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

Sunak stood up in parliament and said "No Mister Speaker, I did not attend any Parties". Which would appear to be an attempt to deliberately mislead the House. This could get interesting.

…and we’ll probably get our resident Boards corrspondant for GB News back here to explain to all of us how wonderful the Tories are and always have been with the selection of Sunak.

He’s conspicuously absent tonight too…strange that.

No I was referring to his USA green card situation.

That's all logical Bass. They have defied logic over there for the best part of the last decade. I wouldn't put anything past them.

What do they have though? 2 years max before an election? That's a lifetime in politics

If you look at history the problem with Consertives politics is the longer they are in power the further to the Consertives right they go. Blair and Cameron were immense politicians. They had the ability to pull there parties towards the center. Dick Spring was similar with Labour in Ireland.

However the core policies of the party then start coming to the fore. Cameron wanted to put the anti-EU wing of the party out to grass. He had already against the odds defeated the Scottish independence vote.

When the Brexit referendum took place a number of Consertives politicians instead of considering the country, instead were positioning themselves for a future leadership battle. Gove, Borris, Rabb etc. Borris never believed it could succeed. It was all about positioning a future leadership challenge.

Brexit was the nightmare Boris never wanted but when it landed on his lap he had to run with it. His problem was no matter how far he or the part went it was not enough for the ERG.

Just think of the stupidity of it. You leave the biggest market in the world on your doorstep, for what to trade with India, Australia and Canada.

The 54 that publically declared for Johnson, should be automatically be disbarred from ever holding ministerial office, by virtue of appalling bad judgement.

Not that, should disbar the rest of them, the Tories are a malignant tumour in British politics.

it's certainly going to feel like a lifetime for the British, who are going to have to put up with another two years of the demoralised and delusional Tory factions fighting like cats in a bag while the country collapses around them.

There's no "with one bound he was free" move for the Tories here. They have spend years encouraging fantasy politics and hollowing out the capacity of the state to manage the challenges that it now faces. They have done lasting damage that requires a lot of rebuilding; it's not going to be a quick job. There is precious little evidence that, even now, the Tories are ready to start that rebuilding; they are certainly not going to complete it in time to avoid a lot of pain for the people over the next couple of years, and they face almost certain humiliation at the next election.

Two things are happening at more or less the same time:

First, the economic harm inflicted by Brexit is becoming undeniable - the contraction of trade, the slowing of growth, etc. And this is happening just at a time when external economic shocks are affecting the UK, and it needs all the resources it can muster to alleviate their impact. Brexit gives it fewer resources.

Secondly, the Brexit itself project is visibly disintegrating as its internal contradictions tear it apart.

Brexit involves leaving the EU single market, which is a well-regulated developed market that is also very open to international trade. (By “well-regulated” I mean here that its regulatory system is comprehensive; it’s not an unregulated or patchily-regulated market. I’m not making any claim, one way or the other, about whether its regulations are optimal, the best regulations they could be.)

The costs of leaving the EU single market are, obviously, high. There is no point in incurring those costs unless you are going to take the opportunity to do something different. What could that be?

Broadly speaking, Brexit offers the opportunity to (a) move to a low-regulated, low-barrier economy that prioritises economic freedom (“Singapore-on-Thames”) or (b) you can move to a protectionist model where regulation and trading policy are focussed on promoting UK industries and UK employment. But you can’t do both; these are moves in opposite directions. ("Do you favour more open immigration or less immigration?" is a handy shorthand test for working out which way different Brexit supporters lean on this question.)

The Brexit project up to now has sought to persuade people that you can do both, or alternatively has sought to persuade different groups of Brexit supporters that the project will take the course that they favour. But it’s round about now that the wheels come off that strategy; the Brexit project must take one course and disappoint, alienate or anger one groups of supporters or it must take the other course and disappoint etc another group of supporters. Neither course of action will enjoy majority support; only 52% of the country ever wanted Brexit on any terms, and once you lose a chunk of them you're in minority territory. The third option is to continue to flounder, doing effectively nothing with new-found Brexit freedoms, and that will piss off everybody. 

So, all possible courses that the Brexit project can take from here are likely to be deeply unpopular. And the project has reached this point in the middle of an externally-imposed energy crisis ;eading to a domestic cost of living crisi, and just at the moment when the UK government has f*cked up its own financial position and its citizens mortgage and rent costs by raising the cost of its own borrowing through incredible idiocy. 

From here, I don’t see any course of action that can save the Tories before the next election. The start of the necessary rebuild has to be an acknowledgment, however low-key, that Brexit was a serious error and a move towards economic rapprochement with Europe; that will appeal to the 48%, and also to those of the 52% who have already arrived at this conclusion for themselves. But I don’t think in its present condition the Tory party is capable of that. It's too fevered and fragile; attempting such a change of course would tear it apart.

If Sunak takes over, how will he make the Tories look like a grown up party again, like one that is not held hostage by Loons. Normal people all recognise that common sense migrant policy is required, sensible Visa arrangements for industry etc. Sensible Climate policies.

For the last few years the loons have ran the asylum, the question is will Sunak if he gets there, have the balls to stare down the ERG? Braverman backing him suggests she'll still be involved, which will be bad news. Having the super troll Rees Mogg out will help.

Everything under Johnson was reactionary, there was no actual policy, just continual sniping with the EU and made up culture war nonsense. Can Sunak bring any stability and the signs at least of grown up policy?

I'd say many could side with Penny just so that the membership get a vote, and thus the winner has more "legitimacy" within the party itself.

But the risk being that the membership will vote for her.

Yikes - fair amount of animosity towards sunak from Tory members.

Let alone the general public.

Choppy waters ahead for him.