Liz Truss resigns as prime minister pic.twitter.com/GIQNHeKuNj
— The Independent (@Independent) October 20, 2022
Lettuce wins.
Open Thread
by David Anderson| 162 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics
Liz Truss resigns as prime minister pic.twitter.com/GIQNHeKuNj
— The Independent (@Independent) October 20, 2022
Lettuce wins.
Open Thread
Comments are closed.
geg6
Unfreakingbelievable. Tony Jay must be in hysterics.
hells littlest angel
Her time in the job was 1/586th of a QEII.
Miss Bianca
Man, that was fast.
Jesse
Does this matter. I mean, the UK has been such a shitshow leading up to, and following, the Brexit vote. Given how much they’ve shot themselves in the foot again and again, I can’t get worked up anymore.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
The Tories are pretty great at picking their leaders, eh? Hard to blame the voters for this one…
Leto
Origins of the lettuce meme, an Oct 11 Economist article:
https://mothership.sg/2022/10/liz-truss-lettuce/
The Moar You Know
Boris has already announced that he’s standing for the position. Some arglebargle about “national security”. Thing is, he might be the only person that the Tories can agree on. What a shitshow.
Brachiator
King Charles is miffed that he is going to have to remember the name of another prime minister.
Liz Truss was prime minister for only 44 days. I don’t know whether she will qualify for a prime minister pension.
Leto
@Miss Bianca: 44 days. Shortest PM term in UK history.
Shalimar
@The Moar You Know: Rishi Sunak was the obvious choice last time. The only reason he lost to Truss was racism. Of course, all those racists are still there, so maybe Boris will be the choice again.
Mike in NC
Truss out after a mere 44 days as UK’s PM. By contrast, the Fat Orange Clown planned on being our dictator for 44 years, then let Princess Ivanka take over. We were not worthy!
Roger Moore
So she made it 4 Scaramuccis, or about 4 kilowarhols. IOW, about 4,000 times longer than she deserved.
jonas
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: As Tony Jay has so eloquently described, the Tories have been captured by a cadre of utter nutcases who, like Republicans here, are interested only in trolling and theatrics rather than governing. So here we are.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
I think that Johnson still has to deal with charges that he lied to Parliament about partygate.
But the Tories might be crazy enough to try to reinstate him.
Otherwise there is some chatter about Penny Mordaunt. She is a mean piece of work.
Calouste
Keep in mind the next Tory PM will be worse, because they always are.
So far the candidates that have announced are Braverman, Badenoch, and Johnson, which confirms the above.
twbrandt (formerly tom)
Cranking up my imperial to metric converter, 4.4 scaramuccis = 1 truss.
bbleh
Can they keep the lettuce? Head of Government? It might be rotten, but all the rest of them are too, so …
suzanne
I can now rest assured that, though I have fucked things up in my life, I didn’t fuck up as badly as the British Prime Minister.
LMMFAO CONTEMPT.
rikyrah
44 Days?
Oh well.
WaterGirl
@Leto: Too funny. Not her best week, I guess.
YY_Sima Qian
@Brachiator: Yep, the Tories can certainly do worse than Liz Truss…
MattF
I guess it’s interesting that all-in American RWNJ economics is unacceptable in the UK.
Leto
@WaterGirl: “Somebody is having a case of the Mondays!” – Office Space
dmsilev
I guess this means that the head of lettuce is now PM?
Definitely a step up.
kalakal
Don’t wish to worry anyone but the UK may be taking democracy a bit far
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1582725919680204802?s=20&t=FKsAKkAh4tjAgqJq9jgwAw
dmsilev
Alternatively, does Charles get to say ‘you fucked up too many times in a row. I’m taking over now’?
Splitting Image
It’s funny to think that Tony Jay wrote here about how the theatrics surrounding QEII’s death were allowing Truss’ meanness and incompetence to fly under the radar.
One wonders how quickly she would have flamed out if the British news media had been able to focus on her from the beginning.
The next Tory leader will be the fifth Conservative to serve as PM in the last ten years. The best of them will be a man who fucked a dead pig.
Brachiator
@MattF:
The British got halfway to crazyville with BREXIT. Tory hardliners keep trying to go all the way.
Jinchi
@Shalimar: Was he though? I mean none of these guys are great, but he’s a multi-billionaire who has interesting views on “undeserving” poor people.
cain
@Splitting Image:
Well one day the voters will figure it out – on the other hand, if they are our like our GOP voters – they like this chaos and instability as it owns the libs.
The pain has not yet reached Tory voters. :)
Princess
How many Scaramuccis is that
ETA I see someone got there. Anyway, Brexit on top of inflation and looming recession means any British PM has an impossible job. If Boris had been smart he’d have called an election instead of resigning, and passed this mess to Labour.
Ken
@dmsilev: Wikipedia informs me that the King theoretically has the power to choose the new PM now that Truss has resigned, but that it’s not been used for decades. That same article says there are differences of legal opinion if he can dissolve parliament without consent of the ministers.
sab
@kalakal: They don’t get any sort of revote until 2024, so I don’t think democracy too far is their problem. Also the PM is chosen by a handful of dues paying party members, not the actual voters. Also too not a democracy problem.
