Political Observer comments.
Sep 29, 2024
FT
Headline: Sunak warns Tories they risk marginalization if divisions persist
Sub-headline: Former prime minister urges Conservatives to unite behind who succeeds him as party leader
https://www.ft.com/content/ee928d9c-983e-437e-ba7d-d43c55838b87
Some quotations from the article:
“When we turn in on ourselves, we lose,” Sunak told activists in a low-key address on the first day of the party’s annual conference in Birmingham. “We must end the division and the backbiting and squabbling,” he added.
“Whoever wins the contest, give them your backing.”
“We must always remember what unites us, rather than obsessing about where we might differ,”
Sunak attacked Starmer’s “cruel” decision to withdraw winter fuel payments from most pensioners and lampooned the prime minister’s acceptance of free clothes and glasses from the Labour peer Lord Alli.
The Tory leader said: “Socialists always run out of other people’s money, something Lord Alli is finding out the hard way,” he said. Sunak added: “You don’t need designer glasses to see the shine is coming off Keir Starmer already.”
In a reminder of one of the worst scandals that beset the final weeks of Sunak’s premiership, Sky News reported on Sunday that his key lieutenant Oliver Dowden, former deputy prime minister, has been interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election.
An investigation was launched in June when Craig Williams, Sunak’s closest parliamentary aide, and another Tory candidate were placed under investigation for allegedly placing bets on the date of the election, prompting the Conservative party to eventually withdrew support from them just days before the poll.
A Labour candidate was also suspended over placing bets on whether he would lose his seat.
Dowden spoke to police officers involved in the Gambling Commission probe earlier this summer to help their inquiries as part of their investigation into other figures, it was reported.
An ally of Dowden said he was never and is not under any sort of investigation by the Gambling Commission.
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Editor: The Reader need only look at the scandals of the Tory Party as evidence of a double standard, or that both New Labour and the Tories are equally corrupt and even malfeasant!
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The Guardian:
Headline: Moderation out and madness to the fore in the Tories’ Birmingham echo chamber
Sub-headline: With the leadership contenders vying to out-crazy each other, it was Boris – well it would be, wouldn’t it – who outdid them all
Editor: John Crace’s virtue is that he writes as a satirist, in sum his cut and trust are part of his tellingly alive satire, that points to the bad, and or miserable playacting, of those who wield power. The opening shot off the bough:
See it from the point of view of the Fearless Four. You’ve already seen off the mighty challenge of Priti Patel and Mel Stride, latter-day Tory titans both, so now you’re through to the Birmingham eliminator.
You’ve disappeared through the wormhole into the mephitic swamp where any intelligent life comes to die. Where only the clinically deranged and terminally deluded are to be found. Where the sanest voice is Michael Fabricant’s rug pleading with its owner to be allowed to go home. Welcome to the Tory party conference.
But this is your big moment. Four days when the Tory party has nothing better to do than to turn its gaze in on itself. Four days when you can take centre stage. When your narcissism can go unchecked. You’ve been dreaming about this for weeks. People actually pretending to be interested in what you have to say.
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It’s been said by Boris Johnson in the serialisation of his almost entirely fictional memoir. The one that is written so badly it could have been done by ChatGPT. As ever, Boris has done the least amount of work possible and still he outshines those he has left behind. When it comes to attention-seeking sociopathy, he has no equal.
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Which has left the Fearless Four in something of a quandary. They are boxed in. Nowhere to go. Their madness will only look half-arsed. Too tame for Tories given new hope by the thought of starting a third world war fuelled by Covid dreams.
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But whether the Tories like it or not, Honest Bob is the clear favourite to win the leadership contest. And he was the first out of the blocks on the Sunday morning media round.
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At least the Tories have Kemi Badenoch. Having implied that immigrants should be banned from entry to the UK for not liking Israel, KemiKazi went for broke by insisting that all women who had babies were basically spongers. Only getting pregnant to hoover up maternity pay.
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The best news for the Fearless Four is that all this took place inside an echo chamber. Compared with previous years, the conference is a ghost town. The security is to keep people inside the compound, not to stop the unwanted coming in.
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It was hardly a truth and reconciliation committee. More a coming together of the weak and the fallen, trying to console themselves that the public still loved them really. It’s not you, it’s me. The Tories haven’t quite grasped that no one gives a toss what Penny Mordaunt and Daniel Hannan have to say any more. If they ever did.
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It seems the Conservatives have a way to go before the collective synapses interact. The biggest queue of the day was for Rishi Sunak. Here for one day, only to show slides of his summer hols in California. Says it all, really.
I hope that my selections from Mr. Crace’s essay, and my reductivist vignettes, have or will lead the reader to explore his singular talent!
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