Conservative peer wants us all dead

 Says it all, really:

Lord Frost, who has led negotiations with the EU, is reported to have handed in his resignation letter to Boris Johnson last week. But the Mail on Sunday reported he had been persuaded to stay on until January.

The newspaper reported it was the introduction of plan B coronavirus measures, including the implementation of Covid passes, that prompted Lord Frost’s decision. It also said he had become disillusioned by tax rises and the cost of net zero policies.

He's essentially resigning because he's opposed to trying to stop people dying from COVID, having to pay more tax because of the costs associated with COVID and climate change response / mitigation.

In other words, he's happy for us all to suffer and die if it means his 'liberty' (i.e. wealth and associated privilege) are not impinged upon.

Because generally the wealthy will not have as rough a time of COVID - or climate change - as the rest of us.  Their privilege will insulate them from - more or less - from the ravages of the pandemic, in either the economic or health spheres.  They won't be stacked up in NHS hospitals, or struggling to find mney to pay rent, or worrying about their businesses collapsing.  Their main concern will be wether the bloody lockdowns or travel restrictions or - shudder - vaccine passports will affect their God given right to do whatever they bloody well choose.

Nor will climate change hurt them too much.  Again, wealth, power and privilege will insulate them and the won't be sweltering in poorly ventilated housing, or made homeless by flooding, or face the prospect of their home becoming worthless in the face of coastal erosion.  And they obviously aren't too bothered about the likelihood of it harming the prospects of their grand children or great grandchildren - so much for wealth cascading down the generations.  Because they are absolutely selfish.

More lies on the Twitter (Dan Hodges edition)

The other big story concerning Leeds Hospital is Boris Johnson's bizzare behaviour at Leeds Hospital, where he was confronted by a journalist and challenged about a four year old boy with suspected pneumonia who was left sleeping on the floor, rather than getting  abed like a sick kid would in a decently funded heath system.

Johnson refused to engage with the journalist and refused to look at a photo of the child and then - bizarrely - tried to steal the journalist's phone to head off further challenges.

On Dan Hodge's Twitter feed (Hodges is a 'commentator' for the Daily Mail) that narrative is challenged:

Peak hysteria from the Guardian. pic.twitter.com/h1rsPdbMW9

— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) 9 December 2019

So, a clear GOTCHA.  Johnson is looking at the image.  The Guardian is full of hysterical FAKE NEWS bullshit.  A picture is worth a thousand words, eh, Dan?

Only, if you read the piece in the Guardian that Hodges sneers at, some of the words indicating Johnson did not look at the image are direct quotes from Boris Johnson:

Johnson refused to look at the photo and, out of camera shot, eventually took the phone from the reporter and put it in his own pocket. 

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, responded by tweeting a video of the exchange with the message: “He just doesn’t care.” 

First asked if he had seen the photographs, Johnson said he had not. The ITV reporter, Joe Pike, then showed the prime minister the photograph on his phone, describing what it portrayed. 

Johnson declined to look at the picture, saying: “I understand. And obviously, we have every possible sympathy for everybody who has a bad experience in the NHS.” 

He went on to discuss investment in the NHS and Brexit. Pike pressed the prime minister: “I’m talking about this boy, prime minister. How do you feel, looking at that photo?” 

Johnson replied: “Of course. And let me tell you … I haven’t had a chance to look at it.” 

Pike asked: “Why don’t you look at it now, prime minister?” Johnson, still not looking at the photo, replied: “I’ll study it later.” 

Pressed again, he said: “If you don’t mind, I’ll give you an interview now. What we are doing is we are taking this country forward, and we are investing in the NHS.”

Sorry, Dan, but if Boris Johnson is saying he hasn't had the chance to look at the image, either he hasn't had a chance to look at it (and thus your photo with its squiggly yellow lines is worthless) or he's a serial liar who was trying to bluster his way out of having to address the issue.

Obviously, Dan Hodges thinks that latter.  And if Dan Hodges wasn't running cheap propaganda for the Conservatives - he also ran with the 'protester punched a SPAD' lie for a short while - he'd be tweeting about how Johnson is a dishonest liar who will bluster and lie to avoid having to address the reality of austerity.

Let this never be forgot

In the spirit of Remember, remember the fifth of November, let's keep this in mind FOREVER.

