Simon Hart was the Conservative MP for Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire from 2010 to 2024. Following a stint as secretary of state for Wales, he was appointed chief whip by Rishi Sunak in October 2022. His diary covers the ensuing 21 months until the general election.
October 24-27, 2022
I am in Central Lobby when I get a call. “Rishi Sunak”, it says on the screen. He sounds somewhere between overwhelmed, excited and grateful.
After a few niceties he says, simply and slightly awkwardly, “Will you be my chief whip?” Slightly awkwardly, I agree. I feel pride, but a sense of terror too. There is no hiding place now, no one else to blame. It’s terrifying.
I am told to report to the Old Admiralty Building at the top of Whitehall in 15 minutes to “assemble a government”.
Once the sackings are complete, we move to No 10 for the hirings.
[But] before the ink is even dry, Suella Braverman is in trouble for leaking confidential info to a backbencher, Sir John Hayes.
It was put down to lazy misuse of the internal email system.
By unhappy coincidence for Suella, there is more than one person on the parliamentary email system of the same name as Sir John’s staffer, to whom she had intended to send the “protected” information.
The other happened to be a rather good friend of mine, startled to receive such sensitive material out of the blue and rightly minded to “do the right thing” by alerting the authorities. Understandably, the PM is loath to lose her this soon, so we gloss it over, at least for now. Let’s hope she remembers.
October 31
An urgent meeting request from Matt Hancock.
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I suggest tomorrow, which to me met the definition of urgent. “I really need to see you now,” comes the response.
My heart sinking, in he comes, cheery and upbeat as ever. “I need to get permission for an extended period of absence,” Matt suggests.
Naively, I ask exactly what this means.
“A couple of months maybe.”
He then explains he has accepted a chunky fee [rumoured to be £400,000] to go on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!. I explain I would need to speak to No 10 and get back to him.
“When are you planning to leave?” I ask.
“Tonight at nine.”
“So, Matt, you aren’t so much asking me as telling me,” I suggest.
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s it really.”
• MPs vote on mobile app to make jungle life a misery for Matt Hancock
November 3
Breakfast for the new whips’ office with the PM in the cabinet room.
We have instantly been handed ongoing troubling cases of claims made against serving MPs.
The first is a longstanding case of multiple alleged rapes and coercive control by an MP against two women on the parliamentary estate.
In a separate case, it looks like the CPS is considering charging a separate former MP with child sex offences.
November 7
I am blessed with the use of a car to share with Commons leader Penny Mordaunt. On its first outing, the government car service sends a very pleasant driver who has clearly never been outside the M25 and is totally unfamiliar with the rural, unlit lanes of west Wales. We crawl along, following the verge in and out of every yard and gateway until we get to a road with white lines, where normality is restored.
November 24
The phone rings at 2.45am from a 2019’er, clearly pissed but just about coherent: “Hi, chief. Hope I haven’t woken you.” (It’s 2.45am, FFS.)
Me: “What’s up?”
Him: “I’m stuck in a brothel in Bayswater and I’ve run out of money.”
Me: “Go on…”
Him: “I met a woman as I left the Carlton Club who offered me a drink, but I now think she is a KGB agent. She wants £500 and has left me in a room with 12 naked women and a CCTV.”
Me: “Give me a few moments and I will call you back.”
Bloody hell, this is a mess. I ring Spad [special adviser] Emma. She offers to leave her house and go personally to Bayswater on an extraction mission.
I suggest not (she sounded rather disappointed).
Instead, we devise a plan to send a taxi, extract our man, return him to the safety of his own hotel. I go back to sleep.
4.10am. Phone rings again.
Me: “Are you back safely?”
Him: “Yes, but you will never guess what happened next.” (The truest thing he said all evening.)
Me: “Go on…”
Him: “Well, I slipped out of the room and saw the taxi Emma ordered across the road, so I legged it over and jumped in. However, it turned out it was a different taxi being driven by an Afghan agent called Ahmed.”
Me: “So…”
Him: “Well, he demanded £3,000 for a blow job.”
