I wish the conservative party in the US had the guts to stand up to their unethical leader.
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And yet, here we are.
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I thought about this comment when I woke up and saw the news. Aaand that forecast was off.
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It was amazing when we had all these really influential people resigning from Trump’s administration but then all just got filled with less qualified yes-people, and then again.
At the start I remember there wasn’t an awful case to be made that at least Trump’s cabinet was filled with pretty smart, reasonable people. But they all eventually resigned.
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His resignation has been confirmed. Wow! Thought he would drag it out longer but good riddance. Only negative is that Tories might actually find a successor who will win the next election. The UK needs a break from Tory rule.
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Agree but at least two big differences.
Firstly, Trump has a loyal core of voters who will follow him no matter what he does: BJ does not have that cult-like following.
Secondly, Republican politicians are afraid of being in Trump’s disfavour because of his vindictive nature: no one is afraid of BJ because no similar consequences to challenging him.
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Yes at the beginning of his presidency I was cautiously optimistic that he would simply bask in the glory of being “the most powerful man in the universe” and leave the actual decision-making to his somewhat qualified cabinet and things might not be too awful.
But he turned out to be much worse than that. Which wasn’t super surprising but certainly disappointing.
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Big decision looming for Boris and the Tories: does Boris stay on as interim leader until a new leader is chosen or is someone else appointed until then? The accepted practice is for the resigning leader to step down immediately but I expect Boris will fight that.
According to CNN he’s staying for now.
If you don’t want to click the link, the gist is: (emphasis mine)
He will undoubtedly be forced out earlier than he wants as it will be unhealthy for the party to have him as interim leader until his successor is chosen given how long that process is.
It is more that they now think that he will lose them their seats, especially after the losses in the recent by-elections.
He apparently wants to stick around so that the government pays for his wedding. Or something kind of close to that.
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Oops, he meant to re-sign
Anyone watch Anatomy Of A Scandal on Netflix? Kind of eerily close to this situation.
Nothing like a leadership race amongst conservatives. If you can’t access the link below the paragraph below it sums it up quite nicely.
“In the last few days, the mud has been flying as candidates and their backers openly criticize each other and, according to media reports, prepare secret dossiers listing marital affairs and other transgressions by their rivals. The bitterness has gotten so bad that some senior party figures have expressed concern about the lasting damage it could cause.”
<letthemfight.gif>
Did they have the best they could get with Boris and they never realized how bad the rest of them were?
The current pattern in tory PMs is that each one is worse than the one before:
Cameron - self destructed with an over confident attempt to use a referendum to shut up the dissenters in his own party
May - self destructed by throwing a majority away by delivering the worse election campaign in living memory - literally ran on the promise of costing her core constituency more money
The clown - gross incompetence. Now has a reputation as being the biggest liar in politics. Almost certainly not true, however did not have an ability to lie credibly.
Looking at the field now, apparently the magic money tree is in full bloom for all these tax cuts we are going to get. Only Sunak has sounded half way sane.
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I view Cameron and Boris as the worst of these three PM’s.
Cameron can never be forgiven for promising the Brexit referendum as part of the 2015 campaign. He opened the Pandora’s Box.
May just tried to do the best she could with the surprise (at least to Cameron) Leave vote.
Boris lied repeatedly during the Brexit campaign and is a clown.
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We will soon need a “Liz Truss, now ex-PM” thread.
UK politics is tough.