Westminstenders: Has Boris been outmanoeuvred? Reprise

[RedToothBrush]

In the beginning there was this thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2670552-Has-Boris-been-outmanoeuvred?pg=1

And it said:
If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.

Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.

With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.

And

If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over - Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession ... broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.

The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.

So what of where we stand and the poison chalice of the Tory Leadership and a deal.

According to a poll of Tory Members, Johnson is by far their runaway favourite to become next leader. And he's given a 61% competence score - higher than any other candidate.

With Raab as their second favourite.

May has successfully managed to make such a mess of how she handled the 2016 Tory Party Conference and everything that subsequently stemmed from that, that the poison chalice of leadership will be passed and sooner than many would have wanted.

However blame for what follows can be laid at her feet. At the Labour Party’s feet for ending talks that were never going anyway. At the EU. And No Deal has been detoxified by May's handling amongst many supporters of Brexit. Johnson and Raab will therefore have no interest in striking a deal with the EU and instead set sail for exit on 31st Oct and will brazen it out.

What is scary is that waiting in the wings is Farage, who without winning a single seat in the HoC has more power than any MP. They are all so afraid of him. Thus we face a very hard push to the right, with the left and centre in disarray and disorganisation.

The Human Rights Act and Devolution settlements will be top of the list to go.

And we will face draconian ways to control the population as the lazy fools will want no accountability to the press or the courts.

How long before appointed or elected judges?

Was Boris outmanoeuvred?

By the look of it, absolutely not. He just had to wait a few years. But his path and power will not be lead by him... But by those who pull his strings.

It looks bleak. Very bleak.

Many may rue the day they didn't vote for May's deal yet...

... And fear of this nightmare vision of the future is the only card May has left in her hand to play. Will anyone realise this?

Probably not, because they will all still think Johnson's leadership bid will be blocked by moderates. The trouble is he's polling well and the cowards are too busy looking over their shoulders at the turquoise arrows.

Pray for a shock result next week which brings fewer Brexit Party seats than are anticipated. The trouble is they have the momentum right now and Remainers don't know their arses from their elbows much less be passion and inspiring to the young and to women.

We are fucked.

Thinking about it maybe it is education as nearly everyone I know went to university.
But I live on the edge of a rich huntin’, shootin’, fishing strong Tory constituency.
I know what it’s like as DH lived there as a child until he left home. His parents were very poor though from a family of farm labourers.
Property is very expensive and the people must have got their money by mainly working for it, which suggests they had a good education.
I think it must be predominantly white although I have no figures to show that.
So it’s a bubble of smug Tories, many of my age, like in the SE.
Living in an area that is not socially or racially diverse. Though that could be seen as a choice of course not an effect.
Maybe they were just born like that. Rather like sponges. Absorb ‘facts’ without any ability to question them. They probably read the Telegraph.
Also, of course, protecting their ‘privileged’ lifestyle.
How depressing.

"people must have got their money by mainly working for it"

I don't think that necessarily follows.

I don’t even see myself as older when I look in the mirror born. It’s only when I see a photograph. I now resist having them taken.
I went to 3 different places a few years ago until I got an acceptable photo to renew my passport.
It’s still awful and I never look at it.
Like you I returned to education much later and never felt any different to the other students.
Also I worked overseas for many years and have a racially mixed family.
All that has maybe reinforced my beliefs but I don’t believe has formed them.

Most of them must have piglet. It’s a massive constituency and although some may have inherited wealth I don’t think most will have done so. Maybe some inherit a house but they still have to earn enough to live there in the manner to which they are accustomed.
There are rich farmers and landed gentry but many villages with chocolate box houses at very high prices.

Thinking about it maybe it is education as nearly everyone I know went to university.

My parents left school at 15.

Little I’m not at all trying to say that people who went to university are somehow better. Those that did were extremely privileged and the school system we had, with the 11 plus, threw so many children on the scrap heap and made them feel like failures at a very young age.
Now I’m worried I’m sounding superior which was never my intention. I am just trying to work out what makes so many people of my age vote Tory, support Brexit and have so little consideration for anyone else.
I’m sorry if it came across that way.

Even in the 'good old days' of the late 60s and early Seventies, it was usually only the Grammar school boys, who went to University. The girls were mostly shunted off to teacher training college - some of which started to offer degrees around 1969 ish, but still plenty didn't. The future was then mapped out for you - get engaged at the end of your first year at college, get married when you left, teach for two years, have your first child........

Theresa May would almost certainly not have gone to Oxford if she had been at my school. She might have aspired to Manchester or Birmingham, but Oxbridge would be out of the question. In the seven years I was at my school, they sent no one to either university, although I am quite sure each year there would have been a few pupils who would have been successful, with a little encouragement.

But I digress - Boris Johnson wouldn't have got to Oxford from my brother's school either - he might have managed to get a place at a Poly.

I’m sorry if it came across that way.

Don't worry at all - no offence taken and I completely understand your bewilderment. I feel it myself.

I'm a sort of bridge between two worlds. Only person in my family to leave run down coastal resort and go to university.

What I'm trying to explain is that it is a different background and I think people voted the way they did out of a combination of fear and hope. My Mum for instance thought it would mean more money for the NHS & she has since died.

A halfway decent opposition would forensically attack the shitty outcomes of Brexit for ordinary people, while giving people what they really need - hope.

