Rishi Sunak - PM

[FlammableFlower]

A principled resignation with immediate effect - forcing another by election

Chris Skidmore - who is obviously unhappy at Sunak earing up the Net Zero commitments that Skidmore signed.

meanwhile apropos of nothing, this thread is interesting. And to be honest, I think Plodder's statement still stands.

Rishi Sunak, who likes licking bums, is IN! as chancellor.

https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/sta ... wsrc%5Etfw

What? Who? Huh?

Do you think Skidmore was just looking for an excuse to get out before the GE?

[IvanV]

Do you think Skidmore was just looking for an excuse to get out before the GE?

He's not standing at the next election anyway. He seems to already have an academic job, appointed Prof at Bath Uni in June. So either pleased to leave early, or else pleased to have the opportunity to cause trouble at relatively little cost to himself.

Despite this stand on green issues, Skidmore is a right winger and a Trussite. He is, for example, one of the five co-authors of Britannia Unchained with Kwarteng, Truss, Raab and Patel, which is kind of the Trussite batshit manifesto.

His seat is due to be abolished with the boundary changes at the next election. He already said, 15 months ago, that he is not seeking another seat.

[headshot]

Local Conservatives have chosen a fantastic candidate to stand as Peter Bone’s replacement in the upcoming by-election…his partner, Helen Harrison.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... eplace-him

She’ll probably win.

[FlammableFlower]

Do you think Skidmore was just looking for an excuse to get out before the GE?

He's not standing at the next election anyway. He seems to already have an academic job, appointed Prof at Bath Uni in June. So either pleased to leave early, or else pleased to have the opportunity to cause trouble at relatively little cost to himself.

Despite this stand on green issues, Skidmore is a right winger and a Trussite. He is, for example, one of the five co-authors of Britannia Unchained with Kwarteng, Truss, Raab and Patel, which is kind of the Trussite batshit manifesto.

His seat is due to be abolished with the boundary changes at the next election. He already said, 15 months ago, that he is not seeking another seat.

Yeah, I noticed just today that his seat is disappearing at the next election anyway. So it's just a way off getting out with the minimum association with the Sunak government.

[IvanV]

It seems that Sunak is proposing to give up Britain's flexibility to deviate from EU standards, to maintain regulatory alignment with Northern Ireland, and so get the DUP to agree to go back to the assembly.

It was apparently in the Torygraph, would you believe, but behind a paywall. But you can read it in The Belfast Telegraph. And Slugger O'Toole has some commentary.

The right-wing is obviously shocked, and Kemi Badenoch, business secretary after all, is furious. There's no point to Brexit without this, she has said in response. There's another pay-walled article in the Torygraph saying she will challenge him over it.

I'm astonished. But who knows where this leads.

[Sciolus]

It would indeed be astonishing if Sunak were to do what people have been saying for 8 years is obviously the only sensible thing.

[FlammableFlower]

Ah, another Brexit unicorn - the one where we're able to completely diverge from a neighbouring huge market with no negative repercussions and everyone will look at us and say, yes we must follow them... for no reason whatsoever except... we're Britain

[IvanV]

It would indeed be astonishing if Sunak were to do what people have been saying for 8 years is obviously the only sensible thing.

Clearly it is astonishing because it is what they have striven hard not to do for that 8 years.

But, having thought about it overnight, the reason that the Tories have been unable to move in the direction of a sensible, soft Brexit, which was apparently their policy during the referendum, is that the right wing of the party subsequently prevented it. Subsequent to the referendum, they realised that they could insist on a hard right agenda of a much harder Brexit, and the economy can go hang.

But now that the right wing have made clear to Sunak-the-right-winger that he isn't right-wingy enough for them, and are making trouble for him like John Major suffered with "the bastards", I think he is giving up trying to satisfy them. Rwanda was an attempt to make it look like he was satisfying them, while actually not doing so. But they saw through that. So I think he has just given up, and has decided to confront them rather than make it look like he is satsifying them.

And astonishingly, proposed to do something sensible. How much of what the Tories have recently proposed has been sensible? Very little.

Sensible in policy terms. Even though it demonstrates the folly of pursuing this hard Brexit, which was always irreconcilable with both Northern Ireland and the health of the economy.

And sensible for the long term relevance and electability of the Conservative party. Just like the Corbynites needed to be destroyed for the Labour party to become electable, so the hard right of the Conservative party needs to be confronted and destroyed.

[Grumble]

It would indeed be astonishing if Sunak were to do what people have been saying for 8 years is obviously the only sensible thing.

Clearly it is astonishing because it is what they have striven hard not to do for that 8 years.

But, having thought about it overnight, the reason that the Tories have been unable to move in the direction of a sensible, soft Brexit, which was apparently their policy during the referendum, is that the right wing of the party subsequently prevented it. Subsequent to the referendum, they realised that they could insist on a hard right agenda of a much harder Brexit, and the economy can go hang.

But now that the right wing have made clear to Sunak-the-right-winger that he isn't right-wingy enough for them, and are making trouble for him like John Major suffered with "the bastards", I think he is giving up trying to satisfy them. Rwanda was an attempt to make it look like he was satisfying them, while actually not doing so. But they saw through that. So I think he has just given up, and has decided to confront them rather than make it look like he is satsifying them.

And astonishingly, proposed to do something sensible. How much of what the Tories have recently proposed has been sensible? Very little.

Sensible in policy terms. Even though it demonstrates the folly of pursuing this hard Brexit, which was always irreconcilable with both Northern Ireland and the health of the economy.

And sensible for the long term relevance and electability of the Conservative party. Just like the Corbynites needed to be destroyed for the Labour party to become electable, so the hard right of the Conservative party needs to be confronted and destroyed.

It would be nice if there was a Conservative Party that I didn’t think would ruin the country when elected.

[IvanV]

It seems that Sunak's proposal isn't quite as strong in terms of alignment as early reports suggested. Rather it is just alignment to the minimum extent where failing to do so might make GB-NI trade more awkward. Doubtless this leads to a requirement for repeated engagement with the EU whenever there is a difference of opinion over what that comprises.

It would be nice if there was a Conservative Party that I didn’t think would ruin the country when elected.

We went from having a Labour Party many people thought would ruin the country when elected, where the ruin-seekers seemed to have taken over the Labour Party securely, to a reasonably sensible one, fairly quickly after the ruin-seeking leadership lost an election. It looks like the ruin-seekers in the Conservatives have the party pretty securely held too. But I was wrong about Labour, and that gives me hope I might be wrong about the Conservatives. Perhaps the difference is that right-wing ruin-seekers are quite broadly in the ascendancy in many countries at the moment, and seem quite powerful and harder to dislodge.

[headshot]

The difference is that Labour was a broader church and the centrist were ready in the wings to take over - and may have even perpetuated the fall of the left.

A lot of the centrists have left the Tory party for good. There is no-one waiting in the wings. The Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that Gove looks like a moderate.

[bjn]

The difference is that Labour was a broader church and the centrist were ready in the wings to take over - and may have even perpetuated the fall of the left.

A lot of the centrists have left the Tory party for good. There is no-one waiting in the wings. The Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that Gove looks like a moderate.

They didn't just leave, many were pushed out when they lost the whip under Johnson.

[jimbob]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... dApp_Other

John Crace again