The On-going Never-ending Brexit Story Part Four

Yeah, the tories aren't good but they're not actually clinically insane.

 

In all seriousness, the announcements from Sunak are appalling.
Ignoring the actual environmental impact, they are reversing a key manifesto pledge upon which they were elected. As he has no personal electoral mandate he should simply not be permitted to do this. Add to this that they were made outside of parliament and they are an affront to democracy.

 

Which has been pointed out with some force by speaker Hoyle and the Lord's...

https://www.politicshome.com/news/a...iamentary-scrutiny-delaying-net-zero-policies

 

But Hoyle will do absolutely nothing other than get a bit angry.

 

It makes Sunak's position more tenuous with his MP's more difficult but his power's are limited if he isn't supported by the house.

I mean, it's a parliamentary system. That's just how it works.

 

That's my question: are there more than 40 Tories willing to defy him on a violation of their manifesto in order to alienate a large and growing segment of the electorate? I suspect that they are all going to fall in line because they know how f***ed they are right now and they have to try something...but the voters happy with this change are not getting any younger.

 

I doubt they'll defy him. The Tory moderates that are left have pretty much accepted defeat long ago. If the Tory right thought that this (or things like channel crossing rhetoric) would give them any chance at the next election, then they'd replace Sunak this year and double down on it with someone like Badenoch or Braverman. Instead, they've accepted they will lose, will pin it all on Sunak for not being a "true conservative", and pivot even harder right.

 

Well, I admit it's something of an open question at this point

But, no. They're not as bad as some on the American right and, more to the point, they're simply not in a position to support the sorts of policies, (as opposed to the rhetoric), of their US counterparts are because the voters simply wouldn't wear them.

There just aren't enough people in the UK that would be prepared to accept the sorts of things the they are doing, particularly in areas like gun rights, as AB points out, and the NHS.

So the context is very different.

Well, one flows from the other to an extent, doesn't it.

If they thought they stood a chance of being voted in again they probably would have supported Johnson's attempt to continuously prorogue parliament, if necessary changing the law to allow it... but they didn't think that... and they were right.

Whether people like her actually are fascists or whether she's just channelling the sort of rhetoric she thinks she can get away with because of her colour, I find difficult to tell.

There are a lot of very dumb politicians around and maybe she thinks it's OK if it gives her electoral advantage.

But, tbh, I don't think it matters in the sense that there just aren't enough voters that support it to get a working majority with all the OTHER things the tories have done to destroy people's jobs and livelihoods.

If she was like Orban in Hungary and doing it in a context of improving living standards and lifestyles for his people, she might be OK but that's not the situation.

So it might just be a hail mary as a last, desperate attempt to remain in power I suppose? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Oh, they'd drop him like a stone. obviously.

But moving onto their THIRD unelected prime minister in LESS than a year, (Truss left office on 24th Oct 2022), would become even more farcical than the current situation.

 

Yeah, the pissing off the electorate is an issue. For the tories the 'violating a manifesto pledge' bit is more of a feature than a bug

 

I can't say as I know too much about the US constitution apart from the bits I've picked up over the years but, on that specific point, my impression is that it's not that there's a problem with the US constitution. It seems to me like it's more a matter of them not enforcing the 'guardrails'?

 

Katy Balls, who writes mainly for right-wing publications, has the inside story on what's happening among the tory MP's, covered, somewhat surprisingly, in the grauniad....

Inside the Tory climate soap opera this week: ‘The WhatsApp groups are a bloodbath’
The party’s net zero divide was deeper than ever before Rishi Sunak’s speech – but will he be vindicated or vilified by voters?

It's interesting because, although the proposals, overall, were negative for climate change, some quite positive aspects, (increasing the grant for heat pumps by 50% from £5,500 to £7,500), have been missed.

If he'd dropped all the nonsense about not forcing people to do things they weren't going to have to anyway, some aspects of it are positive, (of which the increase in heat-pumps is by far the biggest), or irrelevant, like moving back enforcing new electric cars to 2035 when, by then, pretty much ALL cars will be electric or plug-in hybrid ANYWAY.

Electric car sales are expected to be around 25% THIS year and we're still 7 years away from 2030 with the price of petrol and diesel continuing to rise.

IOW the bulk of it's essentially just 'mood music' for the swivel-eyed hang 'em and flog brigade' and the benefits, (such as they were), have been lost because of the incompetence of how it came out.

To which my inner Nelson Muntz says...

 

A new name for our PM.

Rishi '7 bins' Sunak...

 

We'd be in a hell of a better position if journalists had taken this sort of approach from the beginning with Camerorn & Osbourne, and later Johnson in particular.
All it feels like now is that they know the Tories are on the way out so they don't need to worry about retaining access.

This is delightful to watch. Robert Jenrick being held to task by Victoria Derbyshire. More of this please from MSM. pic.twitter.com/8oAppN8z69

— Robert Bob.... mrrobertbob.bsky.social (@MrRobertBob1) September 22, 2023

 

Derbyshire's gone rogue

 

Nothing else cutting through, so the Tories wheel out the Inheritance Tax thing again.

 

All the rich Labour voters suddenly bolting to the Tories

 

Since U.K. politics closely resemble that of the States, with culture wars pushing many white working class voters to the right, and many of wealthy and educated voters to the left, I suspect that will not occur.

 

Wealthy Labour voters have mortgages and nothing -- NOTHING -- is going to make them forget Liz Truss.

 

When they piss off the hippies at the Ford Motor Company and don't row back you know they don't care and are just trying to saddle Labour with more baggage.

 

Ha! My bad.

 

They gave Kuenssberg a day off this week so Victoria Derbyshire interviewed Michael Green... sorry, Grant Shapps this week for several minutes, particularly after about 10 minutes



They're talking about this...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...s-of-scrapping-hs2-manchester-leg-rishi-sunak

As I've observed before, normally the average tory would pay a lot of money to get a spanking like this.