My home town is crumbling, full of empty shops, rusty railings, drug addicts, homeless people & food banks. You have to deal with that and kill Brexit at the same time & Corbyn isn't charismatic enough.

I've been on FB trying to deflect Faragit support, using the tack of:
"-The BP only has one remit, but it cannot actually deliver Brexit with MEPs as that's Westminster's job
-No point voting for BP candidates as they will not help British interests even in the short time we are still in the EU (see Farage losing our fishing rights by missing votes)
-If you are actually serious about delivering Brexit you'll vote Tory or Labour as they have the power to get Brexit done."

Note: I do not intend to vote Labour or Tory, nor do I wish to get Brexit done while there's still a hope of revoking, but this tactic allows the Brexiters to save face and still "win" while keeping power away from the odious Fartage and his ridiculous vanity project.

To those who were pondering how anyone can think Johnson & Rees-Mogg speak for them as opposed to Jess Phillips, my dh was speaking to a politics professor recently who is American. The professor was explaining that the abject poor who still vote Trump/republican are happy about the vastly rich to having huge tax cuts is because they believe in the American Dream. They believe that any minute now they will also be vastly rich. And then they will also benefit from those tax cuts.

We have a lot of that notion too. A lot of people have an aspiration for huge wealth that they think the likes of Johnson & Rees-Mogg can give Britons too. The right sort of Britons of course

Johnson & Rees-Mogg speak for their dream future selves.

That seems a very clever tactic InMySpareTime

We literally cannot win as even when we vote to reject Brexit it's taken as 'get on with Brexit'.

It's been that way ever since the GE of 2017. Remember when TM LOST the GE and then delivered a victory speech saying 'let's get to work'? And then yesterday - a senior tory admitted the reason another vote/ GE couldn't be held was because they knew we would vote down brexit. They know full well what the local election results showed - but they are determined to have brexit for their own bank balance reasons and there is literally nothing the electorate can do to stop it. I'm starting to think a second ref on May's deal vs remain - in which remain won a landslide victory - would be taken as a vote for hard brexit. They want it to happen and so are not prepared to listen to what the actual 'will of the people' is.

@tobee that's a good point

There have been no grammar schools in Scotland since the 70s - the system here is fully comprehensive. Maybe that is part of the different attitude?

I genuinely don't know any Leave voters of any age (from my 82 year old father down ). I tell a lie: I've come across a single person who voted Leave. My cousin's boyfriend, who at the time of the referendum was struggling to organise a working visa for her to come over from the States (although she is South African/Australian - not sure which passport she uses/what she considers herself) and felt that the UK should be more open to Commonwealth citizens. She's here now and with hindsight, he acknowledges he was conned - that it was a simplistic reaction to (internal) Home Office hostile policy.

I envy you Prettybird, as most of the people I know are Leavers and I'm seen as the slightly weird nutcase who keeps arguing with them (and who they wish would just shut up, as it's embarrassing to talk about Brexit in polite company).

Mind you, our visit to Edinburgh last year was made even more delightful by the obvious Remain leaning of everyone we talked to. The taxi driver back to the airport was both hilarious and savage in his denunciation of Brexit. Total contrast to the frothing arsehole who then took us home from Gatwick - really like night and day and a very depressing homecoming.

I'm not sure that's the difference @prettybird . My world is entirely comprehensive education and yet this is a Leave stronghold.

@prerrybird what do you mean no grammar schools in Scotland since the 70s? Aberdeen grammar? Or do you mean new ones?

Significant concentration of flouride in the water has the effect of making people passive IIRC.
There is certainly something 'weird' going on if you think of the anti war, anti nuclear, Greenham Common protests back in the day.
Now the government is buggering the UK completely and many of the populace seem to be just accepting it.
I suppose until say the last 5 years or so, the prosperity and stability of the majority of the UK might have led to a feeling that things can't get worse as most 'upsets' have been pretty localised and things have largely recovered, possibly made 'invisible' by the failure of mainstream reporting.

Whisky _ Aberdeen Grammar has been a comp. since 1970!
Conservative party member I certainly don't want Boris as PM. It would be a disaster for the country and the conservative party. I really wish people would wake up and realise what an idiot he is. Have they all forgotten what an arse he made of himself as foreign sec!

Whisky2014 - there are schools that are called Grammar schools - but they are, and have been over over 40 years, comprehensives. So not "Grammar Schools" as those in England would understand them.

The names are purely historical.

The 11 Plus was abolished in the 70s and even grant aided selective schools (by whatever means the selection happened) was abolished then too.

I am not sure that people vote for Farage as the equivalent to Trump because of a UK version of the American Dream.

I am much more sure that it's social class based, and the Rees-Moggs and Johnsons are looked up to because they are toffs, with the belief that they were born to rule. Farage doesn't fit this mould, hence his man of the people act with his beer and fags.

Oh I see, thanks @prettybird

You would not believe it from Mumsnet, but most parts of England don't have grammar schools either.

I can't talk for Wales, but I think they are far and few between there too.

No grammar schools here.

Michael Heseltine says he will vote LibDem in the Euro elections, and Labour is panicking about the switch to the LibDems. Heseltine was a real maverick in his day. Of late I believe he's mellowed into a wealthy old gentleman who I believe has done much to support schools local to where he lives.

Even if they beat the Brexshit party hands down, it will still be a sign that we want to Brexit - this has now become an act of faith.