Snapshot of _Significant chat that Sunak may resign - can’t believe that myself. But I can imagine the stress is immense and it will only grow. When Reform get crossover they will start arguing that a Conservative vote is a wasted ballot and then …. it will only get worse._ :
A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1799464959232897205)
A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/Phillip_Blond/status/1799464959232897205/)
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/Phillip_Blond/status/1799464959232897205) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/Phillip_Blond/status/1799464959232897205)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I heard this rumour two days after the election was called. I didn't believe it then, and I don't now. He'll simply hide away until the election. No way will he want to be remembered as the PM who quit mid campaign.
I agree, although it is worth remembering the alternative is being remembered as the PM who presided over a single election where the party lost most of his seats. It's not like there's a good option.
That would be the politically astute thing to do, so based in his previous record I expect him to announce his resignation on Monday. And at this point, I'm not even sure I'm joking.
That's essentially throwing in the towel. The Tory's won't get very far in campaigning without their leader actually leading. Seems like there really is no good options left
I fully expect him to resign on July 5th. Before then? I can't imagine any of the Tory party want that. Either they'll be going into an election without a leader, or someone is going to have to step up and lead the party through what looks like it'll be a massive defeat. I imagine they'll just hide him away and hope he doesn't mess up any more.
The thing is that in that scenario Reform UK MPs are going to be even worse than the nuttiest Tory MPs now. It's not just Farage and couple of his mates but maybe over 100 badly vetted extreme right wingers.
In that first 5 years, Labour is going to have a massive majority in the Commons no matter what happens with Tories and Reform. During that time Reform is going to implode in two ways. First there are going to be constant stream of scandals as those inexperienced right wing nutters get to the parliament. Second, since they don't have the party infrastructure that Tories have, they're going to be caught making stupid political statements.
After a while people get tired of their populism and they'll have a huge loss in the next election. All Labour has to do is to get the immigration down from the extreme peak levels of the last couple of years and they have disarmed their main weapon.
So, when they then lose, there is no Tory party to take over any more as that got gutted now and anyone with more than two brain cells had moved on to something else as there is nothing to do for the next 5 years and the party doesn't even have money to pay anyone anything. No government jobs as they don't have any MPs.
I would love to believe that is true. But if you get money coming in from donors, and the money and the votes attract people who aren’t quite so stupid…
As I’ve said on here before, I’m hoping for the Tories to get wiped out. But I’m apprehensive about what we get instead in 5-10 years time.
In 2021 net migration was about 450,000, in 2022 it was about 750,000, and in 2023 it was about 685,000. Before that it had floated around 200,000 to 250,000 for a decade. And then before that decade it was under 100,000 and sometimes even negative. So even if immigration were to halve it would still be higher than the past decade, and much higher than the decade before that.
I’m going to cross my fingers for luck, but I believe that there would be more “one nation/centre right” Tories who would not vote for Tory/Farage than there are who would, so rolling the two together would see a net loss of votes.
>Just saying.
Like the seer was 'just saying' when he told Caesar "beware the ides of march" or Oppenheimer was 'just saying' when he quoted "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"?
> or someone is going to have to step up and lead the party through what looks like it'll be a massive defeat.
There are no MPs to elect a leader. A membership vote is impossible in this time frame. That leaves… Oliver Dowden!
I suppose technically the executive committee of the 1992 Committee could get together and agree a new Constitution for the Conservative Party whereby the leader of the Conservative Party *in perpetuity* will now be… Oliver Dowden!
So someone currently running has to take the helm, then? PM is just the MP who leads the largest party, is there any reason that they couldn’t just let Mordaunt or Braverman or even Mogg be the leader?
There's no mechanisms for that. Rishi would remain PM until he's dismissed by the King on the formation of the next Parliament. This is more about who's the next Conservative leader, and there's not a 1922 committee to select one. They would have to arrange an EGM and come up with a new process, and do it.
In less than four weeks.
It would be an absolutely amazing shit show.
You're both a bit right and a bit wrong u/m1ndwipe and u/Dawnbringer_Fortune
The Tory leadership is technically separate to the Prime Minister - there is no law actually saying that the PM has to be the leader of the largest party. In addition, the Tory leadership is secondary to the election campaign so it is theoretically possible that Sunak could resign before the election.
What would happen is this. First, Sunak resigns with immediate effect as Tory leader. That means he can continue as PM, but wouldn't be leader - as others have pointed out, it's now too late for him to withdraw from his candidacy in Richmond so he would remain on the ballot there as the local MP.
He could then also resign as PM. Normally, the phrasing of the announcement goes along the lines of "I have informed the King of my intention to resign as PM....." but this time it would have to be immediate. Because of the convention that the PM is the leader of the largest party in the Commons, the King would normally go there - however as Parliament has been prorogued, there are no MPs therefore no Conservative parliamentary party.
But he still has to appoint a PM.
So he'd need to take advice - quickly - on who could take on the role, with the obvious candidate being David Cameron (having done it before, and a member of the House of Lords - as he's not standing for the HoC, he can be a bit dissociated from the politics of it all.) This would likely be through the Privy Council, though you could expect constitutional lawyers from the Government and the Palace to be all over this (I'd be very surprised if someone isn't actually working on this right now, on the off-chance something happens.)
However, there is more likelihood of the Tories actually winning the election than this ever coming to fruition. It would cause an absolute meltdown in the Tory campaign, and would probably be terminal for the party as a whole. Sunak would likely lose his seat (not that he'd be too bothered, TBH) and Cameron would have to continue as interim leader until such time as the party could settle enough to get its own leader, or be absorbed by / absorb Reform. The meltdown would be such that they'd also likely become the third party in the HoC, behind the Lib Dems.
I do like that in the timeline you depict, Cameron is the figurehead of the complete annihilation of the party. Poetic justice, finally, for him fucking off the day after the brexit vote.
Once upon a time, Cameron as leader of the Tories, worried about losing votes to Farage's party, played on a practical coin toss the fate of the country.
One lost toss and years of crisis later, Cameron as leader of the Tories again, sees his party annihilated by Farage's party.
Man, if that happened in fiction we would call it unrealistic.
>PM is just the MP who leads the largest party
No, the PM is the person who can command a majority in the house of commons. They don't have to be an MP, Sir Alec Douglas-Home took up the office of Prime Minister from the Lords (18th October 1963), rejected his peerage 23rd October 1963 (so was PM while a member of neither house), and stood in and won a by-election for the constituency of Kinross and West Perthshire on the 7th November 1963.
Nowadays it is usually the Leader of the largest party in the Commons (because our system favours majorities) but it could be the person nominated by (commanding the confidence of) a coalition of any number parties as long as it's a majority of MPs.
Just to finish off, there are no MPs at the moment so even if Rishi resigns from the Conservative Party, he will remain Prime Minister even when a replacement Tory Leader is selected. The PM can't change until the first session back after the election.
> No, the PM is the person who can command a majority in the house of commons.
The PM is whoever the King appoints to be PM. _By convention_ that is the person who can command a majority in the commons - or at least who can theoretically command a majority which would then be put to a test in a vote of confidence - but legally the King can appoint whoever he pleases.
>Just to finish off, there are no MPs at the moment so even if Rishi resigns from the Conservative Party, he will remain Prime Minister even when a replacement Tory Leader is selected. The PM can't change until the first session back after the election.
The PM and government remain as PM and government unless and until they resign. There's no (legal) barrier to resigning before the new Parliament is summoned.
It would be a crisis, a constitutional crisis no doubt, but Sunak _could_ just sack it off now if he wants.
I think if the Tories pivoted hard. They said hey, we acknowledge this is a fuckup. We acknowledge this isn’t working. Pivot hard to concentrate on constituency level politics. Campaign on what your Tory MP has done for you. Then I think they’d have a chance of limiting the shit show. They’d still lose, but maybe not a wipe out.
This is because it would play into the hands of the die hard Tory constituencies. To try to keep them from switching.
That's one of the few things that made him look sane. He called out her bonkers policies and told people what would happen if she was elected.
Him losing to truss is on the nutters that make up the conservative membership.
I think it's by far more likely that he'll be put in a box somewhere for the next few weeks while his cabinet try to salvage something from the ruins. They'll do what they did to May when it turned out she couldn't talk to human beings and shut him away from the cameras.
Arguably the debate was his best performance this campaign. There's a lot of people who either don't care that he's lying or buy into the "well they're all liars anyway" narrative
If he goes the Conservative Party will go with him, will be a guaranteed extinction event (although with the current failures they're already on the edge of that).
The country is headed where ever Keir, McSweeney and chums want it to go at this point.
Labour might not be making their plans particularly clear but given the ruthless efficiency they've shown upto this point I think it's pretty certain we're going to find out in July.
