I did a Twitter poll an hour or so ago:
These things are not scientific, of course. And I have no doubt my Twitter timeline is biased, but I still think it interesting.
Who are the 4%? What planet do the live on? You cannot see the ratios until you vote. It is likely that they are serious. Why? I admit to bemusement.
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Old Etonian George Orwell concluded that as members of the British Establishment his fellow pupils were convinced that they had a right to rule, that their way of looking at the world was the only way of looking at the world and were incapable of learning any lessons from what was happening in the world.
That was a hundred years ago.
We have come full circle and they have not changed
They are the people that support Boris Johnson.
They would rather see Britain destroyed than admit they were wrong.
You are right of course but beyond the Etonian types there is also support. Jeremy Vine during the week was squawking like an excited schoolboy about Johnson’s return (only to be shot down by a Tory grande who very forcefully said ‘good lord no’.)
There does seem to be a significant number of ordinary (for want of a better term) people who would love to see Boris back. It is absolutely baffling to me but to requote Ivan’s Hyde quote ”Or to quote Marina Hyde’s summary: ‘Who would think a lying, hypocritical degenerate was the answer to this crisis? A large number of Conservatives, apparently.’’
Looking at things more broadly it becomes less baffling, after all significant numbers of people fell for the Brexit lies and any number of ‘we’re all in it together’ bullshit.
I’m not sure I can actually express what I feel at the moment. Somewhere between incandescent rage, overwhelming frustration and stupefied by people (the general public or Tory politicians) who even consider for a moment that Johnson should even be considered as a possible candidate to lead the Tory Party. Unbelievable! The fact that he is off on holiday when parliament is actually (supposed to be) in session – when for much of the last while it hasn’t largely down to him and party conferences – says it all. What does he actually do for his MPs salary? Frankly, it is sickening and so emblematic of what is wrong with this country and the political class.
The Tories talk about being the party of business. Truss wouldn’t pass the probationary period that would normally be applied (fortunately she was allowed to resign) and Johnson wouldn’t pass a rudimentary psychometric analysis…unless you thought (as included in Ivan Horrocks response quoting Marina Hyde) that we needed a “lying, hypocritical degenerate”. To which I would add, lazy, narcissistic, self-entitled, etc., etc. We all KNOW…he has proved himself incapable, unrepentant and that he doesn’t have a single leadership molecule in his body. He clearly has absolutely no shame. Back to the world of business….who having messed up so royally would ever be invited back particularly into a senior role? It is as suggested earlier a combination of (Etonian) self-entitlement and an extreme case of the Dunning-Kruger syndrome.
There is a petition calling for an immediate general election to end this chaos. I have signed and encouraged anyone I know to sign. Frankly, the government’s initial response is probably where the incandescent rage bit comes from. It is probably futile but, as discussed variously in Richard’s blog, if ever there was a clear signal that we need a constitution and proportional representation it is now.
What have we done to allow such damaged and untalented people to rise to positions of power – I’m thinking Johnson, Truss, Kwarteng, Patel, Shapps, etc. And for an international dimension, Trump, Putin. For me the most telling part of this whole sorry saga that has resulted in the Tories trashing the economy over the past 12 years (and previously with Thatcher, et al) and Truss almost putting the final nail in the coffin, is that the best they seem to come up with is the possible return of a proven blithering, dithering, self-entitled fool and a few other candidates that at a stretch might rise to mediocrity.
What is most annoying is that there are actually solutions. Solutions that can address the immediate energy crisis, can relieve the cost of living crisis and, in the medium to long term create a fairer society, improve the quality of life for all and to take care care of the planet we inhabit. However, these solutions require a reversal of the financially-led world that is designed to further increase the wealth gap.
I’m off to bathe in the healing powers of nature – a nature these buffoons are trashing – to forget the very disturbing reality that we face.
I have been bird watching all morning – very good too, including a pair of marsh harriers
A Twitter ‘pill’ (your typo) would probably be about right in explaining how anyone can want Johnson as PM again, after the way he trashed the office last time round, Richard, but apparently many members of the Tory party do, as do many MPs. Or to quote Marina Hyde’s summary: ‘Who would think a lying, hypocritical degenerate was the answer to this crisis? A large number of Conservatives, apparently.’ What a pity many of them will never read Hyde’s piece, of the brief summary The Guardian’s brief resume of all the things he did wrong/laws broken, etc. If they did their worship of Johnson might be challenged. Then again, probably not.
