Any Tory who defended Boris's Savile smear as 'cut and thrust' should immediately recant

[noblegiraffe]

Any of the despicable lot who did the media rounds defending Boris making a far-right smear in parliament as 'political cut and thrust' should be faced with a journalist tomorrow asking whether they had reconsidered in the light of the mob surrounding Keir Starmer tonight calling him a fucking traitor, saying he should be hung, and repeating the same accusation. Their responses should be collated and published.

In recent years we have seen two MPs murdered. These mobs must be taken seriously. They should not be whipped up by the Prime Minister in the Houses of Parliament.

Boris has to accept responsibility for this, and every fucker who defended it as acceptable should be called to account.

You'd think after the tragic murder of David Amess they'd be a bit more restrained.

Hell if I was a Tory MP I'd want the PM to defuse this. After all ..

No-one normal can defend this.

OP you are right

@daimbarsatemydogsbone

Would like to see a few of the usual suspects turn up here and carry on defending the slur, which even for Boris, was low.

They're usually off shift by now.

13 people voting that IABU suggests that some are still up, but not willing to put their name to it.

@thecatfromjapan

Thank you for starting this thread.

I'm appalled and devastated about this.

I really hope I am not alone in thinking this is totally unacceptable.
I'm glad you make me feel I'm not alone in finding it just unsupportable.

I just hope others feel this way.

I feel the same.

I wrote to my Tory mp last week after the comments were first made and I've still not had a response, not even an automated one - it was an email.

This is all so depressing and frightening. I hate what this country is turning into.

Anyone defending this is as empty of moral compass as Johnson himself.

What we need is fact checkers in parliament who can immediately eject liars from the house instead of the ridiculous situation were the PM can routinely and repeatedly stand at the despatch box and lie but any MP calling out those lies is expelled from the chamber.

But this will never happen because Tories wouldn't vote for it and will protect Johnson. Shameful.

@madIam

I wrote to my Tory mp last week after the comments were first made and I've still not had a response, not even an automated one - it was an email.

This is all so depressing and frightening. I hate what this country is turning into.

Par for the course. My tory mp has never responded to emails beyond cut and pasting the party line.

After storm Arwin my village went without power for 10 days. Plenty of people tried to phone and email him for his help in organising showers/hot food etc for the elderly and families - he couldn't even be arsed to respond to those, prefering to attend a photo op planting a tree in a town 20 miles away.

@Kendodd

What we need is fact checkers in parliament who can immediately eject liars from the house instead of the ridiculous situation were the PM can routinely and repeatedly stand at the despatch box and lie but any MP calling out those lies is expelled from the chamber.

I agree totally. It is almost like something from 'Through the Looking Glass' in that people can lie with impunity in Parliament but tell the truth (ie say Johnson is a liar) and you're suspended for the day. I wonder how soon it'll be before we get Looking Glass justice ? (Sentence first, verdict afterwards)

@thecatfromjapan

Thank you for starting this thread.

I'm appalled and devastated about this.

I really hope I am not alone in thinking this is totally unacceptable.
I'm glad you make me feel I'm not alone in finding it just unsupportable.

I just hope others feel this way.

I feel absolutely sick at this.

I hate what this country is turning into.
Me too. But it is absolutely 100% our own fault. We get what we vote for. This is the path we are choosing. I could cry.

@Kendodd

I hate what this country is turning into. Me too. But it is absolutely 100% our own fault. We get what we vote for. This is the path we are choosing. I could cry.

I think it's more subtle than that. The difficulty is, with our electoral system, for most of us our vote actually makes no difference.

On average, elections are decided by the votes in marginal constituencies. If you live in a safe seat (of whatever 'flavour') it really makes no difference who you vote for. Over time this just leads to voter dis-engagement. Who can blame them ? My local MP has a majority of about 24,000. He's never going to be voted out. I vote because I feel I should, but it's a waste of my time and I know this deep down.

Even worse, the funding of political parties is opaque and far from a level playing field. The Tories get far more funding - a lot of it quite dubious - and can simply spend their way to victory. The bare faced lies told during the Brexit campaign are simply another example of how uneven funding and lack of enforcement of standards in our political sphere leads to where we are now.

I would personally like to see a system of Proportional Representation - so every vote truly matters - coupled with state funding of all political parties with a cap on it and no other funding permitted. Campaigns which have demonstrable lies are punished by funding allocations being lowered or withdrawn altogether.

There are many other things which could be done, but those would be a good starting point in my view.

@kenndodd

Do we though? Our voting system is somewhat dysfunctional. And plenty of us didn't vote for this horrible man.

‘After storm Arwin my village went without power for 10 days. Plenty of people tried to phone and email him for his help in organising showers/hot food etc for the elderly and families - he couldn't even be arsed to respond to those, prefering to attend a photo op planting a tree in a town 20 miles away.’

But come Election Day most of the village will vote Tory finding all kind of excuses to do so and he knows it.

I would personally like to see a system of Proportional Representation - so every vote truly matters - coupled with state funding of all political parties with a cap on it and no other funding permitted. Campaigns which have demonstrable lies are punished by funding allocations being lowered or withdrawn altogether.

I agree about banning donations to political parties are even started a thread about it the other day. As for PR, I also agree, unfortunately the public rejected it at the ballot box. Politicians, particularly Johnson, have learnt that for all we huff and puff about it the truth is they can lie as much as they want and we DON'T punish them at the ballot box. Look at Brexit, sold on a pack of lies and racism, and yet even now when it is so, so obviously clear politicians were lying, still, barely anyone who voted Leave is complaining about it.

And plenty of us didn't vote for this horrible man.

And plenty did. He was known to be the biggest vote winner the Tories had.

@Breathe57848

All those with Conservative constituency MPs please write to them!

Definitely will do. Mine is an ERG hard-line Tory so I don't expect much but I will definitely send something.

And there have been loads of threads with posters saying they would absolutely still vote Tory with Johnson as leader, claiming the alternative (presumably Starmer) being too terrible to contemplate.

Totally agree @BerylStrip. Stronger local democracy is vital. We have PR - Single Transferable Vote - in Ireland. Not a magic bullet but you don't get a huge majority with 4 out of 10 votes here. Coalitions are normal , get used to it. Blair's 2nd biggest mistake was not bringing in PR.

Johnson has done far more lasting damage to his country.
That remains to be seen, Trump could yet cause the collapse of (what passes for) US democracy.

Great thread, collating all the MPs going out on Twitter tonight to backstop for Johnson.

Keeping it general, minimising, minimising.

For shame.

twitter.com/mikeholden42/status/1490776813865476098?s=21

@Kendodd the public rejected some dogs breakfast called AV. They couldn't understand it . Neither could I and I'm from a country that has always used PR. Note how the London government made sure Scotland and Ireland had PR. Can't have some extremist group taking power under the barking mad FPTP system Eh?