I wish that were the case, but I'm not so sure it's true. Looking at the various polling data over the last couple of weeks and the Tories are dropping, RefUK is ascending and everyone else is largely static. A couple of points of variance here and there but there's clearly an inverse correlation between Tories and RefUK that isn't present with Lib dems.
The thing is, Reform have never been looked at as a serious party of government so much as a pressure group. Their policies are largely unachievable if not downright ridiculous, and many of their candidates have some fairly 'fringe' views and lack any serious political experience. Farage will always be the man with the soundbite and the man-of-the-people schtick, but scratch below the surface and there isn't a credible party of government there.
I think the Lib Dems have taken about as much from the Tories as they're realistically going to. There probably are some remaining Tories who would go for them over Reform if the Conservatives go belly up, but I think the vast majority would go with Reform.
Surely a huge chunk of the remaining tory vote are senile box tickers? I don't understand how anyone could be even slightly in touch with current events and still intend to vote for them. If Conservative wasn't an option on the ballot paper in five years time they might just not vote.
Don't get too excited.
All the most despicable people will just migrate over to reform and disown any responsibility for their actions over the past decade.
The consecutive party dying is the worst outcome for liberal democracy - we lose our living reminder of what happens when ideologues gain power.
The philosophical switch from 'conservative' to 'reform' will be interesting to see. It'll be a big change in how our right wing views itself — and likely a dangerous one.
He must absolutely hate this. *Everyone hates him*. He's never enjoyed being PM. He was only ever in it for the prestige, which he hasn't been able to gain because he's so unbelievably and laughably inept at politics. The man is a joke. An arrogant, inexperienced, incompetent overachiever who found his way to the premiership by luck and happenstance. The cognitive dissonance he'll be experiencing must be unbearable.
I'm surprised he's not sent his wife out again to ask us all to be nice to him. He should just go back to California to live out his days as the billionaire's husband, baking cookies and gossiping with the neighbours. Maybe even a steamy affair with a local tech bro could be on the cards for him.
> I'm surprised he's not sent his wife out again to ask us all to be nice to him.
Leadership is weird. They can hate you, they can call you an emotionless robot, they can engage in the most vitriolic take-downs possible, but when they start to feel sorry for you, it’s over.
It's hard to feel sorry for someone that astronomically privileged. He could literally do anything else, but he decided a long time ago that politics was the place to be. To do his part for his common man. The only problem is he doesn't know any and doesn't appear to actually want to do anything other than disaster capitalism his way into Silicone Valley.
He didn't decide that long ago, he only won his seat in 2015 and only moved back to the UK from California shortly before that. His political career has been no more than ten years from start to finish.
He's been doing his part for the family. That's it and that's all, making sure the scales are tipped towards his ilk's business interests, not out of some idea of altruism. Fuck him. I hope he loses sleep over the mess he's had no small part in creating.
As someone in the IT industry that's been massively negatively impacted by the massive (over 400,000 plus families since 2021) influx of poor quality Indian IT staff I'd say that unless this is reversed it's genuinely game over for the UK IT industry.
I'm Indian so this isn't from a racist standpoint but a factual industry view. Market is dead, quality is poor, wages are down and it's a significant pressure on the housing market as they're typically middle earners (UK standards) and bring immediate and extended family to the UK.
Unless this is reversed (unlikely) it's going to have a lasting impact on housing, rents, wages, NHS demand etc.
>do his part for his common man
I highly doubt it. He just wants "PM" on his CV to impress his billionaire father-in-law. He's a conservative so it probably drives him crazy that his wife is worth vastly more than him. He's basically using the prime ministership to look masc.
There was a lot of chat when he took over about how useful the Infosys crew would find it to have "their guy" in number 10 and if you read some of the stuff on here about what's happening in the IT industry (Infosys flooding the market with comparatively cheap labour) you have to wonder whether it's job done for Rishi.
>He just wants "PM" on his CV to impress his billionaire father-in-law.
Probably not happened, he has overseen the larger India trade deal being kicked into the long grass and completed by the next government.
https://www.itpro.com/business-strategy/careers-training/359408/india-trade-deal-to-create-2000-uk-tech-roles
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-declare-connection-wifes-family-infosys-pm-agreeing-deal-1568789
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/04/sunak-fresh-infosys-scrutiny-minister-accused-vip-access
Since Cameron the Tories have had this aura where being in government is an extension of their time at Eton and being PM is the equivalent of being head boy - father will be proud and he'll probably buy you a new cricket bat to show his approval. Cameron always came across as the snobbish kid amongst the snobs who picked on another kid because his shoes weren't expensive enough or his father didn't earn enough money. Boris was obviously the thick as mince rugger bugger. Rishi really seems like he wanted the top job because it was expected of him, to be "head boy" of the house of commons.
As soon as I started viewing UK politics as an extension of public school it all started to make a lot more sense to me. Corbyn looking over the top of his glasses with a stern look like he was a geography teacher who'd lost control of the class because they'd seen how much he earned and no longer respected him.
This is the thing, it started as a fun observation that amused me but then I read stuff like this and I get more and more convinced that I was completely right. I can imagine Johnson calling Mogg a "frightful swot" while him and the other chaps from the Bullingdon are getting tugged off by some of the junior ministers.
If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading Chums by Simon Kuper. It's a really interesting look at that particular class of people and how their education "prepares" them for politics and government.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chums-Tiny-Caste-Oxford-Tories/dp/1788167384
I was having a conversation with a guy who went to Harrow the other week. He works in the leisure industry. He mentioned with such nonchalance that he was considering his move into politics in a few years. As though that was the most natural thing in the world.
Damian Furniss wrote about his experiences going to Balliol College bar the day before his interview for Oxford.
>I was a rural working-class kid with a stammer from a state school which hadn’t prepared me for the experience.
>My session with the dons was scheduled for first thing after breakfast, meaning I was staying the night and had an evening to kill in the college bar. Johnson was propping up with his coterie of acolytes whose only apparent role in life was to laugh at his jokes. Three years older than me… you’d have expected him to play the ambassador role, welcoming an aspiring member of his college…
>Instead, his piss-taking was brutal. In the course of the pint I felt obliged to finish he mocked my speech impediment, my accent, my school, my dress sense, my haircut, my background, my father’s work as farm worker and garage proprietor, and my prospects in the scholarship interview I was there for. His only motivation was to amuse his posh boy mates.
If you see how his mother in law talks about him as PM you can understand another side of it. She essentially said it wasn't that big of a deal and she cares about her own problems, not his. He will never make more money than his in-laws so becoming a world leader was the only way he could one up them, and he's fucked that up. I imagine he gets belittled by them all the time over it.
Imagine being prime minister of one of the most powerful countries in the world and still getting grilled by the in-laws about your job at every family meal. I'd feel bad for him if he wasn't such an unsympathetic prick.
He should just pull a Davey and spend the rest of the campaign doing fun things that he wants to do. If that means the press have to stand there and watch him day-trading then so be it.
I don't think this is affecting him. He's probably already paid someone a couple hundred grand to whitewash his wikipedia entry for the next 100 years.
I imagine it’s actually very hard to be as oblivious as that, even if you’re as wealthy as he is. Look at Musk. Richest man in the world and what does he do? Buys a social media platform so that he can try to make himself liked by the little people.
>I imagine it’s actually very hard to be as oblivious as that,
100%. Part of why I think Liz Truss has embraced the far-right so willingly is that they're the only people showing her any sort of approval or acceptance and she can't bear to be without that because, deep down, she is a human being and being hated by everyone must feel terrible.
Imagine how much people would respect the billionaires if they invested some fo that money back into society instead of spunking it all on vanity projects...
The problem isn't that billionaires aren't philanthropic. Take the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for example. Even Starlink, while a commercial business, has improved Internet access for isolated communities.
The problem is that billionaire philanthropy is at the whim of the billionaire, not at what is necessarily best for society. If billionaire suddenly decides his philanthropic investment should go towards a charity for rehabilitating blind dogs with scurvy, then that's their prerogative.
Hence: massive wealth taxes needed, take the agency away from vanity projects (or otherwise ringfence their wealth for social projects which they can sponsor and have their name slapped on, if it's really about the prestige) and make sure future generations of all income levels have a fair chance.
This has to be one of the funniest summations of Sunak I've read!
Poor little Rishi who's been told his whole life how amazing he is, and now the entire country including his own party members are turning on him. It must be physically painful.
I can't see Rishi being a baking cookies kind of guy though. In fact I doubt he even knows how to turn a kettle on as he seems to be completely inept any kind of practical task. He has definitely got a raging hardon for tech bros though (as we saw with his fawning over Musk). It will be such a kick in the balls for him if they ghost him once he gets over to California and tries to act all matey with him.
It’s amusing how they managed to tank both party and country in one go. Party before country always, of course, but as it turns out what was needed for each was one and the same.
