General British politics discussion thread

Dan Rosenfeld- Johnson's chief of staff, and Martin Reynolds his private secretary (and bring your own booze emailer) have also just quit. So 4 of his closest team.

Some online trying to suggest this is Johnson cleaning up Number 10 after the Parties report, but the manner in which they're all leaving makes that look very unlikely.

Sunak also not toeing party line today, implying Johnson was wrong.

What a horrible day for him, headlines screaming about how financially fecked most of the population are about to find themselves (gas cap raised, interest rate rise, inflation ballooning). His number 1 Dead Cat - Saville - coming back to haunt him. His back up Dead Cat - Northern Ireland chaos, just looking like a DUP stunt with his approval. And after another day of dress up, he'll be coming back to an empty Number 10, except for Carrie and 2 kids as all his team scarper

The people leaving are not the good guys, they knew exactly what type of person Johnson is. Mirza has been his close aide for donkeys years

ITV's Peston seemed to go full Kuenssberg this evening getting out the Johnson side of todays events

A fantastic explainer from the BBC's Atkins

Surely Dorries deserves a mention.

It's clear Sunak and his team think he has a good shot at being leader now. I thought surely the scandal around the billions in COVID fraud that he is writing off would harm him...but given the other candidates...

Yeah people can tolerate a lot when it comes to politicians, corruption, bigotry, ignorance etc, but the one thing that cuts through is hypocrisy, tell the general public to do one thing and then do the opposite themselves well then they get angry.

Examples of the recent by elections, the dismal poll numbers, senior Tories hammering him in public and loyal servants like Murza leaving. The Savile Stuff just tops it all off,,,and for what its worth I don't think its worked as a distraction whatsoever the way he planned.

The likes of Patel and Dorries have peaked career wise, but Raab will be fine, popular enough with the members and close to Cummings.

With standards of living going to fall to a historic low because of energy prices I don't see any good news to make people feel good about Johnson. Probably hoping Russia invade Ukraine.

Can I suggest Patel?

Yes. But in a parliamentary system a healthy party will usually have a choice of potential leaders. And, given two or more leaders capable of winning elections, the party usually has the luxury of choosing the one who has some integrity and character over the one who doesn't.

Plus, the two things are linked. Voters are realistic (or cynical, if you prefer) and take it for granted that politicians will tend to have unpleasant character traits - a bit of dishonesty, ruthless ambition, a tendency to put their own political survival before the good of the country, etc. But there are limits - Johnson's character flaws are so great and, now, so public that they jeopardise the Tories' ability to win the next election. We are reaching the point where it doesn't matter whether the party the party chooses the leader most likely to win an election or the leader with at last a bare minimum of decency; if they adopt either criterion, how likely is it that they would choose Johnson.

We may never know if Johnson gets an FPN for breaking Covid rules. The police have already said that they will not name the people to whom they issue FPNs. If anyone refuses to pay an FPN and wants to have their day in court instead, of course we'll know all about that. But if they just pay up, I'll we'll ever hear about it are leaks and rumours.

The continued notion that Blair was a tory is still to this day gas.

Having basically lifted all boats for a decade and giving the UK its most successful and prosperous period in the recent living memory. Actually the narrative tying him to torys is to give torys the reflection of success. It's silly that people fall for it tbh. And embarrassing. It seems to be a Labour leader you have to be nationalising everything in sight and bringing back coal mine jobs.........

Tony Blair wouldn’t have been leader in 1997 if John smith hadn’t died. Would labour be in a better place now if it was John smith who was leader in 1997 and in subsequent elections ?

Anyway sky news are reporting that there’s possibly a fifth person leaving Downing Street. I see the spin about the four who left yesterday as it being the PM taking is starting, expect the policy chief isn’t involved in party gate as far as we know and she may be the Geoffrey Howe of Downing Street.

Already being spun as Johnson taking action and clearing house. A strong PM

It'd have to be sackings for that spin to work.

Option 2 is what almost always seems to happen the Tories in my lifetime. Major was the only Tory PM deposed in a General Election rather than a push and that wasn't from the lack of trying either.

Of course there was the 3 almost interchangeable leaders who lost to Blair who stepped down after election loses.