Boris Johnson, parties and the Sue Gray report fall out. Thread 6

[DuncinToffee]

Previous thread
www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4552700-boris-johnson-fpns-and-sue-gray-report-due-thread-5

We continue

Sounds more and more like Trump.

'Got a huge agenda, we're going to get it done'

They weren't of course saying that when May had fewer against her. But it's Brexit arithmetic so we knew that even a win by one vote would be 'overwhelming'.

I can’t believe that so many MPs voted to support someone like Boris but am trying to take comfort in the fact that with 41% of his party colleagues against him, his PM days are very much numbered.

160-70 of those voting are on Johnson's payroll. Most wouldn't get near any senior positions w/o him.

At least this is a bad blow for him. He knows it, even though he and his supporters are trying to spin otherwise.

Yeah, sending people to Rwanda and putting crowns on pint glasses are big, important jobs that will really benefit us all...

I've been typically not able to see this till now.

For god's sake, let's just think this is a good outcome for Labour

Am amazed that the rapist Andrew Rosindell the rapist took a vote for him.

Let him limp on.

The sniffing in his speech suggests to me he may have taken something....

Can't remember what the rules say about a leadership bid?

In theory he's safe for a year. In practice someone read the rule book and found that another vote could be called within the year. So the fighting in the party continues.

Also why do people keep saying about Thatcher's confidence vote? It was a leadership bid. Or are they (effectively) the same thing?

There was Thatcher stalking horse and then Heseltine

Anthony Meyer stalking 🐎

I'd totally forgotten about Anthony Mayer being a stalking horse. I wonder if Hunt was providing a similar service (with a promise of a job at the end of it).

It was a different set of rules in Thatcher's day, but an analogous situation.

And the eyes.
I thought so too. That's just my impression from the interview though, others could have another view.

Alistair Campbell has comments about drug testing:
twitter.com/campbellclaret/status/1533928120713101313

Quite right too to question him. He looks a sweaty sniffy mess and a big grin isn't far from his face. He'd imbibed something that's for sure. The latest soundbites are.... 'decisive' and 'focus on stuff that really matters'. Along with 'getting on with the job' of course.

How it's decisive when 7 out of 10 of his backbenchers are against him, god alone knows. First lie already, he says he got a bigger mandate than 2019. Incorrect. He didn't. 66% then, 58% now. I'm going to call him LJ from now on.... Liar Johnson.

My personal opinion is... this is when he's at his most dangerous as he's wounded and clinging on. There'll be batshit crowd pleasing policies, endless lies about what the Govt are doing, empty promises and we need forensic Starmer and opposition calling him out on and on.

For Christ’s sake! Where is his integrity? It’s shameful. I’m so fucked off. It’s like unless something is specifically written down we can’t expect Boris to know it’s against the rules (and even then he’ll still do it if he wants to).

If he is taking class A drugs: they are illegal, with criminal penalties. That’s the law whoever you are or however ‘above the law’ you feel you deserve to be.

He thinks he's untouchable. He really is not. This is his swansong. Too many of his own are against him. Not the sycophants on the front benches, the MPs who have been toiling away in their constituencies trying to do good but coming up against the brick wall of Liar Johnson. There will be much disunity from now on.

And we have the by elections

So this is how they got the votes they did... coercion and threats

"Other allies of Johnson said drastic action was needed to restore discipline, such as sacking anyone on the government payroll who remained conspicuously silent on Monday while colleagues tweeted their support.
Though MPs were forbidden from taking pictures of their ballot paper to prove they had voted to support the prime minister, many were told to make public statements
A Tory MP who voted against Johnson said his supporters “need some lessons in how to win friends and influence people” because “they’re not taking people under their arm and trying to understand, they’re being downright nasty and threatening.”

Does this Tory MP not realise that the Tory party and government has spent years being downright nasty and threatening to those who are a bit different in the country and especially the poor and vulnerable?
Why would they be surprised that the Tory party would do the same to them?

William Hague (ex Tory Party leader) in the Times today calling for Johnson to go. Surely it can’t be long now. This won’t stop until he does, and nor should it.

That saying ‘every political career ends in failure’ is a universal truth of politics, as much as Johnson appears to be in denial of that.
His PM-ship jumped the shark a long time ago.

Dragging it out as he’s doing now, especially now that so many people have seen him for what he is, is going to be much worse for him if he cares about how he’s going to be remembered.

He could be in control of a writing a final twist that could be spun as redemptive in the otherwise negative future narrative of his political career.

Either way, his PMship is over and it’s time for his party colleagues to step up and compete for the leadership despite all the bullying and threatening, or we are all going to be in serious trouble, with months of in-fighting and distraction from tackling the global and national crises that are happening.

William Hague also makes the point that yesterday wasn't an organised coup nor a movement against a specific policy - it was a broad gathering of disaffection and a collapse of faith. There isn't anything that Downing Street can reverse or re-engineer to smooth things over.