Re: UK politics thread

by Guest Tue 28 Jun 2016, 17:43

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36651406

I'm sure this will help us to get a good deal for exiting the EU and secure great trade deals for the future

.

by Basil Tue 28 Jun 2016, 19:53

And now one of the MP's who supported Corbyn in the vote of confidence earlier today has changed her mind and resigned from the front bench. You really couldn't make this shit up.

by taipan Tue 28 Jun 2016, 21:07

Explosions at Istanbul Airport. The Brexit supporters will see it as justification.

by Basil Tue 28 Jun 2016, 21:14

taipan wrote:Explosions at Istanbul Airport. The Brexit supporters will see it as justification.

10 dead apparently

by skully Tue 28 Jun 2016, 21:48

vilkrang wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36651406

I'm sure this will help us to get a good deal for exiting the EU and secure great trade deals for the future .

I'm with JGK on Farage having a very punchable face. What a pompous arrogant twat.

by skully Tue 28 Jun 2016, 23:59

by taipan Wed 29 Jun 2016, 06:38

skully wrote:

And in other news the Spice Girls have postponed their 20th anniversary tour until 2017. Presumably they couldn't get venues in Europe.

by JGK Thu 30 Jun 2016, 04:40

Downing Street is no place for bumbling Boris

JENNI RUSSELL

So here we are. The joker won the game. He’s blown up our bridge to Europe and now he’s bidding to run a country that might, because of him, break apart.

Except, of course, here we aren’t. Or here he isn’t. Because Boris, unwilling as ever to face the uncomfortable consequences of his actions or to offer genuine leadership, has been almost invisible ever since he decapitated the prime minister. After one brief press conference, where he looked like a shell-shocked, frightened rabbit, and where he scuttled away rather than dare to take questions, Boris has been in hiding. Far from taking control, he has run from it.

“That’s the authentic Boris,” said one person who has worked with him for many years. “He hates unpleasantness. He just wants to be liked. He’ll do anything to avoid meeting people who might be upset with him. He’s in this for the adulation and applause.”

There couldn’t be a greater contrast with David Cameron. He has just lost the referendum and his political career, and yet he’s out in public, arguing for Britain, teasing the opposition, performing with energy, dignity and humour. Boris didn’t even have the grace or courage to turn up to the Commons for Cameron’s statement on Monday or Prime Minister’s questions yesterday. Where there should be visibility and responsibility, Boris has left a void. He’s been too busy scheming to get MPs’ votes to bother to tell the country how the glorious future he promised will be delivered.

Boris is under pressure as never before, and the flaws in his character and political positions are being mercilessly exposed. For the first time in his life he’s being held accountable for the inconsistencies in his fantasy politics. His political backers were livid at his newspaper column on Monday, in which Boris visibly retreated from his campaign’s pledges to cut immigration, and pretended that apart from a few technical changes to take us out of EU law, and a little points system here and there, everything in our relationship with Europe could continue largely unchanged.

Thumbscrews were applied overnight as influential people who had pledged themselves to him threatened to withdraw. Within 24 hours Boris had recanted, with friends briefing that he would slash immigration after all, and blaming “tiredness” for his “mixed messages”. Future articles, they promised, would be checked before publication.

Whoa. Stop right there. Boris had four months to prepare for this moment. He had 48 hours of seclusion to write the column which set out our path to the future. Given all that time, he came up with a muddle. The point about being Prime Minister is not that supervisors have to check your work. You are the supervisor. That’s the job you applied for. You’re the ultimate decision maker, the person in whose hands power rests.

To be Prime Minister is to make dozens of hard choices every day. A leader can’t spend two days concentrating on a single decision and then fluff it. The pressure is relentless. The public face of the office, the bit that’s on show, the bit that makes Boris so popular, is just one element of the job.

David Cameron is up at 5.30 every morning to spend two and a half hours on his papers before a gruelling day of meetings, campaigns, receptions. I have watched him work on them, and his concentration is intense. The point about the decisions is, he told me, that if they were obvious they would have been made without coming to him. Everything in his ministerial red box is contentious. In minutes he must switch between spies in Syria, rising budgets on HS2, hospital deficits, Russian sanctions, energy market reform, public appointments and migrant patrols in the Med. The choice is often, he says, between a bad outcome and a worse one which no one will like but you have to get on with it and take the consequences.

One of Boris’s former colleagues says he is utterly unsuited to this tough, disciplined, private slog. “His whole history is he’s very indecisive,” he points out. He switches position on the relatively small issues — housing, skyscrapers, mayor’s schools — as well as the big ones. He’s “a showman, a comedian; he’s addicted to clowning and getting a laugh” but not to details or driving policy through.

A former No. 10 aide says grimly that the key to Boris is that his persona is what you get. There is no capable grown-up hiding beneath the bumbling exterior. He has no grasp of details, budgets or time. He is as late, disorganised and unbriefed in his private meetings with No. 10, whether they are on the London budget or its infrastructure plans, as he is for an after-dinner speech. Several big projects, like the plan for a science hub in the former Olympic Park, were stillborn as a result. “What’s amusing on a stage is a lot less funny when lives and jobs are at stake.”

His gravest flaw is that even he doesn’t know what he stands for, as we saw this week. A former aide says he changes position constantly because his focus is always on pleasing the audience of the moment, whether it’s billionaire property developers, campaigners for affordable housing or Eurosceptics who might make him PM.

Boris could get away with this as a figurehead mayor. But now all our futures may depend on this evasive, crowd-pleasing clown. To govern is to choose, a responsibility he is psychologically and practically unfitted to bear. The Tory party will be fools if they now choose him to govern.