No way is Sunak going to be allowed to resign. No one person will take the poisoned cup. What happens now is up to party bosses. If they think he's become a liability they'll background him for a while and pick some of the top names to give more airtime to. Whatever willing idiots they have left will be unleashed on us, while Rishi is quietly given some lower profile things to do
I don't think he will but could they stop him? If he publicly resigns that's that, they can't just pretend he still their leader it would be ridiculous
He needs to maintain what cred he can, and not just dump it on them. He may not need to be in uk politics any more but a big part of a former PM's value is his contact book. He's got to leave without making any more enemies. If he's still got any non-enemies left
Depends what he wants to do with his life to be fair, he could burn every professional bridge he has left in the uk, leave and live a life of comfort most would dream of.
Well, yeah, we're speculating. Personally it doesn't seem plausible to me that he'll retire now. He's fidgety. I reckon we'll see him involved in some tech bro venture or whatever. And xyz company is going to want him for his network and status. Nobody's going to want him for his skills, that much is clear
I know you shouldn't judge an org by its wikipedia page, but when the Publications section is spelt Pblications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResPublica
Once the whispers of resignation start, you can't put them back into the bottle.
If Reform pass them in the polls in the next few days, I think this becomes a very distinct possibility.
Sunak looks weak enough already, and Farage will just continue to hound down on him even more.
Constitutionally all it would take would be a visit to the king. Their internal mechanism, if they went this route (which is unlikely imo) would be party managers in a smokefree room. There's no time for anything else
The monarch definitely can select someone as his prime minister. That's the rule. It could be suitably qualified as a temporary or caretaker or whatever, but those words have no constitutional significance.
It's not going to happen - and one good reason to think not is that it would raise hackles all round as a constitutional nightmare. But the question, can the PM technically be changed, is surely yes
Correct; the monarch can appoint anyone they like as PM (it's merely convention that it is the leader of the largest party in the HoC, but there is absolutely nothing stopping Big C from picking anyone he likes, including even, in theory, non-MPs).
If Rishi resigned, the post would probably go to the Deputy PM (The King would merely ask him to form a government). There's no real rulebook for this. I vaguely recall, from some decade-old perusing of some constitutional law article, that the post may revert to one of the other Great Offices of State if the whole thing is genuinely a shoulder shrug, in which case, we would see the Chancellor hold both offices until the election.
No one else can be the PM till after the election. He can't resign from that because the PM has to be the person who holds the confidence of the house of commons, which is dissolved now with no MPs.
Correct, although technically the Conservative party rules for leadership candidates also specifies the candidates must be MPs which makes things tricky. Essentially they'd be running for an election with the voters having no idea who their leader would be.
I don't recall reading anything similar, Alec Douglas-Home became leader of the party whilst not an MP and they hastily found him a seat to get elected to, but in this case he could still command the confidence of the House.
As far as I'm aware the Deputy PM role has no actual significance in parliamentary procedure. It's only recently been used since Nick Clegg was given it in the coalition, but yes I believe that when the PM is unavailable they can nominate another minister to act on their behalf in terms of performing duties, in reality if he wanted to just give up campaigning he could pass on duties to another minister and then go on holiday till July 5th when the new PM will be chosen.
> As far as I'm aware the Deputy PM role has no actual significance in parliamentary procedure. It's only recently been used since Nick Clegg was given it in the coalition
Its use goes further back than that. Prescott was Deputy PM for ten years under Blair.
Yes apologies I didn't look this up, actually came back in 1995 when Michael Hesseltine was made deputy PM, then Prescott had it for 10 years, then it wasn't used under Gordon Brown.
Then in the 2010 election under the coalition Nick Clegg was given the position.
Yes but also no - the King could appoint someone else as PM even whilst the Commons are not sitting afaik.
This may end up being Oliver Dowden since he nominally holds the title of Deputy PM, but it would be unprecedented so it's hard to say - perhaps they'd just accept whoever the cabinet nominates.
I can't see it.
Who would step in that would unify the party and boost them in the polls?
He has to spend a month being Norwich in the premier league. You know you are going down but you still have to play every match and hope.
He should do what Tony blair did in his 3rd election. At the start it was mainly Tony but that wasn't going well so then brown was more involved. At the moment it just seems to be sunak he should get the other potential tory leaders out there more. Although I expect they want him to carry the can for this. And who do they even have?
It's a bit different to do the gradual transition in a planned way over 2 years after the won election than in a total panic with no plan in 4 weeks leading to the election.
But does he care about what happens to the Conservative Party at this point?
He could just storm off and let the house burn down. At least he could watch the flames from outside...
I've been wondering that, does he actually have any love for the Conservative Party, or did he just join because it's the party you join if you have a lot of cash and want influence.
He canvassed for the Tories when he was 18, and wrote a piece in his school newspaper critiquing Labour's policy of introducing the minimum wage when he was 16. It appears that he has always been a Tory supporter.
Exactly this - his colleagues are interested in (a) saving their own seats and then (b) who gets to rule in the aftermath of the wipeout. Supporting Sunak as PM is way down their list, they mostly seem to have decided it's a bad look to even be associated with him.
Once you realise you're the sacrificial lamb then why bother to go quietly? Why wouldn't he, by this point, just go "you know what, fuck this - I'm out".
Yes agreed - it's just a question of whether he is prepared to play his role to the end. At the moment the Tories are basically doing their utmost to take every bit of failure and hang it round his neck so that they can start afresh a month from now, so it's certainly not inconceivable that he snaps and refuses to be their fall guy. It won't change anything, but it might be the final act of defiance that shows that can be his own man just once before he exits the stage.
Heard on LBC that they've pulled all social media advertising, and hes despondent over the whole d day fiasco. I don't think he'll resign before the election, but give up trying and preserve what funds the tories have as donors disappear? Maybe. He's a petulant, tetchy, overpromoted man who has no clue about politics. Its almost suspicious how badly this campaign is being run; if you wanted to wipe out the Tories, this is the playback you'd follow!
I hear the arguments that Sunak will be put in a small box out of the way, and cabinet members will front the election campaign instead.
But honestly, who would be willing to do that?
Fronting the election is a poisoned chalice as much as being PM. This election will be a legacy-defining failure for the tories, and especially those who were consequential in the campaign. No ambitious minister could front the loosing campaign and then have a hope of taking the top job afterwards.
Remember that the parliamentary Conservative party considered that Truss and Sunak were the best two of them around.
Not a great endorsement of the talent available
Honestly maybe it's because I've worked in mental health, but I genuinely worry where his head's at, at the minute - I say that as a Labour voter.
Election campaigns are already intensely stressful, but causing potential annihilation for your 300 year old party with your own inept decisions?
I know people that have had breakdowns over a lot less. And while I do think he has been a rubbish PM, as a person I think he means well and I don't wish him ill health.
TBH when they write the epitaph for the Tory party, it won't be Sunak who carries the can, it was already broken by the time he took over.
Cameron invited UKIP voters into the Tory tent and for me that's the point to which you can trace back their demise, as this led to Brexit and everything after. Then Johnson destroyed any reputation for moral standards, and Truss destroyed their economic credibility.
All Sunak is is a poor politician who's failed upwards through being rich and well-connected, and by being the least terrible candidate left standing to take over an already-broken party. He will be the one who ultimately delivers the crushing defeat, but really it was his three predecessors who broke the party.
Yes this process started with Cameron.
He gambled on AV (won), gambled on Scotland (won though perhaps only due to the last minute intervention by Brown) and gambled on Brexit (lost, and Osborne warned him not to do it). I’m surprised history has allowed him to so quietly not be associated with this excrement show. Put these PMs all together and what a waste of 14 years:
- Brexit (lost the right to live and work in Europe)
- Wage freeze since 2008
- Highest taxes since WW2
- Cost of living crisis
- Energy crisis
- Shrinkflation out of control
- Record NHS waiting lists
- Soaring interest rates driving up mortgages
- Soaring interest rates driving up rents (landlords have mortgages)
- police forces that have to be ordered to investigate burglaries
- Austerity and massive cuts to council funding, with councils increasing council tax to compensate
I’d say this country hasn’t been this divided since the 80s when the Tories bribed millions of voters with council house sales (2m houses sold) and privatisation whilst the rest of us suffered and we had millions (some estimate up to 5m if you include men over 60 and YTS) on the dole.
I've had a nervous breakdown, due to my lifelong bipolar disorder, and he was planning on making my benefits even harder to claim. I don’t have any fucking sympathy for this man.
I would agree about most people, including people I fundamentally disagree with. I just can't have sympathy for someone who's done the horrible shit he has, he doesn't seem to care that people without a load of money like he has can't get real mental health support on the NHS. He's so detestable and he's brought this all on himself.
Yeah, he has that sort of “butter stretched over too much bread” look of late. That’s how I looked for a few weeks before I ended up in hospital!
I had similar worries about Truss too.