Oh dear. Extraordinary interview on PM with Andrew Bridgen and @EvanHD just now. Bridgen was defending Jacob Rees Mogg’s Grenfell comments. Evan asked him if JRM had meant to say he would have left the flats that night, against official advice. pic.twitter.com/A4Mwx22dDg

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) 5 November 2019

Lades and gentlemen, the true face of the Conservative Party - inhumane, arrogant, blinkered and contemptuous. And utterly unapologetic.

Vote for them at your peril.

432-202

So, that worked out well for Theresa May.

I wonder if she is anticipating a discrete visit from some men in gray suits?

The woman has more lives than a cat. She should have gone after the 2017 election disaster. After Grenfell. After the conference fiasco. After failing to put her deal before parliament in December last year. Somehow she manages to cling on to office, if not to power. That slipped through her fingers quite some time ago.

This is an entirely self inflicted calamity, from beginning to end. A better deal was available. Endless better deals were available. The EU have been perfectly aware that there is a real risk their 'problem child' might actually follow through on its threat; they have negotiated in as much good faith as one possibly can with people who think that "Brexit means Brexit," "No deal is better than a bad deal" and "Red, white and blue Brexit" are useful contributions to any sort of a debate.

It didn't help when May painted herself into a corner with all her red lines and - as yesterday demonstrated - has signally failed to actually convince her own party of the merits of her case. May's peculiar genius has been to craft such an awful deal that even her own frit party can't bring themselves to support it.

I think it is hysterically funny that she delayed voting in the hope of avoiding defeat. Clearly, she has no idea about the mood of her party, and neither do her whips. They actually thought they would be able to argue, bribe or bully a few rebels into line. They had no idea just how utterly without credibility she is, and how despised her deal is.

The woman seems to have a remarkable ability to make things worse for herself by wasting time. In 2017 she triggered Article 50, then decided to lose time with her vanity election; now, facing defeat on her deal in December, she prevaricated, delayed, and finally went down to defeat. I feel a bit like Corbyn's internal enemies must have felt in the second half of 2016, in the throes of the Chicken Coup: "Why the Hell won't you just take the hint and go?"

Don't ever, anyone, accuse Corbyn or Labour of wasting parliament's time with the Motion of No Confidence. We could have done all this before Christmas, if May had the guts and any sort of awareness of what was actually going on in her party.

May's bracelet

It has been observed that Theresa May unaccountably took to the stage for her big speech to the Conservative conference wearing a bracelet featuring art work by Frida Kahlo, communist artist and (because women must always be defined by who they sleep with) occasional girlfriend of Leon Trotsky.



After being handed a P45 mid-speech by an audience member, a chronic coughing fit and then having the sign behind her fall to bits, it might seen a minor faux pas.

The Telegraph, heroically, tries to justify it:

After divorcing her husband Diego Rivera, Kahlo painted Self Portrait with Cropped Hair in 1940. The picture, showing her wearing a black suit and with a very short haircut, was widely interpreted to mean that Kahlo was sending a strong message to men: I am independent and I don't need you.

Might Mrs May have been willing the 'naughty boys' in her party to understand the very same?

I prefer a simpler explanation.

I imagine she wore it because she had little idea who the artist was and just thought it looked stylish and interesting. If she had a clue, I doubt she'd have been so silly as to wear it for the biggest speech of her life.

Just another fail in a day - a whole conference - of fails.

Stray thought

I say, I say, I say!  Remember all those TORIES, who - before the election - were saying Jeremy Corbyn should STEP DOWN as Labour leader because it was essential for a democracy to have an effective opposition?

We don't hear so much from them these days, do we?  But that's by the bye ...

What I'm wondering is will they be consistent and demand Theresa May step down, as the result of June election means she can't provide an effective government?

Negotiations “haven’t proceeded the way we would have expected.”

The Tories can't even impose their will on a bunch of Irish God Botherers they outnumber 30 to 1. 

How the Hell are they going to beat Europe into submission?

Agreeing a deal with a party that is basically on your side shouldn't be so bloody difficult, woman!

Theresa May said she'd thrash Labour ... She didn't.

She said she's bend the DUP to her will ... She didn't.

She says she'll negotiate a deal of absolute awesomeness with Europe ... Given her track record, how do you think that will work out?

Still, third one's a charm, eh, Tessa?