ETA Possibly a party problem. G Washington thought parties were toxic, but that was just him. I think they are useful if we are careful.
Brachiator
@Jinchi:
Sunak’s wife is the billionaire. Family money.
Sunak is not a friend of the working man, but he doesn’t appear to be a Tory hardliner. In any case, I don’t know that he is really on the top of the list of potential prime ministers.
Kineslaw
She will go down in history as the PM with the shortest time in power and yet the first PM since Winston Churchill to serve two monarchs.
Anyway
@sab:
The (elected) MPs choose the Prime Minister — not sure who the dues paying party members are?!
sab
@Ken: In current UK the king/queen has enormous powers until they use them, then parliament will vote those powers out. Seems okay to me. Ultra rich royalty running my country isn’t my governmental ideal. Republicans aren’t my ideal either, but in that case most of us voted for the appalling result. That’s democracy.
scav
@MattF:
I’m wondering if it was more the markets reacting in horror at actual enacted all-in American WRNJ economics that doomed Lettucehead rather than any opinion of mere UKish inhabitants. They had things set up so they could coast to the next general election and hope that the horse could talk (and the voting public revert to form) by then. The pound is — at least currently — responding well to the change in puppet PM, but I’m not sure the pantomime chaos bodes well for buffing the Tory reputation. That future horse better speak in smooth Iambic pentameter.
sab
Years ago, but I still think Nick Clegg as a lot to answer for and is also a chump who history books will remember as a chump.
Cameron
Leave the Truss. Take the lettuce.
mozzerb
@Brachiator: Yes, she does, £115K for life. Or in the case of the Trussbot, until she rusts I suppose.
Then again, if the Tories carry on as they have been that’ll be just enough to buy a small cup of coffee.
sab
@Cameron: Stil waiting. My deer hasn’t.
kalakal
@sab: click the link, I’m not referring to the government, it’s a joke, or if you prefer a very misconcieved headline
Jackie
Posted this on the morning thread:
”Even though her short, six-week stint as the UK’s prime minister came crashing down on Thursday, Liz Truss will still get to claim a yearly £115,000 allowance reserved for former prime ministers,” Insider reports.”
Nice allowance for a six week career.
Roger Moore
@Anyway:
The MPs technically choose the PM, but they’re always going to vote for the party leader, and the party leader is chosen by a vote of the party members. In the UK, you have to pay membership dues to be a formal party member, which means that vote is among a relative handful of people willing to pay money for party membership, rather than everyone who sees themselves as a partisan voter.
Princess
I suppose in theory C3 could decide that the Tories are not capable of forming a government and prorogue Parliament for an election. The prime minister is supposed to be the only one who can do that, but if they cannot agree on a prime minister, in theory the king could. But I think they’d need a few more head of lettuce terms before that would be viewed acceptable.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Ken:
“We name Ourselves as the new Prime Minister. For far too long the Crown has deferred Our wishes to the whims of elected rabble.”
sab
@kalakal: Yikes. Did I misunderstand?
ETA All I saw was Brit nukes.
WaterGirl
@twbrandt (formerly tom): Ha!
WaterGirl
@kalakal: WTF?
(I didn’t get to read the article because I wouldn’t accept their cookies.)
Betty Cracker
Would love to read a transcript of the call between Truss and KC3.
Geminid
@Anyway: A party’s MPs elect the Prime Minister, but in the cases of Johnson and Truss party leadership first narrowed down the candidates, and then allowed the ~150,000 dues-paying party members to make the final choice. This process is optional, though.
sab
@Geminid: You are an annoying source of actual facts. Keep on being you.
trollhattan
UK’s decades-long ambition of becoming Italy II achieved. Good job, Tories!
trollhattan
Rules of the road re. another general election.
Matt McIrvin
@MattF: One advantage of a parliamentary system is that without US-style separation of powers, it’s clear which party is actually in control and who did what. A state government or Congress can’t abuse its own constituents and blame the bad results on the President of the other party, which is more the norm than the exception in the US.
The Lodger
A farewell worthy of… Caesar.
Calouste
@Geminid: I don’t think the process is optional. What has happened, when Theresa May became PM, is that one of the final two candidates withdrew, and the vote by the party members became redundant. I can’t see any of the nut jobs putting their name forward this time withdrawing if they made the final two, and I think the 1922 committee sees that as well and is looking for a way to avoid another drawn out leadership contest. Not sure they will succeed in that.
Dorothy A. Winsor
If BoJo is PM again, does he get to collect a salary and a pension? Eventually two pensions?
This would be funnier if these people weren’t so destructive.
Brit in Chicago
@trollhattan: Italy’s turnover of prime ministers results from the fact that they have proportional representation, which means that lots of small parties have members of parliament (equivalents). So there are coalitons which sometimes fall apart. In the UK there are not many parties (more than there used to be, because of the Scottish Nationalists). Usually, and certainly right now, one party can rule by itself —if it can manage to be internally coherent enough, and to choose someone competent. The Tories have badly failed to meet these conditions.
