Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

Be a bit of a blow if he was - let’s draw a line under that…

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61865032

Hmm! Rather blatant.;)

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

That had me snorting with laughter :D

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

As long as it is just laughter you are snorting with ;)

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

Rumours that Starmer will find out today if he is fined or not. If the police have waited until after the by-elections it suggests he will be.

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

They've not had his forms for very long though. Would be a big news day on top of the by-election results.

Meanwhile, Conservative Party Chairman Oliver Dowden has resigned in a 5.35am letter after the two by-election losses.
https://news.sky.com/story/double-bl...feats-12639472

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

The Tories were expected to lose the two by-elections but not on the scale they did. Especially the Liberal Democrat win, the Tories had a small hope the majority was so big they could hold it but I don't think they expected for the Liberal Democrats to win so easily.

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

Most of the time Tiverton seemed to be a narrow win for the Conservatives from the reports I had read, except yesterday when it looked likely it would fall.

Apparently, the Conservative candidate Helen Hurford was so convinced she would win that she had no concession speech ready! So she dashed out at 4am without making one and did not speak to the press.

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

Whether one likes Boris Johnson or not he is a dead man walking as these last 4 or 5 byelection defeats are very reminiscent of the John Major era..

The Conservatives need to face up to that or they are going to find it very hard to recover to win the next General Election.

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

I think the problem right now is that Boris has come to believe his own legend. The last general election victory was astonishing - of the size that is ordinarily all but impossible for an opposition to overturn in one further election. The usual expectation would be for Labour to have reduced the Tory majority in 2024 then aimed to overturn it completely in 2029.

Right now, however, the Tories seem to have forgotten that this rule of thumb can only work while the party in power is at least trying to honour all the other rules of thumb, around attempting to behave reasonably competently and accepting that major misdemeanours mandate ministerial resignations. Boris thinks he’s bulletproof and rather too many of his MPs seem to agree. If they don’t disabuse themselves of that idea pretty soon, they may find themselves making electoral history for all the wrong reasons.

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

Agreed. But Johnson will only give up power if it's wrenched away from him. He's not one to take a hint, however direct that hint might be!

And there is no obvious successor waiting in the wings as there was with Thatcher and Major and Blair and Brown. Sunak has been tarred with the Partygate brush and financial mishandling. (NI increase and windfall tax u-turn).

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

It seems pretty clear that the only hope the conservatives have of winning the next election is to ditch Boris.

Whatever public support he had (which was a lot at one point) has now gone.

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

They can only get rid of him if they change the no-confidence rules again if l am correct.

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion
 

They've already made by-election history for all the wrong reasons!

According to today's usually-restrained Daily Telegraph, Tiverton was the biggest by-election defeat in British history.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...fx7?li=BBoPWjQ

Re: Partygate & Beergate discussion