The remaining likelihoods for our new prime minister are dire and dire.
Given that Kemi has been eliminated, the choice that the Conservative party is faced with is pretty appalling and not a conservative to be seen. I suppose if I had a vote it would either be Truss because she isn’t Sunak or put a line though my ballot paper and scribble ‘Kemi’ on it.
All likeliehood of proper conservatism evaporated when the closet Lib-Dems, and social democrats masquerading as Conservatives, chose one of their own. I’m with you, and a bit of ballot spoiling.
That is an idea worth spreading. Writing something like “Kemi Badenoch I would have voted for” on your ballot might send some kind of message.
That would be fun. Especially if it got more than the other two.
Lib/Lab regime next general election then, Blairite just like the Tories.
I too was rooting for Kemi, she’s the only conservative standing and they’ve voted her out, well done, turkeys voting for Christmas again.
Guess that’s Starmer as next PM then. Unless he does a John Smith.
I sometimes wonder what the UK would be like if Smith had lived, and we never went down this awful road laid by Bliar.
I wonder that, sometimes as well.
Blair pioneered the modern style of media politics, in which everything is about winning the next day’s headlines by any means necessary. In this form of politics, there is no explicit ideology, no long-term plans, and no red lines. There is just a media grid, and an underlying assumption that the people who control it are the omniscient masters of the universe who can control reality through the power of press releases.
It was devastatingly effective in the 1990s, because in those days controlling the media meant leaning on half a dozen newspaper editors in central London who all craved preferential access to whoever was in power (or likely to be), and the public hadn’t woken up to how media spin works. All the other parties then copied it, just as the internet was about to make that whole model obsolete.
So, if Smith had lived, he might well have gone down to a huge defeat to the first Conservative leader to recognise the opportunities presented by the media environment of the time. If he had become PM, he would have constantly struggled with the challenges that it posed.
The absence of Blair might have delayed the ascendancy of his style of politics, or caused it to be less effective. But Blair, Mandelson and Campbell were simply exploiting the opportunities that were presented by the particular circumstances of their time, and if they hadn’t done it then someone else would have.
The only alt-history scenario in which nobody does it is one in which all the major party leaders are grossly incompetent at electoral politics, which is not likely to result in political stability or good government.
Perhaps when Smith died I was still naive but I thought that he would have been a prime minister who had integrity and still considered that HMG was there to serve the people. Since Blair I’ve believed that politicians are there to feather their own nests and it’s but a happy coincidence if they do any good for the country.
I don’t think it actually matters any more who is PM or which party governs.
According to Mayher Tousi, the rank and file aren’t happy with the outcome. This could get interesting.
Others apart from Mr Tousi have said something similar. Guido Fawkes said that there was a ‘lack of morale’ in the party over this leadership election and the choices that they have been given. https://order-order.com/2022/07/20/tory-members-demanding-boris-is-added-to-ballot-hits-3500/
The fact that there exists a small write in campaign to put Boris Johnson on the ballot might not be big in itself but could well be indicating a lot of underlying disaffection among part members about the leadership choices they have been given.
Roughly 150,000 Conservative Party members who can vote.(The exact number doesn’t matter.)
If 60,000 write in Kemi Badenoch, 45,500 vote for Truss and 44,500 vote for Sunak then Truss wins and is their leader and our PM.
The powers at the top of the Coservative Party despise their own membership only slightly less than they despise the rest of the electorate.
Spot on there Mr Strong. The Tory membership should have been offered at least three and possibly four leadership candidates from which to vote for. This stitch up in favour of Sunak is a revolting dismissal of the views of the members but then as you say the parliamentary Tory party seems to hate its own members.
Not to mention the stitch up which saw the favoured Stepford wife Truss leap above Penny Mordaunt yesterday from absolutely nowhere.
But you know what they say, if it smells like fish…
It’s interesting to me that the Tory 1922 Committee is so quick to take letters of no confidence in an existing leader, but apparently there is not going to be an option of “neither of these useless c**ts” on the leadership ballot.
I wonder what the result would be like if there was…
Off topic – on the subject of that ‘Unvaccinated’ programme on the biased BBC yesterday, the Telegraph review said, “painfully patronising documentary treated vaccine sceptics as idiots”:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/unvaccinated-review-painfully-patronising-documentary-treated/
Well, of course. It was BBC corona “vaccine” propaganda. What did the Telegraph expect? After reading that Daily Mail piece about the programme the other day, I had no desire to actually watch it. However, if I find myself in a particularly masochistic frame of mind one day, I may give it a go and try watching it.