“I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie” - UK politics June 23 on

as chancellor he presided over one of the - if not the - biggest, most sustained social welfare programmes in post-war history, shovelling billions of pounds into the pockets of people unable to work because of covid, and it worked, which is i think in the eyes of many tories simply inexcusable

also the tight-arsed (in comparison to the French equivalent) Cost of Living payments - the absolute socialist horror of giving free money to poor ppl upset some of the hard-right. I think he was using them against Truss in the leadership debate, who was a bit fuzzy on committing to further payments.

He was at the height of his popularity during the eat out to help out scheme.

Tories like to give money away as long as they are destroying state capacity, but Covid did short circuit them.

isn't it just that they think he's a centrist because he's marginally less unhinged than like, truss, badenoch or braverman

is he though

Think that before becoming PM he was seen as somewhat quieter compared to Truss, but yeah he is just as unhinged now he's at the top.

Truss had many years of Cabinet membership to grossly inflate her sense of competence and resulting Main Character flameout. Sunak seems to have a bit more self-awareness and isn't as pig-in-shit comfortable dipping into culture war BS. He does seem more Cameron/Osborne-like to me.

i think all of them are products of 'the moment' more or less in that, while I don't doubt they are all pretty hateful and would send us all to the camps without a second thought, i think the ratio of zealotry to opportunism is often overstated on the part of these ghouls. They're hateful but they peddle hate mostly because its useful to them. For this reason I think its difficult to gauge what motivates them by the policies they push and place them on a swivel-eye scale. all that said, my instinct is that truss and braverman are more motivated by an actual belief in their bullshit than sunak and to a slightly lesser degree badenoch who both strike me as primarily immoral blaggers.

yeah i pretty much agree with that

another caveat for me is the difference between culture war zealotry and libertarian roll back the state zeolatry, obv these things have close ties but they're not identical and you can be a partisan of either while assuming the mantle of respectability on the other, but at heart they're both roads to cruelty & fascism

like for Sunak surely Prime Minister is not the most personally lucrative grift open to him, but it gives him power to push the economic landscape in ways that enrich him and his allies long term, so it's easy to see the adoption of bigoted stances as just flavour sauce for the useful idiots

Badenoch is very much a zealot btw.

Tell me more! I hate her but she always comes across as a total cynical grifter to me

Whenever I think of Kemi Badenoch I think of that period I was reading conservative home every day for the loonies in the comments

https://conservativehome.com/2017/12/21/interview-kemi-badenoch-im-not-really-left-leaning-on-anything-i-always-lean-right-instinctively/

Badenoch: “The escape from Colditz is I think probably the coolest thing any British politician has ever done.”

Bacon: “One or two lords escaped as well.”

Badenoch: “They were made lords because of their war service. So that we do have a lot of war heroes. But when you think about MPs, when I listen to MPs, again, I must sound so tribal, but when I hear a lot of the whining from the Opposition benches, you think about people like Airey Neave, and what they got done, and I just imagine if the current Parliamentary Labour Party and probably a few others on our side were in prisoner of war camps, they’d probably just die.”

ConHome: “Well Dan Jarvis would be all right.”

Badenoch: “Maybe, maybe Dan Jarvis. But I feel we are much softer as a generation, and that’s probably a better point to make, it sounds less party political. I think that we have gone a bit soft in terms of how resilient we are in dealing with adversity.

“And that’s not as politicians, but just the country as a whole. I don’t feel that we’re as tough as we used to be, if we had to deal with rationing or not having everything 24/7 immediately available.

She's one of the more enthusiastic, and genuine, culture warriors in the Tory Party.

i also enjoy thinking about Airey Neave getting done tbf

Idk for badenoch I always get the sense that it's just some dumb game and that particular slice of drivel does little to dispel that feeling. To be clear what I'm claiming is very much an instinct and thus fairly resistant to being disproven empirically.

Truss is also somewhat moot as her brain is clearly mush

What is a “Blueberry & Yuzu Blondie”?

Come on, Leon, why not offer a delicious Chelsea Bun!#ReviveTheChelseaBun pic.twitter.com/QLbhHQ8JC6

— Greg Hands (@GregHands) March 25, 2024

i only found out what a yuzu was in the last few days (courtesy lidl's japanese week) -- did everyone else (except greg hands) already know?

anyway they're really nice

I am going to have to try this.