Of the two systems, I’d take the Italian, for all its drawbacks. Proportional representation is far more democratic than the first-past-the-post system. We should have PR in the USA as well.
BC in Illinois
From the morning thread (with additions):
George Takei :
Also, it is noted that the Liz Truss said that best thing to do about Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, is to ignore her.
Yes, she is.
Sturgeon has now been Scotland’s First Minister through four [set to be five] UK Prime Ministers.
The week that Margaret Thatcher resigned (1990), I was at a concert of The Battlefield Band, a traditional-plus-electronic Scottish band. Their joy at her departure was loud and repeated. The Scottish National Party is happy to see Liz Truss go, and is (probably vainly) calling for new elections.
trollhattan
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If that happens we know with certainty the Tories are a death cult. TJ would probably assert that is established fact, but I yield to him on these things.
Know I would prefer to never see or hear him again, for numerous reasons.
West of the Rockies
Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I think we’re seeing the decline of rightwing nonsense. Trump continues to burn like the proverbial dumpster of tires and farts. Putin is looking ever more vile and inhuman, Truss proved to be an enraged wet pomeranian…
Three of the most important world governments have shown the folly of wingnuttiness.
Lushenko may crumble soon, Iranian religious zealotry is under fire, Netanyahu finally faded…
I hope Mohdi soon gets exposed.
WaterGirl
@sab: I think that was meant as a compliment to Geminid, but I am not 100% sure.
Pretty sure that “annoying” was along the lines of annoying because the rest of us aren’t as well versed. :-)
It’s the keep on being you part that is close enough to “you be you” which i mostly translate into fuck you.
kalakal
When she was elected Truss declared that ” They’ve shown the breadth & depth of talent available to the Conservative Party”
I found myself in total agreement then and the following weeks have more than confirmed that opinion.
Today we see the latest eruption of a boil that has been festering in the Tory Party for at least 70 years.
Spurred on by murky ultra right wing S
epticThink Tanks such as the TaxDodgersPayers Alliance a hard core of Libetarian Fanatics got their dream agenda culminating in the last few weeks with the ministry of none of the talents.The resulting debacle with a revolving cast of repulsive characters, outstanding only in their ambition, bereft of all the virtues,l but abundant in their vices has led to the complete collapse of the British Government. The last few weeks, in which a creature like Jeremy Hunt , and believe me there is no problem in recorded history to which the answer is Jeremy Hunt, is seen as a safe pair of hands, in which a Home Secretary who boasted that she dreamt of deporting of deporting helpless asylum seekers to Rwanda was replaced by Grant Shapps ( or whatever his alias is this week) and man who within 48vhours went from condemning a government to be replaced to joining it.
Where Kwasi Kwarteng became the only man in history to be thrown under a bus while driving it over a cliff.
All this will look like a shining example of government at its best compared to what is to come as a bunch of the worst people on earth knife each other in a struggle for power. The Tory party is tearing itself apart, which makes me ecstatic, the collateral damage is already ruinous.
I am so angry
It’s not often I’m in agreement with a Tory MP but Charles Walker nailed it 2 days ago
https://twitter.com/DanJohnsonNews/status/1582808074875973633?s=20&t=7y-KwGmBDy3ZRx94fwuG4g
Amir Khalid
@Geminid:
I remember it differently. A few candidates — five or six, as I recall, or maybe more — put themselves forward. They went through several rounds of voting among Tory MPs, with the bottom candidate eliminated after each round, until only Truss and Rishi Sunak were left. (Sunak, who was BoJo’s last Chancellor, finished with more votes from the party’s MPs than Truss got.) Then it went to the party membership, and Truss won that final round.
sab
I like Meghan M
I like Meghan Markle as much as the next person. I really do. I think she has ben glorious in a realy difficult position.
Meanswhile …w
p
Following British parliamentary politics… I don’t care. You are nuts.
ETA : I could say I don’t care but that would be not true
@Calouste:
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: May be Ds should have that requirement too, not for voters but candidates who want run for President as a Democrat.
Eolirin
@West of the Rockies: Netanyahu is on the verge of becoming PM again.
Tony G
Say what you will about Britain, but at least they have a way of getting rid of idiots (and replacing them with new idiots) quickly.
Tony G
@Eolirin: Maybe the Brits will bring back Boris-Johnson-Two (electric boogaloo).
mdblanche
Live feed from Westminster
Frankensteinbeck
Won’t whoever follows Truss continue the same policies? I’m not sure I see things getting any better for Britain, and to my astonishment center-right Brits have at least a pinkie toe dipped into reality and will turn against leadership after it drops ruination on their heads.
What I’m saying is, this shit show might be only getting started.
p.a.