Jeremy Corbyn is far better at talking to Irish people!

Post Election thoughts, Round 2 - Possibly Repetitive

The full scale of the awful situation that has engulfed the Tories is only just starting to sink in.

Probably, the only thing worse than calling a vanity election and losing your majority would be calling a vanity election, losing your majority and still being left to deal with the mess you've made of everything.

I give them two years, max. They won't have a choice. Every by-election, defection or resignation will drive them into calamity.The longer the Tories cling on to power, the worse their situation is going to get.

They will look more and more shambolic and hapless.

People are going to get sickened by the sight of them limping weakly from disaster to catastrophe, too frit for another election as they're (can you believe this) scared of Jeremy Corbyn!

The Tories are waning. Labour, on the other hand, are waxing.

They can sit back and occasionally tweet about how different things could have been, if only ... They will likely have a stronger front bench within a couple of weeks, as Corbyn has a reshuffle and some big names agree to work with him.

Corbyn can carry on spreading his hopey-changey message to da yoof and exhort them not to give up - "One more push! Tomorrow belongs to us!"

The right wing media have shot their bolt. They threw everything at Corbyn. Next time, what more can they say?  So whatever effect the relentless negativity had will be diminished.

The Tories have no message. The said they were strong and stable, and ended up in a coalition of chaos.

What can they say to the electorate that will be believable and which will entice voters to them? They got nothing, because the electorate will look at any offer and say, "Why didn't you say that in 2017?" 

Worse, Brexit beckons. Negotiations are due to start in a week! How are the Conservatives - disorganised, demoralised and divided - going to make anything other than a mess of them?

Only Labour can look forward to another election with any enthusiasm. The Tories will likely slip further away from power - why would people want to vote for them more in 2018 or 19 than they did in 2017?

My only concern is Corbyn's age. If the Tories hang on until 2019, he'll be 70. Will he have the energy for another big campaign? Will he have to hand on the leadership, and just play the figurehead role in the campaign?

A bit of me is wondering if that is why the Conservatives will cling on to the bitter end - hoping that something will turn up to help them, and hoping the irascible Corbyn will stop ruining things for them.

Put to fear by a hapless vegetarian.  Can it get any more humiliating for the part of Churchill, MacMillan and Thatcher?

Post Election Thoughts, Round 1 - Whither Now, Tessa?

Well, that was interesting.

I remember, back in 2010, when Cameron managed to ... um ... not win an election, I predicted that the Tories would live through some sort of grim equivalent of the ordeal Labour went through in the 80s.  I turned out to be wrong, massively, as the Tories managed to form a solid coalition with the Lib Dems and managed to survive for ten years and went on to win an outright majority ...

But, undeterred, I now confidently predict the Tories will find themselves in a situation curiously reminiscent of the 1990s.  And the worst bit of the 90s at that.  Not the good bit where they won an election.

Some thoughts for the stunned mullets on the right, particularly those desperately trying to spin this result as a victory for Theresa May.

• Your party has no inherent majority. You had one of course, but you threw it away.
• You're relying on a bunch of Irish Nationalists to give you a working majority.
• Even then, you've only got a tiny majority.
• Your leader is humiliated, her authority is broken, her credibility is gone.

Fair summary of the situation, yes? Nothing too controversial or partisan there.

So, the question is, how do you manage to rebuild your party brand so the next election - in 12 months? 18? 24? - isn't a thrashing on the scale of 1997?

• Can the conservatives offer the country "strong and stable" leadership? No, because the coalition has a tiny majority and every time an MP is sick, or mysteriously absent because they don't want to be associated with a piece of toxic legislation, the they risk defeat. They are at the mercy of events and mavericks. 
• Can they offer a strong leader that can run a presidential style campaign? No. You tried that, and it didn't work very well. May was awful. Who could replace her? BoJo would be a disaster. Rudd has a tiny majority and is going to be focused on that? Gove is a joke.
• Can you offer a vision that you can sell? No, you don't seem to have any. There was no vision or ambition or hope in 2015. How are you going to find it by 2019 and sound credible? You can't. That's why the Conservative campaigns are so relentlessly negative. They have nothing good to say about themselves.
• Can you rely on the opposition destroying themselves. I doubt it. They did there best in 2016, and the still managed to turn May's coronation into a bloodbath. Corbyn managed to re-invent himself as everyone's favourite batty old uncle, and some big names will be tempted back onto the front bench now that they see power is actually within their grasp.

