Off Topic Politics Thread

Got to say this is not a surprise. It is also being reported in the Evening Standard. I would expect that this news will prompt a few more voices in the Conservatives who have not been happy about him to speak out. The Telegraph was saying in an article last Friday that there is growing dissatisfaction with his performance amongst the ranks. There is no way that he is going to see out his term. As has been pointed out , the Tories are really good at shooting their leaders and I don't think anyone ever anticipated that BJ would have been so useless. Given the majority in parliament, his propensity for U-turns makes him appear little more effective than Theresa May. The six month period seems credible. He will go once Brexit has been done. There will be plenty of time for more gaffs and U-turns to ensure what credibility he has remaining is destroyed.

He should never have been put in the position to lead the country in the first place.

 

Leaving the sinkng ship then?

 

Amused as I am by this story, I dread to think what soulless, brain-dead ghoul the Tories will replace him with.

 

Watching Ch4 News coverage of the US Election. Trumps supporters are insane. I mean they have completely cut all links with objective reality.

 

I thought he had already gone.

 

This was not the action of a patriotic party putting the needs of the country first, yet they would have you believe that they are patriotic.

 

There are a couple dozen candidates for federal office (who have won their primaries) who believe in the QAnon conspiracy. One is invited to Trump's (illegal) White House speech on Thursday.

For those unfamiliar, QAnon is the belief that a high-level spy is sending coded messages through a site for edgelord teens, detailing the fact that Donald Trump is pretending to be stupid to take down a global ring of cannibals who harvest a drug from the glands of children. To square the fact that Q stated that these people would be taken down with the bit where the individuals cited as cultists (most Democrats, Bill Gates, the cast of Friends, etc) are still walking the streets, many Q believers now suspect that those individuals have been executed in Guantanamo Bay and replaced with clones.

They haven't merely cut links with objective reality, they have placed a 20 mile wide moat filled with sharks and proximity mines between themselves and objective reality.

 

Wee Nicola does it again. Another U turn, this time on face masks in schools. Why not just replace Pfeffel with her and cut out the middle man?

 

On the subject of the GOP...tonight's speakers include a woman who believes that wives should not be able to vote, and one who propped up an actual Protocols of the Elders of Zion-based conspiracy theory hours before she is to speak:





If nothing else, they're really showcasing the diversity of thought in the party...they have believers in every major and minor conspiracy imaginable!



Edit: cancel culture strikes again, as the anti-Semitic loon had her speech pulled at the last minute.

 

I think someone from the more centrist side of the party will step forward. They will look for another Cameron to make the party seem more human and reasonable. It will be interesting to see if this story develops as the media and politicians at a local level have switched on to the fact that they can run the agenda. I think that they will continue to toy with this government and we will see even further U-turns. Everyone knows that Boris is a very weak leader. The approval ratings are down and people within his own party have been highly critical. I cannot see him clawing back any authority. The press and the likes of Nicola Sturgeon are setting the agenda although I think that Starmer has been extremely underwhelming and indicative of the kind of neo-liberal "Blue Labour" politician who prompted the rise of right wingers such as Boris. Disappointing that Labour did not stick to the path it was on as they would have had a field day by now.

There are plenty of Tory MPs who were isolated when Boris came to power including the likes of Hammond and Javid - both of whom have been remarkably quiet although the latter has secured himself an extremely lucrative job with a bank in the city.

 

They don’t have another Cameron. Westminster has largely been purged of moderate Tories. And he wasn’t that moderate anyway, he was just vaguely palatable; if you remember the axe he allowed Osbourne to take to public services, and the act of unforgivable vandalism on our country’s future he committed with that referendum. That genie is out of the lamp now, and the Tories are basically UKIP in blue.

 

The Tories will revert back to a more liberal position as taken during the coalition. I think that there are still plenty of politicians in the party who are no so rabidly pro-Boris and it is always worth noting that this is a political party that is capable of changing it's spots. Once Brexit has happened, Boris will be gone.

 

A No Deal Brexit to combine with a second wave of Covid? What could possibly go wrong ?

 

Sorry Ian, but the Tories did NOT move to a more liberal position during the coalition. They imposed austerity cuts on social services, tripled tuition fees for students, and generally made life a misery. The truth is that the Lib Dem’s moved to a more right-wing position to keep them in power.

 

The whole ****ing mess will be blamed on immigrants and poor people. And a large chunk of the electorate will lap that up

 

Real quotes from Trump.

 

Anyone would think we are a left wing Forum. I cant argue that BJ is not a first class twat because he is. I think sometimes you guys just criticise just for the sake of it sometimes. For instance you criticise him for reversing a decision for children to wear masks in certain scenarios. Why, he followed the advice then and did again now. Surely that's what you would expect him to do. Do you honestly think the Labour or Liberal party would have done anything different? They too would have acted on the advice they were given at a time. He doesn't make decisions on his own whims although granted you like to think he does.

 

The problems with the covid/exams/back to school are not so much one the actual policies/political leanings but of:
1. Scotland/Wales/N.Ireland using the same science always seem to be first
2. The message coming from government is unclear
3. The message from government is always changing
4. The PM goes missing until there is a quick win bash the BBC story
5. There have been many mistakes and very little apologies - and what would be a resignation mistake in the past has been glossed over.

So it does appear the board is more left leaning and I am sure that a Labour government would have struggled with the same issues is not the point. The point is that the standard of government is poor by any measure.

 

Making u turns isn’t bad, unless they are made as a result of continually making the wrong decisions, against the advice of scientific/education bodies.
When WHO clearly state that children aged 12+ should wear masks, in unsafe areas (lack of distancing etc) and Johnson says that schoolchildren don’t need to wear masks, it shows that he is ignoring scientific advice.
Likewise with the exams farce. The government were warned many weeks ago about the problems, but they just didn’t care. The only reason they changed things was because the media started to talk about the votes they could lose as a result.