Rishi is PM - coronation, unelected -GE Now

[MrsRobinsonsHandprints]

This is not democracy.

@Kissingfrogs25
By installing Sunak - how many red wallers or blue wallers will vote for a billionaire banker do you suppose?

I'd put money on that being more than you think and Labour would be wrong to take that approach as a given.

People were incredibly more willing to give Truss a chance to prove herself than they are Rishi. Give the man an opportunity to at least try to sort out this mess. What have we got to lose right now?

I think we need to give it time before we can judge how many won’t vote for him because he is so wealthy

Didn't stop voters voting for Cameron or Johnson

what does appe to Tory voters particularly is overcoming obstacles and Sunak has that he will have and his family will have had to deal with racism and people can be picky who they are and who they are not racist towards. Immigrants who have come here worked hard and show gratitude that their children are British educated here etc are far more acceptable than Immigrants who do not openly show gratitude and feel the country has let them down

Yes I get Starmer and Johnson supporters taking this line but we’ll see

Exactly this.

YABU.

1. The British never have directly elected a Prime Minister - this isn't a presidential system. We elect MPs to represent us in Parliament and an MP who can command the support of a majority in Parliament will be asked to form a government.
2. Haven't the markets (upon which all of our jobs, pensions etc. depend to one extent or another) had quite enough jitters for the moment? We need a safe pair of hands to stabilise the economy and restore business confidence. Yet more uncertainty is the last thing we need.

Do you honestly believe in the myth of trickle down economics? Truss’ ‘plan’ would not have enabled us to “grow our way out”.

who would your choice have been? BoJo? What would his economic plan have been? Or was he still waiting for his instructions from Crispin Odey?

...what does appe to Tory voters particularly is overcoming obstacles...

That is demonstrably untrue.

What appeals is caricatures of British and Tory 'types'.

Boris the hare brained toff who tried to model himself on Winston Churchill.
Margaret Thatcher the stern boarding school matron, copied by Liz 'pussy bow' Truss.
Cameron the agreeable sort who went to the right schools...

The tabloids have trained the public well to opt for style over substance.

The oil companies making billions?

That’s an obvious place to start filling the fiscal gap. It’s one party’s policy - regrettably it’s not the party in power.

I do understand that in our parliamentary democracy we vote for an MP and not directly for a PM. However, in practice of course the current party leader at election time influences people's votes.

Particularly in the most recent elections, the Tory campaigns have definitely exploited this: part of the reason Johnson was so popular as a party leader was that his personality was seen as a vote-winner. Conversely, the Tories and the Tory press definitely took the line in the last general election that Jeremy Corbyn himself was a dangerous person to have in charge of the country. They also attacked Ed Miliband personally before that (remember that bacon sandwich?).

So even though it is technically accurate, it does come across as dishonest and undemocratic for the same people who encouraged us to vote for/against certain personalities as leaders to turn around and say oh, you shouldn't expect to have a say in who the leader of our country is, don't you understand how a parliamentary democracy works? It's particularly acute when we're now on our 5th leader in less than 7 years.

A hell of a lot more than most realise if we don't control our spending/borrowing/interest rates. I don't believe that there is anyone better qualified than Sunak to take on this mess. That's being honest (full disclosure - I've never voted Tory in my life).

Partying during lockdown He turned up early for a bloody meeting. He's a teetotal policy wonk.

I hate the Tories. I hate everything they stand for. I will NEVER vote for them.

But I am actually glad it's Rishi over Penny and I don't want a GE because Labour are atrocious at the moment over their stance on women's rights. So at the moment I can't vote for them either.

I'd like Rishi to get things a bit more stable, Labour to realise they are backing the wrong horse and understand why sex matters and THEN have a GE in about 2 years when hopefully Labour still have a landslide, inherit less of a financial mess so have a chance of staying in power for the next 10 years and women don't get thrown under the bus.

His main gripe was that Johnson stitched him up by leaking these stories when he was fundamentally, squeaky clean. That was at the heart of their estrangement.

It's their only policy as far as I can see.

People were incredibly more willing to give Truss a chance to prove herself than they are Rishi. Give the man an opportunity to at least try to sort out this mess. What have we got to lose right now?

He was in favour of a hard Brexit from the get go. The number of Brits who think Brexit, which will hit our GDP by 4% in the medium term, was a good idea is now down to 1 on 3. So either :
A) he is an irresponsible idiot - as much a fantasist as Truss.
B) he purposely campaigned to make most of us poorer and the UK economy less competitive.

either way he is not deserving of any kind of chance or opportunity. That’s before we mention him being comfortable with wife avoiding tax or his breaking lockdown rules.

Maybe pay a bit more attention then.

@theworldhas

a hugely privileged individual who chose to join a political party which aims to maintain the massive wealth inequality present in the UK compared to other OECD nations and run down and then privatise all public services. . Apart from that he seems alright I guess

The hyperbole really doesn’t help your case. The UK’s gini coefficient is about 0.37, which whilst high, is really not “massive compared to other OECD nations” at all. More than half of all countries are somewhere between 0.3 and 0.4. The USA is 0.4 and after that they start to get “massive”

I watch and read about politics a lot more than the average person. It should all have cut through by now. All I hear from opposition parties is 'General Election Now'. It's a slogan much like 'Get Brexit Done' designed to appeal to the politically uninformed.

Nightbulb this is interesting but which year do you mean? On Statistica 20/21 it is 34.4%, higher in 2009/10 at 36.6%, so has decreased

Don’t be ridiculous. How can any policy cut through when the Tory psychodrama occupies all the bandwidth? We’ve had Partygate, the strenuous attempts to extract Johnson, the interminable leadership contest, Truss’s six weeks of fuck ups, then another leadership contest. In the middle of that the Queen died. Of course you hear GE because it’s what the majority of the electorate wants. This is like being held hostage.

@MarshaBradyo OECD data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm
UK data is 2019, but it puts it into context of other OECD countries. 2020/21 a bit of a statistical anomaly for everywhere due to COVID, but still a good sign it’s going in that direction

@Kissingfrogs25

re. Your comment that the bar was set unnaturally high (i.e. needing the support of 100 MPs) - it had to be a high bar in the circumstances.

If the bar was set at 50 MPs, we might have ended up with a leader (likely Johnson) who did not have the support of the parliamentary party.

That would likely have seen, in fairly short order, another forced resignation, and yet another leadership contest.

Johnson being able to charm a section of the public is all well and good, but he also needs to be able to command the confidence of the government and his own back benchers. He had that confidence once, but not anymore.

Dear old Jo Coburn asks the Labour and Lib Dem MPs about fiscal policy every single time. 'We need a General Election for stability' they cry. The Tories are hopeless at the moment but not so hopeless that I want to vote for Rachael and her 'fully costed' plans. The last Labour shadow chancellor who said that ad infinitum was John McDonnell. I didn't believe him and I don't believe her.