How does Truss compare to post-war Italian PMs?
wikipedia:
Fernando Tambroni serving around four months is the shortest serving Prime Minister of post-war Italy.
kalakal
@sab:
@WaterGirl:
Hah no worries. It was a really badly headline I found amusing. to wit
“Uk nuclear warhead maintenance staff to vote on strikes”
I’m all in favour of workplace democracy but I’m not sure how I feel about the Transport & General Workers Union becoming the worlds 3rd largest Nuclear Power
Sorry for the confusion
trollhattan
Breaking: the obvious solution.
https://twitter.com/Number10cat/status/1583072541677002752
mrmoshpotato
@Cameron: Haha. Nice.
Tony Jay
A NOTE FROM BREXITANIA
“When a leopard looks into a mirror, the only face it sees…”
This was inevitable. Carved in letters thirty metres high across the granite slopes of Mount Yudonsay by Heaven’s own lightning bolts, destiny’s message was clear and undeniable. From the moment that the Tory Party’s MPs offered their membership a choice between a Brown Man and Absolutely Anything Else On The Periodic Table, and that ‘Anything Else’ happened to be a moronic spite-geyser owned down to her molecular structure by corporate lobbyists, this was always going to happen. The fact that it took 44 days and a series of gaffes, blunders and moments of frankly astonishing WTFuckery sufficient to tank the British economy and make the country (even more of) a laughing stock worldwide is a testament to the venal cowardice of the Tory Party and the bottomless appetite of our crappy News Media for Breaking News ZOMG clickbait, and is one of the many, many reasons we’re now tied with Putin’s Russia and the showrunners of Rings of Power on the Fucked Up and Found Out League table.
So, yeah, Liz Truss has resigned as Prime Minister of the UK.
I’ll give everyone a moment to lift their jaws back off the floor. /s
While it was inevitable in essence, it only became a mechanically extruded end-product when Graham Brady, the ham-faced Chair of the 1922 Committee, was witnessed being escorted quietly through the back of 10 Downing Street for a meeting with Prime Minister (in name only) ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss. Since it’s the 1922 Committee to which Tory MPs unhappy with their leaders address their tearstained letters calling for a change at the top, I think it’s safe to say that Brady was there to deliver the least surprising memorandum of intent since Nurse Buck first walked into Beatrix Kiddo’s hospital room and introduced himself.
Downing Street tried to bullshit that Brady was only there because Truss had asked him to visit, but no one was buying that spiel. Once it was reported that the Tory Party Chairman Jake ‘Just get a better paying job’ Berry and Deputy Prime Minister/Minister for Heath Therese ‘Fags, Booze & Pills’ Coffey were in there too, everybody knew it was all over bar the shouting. It went from “The PM will not be making any more statements today” to “The PM will be making a statement today” in less than half an hour, and it was only that long because Brady and Berry had to take turns holding the furious Coffey at bay with a chair while the other recited banishing spells in Latin and Sanskrit.
Lectern outside. Cameras assemble. The worst Prime Minister since the last one emerges. Statement of self-serving nonsense delivered containing the only bit that matters, namely “I’m now fucking off and the next fucker will be along in a week”.
Bye Liz. Don’t keep in touch.
It was inevitable, but how did we get here?
Yes, Truss and her smooth-talking banker of a Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng had crashed the economy and spooked the markets with their mini-budget of huge, unfunded tax-cuts for the rich and penury for everyone else, but that was pretty much exactly what she’d promised to do if elected Tory Party Leader, and though less than 1/3 of Tory MPs favoured her, the Party membership had given her a mandate to go tonto loco on the grounds that at least she wasn’t a Brown and seemed to hate all of the right people.
The problem Truss soon faced was, having done exactly what she’d said she’d do and seen it instantly blow up in her vapid face, she lost all credibility and authority pretty much overnight. Anyone with an iota of self-respect (down to and including Clive Pringle on one of his darkest days) would have taken the brandy and loaded revolver exit ramp right then and there, but not Liz Truss. Nope. She’s a fighter, you see, as well as dumber than a sack of lobotomised sheep and apparently deluded with it. She thought she could hang on in there as a puppet ruler while the ‘non-fascist’ wing of the Tory Party – represented by the new Chancellor Jeremy ‘Spell that, please’ Hunt wore themselves out clearing up her mess. She is, after all, less a functional human being and more a shifting hologram made up of corporate buzz-words, stale slogans and culture-war shibboleths, she could wait, as long as she was still Prime Minister and still had access to the perks of office, she could outlast the current downturn in her brand actualisation and maximalise opportunities for market growth once the underlying fundamentals had shifted in her favour.
Fat chance, Liz.
Three things yesterday really put bat to ball and sent matters into overdrive.
Last night, while I was busy keeping my better half distracted with Thai food and a pub quiz (the boy has gone away with school for a couple of nights and it’s the first time he’s ever slept away from us, so Lady Jay is in a bit of a mess) bloody chaos swept through the Houses of Parliament as a procedural vote on whether or not to accept a Labour Party motion for opening debate on a fracking ban turned into that scene from the end of Blazing Saddles where cowboys, outlaws, Klansmen, Nazis and musical theatre fans in tuxedos punch fuck out of each other on a Warner Brothers backlot.