Remember John Major? A basically sound bloke, whose majority was whittled away over the course of his second term. Eventually, he was left propped up by the Ulster Unionists, but even then he was continually embarrassed in the House. He had to endure continual leadership intrigues, eventually having to suffer the humiliation of asking the party if he was more or less popular than John Redwood! His party was divided against itself over Europe. You see the parallels? By 1996, the Major administration was a feeble, zombie government, shambling on wards, hoping that something would turn up to reverse its fortunes. Nothing did. You'll recall what happened in 1997, I think.

It took the second Major government five years - 1992 to 1997 - to reach the sorry pass May finds herself in. She's starting from the 'shambling zombie' situation Major ended up in.

(And at least he managed to win an election!)

So you've got a couple of years to sort yourselves out, Tories. But I think you'll spend it mired in recrimination, feuding, leadership intriguing, and wallowing in the humiliation of continual defeat and gibbering in terror at the prospect of facing the electorate again.

Hahahahaha Part 2

Massive whoopsie!

Britain is more unsafe because of its involvement in the Iraq war, David Cameron said, as he promised his foreign policy would not be dictated by the US if he became prime minister. 

The Conservative leader endorsed a report by his party's policy group on security issues, which said: "We need to recognise that a central element of foreign policy - the intervention in Iraq - has failed in its objectives so badly that the threat to this country is actually greater than it was before it began."

You tools! You pathetic useless tools!  You hopeless bunch of no-hopers!

You can't even run a decent negative campaign without making yourselves look like idiots! You're a disgrace to the fine tradition of hatchet jobs! You've buried the hatchet alright - in your own stupid legs!

(Actually, there's probably more intelligence in you legs than in your solid bone skulls.)

The Tories have just blundered into a massive elephant trap.

The frightening thing is, I don't think it was actually intended to be a trap. Corbyn said a few reasonable things about foreign policy and its repercussions; the Tories immediately denounced him for saying, even though he was just echoing their own words.

Labour did nothing here. The Tories dug the pit for the elephant trap, put very sharp stakes in it, concealed it with considerable cunning, then all jumped into it with lemming like enthusiasm.

 Idiots.

Are we supposed to trust these clowns to run a country and negotiate Brexit? they can't even savage Jeremy Corbyn properly - the softest of soft targets, we are continually told!

Drum these clowns out of power! They're in mortal danger of making Diane Abbott look good!

Theresa May - Hapless and Hopeless

Prime Minister Theresa May, commenting on Jeremy Corbyn's robust, but nuanced, speech on defence and secuity:

She added: "There can never be an excuse for terrorism. There can never be an excuse for what happened in Manchester." 

She said voters faced a choice "between me working strongly to protect the national interest and Jeremy Corbyn who, frankly, isn't up to the job".

Is this really the Tories master strategy? Claim Corbyn said that "We brought it on ourselves"?

I always thought that the Tories were cunning. Seems I was wrong.

Nothing positive to offer, only increasingly shrill negative personal attacks. They sound pathetic, disorganised and desperate.

This is the stuff of insanity. Corbyn did not 'excuse' - he condemned. He simply noted that reckless foreign policy in the past had contributed to the the current mess the world finds itself it.

Any adult - any child - can understand that actions have consequences.

Theresa May seems to think that young men wake up and decide to detonate themselves at pop concerts simply because it seems like a fun thing to do - there is no background, no (however twisted and perverted) reasoning, just a bunch of people who hate us for kicks. It's berserk thinking. I don't imagine for a moment that she genuinely believes it, but she thinks so little of the British people that she hopes we will buy it.

Almost all their facts are made up, or misprepresentations. Like May bleating that Corbyn is saying terrorist attacks are 'our fault' or people repeating the lie that he 'attended an IRA funeral.' Or that he 'danced on the way to the cenotaph,' or ... it goes on and on. And then there are the lies the Tories tell you to make themselves loook good. 'We'll eradicate the budget in a parliament,' 'We'll reduce immigration to less than 100,000,' 'We're all in this together' .... Don't Conservative voters ever get tired of getting lied to?