Greg hands is the mp for chelsea obv. which is why he's being such a tit about it

We’re about the stage in the Tory lifecycle where we’re due a citrus fruit related autoerotic asphyxiation.

This time the fruit will be Yuzu.

Hi Ed!

I only know yuzu as the ingredient in ponzu

if Starmer was to expire from autoerotic asphyxiation, no doubt he'd be found with a british bramley apple in his mouth, not something foreign. It would be appropriate as well because he already has the skin complexion and build of a small overfed suckling pig.

the labour anonyvoter scandal is something where I initially thought: they do stitch-ups, yeah I know. But this isn't looking good for them or at least it shouldn't be in a functional democracy. I read there are potentially 30-40 selections that may be comprised by this system and there could be criminal convictions to follow the MET investigation, but again this would only happen in a functional democracy.

i wonder if members in the rigged constituencies will have grounds to bring a civil suit but let's be honest if you're still a member you've probably got Stockholm Syndrome so bad you can only speak Swedish

GS asked about Anonyvoter and Croydon and why results breakdowns are not provided.

Evans said - Anonyvoter publicity misplaced and misdirected. False and fake news to suggest Croydon East had anything to do with it. He didn't respond to why results breakdowns aren't provided

— Mish Rahman (@mish_rahman) March 26, 2024

That's all okay then

that's what I was thinking, but they are actually breaking the law here - I know, lol- but I thought this murky internal stuff they do can only be held to account by their own rules and regs. But I have heard ppl saying they could also be prosecuted by law in this case.

The investigation would reveal Evans awarded the Anonyvoter contract to a labour right mate and details of members were altered inhouse, and no other UK party uses this system. This should be a MAJOR scandal.

lol, Laurence Fox has announced he's voting Labour in the next GE

The other shoe is bound to drop re: David Evans eventually.

Feels true.

This place is the narrative arch of the long-90s - from industrial 'creativity' of the YBAs, attempts to brand criticality, to the destruction of any conditions that might produce anything 'creative' by successive neo-liberal brand managers. its maddeninghttps://t.co/RReINdkt11

— Arbeitology (@Arbeit_Fish) March 28, 2024

If only 'Ref' went away...or formed a coalition with Tories

🚨 Labour lead by 19pts (majority of 250)

🟥 LAB 40% (-4)
🟦 CON 21% (+2)
🟪 REF 16% (+1)
🟧 LD 10% (+1)
🟩 GRN 8% (=)
🟨 SNP 3% (=)

Via @YouGov , 26-27 Mar (+/- vs 19-20 Mar) pic.twitter.com/WzifhSRUyu

— Stats for Lefties 🇵🇸🏳️‍⚧️ (@LeftieStats) March 28, 2024

Reform took a while to filter through to the odds, but now

Conservatives to get Most Seats 17/2
Conservative Overall Majority 22/1 (out from 14/1 last time I looked)

nice lil "is there an election in my area" page

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8v36l6d54do

So we get to vote for someone called the Police & Crime Commissioner. Always important to have a foot in both camps.

Lol I never vote for that shit on the basis that whoever wants to do it should be discouraged

Split that Commish! /tomhaverford

pic.twitter.com/i4LMUzoTT9

— DUP (@duponline) March 29, 2024

Aw Jesus, that is horrible.

Prosecution is a ahocking assault on Unionist culture

Orange Bastard In Nonce Shocker

"In the 1980s he ran the constituency office of Enoch Powell, the former Conservative MP". sounds lovely.

I'm a yank obv but wonder what UK folks think about this take: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1774030136737730661.html?

My job is related entirely to foreign students in the UK, and yes there has been a sustained assault on them as a ploy to get immigration figures down, already we have almost zero EU students, and this year masters-level students are significantly down due to new restrictions on bringing their families over.

Just ridiculous

Allergic to the economic argument for migration, but yes it's accurate as to what is happening. We will all be a lot poorer in all sorts of ways as routes for migration are shut.

In some ways the Tories are throwing the economy under the bus for the next government but it's unlikely Labour will do anything #provemewrong

I don't like economic arguments for anything but it pisses me off that the people who make economic growth their only stated goal are still doing this despite the obvious damage to the economy. Even by their own rules it's stupid and only harmful to the country.

Housing capacity (that is affordable for students en masse, let alone working graduates) is so bad this is the inevitable knock on effect.

I mean we all know that there is loads of unused housing around the UK including London, so I don't see that as an excuse.