I want him to suffer a bit longer if only to prove my belief that it'll be the Northern Ireland debacle that will eventually bring him down.
Every time I see her she reminds me of the girls First XI hockey team at school, except she’s not quite as intelligent as a well-used hockey ball.
I think it will be Jeremy Hunt. He's kept well away from Johnson in the last year. Must be positioning himself as a moderate that will be less controversial.
But doesn’t the recent hefty election win and right wing cabinet suggest that people don’t want a moderate ? Especially someone who wasn’t pro Brexit I mean in the eyes of the 1922 committee of course. Pitch to the public in advance that you will have the current cabinet (and not everyone will be like the amiable cad that is BoJo) at election time and I expect they get fewer votes than they did. But maybe not because few people really pay close attention. I would just like to think that if the public looked into Raab’s cold dead eyes and were told “he will oversee issues related to our soldiers” they might think “not for me”. But I overestimate the British public Or that our money is in the charge of a banker who made a living gambling with other people’s money with no accountability and who has never had to worry about money ever and is married into (I believe) a billionaire family? I mean that has happened loads of times to be fair.
Hunt has definitely been raising his profile lately and his comments haven't been supportive of the government either. He was hugely unpopular as Heath Secretary and is a bit creepy. I'm not sure the public would take to him but then again I never thought Johnson with his bumbling chaotic persona would ever become PM either. Then there's this.
Net favourability for leaders tends to have a significant impact on where swing voters break; if you somehow are stuck between parties with vastly different platforms, whether you merely dislike one possible PM and hate the other is often a deciding factor. That benefited Boris in 2019, when he was the least-disliked of the party leaders by some margin. But it sure as hell won't benefit them the next time around, and it does make one wonder whether he'll make it that long.
Notable that Keir is underwater Amusing that Patel is below Boris even now Rishi is likely trading off of handing out money to people during covid which I find unfathomable because : 1. He dallied as much as he could with that and clearly put businesses first 2. Had no choice really and clearly didn’t want to Hence my earlier comments musing about whether his reputation would stand up to enhanced scrutiny - and that arguably not even being relevant as “enhanced scrutiny” is not what our electorate does
It's rare that anyone isn't underwater for a sustained period, simply owing to the fact that the UK has several viable parties, and in general strong supporters of one party will consistently disapprove of the leaders of other parties. Amusingly, the most popular leader in the UK right now is Sturgeon, who is basically at break-even. There's a big difference between -14 and -42, though. Boris went into the 2019 election with an approval rating that hovered in the -10 to -15 range, and Corbyn was generally between -38 to -50. Not shockingly, that ended much better for Boris than Corbyn. Having strident supporters of other parties hating you isn't a big problem. Having the people whose votes you need for victory hating you really limits your chances.
Sunak would take the country to even harder areas of austerity, imo. He’s another game player and has already been said to be pushing for a tax cut leading up to the next general election, but as always what he gives with one hand he always takes away with the other, usually with interest.
Johnson is apparently so terrified of Sunak’s popularity that he surrounds him with tall ministers like JRM, Stephen Barclay, Simon Clarke and co. to make the 5’6” Rishi look even smaller.