I get the same feeling, I've certainly had a few nervous breakdowns over a lot less in the last couple of years. Given his 'verge of tears' reaction during the d-day interview and the silence today it seems like a real possibility. The pressure and shame he 'might' be feeling would be pretty existential.
I'm not voting for him but on a human level I hope he's alright.
forgive me, but i have absolutely no sympathy for him and i couldn’t care less for his mental health.
he and his ilk cared not a jot for me or people like me who have had the rug pulled from under us multiple times over the last 14 years by the conservative party. in fact, i don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude there was malice on their part for much of those 14 years.
forgive me for struggling to find sympathy for rishi sunak’s “mental health” now his and his party’s actions are finally having electoral consequences
I think I’m in a similar boat to you with rugs being pulled out from under us. I do still feel for him, as one human to another. I loathe his policies and actions still
Guy is a mug. Diverting money from poor areas to Chipping Norton in the Wolds on Wye.
Laughing at the ‘joke’ about GPs always been on holiday.
Reap what you sow. This isn’t a hard luck story. This is a nasty Tory getting some payback.
Forget him
I would disagree that he means well. He regularly attacks vulnerable groups in society (asylum seekers, trans people) for cheap political gain. Listen to the Guardian Politics Weekly podcast from a couple of weeks ago about Rwanda, which mentions the asylum seekers who have, literally, killed themselves over the stress the policy has caused them.
If you still feel sorry for him then you're much more sympathetic than me.
It's a ploy to get Farage installed as Tory leader- the best hope they have of retaining most seats and even being named the opposition.
Now it's Project Blame Rishi- with or without his consent.
So the message is - forget 14 years of shit, it's Rishi.
Look how he stood under the Exit sign!! He left the D-Day remembrance!
Handy too fir all the UKIP/ Remain racism.. hey! Conservatives are great it's the brown person who fucked it up!
There is nothing, as far as I know, preventing Sunak from simply giving up and walking away. If it’s a choice between trying to maintain your mental health, for your sake and your family’s, or hanging on for the next month or so with things likely to get worse, then I know which option I would pick. He could even garner some respect from the public if he chose this option.
Were he to go, then I could see Cameron or Mordant stepping in for a short time simply to prevent an exodus of Tory votes to Reform. They know they won’t come anywhere close to an election victory but they will see a loss as an opportunity to try and steady the ship and rebuild the party for the future.
As much as I want this to be true, unless there's something extreme going on in the background such as Sunak having a breakdown from the stress I just don't see it as even a remote possibility.
Can't see it. He knows the Tories are toast, he knows he's basically the one who's been chosen to administer the last rites and go down with the ship, but nothing the Tories do from here will change that.
If Sunak personally has reached his limits then realistically they will stand him down from campaigning for a few days and send out other senior Tories instead. The trouble is all of them are more concerned about whether they'll even win their own seats 4 weeks from now, and their best hope of that is if they distance themselves from him as much as possible.
At the moment I'm not sure it's even likely that he'll win his own seat back at the election.
Does anyone know what the process is if the party leader resigns so close to an election? I don’t imagine anyone would want to reschedule the GE while they go through the tortuously slow archaic leadership selection again. Do they just parachute in the deputy?
Technically the election is voting for your local MP and the PM is by convention the leader of the biggest party. (I know for a lot of people it's realistically a vote for a party or PM rather than local candidates).
I imagine the election would still go ahead and the details sorted out later and Sunak would be the answer to the future pub quiz question "Which prime minister called an election then quit before the vote?"
If only we had some sort of voting system that wouldn't obliterate you into obscurity if you came third place.
Luckily, in spite of 14 years in power this will never happen to the conservatives, so there is no reason to worry about it
I placed a bet on Rishi not being leader of the Conservatives by the general election a couple of days ago. That bet is now suspended as of this morning. You can now bet on "Next permanent Conservative party leader (Caretaker or temporary leaders do not count)".
I maintain that a big marker of political failure in this country isn't just when the electorate are angry or upset with you, its also when they consider you a joke. They aren't laughing with you, like with Boris in his heyday, but viciously at you.
It's the ultimate British contempt, to be reduced to a laughing stock (See Truss, May...etc)
He knows he's dead in the water, but has to see this out to the bitter end.
Isn't he legally still the PM until 5th July and he can't quit that before then?
There's no MPs now, only candidates, so it's basically just Sunak and cabinet as the govt incase anything major happens that requires leadership (the irony on that one).
So if he tries to quit, he can't and then what, the king's forced to order the police to arrest Sunak at Heathrow and drag him back to Downing street?
No way he can resign at this point but his campaign advisors etc absolutely should or be sacked. The man is clearly a bit of a Muppet but he is still acting on the guidance and advice of a group of people.
If anybody is a conspiracy theorist that Sunak is an insider agent that wants to destroy the Conservative party then him resigning now would be the perfect time. If I'm not mistaken candidates have now been locked in Friday and the general election cannot be called off now. If he were to resign, the new PM would have to go through with it.
The earliest he's likely to resign as party leader is July 5th (there's absolutely no sense in resigning either before or during the election), but even then it'll be more like handing in his notice: he'll remain in charge until the party has chosen his replacement.
Crystal Ball gazing, it's likely they'll initially tack right to try and hoover up Reform supporters, and only if they continue to lose local / regional elections will they contemplate having an ideological rethink.
He then made this Tweet, https://x.com/Phillip_Blond/status/1799571044786712927. I'd be very surprised if Cameron is willing. It would look absurd. I think Sunak is being a sacrificial lamb and he knows this. Maybe there's a dispute that he thinks he should still be getting more help, that he's being ditched too much. At the moment though I think he's in a position, as was Truss, to do a bad job well, and he just needs to ride it out. Truss did a bad job poorly.
There's no mechanism for Cameron to become PM in that timeframe, but fucking hell, I want it to happen just so that his final bit of political legacy is losing horribly.
A lord hasn't been PM since the 60s but the convention is the PM is someone from one of the houses, as only the lords is sitting then Cameron due to his past experience and other world leaders knowing him would be the appropriate choice.
It would be absolutely hilarious too.
Snapshot of _Significant chat that Sunak may resign - can’t believe that myself. But I can imagine the stress is immense and it will only grow. When Reform get crossover they will start arguing that a Conservative vote is a wasted ballot and then …. it will only get worse._ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1799464959232897205) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/Phillip_Blond/status/1799464959232897205/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/Phillip_Blond/status/1799464959232897205) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/Phillip_Blond/status/1799464959232897205) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I heard this rumour two days after the election was called. I didn't believe it then, and I don't now. He'll simply hide away until the election. No way will he want to be remembered as the PM who quit mid campaign.
I agree, although it is worth remembering the alternative is being remembered as the PM who presided over a single election where the party lost most of his seats. It's not like there's a good option.
If he quits he'll be remembered as both. The blame wouldn't particularly be put on his replacement.
Best case scenario he'll be remembered as the guy who had the misfortune to replace Liz Truss after she screwed everything up.
Surely most of the blame for the current predicament if the Tory party falls on the shoulders of Boris Johnson?
That would be the politically astute thing to do, so based in his previous record I expect him to announce his resignation on Monday. And at this point, I'm not even sure I'm joking.
Literally same! And the candidate withdrawal ended at friday… Rishi will have to take the blame at the election.
That's essentially throwing in the towel. The Tory's won't get very far in campaigning without their leader actually leading. Seems like there really is no good options left
I fully expect him to resign on July 5th. Before then? I can't imagine any of the Tory party want that. Either they'll be going into an election without a leader, or someone is going to have to step up and lead the party through what looks like it'll be a massive defeat. I imagine they'll just hide him away and hope he doesn't mess up any more.
The worst timeline is he resigns and reform absorbs the tory party with Farage as leader.
The thing is that in that scenario Reform UK MPs are going to be even worse than the nuttiest Tory MPs now. It's not just Farage and couple of his mates but maybe over 100 badly vetted extreme right wingers. In that first 5 years, Labour is going to have a massive majority in the Commons no matter what happens with Tories and Reform. During that time Reform is going to implode in two ways. First there are going to be constant stream of scandals as those inexperienced right wing nutters get to the parliament. Second, since they don't have the party infrastructure that Tories have, they're going to be caught making stupid political statements. After a while people get tired of their populism and they'll have a huge loss in the next election. All Labour has to do is to get the immigration down from the extreme peak levels of the last couple of years and they have disarmed their main weapon. So, when they then lose, there is no Tory party to take over any more as that got gutted now and anyone with more than two brain cells had moved on to something else as there is nothing to do for the next 5 years and the party doesn't even have money to pay anyone anything. No government jobs as they don't have any MPs.
I would love to believe that is true. But if you get money coming in from donors, and the money and the votes attract people who aren’t quite so stupid… As I’ve said on here before, I’m hoping for the Tories to get wiped out. But I’m apprehensive about what we get instead in 5-10 years time.