Me: “And?”
Him: “I legged it back to the hotel and locked the door.”
December 13
Late night “catch-up” pizza with Downing Street aides upstairs in No 10. Joined by the PM, who wanted above all to make sure we tidied the room afterwards. He also wanted to know my most interesting whipping experience so far, so I told him the brothel story. Poor Rishi — he doesn’t believe such things happen.
He is refreshingly straight-laced and tends to see the good in most people. He should work in the whips’ office for a day and that would soon change.
December 20
A suitably straight-faced and standard ministerial security brief reminds us that on no account should we engage in a chat with any unusually beautiful Chinese women (or men, I guess), to which [Scottish secretary] Alister Jack added, “If you think you are punching above your weight, ask yourself why.”
My phone would be a fascinating mine of information.
January 11, 2023
Just before PMQs we get a call to say one of our MPs, Andrew Bridgen, has made a Twitter connection between the vaccine rollout and the Holocaust. No 10 is initially inclined to “demand an apology” but due to Bridgen being an utter knob, we agree the more decisive and meaningful course of action is to suspend the whip with “immediate effect”. The antivaxers go spare; to them our move confirms the Deep State is at work. The reality is he is a malevolent creep whom nobody likes, and we really don’t need him in our party. A massive cheer goes up in the whips’ office when I tell them.
January 19
There is a gathering army of MPs agitated about asylum seeker accommodation being set up in their local towns. They all blame [immigration minister Robert] Jenrick, who looks and sounds increasingly beleaguered. Jenrick thinks the Home Office (HO) doesn’t give a shit whether the scheme works or if our people are offended. In fact, it looks like the HO has deliberately chosen hotels in Tory-leaning areas.
January 30
I get a call from Simon Case, the cabinet secretary. He is concerned certain MPs are being overtly rude about civil servants (at least our people are doing it on the record) and asks, “Could you find a way of getting people to dial back a bit?”
He asserts if there’s “open season” — in which MPs and ministers blame all our problems on the civil service — then we could trigger a go-slow on areas of controversial legislation. In other words, if you are rude to the waiters, don’t be surprised if they eventually spit in your food.
There is also an irony in his comments given the propensity of civil servants to leak shitty stories to the media. We are in a vicious circle, but there are more of them than us.
February 1
Dinner at the Hurlingham Club. Learnt a senior married MP got a bit fruity with a journalist, suggesting her “lovely dress would look better discarded on my bedroom floor”. Groan…
February 6
[Reshuffle day] One lucky cabinet appointee is less grateful than her promotion deserves and more entitled than professionals should be when selected by the PM for high office. “Let’s all agree about one thing,” says the PM. “She is f***ing useless but we can’t get rid of her.”
February 8
The government car service is now becoming a fixation of mine. This time it is the issue of the latest driver’s endless yawning after we had been on the road a few hours, which culminated in the car going so slowly I thought we had actually broken down. I am told not to worry as it was probably the “same guy who couldn’t find the duty-free on the Woolwich ferry”.
And that’s not all. I also hear of a driver whose car was booked by a traffic warden outside a church, fully “ribboned up”, as he was moonlighting as a wedding driver with one of the government Jags.
March 30
As the misconduct stories worsen, I go to see the Speaker about access to the estate by MPs under investigation. There isn’t much he can do. We are powerless to do any more than withdraw the whip.
One of our new, younger whips arrives at the office with a broken rib, apparently the result of an energetic night with his new girlfriend. Oh, to be young again! He is mercilessly teased, but then he shouldn’t have been so honest as to the cause of his discomfort.
April 5
Blackpool MP Scott Benton is “stung” by The Times, offering to ask questions and provide information for money. Unlike some of our cases, this one doesn’t seem to have an innocent explanation, unless rank stupidity is included.
April 26
I really need to see the PM to explain why Suella is not his friend. The problem we have is that the whips’ office is seeing the real Suella but No 10 sees the more house-trained version. We see the leaks, the tearoom briefings and the general lack of solidarity. Troublesome MPs think we don’t know, but fail to understand that almost everyone is talkative. They all tell a friend, who tells a friend who tells a journalist, or even a whip.
