[mrjonathanr]

No one on this, or any other thread, has said there aren’t decent and intelligent Tory members of parliament, so I don’t disagree with that Toby.  But people of Heseltine’s stature, or Ken Clarke’s? There’s no one. Grieve, Stewart, Soubry, Gauke, even Mitchell, decent and able, undoubtedly. All trying unsuccessfully to stem a rising tide of vicious nonsense., but not at the same level, not yet at least.

The point you made which I disagree with, is that someone who has been genuinely impressive and open minded is ‘one of many’. It’s been a long time since you can make a credible case that there are many outstanding MPs of integrity and intelligence on the Tory benches. Run of the mill, decent constituency representatives- of course. But outstanding? No chance. Those days are well behind us, more’s the pity.

[spidermonkey09]

Neither Grieve, Gauke, Stewart or Soubry are current MPs which dilutes the point even further. If Mitchell is the best example of a big hitter one can only laugh! Saying that there are Tory MPs who pass basic standards of human decency is not a glowing endorsement. There are some who do a decent job at representing their constituency but there is not a single bighitter in the entire party at the moment, it is completely barren. Suggestions welcome.

[SA Chris]

Surely the recent leadership race proved that? It was a selection from a shower of shit, and we ended up with the shiniest turd.

[ali k]

I used to think it was a bit far fetched when people suggested the Tories were throwing away the election to lump Labour with cleaning up their mess, but now I’m not so sure. Either that or Truss has been a sleeper inside the party.

They can’t seem to do anything without fucking it up, not even communicate a date without sewing confusion (23rd Nov or not?!). Or U-turn without doubling back. I can see why members are pining for Johnson to return.

[TobyD]

No one on this, or any other thread, has said there aren’t decent and intelligent Tory members of parliament, so I don’t disagree with that Toby.  But people of Heseltine’s stature, or Ken Clarke’s? ...

The point you made which I disagree with, is that someone who has been genuinely impressive and open minded is ‘one of many’. It’s been a long time since you can make a credible case that there are many outstanding MPs of integrity and intelligence on the Tory benches. Run of the mill, decent constituency representatives- of course. But outstanding? No chance. Those days are well behind us, more’s the pity.

The ones you mentioned are essentially centrists, with whom I'd (and I'm going to suggest you) probably agree on many things. Okay I think you're right that there aren't many, I was wrong there. But, there are MPs I really don't agree with who probably would have considerable stature, if they hadn't been consigned to the back benches by Johnson and Truss, who appear to be terrified of being outperformed by their ministers. People such as Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt or Michael Gove are highly intelligent and actually interested in policy rather than populism, I don't agree with them politically but they'd be an awful lot more competent than the likes of the current bunch. It is a low bar, however!

[edshakey]

Chilling stuff from Braverman yesterday.

Her conference speech is getting all the headlines, which was bad...

https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/news-analysis/suella-braverman-migrants-conference-speech-b2195581.html

... but the interview she did with the telegraph is arguably even worse. Much more wide ranging, attacking people on benefits, foreign students, police officers, the works.

True blue Suella Braverman faces down tax rebels

‘Unapologetic’ Home Secretary accuses Tory MPs of staging a ‘coup’ over 45p rate and sets out welfare and migration reforms

Suella Braverman has accused Tory rebels of staging a “coup” to force the Government to scrap its plan to abolish the 45p top rate of income tax.

In a wide-ranging interview for The Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics podcast at the Conservative Party Conference, the Home Secretary entered the debate over welfare spending cuts by warning Britain still had a “Benefits Street culture”, even in the more prosperous South.

She also set out her vision to bring net migration down to tens of thousands in the long term while promising new laws to ensure anyone who deliberately entered the UK illegally from a “safe” country such as France would be returned to their home state or relocated to Rwanda to claim asylum.

A whirlwind series of conference appearances, starting with her Telegraph interview, established her reputation as a new heroine of the Tory grassroots with a standing ovation before she had even finished her speech in the main auditorium.

She opened with a defence of scrapping the 45p rate, saying: “I’m very disappointed that members of our own parliamentary party staged a coup effectively and undermined the authority of the Prime Minister in an unprofessional way.”

 

She singled out Michael Gove, her former Cabinet colleague, for “airing your dirty linen” in public rather than in private, adding that she was “very disappointed” by his intervention, though she accepted the reasons for the subsequent reversal of the policy.

Asked about her stance on the internal Tory row on whether benefits should be linked to inflation, Mrs Braverman said that she supported welfare spending cuts during her leadership campaign. She warned Britain still had a “Benefits Street-kind of culture”.

