And Suella has been sacked

[WellWellSaidTheRockingChair]

not before time - wonder who will get the poison chalice.

if William Hague is still in the commons, but o don’t think he is, Rishi would be wise to draw in his experience and counsel.

Stewart left the Tory party some years back

Yvette Cooper is Shadow Home Secretary. Not sure why you think she’d be replaced by Abbott.
Everyone pays some tax though. Income tax isn’t the only tax - and if the majority don’t pay income tax isn’t that a terrible inditement of the government’s management of the economy? It means a whole load of people aren’t making the threshold.

Rory Stewart has repeatedly said he’s not interested in re entering politics.

@shockeditellyou the Tories never stood a chance holding the red wall, it was always a temporary alliance for Brexit. The policies required would be Kryptonite. There can be no levelling up or the North without a levelling down in the South, in terms of spending.

It's telling that investment in Northern railway (HS2) it required connectivity to the South with the southern half coming first, and that when cuts came the Northern half was cut. The Tories main interests across the UK outside the South East are largely affluent and rural. Like the South East, they have no need for levelling up

Holding both requires a vision for the whole country. I loathe how Blair did it, and Starter aims to do it, but the playbook for both is a vision of national renewal. Labour is probably the only party that needs broad appeal because they're largely aiming at urban areas across the nation

A referendum that wins with yes can’t be said to be for the extreme only, otherwise it wouldn’t have won

I wasn’t writing about the referendum, @EasternStandard . I was writing about PR in elections.

This post demonstrates you are a few years behind the times...

You have to be an actual member of the Tory Party to be leader of the Tory Party for starters.

You also have to be a Tory MP to be taken seriously as Prime Minister/Leader of the Opposition. You'll have a hard time leading your party if you aren't sitting in the commons.

Of those three, one isn't a member and one might struggle to retain his seat.

@TheThingIsYeah
In addition it's the assumption on MN that as soon as Sir Kier is annointed as PM (ably assisted by Diane Abbott as Home Sec), that we will be living in a state of nirvana. So naïve

Abbott is leaving Parliament after the next GE, she isn't very well.

Before you all pile on, just remember two things, 1) the majority of UK adults don't pay income tax, and 2) governments don't have their own money, it's YOUR money

1. 60% of UK adults pay income tax, maybe if they'd grown the economy over the last 13 years, more would be paying in?

2. Its the Tories that have increased borrowing from 65% of GDP to around 100% now..... maybe you should remind yourself where money comes from?

Really?
Saying how happy she would be to see a planeload of refugees on their way to Rwanda?
Spending a fortune on the legionella barge rather than housing refugees in cheaper hotels or processing their claims efficiently?
Wanting to take tents away from homeless people?
Saying she can't see anything wrong with sending gay refugees back to countries that persecute homosexuals?
Making a massive fuss about a march that was never going anywhere near the Cenotaph or at a time when remembrance events would be held?
Constant lying?

Yes, I can see it's a struggle to see why people wouldn't love her for all that.

Oh, and I forgot the legal advice to Johnson when she was A-G that breaking international treaties is absolutely fine.

More the idea that Brexit was just a UKIP idea that wasn’t representative. If it had been really for a minority it wouldn’t have won

I’m ok with any minority party getting something on the agenda in a coalition or deal but it must go to a vote.

This applies to the Lib Dem AV referendum too.

It may not be a necessity wrt procedure but just on democracy alone I think it’s crucial.

Where I would struggle more is if a minority party brought something forward and we didn’t get a say

I think people who are hoping a change of party (or even a change of personnel in the government) will bring about the kind of change the UK needs are missing the bigger picture:

1. The damage that has been done to the UK in the last 50 years but especially in the last 8 have been immense. Every Prime Minister since Callaghan has just tried to put sticking plasters on the issues and of course they've all gotten a lot worse. Thatcher might have temporarily made people feel richer with right to buy and Ask Sid but that kind of magic trick can't be performed again once you've given away all the state's assets. Nor can Blair and Brown's blind eye to financial alchemy bullshit in the 2000s. Brexit and COVID really finished the job off, turning the UK into a basket case with shallow pockets, malaise in the working age population and a slowdown in trade. On top of all of that, we also share the same problems as the rest of the Western world, including an aging population that still expects to retire and enjoy life despite having on average about 20 years left.

2. And even if the external situation was excellent, the culture at Westminster is appalling. Governance is something that happened to the private sector. Parliament is still stuck in the 1950s, where they still flash their bits at junior colleagues, pinch their colleague's bums, play office politics and worry excessively about personal advancement, claim the kind of expenses that would make the King blush and above all think it's some kind of game where they can roleplay their heroes (e.g. Truss pretending to be Thatcher). Anyone hoping Labour MPs are going to behave any better miss the point that a lot of them already don't.

Ah, I see.
I still maintain my opinion makes sense though - if UKIP voters had felt more represented, they might have been less easily persuaded to vote out, or to demand a hard Brexit. Cameron wouldn’t have had to appease his right wing members by proposing a referendum in the first place. And if he had, he might have had the sense to do the usual for a constitutional change and require a super majority.

But she hasn't really, has she? Yes she's prepared to say outrageous things to stir up the rabid right, but she never actually delivers on any of it, does she?

Only 7% of the country voted on the basis of issues related directly to the EU.

Leave themselves have said they based their strategy not on a cohesive idea of what Brexit was but more on a variety of issues where there was political dissatifaction. They decided to leave the concept of Brexit to the imagination of Leave Voters rather than define it.

