Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

At last! Transgenders are to be officially allowed access to the women-only ponds at Hampstead. There's been a bit of a scrum forming every morning, I can tell you. No decision about our ponds yet.

[Mick Harper]

A coupla naice, white middle class parents are in the dock at the Old Bailey because their son converted to Islam, aged sixteen, and went off to fight in Syria aged twenty. They are charged with aiding and abetting terrorism in that they sent him seventeen hundred pounds. They are unquestionably guilty but one can't help thinking this isn't really an Old Bailey case. Twenty quid without the option at the magistrates plus a bindover would be nearer the mark.

[Mick Harper]

Emily on Newsnight was the 124th person today complaining to some hapless Tory that the next prime minister will not be chosen by the British people. So far none of the hapless Tories has pointed out that no British prime minister has ever been selected by the British people. God save us from such an constitutionally ignorant rabble.

Speaking of which the only candidate that is even remotely humanoid is Rory Stewart so he'll be lucky to get two votes. And then only if his mum is a Tory MP.

[Mick Harper]

Before we stick too many knives into our Fallen Leader, we need the facts, ma'am, only the facts. In the absence of Brexit she would have been a perfectly adequate weak-to-middling, stubborn-but-ultimately-collegiate Prime Minister and would doubtless have won the 2022 Election if Jeremy had still been in charge of Labour.

OK, that's like saying "Churchill in the absence of the Second World War" so we need to judge her Brexit performance. Again, average. She failed, her successor will fail, everyone would have failed (except maybe a Thatcher/Churchill -- even, Gawdelpus a Boris -- type PM). For the simple reason that all the opposition parties had a fixed policy of "We are not prepared to help the Tories out of a jam just because it would help the country out of a jam" and there is a substantial Tory minority that, for reasons I still can't entirely fathom, is determined to shit on its own doorstep, come what may. And, pun apart, will have done rather a smart job since one of its number will now inherit the kingdom.

So, bye bye, dear. You did your limited best but the fates were against you.

[Wile E. Coyote]

May will be a forgotten PM, a bit like whats his name....you know the chappie, he buggered foreign policy up a bit, Suez and all that.

Outcome the same, he disappears.....we will have to pretend we have a special relationship with the US, whilst they fuck us.

Lay on your back and think of Britain.....Theresa.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley is putting himself forward, as leader...I am against plastic, global warming, and immigration, except (of course) for folks that are already here. Against austerity, for lower taxes, more help for the homeless and in favour of more owner occupation. (just not for the homeless, nope its a hostel for them).

Now which leadership to stand for? The Cons, Liberal Democrats or UKIP. Plenty of vacancies.Err maybe all three. Broad coalition and all that.

Now just need a pitch.

A once great Island, defenceless. Now surrounded by floating plastic rafts, with refugees clinging to the side, (yikes). We will stop the rising waves, we will cool the warming, we will reduce carbon emissions by introducing fracking. (stop heckling!) Eh? fracking will actually put up emissions..... Err we will cut emissions by introducing more wave power, from the lower waves....

Oh yes....

There will be more banana custard for all, just like my mother's!

[Mick Harper]

It is incorrect to say that the main parties have come out of this equally badly. It seems to me that the Tories are certain to bounce back to the status quo ante because once they have a Leave Leader and the UK has left the EU -- come Hallowe'en with or without a deal -- they will be the sole party of the right. Both Brexit and UKIP parties will functionally disappear and there is no-one else of any significance in the underbrush.

Labour will have the same leader and, with an equivocal policy to the EU, there is no such obvious bounce back factor. Their opponents, on the left, are not only legion but invigorated. No doubt the Greens, the Lib Dems and the bobtails will throttle back but brexiting itself will have no functional effect on them. Both the German and the French 'labour' parties have not been bouncing back for some time now, though elsewhere they are doing OK. It's not a done deal and with Jeremy in charge they are making it doubly difficult for themselves.

Oddly, their best bet is to go for broke and try to avoid leaving the EU at all, at least in October. But now once again the presence of Jeremy (a firm Leaver whatever he says) will probably stymie that.

[Boreades]

Maggie Simpson dominates the elections - again!

UK results



Maggie Simpson

[Mick Harper]

I have withdrawn my support from Rory Stewart on the grounds of

a) launching his leadership bid from the back of a cab on its way to Lewisham market (they don't go south of the river)
b) thinking that a Citizen's Panel will have the slightest effect on MP's
c) being rendered uncomfortable by the completely predictable 'toff question'
d) realising too late that his claim to have stayed on 500 floors in Afghanistan was a learning and humbling experience rather than a stage on the hippy trail
e) allowing his personal appearance to drift once again after making robust efforts to look at least potentially prime ministerial
f) no sense of humour
g) generally too gadflyesque.

There are no other preferred candidates at this time. The Conservative Party may have to leave Westminster without a deal.

[Mick Harper]

With both Labour and Conservative vote now spread thinly but evenly across the country they will be supporting proportional representation. The Liberal Democrats are urging the appointment of a Royal Commission to review the matter.

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Tory Leadership.

If rumours are correct, many of the electorate, ie those elderly Conservative members in the shires, actually did a Campbell, ie in the EU elections voted for a party that was not their own. (Unlike him, they have had the sense to keep quiet about it).

So as we survey the battlefield, probably a third of the army is now flying a foreign standard, a third is dejected, the remaining third is still up for a fight, but only with themselves.

The best Leader for this once Great Army, now disorganised rabble, is of course... Gove, he is prepared to stab anyone.

[Mick Harper]

Hardly 'anyone'. Like Brutus, just the one. And he was an honourable man. But, I agree, Gove is the best of a poor bunch. Also the ugliest, next to Rory, and therefore the most likely to have made it on talent.

[Mick Harper]

Poor old Trump. He gets slaughtered for having the USS John McCain moved out of sight because he hates John McCain; then, when it turns out he didn't, he gets slaughtered for creating the climate in which underlings think it should be moved just in case. Personally I blame him for not having the idea and relying on underlings to keep coming up with these classic stunts. I bet he doesn't even write his own tweets half the time. It'll never get recommissioned.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Kim Jong Un has the same problem: he is damned if he executes his negotiating team, after a failed summit, and if turns out it's fake news it's read as a sign of his personal weakness. I guess he will have to settle for sending aides to labour camps as a sort of middle way.

You wouldn't want his job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB9Zsf2kcbM

[Mick Harper]