“There is a stubborn core of our population that sees welfare as the go-to option and is not motivated for financial or other reasons to get out there and work,” she said, arguing there should be more “sticks” to get people back into employment alongside the many “carrots”.

However, she said would not “take a view” in the current Cabinet debate, saying she was “sitting on the fence” and would support Liz Truss “in exploring this”.

 

Mrs Braverman declared that her “ultimate aspiration” was to get net migration down into the tens of thousands, a target that was scrapped by Boris Johnson. She declined to put a timescale on it, but maintained it was her “unfiltered, unvarnished, unapologetic” aim to bring down net migration despite the push for growth.

She indicated that she would be targeting foreign students on “sub-standard” courses in “inadequate” universities, their dependants and “low-skilled” workers in, for example, agriculture where farmers should be turning to automation and local UK employees.

Net migration is running at 230,000 people a year – similar to pre-Brexit levels – and Home Office figures this summer revealed that the number of visas for foreign nationals to live, study and work in the UK had exceeded a million for the first time. That included a 170 per cent rise in dependants.

She said: “You see quite a large number of students bringing family members. If you’re coming here for an undergraduate degree, is it justifiable that you bring your family members? If you’re coming here on low-skilled work on a temporary visa, is it justifiable that you bring your family members in? No.”

Mrs Braverman accepted high-skilled worker visas for “techno-geeks”, such as broadband or software engineers, could increase to tackle shortages and boost economic growth, but argued that was not “mutually exclusive” from bringing down overall immigration.

 

Acknowledging that there were no “quick fixes” to end the Channel migrant crisis, she confirmed plans to change the law to prevent illegal migrants and foreign criminals “abusing” the European Convention on Human Rights and Modern Slavery Act to avoid deportation.

Addressing the conference, she fleshed it out to applause from the party faithful: “I will commit to you today, that I will look to bring forward legislation to make it clear that the only route to the United Kingdom is through a safe and legal route.

“If you deliberately enter the United Kingdom illegally from a safe country, you should be swiftly returned to your home country or relocated to Rwanda that is where your asylum claim will be considered.”

She admitted it could be months before the legal challenge that has grounded deportation flights of migrants to Rwanda has completed its course through the British and European courts. However, she said that she was “actively looking” at other destination countries where migrants could be sent to claim asylum.

Mrs Braverman defended negotiating a new deal to pay the French to combat the record 33,000 migrant small boat crossings this year, saying that France had stopped 40 to 50 per cent of crossings, or 20,000 migrants.

“It’s not good enough, but it’s better than nothing,” she said, adding she wanted 70 to 80 per cent.

Mrs Braverman, a near fluent French speaker, hinted that she would like joint beach patrols in northern France with British law enforcement agencies working “hand in hand” with the French. “They have 200 gendarmes [on the beaches], we need to double that,” she added.
 

Turning to crime, Mrs Braverman revealed that she once had been on her phone in central London when a mugger on a moped plucked it from her hand and drove off without stopping.

She told police, but “all they were interested in was the crime number for insurance purposes… not actually getting any retribution or justice”.

She cited the incident as evidence of the “crisis of confidence” in the police, which meant criminals believed they could escape justice because they would not be caught or charged by officers.

“It’s a very sad state of affairs, particularly on a Conservative watch as the party of law and order,” she said.

She blamed a “distortion of priorities” where the “PC [politically correct] brigade” obsessed with inclusion, diversity and equality had taken officers away from the “common sense policing” doing the “basics” of solving crimes and catching offenders.

Criticising officers who took the knee or danced the macarena at Pride festivals, the Home Secretary said she believed in the “broken windows” philosophy of taking a tough stance on all crime.

“I want anti-social behaviour to no longer be dismissed as a nuisance by the police, but actually fundamental to law and order,” she said.

She urged police to take a hard line against cannabis and other “recreational” drugs, which she said was “absolutely the wrong term” for substances that were dangerous, harmful and which fuelled violence.

She criticised not only middle-class users who ignored the violence behind the drugs trade, but also middle-class parents “who turn a blind eye to their teenage kids who are routinely sourcing cannabis or weed or pot or whatever you call it”.

Mrs Braverman said she would not apologise for the British Empire, saying how her parents from Kenya and Mauritius extolled the virtues of the Empire which had provided infrastructure, legal systems, civil service and the military.

However, she told the audience that she feared Britain was losing sight of its core values and culture: “The unexamined drive towards multiculturalism as an end in itself combined with the corrosive aspects of identity politics has led us astray.”

