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Like Rory Stewart, Tugenhat is a through and through Tory but is considered too woke despite voting record and army background.

We are waaaay through the Looking Glass

Had the 1922 Committee adopted STV, Single Transferable Vote, this process would have been over in an hour.

I was reading an interesting theory on this earlier. The client journalism papers that support the Tories, so the Mail, Telegraph et al, are chasing more and more online revenue from US readers, so they are focusing more on what matters to right wing US voters than they are on UK voters, hence 'woke', obsession with gender, climate change denial, etc.

This is increasingly putting them out of touch with what matters to their core voters and it'll be interesting to see how long it takes the Tories to rectify it.

Yes but much harder for the required scheming and rigging to go on.

That does make sense but not sure quite how to square with all the Russian influence in/on the Conservatives - I’m struggling to see them winning noughts and crosses with first move, let alone 3D chess

https://twitter.com/RussInCheshire/status/1549111208753725441

Agreed, also would have prevented the Blue on Blue damage of the televised debates, that Tory Central Office are now keen to avoid.

The Russian oligarchs are embedded in the Republicans, and the NRA.

I understand the same is true of the Guardian only obviously it's the US left. The Guardian's decision not to impose a pay wall makes them additionally vulnerable.

Certainly as of 2007 both the Times and the Guardian's online offerings had larger US readership than UK https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2007/aug/03/moreamericansthanbritsread

They should be mandatory for weekly humiliation for the future prospective leaders.

The Telegraph generates less than 3% of revenue from the US

And in the House of fucking Lords

I can't help notice that it's a kind of AV due to the multiple rounds. You could support one candidate first but if they get knocked out you get to transfer your vote to one of the others, your vote isn't effectively discarded. Lovely that these minor or private elections use a more representative system than the more consequential general elections.

Polls don’t bear this out

Yeah they do. End of June and 23% of people think he is doing good job. That's millions of people. It's not my opinion of him but many people would be happy with 10 million+ adults approving of their actions.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/boris-johnson-approval-rating

23% is “immensely popular”? Immensely doing some far fetched heavy lifting there

Government wins the vote of no confidence.

We really are fucked aren't we?

It is so depressing, particularly if one of the Johnson enablers wins the non-people's vote to be the next cunt-in-charge.

uk politics, if by that we mean mostly the politics we are talking about above, is such an unbelievable insult. it is nice/reassuring to read the posts above which say as much, although at the same time it is quite triggering because it feeds the fury and despair.

what occurs to me is that in terms of ‘affect’ this is not unlike the experience of reading the daily mail for many people. is this because of the medium/the internet? or because politics now is so degraded it has become like being in an abusive relationship where you become your basest most predictable self even as the victim?

whilst making sure to avoid being done for incitement to riot, I would say there has to be a different approach so we get off of this terrible and inevitable feeling slippery slope.

It does feel bleak and like howling into the void, yes.

And my mum is a prime example why (nothing like a bit of anecdata to labour a point). My mum is a Daily Mail reader for 50+ years and an absolutely consistent Conservative voter. She was a lifelong renter until she retired (so not lifelong, obvs), mainly relying on council housing and I qualified for free school meals. My wife asked her who she wanted to be the next leader of the Conservative party and she said “not that Starmer, he’ll bring us to our knees”. When it was pointed out that Kier Starmer was not in the Conservative party she got very huffy and said that she was being silenced and didn’t have a voice; her MP is an old Etonian Tory with a 20k majority.

So we have nice people people like my mum (she is nice, the apple has fallen very far from the tree) who feel like they are under attack/powerless despite their views being clearly represented. And there are endless confected bogeymen to put up that will undermine their ability to shop in M&S (my mum).

It’s not great, is it?

Thanks for sharing about your mum. Really interesting and powerful. I despair about my boomer liberal once-upon -a-time radical mother, despite the fact that she is great too. she says all the right things but will consistently flinch when it comes standing up to rather than propping up forms of power that are polite, and have an air of calm authority but who are ultimately self serving. She wants all baddies to look and behave like thuggish twats such as the driving offences woman upthread or, indeed, our PM; she wants all change to take place through discussion amongst ‘sensible’ people speaking a certain kind of language in elite institutions and wants it to be on a level which she feels like she can own. Others will say now is the time for grass roots direct action, a focus on the local, about the politics of community, of youth. Ashamedly, I have inherited some of my mum’s bourgeois instincts, despite working hard to shake them off and despite losing much of the privilege she enjoys/enjoyed. Ashamedly also, I don’t spend enough time in protests, occupations and so on. My weak position is that i pin some hope in the youth and in demographic shifts, I’m unendingly impressed by my students, and those in the community in which i live, i just hope they don’t get hoodwinked by the all-too-reasonable-seeming types that, for example, agreed with everything in corbyn’s manifesto but quibbled because of the lure of the status quo. that’s so much about what i despise, quibbling when there’s a chance to change and complaining the rest of the time. I’m minded of those, some of my friends included, who voted weakly in the 2010 election, effectively voting in the tories and leading us into this mess, their actions are as misguided, to my mind, as those who voted brexit in 2016, but we vilify one cohort more because of perceived norms and social prejudices. rant over

Unapolagetically fatphobic.

This.

@Light_EDDed - have a word with yourself.

Johnson complaining that the Labour party was wasting time with a no confidence vote even though it had come from his party was probably peak lazy bastard, no prep, Johnson (and there is quite some competition).

Unbelievable that anyone thinks he's going to do any work prior to actually fucking off.

It's just more politics.

Johnson needed to call that vote so that he could show that they weren't running scared of a VoNC, and then use the resulting win to have a go at Labour for trying to waste time calling their vote.

The "but you called it" was all part of the continued distraction tactics by the Tories. By being seen as mildly incompetent on things like this it helps deflect from the fact that they're massively incompetent on things that really matter.

Labour were being childish with the wording of their vote, which was non-standard and specifically aimed at sticking the knife into Johnson, and/or creating a list of people who were two-faced to publicly criticise Johnson but then back him in that specifically worded VoNC.

It would have been "good" for Labour to get a VoNC with that original wording in, but it was a very long shot and the Tories called their bluff and used that to make further political capital.

This and the braying at PMQs (and lack of actual on-topic answers to any of the questions) just goes to show how pointless and defunct the vast majority of Parliamentary process is given it's all just held together by conventions and honour, and there's absolutely no requirement to follow any specific rules and no recourse if you don't.

there's absolutely no requirement to follow any specific rules and no recourse if you don't

No applauding, no calling a liar a liar, no taking your jacket and tie off. I think that sums up the most important stuff.

In other Tory news, Tobias Ellwood is no longer a Tory because he didn’t say he thinks Tories should continue Torying.