Checking it out this morning it was madness. A gruesomely out-of-control tableaux that perfectly illustrates what 12 years of accelerating rightwards drift has done to the Tory Party in particular and British politics in general. Tory MPs had been told that the Government was so firmly opposed to letting the Opposition set the timetable for Parliamentary debate that they were imposing a 3-line whip and would treat the procedural vote as a Confidence vote – meaning any Tory MP who didn’t vote against the Labour motion would lose the Party whip, and if enough of them broke the whip or even abstained the Government itself might fall.
But what a hill to die on. Fracking is madly unpopular amongst Tory MPs, because their constituents care very deeply indeed about keeping their rural enclaves pristine and attractive to wealthy house buyers and would go full-on Midsummer Murders on anyone stupid enough to bring that particular cut of pork back to their constituencies. It would be different if corporations could open their environmentally disastrous earthquake farms in someone else’s back garden, especially if those ‘someone else’s’ happened to be poor or brown or both, then they wouldn’t give it two fucks or a moment of their attention, but despoiling their slice of England’s green and pleasant land is a definite no-no, and all the technical pleading in the world about it purely being a procedural matter that just happened to look like a vote to frack their virgin fields into sloppy mush wouldn’t buy most Tory MPs a moment’s mercy.
But then it was apparently announced that Tory MPs would be allowed to abstain if they wanted to, which led to even more confusion. A lot of them were already absolutely livid that they were being forced to choose between retaining the Party whip and putting their knackers on the chopping block of constituent anger, especially given the utterly woeful polling that was already out there putting the Tory Party 30 points behind the Opposition. And for what? To save the Government from a bit more self-inflicted embarrassment? Now this? Was it a Confidence vote or not?
There was so much confusion and anger going around that we’ve heard stories about MPs being threatened and bullied in the Division chamber, with some being physically manhandled into the ‘right’ rooms by a Press Gang consisting of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Therese Coffey. I’m not sure how much I believe that, since it requires picturing Rees-Mogg as a being capable of interacting with the physical world and I’m pretty sure he’s just a spectral emanation originating from the darkness that exists under every bridge. Coffey, sure, that horrible bitch probably stubs cigarettes out on puppies’ ears for kicks. Rees-Mogg? Pull the other one.
Before all this went down, Truss had to ‘accept the resignation’ of Suella Braverman, her Kulturkampfing Home Secretary and currently the pacesetter for Hard-Right candidates looking to succeed her. Ostensibly the resignation followed Braverman being outed for using her personal e-mail to share an official document regarding immigration policy with another MP, but it’s pretty clear that the unstable coalition of Tory factions who had staged a coup by imposing Jeremy Hunt on Truss as de facto Chief of the Regency Council wanted her out, and Braverman took the opportunity to get the hell out of dodge while shoring up her position as Hard-Right and membership favourite by savaging Truss as, basically, an unserious politician who should – but wouldn’t – resign.
And before this, Truss had ‘enjoyed’ only her second proper Prime Minister’s Question Time, which mostly consisted of her doing her best to ignore all of the questions thrown her way via Sir Keir Starmer by Sir Keir Starmer’s collection of speechwriters. She did stumble into one trap, however. Insisting that her Government would not abandon the pension triple-lock (which means state pension payments rise annually by whatever is higher – inflation, average earnings or 2.5%) in direct contradiction of the persistent hinting from Chancellor Hunt and Co that his planned Austerity 2.0 measures would mean ‘looking at it again’.
What all this meant was that Truss had burnt her bridges with the Tory Party’s backbenchers over the fracking vote, with the Hard-Right faction by letting Braverman be forced out, and with Hunt’s faction of ‘moderate’ (only by direct contrast to the Brextremist/Glibertarian Alliance) Tories by contradicting their policy of cutting all benefits to the bone to pay off the black hole Truss’ mini-budget had left in the nation’s bank account.
She had to go. Friendless, feckless and devoid of any achievements bar senseless destruction and the malicious taunting of political rivals, Truss was left as neither useful nor ornamental.
What now? Oh, that’s a whole different bucket of rancid fish intestines. I’ll get back to you on that when I can stomach writing about the next chapter in our ongoing Rightwing breakdown.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
As I understand it, not even Truss has followed Truss’s policies.
schrodingers_cat
Britain fucked around the rest of the world for what 200 plus years? Now they are in the find out phase.
As someone who was born in the so called Jewel in the Crown ( Translation: Place from which we stole all the jewels for the Crown) my schaden is freuded.
ETA When you see Tory lickspittles of South Asian origin like Sunak and that Braverman woman suddenly it becomes clear how a handful of Brits managed to take over the subcontinent.
Tony G
@Tony G: I thought I was joking about Boris Johnson, but apparently he’s interested in continuing his successful legacy … https://www.londonworld.com/read-this/boris-johnson-is-expected-to-run-in-the-tory-leadership-race-to-replace-liz-truss-as-prime-minister-3887828
Benny Hill — the world’s greatest political analyst.
scav
@kalakal: Alas, I don’t think the habit of searching out pun-adjacent double-meaning headlines is quite as widespread a hobby over here. (although I think the “headless body found in xx” stream hangs on.)
Jinchi
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Apparently they are going to decide the next PM with even less input from the voters. That should go well.
scav
@Jinchi: Well, printing “We didn’t vote for this” placards could be the growth industry they so desperately need.
Shalimar
@Jinchi: Sunak is a Tory, so I’m sure he is terrible. What I remember about the campaign, though, is that he kept saying over and over that the libertarian wet dream economic policy that she crashed and burned with would be a massive disaster. It was a massive disaster. Maybe they should have listened to him.
kalakal
@scav: Shame, I’m an absolute sucker for puns
Anyway
@Roger Moore:
Thanks for the correction. This makes me a normie!!!!!! Take that, Baud!
Brachiator
@mozzerb:
Interesting. Nice deal for doing nothing.
Thanks for the info.
kalakal
@Shalimar: Sunak is an austerity freak, disaster in a different form
Ken
@trollhattan: For hundreds of years, the UK has been removing the monarch’s powers and converting them to a symbol. Maybe the time has come to do the same for the Prime Minister and Parliament? It’s more-or-less an open secret that most of them are just rubber-stamping the wishes of their wealthy backers.
WaterGirl
@kalakal: No apologies!
My favorite grocery store tabloid headline: Half-man half-woman gives birth to child he is father to.
Geminid
@Eolirin: Netayahu hopes he can form a government after Israel’s November 1 election. Polls show his four-party bloc hovering between 58 and 61 projected Knesset members. He needs 61. If he does not get them, Defence Minister Gatz will possibly be able to form a govenment out of the anti-Netayahu bloc.
Gantz’s National Unity Party will come in third or fourth, behind the party led by the current interim PM Yair Lapid. Gantz has good relation with Lapid and the two Ulra-Orthodox parties that have aligned themselves with Netanyahu would likely defect to a government led by Gantz.
The alternative would be Israel’s sixth election since 2019. But first, Netanyahu’s bloc must be held to 60 or fewer MKs.
cain
@kalakal: Why do these people keep doing this? It has been shown, over and over and over and over again that austerity doesn’t work. Why does this thing keep coming up?
cain
@Geminid: another country that has elected conservatives and can’t govern.
Eolirin
@Geminid: I am aware.
trollhattan
@Brachiator: Jeez, more than 100K for a few uncomfortable pressers? I’d do that–heck there’s no dignity left to surrender.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: It seems as if people the world over have the “as above, so below” idea that “the economy” is like a family’s finances and is the same thing as the government’s balance sheet. So in any kind of tough times, you tighten your belt and cut spending and you’ll be in a safer position.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tony Jay:
The important question is: Are the Tories going to fix anything that sent the British economy off a cliff?
Frankensteinbeck
@cain:
Because it makes sense to mean shits, and letting facts change your mind is not the default state of humanity.
MattF
@WaterGirl: My fave was ‘Nicole Look-Alike Tells All’.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
No. For example, they are still committed to BREXIT, which can never deliverer what was promised and which contributes to economic stagnation.
Steve Crickmore
@Shalimar: So lucky that the British have full control of their economy, again. Brexitannia. Brexit is a slow puncture not a car crash, but the mini budget was sign that not only will you have a audible hiss, but you might even have a blow-out.
The Brexit effect: how leaving the EU hit the UK
The UK’s recent disastrous “mini” Budget can trace its origins back to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. The economic costs of Brexit were masked by the Covid-19 pandemic and the crisis in Ukraine. But six years after the UK voted to leave, the effect has become clear. See video on youtube Financial Times/The Brexit Effect.
Princess
@Frankensteinbeck: Not Tony Jay but: they’re not rejoining Europe so, no.
WaterGirl
@MattF: That might resonate more if I knew who Nicole was. :-)
mrmoshpotato
@Frankensteinbeck:
Right after the Rethuglicans over here all vote to repeal the 2017 GOP tax scam, so…No.
spc123
@Splitting Image: I’m not sure I’d rank him above Theresa May – terrible as she was.
CaseyL
It seems to be a given that whoever takes over from Truss will still enact an austerity budget, and the UK economy will continue to stagnate, because they can’t undo Brexit even if they wanted to, which the Tories don’t. (I’m pretty sure the EU doesn’t want Britain back, anyway.)
There’s been some talk about rejoining the European single market, which would help, but I doubt the Tories would go for that, either.
Just One More Canuck
@Brachiator: A friend of mine who works for one of the provincial agencies here in Ontario has had so many bosses that he doesn’t bother learning their names until they’ve been on the job for at least a year
Bill Arnold
@Geminid:
What hot-button scandals are in play in the election timeframe, or potentially in play?
LeftCoastYankee
I used to think MP Baldrick and his turnip was satire.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ken: To be fair, the UK being run by oligarchs is a return to form.
Tony Jay
@Frankensteinbeck:
Absolutely not.
They’ll row back from Hyper-Libertarian craziness, but that damage has been done and they’ll use it as an excuse for Austerity 2.0 – cutting every public service and benefit to the bone to force everyone into low-paid, insecure and unregulated work environments.
Then they sell off everything to private corporations all call it ‘modernisation’.
Then NuNew Labour get in power in 2025 and ever so sadly tell the people who elected them they simply can’t afford to change the status quo or nationalise anything, and complaining about it is just the same as supporting the Tories.
Have I ever mentioned that we’re comprehensively fucked?
MattF
@WaterGirl: O J’s ex-wife.
divF
@Tony Jay: Thanks for the lucid (and splendidly splenetic!) description of Liz’s downfall.
@WaterGirl: My favorite from years past: “Pope to declare Elvis a saint!”
Geminid
@cain: The current interim government spans the spectrum from the Arab Ra’am party and liberal Meretz through the centrist parties of Labor, Lapid, and Gantz and on to three more conservative parties. Their unifying principle is that they despise Netanyahu. It includes former Netanyahu allies who now hate his guts.
If Netanyahu cannot win a parliamentary majority, Gantz could be able to form a coalition of those parties plus the two “Haredi,” or ultra-Orthodox parties. It would be somewhat unwieldy, but probably more durable than the last one.
Gantz’s potential coalition building is simplified by one of the conservative parties, Gideon Saar’s New Hope, joining his National Unity Party. Another party, former PM Bennett’s Yamina, has collapsed, and Bennett is not running in the election. A Yamina remnant led by Ms. Shakelet hopes to enter a Netanyahu coalition, but right now is polling below the 3.25% threshold and might win no seats.
Geminid
@Eolirin: I wasn’t sure you knew but even though you do, most Americans don’t pay much attention to Israel’s complex politics and it doesn’t hurt to lay them out here.
Kropacetic
Wasn’t that the problem?
Geminid
@Bill Arnold: There don’t seem to be any prominent issues in this election beyond Netanyahu: for or against. His detractors see Netanyahu’s close alliance with the toxic, racist Religious Zionist party as especially dangerous, and it is.
Splitting Image
@LeftCoastYankee:
I used to think a lot of things were satire. Bloom County, for example. The only thing Berke Breathed got wrong back in the day was having Bill the Cat sell secrets to the Russians before getting Donald Trump’s brain. Otherwise, spot on.
Yutsano
Two vegetables entered. One vegetable left. Would it be wrong of me to say Truss looks like a carrot 🥕?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
At the rate the Tories are going it might come down to that.
There go two miscreants
Fellow-aficianados of tabloid headlines may appreciate an old Donald E. Westlake novel, Trust Me On This. It is a bit dated (many of the plot points would be nuked by the use of cell phones) but still amusing. I suspect that the process of story and headline creation contained therein is all too accurate.
Mike in NC
Bibi Netanyahu is long overdue for his dirt nap.
JoyceH
PM selection is already so undemocratic that I propose a new system – gather all the candidates at Number Ten Downing and let Larry choose.
prostratedragon
“Brief and Breezy,” Henry Mancini, from Peter Gunn
sdhays
@CaseyL: The EU might be willing to take the UK back if it really seemed to have learned its lesson (broad national consensus that Brexit was a stupid, stupid idea that should never be discussed again and the champions of Brexit far away from wielding any power or influence over any government for the foreseeable future), but I think we’re quite aways away from that.
sdhays
@Geminid: It’s pretty sick that nearly 50% of the Israeli electorate seems to think that Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t been PM for long enough. Even if you support his (atrocious) policies, he’s been in office a very long time, and it’s just not healthy. Don’t they have someone else?
Geminid
@Mike in NC: Netanyahu certainly is long overdue for a criminal conviction in his corruption cases. But the slow trial pace would make a tortoise blush. The trial started April of 2020 and is not close to being finished.
The trial will resume after the election, but it will take weeks if not months to finish and appeals could go on into 2024.
That is, if a Netanyahu-led government doesn’t scupper the charges. That why Netanyahu is so desperate to win power again.
Geoduck
Old joke: A lunatic escapes from the asylum long enough to find a prostitute and have sex. Headline the next day: NUT BOLTS AND SCREWS.
Another thing that Bloom County got right was showing very early on what a bad idea it was for Charles and Diana to get married.
prostratedragon
@twbrandt (formerly tom): The ten-day period, which often occurs, has long needed a nice name, like week or fortnight. I think we have a winner.
Timill
@JoyceH: That would be OK provided Larry is willing to do a Cheney…
WaterGirl
@MattF: Ah, good one, if I had seen that 20 years ago it wolud have been more obvious!
WaterGirl
@divF: That was good for a laugh out loud.
Frank Wilhoit
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Stanley Baldwin held the premiership three times non-consecutively (1923-24, 1924-29, 1935-37). There was a poisonous pattern in the inter-war period of Conservative Governments with a Liberal (Lloyd George, 1916-22) or Labour (Ramsay MacDonald, 1931-35) figurehead Prime Minister.
Just One More Canuck
@JoyceH: Larry for PM
Geminid
@sdhays: Netanyahu has a firm grip on the Likud party, which at 30-33 seats will be the largest in the 120 member Knesset. The toxic Religious Zionist party (I may not have their name right) is projected to win 14-15 MKs, and they support Netanyahu because no one else wants anything to do with them.
There are two Ultra-Orthodox parties that like Netanyahu; the Shas party does what the Sephardic rabbis say, and the United Torah party does what the Ashkenazi rabbis say. They are expected to win around 14 seats between them, and might defect to a Gantz coalition if Netanayahu’s bloc can’t win a majority.
One complication for the anti-Netanyahu bloc is that the Arab Joint list, projected to win 4-6 seats, will not join a government even if invited, which they would not be anyway. Another Arab party, Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am, is part of the current government and would join one led by Gantz.
Israel’s electoral politics are very complicated and confusing. I follow them mainly through the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post. These outlets have their biases but are pretty straight up in election matters. Haaretz is better but it’s paywalled.
Eolirin
@Geminid: Sure. And you’re doing a good job on the details, so definitely thumbs up from me on that.
...now I try to be amused
@Betty Cracker: This prog rock geek read “KC3” and thought of the third lineup of King Crimson, the one that made Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black, and Red.
Martin
@trollhattan: I wonder if the Tories have enough MPs to give each of them a turn as PM before the next election?
The Pale Scot
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, watching the maneuvering to become PM gave me the giggles as all the notables proposed solving the problems they are responsible for during their 12 year reign by doubling down on the policies that got them there.
Ken
One scene I remember from that: As someone is walking through the offices of the tabloid, they overhear the reporters doing phone interviews. All the lines are back-engineered from tabloid headlines, such as “As a top scientist, you’re saying you’re shocked at reports the Jersey Devil exists?”
El Muneco
Could have done worse. Akechi Mitsuhide assassinated reigning strongman Oda Nobunaga, counting on Nobunaga’s chief subordinates to struggle in the resulting chaos while he himself consolidated power in the capitol. In an almost unprecedented act given how Japanese warlords behaved at the time, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu worked together rather than infighting – and stamped Mitsuhide down 13 days after he had taken power.
There might also be some lesson in this for various Dem factions…
Ken
@Martin: I have seen jokes (?) that that’s the plan, to get the PM pension for as many of them as possible before an election must be held.
Origuy
Eleanor Morton’s character Craig the Tour Guide has a group in Westminster this morning.
Sister Golden Bear
In the future, every Brit will be PM for 15 minutes.
...now I try to be amused
@Sister Golden Bear: Indeed, the UK has gotten to the point where random selection will give them a better PM than the current system.
sab
@WaterGirl: Totally a compliment.
sab
This is UK, an island off the coast of Europe that speaks English. Why do we care about their government?
Ruckus
@Jesse:
They’ve already shot off both feet and are going for the genitals now.
sxjames
@MattF:
I go with the classics: (In reference to Love Canal chemical disaster and Hooker chemical company)
“Judge orders Hooker to clean Love Canal”
Msb
@ Tony Jay
great rant, and quite accurate at the same time.
I should have put monetary on the lettuce, but wasn’t cynical enough.
leeleeFL
@Splitting Image: Who was that? Seems beneath Cameron, and BoJo couldn’t be the worst, surely?
sab
@sab: My ancestors were from there, but a very long time ago.
The Pale Scot
Jonathan Pie: Welcome to Britain. Everything is Terrible
A Statement of Intent
Shalimar
@leeleeFL: The pig fucker was Cameron, for his Oxford dining club.
The Pale Scot
That would require a TARDIS to go back to 1946 when the UK decided use their share of the Marshall Plan to maintain its military and hold on to their colonies instead of using for infrastructure and education like the Eurupes did. And also prevent the Suez interdiction in ’56, the financial meltdown in the 70’s. Thatcher pumping the N Sea oil as fast as possible to support the Pound. And finally Brexit, which has the UK losing ground to its neighbors at an incredible rate.
The Doctor or King Arthur should be here any day now
SteverinoCT
@Geoduck: Another version: Man in asylum rapes a cleaning woman and escapes. Headline: NUT SCREWS WASHER AND BOLTS
The Pale Scot
@sab:
It takes my mind off politics. Really ramped up after 2016
Tony Jay
@Shalimar:
And every month afterwards. Secretly. Wherever he could source a decent butcher who wouldn’t ask questions.
When a man finds his true passion, etc.
WaterGirl
@SteverinoCT: I have to say that I don’t find a play on words about rape of a woman funny.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
She didn’t do nothing.
She’s destroyed an economy. And likely not done her party any good whatsoever.
I never said what she did was in any way positive, we all know better than that.
Ruckus
@cain:
Two points.
They keep doing what they promised because they are very, very sure that if they keep doing the same thing, sooner or later it will work.
Austerity for all of us can be money for them. They have no idea why or how but still it might be possible. Anything is possible if you snort enough of certain things. You might even be able to fly. A short, a very, very short distance.