Liz Truss’s time is up

[flypanam]

I can't really see it, but Matt Godwin - who's much more plugged in to the semi-fascist end of the tory party than I am - suggests there's serious conversations along those lines happening right now in his latest mailout.

...the implosion of the party is also more structural than strategic. Dominated from head to toe by leaders, donors and MPs who lean much further to the economic right and much further to the cultural left than many of its new voters, the Conservative Party has simply never known what to do with these voters or what to say to them. It thinks it can return to the 2010s while also holding a completely different electorate.

This, alongside general incompetence, is why it is crashing in the polls, averaging a lower level of support this week than it had in the immediate aftermath of the ERM crisis, on the eve of Tony Blair’s victory in 1997, during the depths of Partygate and amid the mass resignations that finally brought Boris Johnson down. Only once in modern history has the party been lower: the spring of 2019 when the resignation of Theresa May and the rise of the Brexit Party nearly completely wiped the party out.

And that is now why some MPs and renegade politicians sense a bigger opportunity. Tonight, on Whatsapp groups and late night calls, there is open talk about the possibility of a far more profound split within British conservatism, a reconfiguration of the right. Some say Suella and others should make it clear they will not tolerate ‘a coronation’, whereby the elected Liz Truss is replaced by the unelected Rishi Sunak and/or Penny Mordaunt. They should appeal direct to Conservative members and make it clear they will not stand for what they call “a coup”. Others want to go further.

A big risk facing the Conservative Party is not just that the turmoil of the Truss government continues but there begin to emerge serious calls for an entirely new vehicle for disgruntled conservatives who simply no longer believe that today’s Conservative Party is what its name implies. ‘We are going to get smashed at the next election anyway’, the thinking goes, ‘so why not try and reshape conservatism along the way’. One MP this evening points to the early 1990s in Canada where, under first-past-the-post, liberal progressive conservatives were suddenly swept aside by a new party that was far more in tune with the working-class, non-graduate and older people who were voting for it. Sounds familiar. Might something like that emerge in Britain in the weeks and months ahead? Maybe.

Interesting. I can imagine that if a split did happen the model will be Poland’s Law and Justice.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Was thinking earlier, regardless of however short her time as PM turns out to be, she'll still benefit from most* of the post-PM perks. She'll get invited to Charlie's funeral, she'll get offers on the speaker circuit, I'm sure there's other crap.

Really takes the shine off




*fair to say that there will be  some impact on what offers she gets from how she's done in the post...

24hr security for the rest of her days, at public expense.

 

[story]

This debacle is making me angry today. It’s entertaining and all that but it’s so fucking disrespectful. Voters, workers, people who are genuinely working hard and struggling to make ends meet, all having slog out another day while these fools and charlatans wobble around like toddlers refusing to have their nappies changed.

 

[friedaweed]

There’s always Press TV.

Or children's TV. I hear on the grapevine they're looking for a new Igglepiggle and they do have the same mouth.

 

[Johnny Vodka]

This debacle is making me angry today. It’s entertaining and all that but it’s so fucking disrespectful. Voters, workers, people who are genuinely working hard and struggling to make ends meet, all having slog out another day while these fools and charlatans wobble around like toddlers refusing to have their nappies changed.

Who will ever be able to forget it though? Hopefully it will put a stake in the heart of the Tory party for a long, long time, the blue one that is...

 

[friedaweed]

This debacle is making me angry today. It’s entertaining and all that but it’s so fucking disrespectful. Voters, workers, people who are genuinely working hard and struggling to make ends meet, all having slog out another day while these fools and charlatans wobble around like toddlers refusing to have their nappies changed.

Why have you waited until today to realise that this is what our MPs are like?

 

[story]

And the utter contempt on show by people like A-M Trevelyan (interview on R4 Today this morning) talking as if it’s business as usual. The assumption that anyone will suck up her shit about how turbulence is normal, everything is okay. It’s outright fucking bald faced lying through their teeth in our face. Shameless. Now that Charles Walker has spoken with some degree of honesty about how bad it is, we know it’s not beyond them to do so. let's have some more of that,

 

[story]

Why have you waited until today to realise that this is what our MPs are like?

Oh fuck off you know exactly what I mean.