A reception in Westminster Hall for the King and Queen. MPs and peers arranged in small manageable groups for a quick handshake and a few moments of instantly forgettable banter — or at least, that was the plan.
Instead, it became a scrum with some MPs manoeuvring themselves so they could have a second or even third attempt at a selfie or, in examples of very poor form, monopolising the King, which included, in one notable instance, producing an envelope of poetry to read.
June 7-8
Harriet Harman calls by to tell me her privileges committee will publish the report into Boris [Johnson] on June 29 and hand it to him on Friday at noon. It will recommend a 20-day suspension, which will almost certainly result in a recall motion and by-election. Brace for impact.
I speak to BoJo, who is questioning whether there is any procedural route by which we can kill off the report or at least vote it down.
In any normal circumstances, a former PM asking for special treatment would be a big deal but this being Boris, it doesn’t surprise me at all.
Worryingly, it doesn’t even annoy me that much either.
So I remind him, as nicely as I can, that it was he who set up this process, he who approved its terms of reference and he who accepted Harriet Harman as its chair.
“But I was in India and I wasn’t concentrating,” comes the reply. “I left it all to the whips.” Not sure that will wash, even if it were true.
June 14
Embarrassment over in No 10 as the prime minister goes on a “dawn raid” with the Border Force with a view to getting some “man of action” photos of the PM arresting illegal immigrants. Everyone lines up as planned and hammers down the doors only to find the bleary-eyed occupants had all the correct permissions and paperwork. Whoever in the Home Office signed that off needs a quiet word. They never miss a chance to f*** up.
July 6
The standards committee publishes its report on Chris Pincher (accused of groping a young man), concluding with an eight-week suspension. He is finished. On the face of it, the sentence seems unbelievably harsh given he has lost his job, all his money and most of his friends. On the other hand, maybe we are all discovering that “squeezing people’s arses” is not acceptable, however fleetingly or however drunken the circumstances.
July 19
It’s about 9pm and we are mid-meeting in the PM’s office when his phone rings. We sit in silence as he has a rather oblique conversation with someone in which he tells them to “take the package to the black gates halfway up Whitehall and someone will meet you”. Faintly alarmed, Rupert [Yorke, deputy chief of staff] asks him to explain and it turns out to be his Nando’s order as he hadn’t eaten all day. Rupert reminds him that as PM he can ask other people to do that kind of thing, but he seemed rather hurt by the suggestion.
October 22
Veteran MP Peter Bone [Wellingborough] rings to say he is about to be suspended for six weeks (triggering yet another recall petition) for bullying a young lad in his employment over the past ten years or so. He says it’s all a bit of a misunderstanding, but the allegations include the suggestion they shared a hotel room together ten years ago while on a trip to Madrid. Peter was 60 and the lad was not yet 25, so the claims he exposed himself and had a habit of making the lad sit with his hands between Peter’s legs as punishment for wrongdoing will eliminate much chance of any public sympathy. He is very calm and utterly convinced of his own innocence. Anyway, as per usual, whip suspended.
October 25
An urgent summons to the Speaker’s office, which is never a good sign especially when head of commons security Alison Giles is there too.
The news is that Crispin Blunt [Reigate] has been arrested on suspicion of rape, incitement to rape and possession of class A drugs. Will this ever stop? Crispin is a former army officer. The whips’ office cannot think of a more unlikely perpetrator of this kind of crime, thus already revealing a degree of unconscious bias.
October 31
Among today’s HR joys is the report that a departmental Spad went to an orgy over the weekend and ended up taking a crap on another person’s head.
To make matters worse, in a separate incident a House employee went to a party dressed as Jimmy Savile and ended up having sex with a blow-up doll, for which he has been subsequently dismissed. Just another day at the office, I guess.
November 13
RS rings Suella [to sack her in the reshuffle]. After some token pleasantries all hell breaks loose. He puts her on speakerphone and everybody is listening in around the table, laden with discarded notes, open packets of No 10 biscuits and half-drunk cups of coffee.