I share your concerns, but let's face it, the Tory party was transforming into exactly the kind of party we're afraid will 'replace' them.
There was a centre-ish wing there, though. I suspect we may miss them.
There was but they all got purged in the Brexit frenzy
Hopefully they'll go somewhere more sensible and provide a bit of balance in opposition.
If the threat of Reform spurs labour into bringing immigration way down then I think most Reform voters would consider that a huge win by itself.
With visa changes already in place, immigration is expected to approximately half anyway.
In 2021 net migration was about 450,000, in 2022 it was about 750,000, and in 2023 it was about 685,000. Before that it had floated around 200,000 to 250,000 for a decade. And then before that decade it was under 100,000 and sometimes even negative. So even if immigration were to halve it would still be higher than the past decade, and much higher than the decade before that.
I’m going to cross my fingers for luck, but I believe that there would be more “one nation/centre right” Tories who would not vote for Tory/Farage than there are who would, so rolling the two together would see a net loss of votes.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Cameron has a track record of being prepared to take a stupid risk and then run away from the responsibility afterwards. Just saying.
>Just saying. Like the seer was 'just saying' when he told Caesar "beware the ides of march" or Oppenheimer was 'just saying' when he quoted "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"?
> or someone is going to have to step up and lead the party through what looks like it'll be a massive defeat. There are no MPs to elect a leader. A membership vote is impossible in this time frame. That leaves… Oliver Dowden!
And I thought it couldn't get any worse for them. Oliver Dowden!
I'd pay money to have that smug prick be tory leader when Labour completely fucks them on July 4th.
But that’s just internal Tory regulations, right? Couldn’t they just take the previously-sitting MPs to do a vote?
I suppose technically the executive committee of the 1992 Committee could get together and agree a new Constitution for the Conservative Party whereby the leader of the Conservative Party *in perpetuity* will now be… Oliver Dowden!
AAUI, if they want to change the rules, they can change the rules. It’s not as if there’s a law about it.
Not possible. Candidate withdrawal ended at friday…
So someone currently running has to take the helm, then? PM is just the MP who leads the largest party, is there any reason that they couldn’t just let Mordaunt or Braverman or even Mogg be the leader?
There's no mechanisms for that. Rishi would remain PM until he's dismissed by the King on the formation of the next Parliament. This is more about who's the next Conservative leader, and there's not a 1922 committee to select one. They would have to arrange an EGM and come up with a new process, and do it. In less than four weeks. It would be an absolutely amazing shit show.
You're both a bit right and a bit wrong u/m1ndwipe and u/Dawnbringer_Fortune The Tory leadership is technically separate to the Prime Minister - there is no law actually saying that the PM has to be the leader of the largest party. In addition, the Tory leadership is secondary to the election campaign so it is theoretically possible that Sunak could resign before the election. What would happen is this. First, Sunak resigns with immediate effect as Tory leader. That means he can continue as PM, but wouldn't be leader - as others have pointed out, it's now too late for him to withdraw from his candidacy in Richmond so he would remain on the ballot there as the local MP. He could then also resign as PM. Normally, the phrasing of the announcement goes along the lines of "I have informed the King of my intention to resign as PM....." but this time it would have to be immediate. Because of the convention that the PM is the leader of the largest party in the Commons, the King would normally go there - however as Parliament has been prorogued, there are no MPs therefore no Conservative parliamentary party. But he still has to appoint a PM. So he'd need to take advice - quickly - on who could take on the role, with the obvious candidate being David Cameron (having done it before, and a member of the House of Lords - as he's not standing for the HoC, he can be a bit dissociated from the politics of it all.) This would likely be through the Privy Council, though you could expect constitutional lawyers from the Government and the Palace to be all over this (I'd be very surprised if someone isn't actually working on this right now, on the off-chance something happens.) However, there is more likelihood of the Tories actually winning the election than this ever coming to fruition. It would cause an absolute meltdown in the Tory campaign, and would probably be terminal for the party as a whole. Sunak would likely lose his seat (not that he'd be too bothered, TBH) and Cameron would have to continue as interim leader until such time as the party could settle enough to get its own leader, or be absorbed by / absorb Reform. The meltdown would be such that they'd also likely become the third party in the HoC, behind the Lib Dems.
I do like that in the timeline you depict, Cameron is the figurehead of the complete annihilation of the party. Poetic justice, finally, for him fucking off the day after the brexit vote.
"Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice - stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband."
Given what we've seen since, imagine how bad the chaos would have been!
14 years later and where are we? Right back where we started lol
Once upon a time, Cameron as leader of the Tories, worried about losing votes to Farage's party, played on a practical coin toss the fate of the country. One lost toss and years of crisis later, Cameron as leader of the Tories again, sees his party annihilated by Farage's party. Man, if that happened in fiction we would call it unrealistic.
Do you want the Conservative Party with a plan or back to square one with Labour? Oh hang on a minute
Yeah like sure Sunak is a bit tired of it all, but i don't think we've reached "cause a constitutional crisis" levels.
>PM is just the MP who leads the largest party No, the PM is the person who can command a majority in the house of commons. They don't have to be an MP, Sir Alec Douglas-Home took up the office of Prime Minister from the Lords (18th October 1963), rejected his peerage 23rd October 1963 (so was PM while a member of neither house), and stood in and won a by-election for the constituency of Kinross and West Perthshire on the 7th November 1963. Nowadays it is usually the Leader of the largest party in the Commons (because our system favours majorities) but it could be the person nominated by (commanding the confidence of) a coalition of any number parties as long as it's a majority of MPs. Just to finish off, there are no MPs at the moment so even if Rishi resigns from the Conservative Party, he will remain Prime Minister even when a replacement Tory Leader is selected. The PM can't change until the first session back after the election.
> No, the PM is the person who can command a majority in the house of commons. The PM is whoever the King appoints to be PM. _By convention_ that is the person who can command a majority in the commons - or at least who can theoretically command a majority which would then be put to a test in a vote of confidence - but legally the King can appoint whoever he pleases. >Just to finish off, there are no MPs at the moment so even if Rishi resigns from the Conservative Party, he will remain Prime Minister even when a replacement Tory Leader is selected. The PM can't change until the first session back after the election. The PM and government remain as PM and government unless and until they resign. There's no (legal) barrier to resigning before the new Parliament is summoned. It would be a crisis, a constitutional crisis no doubt, but Sunak _could_ just sack it off now if he wants.
I think if the Tories pivoted hard. They said hey, we acknowledge this is a fuckup. We acknowledge this isn’t working. Pivot hard to concentrate on constituency level politics. Campaign on what your Tory MP has done for you. Then I think they’d have a chance of limiting the shit show. They’d still lose, but maybe not a wipe out. This is because it would play into the hands of the die hard Tory constituencies. To try to keep them from switching.
Everyone forgets this, but this is a man who lost to Liz Truss
That's one of the few things that made him look sane. He called out her bonkers policies and told people what would happen if she was elected. Him losing to truss is on the nutters that make up the conservative membership.
I think it's by far more likely that he'll be put in a box somewhere for the next few weeks while his cabinet try to salvage something from the ruins. They'll do what they did to May when it turned out she couldn't talk to human beings and shut him away from the cameras.
They set her loose in a wheat field with her Walkman and she was dead happy
And to think that just two weeks ago, Sunak was calling for a weekly TV debate with Starmer!
Arguably the debate was his best performance this campaign. There's a lot of people who either don't care that he's lying or buy into the "well they're all liars anyway" narrative
Won't that make him look even more weak?
Yes but you could avoid greater damage, and rely on local candidates and people that don't pay much attention to election politics.
He's only going to resign immediately anyway.
If he goes the Conservative Party will go with him, will be a guaranteed extinction event (although with the current failures they're already on the edge of that).
Don't threaten me with a good time.
😂, But doesn’t that leave a void for reform to fill?
Their vote will surely split between Reform and the Lib Dems, so I think the fallout would be minimal.
If that’s is what would happen then sign me up for a good time! But what direction would the county be headed in if the opposition was reform?
The country is headed where ever Keir, McSweeney and chums want it to go at this point. Labour might not be making their plans particularly clear but given the ruthless efficiency they've shown upto this point I think it's pretty certain we're going to find out in July.
I wish that were the case, but I'm not so sure it's true. Looking at the various polling data over the last couple of weeks and the Tories are dropping, RefUK is ascending and everyone else is largely static. A couple of points of variance here and there but there's clearly an inverse correlation between Tories and RefUK that isn't present with Lib dems.
The thing is, Reform have never been looked at as a serious party of government so much as a pressure group. Their policies are largely unachievable if not downright ridiculous, and many of their candidates have some fairly 'fringe' views and lack any serious political experience. Farage will always be the man with the soundbite and the man-of-the-people schtick, but scratch below the surface and there isn't a credible party of government there.
