Sajid Javid just resigned

If the anti-Boris Camp get enough people on the 1922 Committee to get a majority they can force a rule change.

If they can force a rule change, they can have a vote of no confidence sooner than the current rules allow.

Pippa Crerar AT PippaCrerar
NEW: Downing Street confirms that Boris Johnson would fight any new confidence vote - and says PM believes he still has the support of a majority of his MPs.

Except there is a problem.

Boris Johnson needed 180 of his 359 MPs to vote for him in order to stay on as party leader and prime minister. He got 211. He had 40% of his party vote against him. Thats most of the backbenchers. If you are in government there is an expectation that you will vote to support your PM in a confidence vote. If you don't, you quit government and become a backbencher.

In response to Pippa Crerar tweet above:

Alex White AT AlexWhite1812
No chance. Take the 18 resignations (so far) and switch them to the other side - that's enough

In other words. If the 1922 Committee (which is made up of all the Tory backbenchers) can get an anti-Boris majority, he's gone.

The numbers are now very firmly against Johnson. Its now just a question of who is in what role as to whether it can be forced, and when that might happen.

It is disturbing to imagine the committee will overthrow an elected PM and a huge mandate to lead.

IF that happens we are all screwed. It will mean that men in the grey suits - unelected technocrats in the back rooms can interfere and meddle and basically create a coup to remove any working PM. How will the public react to such a loss of credibility and democracy?

And how would any potential PM take over knowing the rules were ‘fixed’ to facilitate their promotion to lead country? The people of this country have not voted for them, have not agreed to this at all and are unlikely to give them the time of day. It’s a poisoned chalice.

No wonder Truss and others are staying entirely silent. No one will want to be implicated in such shady corruption of our politics.

Johnson can call a GE at any time

I'm sat here trying to work out how to make the Town Council resign. I say Town, it's a Parish council and the majority of members have been there for 20+ years. New people arrive, stay for 6 months - 2 years and leave, with a loud outcry.

But nothing changes.

At District level we have :

Britain First bloke masquerading as Labour

A weird woman who keeps shouting that she knows what is best for, and I quote "this backward corner of England"

A tree hugger who makes Neil of the Young Ones look dynamic. He wants every tree named and adopted, looked after by a resident!

And someone else who appears and disappears but seems to be quite vocal

And the Independent incumbent. Who probably won because he is quite quiet.

Our MP is a longstanding "much loved" Tory...

I am in the hinterlands and nobody cares!

What would be undemocratic is to have people who are not elected passing judgment on the people who are

That’s exactly what we do now 🤷‍♀️ It’s literally how political parties work.

It's been building for years, but this is the state of UK politics. We built it. This is where/when we pay for it!

I'm heavily involved in local politics and government. The truth is far more depressing than this. The state we are in, politically, in Britain is down to the fact that ordinary people are just too knackered, too busy, carry too heavy a load to hold any kind of civic role or position alongside everything else. People have mortgages and bills, jobs, kids and caring obligations; they don't have the energy for anything else.

So you end up with people who have fewer responsibilities. If someone is under the age of retirement, you generally discover why those people have fewer responsibilities. And it's usually not good.

In every political or civic body or organisation I come across, Pareto plays out. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. These people carry an entire regional branch, an entire council, an entire community group on their backs; after a while, it's shattering. As a rule, these people are never the ones that end up where we need them as a society: using their experience and knowledge to consider and make good law and policy. No, the accolades fall onto the twats, the self-promoters, the Machiavellis, the psychos, and they are the ones who end up on executive boards, and as councillors and MPs.

The pool from which politicians are drawn is inaccessible to most people. And it is inaccessible because most people just do not have the time or the energy to get to a point where they can jump into it. It's not even about money most of the time, it's about having a spare evening a week to spend on something that doesn't make you money, care for your family or provide a respite from your frantic life.

That's why British politics is a mess. We don't need people with passion; we need pragmatic, thoughtful people with a decent amount of life experience who are in the position where they can give up a few spare evenings a week to ask pertinent questions and stop utterly stupid decisions being made (and who will read fucking briefing papers beforehand, to boot).