Once RS has made clear his intentions, there comes this ghastly ten-minute diatribe of vindictive and personal bile.
It’s hard to know how to react at moments like this, or where to look. Part of me feels that this is a private call and that we are all eavesdropping, but the other part realises that for the protection of the PM and the government there needs to be a note taken and a record saved. So, we sit in astonished silence, doing our best not to grimace, smile or give any indication of what we feel.
November 27
Dr Caroline Johnson [Sleaford and North Hykeham] comes to berate me. Her purpose: to raise the two key questions of “felching” and solar panels, topics that rarely feature in the same sentence. Apparently, she explains, the rather unusual practice of felching is being taught to kids who are too young to be subjected to that kind of thing.
The good doctor has a point and is on the warpath, so I promise to raise felching (and solar farms) at the highest level.
February 1, 2024
Off we go to the honours committee again. It’s a much feistier meeting than last time. One prominent Labour MP seeking an upgrade to his knighthood gets defeated — rightly. One of our chaps’ CBE campaign gets similar short shrift by the lay members. I really don’t know what he’s done, but something he shouldn’t have on a foreign trip by all accounts, so that’s him done for.
February 20
Kemi pops in for a chat about trans stuff — I try, but I cannot find a mutually useable wavelength. She is another one who lives in a permanent state of outrage. It must be so tiring.
February 26
A Times journo is sniffing round a story in which one of our MPs (Mark Menzies, Fylde) has allegedly managed to acquire thousands of pounds from a campaign account to pay two dodgy blackmailers who were holding him hostage in the middle of the night (not another one).
The elderly lady who had control of the association’s campaign account thinks it was a loan and the MP in question believes it to be a donation. Either way, it smells fishy. CCHQ starts an investigation. The story involved a lot of money, and I am quite certain the intention of donors and members was not for the cash to be used like this.
April 16
RS and I have a late night one-to-one. He confesses to being fed up on occasions but still determined. He is not certain how or even whether he would contest a confidence vote, for reasons of pride, I guess. We talk about what we might have done differently, whom we wished we had sacked earlier, but neither of us are sure anything would have made much difference in the end. We are nearly 15 years in and on our fifth PM. We have lived through a pandemic and a war in mainland Europe. It’s a miracle we are still standing at all.
April 30
Met one of our 2019 colleagues who resides in a safe seat. They want to trade the seat for the House of Lords. “Give me a peerage and I will give up my safe seat,” they say.
Me: “Sorry, that’s not really on the table.”
Them: “Well, you are all bastards and this is unfair.”
I explain the Lords is not a right, especially for people who have made a rather modest impression over their four-and-a-half-year stint. Another example of the sense of entitlement that has crept into our world and for which we are now paying a heavy price.
May 22
General election announcement day. We have made it, just about. We are wounded, but still alive. Journos descend on No 10. The rest of us stand nervously in the cabinet room huddled around the big screen. The speech itself is decent and respectful but the rain hammers down, turning RS’s suit into a shiny sodden mess. (I’m not sure what happened to the wet-weather plan we discussed only yesterday.)
May 30
CCHQ is in candidate overdrive. We have roughly 160 seats to fill by June 7. Off to the research department for a propriety check. We do 30 a day at least. Some good, some awful and inevitably a fair few fail the vetting process.
Dick pictures mainly, but also inappropriate comments on X and a few dodgy financials.
In one assessment, aides are required to judge whether a candidate’s defence that a photo of his penis had been sent in error to a contact, rather than his doctor as intended, is enough to allow him to apply for seats. It isn’t.
July 4-5 (election day)
I sit out the final moments of my Commons career in my friend John Kilcoyne’s Range Rover [in the car park of Llanelli leisure centre while Hart’s count is taking place], watching the news reports of a Labour landslide as each return is declared. It is brutal, but we all know how this goes.
With formalities concluded [Hart loses his seat in Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire] and as the early morning light starts to show, John and I head for London, for there is one important task still to complete.
