Boris leadership 2019

priceless..

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I think we all need to take a minute and remember that Ed Milliband was decimated for the way he ate a fucking bacon sandwich.

If it wasn’t Corbyn they’d be telling us that insert potential Labour leader here was unelectable and would bankrupt the country because what do you do when you spend too much on your credit card? You tighten your belt and we’re all in this together so bloody well put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem!

r.4 just likened boris's first day in office, to that game of rugby he played against the 11yr olds
specifically his head down charge at that stick thin kid, who subsequently was sent flying

Surely this Cabinet is enough to induce a no-confidence vote on its own.

See that John McDonnell rowed back on Labours promise to hold a referendum on a Tory Brexit last night, now they'd have to inspect it first.

I assume that Johnsons team is privy to much better, unethically aquired (facebook or whatever), polling data than anyone else.

Based on that, if they (Tories) think that a Brexity shaped govt is a vote winner, then I'd have thought it's over for Labour in terms of getting Brexit voters - they've probably lost that battle.

I imagine the data shows that if I were a Labour voter who wanted Brexit I'd vote Tory / Farage far easier than I'd vote for Labour, who not only seem to have no real position but are probably untrustworthy on what they do have.

I assume that Johnsons team is privy to much better, unethically aquired (facebook or whatever), polling data than anyone else.

I imagine the data shows

Our new leader in Downing street. #nerdshirt

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Assume that's from the DM? (typeface nerd alert)

Angela Rayner appears to have been tasked with composing the official Labour response:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/25/boris-johnson-bluster-labour-optimism-uk

I didn't watch the initial q&a session with Johnson, but I've read in several places that he didn't answer any of Corbyn's ten questions to him.

Unfortunately, this is something he has been doing for a long time, rarely answering any questions of the London Assembly. While PMQs is about as pointless as Mayor's Question Time, one does hope that as PM he'll be marginally more accountable than as 'Mayor of London', although I'm not going to hold my breath. Standards have slipped so much.

Also ... that cabinet ... my word.

The inner workings of Priti Patel seem a bit nebulous to me, but my guess is that her supposed tough stance on crime, support for death penalty bla bla.... is just her projecting her own lack of a moral compass onto everyone else.
My guess is that she genuinely doesn't understand why people are so upset with her odd meetings and questionable sources of income. There are no grey areas in her world. She's perfectly right in everything she does and can have all the money and glory she wants, there are other people who are irrevocably wrong and they must simply die.

Paparazzi everywhere:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/26/boris-johnson-security-evgeny-lebedev-perugia-party

Lebedev's dog's called Boris. He had another dog but it was mysteriously poisoned.

Yuck https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24778/priti_patel/witham/votes

Boris' strategy in the first few days seems smart.

Lots of policies stolen directly from opposition parties that will reverse some of the damage of the austerity he helped orchestrate, and play well with the middle of the road - better school funding, more police, rail links in the north.

Then he will say that all this is contingent on leaving the EU, which he has assured everyone will be straightforward, while Brussels seem to be the obstinate ones.

If he can't fulfil his promises, it's the EU's fault - whether that's because no deal is blocked, or because the situation after we leave with no deal is so bad.

I think either way, the country is fucked, but he'll find a way out of it.

I can't look away from this at the moment, I have the feeling that it's possible to divine Johnsons strategy - however, I'm buggered if I can do so.

650 seats, of which 59 are in Scotland.

Tories have 311 seats, plus the confidence and supply with the DUP who have 10, Labour 257 and LD have 12 (smaller than the SNP by a significant margin, who have 35).

The Tories have 70 seats where their majority is under 5,000, and which will be targeted by the opposition, which (bar a pact) will include BXP. In contrast, Labour have 58 below 5,000, but as a % of their total that's 23% for the Tories and 23% for Labour, so nothing in it in one respect.

Of the Scottish seats, 13 are currently Tory which I think will all go in the GE, I'm guessing LD and SNP.

Johnsons goal must be to return a majority of ~350+, but I can't see where he's going to get that from, unless he's planning on losing none of his marginals whilst gaining all of Labours.

Exactly, the parliamentary arithmetic is near on impossible for either side so it's going to be coalition time.

Who is going to go into one with the Tories???

From The Guardian's live coverage of Westminster politics, Friday 26 July,
'Earlier, in response to a question from a reader, I posted a paragraph explaining why Boris Johnson might not be quite as fearful of an early general election as people generally think he should be. (See 2.37pm.) But my colleague Severin Carrell, the Guardian’s Scotland editor, points out (fairly) that I left out the Scottish dimension. He’s sent me this.

Amidst all the talk of a snap election this autumn, it is unwise to ignore the likely scale of an Scottish National party “win” in Scotland. All the recent polls show the SNP will romp home with a larger number of seats: not quite as high as the 56 out of 59 seats they won in 2015 but they’re on course to easily surpass 40, leaving the other parties trailing.

Those numbers will have significant impact on the prospects of both the Tories and Labour of winning a majority in the Commons, where the SNP is currently the third largest party.

The SNP are currently polling at around 40% for a Westminster election. Scottish Labour is in freefall under Richard Leonard’s lacklustre leadership, and is now below 20% - as are the Scottish Tories. That makes it impossible for Labour to win the 20 seats in Scotland it needs to gain a Commons majority; indeed it will struggle to hold the seven it won in 2017.

Now, we don’t know how many centrist and anti-Boris pro-UK voters will switch to the Lib Dems (which did very well in Scotland in the European elections and now have a young, female Scottish leader) but it’s quite possible the LDs will win a couple of more seats, more likely from the Tories in rural areas where farming will be heavily hit by a no deal Brexit.

And with those polling numbers, it is hard to see the Scottish Tories holding onto their current tally of 13 Scottish seats: the conflicts and contradictions between Ruth Davidson, a strong soft-Brexiteer who has built the Tory renaissance by appealing to centrist voters, and Johnson are too significant.

While there are pockets of strong pro-Brexit sentiment in Scotland, there are not enough pro-Brexit votes here to make the difference in first past the post seats other than in north east Scotland and, potentially, in the rural south west - areas where the Tories already have MPs. (It is also the case that with Johnson as Tory leader, the Brexit party has no chance of winning a Westminster seat in Scotland.)

And if the SNP clean-up north of the border, the constitutional crisis over Brexit will be amplified by a constitutional crisis over Scottish independence.'

Will Corbyn change his mind on coalition is the question.

I think BXP-Tory is interesting- if Johnson goes far enough to the right will anyone vote BXP? But of course he then loses to the LD’s what he preserves from BXP.

The price of a coalition with the SNP will be an Indy ref v2, and with Brexit they’d likely go I think.

Cummings is terrifying me. Sneaky brainy leaver fucker.

Priti Patel.. is scaring me..shes a dick.

Apparently Cummings has ruled out an election before (current) Brexit day, and any extension for Brexit. I can't see how Johnson could hope for re-election after a no-deal Brexit, however. Maybe one term is enough for him?

There is the thought that Boris believes in the long term success of Brexit enough that he'll do whatever to mark his place in history, even if such a thing comes after his death.

That makes him very dangerous.