Typo corrected
Rest, agreed
Richard, I may have missed them, but I don’t recall seeing any reference in your blogs to Marcus J Ball’s attempts to prosecute Johnson or of his crowd-funded organisation: https://www.stoplyinginpolitics.org/
It may be coals to Newcastle, but if not, watch out for the film that he has nearly ready, exposing how a judge who was one of Johnson’s pals (or maybe just an old-Etonian?) arbitrarily stopped Ball’s first attempts at prosecution in early 2019 before Johnson became Tory party leader.
The tories know Johnson is their best chance of electoral success. Watch the polls narrow sharply in the next few months if he gets in
Wow. So short a comment. So wrong.
I’d suggest that no-one thinks he is a reformed person but, if you are a Tory MP staring down the barrel with the likelihood of having to find alternative employment in a couple of years if not sooner, you are desperate believe to try anything. The only question is whether enough of them are prepared to put any residual sense of decency they may have onto one side and support him. By all account two MP’s who were part of the mass resignation that drove him from office have already signalled their support. The Tory clown show continues to roll remorselessly on.
And what one would hope is that any MP who now supports Johnson is ensuring they will never be voted for or be allowed to stand as an MP again. It makes it so blatant that the only thing they are interested in is feathering their own nest and care nothing at all for this country.
In reply to AliB
I am told that many of these Tory MPs have a degree in PPE. What does PPE stand for?
As most of them line themselves up for lucrative directorships and consultancies after they leave office, it is now clear it is – Piracy, Prostitution and Extortion, – or have I got that wrong?
Politics, philosophy and economics
Or general studies
what way your degree in Richard? didn’t you drop out of Southampton uni after a term?
You really shouldn’t Red Tim Worstall
BSc (Soc Sci) Business economics and accountant
2:1
1979
Southampton didn’t give a first in five years in social science for five years at that time
… I would also note the the markets aren’t too keen on Johnson. As someone who always says “yes” to whoever he is talking to at the time it seems unlikely that the “fiscal hole” will shrink – on the contrary, it will grow.
Leaving aside all the issues about rates, money creation etc. (because they Tories will be (choose to be?) judged in “orthodox” monetary terms) the markets see the response to fiscal loosening as higher rates from the BoE. So, GBP was stable (on the expectation of higher rates) and gilts down 2 points.
If Johnson makes it to a Tory members vote the gilt market might have a say!
If Johnson reaches 100 votes, then either he wins or the likelihood of the Conservative Party falling apart exponentially increases. There are positives from this that I suspect may outweigh the negatives. Here is the hypothesis. The end of the Conservative Party follows from a Conservative Party formed around the tension between Sunak and Johnson: it doesn’t work, save by trying to ‘con’ the public – again (which divides, at least into two, with the UKIP/ERG extreme forming a separate Party – which cabal keeps the husk of the old Party? Who knows?), opens the prospect of a change in attitudes to Brexit to recognise that it is the source of the major economic problem; at least suffcient to contemplate a custom union, or single market compromise with the EU. Second, FPTP would not survive the political fall-out from the collapse of the Conservative Party, and we can make PR make work in the service of democratic, consensus politics, that respects those NOT in power – the critical value of democracy FPTP ignores (but NOT d’Hondt! That was a cynical maneouvre by Westminter FPTP Parties in Scotland to make PR the creature of Party).
Slightly garbled comment, I confess (festina lente is the lesson!); but the hypothesis I am trying to offer is that the Conservatives may already be beyond the ‘tipping point’ into the political abyss. The new leadership election system created overnight by the ’22 Committee (they even looked shifty explaining it to the public), was obviously created simply to block a Johnson comeback. It failed. Johnson is back; centre of attention, like a Pop Star on the red carpet. If he makes the 100 cut-off, and it goes to the membership, then Sunak is unlikely to defeat Johnson. That should tell you all you need to know about the demented gerontocracy (at least 20% do not even have e-mails) that makes up the membership, and the bizarre nature of the neoliberal Conservative Party, beyond the gatekeepers of the fawning media who have distorted public understanding of the nature of the Conservative Party for so long.
Stopping Johnson winning was not the point of the ’22 Committee plot. The point was to block Johnson standing, because they knew that even if he stands they are in deep peril. That outcome has already collapsed. The Conservative Party is already scrabbling around trying to claim that (nevertheless Johnson standing), Sunak unites the Party. He doesn’t. He can’t.
Already 60+ MPs are backing Johnson,probably more; in spite of the pressures, and even if some have no yet admitted it – because pressure no longer works in the Conservative Party, discipline has gone, and even patronage has minimal peruasive power). Johnson and Sunak cannot offer the country that it can actually provide a united Party; and be in no doubts, the Party will not fool the Markets they rely on, either. The most likely outcome of this disintegration of Party morale, sooner or later, is a damaging collapse of Government, or a Party split into inreconcilable personality and ideological camps in a toxic mixture of antagonism.
