Guest 2982- Registered: 20 Nov 2018
- Posts: 36
[QUOTE="howard mcsweeney1"]I don't see her being a contender as she has one of the smallest majorities in the Commons and Labour are actively targeting it. Boris seems to have gone quiet of late which normally means he is plotting something.[/QUOTE
Is it possible for them to move Amber to a safer seat ?
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Dolly wrote:[QUOTE="howard mcsweeney1"]I don't see her being a contender as she has one of the smallest majorities in the Commons and Labour are actively targeting it. Boris seems to have gone quiet of late which normally means he is plotting something.[/QUOTE
Is it possible for them to move Amber to a safer seat ?
Only if a by election is called due to an incumbent MP resigning, retiring or kicking the bucket, even then the local party would object to Central Office parachuting someone in.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
probably talking his all british turkey from Holland.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Pablo, Brian Dixon and Guest 1881 like this
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,788
This is brilliant, I can imagine this actually happening almost every time she enters No.10.
https://www.facebook.com/Standupcomedyuk/videos/236717117219675/?t=31-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Button
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 3,007
What's that old saying, more money than sense?
(Not my real name.)
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Courtesy of the Telegraph.
He was famously banished to the backbenches and told to learn about loyalty by Theresa May, but now Michael Gove could prove to be the Prime Minister’s ‘silent assassin’, according to Tory sources.
Following a stellar Commons speech in which he eviscerated Jeremy Corbyn, a different kind of momentum is gathering behind the Environment Secretary as a potential ‘unity’ candidate to succeed Theresa May. According to one Conservative MP, the prominent Brexiteer has overtaken home secretary Sajid Javid as the favourite among the party’s newer intake as leadership contenders this week jostled for position following Mrs May’s controversial request to extend Article 50.
“Michael is the name on a lot of colleagues’ lips at the moment,” revealed the young MP, who was elected in 2015.
“A lot of the newer MPs have swung in behind him following the no confidence speech. It made them realise what a superior parliamentary performer he is to Saj.” The barnstorming speech - praised as the best of Gove’s 14-year parliamentary career - sympathised with Labour moderates while tearing apart Corbyn and his hard-left policies. In an address that prompted howls of laughter from the backbenches, he dubbed the Opposition’s Brexit policy “bollocks”, likened the Liberal Democrats to the Little Britain character Vicky Pollard, while championing Tory successes on unemployment and the economy “despite Brexit”.
Having helped Mrs May to win the no confidence vote in January, the 51-year-old father of two was invited back to the despatch box earlier this month to open the Government’s no deal Brexit debate with similar aplomb. His oratory has been praised in comparison to that of his former leadership rival Boris Johnson, who has been criticised by some Tories for “failing to rise to the occasion”. As one put it: “There is all this talk about Boris, but a Brextremist is not going to get through to the final two. The silent majority will make sure there’s someone sensible in place. What they want is someone willing to carry the baggage of Brexit through but who is fair minded and good on law on order - a patriot who can stand up for the working man or woman.” As a former justice secretary who took on the teaching unions as education secretary from 2010 to 2014, bringing in education reforms that have proved popular with the party faithful, Gove certainly appears to tick those boxes.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Although party members choose the leader of each main party the Tories have a shrewder system that stops someone totally unelectable being named on the final ballot paper, the MPs filter them out beforehand. If the rumours are true then they seem to have missed a trick with the choice of one from Javid and Hunt and one from Raab and Johnson. Out of that lot they would be almost certain to choose Johnson which would please the Labour party.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Update from the Times website - things moving fast now.
Theresa May has summoned leading Brexiteers to a meeting in Chequers as she fights off attempts to force her to stand down. The prime minister is under intense pressure to name her departure date ahead of one final effort to win the Commons backing for her deal. However, efforts to force her to stand aside immediately had lost momentum this morning, as senior Tories from both sides of the Brexit divide condemned the plotters. Boris Johnson, Iain Duncan Smith, Dominic Raab and Jacob Rees-Mogg are among those invited to speak with Mrs May at her country retreat later today. It is not yet clear whether the meeting will be in person or on a telephone conference call.
Mr Duncan Smith angrily condemned a “cabal” of cabinet ministers he accused of seeking to organise a coup to install David Lidington as a caretaker prime minister. The former Tory leader said Brexiteers should “keep their options open” on whether to drop their opposition to Mrs May’s deal.
Philip Hammond made clear he would oppose any attempt to remove Mrs May from Downing Street, saying it was “self-indulgent” to put the leadership of the country in question at a time of crisis. The chancellor also opened the door to a second referendum, saying it was a “coherent proposition” that deserved to be on a list of options expected to be debated by MPs next week. MPs holding out for a no-deal Brexit or a harder form than that offered by Mrs May face a rapidly diminishing set of options. Bids by a cross-party group of MPs to take control of the legislative timetable from the government are likely to pass tomorrow.
That will enable so-called indicative votes, which could allow parliament to arrive at a consensus on the best way forward. Most observers believe amending Mrs May’s deal to place the UK in a customs union is the most likely alternative to emerge. However, the Brexit secretary warned that such a move could force the government to call an election. Stephen Barclay told The Andrew Marr show: “If an amendment goes through where parliament takes control of the order paper then that leaves open the door to parliament then legislating to take no-deal off the table. “And that is something that Brexiteers like me would see as a massive risk to Brexit because if Brexiteers and parliament votes against the deal and also votes to take no-deal off the table then the only option is to then have European parliamentary elections.”
Mr Barclay said that if the Commons takes control of the order paper and votes for a different outcome, it would “potentially collide with fundamental commitments the government has given in their manifesto”, though he said the vote itself would not be binding. He added: “What parliament has done is vote for a number of contradictory things so we would need to untangle that but ultimately, at its logical conclusion, the risk of a general election increases because you potentially have a situation where parliament is instructing the executive to do something that is counter to what it was elected to do.”
