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Thursday 10 October 2024

New Tory Leader WON’T DO REALITY

As Labour gets itself mired in yet more factionalism and infighting, Keir Starmer need not worry, well, not for the next few weeks: to prove that he is the luckiest of generals, the opposition has ridden to his rescue, as the contest to lead what is left of the Tories has spat out the one name from those competing who was prepared to remain in the real world.


In the last ballot of Tory MPs before the final two candidates are offered to the party membership, James Cleverly, thought to be the front runner, was eliminated. This left a choice between a wacko, and, er, another wacko: the two names going forward to a ballot of members will be Kemi Badenoch, and Robert Jenrick, neither of whom appears to have a handle on reality.

Sadly for Jenrick, he has already been cursed by the endorsement of formerly totally out of his depth Brexit negotiator “Lord” David Frost, who memorably assertedI’m backing Liz Truss for PM to lead the talented team that will deliver for Britain … It would not be possible for me to serve under Penny Mordaunt. I don’t believe a Government led by her could succeed”.

He is backing someone prepared to flat-out lie in order to get ahead: Jenrick has asserted that in 2010, when the Tories returned to power, Britain was bankrupt. It was not. He dog-whistles about migrants including “bad people”, which, for those not yet attuned to his modus operandi, means more of those Scary Muslims™. But he has one way to stave off criticism.


And that is to follow the lead of disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who has now been called out repeatedly for lying in his new book, and has responded by getting suitably righteous and denying that he has ever lied about anything. Sadly for Bozo, and indeed Jenrick, Peter Oborne has the receipts, and has documented the lies.

But that is as nothing when put alongside the inversion of reality offered by Ms Badenoch. Like her claim thatpavement dining” was a “Brexit freedom”. Well, sorry to disappoint you Kemi fans, but eating outside, whether just for a mid morning coffee and pastries, or full meals, happens here in Portugal even in mid-October, and the country is not leaving the EU any time soon.

Indeed, across the river in Lisbon, there are food and drink outlets where most, sometimes all, seating is out on the street. But such is the Kemi Badenoch reality warp that it is, when dutifully churned over by the political editor of the Daily Mail, a “Brexit freedom”. Then there is her habit of claiming that she did not say what she actually said. As with maternity pay.


As the BBC has reported, she “has suggested maternity pay has ‘gone too far’ and the government needed to interfere less in people's lives [and] said statutory maternity pay, set up to support mothers for 39 weeks after having a baby, is a ‘function of tax’ which she called ‘excessive’ [adding] We need to have more personal responsibility - there was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies”. But maybe she didn’t.

She later said she had been ‘misrepresented’, and she was making a wider comment about cutting regulatory burdens on business”. The Beeb has helpfully set out exactly what she said, just in case. It’s almost as if some media outlets know in advance that what she says may later be denied.


The joke from a Labour source asking if Cleverly’s elimination from the Tory leadership contest can be declared as a gift is actually deadly serious. We have a main opposition party which may be about to appoint a leader who is so obsessed with dog-whistling that his policy platform is indistinguishable from Reform UK and its Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage.

And the alternative? Someone who has a habit of “off the cuff once too often”, but then becomes testy and even hostile when her “mis-speak” is pointed out. The Tories have been a wacko party ever since Bozo petulantly expelled the last remaining reality based MPs. Now they are giving their members a choice between one wacko candidate … and another wacko candidate.

The main problem is that the right wing press will consider them credible.


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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

BadasEnoch and Jerkoff?.....Pffffttt..... They've got fuck all on NotCleverly, who said far right Ronald "B movie/Senile Dickhead" Reagan is his political "hero" (read: führer).

As if it made the slightest difference which of those crime syndicate employees gets upfront. Any of them are interchangeable with Starmer/Reeves.

Ben Lapointe said...

"there was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies”. There was also a time when one working class wage could cover housing and food for a whole family of many children. There was a time whe. "Corporation houses" (before they were called council houses) had to have a minimum size, which was enough to fit a few kids in (and are worth fortunes today in private hands). So, yeah, Mrs Badenoch, I'd like to go to back to a time when parental leaves weren't needed IF wages increase enough so only one working parent is needed. But I guess it's not what she meant....

