Interesting, yes - I just saw the announcement. My prediction - worth as much as the paper that it is written on - is that he will narrowly win, then struggle on as a lame duck PM without the full support of his party.
I’m not so sure about calling him “Big Dog” (or Boris for that matter) - Johnson carefully cultivates his image with this sort thing. Call him Johnson, or Mr Johnson if you must. Boris is not his first name, it is his stage persona. Big Dog is just laughable intended to make him seem cuddly and harmless (as he stabs you in the back).
Not surprising…
Someone has obviously let slip that BJ was responsible for the “enormous” flag-gaffe yesterday…
Let’s face it, if one was staring intently at that portion of the screen and didn’t blink it was impossible to miss such an enormous gaffe… and if one did blink, there was someone ready to bring it to Everyone’s attention through social media…
So… BJ doesn’t stand a chance… or does he…
Sir Graham Brady has said that a number of letters calling for the vote were signalled by members as “to be held until after after the Jubilee celebrations” which is why it has been announced today, by all accountants.
The swivelled eyed loonies who allow this to happen will have signed their own deselection warrants, the voting public will not be amused.
If you missed it, you were obviously busy enjoying something else…
and, to be fair… it was an amalgamation of rugby/sport emblems and flags of whatever… and it was only a fleeting backdrop to a rapper doing his stuff… so perhaps we can forgive BJ just this once… (or whoever was responsible…)
No, he won’t be facing a vote of no confidence. If the 1922 Committee want him gone, they’ll just sack him. Any Tory MP calling for a VONC whilst the 1922 Committee still support Johnson will be swiftly promoted from MP to constituent.
it’s not in their gift.
They persuaded TM to resign but they couldn’t sack her - IIRC she won the VONC, albeit marginally, which protected her from another VONC for 1 year but they threatened to change the rule if she didn’t go willingly.
Which surely is the best result for everyone aside from the extreme right of his party. Just as with the Republican Party and Trumpism the Tories have become stuck with a small faction calling the shots which has proven impossible to shake loose to date. Of course MPs will on the whole only be as thinking as far as saving their own seats, and their own necks, but I’m sure in hushed tones there must have been acres of discussion about the ERG and ERG aligned MPs stranglehold, and unfortunately the best chance to rid them of it long term will be an election defeat and loss of MPs. Keep him on, have him and his ilk fail at election time in a year or so, then use it to clean house and realign. The GOP are still going down that same old extremist road but then to be fair to them because of the electoral college it was a strategy that worked in ‘16, and almost worked again in ‘20, and could well work in a couple of years time, so they’ve not had that shock yet needed to wake them up. But a Tory election defeat at the hands of Johnson and the ERG would be the best result for the country, and the Tory party as they’d have some ammunition to make changes and dump the populist culture war rhetoric and realign to what worked so well for them for years before they let the lunatics run the asylum. Not that I want them to become a party anyone reasonable would want to vote for of course, the more damage they do to their own party the better, it’s just a shame it goes hand in hand with doing such damage to the country and the most vulnerable members of society.
I think he’ll manage to scrape by, not because his MPs have confidence in him but mostly because they don’t have confidence in any of the hopeful replacements. Unfortunately, if he does win he’ll be untouchable for the next 12 months.
