BoJo banished - Liz Truss down. Is Rishi next for the toaster? **threadbans in OP**

The one good thing that did come out of the Conservative tenure is that it dragged politics to the right.

Now we see Keir Starmer embracing Brexit, for example. So even after Liz Truss is gone, one of the legacies of the conservatives will be to have done that. Truss is an interim distraction.

Free market capitalism may have created the 1%, but that 1% has elevated the living standards of billions of people across the globe in a way that no other economic system managed to achieved.

That, to me, is a price worth paying.

Is it perfect? No, but no system is.

But it's the least worst option when you consider what communism and its depraved offspring failed to achieve.

The politics of envy - of wanting other people's money - will always have a field to graze on.

Responsible adults learn to reject the politics of envy and greed. Instead, they appreciate that only hard graft can get you to where you want to be. Relying on the state as an ever-protective cushion is the kind of overbearing mother no adult wants to have. This is the kind of personal responsibility that Conservatives try to promote.

They don't always get it right, and I've been many times critical of some of the economic policies of the past couple of conservative prime ministers. But by and large, the direction of travel is right. And as I say, certainly better than what the alternatives offer (you need only look at the results of those policies to see how erroneous they are).

You do realise you can be black and conservative?

That's an insult to Suella Braverman and others, as you are effectively saying that you can't really be black and a conservative unless there's some *hidden agenda* by "the Racists". It's bordering on conspiracy theories kind of nonsense. The past two conservative cabinets had many black ministers.

If anything, and perhaps ironically, it shows that the Conservatives are more diverse than the opposition.

My thoughts exactly. At least someone (and most people reading the thread) can see through the deliberate misrepresentations, embellishment, and counterfeit "truths". But enough about that conscious deviation.

Let's not forget the irony that the people who smear Conservatives as "racists" and "knuckle-draggers" (and the insults are not limited to these) are exactly the same people saying how they belong to the party of empathy, conciliation, and understanding. That moral compass needs retuning, I think.

The irony just doesn't hit them.

As David Starkey once put it, it's often those from the most deprived backgrounds who become Conservative over time precisely because they understand the value of opportunity and working your way up and taking responsibility for yourself.

On the other side of the equation, many people who have had a very prominent upbringing turn out to be Labour - who speak on behalf of a working class that they had no association with growing up.

I think Starkey's assessment is correct. Of course, it doesn't seek to answer to everyone, but it does account for why Suella Braverman and Priti Patel (but certainly not limited to these) end up Conservative rather than Labour.

It's noteworthy that when I see a Conservative cabinet minister, I just see a Conservative cabinet minister. I never think of the colour of their skin.

You, on the other hand, see the colour of the Conservative cabinet minister first, and then their role - as you've done with the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman (but you've also done this with other ministers in the past). In other words, the only person dragging skin colour into the debate is you.

Everyone else on the right-wing side just sees a highly ambitious person who has just become Home Secretary. That's all.

No conspiracy theories. No hijacking of her skin colour by "the Racists". Nothing like that at all.

We, on our side of the argument, are colour blind. All we care about is that the cabinet minister does a good job. Nothing else.

Perhaps it's about time that you stopped dragging race into every single possible subject.

There's nothing "inhuman" about it.

That's a gross exaggeration. If you've spent a moment watching Border Force (either the UK or Australian version), you'll see that border force routinely turn people back to their home country - on an hourly basis - for people who have tried to get into the country in contradiction to what they originally declared. The tears keep flowing from the affected people, but ultimately border force have a job to do - and that's to uphold the law and protect the border. This happens, as I say, on a daily basis.

When upholding the law and the protection of the country, we need to set emotional reactions to one side and simply enforce what needs to be enforced.

We cannot let compassion colour our judgement. If we did, the law would become a mess; a farce, and completely unenforceable.

Sometimes you must be cruel to be kind. The purpose of the Rwanda solution isn't to punish migrants, it's to deter migrants from taking the treacherous route across the English Channel.

If the migrant decides to advance toward Dover in full knowledge that they'll be shipped to Rwanda, then they've already accepted the consequence of their actions. They knew it would happen, but decided to cross the channel regardless. They could have remained in France and sought alternative means to secure asylum in the UK and, if that is not possible, to secure asylum in a different European country. But most of the migrants throw their documents into the English Channel anyway, making identification as difficult as possible. The only reason they would do such a thing is if they knew they weren't legitimate asylum seekers to begin with. 60 percent of migrants crossing the channel are from Albania. Not Syria and Afghanistan, but Albania - a candidate country flirting with the prospect of joining the European Union.

But ultimately, crossing the English Channel should be deterred as much as possible - not least because it mitigates against the risk of drownings.

You may call the deterrence "inhuman", but it's there for a greater good. If the Rwanda solution stops people drowning and culls the criminal gangsters in France who are profiting from the whole enterprise, then, in my book, that can only be a good thing.