Therefore you had a bunch of people voting for Brexit because they didn't like Cameron and Osborne and were making a protest vote about austerity, or because they want to join the Euro, another bunch because they don't like immigration, another group because they were pissed off about potholes and bins not being emptied (I'm not actually joking - this was what was found in surveys afterwards!), another group because they don't like the ECHR, another group because they wanted financial liberalisation and to get rid of workers rights etc etc. But nothing whatsoever which was ultimately unified in its thinking and logic.

To say it was a majority idea is as misleading as suggesting a minority voted for it. That was precisely May (and later Johnson's) problem - they couldn't get a clear majority for what Brexit should ultimately be - because the vote was so fractured between interest groups and what they thought Brexit should be because it had been left to be 'in the eye of the beholder'.

It was THE catastrophic error by the Tory Party - because it meant that NONE of the arguments that the Referendum were supposed to resolved internally COULD be because it set up years of debate and arguments about what Brexit should be.

And thats why we are in the mess we are in.

The Leave campaign was successful only at winning a vote. It was not successful in identifying and defining what Brexit was / should be - by design. The referendum was therefore nothing but an exercise in how to win an electoral campaign. What it wasn't was a cohesive political movement which represented a majority within British politics nor the British public.

Understanding the difference is essential to understanding anything about British politics in the last 10 years - this is totally regardless of your political leanings either party political or with regards to Europe.

A lot of the UKIP vote was anti establishment. At previous elections it had been pro-LD.

The 2010 LD to subsequent UKIP voters are really interesting....

There has been study on it since. Immigration scored highly

Also remainers when asked didn’t get the reasons very closely

It doesn’t really matter imo that Leave had a good and effective campaign, if it had been a very unpopular idea it wouldn’t have won

Imo immigration won’t go away, it’ll get more pronounced and the EU will join in the overall debate on it

Germany the latest, it’ll pick up over time

On a separate note it’s a change to not have hints and leaks on stuff before it happens

Must have been planned for a while and not a peep

I'd have more confidence in the cat, tbh...

No I don’t hope it’s true nothing in my posts suggest this. It’s voting patterns that have and the move towards populist politics and that she is being applauded by certain areas of the press

anyway I agree with a move towards PR. It does mean extreme parties being in the HOP but if UKIP had been and there had been debates over membership of the EU we probably wouldn’t have ended up having a referendum. This would have been the correct way our elected MP’s to deal with the discontent around us being a member of the EU

I DON'T disagree on that. But scoring highly does NOT mean a majority either.

Which is why I say its WRONG to say there was a majority for anything even though Leave won!

Its a bizarre concept, but its essentially why we've had car crash politics ever since.

The EU is slowly moving to where the UK was in many respects. I don't think the UK has shifted much from that position - so there is a narrowing of the gap. It does mean that we are potentially more on the same page as Europe than we were (ironically).

As I say I think recent shifts in geopolitics have changed the debate somewhat too.

I think there is one curiousity that troubles me that no one has really touched on (any you mentioning Germany is relevant here).

How will the Rwanda court case go? Braverman was on a mission on that and said if she lost she'd campaign to take us out the EHCR. Our relationship with the EU is closely tied with the ECHR (see Northern Ireland and the devolved governments). And up pops Cameron.

I note the recent comments in Germany by senior politicians about suddenly being keen on a Rwanda deal... Macron is also very concerned about mass migration from North Africa in particular after a summer of issues. Italy has the government it does for not dissimilar reasons. I could go on.

It is going to become a bigger and bigger issue. In ways that we don't yet fully comphrehend the implications of...

Not sure I am talking about dislike of party in power though Labour have been in power outright or collation throughout so maybe it is hard to separate.

I honestly don't think a change in party would change the attitude - consultations being are done people point out issues after issue and yet they plough on - opposition isn't effective and there's no second chamber to reflect on proposals. I think it's more fundamental set up issue that just the one party.

Also changes coming/proposed - closed proportional lists- I think will add to group think - with any dissenting voices being taken off the list.

I'm not against PR - just think not all systems are better than first past post and I don't think the Welsh PR is good one.

I nearly voted for Brexit. My rationale was it would destroy the Tories reputation for economic competence, and see them in the political wilderness for a generation. I knew quite a few who actually did it, many of them were issuing a 2 finger salute to Cameron and Osborne for a wide range of reasons

Not a bad calculation, although I probably didn't envisage them taking 8 years to peak and I was anticipating a desire for a dramatic change of direction. I didn't foresee what appears to be a very conservative Labour party

You would think...

I note the recent comments in Germany by senior politicians about suddenly being keen on a Rwanda deal... Macron is also very concerned about mass migration from North Africa in particular after a summer of issues. Italy has the government it does for not dissimilar reasons. I could go on.

It is going to become a bigger and bigger issue. In ways that we don't yet fully comphrehend the implications of...

Absolutely.

I’ve thought this for a while and could see it a strong likelihood. I did vote remain but changing geopolitics are incoming. Saying this hasn’t always gone down well on mn.

It’s the climate pressures and increased volatility

It’ll strain post war institutions. I think we’ll see a shift in views on immigration.

It may be smooth for first players.. up to a point, I can’t really see how we do with many countries picking up alternate country asylum policies

I can do a couple of years in advance (from a while back) but then it gets hairier further out and who knows