And it's hilarious - but at the same time slightly nauseating - to hear the woman who couldn't handle a few questions from Andrew Neil mumble how Jeremy Corbyn isn't up to the job.

She can't even look after herself, how can she look after the rest of us?

Hahahahahahahahahaha!!

Fallon disagrees with a quote, thinking it is from Corbyn, then discovers it is actually Boris Johnson saying the Iraq War "the war has unquestionably sharpened the resentments felt by such people".

Also repeats the stupid lie that Corbyn wants to "sit down and talk" to terrorists. Obviously not understanding what "That assessment in no way reduces the guilt of those who attack our children. Those terrorists will forever be reviled and implacably held to account for their actions."

Stupid Tory Muppet.

The End of Cameron

Cameron really is hopeless, isn't he?

He's arguing that if we leave the EU the world will immediately dissolve into a state of war, famine, plague and Mantovani.

So why did he risk unleashing this apocalypse by offering a referendum as a sop to a few grumpy MPs and UKIP voters?

If he loses (and it is looking, insanely, like he will) he is finished; if he wins, all the problems that made him offer the referendum remain, and are worsened, if anything.  It shows an impressive lack of strategic foresight.

But then, we are talking about the man who could only manage a draw against Gordon Brown, even with the 2008 Financial Crisis to help him.  And could only defeat his coalition partner in 2015, not Ed Milliband's Labour in 2015.

A hopeless clown, a blustering buffoon, strutting and fretting and soon to quit the stage.

The only Prime Minister of the 21st century so far, to whom the label, "As bad as Blair," can be applied.

Anyway, get used to this:

More Educational Excellence Everywhere

Surprisingly, political interference in pursuit of a myopic vision of 'excellence' in education results in failure, distress and demotivates students. Wodathunkedit????

The government’s overhaul of primary-school assessments has turned into a shambles, according to the teachers who will have to carry them out from next month, with complaints that seven- and 11-year-old pupils find the new standards too hard and too confusing. 

The new spelling, punctuation and grammar tests came in for particular attack from those who responded to the National Union of Teachers’ request for comment, with 86% of those saying that the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, should cancel this summer’s assessments. 

More than 5,000 primary-school teachers in England responded to an NUT request for their opinion, and virtually all agreed that the new assessment levels were inappropriate for the pupils, given their age, and was likely to brand many as failures. 

More than 90% of teachers at key stage 1 and key stage 2 said much of the material in the new spelling, punctuation and grammar tests – nicknamed Spag – was too advanced or inappropriate for the age groups being tested. 

Christine Blower, general secretary of the NUT, said many adults would struggle to answer the demands of the new assessments. 

“I can tell you that quite a lot of people who ply their trade by writing in English are incapable of getting 100% on the key stage 2 Spag test,” Blower said. 

One teacher told the NUT survey: “The terminology for Spag is a constant cause of stress for children who find it all confusing. They are feeling like failures because they can’t remember the four different types of nouns, or they are confused by the fact that some things can have several different terms.” 

Another said: “As a year 1 teacher, I am finding myself teaching complicated whole-class grammar in order to prepare them for next year when some of my children still can’t write their names. It’s setting the majority up for failure, no matter how much you prepare them.”

Nothing promotes educational excellence everywhere like setting kids up to hate school and to think of themselves as failures from an early age.

Why is it every government feels it has the God given right to interfere in Education?

Here's a crazy idea. Why not give teachers a bit more freedom and independence to make their own decisions, based on professional experience and with promoting excellence, critical thinking and enthusiasm in their students?

If the Conservatives think the chicken killing and pig slaying industries are competent to regulate themselves, why can't education?

In the Land of the Pig the Butcher is King

I can see no way, no Earthly way, this could possibly go wrong. It isn't like we managed to inflict Mad Cow Disease on ourselves (and cows) by letting the industry decide on its own standards, or anything.

Conservative ministers are planning to repeal an array of official guidance on animal welfare standards, starting with a move to put the code on chicken-farming into the hands of the poultry industry.

Liz Truss, the environment secretary, is overseeing moves to scrap the statutory codes on farm animal welfare and move to an “industry-led” guidance as part of her department’s deregulatory agenda.

In a change that has caused concern with the RSPCA, Compassion in World Farming, and opposition parties, the government has already quietly tabled a draft order to scrap the official code on farming chickens for meat and breeding.