Anonymous said...

In fairness, I think what she really meant is that women should be at home being, as her right wing US hero's call them, 'homemakers'. Rather than bothering their employers with the inconvenience of taking time off to provide said employers with the next generation of workers.

Of course there is the other element, that despite having the least onerous employment and health safety laws in Western Europe, and beyond, the UKs employers still can't manage to cope with what little responsibility they have.

Were they to try their luck in say, Germany, or France, or heaven forfend, Scandinavia, they'd faint with shock at the states requirements.

What the likes of Badenoch Truss, Raab, Kendrick, Braverman and co are in fact admitting, is our businesses are in fact too inept even to handle the most modest of attempts to get them to behave like decent human beings..

Ben Lapointe said...

You're probably right about the "homemaker" fetishism. But, as usual, right wingers don't understand reality. If they want more "homemakers", this means housing cost need to go down and wages need to go up. And markets alone won't do that. So the state would need to intervene. And it's against their cult. (And I'm not even mentioning many women wouldn't want to be homemakers even if they could afford it and that many men would really enjoy being homemakers).

Anonymous said...

This is one more tedious episode in the British state all-parties soap opera. A poor man's pirated copy of the US Loony Tunes cartoon version. Soon to be replaced by AI.

Eventually the truth of this will dawn on even the most dullard dopey members of the Micawber Tendency.

Until then the ludicrous tragicomedy will continue, Starmer bots and all. A fascist protection racket run from Washington. All of it fronted by conscience-free gutless shithouses in corporate media.

It's a safe bet "Labour" red tories will lose the next election. The blue replacement will move into the corrupt rathole that is Downing Street, genuflect to Langley and its manufactured wars, announce "fiscal responsibility in place of state profligacy" and loot what remains of national assets. Assuming of course the mad bastards haven't incinerated the rest of us in a nuclear holocaust while they hide in a Hitler bunker.

That's the future and it doesn't work. Unless enough good people decide to change it.

Anonymous said...

Tbh, I've always found it amusing that the right describe socialist as loony lefties, and as any American will tell 'socialism never works'. Yet the right are so detached from reality it makes you wonder if they've collectively lost it, or they'll just spout any old crap as long as it pleases boomers and the right wing press.

The economic, so social and political reality we live in, like it or not, has been shaped by the Bedenochs of this World. But they cannot, whether through ignorance, or craven cowardice, ever admit it, or try and remedy it.

There are times these days when I wonder if I fell asleep in 1979, and ever since then I've been in a very bad dream...

Anonymous said...

Didn't you know, Tim....."misogyny" is the new "antisemite". You know, a desperate smear.

So make sure you don't attack Badenoch, Reeves, Rayner, Hodge, Mordaunt, Nokes etc etc. They're all helpless women whatever the woke feminists say.

Mind you, attacking men will make you "misandrist".......

You ol' rascal you.

Anonymous said...

Badenoch just stepped up a gear.

Having attacked the family value of maternity rights she now implies (not straight out attacks, mind) the autistic and mentally ill are, well, you know, maybe just scroungers after all. Plainly - like Stürmer - had "advice" from "sophisticated" pr bullshitters.

She's an utter ranting rightie. Wannabe Gestapo, like all Tories.

Anonymous said...

This is nothing knew with the Tory's. They've never been able to accept that Autism and depression are 'real', indeed, many on the Torys right (which means totally cuckoo these days) don't accept and mental illness unless its accompanied by a physical disability.

Matthew Parris, or the 'snake in a suit', started the whole 'the majority of Autism diagnoses are fake', bandwagon going g with a recent article in the Toryograph if memory serves.

Building on the old 'they're all scroungers really', narrative, Badenough, has added in the 'giving the feckless, pretending to be mentally disadvantaged' a leg up by, you know, simply repressing the imbalance a little, is just typical of the nanny state, woke blob, or whoever else the rights feverish fantasies have dreamed up as the reason for the mess they created.