At around 9am, we congregate in the hall of No 10 to “clap out” Rishi and Akshata. And with that we are instructed to place our passes in the cardboard box and leave the building.
Stop voting for fucking Tories
This is rather brilliant, extracts from Simon Harts book
All the money you made will never buy back your soul
Brilliant stuffSlick wrote: Wed Feb 19, 2025 1:22 pm This is rather brilliant, extracts from Simon Harts book
SpoilerShowSimon Hart was the Conservative MP for Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire from 2010 to 2024. Following a stint as secretary of state for Wales, he was appointed chief whip by Rishi Sunak in October 2022. His diary covers the ensuing 21 months until the general election.
October 24-27, 2022
I am in Central Lobby when I get a call. “Rishi Sunak”, it says on the screen. He sounds somewhere between overwhelmed, excited and grateful.
After a few niceties he says, simply and slightly awkwardly, “Will you be my chief whip?” Slightly awkwardly, I agree. I feel pride, but a sense of terror too. There is no hiding place now, no one else to blame. It’s terrifying.
I am told to report to the Old Admiralty Building at the top of Whitehall in 15 minutes to “assemble a government”.
Once the sackings are complete, we move to No 10 for the hirings.
[But] before the ink is even dry, Suella Braverman is in trouble for leaking confidential info to a backbencher, Sir John Hayes.
It was put down to lazy misuse of the internal email system.
By unhappy coincidence for Suella, there is more than one person on the parliamentary email system of the same name as Sir John’s staffer, to whom she had intended to send the “protected” information.
The other happened to be a rather good friend of mine, startled to receive such sensitive material out of the blue and rightly minded to “do the right thing” by alerting the authorities. Understandably, the PM is loath to lose her this soon, so we gloss it over, at least for now. Let’s hope she remembers.
October 31
An urgent meeting request from Matt Hancock.
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I suggest tomorrow, which to me met the definition of urgent. “I really need to see you now,” comes the response.
My heart sinking, in he comes, cheery and upbeat as ever. “I need to get permission for an extended period of absence,” Matt suggests.
Naively, I ask exactly what this means.
“A couple of months maybe.”
He then explains he has accepted a chunky fee [rumoured to be £400,000] to go on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!. I explain I would need to speak to No 10 and get back to him.
“When are you planning to leave?” I ask.
“Tonight at nine.”
“So, Matt, you aren’t so much asking me as telling me,” I suggest.
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s it really.”
• MPs vote on mobile app to make jungle life a misery for Matt Hancock
November 3
Breakfast for the new whips’ office with the PM in the cabinet room.
We have instantly been handed ongoing troubling cases of claims made against serving MPs.
The first is a longstanding case of multiple alleged rapes and coercive control by an MP against two women on the parliamentary estate.
In a separate case, it looks like the CPS is considering charging a separate former MP with child sex offences.
November 7
I am blessed with the use of a car to share with Commons leader Penny Mordaunt. On its first outing, the government car service sends a very pleasant driver who has clearly never been outside the M25 and is totally unfamiliar with the rural, unlit lanes of west Wales. We crawl along, following the verge in and out of every yard and gateway until we get to a road with white lines, where normality is restored.
November 24
The phone rings at 2.45am from a 2019’er, clearly pissed but just about coherent: “Hi, chief. Hope I haven’t woken you.” (It’s 2.45am, FFS.)
Me: “What’s up?”
Him: “I’m stuck in a brothel in Bayswater and I’ve run out of money.”
Me: “Go on…”
Him: “I met a woman as I left the Carlton Club who offered me a drink, but I now think she is a KGB agent. She wants £500 and has left me in a room with 12 naked women and a CCTV.”
Me: “Give me a few moments and I will call you back.”
Bloody hell, this is a mess. I ring Spad [special adviser] Emma. She offers to leave her house and go personally to Bayswater on an extraction mission.
I suggest not (she sounded rather disappointed).
Instead, we devise a plan to send a taxi, extract our man, return him to the safety of his own hotel. I go back to sleep.
4.10am. