‘The entire clown show caught up with us’: Tory infighting erupts after defeat

18 comments

1. *[…] the former deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden and chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith were singled out by angry candidates and aides for their role in the “cataclysmic defeat” that several sources claimed had been made worse by the early election decision.*

   *Booth-Smith was handed a peerage in the dissolution honours list, while Dowden was given a knighthood. Both are said to have backed an early election, with Dowden described as particularly influential.*

   *“Somewhere between 1,300 to 1,500 people lost their jobs last night,” said one senior Tory source. “The person who helped decide that this was the right time to do the election, Liam Booth-Smith, was included in the dissolution honours on the same night.”*

   *Dowden was also criticised by one figure for backing an election before playing little part in the election campaign itself. Another senior Tory adviser said simply: “Fuck that guy.”*

    

   *[…] Insiders painted a picture of a despairing campaign in which the Tory HQ regularly struggled to find ministers to take to the airwaves. “That’s why you saw the same names,” said one party source. “Poor Mel Stride.”*

   *[…] Figures close to Sunak, however, remain adamant that they had little choice but to call the early poll, because of the high numbers of households that were having to remortgage each month.*

   *[…] “I’m convinced we should ban polls during campaigns,” said one campaign figure. “The reason we had to start talking about a supermajority was because in all our research, people just didn’t believe we were going to win. Three weeks out after the manifesto launch, it became evident and clear that nothing was really working because no one believed it would happen. That was a direct result of there being an MRP [multilevel regression and post-stratification] poll every day. Labour only won by 10 points in the end.”*

2. ““Somewhere between 1,300 to 1,500 people lost their jobs last night,” said one senior Tory source.”

   Are we supposed to feel sorry for them? An unbelievably blind comment. Those stone hearted ghouls couldn’t care less about those relying on food banks and working multiple jobs to afford their rent. Meanwhile, they will just stroll back into directorships at hedge funds as if nothing happened. Fuck them.

3. It’s been obvious to the electorate that it’s been a clown show since Johnson, even May with her conference speech.

   It’s not surprising it has attracted people who think running a clown show is the way to get elected.

4. The entire party have been obsessed with fighting for control over the dumpster fire rather than actually addressing the problem.

   Sadly the remaining Tory MPs are full of the absolute dregs of the immigrant baiting right of the party like Francois, Badenoch, Cleverly, Braverman et al.

   I really hope that Labour can do a good job for the country, but also between them and the Lib Dems to give a political home for the more centrist elements of Tory voters

5. > “The person who helped decide that this was the right time to do the election, Liam Booth-Smith, was included in the dissolution honours on the same night.”

   Standard deluded Tory response to anything that goes against them. It was just the timing, it was a few individuals, it was bad luck, etc.

   The sandpaper dildo of consequences has been *en route* for a long time. It’s been inevitable since Partygate and it only sped up thanks to Truss and Sunak’s blunders. You can blame Sunak for a million and one things but the Tories were getting rinsed in this election no matter when he called it.

6. I really can’t feel sorry for a political party that thought ‘party first, country a distant second’

7. This is a sack the lot of them moment for the tories. Select new candidates and focus on developing them and regaining a proper local ground game.

   Develop a policy framework around a catchy but meaningful phrase.

   New party policies to eject the likes of truss and others that undermine a party.

   Work on exercising Boris, truss etc from their consciousness and eject that brand of politics. Then they could show they learnt and listened.

   Start playing a positive game. It isn’t all about ‘immigrants’…benefits scroungers… It’s about local power,building for the future, visionary agendas of energy production, trade, removing the commoditisation of housing, removing second jobs and other benefits afforded to those that lead us.

   Even so, it will be at least a decade if not another 14 or 15 years until labour are truly under threat imo.

   I say this as someone that voted green. I beleive we need a strong opposition that’s credible. But this mob of tories we’ve suffered through…no…no thank you….

8. I hope they don’t slow down the turnover of party leaders just because they are not in power anymore. I expect them to go through at least 6 leaders in the next 5 years. Preferably more.

9. The worst thing for the Tories would be to have won. They needed a gutting to remove a lot of the dregs Johnson filled the party with purely because they were Brexit supporting and loyal to him

   I’m sure they won’t use this reset to actually move the party back towards center, but this is what they needed

10. I feel sorry for Sunak. It should have been Boris who lost so badly. He is the cause of so much of the Connservatives’ problems, but he ran away as soon as he thought he would he held to account. Now he can come back and claim it would have all been great if he was still in charge.

11. If you work for an MP directly, (i.e. a parliamentary or constituency assistant, for example) then you know your job ends with theirs. I don’t think this would have been a shock for any of them given the polls were predicting this for the last 18 months.

12. As to Covid While they partied our elderly Queen was at her husbands funeral and a grieving widow after serving us for decades!Despicable

13. Cry me a river by Justin Timberlake is an apt song.

    I’m more worried about the homeless, the renters and home owners on the brink of homelessness and the countless fellow countrymen and women who died because of incompetence.

    Not to mention the business owners who were screwed over by brexit and all of us paying higher food and gas/elec prices for the privilege.

    No we don’t want to be isolated like the good old village of the damned days where we bred livestock and everybody in the village was white

    We live in a multicultural world with people of all types of races. The adult way is to build relationships with everybody and that is the way forward.

14. Can anyone else not stand the term ‘clown show’? Such a poor, odd insult. Bunch of crusty jugglers the lot of them. 

15. Already plotting their comeback. Don’t forget. Don’t let them back in.

16. Unemployment is -40% then 2010 so they’ll easily find jobs. 

17. For 14 years the Tories waged a war of lies, propaganda, persecution and terror against the sick, disabled and vulnerable in way not seen since the times of the 17th century, King James I and the Pendle Hill witch trials. Hundreds of thousands of people died and committed suicide, millions of lives have been wrecked as a result.

    The Tories – ministers, MPs, councillors and voters are stuck with this. They’re stuck with this. If you voted Tory in the past 14 years you’re complicit in all this. You cannot say “This had nothing to do with me.” or “I wasn’t aware.” Bullshit.

    Being on the electoral register gives you the right to vote. With that right to vote comes the responsibility to make yourself politically and socially aware enough to vote responsibly for the needs of your constituency. This isn’t like football, where you pick a team and follow that team. Being motivated to vote for someone to hurt or harm other people is exactly how we are now in this mess with two political parties trying to out nasty each other so they get to hurt more people.

    “We’ve got to get immigration under control”… “We’ve got to stop the boats..” Get with the fucking program, folks. Some of those people are fleeing the effects of climate change. We have food shortages. We have drug shortages. We’ve got millions of people relying on food banks. Our rivers and waters are toxic and polluted. The consequences are piling up.

    Stop listening and paying attention to those who fucked up everything for everyone else. They do not deserve one iota of your attention.

    Farage got the lion’s share of publicity and media attention. Reform got five seats. The Greens, who got hardly any publicity or media attention got four seats.

    Consider that this country is far less right wing than you’re being led to believe.

18. I get so sick of this Tory comment. That the UK people got tired of their infighting.

    None of us could give 2 shits about your infighting. We don’t spend our time thinking about your infighting.

    What we do take objection to is utter mismanagement, blatant fraud via PPE contracts, unethical gambling on election dates, Partygate obscenity, Prime Ministers that tell proven lies, Prime Ministers that fuck the country economically and still deny it and every other antic you have got up to.

    Your childish infighting only matters to you. We voted you out for very different – and very real – reasons. Until you truly understand that, you have no hope of a return to power. Go and learn about true humility.