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
oh dear more infighting by the incompetent people. infadels all of them.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Latest odds.
Next Prime Minister after Theresa May
Michael Gove
4/1
David Lidington
4/1
Boris Johnson
7/1
Jeremy Hunt
10/1
Jeremy Corbyn
10/1
Dominic Raab
12/1
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
in that case H I will have a fiver on zorba the greek.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Courtesy of the Times.
The woman who noticed the Conservatives were seen as the nasty party has now fallen victim to the species she identified. On Wednesday Theresa May threw her last roll by pledging to resign once her withdrawal agreement has passed. At her current rate of progress that’s a recipe for remaining as prime minister for another decade. When she does go, the forces she once identified are gathering to replace her. The melee has started. Campaign teams are being assembled and activity grids drawn up. Donors are being tapped, headquarters rented, attack lines polished and signature policies devised. The canvassing of colleagues, until now discreet, will soon break into the open and every media interview will become an audition for the top job.
But before the mathematics of politics comes the philosophy. Even an avowedly non-doctrinal party such as the Conservatives divides into the several different worldviews. Indeed, ideology has entered the soul of the modern party, to the chagrin of many members. The Tory party once travelled light, ideologically. Its elixir was its intellectual flexibility: the capacity to be protectionist in one era and liberal in another. Such shifts rarely lasted for long — they were merely pragmatic moves by a party in which belief was subordinated to the pursuit of power. The temptations of two particular doctrines have made the Tories all but ungovernable. The first is the appeal of sovereignty-based nationalism. There is a breed of Eurosceptic in the Conservative Party that loathes the European Union so much that they are not even prepared to vote to leave unless they can stick their fingers up to it as they go. Their vision of national sovereignty in a world of alliances, treaties and trade and capital flows is a century out of date and their assumption that taking back control from Europe is the answer to the problems Britain faces is simply fatuous. Yet they have got religion and cannot be reasoned with.
The second doctrinal temptation is hang-over Thatcherism. The House of Commons is full of lags in the sense that people who came to political maturity in one era then serve in another. That makes them strangely ill-equipped for relevance in the time of their prominence. The Labour leadership candidates in 2015, Jeremy Corbyn apart, sounded like visitors from the New Labour past. The low-tax, slash-regulation Tories hark even further back, to the last successful Tory political venture of the Thatcher years. The coming leadership contest will be a test of whether the Conservative Party can avoid either of these two versions of the hard stuff. The really intoxicated among them will pour a cocktail made of both elements. The candidate for the determinedly drunk is Dominic Raab who, incredibly, declared that the best plan for the government is to demand legally-binding changes to the withdrawal agreement and, if they are not forthcoming, leave the EU without a deal. He must have been asleep for the fortnight in which it became obvious that neither of these two options were feasible. Mr Raab is the last ditch candidate who loves Britain so much he thinks we could be Singapore.
Though Mr Raab does an impeccable job of diminishing himself I am loathe to join in because he is my preferred candidate to win the leadership. Speaking as someone keen to see a new party emerge in British politics, Mr Raab is, without question, my candidate. He is exactly the sort of cat-that-got-the-cream character who would repel floating voters. Non-Tories will really dislike Mr Raab who will rapidly restore the Tories to the status of the nasty party. Mr Raab is the kind of Tory who thinks that people eat at food banks because they like the menu. There is a set of Tory MPs ready to walk if his unforgiving politics were allowed to take over. And his seat of Esher in Surrey is high on the list of possible places that a third party might do well. Let’s field JK Rowling against him and be shot of him.
The main purpose of political parties in a democracy is to be one of the guard-rails. It sounds out of the temper of the times to say so, but the party structure is there to protect democracy from the hot-headed members. Leadership elections should not be plebiscites and that applies even more when Tory activists are selecting a prime minister. Changing the person at the top like this should, in my view, force a general election but it doesn’t so the task falls to Tory MPs to select two candidates who are plausible occupants of Downing Street.
That criterion ought to rule out Boris Johnson and may well do so. It is hard to think of anyone, in my political lifetime, who has wasted office more than Mr Johnson. He had such an opportunity. He had public recognition and a degree of affection. He reached parts of the political spectrum unvisited by other Tories. You cannot mint that quality: he really did have something none of the others had. All he had to do was to graft on a sense of gravity and political weight — a task that has proved entirely beyond him. He could and should have cast himself as the heir to liberal conservatism. Instead he has lost himself down the dark alley of Brexit. A disastrous spell as foreign secretary has exposed him as a charlatan who will need to be stopped.
Ross Miller
- Location: London Road, Dover
- Registered: 17 Sep 2008
- Posts: 3,693
Much as I do not really care not a single one of them has shown an iota of leadership which bodes ill for the Tories and the country
ray hutstone likes this
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Laozi
Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,877
Apparently Grayling has now thrown his ring in the hat.
"Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds"
Pablo- Registered: 21 Mar 2018
- Posts: 614
Jan Higgins, Button and Ross Miller like this
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
All the talk is of a "moderniser" being the next leader with Jeremy Hunt being pushed by many but the rumours are that Boris Johnson will take the same route going back to his old credentials as the candidate that can reach non tory voters. I don't see his colleagues being taken in by that one let only party members when they come to vote.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Tonight is not really about indicative votes but much more about jostling for position with our Charlie keeping a close eye on who is gaining ground in the leadership stakes and voting accordingly. Not having a go at him personally as most back benchers will be looking to their own political future.
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Jan Higgins, Button and Ross Miller like this