It is planning to revoke the code on 27 April – the day that new guidelines will be made public by the British Poultry Council, which will in future be in charge of writing and keeping the new regulatory code.

The industry body counts chicken hatchers and breeders as well as meat-processing giants such as Faccenda and 2Sisters among its member companies.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs confirmed it will now begin working with other livestock sectors in a staged timetable of reform. Other sectors that could get control of their own guidance include the cattle, sheep and pig farming industries.

At best this will lead to a massive deterioration in the standards of care for the animals; at worst, it may lead to poisonous, disease ridden DEATH FOOD being served.

The post title, by the way, refers to a song from Meatloaf's third Bat Out Of Hell effort.  It isn't very good, and Meatloaf endorsed Romney (and is probably fawning over Trump) but, oh well, past glories and all that.

Skoolz

One minor measure in George Osborne's budget, which has been generally overlooked in the fuss about sugar taxes, is his scheme to turn all the schools in England into academies.  Academies are tax payer funded, independent schools which aren't required to follow the national curriculum.

Given the state of the national curriculum, post Michael "Memorise them Kings!" Gove, that might seem to be not a bad thing.  But it is.

Even Tories realise this.

Leading Tory councillors across the country, dismayed by key elements of the education white paper outlined by the government last week, are calling on education secretary Nicky Morgan to rethink her policy of compulsory academisation for all schools. 

Their concerns echo those of many teachers and parents, who took part in rallies in London and many other towns and cities on Wednesday, to protest against the government’s forced academy programme. 

Around the country, councillors – many of them lifelong Tories who have devoted decades to working with schools in their areas and in many cases improving attainment – expressed profound reservations about the changes. 

The government’s white paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, says all schools that have not begun to convert to academy status by 2020 will be directed to do so under new powers. Councils will lose responsibility for the remaining maintained schools, the majority of which will be expected to join multi-academy trusts, regardless of performance. 

“I feel really angry,” said Melinda Tilley, cabinet member for education for Oxfordshire county council, which covers the prime minister’s Witney constituency. 

“If it’s not broke don’t fix it. I don’t think schools should be forced. We’ve been supportive of the government’s agenda. We were going along quite well, helping schools to convert where we could. Now all of a sudden they are going to force the rest of them. It makes my blood boil. I’m put in a position where I can’t protect schools. One size does not fit all.”

Educational Excellence Everywhere is a great name for a white paper on education.

Just as you can tell a country that ostentatiously includes the word 'democracy' or 'democratic' in its name is nothing of the sort, you can tell straight away that these measures will not foster educational excellence anywhere.

Iain Duncan Smith resigns, immolating George Osborne in the process

It's a sign of how mental George Osborne is that even IDS has quit rather than impose his plans to harvest organs from beneficiaries and put taxes on breast milk:

Iain Duncan Smith has resigned from his role as Work and Pensions Secretary complaining of Treasury pressure to make cuts to benefits.

In a statement to the media, Mr Duncan Smith said he "incredibly proud of the welfare reforms that the Government has delivered over the past five years" but said he is "unable to watch passively whilst certain policies are enacted in order to meet the fiscal self imposed restraints that I believe are...distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest".

Even Scrooge can't stomach what Osborne intends for the proles!

it is an impressive piece of political shafting by IDS.

IDS might have been a dreadful leader, an awful minister ... but quitting like this just days after the budget, and calling the budget a piece of ideologicaly motivated national sabotage must have put paid to Osborne's leadership hopes.

Nothing in his political life became him like the leaving of it, as Shakespeare almost said.

Tory Leadership Slow Motion Apocalypse Underway

Get in now for front row seats as the Best Show On Earth After The American Election And Most Other Shows Even Cats gets underway.

Who will replace the red faced non-entity bumbler when he finally buggers off the political scene, having accomplished nearly nothing other than squandering a recovery, prolonging a recession and making Britain look stupid for the whole of Europe - even Greece (GREECE?!) - to laugh at?

Will it be Boris, effectively upping the buffoon quotient?

Or George 'Why did 80,000 people boo him' Osborne?

Or someone thing else?

Who will turn out to be the brightness in this dullness of Tories? The fastest in this loiter of sloths? The sternest in this gutter of wet bus tickets?