In addition, all that any British Conservative Government can now offer the financial Markets is a dscount on bonds (a higher yield, at more cost to the public), for the Markets to accept the burden of a discredited Conservative Government continuining in charge of the country.
All that Tory MPs are interested in are power and party, and the money and positions that flow from it. The country and its people are of no interest now as they know they will be thrown out at the first opportunity.
To your last point, I think Krugman refers to it as the moron premium. As that is how the UK government are now widely regarded.
Mr Stafford,
It is Party interest first, and last. They were contemplating whether they can perform a bizarre ‘stitch-up’ between Johnson and Sunak. Such a phoney agreement not last. The only analogy I can think of (a tasteless one, but that is the sewer into which the Conservatives have dragged us down); is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (that ended well); they are figuring out if they can divide Government between them, and stitch us all up, until somehow, the polls turn and the Party comes up smelling of roses. It doesn’t seem to have worked, but the fact that they would, in desperation run it briefly up the flagpole tells you all you need to know about the political insanity of the Conservative Party. You cannot believe a single blethering word any single one of them utters.
Molotov and Ribbentrop were of course busy dividing up other people’s countries – a piece of history that the further Left are rather quiet about. In this case the Tories are busy dividing up our own country – its wealth, society and the country itself. They make a better case for Scottish independence than the SNP ever could on their own. (I shall be back to Skye yet again in a few days).
Its clutching at straws I know but I wonder if the media has turned. The extent to which Conservative MPs and their cheer leaders are challenged is very different to say 6 months ago. Its not just Krishnan G-M. There was a remarkable introduction to ITV news this week that has been replayed. Even the Torygraph printing articles about how Project Fear was right. I don’t think they are going to switch back.
Death of Stalin works quite well as a parallel – none of them trust each other and there has been so much lying and back stabbing that any pact is likely to fall apart very quickly. (Johnson as Beria?!) So I think its 50:50 that we will be on for an election before their time is up and then we need the opposition to work together in ways that they have not done before.
Im sure that others here also follow Chris Grey’s excellent analyses.
https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/10/total-disarray.html
Another one thinking, hoping that the Tories are close to the end.
Isn’t Johnson preferable to Sunak when it comes to harm reduction? Sunak means austerity on steroids justified with reasonable-sounding technocratic nonsense, Johnson means probably milder austerity justified with meaningless populist sound bites. Yes I know, devils dancing on the edge of a razor blade, and none of us get any say, but for the sake of argument, isn’t that (Johnson) preferable?
Your poll seems to replicate some of the TV interviews I’ve seen.
The answer is that there are some in the public who like his character – the presentation – and are just not interested (still!!) in the substance. Some people are just like that I’m afraid – politics is just entertainment. This is what apparently won over so many red wall voters in the first place. Johnson seemed to be this and that. So, he seemed sincere about levelling up.
And think about it – if Johnson was NOT as we know he is, then the Tories and the country would be onto a winner. We’d be calling him an engaging fellow who comes across positive all of the time and ‘can do’.
Except of course that he isn’t. It’s all been lies. But effective all the same. Let’s hope that effectiveness has worn off – 4% is nothing to worry about in my view BTW. Let them get on with it.
I think you’re on the right track, regarding the public’s attitude towards Johnson, Pilgrim Slight Return. Which may well influence how Tory MPs vote, when it comes to selecting the next numpty to fill the PM’s seat. I would not be surprised to see a few Tory MPs, who earlier supported ousting Johnson, now turning around and supporting him.
Unfortunately “better the Devil you know” is a very strong factor in how many people vote. (It’s one of the major factors that keeps so many Scottish people clinging to the Union—a union that clearly isn’t working for them.)
I think Johnson will get support from many MPs because they recognise that this ‘known Devil’ factor can win elections …elections of the most unqualified (and sometimes most disreputable) people. “I know that person, but I don’t know the other one.” Never mind what the known person was known FOR. That doesn’t factor in, when you’re dealing with voters who find politics ‘boring,’ or who just want to cheer a soundbite hero whose face they recognise—or who fear change, more than they do a wretched status quo.
Overseas, there is Trump, for example. He is a recognisable ‘celebrity,’ and for lazy voters, he was an easy choice because the name and face was familiar—from a TV reality show. (FFS.) “He sure knows how to hire and fire people. He’ll make a good President.” (And yes, I actually heard that said to me by a Trump supporter I …groan …actually know!) So is Trump gone now? For good? No, he’s definitely not.
George W Bush stumbled into power on the Devil You Know principle as well. “Hey, we know that name. His dad was President. We’ll vote for him and get another President George Bush. Who is that other guy again?”
