Britain is going to be Tory for at least 10 years.

[Brian Peacock]

Theresa May’s controversial co-chiefs of staff Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy have quit, amid warnings that the prime minister faced a leadership challenge next week unless she sacked her top team and radically changed the way she governs.

Mr Timothy, author of the Tory manifesto, was widely blamed by MPs for the disastrous “dementia tax” policy, while Ms Hill was Mrs May’s closest confidante, famed for her lacerating texts to senior cabinet ministers.

The pair were seen as a symbol of Mrs May’s secretive and closed style of government and their removal was viewed by cabinet ministers and Tory MPs as a litmus test of whether the prime minister was willing to change.

On Saturday evening, Mrs May named Gavin Barwell, a former minister who lost his parliamentary seat in Thursday’s election, as a replacement for the pair.

Mr Timothy, writing on the ConservativeHome website, said he took full responsibility for the Conservative manifesto but denied the social care reforms were his “pet project”. He added the reason for the Tory defeat was an unexpected surge in support for Labour.

“One can speculate about the reasons for this, but the simple truth is that Britain is a divided country: many are tired of austerity, many remain frustrated or angry about Brexit, and many younger people feel they lack the opportunities enjoyed by their parents’ generation,” he said...

https://www.ft.com/content/cf79605c-4db ... 19572361bb

[Hermit]

Mr Timothy ... added the reason for the Tory defeat was an unexpected surge in support for Labour.

https://www.ft.com/content/cf79605c-4db ... 19572361bb

Wow! His analytical powers are just wow.

[Brian Peacock]

[Calilasseia]

What I came here to see, is if Devogue delivered a spleenfest over succubus May's schmoozing with the DUP. Which would be gold medal winning reading if he'd unleashed it.

She really has dragged everyone around her into a galactic clusterfuck. Her kapok-brained "strong and stable" Dalek act, has delivered not so much a Coalition of Chaos, as a Duumvirate of Dumbfuckery.

Was she competing for the "hold my beer and watch this" award, with respect to a competition to outdo Donald Trump as the planet's number one fucktard? Why doesn't she go the whole fucking hog, and paint her head orange? It'll be in keeping with her new pals, as well as signalling to the world that once again, the moneyed elite in the UK have demonstrated their total disconnect from reality, to an extent making the development of the Total Perspective Vortex into which to throw them all, a pressing and critical need.

It wouldn't surprise me, if the other European nations decide that the only response to the current state of the UK, is to have our national anthem played on whoopee cushions when May sends her Brexit team over. Because the fucking bacteria in my aquarium gravel could do a better job.

[Brian Peacock]

Indeed. What was that about 'strong & stable' government and Labour offering nothing but a 'coalition of chaos' again?

Theresa May’s plan to govern with DUP support thrown into confusion

Theresa May’s plan for a loose alliance with the Democratic Unionists to prop up her government was thrown into confusion last night after after the Northern Ireland party contradicted a No 10 announcement that a deal had been reached.

A Downing Street statement on Saturday said a “confidence and supply” agreement had been reached with the DUP and would be put to the cabinet on Monday. But the DUP last night put the brakes on that announcement, saying talks were continuing, not finalised. The DUP leader, Arlene Foster, said “discussions will continue next week to work on the details and to reach agreement on arrangements for the new parliament”....

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... _clipboard

[pErvinalia]

What I came here to see, is if Devogue delivered a spleenfest over succubus May's schmoozing with the DUP. Which would be gold medal winning reading if he'd unleashed it.

She really has dragged everyone around her into a galactic clusterfuck. Her kapok-brained "strong and stable" Dalek act, has delivered not so much a Coalition of Chaos, as a Duumvirate of Dumbfuckery.

Was she competing for the "hold my beer and watch this" award, with respect to a competition to outdo Donald Trump as the planet's number one fucktard? Why doesn't she go the whole fucking hog, and paint her head orange? It'll be in keeping with her new pals, as well as signalling to the world that once again, the moneyed elite in the UK have demonstrated their total disconnect from reality, to an extent making the development of the Total Perspective Vortex into which to throw them all, a pressing and critical need.

It wouldn't surprise me, if the other European nations decide that the only response to the current state of the UK, is to have our national anthem played on whoopee cushions when May sends her Brexit team over. Because the fucking bacteria in my aquarium gravel could do a better job.

[Brian Peacock]

Former coalition cabinet colleague Ed Davey on Gove...

Perhaps Theresa May has a sense of mischief after all. Putting Michael Gove in charge of the Department of the Environment is much like putting a wolf in charge of the chicken coop. To say that the Gove pulse is unlikely to race too much faster over environmental concerns would, from my experience of working with him, be an understatement. He probably regards global warming as an excuse to reduce winter fuel payments.