The Times

by skully Fri 01 Jul 2016, 00:04

So Boris leads the greatest fark up in UK history then decides not to run for the top job?? FFS, what a blithering fraud.

by JGK Fri 01 Jul 2016, 00:20

Maybe that qunt Lynton Crosby should hand back his Knighthood.

by JGK Fri 01 Jul 2016, 00:24

All sounding very House of Cards:

Mr Johnson's most loyal friends were apoplectic. One described Mr Gove's behaviour as "utter treachery", and suspicions quickly surfaced that Mr Gove had intended all along to use the popular Mr Johnson to win the referendum vote before ambushing him at the last moment.

"Gove is a ____ who set this up from start," said one, bluntly. Could they be right?

It is no secret that Mr Johnson had been broadly supportive of Europe before the referendum campaign began, and that David Cameron had expected to rely on his support for Remain.
Mr Johnson, though, fell for the persuasive powers of a certain Michael Gove in deciding he was, after all, in favour of leaving the EU.

At what is rapidly becoming an infamous dinner party at Mr Johnson's home on February 16, Mr Johnson, Mr Gove and their wives sat down with the newspaper owner Evgeny Lebedev to discuss politics.

Mr Gove's wife Sarah Vine described how: "Boris was very agitated, genuinely tortured as to which way to go." It seems that by the end of the night Mr Gove, a lifelong Eurosceptic with an "obsession" for getting Britain out of Europe, had persuaded him which side of the fence he should come down on.

by skully Fri 01 Jul 2016, 01:49

Deary me. Unbelievable that such a flip-floppy goose (Boris) could have so much influence in Blighty.

by furriner Fri 01 Jul 2016, 16:53

I only caught up on this Brexit nonsense over the last two days. I had no idea so many Brit politicians - as a class- were so f*cking dumb. And so transparently conniving. It quite restores my faith in humanity to see they're just as bad as the worst politicians in India.

by furriner Fri 01 Jul 2016, 16:58

Oh also Boris Johnson looks like Trump (I'm sure no one has ever remarked on this ever), Gove reminds me of Uriah Heep (the one in the book, not the band), and Cameron looks like a soufflé unable to make up its mind.

by taipan Fri 01 Jul 2016, 20:19

furriner wrote:Oh also Boris Johnson looks like Trump

Both born in New York?

by lardbucket Fri 01 Jul 2016, 23:38

furriner wrote:I only caught up on this Brexit nonsense over the last two days. I had no idea so many Brit politicians - as a class - were so f*cking dumb. And so transparently conniving. It quite restores my faith in humanity to see they're just as bad as the worst politicians in India.

or indeed anywhere

malice and self-interest reduce even the intellectually competent to gibbering levels of incomprehensibility ... remembering what lies you told and when must be infinitely more difficult than remembering the truth

by skully Sat 02 Jul 2016, 00:57

Meanwhile, 64 million people get farked up the arse.

by horace Sat 02 Jul 2016, 01:12

lardbucket wrote:
furriner wrote:I only caught up on this Brexit nonsense over the last two days. I had no idea so many Brit politicians - as a class - were so f*cking dumb. And so transparently conniving. It quite restores my faith in humanity to see they're just as bad as the worst politicians in India.

or indeed anywhere

malice and self-interest reduce even the intellectually competent to gibbering levels of incomprehensibility ... remembering what lies you told and when must be infinitely more difficult than remembering the truth

...and yet the pig abuser and Boris went to a good school (in Taips estimation) - Eton and Oxford

by horace Sat 02 Jul 2016, 01:13

....and spot on Furri

by lardbucket Sat 02 Jul 2016, 09:06

This new bloke, Gove ... is he Kevin Rudd's identical twin, separated at birth?

The hubris, the twattiness, the 'I'm chosen', the 'everyone wants me to lead, I'm reluctant, but can see I'm the best' ... it's all there.

by JGK Sat 02 Jul 2016, 09:08

For someone who only decided to run a day or so ago, he had a bloody long speech prepared.

by Guest Sat 02 Jul 2016, 09:14

Some Gove quotes on becoming PM:

“No, I’m constitutionally incapable of it. There’s a special extra quality you need that is indefinable, and I know I don’t have it. There’s an equanimity, an impermeability and a courage that you need. There are some things in life you know it’s better not to try.” March 2012

“There are so many different ways in which he [a prime ministerial candidate] can deny it. And everyone tries to look at those denials and say was he leaving open the door, or was she trying to suggest she might wriggle out of it at some point… I don’t know what I can do in a way but if anyone wants me to sign a piece of parchment in my own blood saying I don’t want to be prime minister, then I’m perfectly happy to do that.” August 2012

“There are lots of other folk, including in the cabinet, who could easily be prime minister. I’m not one of them. I could not be prime minister. I’m not equipped to be prime minister. I don’t want to be prime minister.” October 2012

“I don’t have what it takes... I have seen David close up on a variety of occasions: he just has an equanimity and a stamina, a sense of calm, good judgment... The pressure of the job is phenomenal and it takes a toll on you and your family and I don’t think I could do that.” March 2014

Asked if he was interested in being prime minister, just last month, he said: “No, I’m not. There… I don’t want to do it and there are people who are far better equipped than me to do it.” May 2016

He likes the word "equanimity" doesn't he. Get a new word, ya cock.

by lardbucket Sat 02 Jul 2016, 09:36

It's a good enough word. Mixed up tinea y quim ...

by horace Sun 03 Jul 2016, 07:25

Michael Gove seems a bit of a cove. When did his chin leave his face?

by taipan Mon 04 Jul 2016, 14:35

You couldn't make this shit up.

Boris Johnson, the leading leave campaigner and favourite to become the next prime minister until he ruled himself out last week, attacked the government for not having a plan in the event of a leave vote

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/04/tories-clash-brexit-hysteria-leadership-battle

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