Westminstenders: One Pepperoni Pizza Please. And a Milkshake To Go.

[RedToothBrush]

On the Eve of the EU Elections that we never met to happen, and we don't know what the next hour next mind day might bring.

Farage is enjoying the theatre of milkshakes. It means he gets attention and gets to play the victim. And avoid talking about his dodgy friends and even dodgier financing. The Brexit Party are polling so highly its possible he could be PM. And boy does he know it. The temptation is there and its too much to resist.

May has refused to resign so far tonight after a day of asking her to. The 1922 Committee refused to change the rules to help oust her - possibly because they don't want the next PM to be beset with challenges to the leadership at the drop of a hat. Graham Brady is seeing her on Friday... The ERG are not happy bunnies.

May is still apparently planning to plough on with the WAB with a referendum possibly attached. Though this remains to be seen.

Meanwhile Leadsom has just quit the Cabinet. She was one of the Brexit 'Pizza Club'. Rumours are this might be the Cabinet withdrawing support for her. Though Gove has said he doesn't intend to resign (tonight at least).

Rumour is that May's senior staff have abandoned her to let her make the decision to go. And rumours are that when Leadsom rang May to tell her she was leaving cabinet, May didn't tell her senior staff. This comes two weeks after rumours where that Phillip May was at the point of telling her it was time to resign. The rumours of course may be just that, rumours but it's hard to see how or why anyone would tell her to carry on now.

And so tomorrow. Who would vote for this utter shower of shit? Even if you were the most loyal of Tories?

The thing tomorrow is to get the remain vote out. It doesn't matter ultimately what people vote for. Every vote cast for remain keeps the Brexit Party popular vote down. Even if it doesn't win seats. And that is psychologically important.

Tomorrow make sure EVERYONE you know who is anti brexit party votes. More so if they are a Remainer voting for a Remain party, but also if they are solid Labour or the rarest of things, a true blue.

It MATTERS. Narratives will be set.

If you are not sure if you are registered to vote, please TRY ANYWAY. The worst case is you are turned away and have lost 20 mins of your life. But you might also be able to vote and that might change the course of events.

Talk to people tomorrow. Remind them. Make sure it's about preventing a hard right foothold. Apathy will destroy our futures. Being fed up of politicians so refusing to vote is actively shooting yourself in the face.

Who am I voting for?

Still no idea. But I will vote.

“To give a voice to the voiceless.”

Yeah, right😐

Was depressed to hear this morning that my Friend’s DD who is 20 voted Conservative.

I'm sure the Cons would be delighted to hear of ANYONE voting for them.

Tbh I can cope with votes for tories in this election. There are some very good tory MEPs. And it's not a vote for the Brexit Party.

NS was bloody quick!! As ever.

Ken Baker being interviewed on Sky now.
Saying how hard it will be for Europe now - it's their problem to 'sort out Ireland'. When interviewer guffaws he repeats it is their problem. FFS. Quelle surprise...

Loathsome Leadsome. KB quotes Latin. Then refers to a book about HItler / 'How Democracies Die'. Says 2 major parties, the gatekeepers of Democracies can no longer guarantee this. Smashing...

{Was depressed to hear this morning that my Friend’s DD who is 20 voted Conservative.}

Would anyone with a workable plan please step forward.

“To give a voice to the voiceless.”

Unless you're an EU citizen here, or a UK citizen abroad, trying to cast your vote...

Reasons not to feel sorry for Theresa May ..

Even on the same page announcing her going:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48394001

Foreign students may have been unfairly deported from the UK after being falsely accused of cheating in English language tests, a report has warned.

The government withdrew 30,000 visas from non-EU citizens after the BBC uncovered a testing scandal.

The National Audit Office concluded cheating had been "large scale" but innocent people may also been deported.

(contd).

I know who I feel sorry for.

There were some awful things happened under her watch, that she just didn't care about. She has compassion only for herself.

Interesting POV Red, "poison the well" is pretty strong. Hard to reconcile that with her known devotion to the Conservative party in my view.

Nicola Sturgeon has been utterly unsupportive and dismissive of TMs position and shows what is likely fake sympathy afterwards. if you call that pitch perfect I don't know what planet you are on.

How long do new PMs in this situation generally last before being forced to call a GE?

@MonarchyUK

UPDATE: The brutalist totalitarian May regime has removed Larry the Cat from his position.

He was just enjoying the sun! It is a cruel, cruel world. @Number10cat

twitter.com/MonarchyUK/status/1131844617031303169

Nicola Sturgeon has been utterly unsupportive and dismissive of TMs position and shows what is likely fake sympathy afterwards. if you call that pitch perfect I don't know what planet you are on

TM created her own position by pandering to the Brexiteers, coming out with the nonsense about citizens of nowhere, her red lines, and Brexit means Brexit. NS is consistent about wanting Scotland to be independent, no hypocrisy there, even if you don't agree with her.

I would like Scotland to stay in the UK but the Westminster government has no right to destroy their lives by removing the UK from the EU without a deal (ditto Gibraltar).