She cited that even in Leicester, “a beacon of religious harmony”, there had been riots and civil disorder between Hindus and Muslims “because of failures to integrate large numbers of newcomers”.

Copied cos the telegraph is paywalled. Really troubling if she gets a big following of MPs, she's like another Patel but maybe even worse? The whole thing lacks any real substance but contains all the necessary quotes to whip up a right wing frenzy.

Hopefully this whole cabinet collapses soon enough and that can sideline her for the rest of this parliament.

[Fultonius]

Did you see the video of her talking about planes to Rwanda, the glee in which she was talking about deporting people who've been through life changing trauma and tragedy. She's sick in the head that one!

[mrjonathanr]

Hi Toby, I’ve no argument with you, I just think we view those politicians differently. The three you mention all have talent, but are not afraid to misuse it, so that disqualifies them from being men of stature in my eyes.

Javid has given too many dog whistles for me. I also think a country should take responsibility for its citizens. Stripping Shamima Begum of citizenship was populist and cowardly.

Hunt, defender of the NHS now, but when in office… not so much. Maybe the doctors here would share their views about Hunt, contracts and weekend working.

Gove? Good if you are happy about stopping the sports coordinators and the building schools for the future programme. Good if you like forced academisation against the will of local communities, the wilful destruction of expertise such as SIPs in Local Authorities and massive transfer of publicly held assets on school sites into private hands (or theft, as most would see it when something they own is given to private interests). Great if you don’t like oversight and believe the Secretary of State can effectively manage every one of the 5,539 academies in the country. Great if you are an academy exec, of which 98 were paid more than the prime minister (£158,750) in 2019-20. Paid by public taxation. Great if you think the £4bn+ spent on free schools has delivered value for money.
Not so great if you want evidence that academisation improves school results over time. Not so good if you want public funding per pupil to be spent on children, rather than company profit and wasteful messing around with structures. It’s 12 years since he and Cummings set all this in motion; a whole generation blighted. Williamson was useless, but Gove did the deeper damage.

[Nigel]

Did you see the video of her talking about planes to Rwanda, the glee in which she was talking about deporting people who've been through life changing trauma and tragedy. She's sick in the head that one!

‘I would love to be having a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda. That’s my dream. That’s my obsession’.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1577356617154183183

[mrjonathanr]

edit. That's too unpleasant for quips.

[TobyD]

Interesting comment piece in the Times this morning by James Marriott:

 "It’s now clear that an appreciation of Latin poetry and a PhD in 17th-century coinage aren’t enough to stop a man from crashing the economy. Kwasi Kwarteng’s intellectual armoury sounded intimidating but it turns out that when the pound is jittering and kicking like a spooked mule, you can’t soothe it with a few well-chosen verses from Horace. Intriguingly, even as bits of the economy were falling off and bursting into flames, the chancellor’s allies continued to insist their man was “formidably” intelligent. The guy writes poetry in Latin. And if you ever wanted an informed opinion on the coinage crisis of 1695-97 . . .
Obviously, these aren’t the limits of the chancellor’s achievements. But they have been strangely prominent in the case for the defence. The British reverence for stuffy, old-fashioned indicators of superior intelligence remains as fervent and misguided as ever.
Even after our last prime minister worked tirelessly to prove there is no link between fluency in ancient Greek and competence in government, many are still unduly impressed by an establishment drawl and a familiarity with some of the more obvious sayings of Shakespeare. Put an Englishman in a smart blazer, teach him a Latin aphorism and an alarming number of his compatriots will leap to acclaim him as an intellectual."

[danm]

And now they finally play their Trump card by denouncing anyone who opposes them as part of a traitorous anti-growth coalition. The slide into fascism continues.

[SA Chris]

MGBGA doesn't quite work as well. Actually MEGA works though, when are the the indy refs

[BrutusTheBear]

And now they finally play their Trump card by denouncing anyone who opposes them as part of a traitorous anti-growth coalition. The slide into fascism continues.

  It’s insanity, how long have they been in power and what has happened to growth during that time?  They are the anti growth coalition!  Surely they can't make this stick though..

[ali k]

They are the anti growth coalition!

Anti-growth isolationists surely? Not sure there's anyone on their side to coalesce with apart from the "vested interests dressed up as think tanks" she bizarrely ranted against yesterday (IEA and Taxpayers Alliance).

[mrjonathanr]

  It’s insanity…
They are the anti growth coalition! 

Well yes; just so.