 

[ska invita]

This debacle is making me angry today. It’s entertaining and all that but it’s so fucking disrespectful. Voters, workers, people who are genuinely working hard and struggling to make ends meet, all having slog out another day while these fools and charlatans wobble around like toddlers refusing to have their nappies changed.

yeah but its the Tories so thats true every day...lets count ourselves lucky theyre collapsing rather than being competent

 

[story]

yeah but its the Tories so thats true every day...lets count ourselves lucky theyre collapsing rather than being competent

I refer the baby eating anarchist to my earlier response

 

[Leafster]

And the utter contempt on show by people like A-M Trevelyan (interview on R4 Today this morning) talking as if it’s business as usual. The assumption that anyone will suck up her shit about how turbulence is normal, everything is okay. It’s outright fucking bald faced lying through their teeth in our face. Shameless. Now that Charles Walker has spoken with some degree of honesty about how bad it is, we know it’s not beyond them to do so. let's have some more of that,

The difference is, he's standing down at the next election so doesn't need to worry about the repercussions of speaking out.

 

[killer b]

Interesting. I can imagine that if a split did happen the model will be Poland’s Law and Justice.

I expect it'll turn out to be wishful thinking on Goodwin's part tbh, but who knows?

 

[rutabowa]

Who will ever be able to forget it though? Hopefully it will put a stake in the heart of the Tory party for a long, long time, the blue one that is...

Everyone always forgets after a few weeks/months, it isnt that big a deal in the scheme of things

 

[story]

Do I really need to clarify this?
Obviously I know they’re a pile of pricks every single day. At least they usually have the common courtesy to go through the motions of adhering to protocol most of the time.

 

[platinumsage]

24hr security for the rest of her days, at public expense.

Even if she does a Harry and becomes a Louise Mensch type figure shilling for the Republicans in the US, unjustly forced out of office by the global liberal elites?

 

[Karl Masks]

They have urban in End Times

Future Liz is a FIGHTER not a QU1TTR!!!

yet

 

[Artaxerxes]

If she has any sense at all she’ll employ a really good comic speechwriter to take the piss out of herself as the worst PM ever. Ride the whole dry self-deprecating British sense of humour thing. Rich white men paying to get pissed and roar with laughter at a woman who failed spectacularly in public. She’ll make a fucking fortune.

Great now I remember how May showed up dancing on stage at conference

 

[Karl Masks]

Even if she does a Harry and becomes a Louise Mensch type figure shilling for the Republicans in the US, unjustly forced out of office by the global liberal elites?

she only ever got anywhere because her husband manages the world's largest heavy metal act

 

[Cid]

It’s hard to imagine what she might do after this, who would give her a job.
Her only useful qualification is as a chartered accountant but who the fuck would employ her as that of all things now.

I hear the Norwich rotary club will pay up to £500 for their gala dinner speaker; between that, the panto circuit and strictly/I'm a celebrity she should get by.

 

[Karl Masks]

Cameron’s giving talks on leadership so always someone willingly buying a load of tosh

he actually got voted in.

Liz isnt' even an articulate or entertaining speaker. There's no chance she'll do anything except write memoirs that would make Bouncing Back look like a bestseller. Even GBN would balk at hawking the Liz Truss Diaries

 

[Rob Ray]

I for one would pay good money to watch her on Total Wipeout.

 

[story]

The difference is, he's standing down at the next election so doesn't need to worry about the repercussions of speaking out.

Now that we have twitter etc and so forth it would be nice if he set a precedent for more though honesty wouldn’t it.

They don’t care about us but they do care how they come across. Maybe this ripping away of the curtain will give some of them the balls to be more open, if not more honest.

 

[ska invita]

I expect it'll turn out to be wishful thinking on Goodwin's part tbh, but who knows?

Seems very unlikely however UKIP was successful on its own terms, and a fringe pressure group party would get funding in a way a left version would be skint

 

[steveo87]

Zahawi knows what's coming....

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Tory MPs variously calling for Hunt, Sunak or Johnson (Dorries, obs) to be new PM. Hopefully a few more names will be mentioned across the day. They know what they don't want. They don't know what they want.

 

[story]

Zahawi knows what's coming....

Yeah, this is going to unleash an unholy mess.

 

[story]

Tory MPs variously calling for Hunt, Sunak or Johnson (Dorries, obs) to be new PM. Hopefully a few more names will be mentioned across the day. They know what they don't want. They don't know what they want.

This is also going to unleash...

 

[Rob Ray]

In the last hour:

• Hunt ally pitches for him to become PM
• Dorries pitches for Johnson to become PM
• Multiple MPs call for PM to resign
• Suella Braverman refuses to do a resignation speech
• Kemi Badenoch, for some reason, publicly says she won't be resigning

Lol.

 

[killer b]

Kemi Badenoch, for some reason, publicly says she won't be resigning

Last night one of the rumours swirling round the hacks was that she was on 'resignation watch' so I guess it's in response to that

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Cameron’s giving talks on leadership so always someone willingly buying a load of tosh

Well if she somehow hangs on as long as him I'll be wrong and she'll be quids in. I wouldn't be betting on it right now though.