I don't think no deal will happen because it sensibly can't, but it does depend on what nutcase takes over.

I think we probably all thought May was the best candidate for Leadership at the time. However I revised my opinion at her first PMQs, when she started sneering at Corbyn. I thought, no, we now need a healer and a reconciler, and that's not the way to go about it.

May really blew it when she called the GE. That will be seen as one of her biggest mistakes.

Brace yourself everyone it still has to get worse before it can get better.

'This country I love'

What country would that be? The one that's seeing appalling levels of child poverty? Hospitals and schools crumbling? Jobs collapsing? Teens carrying knives 'for protection'? Infrastructure falling apart?

Or the one where she and Philip go to a lovely country church every Sunday and play with a cute dog while the cameras snap them laughing away?

Sorry, no.

Boris takes an early lead in the "Hypocrisy Stakes" though I see, my prev criticism of NS probably needs to be softened a bit, she's got nothing on Boris. He really is low.

I'm assuming, in order to respect democracy, the new PM will have to be a True BeLeaver? (Over the past few years, I have gathered that many Leavers blame the lack of instant unicorns on May's prior Remain-supporting taint.) There are quite a lot of suitably qualified candidates such as Johnson, Raab, Leadsom, Jenkyns, Rees-Mogg.

How long do new PMs in this situation generally last before being forced to call a GE

not sure - Major waited two years - Gordon Brown also waited too long. May possibly didn't want long enough. Or too long. Who knows. It's all a big mess.

However, the only upside of Boris is that Boris will do whatever suits Boris and not what suits the ERG. So it is not completely out of the question that he would do a bit of turncoating once in power.

Gove doesn't want no deal.

Not sure about Raab. He came across as having a degree of intelligence until he made the comment about now knowing the Dover Calais route was important.

Rumours circulating Cambridge turnout is 48%

I think she did the job dreadfully and made huge mistakes from the outset, but I also agree with Ken Clarke that she was treated abysmally by her own party. I was watching Ben Fogle and the wilderbeast at the Mara river crossing the other day, and the circling crocodiles reminded me of the ERG, solely focused on the death roll. Does anyone have any faith that any of the Tory candidates will do a better job? Gove (loathsome though he is) seems to have a brain and some energy. But as RTB says, it's a pyrhicc victory for whoever takes over. All the unsolvable issues still remain. It's been proven that we can't "just leave". Even if they end up with no deal, all these fundamental problems still remain. Something will have to replace what we have now. What a horrible horrible never-ending mess.

I have sympathy for her at a human level. She was in an impossible position ....although it was her red lines that backed herself into a corner making herself a hostage to the ERG who used her to get the most tax efficient brexit (for the 1%) and to hell with the rest of us.
Her legacy will be remembered as a failure on many levels but still not as catastrophic as Thatcher.
Her successor faces a similarly impossible job given the current numbers but if any of them go for a hard brexit they will surely be the worst PM ever...
One upside is the dismantling of the nasty party but if the votes go to brexit/ukip/BNP we should perhaps be careful what we wish for

not sure - Major waited two years - Gordon Brown also waited too long. May possibly didn't want long enough. Or too long. Who knows. It's all a big mess.

Brown and May waited too long. To be fair to Major though, he toughed it out and won in his own right.

If changing a Prime Minister can have such a profound effect on the direction and composition of government, I think it's time to have a convention that a change of party leader should result in an election. But that's because successive governments - starting with Thatcher - have weakened the core of collective responsibility in the cabinet.

Know we’re in unprecedented times but am I right in thinking that historically it’s someone not mentioned much at the start that comes through to win? Got to the stage where I think given circumstances maybe Gove would be the lesser of many evils and this comes from someone who spent many happy hours on the slap Gove app.

Or maybe Boris and his ego gets it then does that channelling his inner Churchill thing he’s so fond of and does a grand revoke speech, deciding he will then be adored by Remainers everywhere. What a bloody mess.

May's mistakes

The October 2016 red lines. She misunderstood the ref and pandered to the right in the spirit of compromise

Triggering article 50 without a clear path forward. Again pandering to the right.

The GE. A vanity project in which she failed to understand her personal weaknesses as Leader.

Leading by dictate and playing one side off against the other. In the belief it would force compromise.

The entire belief that the hard right are actually capable of compromise.

And that's why I believe she has poisoned the well. Her vision of Conservatism and the purpose of the party can only exist within a party that compromises.

A hard right leader can not lead compromise.

She's warning the party that if they don't learn the lesson the party will fail. And the country she loves and the vision she had disappears. (note she once again referred to the unionist bit of the party. NI goes with a Hard Right leadership.)

@RedToothBrush I'm in Cambridge and the polling station was buzzing with people when I went to vote.

Or maybe Boris and his ego gets it then does that channelling his inner Churchill thing he’s so fond of and does a grand revoke speech, deciding he will then be adored by Remainers everywhere.

I've long thought that this was what Johnson's had up his sleeve.