Relevant stuff:

Earlier this week there was a new YouGov poll of Conservative party members in the Times or, more specifically, two new polls of Conservative party members: YouGov polled the same party members before and after Boris Johnson came out in favour of leaving the EU to see what impact it had on the leadership race. Results are here.

At the simplest level Boris was ahead before, and was ahead afterwards, but there were some interesting shifts. Boris’s approval rating among Conservative party members dropped significantly after he came out (from 83% approval to 76% approval), but his position in the leadership race improved. Presumably he annoyed some members who saw his actions as disloyal or disagreed with his stance, but he consolidated the support from those who did not.

Almost unavoidably Boris coming out was going to upset some members – he has carefully avoided having many fixed political opinions over the years, so I expect many pro-European members would have assumed Boris agreed with them, many anti-EU members would have assumed Boris agreed with them. For once, he is forced off the fence and forced to upset some people – so his overall approval rating among Tory party members fell. However, in the race to be the next Tory leader his position has improved. 

43% now say they’d back Boris, up from 38%, with support falling for Theresa May and Sajid Javid, both of whom were seen as potential “outers” and both of whom ended up supporting Remain. Asked how they’d vote in a match up between Osborne & Boris the figures don’t change as much (Boris 55%, George 36% before, Boris 56%, George 38% after) – the broader balance between those party members who want Osborne as the next leader and those who don’t hasn’t changed much, it’s just Boris is now more clearly the “not-George” candidate.

Only a quarter of Tory party members said that the leadership candidates’s stances on the EU were an important factor in picking the next leader – 4% said they wanted the next leader to be someone who had campaigned for the UK to stay, 20% wanted the next leader to be someone who campaigned to leave, three-quarters picked other criteria as their main considerations. Far and away the most widely picked criteria was someone who will make a competent PM, picked by 67%, followed by someone who has a good chance of winning the next election on 52%.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but if only Anthony Wells was a girl and there was a sort of heterosexual equivalent of being Gay Married, I'd do that with him in an instant.

UnlessYouDieGate

Seems they aren't hated and abused enough and have to invent vitriol:

A Tory MP who voted to bomb Syria was criticised today after she doctored an email from a constituent so it read like a death threat. 

Lucy Allan, 51, published a genuine email from a voter who branded her 'an empty shell of a human being' and 'detached from reality' but added the words 'unless you die' and put it on Facebook. 

Sender Adam Watling, 27, who was writing as Rusty Shackleford, claims she deliberately added the final three words to make it appear as though he had sent a death threat. 

Mrs Allan has since deleted the Facebook post, claiming that the three extra words were from another email and the post was an 'illustration' of the unpleasant comments she had received.

Cameron should resign. How can he persist in office when he leads a party of evil hearted lie-mongers? He must take responsibility and show that honour has not been completely extirpated from the Conservative Party. After Shappsgate, Clarkegate and now UnlessyouDiegate, it is clearly impossible for his to remain in office. Resign! Resign!

Seriously, what is happening in the Conservative Party?  they've allowed grand Shapps, a serial spiv and liar, to retain in office until a couple of weeks ago; the party seems to be riddled with corruption, bullying, blackmail and vice; and now 'poetic licence' is being used as an excuse for making stuff up about people.

The whole party seems to be sick.  Perhaps they need to actually seize the opportunity Jeremy Corbyn proffers with his talk of a 'new politics'; but David Cameron's recent return to red-faced yelling and bluster suggests otherwise.  The culture of bullying, threatening and shouting down arguments starts at the top.

Oddly, I don't recall seeing them much BEFORE the election ...

But here they are, crawling out of the wood work immediately after their vote-shedding faces are no longer likely to jeopardise Conservative prospects.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr Michael Gove:

Michael is charged with repealing the Human Rights Act!

And by 'charged' I mean 'told to by David Cameron' not 'in legal trouble because of'!  Though you'd think taking a blow torch to the legal protection of British citizens might merit the latter sort of charging.

And here is Mr Iain Duncan Smith, showing Ed Miliband that there is life after losing the leadership:

Iain is clearly very happy.  And who can blame him for feeling chipper?  He's just been charged (again, in the 'told to by David Cameron' sense) with hacking a further £12 billion out of the welfare budget. Obviously, Iain isn't going to be feeling any of these cuts, otherwise he might not be looking quite so smug.