So why are there only 250,000 Tory members? Because that's how many people bought tickets!

Don't read too much into it. Even UKIP have more, far more!

We aren't party stalwarts any more. We are all possible swing voters - to borrow a phrase.

So why are there only 250,000 Tory members? And why don’t you acknowledge the process is a million miles away from democratic?

No politician in history has ever been elected by the whole electorate. You clearly have no understanding of our political system.

The rules are set by the committee

Presumably it is within their remit to address what they are

If the process exists to change them then I don’t see the issue - if it’s by consensus or whatever the criteria is.

Breaking rules suggests there is no path way to change

Then I chose to keep him Marsha, if the new Prime Minster starts his job by breaking rules then we are already on a slippery slope.

Samphire completely agree, it actually makes me sick to think I have no one to vote for.

I’m uncomfortable with any party who lies about biology so Labour’s out for me

I don’t care if Johnson goes at this point, although the media circus has been insane and I find that fairly unbearable, but I’d choose ending the pain of this turmoil over worrying about a change in rules

He’s democratically elected, and you can’t give one person (or set of people) more power than the people.

We already do. Tory leaders are elected by the 250,000 set of people who are Tory members.

but I'm uncomfortable with any party that doesn't stand by their own rules.

That's the rock.

The hard place is a party whose rules are ludicrous and dangerous to me as a woman, to the women I work for!

As part of the electorate I have no bloody idea how to vote! And I have been politically active for the whole of my adult life - now tapping 60!

Oh well if you want him to go it might be your only chance so choose which - stay or change rules and go

This Marsha of course I want him to go but I'm uncomfortable with any party that doesn't stand by their own rules. The main issue with the Conservative party is that they disregard rules. If Boris had followed rules we wouldn't be where we are now.

That’s exactly the right question. Who can assess, by their actual actions and on a politically neutral basis, whether someone is fit to govern? Not to represent their party - that’s a party matter, but to be in government at all.

A very large, randomly selected, anonymous and single purpose special jury on a case by case basis would be my proposal. Almost a mini referendum. For criminal and gross misconduct cases. Like a super-trial (for super-criminals)

You do not take a poll of your mates to see if you are fit to keep your job. That should not be the best we can do.

Yes. As I said, the heart of that contested post

This is the parlous state of UK politics. We grew it. We now get to pay for it.

I have too as some seem annoyed he can’t be challenged for a year and others that the rules might change

If he won’t go on his own steam then it’s choose which you prefer - stay or rules change

I sway between both as I prefer the stability but another year of the situation we have now in politics is pretty awful

What about illegally poroging parliament and lying to the queen? Should he have resigned for that reason? Is that in any way hugely relevant to his actual job, a major abuse of his position and actually quite a massive deal for a PM? Or being caught in a compromising position at work with his mistress and trying to get her a 6 figure civil service position which the civil service have to scotch in case you are found out and then BOTH subject to blackmail (presumably in return for even for more improper conduct) and the use of public funds during the pandemic is a disgrace. He is a disgrace. It should never have got to the birthday cake.

KS says he will. In the litany of Boris’ offences, its not a big deal. But many of the other are. So if you defence of Boris is ‘it was only a cake’ then you need only move on to the next episode on a long line of grossly improper conduct incidents.

I think you are probably right about the plot to depose. Except that Boris was only installed as PM in the first place as a plot to force it through. So if it is wrong to machinate him out, on the same basis it was wrong to machinate him in! And the fact remains that MPs in general, and PM’s in particular are immune from the consequences of their poor conduct. If there were proper powers in place to discipline MPs with occupational consequences (demotion or dismissal would be the least the rest of the public service would face, if not actual prison in many cases) It would protect honourable MPs (should there be any) and it might actually discourage the rest of the from doing it. By not having any really consequences we condone it again and again. It says ‘it’s alright for you to do this, even though its not for us’ so they do, in specific cases and general culture. Long after this sort of thing stopped being the norm in other workplaces (he through nurses had a fucking bar in their staff rooms. Nurses barely have bloody staffrooms these days!)

So we agree on one thing. This is not about cake.

Hmm Javid

What a mess this all is