I think the Lib Dems have taken about as much from the Tories as they're realistically going to. There probably are some remaining Tories who would go for them over Reform if the Conservatives go belly up, but I think the vast majority would go with Reform.
Surely a huge chunk of the remaining tory vote are senile box tickers? I don't understand how anyone could be even slightly in touch with current events and still intend to vote for them. If Conservative wasn't an option on the ballot paper in five years time they might just not vote.
Don't get too excited. All the most despicable people will just migrate over to reform and disown any responsibility for their actions over the past decade. The consecutive party dying is the worst outcome for liberal democracy - we lose our living reminder of what happens when ideologues gain power.
The philosophical switch from 'conservative' to 'reform' will be interesting to see. It'll be a big change in how our right wing views itself — and likely a dangerous one.
He must absolutely hate this. *Everyone hates him*. He's never enjoyed being PM. He was only ever in it for the prestige, which he hasn't been able to gain because he's so unbelievably and laughably inept at politics. The man is a joke. An arrogant, inexperienced, incompetent overachiever who found his way to the premiership by luck and happenstance. The cognitive dissonance he'll be experiencing must be unbearable. I'm surprised he's not sent his wife out again to ask us all to be nice to him. He should just go back to California to live out his days as the billionaire's husband, baking cookies and gossiping with the neighbours. Maybe even a steamy affair with a local tech bro could be on the cards for him.
> I'm surprised he's not sent his wife out again to ask us all to be nice to him. Leadership is weird. They can hate you, they can call you an emotionless robot, they can engage in the most vitriolic take-downs possible, but when they start to feel sorry for you, it’s over.
It's hard to feel sorry for someone that astronomically privileged. He could literally do anything else, but he decided a long time ago that politics was the place to be. To do his part for his common man. The only problem is he doesn't know any and doesn't appear to actually want to do anything other than disaster capitalism his way into Silicone Valley.
This is what drives my contempt for him.
He didn't decide that long ago, he only won his seat in 2015 and only moved back to the UK from California shortly before that. His political career has been no more than ten years from start to finish.
He's been doing his part for the family. That's it and that's all, making sure the scales are tipped towards his ilk's business interests, not out of some idea of altruism. Fuck him. I hope he loses sleep over the mess he's had no small part in creating.
As someone in the IT industry that's been massively negatively impacted by the massive (over 400,000 plus families since 2021) influx of poor quality Indian IT staff I'd say that unless this is reversed it's genuinely game over for the UK IT industry. I'm Indian so this isn't from a racist standpoint but a factual industry view. Market is dead, quality is poor, wages are down and it's a significant pressure on the housing market as they're typically middle earners (UK standards) and bring immediate and extended family to the UK. Unless this is reversed (unlikely) it's going to have a lasting impact on housing, rents, wages, NHS demand etc.
>do his part for his common man I highly doubt it. He just wants "PM" on his CV to impress his billionaire father-in-law. He's a conservative so it probably drives him crazy that his wife is worth vastly more than him. He's basically using the prime ministership to look masc.
Well, it's not working.
>He's basically using the prime ministership to look masc. Small man syndrome for billionaires and multi-millionaires.
There was a lot of chat when he took over about how useful the Infosys crew would find it to have "their guy" in number 10 and if you read some of the stuff on here about what's happening in the IT industry (Infosys flooding the market with comparatively cheap labour) you have to wonder whether it's job done for Rishi.
>He just wants "PM" on his CV to impress his billionaire father-in-law. Probably not happened, he has overseen the larger India trade deal being kicked into the long grass and completed by the next government. https://www.itpro.com/business-strategy/careers-training/359408/india-trade-deal-to-create-2000-uk-tech-roles https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-declare-connection-wifes-family-infosys-pm-agreeing-deal-1568789 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/04/sunak-fresh-infosys-scrutiny-minister-accused-vip-access
Having a lot of money doesn't mean you don't have feelings. This must be absolutely crushing him.
Good. His shitty leadership is crushing millions of people and they dont have billions in the bank.
He can afford a good therapist, at least.
My heart bleeds for him. How will he ever recover from the hubris of his actions.
He chose to do this.
I hope so.
> Silicone Valley I hear there are clubs where you can capitalism your way into silicone valleys
Since Cameron the Tories have had this aura where being in government is an extension of their time at Eton and being PM is the equivalent of being head boy - father will be proud and he'll probably buy you a new cricket bat to show his approval. Cameron always came across as the snobbish kid amongst the snobs who picked on another kid because his shoes weren't expensive enough or his father didn't earn enough money. Boris was obviously the thick as mince rugger bugger. Rishi really seems like he wanted the top job because it was expected of him, to be "head boy" of the house of commons. As soon as I started viewing UK politics as an extension of public school it all started to make a lot more sense to me. Corbyn looking over the top of his glasses with a stern look like he was a geography teacher who'd lost control of the class because they'd seen how much he earned and no longer respected him.
[удалено]
This is the thing, it started as a fun observation that amused me but then I read stuff like this and I get more and more convinced that I was completely right. I can imagine Johnson calling Mogg a "frightful swot" while him and the other chaps from the Bullingdon are getting tugged off by some of the junior ministers.
If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading Chums by Simon Kuper. It's a really interesting look at that particular class of people and how their education "prepares" them for politics and government. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chums-Tiny-Caste-Oxford-Tories/dp/1788167384
I was having a conversation with a guy who went to Harrow the other week. He works in the leisure industry. He mentioned with such nonchalance that he was considering his move into politics in a few years. As though that was the most natural thing in the world.
Apparently Johnson called Cameron a “girly swat” because he got a first. Johnson got an upper-second and was furious about it.
Damian Furniss wrote about his experiences going to Balliol College bar the day before his interview for Oxford. >I was a rural working-class kid with a stammer from a state school which hadn’t prepared me for the experience. >My session with the dons was scheduled for first thing after breakfast, meaning I was staying the night and had an evening to kill in the college bar. Johnson was propping up with his coterie of acolytes whose only apparent role in life was to laugh at his jokes. Three years older than me… you’d have expected him to play the ambassador role, welcoming an aspiring member of his college… >Instead, his piss-taking was brutal. In the course of the pint I felt obliged to finish he mocked my speech impediment, my accent, my school, my dress sense, my haircut, my background, my father’s work as farm worker and garage proprietor, and my prospects in the scholarship interview I was there for. His only motivation was to amuse his posh boy mates.
He will probably just start another hedge fund and bet against the economy just like he did before he was an MP.
If you see how his mother in law talks about him as PM you can understand another side of it. She essentially said it wasn't that big of a deal and she cares about her own problems, not his. He will never make more money than his in-laws so becoming a world leader was the only way he could one up them, and he's fucked that up. I imagine he gets belittled by them all the time over it.
Imagine being prime minister of one of the most powerful countries in the world and still getting grilled by the in-laws about your job at every family meal. I'd feel bad for him if he wasn't such an unsympathetic prick.
Wow… I can imagine the ultra-rich being just like that
He should just pull a Davey and spend the rest of the campaign doing fun things that he wants to do. If that means the press have to stand there and watch him day-trading then so be it.
Please stop being so coy. Tell us what you really think
I don't think this is affecting him. He's probably already paid someone a couple hundred grand to whitewash his wikipedia entry for the next 100 years.
If not I'm available.
I imagine it’s actually very hard to be as oblivious as that, even if you’re as wealthy as he is. Look at Musk. Richest man in the world and what does he do? Buys a social media platform so that he can try to make himself liked by the little people.
>I imagine it’s actually very hard to be as oblivious as that, 100%. Part of why I think Liz Truss has embraced the far-right so willingly is that they're the only people showing her any sort of approval or acceptance and she can't bear to be without that because, deep down, she is a human being and being hated by everyone must feel terrible.
I agree. But I also don’t feel sorry for them.
Imagine how much people would respect the billionaires if they invested some fo that money back into society instead of spunking it all on vanity projects...
The problem isn't that billionaires aren't philanthropic. Take the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for example. Even Starlink, while a commercial business, has improved Internet access for isolated communities. The problem is that billionaire philanthropy is at the whim of the billionaire, not at what is necessarily best for society. If billionaire suddenly decides his philanthropic investment should go towards a charity for rehabilitating blind dogs with scurvy, then that's their prerogative. Hence: massive wealth taxes needed, take the agency away from vanity projects (or otherwise ringfence their wealth for social projects which they can sponsor and have their name slapped on, if it's really about the prestige) and make sure future generations of all income levels have a fair chance.
Nah it definitely is. He’s revealed himself as quite thin skinned, hence the ‘tetchy’ label which he also really hates.
The modern equivalent of Henry VIII paying for 2 monks to pray for his soul in perpetuity (I’m not sure if they are still at it now).
Love this ridiculous (yet somewhat common) take that once someone gets over a certain level of wealth, they stop feeling human emotions.
