[mrjonathanr]

More importantly, I find the terms of the debate - basically a competition to outbid each other on who is most low-tax/small state and most anti-"woke" - utterly depressing. It's like a monomaniacal obsession. They have no other vision of how to build a dynamic, forward looking society and economy.

Agree with all that. On the other hand, were I in that race, I’d look at what has worked recently and quite reasonably I think, conclude that what works is candy floss promises of no tax, no state, huge prosperity. If the parliamentary Tory party and the membership and large chunks of the wider electorate seem to believe that Thatcherite fantasy hasn’t worked yet because we just haven’t haven’t had enough medicine, I’d give them promises of more, with a side helping of cultural anxiety to keep them sharp.

[andy popp]

More importantly, I find the terms of the debate - basically a competition to outbid each other on who is most low-tax/small state and most anti-"woke" - utterly depressing. It's like a monomaniacal obsession. They have no other vision of how to build a dynamic, forward looking society and economy.

Agree with all that. On the other hand, were I in that race, I’d look at what has worked recently and quite reasonably I think, conclude that what works is candy floss promises of no tax, no state, huge prosperity. If the parliamentary Tory party and the membership and large chunks of the wider electorate seem to believe that Thatcherite fantasy hasn’t worked yet because we just haven’t haven’t had enough medicine, I’d give them promises of more, with a side helping of cultural anxiety to keep them sharp.

Oh yeah, absolutely! Which is what is so depressing.

[TobyD]

I predict, on the basis of zero special insight, that it will soon be narrowed to Sunak/Truss, though perhaps not after today's first round of voting (e.g. there will still be more than two at the end of today). I no longer know what the process is but if the general membership has any role I would have thought that favours Truss.

More importantly, I find the terms of the debate - basically a competition to outbid each other on who is most low-tax/small state and most anti-"woke" - utterly depressing. It's like a monomaniacal obsession. They have no other vision of how to build a dynamic, forward looking society and economy.

I agree that this is the most likely outcome.  The UK will be as bad under a Truss administration as it has been for the last 3 years.  She is never across her brief properly and if she carries on saying what she has been saying recently,  we'll have a nuclear war with Russia. 

The panorama programme at 8 tonight sounds like it'll be worth watching,  just heard a precis of it on the radio.  In the final days Johnson was offering several different people the same promotion to try to stop them resigning and refusing to listen to any advice.  The UK's pound shop January 6th investigation?

[Wellsy]

I saw a tweet with all the polling runoffs for Sunak

https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1546832557395812352?s=20&t=J1000u5HSrX8aEoSTcjj5w

Not great tbh!

[galpinos]

Truss is presumably terrible given that Dorries - who is either a total fuckwit or reprehensible or both - is backing her.

Not just Dorries, but JRM, IDS and Mark Francois...... Quite the handful of c**ts.

[spidermonkey09]

Sunak is more likely to win over which ever of the mentals ends up in the final two.

I think this is completely wrong based on all the polling?

[tommytwotone]

Truss is presumably terrible given that Dorries - who is either a total fuckwit or reprehensible or both - is backing her.

Not just Dorries, but JRM, IDS and Mark Francois...... Quite the handful of c**ts.

Don't forget Truss was an ardent Remainer as well!

As they were saying on the Rest Is Politics podcast yesterday, while the collection of weirdos and nutters is disconcerting, I guess you could say it's progress that there is at least a decent amount of diversity in the candidates in terms of them not all being middle aged white men.

[Bonjoy]

I can't imagine refugees sat on a flight to Rwanda are in any way consoled by the fact a woman of colour put them there.
Being abused by sociopaths of all genders and ethnicities is a certain kind of equality I guess.

[Fultonius]

I can't imagine refugees sat on a flight to Rwanda are in any way consoled by the fact a woman of colour put them there.
Being abused by sociopaths of all genders and ethnicities is a certain kind of equality I guess.

I was thinking of a way of saying the same thing. It's a shame there are oppressors and bad agents from all colours, races, sexes and genders....

Give me a progressive compassionate middle class white man over any of those options...but better a woman etc...

Johnson was massively struggling on what I heard on PMQs today. How this "country" can keep voting Tory is just beyond me!

[TobyD]

Sunak is more likely to win over which ever of the mentals ends up in the final two.

I think this is completely wrong based on all the polling?