[danm]

The IMF chief made a statement suggesting economic instability, high inflation and low growth (recession in fact) are here for the foreseeable. But, what do they know, they're woke remoaners after all! Truss and gang believe they know better than both the markets and most mainstream economists 

[TobyD]

And now they finally play their Trump card by denouncing anyone who opposes them as part of a traitorous anti-growth coalition. The slide into fascism continues.

Its clearly not facism. However it is an unpleasant and concerning slight on the media and anyone who criticises her policy.  It was,  I think a mark of desperation,  an attempt to unite her party and distract them from trying to get rid of her before Christmas.  She made no argument for her plans other than saying 'growth' 30 times, which is all very well,  until she tells people it means no levelling up,  reducing public services and increasing migration,  which would lose most of the rest of the Conservative voters.

[ali k]

She made no argument for her plans other than saying 'growth' 30 times, which is all very well, until she tells people it means no levelling up, reducing public services and increasing migration, which would lose most of the rest of the Conservative voters.

Don't forget tarmacing over the green belt which Tories in the shires love. Oh wait.

[Fultonius]

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/10/04/world-first-nuclear-fusion-plant-could-generate-carbon-free-energy-by-2040-uk-government-c

Given the utter lack of attachment to reality that our government has, what's the bets they've done zero due diligence on it and it's got about a 5% chance of even being built...

too cynical?  Probably not:  https://news.newenergytimes.net/2021/10/18/former-head-of-u-k-fusion-said-tokamak-energy-ltd-made-baseless-fusion-promises/

[teestub]

Fusion seems to have been about 20 years in the future for the past 40-50 years, so this seems about right 😂

[TobyD]

She may yet be more successful at some point,  but at the moment,  it really doesn't seem likely that the Truss administration has the potential lifespan or basic competence to actually do very much of what they're threatening to.  Braverman may want to stop anyone at all claiming asylum and increase police numbers,  and get every robbery attended by a SWAT team,  but she's unlikely to be allowed the funds to do much of it is my guess. The fact that she heavily massaged her legal CV to get where she is suggests that her knowledge of international law might not be that great either.  Never mind the risk of Putin starting a wider European war, I wonder if Truss has considered it to save her political skin?

[Oldmanmatt]

She may yet be more successful at some point,  but at the moment,  it really doesn't seem likely that the Truss administration has the potential lifespan or basic competence to actually do very much of what they're threatening to.  Braverman may want to stop anyone at all claiming asylum and increase police numbers,  and get every robbery attended by a SWAT team,  but she's unlikely to be allowed the funds to do much of it is my guess. The fact that she heavily massaged her legal CV to get where she is suggests that her knowledge of international law might not be that great either.  Never mind the risk of Putin starting a wider European war, I wonder if Truss has considered it to save her political skin?

I don’t think a “wider European war” is a likely thing, at least not for more than a couple of days. Should he launch an attack on Europe or NATO, then his conventional forces would be decimated in hours or at most a few days. This would, I fear, mean an almost certain escalation to strategic weapon use, by Russia, or submit utterly to “the West”; which seems vanishingly unlikely. Gut feeling is, he won’t, or should he think of trying, someone on his “inside” will resolve the issue internally. Hopefully with a baseball bat and starting at his toes. Sorry, bit tired of that idiot now.

[TobyD]

She may yet be more successful at some point,  but at the moment,  it really doesn't seem likely that the Truss administration has the potential lifespan or basic competence to actually do very much of what they're threatening to.  Braverman may want to stop anyone at all claiming asylum and increase police numbers,  and get every robbery attended by a SWAT team,  but she's unlikely to be allowed the funds to do much of it is my guess. The fact that she heavily massaged her legal CV to get where she is suggests that her knowledge of international law might not be that great either.  Never mind the risk of Putin starting a wider European war, I wonder if Truss has considered it to save her political skin?

I don’t think a “wider European war” is a likely thing, at least not for more than a couple of days. Should he launch an attack on Europe or NATO, then his conventional forces would be decimated in hours or at most a few days. This would, I fear, mean an almost certain escalation to strategic weapon use, by Russia, or submit utterly to “the West”; which seems vanishingly unlikely. Gut feeling is, he won’t, or should he think of trying, someone on his “inside” will resolve the issue internally. Hopefully with a baseball bat and starting at his toes. Sorry, bit tired of that idiot now.

I think most people will emphasize with that. He's just made everything in Europe more expensive and difficult, whilst his demise can't come soon enough, I wonder if the replacement would be worse

[lukeyboy]

He's just made everything in Europe more expensive and difficult

Whilst simultaneously managing to achieve the same in Russia!