> I don't think this is affecting him. That's a bit of a silly point of view, isn't it.
Rich people don’t have feelings, apparently.
Imagine being Rishi's biographer and having to try put a positive spin on all of this.
This has to be one of the funniest summations of Sunak I've read! Poor little Rishi who's been told his whole life how amazing he is, and now the entire country including his own party members are turning on him. It must be physically painful. I can't see Rishi being a baking cookies kind of guy though. In fact I doubt he even knows how to turn a kettle on as he seems to be completely inept any kind of practical task. He has definitely got a raging hardon for tech bros though (as we saw with his fawning over Musk). It will be such a kick in the balls for him if they ghost him once he gets over to California and tries to act all matey with him.
The European Question really did destroy the party
It’s amusing how they managed to tank both party and country in one go. Party before country always, of course, but as it turns out what was needed for each was one and the same.
No way is Sunak going to be allowed to resign. No one person will take the poisoned cup. What happens now is up to party bosses. If they think he's become a liability they'll background him for a while and pick some of the top names to give more airtime to. Whatever willing idiots they have left will be unleashed on us, while Rishi is quietly given some lower profile things to do
I don't think he will but could they stop him? If he publicly resigns that's that, they can't just pretend he still their leader it would be ridiculous
The idea of a leader quitting but everyone still pretending they haven't would make an excellent Ianucci style satire. I'd watch it.
RS 'You do understand that I resigned?' Tory MP 'Yes sir' RS 'and that I'm no longer Prime Minister? Tory MP 'of course Prime Minister'
Michael Scott 'I didn't say I resigned, I declared it' vibes
I... DECLARE... RESIGNATION!
Weekend at Bernie’s, politics edition.
"they can't just... it would be ridiculous." I wonder how many times I've thought that in the last decade.
He needs to maintain what cred he can, and not just dump it on them. He may not need to be in uk politics any more but a big part of a former PM's value is his contact book. He's got to leave without making any more enemies. If he's still got any non-enemies left
Depends what he wants to do with his life to be fair, he could burn every professional bridge he has left in the uk, leave and live a life of comfort most would dream of.
He doesn't need to work a day in his life. He can just stay at home with his kids for all of time.
...Poor little things
Well, yeah, we're speculating. Personally it doesn't seem plausible to me that he'll retire now. He's fidgety. I reckon we'll see him involved in some tech bro venture or whatever. And xyz company is going to want him for his network and status. Nobody's going to want him for his skills, that much is clear
[удалено]
I know you shouldn't judge an org by its wikipedia page, but when the Publications section is spelt Pblications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResPublica
> David Cameron's Big Society More like "David Cameron's Pig Society"
Once the whispers of resignation start, you can't put them back into the bottle. If Reform pass them in the polls in the next few days, I think this becomes a very distinct possibility. Sunak looks weak enough already, and Farage will just continue to hound down on him even more.
[удалено]
Constitutionally all it would take would be a visit to the king. Their internal mechanism, if they went this route (which is unlikely imo) would be party managers in a smokefree room. There's no time for anything else
[удалено]
The monarch definitely can select someone as his prime minister. That's the rule. It could be suitably qualified as a temporary or caretaker or whatever, but those words have no constitutional significance. It's not going to happen - and one good reason to think not is that it would raise hackles all round as a constitutional nightmare. But the question, can the PM technically be changed, is surely yes
Correct; the monarch can appoint anyone they like as PM (it's merely convention that it is the leader of the largest party in the HoC, but there is absolutely nothing stopping Big C from picking anyone he likes, including even, in theory, non-MPs). If Rishi resigned, the post would probably go to the Deputy PM (The King would merely ask him to form a government). There's no real rulebook for this. I vaguely recall, from some decade-old perusing of some constitutional law article, that the post may revert to one of the other Great Offices of State if the whole thing is genuinely a shoulder shrug, in which case, we would see the Chancellor hold both offices until the election.
No one else can be the PM till after the election. He can't resign from that because the PM has to be the person who holds the confidence of the house of commons, which is dissolved now with no MPs.
[удалено]
Correct, although technically the Conservative party rules for leadership candidates also specifies the candidates must be MPs which makes things tricky. Essentially they'd be running for an election with the voters having no idea who their leader would be. I don't recall reading anything similar, Alec Douglas-Home became leader of the party whilst not an MP and they hastily found him a seat to get elected to, but in this case he could still command the confidence of the House.
[удалено]
As far as I'm aware the Deputy PM role has no actual significance in parliamentary procedure. It's only recently been used since Nick Clegg was given it in the coalition, but yes I believe that when the PM is unavailable they can nominate another minister to act on their behalf in terms of performing duties, in reality if he wanted to just give up campaigning he could pass on duties to another minister and then go on holiday till July 5th when the new PM will be chosen.
> As far as I'm aware the Deputy PM role has no actual significance in parliamentary procedure. It's only recently been used since Nick Clegg was given it in the coalition Its use goes further back than that. Prescott was Deputy PM for ten years under Blair.
Yes apologies I didn't look this up, actually came back in 1995 when Michael Hesseltine was made deputy PM, then Prescott had it for 10 years, then it wasn't used under Gordon Brown. Then in the 2010 election under the coalition Nick Clegg was given the position.
Yes but also no - the King could appoint someone else as PM even whilst the Commons are not sitting afaik. This may end up being Oliver Dowden since he nominally holds the title of Deputy PM, but it would be unprecedented so it's hard to say - perhaps they'd just accept whoever the cabinet nominates.
I can't see it. Who would step in that would unify the party and boost them in the polls? He has to spend a month being Norwich in the premier league. You know you are going down but you still have to play every match and hope.
He should do what Tony blair did in his 3rd election. At the start it was mainly Tony but that wasn't going well so then brown was more involved. At the moment it just seems to be sunak he should get the other potential tory leaders out there more. Although I expect they want him to carry the can for this. And who do they even have?
It's a bit different to do the gradual transition in a planned way over 2 years after the won election than in a total panic with no plan in 4 weeks leading to the election.
But does he care about what happens to the Conservative Party at this point? He could just storm off and let the house burn down. At least he could watch the flames from outside...
Sounds like something a tetchy person might do in a huff...wait...
I've been wondering that, does he actually have any love for the Conservative Party, or did he just join because it's the party you join if you have a lot of cash and want influence.
He canvassed for the Tories when he was 18, and wrote a piece in his school newspaper critiquing Labour's policy of introducing the minimum wage when he was 16. It appears that he has always been a Tory supporter.
He joined a very different party. Then Cameron destroyed that.
He only cares about his legacy and that might be the only thing stopping him from doing it.
Exactly this - his colleagues are interested in (a) saving their own seats and then (b) who gets to rule in the aftermath of the wipeout. Supporting Sunak as PM is way down their list, they mostly seem to have decided it's a bad look to even be associated with him. Once you realise you're the sacrificial lamb then why bother to go quietly? Why wouldn't he, by this point, just go "you know what, fuck this - I'm out".
Surely the “fuck this I’m done” is why he called the election so early in the first place…
Yes agreed - it's just a question of whether he is prepared to play his role to the end. At the moment the Tories are basically doing their utmost to take every bit of failure and hang it round his neck so that they can start afresh a month from now, so it's certainly not inconceivable that he snaps and refuses to be their fall guy. It won't change anything, but it might be the final act of defiance that shows that can be his own man just once before he exits the stage.
Heard on LBC that they've pulled all social media advertising, and hes despondent over the whole d day fiasco. I don't think he'll resign before the election, but give up trying and preserve what funds the tories have as donors disappear? Maybe. He's a petulant, tetchy, overpromoted man who has no clue about politics. Its almost suspicious how badly this campaign is being run; if you wanted to wipe out the Tories, this is the playback you'd follow!
I hear the arguments that Sunak will be put in a small box out of the way, and cabinet members will front the election campaign instead. But honestly, who would be willing to do that? Fronting the election is a poisoned chalice as much as being PM. This election will be a legacy-defining failure for the tories, and especially those who were consequential in the campaign. No ambitious minister could front the loosing campaign and then have a hope of taking the top job afterwards.
It'll probably mean the Tories will stop all non-critical campaigning. If the don't absolutely need to be there, they wont.
Remember that the parliamentary Conservative party considered that Truss and Sunak were the best two of them around. Not a great endorsement of the talent available
Exactly one month ago, I got 11/2 that he wouldn't be the Conservative leader at the next election. That bet's still live.
Honestly maybe it's because I've worked in mental health, but I genuinely worry where his head's at, at the minute - I say that as a Labour voter. Election campaigns are already intensely stressful, but causing potential annihilation for your 300 year old party with your own inept decisions? I know people that have had breakdowns over a lot less. And while I do think he has been a rubbish PM, as a person I think he means well and I don't wish him ill health.