The problem with any polling at this stage in a contest is that how people say they will vote based on a hypothetical option is different to what they actually do. An opposition is usually ahead in the polls mid term,  then people often actually go for the devil they know when an election is called.  Of course this isn't guaranteed; but at this stage a sunak/mordaunt run off is the least worst outcome,  in my opinion.

[spidermonkey09]

Well, that's the same for all polling ever apart from the exit poll. I was just curious what you were based your "Sunak is more likely" comment on or is that just opinion? Cause the polls I've seen are not even close, he'll make the final two but if the other is Mordaunt he will probably lose. Against truss it's less clear cut.

[TobyD]

Well, that's the same for all polling ever apart from the exit poll. I was just curious what you were based your "Sunak is more likely" comment on or is that just opinion? Cause the polls I've seen are not even close, he'll make the final two but if the other is Mordaunt he will probably lose. Against truss it's less clear cut.

I'm doubtful that this picture will persist.  Badenoch used to work at the Spectator so has a lot of powerful backers, who would be likely to go for Truss if she's eliminated and are already trying to portray Mordaunt as a woke pansy. The same lot helped to install Johnson to fulfil their Brexit dreams, it beggars belief that they think that their judgment is going to result in a better bet this time. My point was that when faced with the choice of 2 Rishi Sunak is likely to perform better but not necessarily by enough for him. I think Mordaunt would be considerably better than Truss as a PM, though frankly among the population Sunak looks like the most likely to beat Labour in the next election,  the others are a less known quantity. 

[slab_happy]

Truss is presumably terrible given that Dorries - who is either a total fuckwit or reprehensible or both - is backing her.

Not just Dorries, but JRM, IDS and Mark Francois...... Quite the handful of c**ts.

Don't forget Truss was an ardent Remainer as well!

As they were saying on the Rest Is Politics podcast yesterday, while the collection of weirdos and nutters is disconcerting, I guess you could say it's progress that there is at least a decent amount of diversity in the candidates in terms of them not all being middle aged white men.

In the same sense in which Thatcher being PM was a great win for feminism, yes. Speaking as a feminist who grew up under the Thatcher regime ...

(And in a certain sense it was a win in that it should have shattered forever any idea that women would be morally superior, more caring more nurturing, blah blah blah, as leaders. Unfortunately it turns out that women are full human beings and moral agents and thus just as capable of being truly fucking evil as anyone else.)

There's also this weird thing whereby you can rocket up the ranks of the Conservative party by being a BAME person who's willing to declare loudly that RACISM DOESN'T EXIST, BRITAIN HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG, CHILDREN SHOULD BE TAUGHT ABOUT THE POSITIVE SIDE OF THE SLAVE TRADE AND WE SHOULD TRAFFICK REFUGEES TO RWANDA. They loooooove that. Checkmate lefties you can't say it's racist if it's Priti Patel saying it!!!

And their own racism and misogyny gets reserved for the other side (in public at least).

They're not going round accusing Liz Truss of "opening her legs" in Parliament (as one of their delightful new ministers said about Angela Rayner). Kemi Badenoch would have been torn to shreds for her stupidity and total lack of professionalism if she was sitting where Diane Abbott is.

[tommytwotone]

There's also this weird thing whereby you can rocket up the ranks of the Conservative party by being a BAME person who's willing to declare loudly that RACISM DOESN'T EXIST, BRITAIN HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG, CHILDREN SHOULD BE TAUGHT ABOUT THE POSITIVE SIDE OF THE SLAVE TRADE AND WE SHOULD TRAFFICK REFUGEES TO RWANDA. They loooooove that. Checkmate lefties you can't say it's racist if it's Priti Patel saying it!!!

And their own racism and misogyny gets reserved for the other side (in public at least).

Absolutely - I just meant that the "optics" weren't what you'd expect from the Tories.

I wonder to what extent they go into this knowing that they are a "useful idiot" for the reasons above.

So far, hard to know who the least worst option is from an awful bunch. Tugendhat and Mourdant are being painted an more centrist "from the left of the party" (whatever the hell that means), but who knows what moral sacrifices they would have to make to the ERG wonks to stay in power.

[BrutusTheBear]

Given the appalling views on colonialism, refugees, race relations, handling poverty, education etc.. that this lot hold.  It's hardly a step towards equality.  If anything it proves that if you want to reach the 'top' in the Conservative party you have to become or be a complete.......... anyway.  Their ascent to power will do nothing for the average BME person in this country.  In most cases it will make life worse.
The clip of a young Sunac talking about his friendships with 'upper class, middle class and working class, errrr I mean not working class' sums it up for me.

