It’s a bit unfair to say this is cynical timing given that they have been speaking regularly on the 'phone over the last few months but you’d have to think that No.10 would have wanted to use this for political advantage given the vote later
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Odd one for those who don’t like Boris and the Conservatives. If he stays, better chance of them losing the next election. If he goes and gets swept away, much harder to pry them all pit at the next election.
Best case scenario, he wins his no confidence vote by the skin of his teeth.
A large number of rebels within the party, leading to an early general election a year down the line.
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Is Sunak still being a coward or has he stuck his neck out one way or another?
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Can certain other countries get a no confidence vote too now, please? Asking for a friend.
No chance - he’s too scared and too rich to do it.
Except that it’s not. How can it be considered ‘done’ when there is an ongoing constitutional crisis in Northern Ireland which is a direct result of Johnson’s lies about Brexit. And when the UK Govt. is threatening to break international law because they now want to renege on a treaty that they negotiated and sold as a great deal for the UK.
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Done in that it cannot (politically) be reversed. Obviously there remain many issues to resolve that flow from the UK’s formal exit from the EU (the issue that is done).
Shit…can you imagine. Some sort of political Eurovision contest (pretending that Eurovision isn’t political anyway!)?!
Sunak backed Boris this morning.
We’ve already had one senior Tory calling for the UK to rejoin the single market this week . Were Johnson to be ousted and the Brexiteers sidelined in favour of someone less dogmatic , then it’s quite conceivable that the more pragmatic wing of the Tory party would consider it a price worth paying to deal with some very serious issues.
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Not gonna happen but it would be fine with me.
Sorry, I should clarify. It would have been fine with me in 2016. Not now though. It would need to be something else.
Any new leader would have to be voted on by the Tory membership. There was huge entryism from far right parties to get Johnson elected so I can’t see them going for pragmatists.
British politics is very messed up in this regard.
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On the vote of no confidence, it’s highly possible that Johnson will win. But you never win votes of no confidence for long. Theresa May survived one, and was gone five months later.
The Tories will be proceeding with a leader who demonstrably does not hold the confidence of a sizeable chunk of the party. He will definitely not contest the next election.
I don’t think I’m being naive with that view and it’s obvious that it’s impossible to say how anyone else would have done.
Vaccines, testing, furlough, Ukraine…in the positive column.
Lockdowns, cost of living, hospital provisions, ministerial appointments (and precedents he’s set around the ministerial code), proroguing parliament, Northern Ireland…negative column.
Putting patients with covid into care homes, spreading the virus around the elderly, 170k deaths. Think that one’s in the wrong column.
And what’s he done in relation to Ukraine that’s been so positive?
And the vaccines…the UK is pretty average in this regard, not ‘world leading’ as Tory spin would have you believe.
Could keep editing but will stop there!
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Cameron, May, Johnson…what are the odds that Johnson will be replaced by someone even worse?