This article is from a month ago but Keir Starmer’s personal approval ratings despite all the scandals surrounding Johnson are a shocking. 2 points lower than Johnson!
In short he probably has very little chance against a new Conservative leader.
1 Like
OH done just that. He has every intention of voting. 
1 Like
Good and very true comment and why i personally belive the political foundations of the UK are now rotting away. That such a constituency can decide the leadership of the UK and the wider electorate can have no say until the next general election is undemocratic. I believe that it should be “law” that if the governing party changes its leader (thus the PM) then a general election must be held within nine months. The problem is that because the UK has no written constituion it is impossibke to enshrine such a law.
One simple observation…most of the candidates are from the same sinking deck, just a reshuffle of deck chairs. What is needed are a few canddates who have had nothing to do with Johnson’s regime, trouble is the constituency that @Geof_Cox so eloquently described don’t want nor would support this, so the UK is left with the same tired discredited set of faces.
1 Like
From the website
Members play an active role in the Party, can attend our annual Conference and receive voting rights in Party elections after 3 months of Membership.
We’re not going to change things immediately but it’s a good idea.
1 Like
IIRC, Labour introduced a similar policy on membership so pretty standard stuff to contain claims of vote rigging…
He joined months ago, in the certainty that one day he would get the chance to vote Boris out, so he will be able to vote in the coming election for a new leader. Only downside? He has to put up with emails from every Tom, Dick and Harriet in the Tory party wanting something from him.
3 Likes
Don’t forget that in any coming General Election there are all those that were not allowed to vote because they had been out of UK for more than fifteen years.
I can’t see them voting for any local candidate who voted for Brexit or who was allied with Boris.
The problem is that the membership only get to choose from the last two surviving candidates. I wonder how likely it is that the remaining two could be far apart in their ideas and ambitions.
Parliament could pass a law requiring an election within 9 months of a governing party leadership change if they wanted to - but equally such a law could also be repealed. We used to have 5 year fixed-term Parliaments (Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011), which aimed to provide medium-term stability by preventing Prime Ministers calling snap elections on a whim; but Boris got it repealed in March this year, presumably because he liked the idea of calling an election on a whim!!
1 Like
I haven’t looked at who’s standing (and probably we don’t know yet), but just remembering events Jeremy Hunt sprang to mind as the only still prominent figure to have actively refused to serve under Johnson - and after the referendum I know he advocated the sensible compromise of staying in the single market.
Obviously he has a chequered past, including his own financial shenanigans - and is inescapably part of that elderly, white, insular, bigoted constituency - but perhaps the ‘least worst’?
(Just saw that Tugendhat advocated tax cuts as the solution to the cost of living crisis - thus revealing his economic illiteracy on top of his obvious stooge of US big business tendency.)
2 Likes
Turkeys voting for Christmas more like…
He used a 3 line whip to force them to vote to repeal the FTP Act and then has used it to threaten the “red wall” Tories with losing their seats if they don’t conform by calling a GE on a whim.
You’d think they would have had more sense… but then again, they weren’t the brightest and best candidates in the first place 
I subscribed to Trump’s emails when he announced his candidacy back in around 2014/15. I managed to hold out until about 2018 primarily because of the comedy value, each was more desperate, manipulative and money grabbing than the last and as someone with an interest in cults and other high control groups (as a study, not to join 
) it was fascinating seeing how they hooked the daft and foolish into handing over cash and participating in their surveys that all seemed to be a variation of ‘Is the Don A) amazing B) incredible C) the best president the US has and will ever have’. Anyway, I digress. Despite removing myself from his mailing list I am still getting several emails a month from all kinds of unsavoury characters in the Republican Party including people (candidates/ representatives) who have been accused of/ found guilty of hate crimes, sexual assault, rape, and many other things, all proudly boasting what good mates they are with Trump.
After the Scientology mailing list which you literally have to threaten to sue them to get off of, there seems to be no mailing list more difficult to extract yourself from than the trump one.
1 Like
It only hit home to me just how ‘big’ government is when 50+ resigned last week, there’s probably 100+ Tory MP’s in some sort of government post which is getting on for a third of the total number in parliament. Given that, it leaves around 200 (ish) ‘untainted’ by Johnson but the vast majority would be very inexperienced so they can nearly all be dismissed as suitable candidates, ergo the choices aren’t great.
So they favour the guy that actually ran Johnson’s leadership campaign? I despair!
1 Like
they have such short memories Geof
It won’t be Ben Wallace.
1 Like
you’re right…
So it looks like it’ll be Truss. Lawd help us!