[galpinos]

Tugendhat and Mourdant are being painted an more centrist "from the left of the party" (whatever the hell that means), but who knows what moral sacrifices they would have to make to the ERG wonks to stay in power.

Both support/have pledged to continue with the Rwanda plan.

[Offwidth]

Great fun

[BrutusTheBear]

Can't find her way out of the room without help   Bodes well.  She'll have some intelligent advisors behind her though won't she.

[slab_happy]

Talking of advisory, Truss is the one who disbanded the government LGBT advisory panel -- after half of them had resigned in protest anyway -- because they kept having opinions she didn't like.

(Literally, she explained that it was because there was a "fundamental difference of opinion" over trans rights.)

[tommytwotone]

Tugendhat and Mourdant are being painted an more centrist "from the left of the party" (whatever the hell that means), but who knows what moral sacrifices they would have to make to the ERG wonks to stay in power.

Both support/have pledged to continue with the Rwanda plan.

I guess that's my point - it's a complete irrelevance what they say or do in this process, as when they get into the messy business of trying to (re)unite a fundamentally broken party, and actually govern, the whole machine of the right-ist factions and their media machine will force them in that direction anyway.

[TobyD]

Tugendhat and Mourdant are being painted an more centrist "from the left of the party" (whatever the hell that means), but who knows what moral sacrifices they would have to make to the ERG wonks to stay in power.

Both support/have pledged to continue with the Rwanda plan.

I guess that's my point - it's a complete irrelevance what they say or do in this process, as when they get into the messy business of trying to (re)unite a fundamentally broken party, and actually govern, the whole machine of the right-ist factions and their media machine will force them in that direction anyway.

I don't think that is necessarily the case. They all have to say these things in a leadership election, but I think that the Rwanda policy will be quietly dropped at some point unless the eventual winner keeps Priti Patel in her role. It's just such a ridiculous idea, costs a huge amount and won't achieve anything.
 I feel that it's a real mistake to dismiss the Conservatives as all somehow evil, they are clearly not, most of us just don't agree with most of them. They have in the past achieved some good things in office, just not recently given that Johnson did sweet FA for 3 years.

[Offwidth]

I've quite a few tory friends who are good people but if there is a hell plenty of Boris's cabinet will be heading there.

Back on Liz, her launch event was apparently even funnier than the YouTube clip indicates.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/14/lost-to-spam-truss-had-only-one-thing-to-offer-it-was-still-the-convict

[TobyD]

It now looks probable that the Brexit hard right ultras in the party and at places like the spectator will install Truss to fight their pathetic culture war and screw up the Northern Ireland situation completely. She's basically the worst of Johnson and May combined: incompetent and robotic , I think she'd be a disaster but the elderly conservative voting population will probably love her pound shop Thatcher tribute act, and she'll probably win in the end. It's hugely depressing but I reckon it looks likely now.

[teestub]

It now looks probable that the Brexit hard right ultras in the party and at places like the spectator will install Truss to fight their pathetic culture war and screw up the Northern Ireland situation completely. She's basically the worst of Johnson and May combined: incompetent and robotic , I think she'd be a disaster but the elderly conservative voting population will probably love her pound shop Thatcher tribute act, and she'll probably win in the end. It's hugely depressing but I reckon it looks likely now.

You think there’s going to be a big swing behind her after the weekend? She still seems to be quite far behind the front two in polling

[TobyD]

It now looks probable that the Brexit hard right ultras in the party and at places like the spectator will install Truss to fight their pathetic culture war and screw up the Northern Ireland situation completely. She's basically the worst of Johnson and May combined: incompetent and robotic , I think she'd be a disaster but the elderly conservative voting population will probably love her pound shop Thatcher tribute act, and she'll probably win in the end. It's hugely depressing but I reckon it looks likely now.

You think there’s going to be a big swing behind her after the weekend? She still seems to be quite far behind the front two in polling

Yup. The right wing media are hugely biased towards Truss, and against Mordaunt or Sunak,  who they see as too soft and woke (their pejoratives not mine). These people will always win in the Tory party,  they did for most of their previous leaders when they disappointed their dreams of the UK becoming a world beating imperial nation again.  The likes of Charles Moore, Andrew Neil and the Johnson loyalists will get their way, I predict.  The sole plus point is that if Labour sort themselves out a bit, and continue to look reasonably credible to middle England,  Truss might be the most beatable in the next election.