Liz Truss has resigned. Part 4: The Desolation of Boris

[sunnydaytoday0]

Continuation from last thread, for those of us following all the action on Monday.

And yes I'm a LOTR fan, so tried to continue the theme in the thread title 😉

Checking in!

I think/hope that Rishi will bring some stability to the country and calm things down and that together with Kier we can get back to calm politics. I do think we need a general election but maybe not until next summer (which unfortunately will mean new boundary changes).

For the political process in this country to work well we need a choice of at least two normal reasonably centrist parties who are fairly evenly matched. Landslides and weak opposition aren't good as then things lack scrutiny.

Those FIVE Zahawi u-turns in full:

Serving Boris
“He’s got to go”
Chancellor, yes please
Letter: Actually you should resign
I’m backing Boris
We must support Rishi

Migh be helpful for the Johnson fans on here

A Boris Johnson supporters (bloke on R4 this morning - was half asleep and can't remember who!) are now saying there should be a general election as Rishi sunak doesn't have a mandate from 'the country' , as though Boris Johnson's from 2019 is worth wiping your arse on now 🙄

Maybe Boris Johnson is hoping that all his Troy opponents will lose
their seats and he will be able to stride in as the triumphant leader.

Shortly before Johnson announced he wasn't standing Guido published a projection on what they thought he could get. That came out at 106. That's 106 best case scenario.

In reality Johnson couldn't rely on all of those to come good. He was very aware there were likely to be a few who would jump ship at the last second. He said his number was 102. That's probably true. He probably did have 102 names. But names on a list aren't ticks in boxes.

Ultimately he knew he didn't have enough of a margin to get 100 xs. He'd have come up somewhere in the 80s or 90s.

If Johnson supporters in Parliament want a GE it's actually very easy for them to get one.

Sunak only needs 40 to turn against him and side with the opposition to have a no confidence vote in Parliament and trigger a GE.

Something tells me they are unlikely to do this, any time before at least May.

I shall watch with interest to see if they decide to retain the Tory whip and vote with the rest of the party or are fully committed to a GE.

Plaice matting.

That halfwit Christopher Chope saying how angry he is that "Boris has been let down once again and undermined by our parliamentary colleagues".

These people really think that Parliament and the country exist for the benefit of themselves and their mates, don't they? They're not even bothering to hide it.

Yes, even though we've seen it all before, the sense of absolute entitlement is astonishing, isn't it?

It is in no way "letting Boris down" or undermining him for MPs to say that they would prefer another candidate. They are not under any obligation to choose him, but he seems to struggle to understand this.

Was feeling bad mood like as R4 was depressing but news that pound has strengthened and cost of borrowing fallen is good

Nick Robinson on the Today programme said as much - that it was code for Sunak and Mordant wouldn’t step aside for him.

Will Walden: "James Duddridge, poor guy... Boris was messaging him on the way back from the Caribbean. 'Come on Dudders, let's go for it'. All the usual nonsense. I thought from the beginning it was all rubbish.

"They're clearly furious with him."

Johnson's comms chief there. When you have friends like Johnson, who needs enemies. (Duddridge now supports Sunak, by the way, like nothing ever happened.)

I can see Chope's dilemma - the putrid old dinosaur is now in the terrible position of having to choose between a woman and a brown man. Must be horrendous for him.

BBC Radio 4
UK economy "frankly doomed" without Brexit renegotiation

Guy Hands, CEO of private equity firm Terra Firma & long time Tory supporter, says UK is on a path to being "the sick man of Europe" & would eventually need a "bailout from the IMF"

Interesting Radio 4 had this view on this morning. Stating the obvious Overt anti-brexit talk is rarely allowed. Perhaps a change is in the air.

Chris Mason reporting that the King is scheduled to be in London this evening…😜

From journalist Paul Brand (ITV) on Twitter:

"Penny Mordaunt’s team are briefing that they have the numbers this morning. I asked why we can’t see 100 names but they say a lot of the endorsements are remaining private. We’ll find out shortly I guess."

Guy Hands is right.

Yes we can make our trade deals, but the uncomfortable truth of Brexit is that we have to be in regulatory alignment with the EU, even on the outside.

Johnson has been left with the headbangers and gargoyles of his party. Yes he might stage rebellion via them, but if he does, I imagine he is finished as a leader contender.

A very diminishing group of people take him seriously in Parliament. They may not be the best either, but the Conservatives have worked out that doing sums is good. I think they have screwed themselves really, but rebuilding with Sunak is at least tenable, instead of a ride on the Johnson drama llama. He was a party PM and we need someone who is not an idle lazy booze craver in charge.

Whatever the testimony of former No 10 staffers on the parties, I bet it is electric.

Is Penny going to do the same as Boris? Pretend she has over 100 and then pull out for the "good of the party"? She's going to look pretty stupid if she claims to have 100+ and it gets to 2pm and she doesn't.

If I saw correctly Patel, Gove and Cleverly back Sunak

Is Penny going to do the same as Boris? Pretend she has over 100 and then pull out for the "good of the party"? She's going to look pretty stupid if she claims to have 100+ and it gets to 2pm and she doesn't.

I have a feeling she is angling for a major post in Cabinet but Rishi isn't picking up her calls.

Lots of very disgruntled Conservative party members on Twitter complaining that they're landed with the person they rejected last time around. Strangely, none of them seem to be reflecting on the fact that maybe the person they did choose didn't work out too well.

Give that over 25% of them own neither computers nor mobile phones, it’s astonishing they’ve even heard of Twatter.

I like Peston's theory of why Johnson pulled out, which was that when he took soundings it became obvious that an awful lot of the people who said they couldn't work with him back in July still say that, so that even if he got in he'd struggle to put together a cabinet which didn't solely consist of the batshit right and outright idiots. It would of course be entirely typical of Johnson to dismiss the possibility that his former colleagues might actually have meant what they said and don't have his facility for hypocritical U-turns.

The problem is that if the Conservative party puts off members who accordingly don't renew, then it becomes entirely funded by donations from wealthy individuals.

But the members have proved that they aren't competent to choose a leader.

Difficult one - I would point to the fact that the members only started to have a voice in the leadership process in about 2000.

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