't accept that definition at all.

If you need to make the qualification "intelligent achievers", you're acknowledging there are intelligent non-achievers. I don't see how it's useful to conflate the native ability to do something with the resolution to do it.

If any of these public school idler's native wit is enough for him to get by at a level that other people have to work much harder to reach, then some would say he's clearly much smarter than them because he's saved himself effort. The fact that this is ethically or morally repellent and unwise is a different thing.

Logically, I don't see use in conflating intelligence with resolve or ethical/moral principle. It's useful to be able to talk about them separately. Happy to judge Boris, for example, negatively for his lack of the latter characteristics - in fact, I judge him more harshly because he's smart enough to know just how pernicious his behaviour is and still does it. He's in a whole different category from, say, Mark Francois, who is clearly too stupid to understand a lot of things.

There is something quite sweet about seeing someone with that proper nineteenth-century public school optimistic attitude that you could literally go anywhere and have a bloody good crack at anything.

He seems to have a genuine optimism and upbeat attitude which is quite refreshing. But his voting record shows he has that cold, dead-eyed careerist streak in him.

.

Any particular examples, I've not seen anything in the coverage so far.

I'm not sure about that either.

I think you could make a tenuous link between his championing of Theresa May on her resignation and her "hostile environment", which clearly had racist repercussions if not intentions.

But nineteenth century racism would be pseudo-scientific racial hierarchies and an idea about "civilising" "backward" people and, while I didn't watch his hedgehog speech, I've not seen much indication of that.