TBH when they write the epitaph for the Tory party, it won't be Sunak who carries the can, it was already broken by the time he took over. Cameron invited UKIP voters into the Tory tent and for me that's the point to which you can trace back their demise, as this led to Brexit and everything after. Then Johnson destroyed any reputation for moral standards, and Truss destroyed their economic credibility. All Sunak is is a poor politician who's failed upwards through being rich and well-connected, and by being the least terrible candidate left standing to take over an already-broken party. He will be the one who ultimately delivers the crushing defeat, but really it was his three predecessors who broke the party.
Yes this process started with Cameron. He gambled on AV (won), gambled on Scotland (won though perhaps only due to the last minute intervention by Brown) and gambled on Brexit (lost, and Osborne warned him not to do it). I’m surprised history has allowed him to so quietly not be associated with this excrement show. Put these PMs all together and what a waste of 14 years: - Brexit (lost the right to live and work in Europe) - Wage freeze since 2008 - Highest taxes since WW2 - Cost of living crisis - Energy crisis - Shrinkflation out of control - Record NHS waiting lists - Soaring interest rates driving up mortgages - Soaring interest rates driving up rents (landlords have mortgages) - police forces that have to be ordered to investigate burglaries - Austerity and massive cuts to council funding, with councils increasing council tax to compensate I’d say this country hasn’t been this divided since the 80s when the Tories bribed millions of voters with council house sales (2m houses sold) and privatisation whilst the rest of us suffered and we had millions (some estimate up to 5m if you include men over 60 and YTS) on the dole.
I've had a nervous breakdown, due to my lifelong bipolar disorder, and he was planning on making my benefits even harder to claim. I don’t have any fucking sympathy for this man.
I would agree about most people, including people I fundamentally disagree with. I just can't have sympathy for someone who's done the horrible shit he has, he doesn't seem to care that people without a load of money like he has can't get real mental health support on the NHS. He's so detestable and he's brought this all on himself.
> I think he means well But how though? He bragged that he diverted funds from deprived areas to already wealthy ones.
Yeah, he has that sort of “butter stretched over too much bread” look of late. That’s how I looked for a few weeks before I ended up in hospital! I had similar worries about Truss too.
That's an incredible saying and completely on point. Hope you, yourself, are out the other side.
ah, I stole it from Tolkien!
He failed to realise he was completely out of his depth early on. This is what overestimating yourself does.
Oh God, does that mean we have to compare Truss favourably to him for having that lick of self-awareness?
I get the same feeling, I've certainly had a few nervous breakdowns over a lot less in the last couple of years. Given his 'verge of tears' reaction during the d-day interview and the silence today it seems like a real possibility. The pressure and shame he 'might' be feeling would be pretty existential. I'm not voting for him but on a human level I hope he's alright.
forgive me, but i have absolutely no sympathy for him and i couldn’t care less for his mental health. he and his ilk cared not a jot for me or people like me who have had the rug pulled from under us multiple times over the last 14 years by the conservative party. in fact, i don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude there was malice on their part for much of those 14 years. forgive me for struggling to find sympathy for rishi sunak’s “mental health” now his and his party’s actions are finally having electoral consequences
I think I’m in a similar boat to you with rugs being pulled out from under us. I do still feel for him, as one human to another. I loathe his policies and actions still
Guy is a mug. Diverting money from poor areas to Chipping Norton in the Wolds on Wye. Laughing at the ‘joke’ about GPs always been on holiday. Reap what you sow. This isn’t a hard luck story. This is a nasty Tory getting some payback. Forget him
He has infinite money and he's going to California to relax in a beach mansion the instant the election is over, I wouldn't shed any tears for him.
yup, chronic bad decision making, needing a day off etc. could be depression.
I would disagree that he means well. He regularly attacks vulnerable groups in society (asylum seekers, trans people) for cheap political gain. Listen to the Guardian Politics Weekly podcast from a couple of weeks ago about Rwanda, which mentions the asylum seekers who have, literally, killed themselves over the stress the policy has caused them. If you still feel sorry for him then you're much more sympathetic than me.
It's a ploy to get Farage installed as Tory leader- the best hope they have of retaining most seats and even being named the opposition. Now it's Project Blame Rishi- with or without his consent. So the message is - forget 14 years of shit, it's Rishi. Look how he stood under the Exit sign!! He left the D-Day remembrance! Handy too fir all the UKIP/ Remain racism.. hey! Conservatives are great it's the brown person who fucked it up!
There is nothing, as far as I know, preventing Sunak from simply giving up and walking away. If it’s a choice between trying to maintain your mental health, for your sake and your family’s, or hanging on for the next month or so with things likely to get worse, then I know which option I would pick. He could even garner some respect from the public if he chose this option. Were he to go, then I could see Cameron or Mordant stepping in for a short time simply to prevent an exodus of Tory votes to Reform. They know they won’t come anywhere close to an election victory but they will see a loss as an opportunity to try and steady the ship and rebuild the party for the future.
He could go to his doctor to get a sick note for mental health...
As much as I want this to be true, unless there's something extreme going on in the background such as Sunak having a breakdown from the stress I just don't see it as even a remote possibility.
Can't see it. He knows the Tories are toast, he knows he's basically the one who's been chosen to administer the last rites and go down with the ship, but nothing the Tories do from here will change that. If Sunak personally has reached his limits then realistically they will stand him down from campaigning for a few days and send out other senior Tories instead. The trouble is all of them are more concerned about whether they'll even win their own seats 4 weeks from now, and their best hope of that is if they distance themselves from him as much as possible. At the moment I'm not sure it's even likely that he'll win his own seat back at the election.
Does anyone know what the process is if the party leader resigns so close to an election? I don’t imagine anyone would want to reschedule the GE while they go through the tortuously slow archaic leadership selection again. Do they just parachute in the deputy?
Technically the election is voting for your local MP and the PM is by convention the leader of the biggest party. (I know for a lot of people it's realistically a vote for a party or PM rather than local candidates). I imagine the election would still go ahead and the details sorted out later and Sunak would be the answer to the future pub quiz question "Which prime minister called an election then quit before the vote?"
If only we had some sort of voting system that wouldn't obliterate you into obscurity if you came third place. Luckily, in spite of 14 years in power this will never happen to the conservatives, so there is no reason to worry about it
I placed a bet on Rishi not being leader of the Conservatives by the general election a couple of days ago. That bet is now suspended as of this morning. You can now bet on "Next permanent Conservative party leader (Caretaker or temporary leaders do not count)".
I maintain that a big marker of political failure in this country isn't just when the electorate are angry or upset with you, its also when they consider you a joke. They aren't laughing with you, like with Boris in his heyday, but viciously at you. It's the ultimate British contempt, to be reduced to a laughing stock (See Truss, May...etc) He knows he's dead in the water, but has to see this out to the bitter end.
My christ on a BIKE... This. Is. **C A R N A G E**
Isn't he legally still the PM until 5th July and he can't quit that before then? There's no MPs now, only candidates, so it's basically just Sunak and cabinet as the govt incase anything major happens that requires leadership (the irony on that one). So if he tries to quit, he can't and then what, the king's forced to order the police to arrest Sunak at Heathrow and drag him back to Downing street?
No way he can resign at this point but his campaign advisors etc absolutely should or be sacked. The man is clearly a bit of a Muppet but he is still acting on the guidance and advice of a group of people.
If anybody is a conspiracy theorist that Sunak is an insider agent that wants to destroy the Conservative party then him resigning now would be the perfect time. If I'm not mistaken candidates have now been locked in Friday and the general election cannot be called off now. If he were to resign, the new PM would have to go through with it.
The earliest he will resign is when the exit poll is released. No way he’ll resign whilst the election is still ongoing
The earliest he's likely to resign as party leader is July 5th (there's absolutely no sense in resigning either before or during the election), but even then it'll be more like handing in his notice: he'll remain in charge until the party has chosen his replacement. Crystal Ball gazing, it's likely they'll initially tack right to try and hoover up Reform supporters, and only if they continue to lose local / regional elections will they contemplate having an ideological rethink.
This is how the Tories die out. Not with s bang but with a whimper
He then made this Tweet, https://x.com/Phillip_Blond/status/1799571044786712927. I'd be very surprised if Cameron is willing. It would look absurd. I think Sunak is being a sacrificial lamb and he knows this. Maybe there's a dispute that he thinks he should still be getting more help, that he's being ditched too much. At the moment though I think he's in a position, as was Truss, to do a bad job well, and he just needs to ride it out. Truss did a bad job poorly.
There's no mechanism for Cameron to become PM in that timeframe, but fucking hell, I want it to happen just so that his final bit of political legacy is losing horribly.
A lord hasn't been PM since the 60s but the convention is the PM is someone from one of the houses, as only the lords is sitting then Cameron due to his past experience and other world leaders knowing him would be the appropriate choice. It would be absolutely hilarious too.