It’s appalling, but I think Johnson could be the eventual choice of Tory MPs who get a chance to vote on this. A triumphant return of the old Devil himself—the one everybody ‘knows’—might be just the boost they need to blow away this current confusion and hang on to power. Boris’s transgressions will be brushed aside by many people who just want to see somebody they ‘know’ back in that seat again. Then they can smile, and go back to sleep.
Nothing scarier.
There are a myriad of reasons why Mr Mendacious, Mr Cam-moron, Gidiot & the host of mostly Tory men should never ever be left in charge of anything in the political sphere. However, I will confine myself to mentioning the book “Wounded Leaders” by Nick Duffell. This shows that those who have been to public school are, for the most part so disfunctional that they should never have any position of responsibility whatsoever. If they have responsibilty, it will end in disaster. Readers may care to review the events 2010 – 2022 – I rest my case. Mr B.Liar was barely any better (& had an identical background to Cam-moron etc) – & if you live in Iraq you might have some very distinct views on B.Liar.
Anybody supporting Mendacious is in urgent need of psychiatric treatment, since they must be suffering from serious dementia. Media people talking in anything other than the most negative terms about Mendacious etc – likewise – indeed they are unfit to hold the media positions that they do. I’m deadly serious on this.
I have negative respect for those mention – hence the use of, in my view, appropriate nicknames. Gidiot, given his “intellect” is barely fit to clean carpets. 500,000 children in the Uk go to school hungry each day – 500,000 all down to the human scum mentioned above. Instead of that being the headline each and every day – it is all about Mendacious. What an utterly sick country. Sick to the very core.
If this isn’t the right post/place, please remove, delete, whatever. Prof Murphy, you have said previously on more than one occasion that you think January next year will be the real indicator of government fortunes. I agree. And I have a measure of how they will fare. I live on a smallish estate on the outskirts of a (very) small c conservative town. About 500-600 houses in total on the estate. I am going with this measure: if more than 100 have exterior decorative Christmas lighting on in any part of an evening in December then the Tories will win the next election. If around 50-60 have this then they will lose, but form a significant minority / opposition. Only if fewer than 30 houses have exterior decorative Christmas lighting on will the Tories be effectively wiped out at the next election. What do you or any other contributors think? CR
I am not convinced
This Christmas will be defiant in spending terms
January is when reality hits
It’s good point.
In a world of conspicuous consumption, no one wants to look poor.
Men who like him would like to live as he does, women who like him imagine he’d fancy them.
Not sure it’s any more complicated than that.
I really think it is
I know it’s more complicated – but , as with Trump and Berlusconi, many people admire this sort of transgressive behaviour.
britain is in suicide mode. Brexit, Johnson1 and Johnson 2 .Tories will back any ass to stay in power. Richer Sunak could get in although his well documented failures -Via the Eye et al- and billions squandered irrecoverably: business loans , PPE……And add immigration
The Conservative Party claims Sunak will “unite” the Party. This is the victory of a last, desperate hope over reality. The Johnson supporters, certainly around 60+ MPs are an unforgiving crew: but let us look closer at Sunak’s support base. Much is made of his 142 declared MPs by around 6pm today, because the ‘target’ was 100. The target was made up on the hoof last Friday by a ’22 Committee at the end of its tether.
The real measure is the 142 declared supporters, out of 357 Conservative MPs, quite late in the day. 60% of the Conservative MPs have not yet backed Sunak, even this late (the later you come out in favour the lower your standing in the award of patronage). Patronage and discipline clearly do not count any more, for this is a Party seized by ideology and personality antagonisms (mostly the latter) – a toxic mixture. This is not a united, or quite possibly unitable Conservative Party and it is not fit to govern a day longer; forget the prospect of two years more of this trash. It will bring misery to millions, just to stay in office, and put off their richly deserved electoral oblivion.
It is a Party falling apart at the seams in front of our eyes.
‘Heard on the radio (R4) this morning that Johnson has pulled out with all this guff about ‘not his time’!!!
Sunak is already being praised for his market calming statement, Mordant is still in there and Labour have asked for a GE again.
Tories as Neo-liberals as monopolists – that’s all I see. Defying gravity, defying honour, defying democracy.
And then the BBC starts banging on about China without really saying the obvious that we have a Thousand Year Tory Reich on our hands in the making!!
See the thread just posted inspired by the stupid things Thjorberry is saying this morning
Looking like Sunak’s got it. All their spin doctor’s and advisors will be working round the clock from now on. They will do their best to present the party as One Nation Tories who have seen the error of their ways – in an attempt to stave off a GE for as long as possible – while carrying on business as usual. I hope they won’t succeed in bamboozling the electorate this time.