May bringing in her old enemy demonstrates her crippling weakness. This desperate attempt to buy off those who might bring her down may help her own survival for another few months. Sadly, it will do nothing to help the survival of the planet. As an act of environmental vandalism, it sure beats the mischief of her youthful run through a wheat field.

Gove’s appointment is a threat to the British fight against climate change. Uniquely for a cabinet minister, Gove turned the word “expert” into a snarling insult. Truly, Donald Trump would have been proud. The public outcry over the US president’s rejection of the Paris agreement shows us that people have little time for politicians refusing to listen to expert scientists on such a vital issue.

When I was energy and climate change secretary I sat around a cabinet table with Gove, and he couldn’t help playing to the Tory climate-sceptic audience. As education secretary, he tried to ban climate change from the geography curriculum. After an angry exchange of letters with me, he eventually backed down.

On another occasion, he stopped Amber Rudd – my then junior minister – from attending a critical climate change conference under the pretence of needing her for a vote in parliament. The Lima conference Rudd missed laid the groundwork for the Paris agreement, and I attended as secretary of state. However, given the significance of these annual UN talks, the minister for climate change had always attended in the past. For Gove, as chief whip, to hold her back prevented the UK reaching out to many more nations, and shocked everyone involved with the UK delegation. The move was as petty as it was cynical...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... _clipboard

[Brian Peacock]

[cronus]

Mis-steps away from full-on revolution in the capital. Mood is ugly and a hot summer, plus a small market crash leading to a undesirable Budget should be enough to run today's suits out of town...ten years ain't what it used to be....

[pErvinalia]

[Scot Dutchy]

Well the UK will be out of the EU so it does not matter.

[Brian Peacock]

Stewart Lee made me laugh...

... Johnson, Hunt and Gove. It’s as if DC Comics, having mislaid Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, had to launch a movie franchise based on Ace The Bat-Hound, Matter-Eater Lad and the Super-Moby Dick of Space.

Yes, even the Trump-rimming Murdoch fist-puppet Gove has been reinstated, despite the proved electoral toxicity of associations with the environment-loathing golf magnate and the failing public-opinion wrangler respectively.

Was it only in January that Super Dick Gove, his pink bottom upon the old knee of an invisible Murdoch, flew to New York in a golden elevator to rub his horrid genital against Trump’s chair leg? Gove then described as “warm” and “charismatic” a man whose British visit, it is tacitly accepted, would have caused civil disobedience on an unprecedented scale. Oh! The warmth!! The charisma!!!

Since 8 June’s Ragnarök, the Conservative party has resembled not so much a dog returning to its own vomit as a dog returning to its own vomit, putting on a nice dinner suit and tucking into its own vomit with the finest silver cutlery, as if its own vomit were in fact a delicious treat it would choose to eat willingly, over and over again, even if had it the option of consuming the finest Pedigree Chum instead.

Waking up at the weekend, it appeared to my blurred eye that the Conservatives were about to enter an arrangement with the Plague Monks, the parade-loving, rat-faced death-cultists from my 10-year-old’s Warhammer game.

“Driven into battle by their frenzied faith, the Plague Monks of Clan Pestilens are a repulsive tidal wave of filth… each model can be built as a Bringer-of-the-Word, clutching a Book of Woe, an Icon Bearer with a Contagion Banner or as a Plague Harbinger carrying a Doom Gong.”

But the Tories’ proposed partners were in fact the Democratic Unionists, doom gongs in hand, who appear to be lead by the Gruffalo from the popular children’s book of the same name....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... bed-sordid

Or as Frankie Boyle put it, "The Tories are now in coalition with the political wing of the Old Testament."

[Brian Peacock]

Theresa May under pressure as DUP says: ‘Show some respect’

Theresa May will press ahead with a Brexit-dominated Queen’s speech shorn of a series of controversial social policies after failing to complete “confidence and supply” negotiations with the Democratic Unionist party.

The Conservative leader will become the first prime minister in decades to lay out a legislative programme without a guaranteed House of Commons majority after DUP sources said the two-party negotiations “haven’t proceeded in the way we would have expected”.

The Northern Irish party accused Downing Street negotiators of being chaotic and said the “Conservative high command ought to stop their backbenchers whingeing about the DUP and show our party some respect”. The DUP added that the party “can’t be taken for granted”....

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... me-respect

[pErvinalia]

Jezza for PM!

[L'Emmerdeur]

“show our party some respect”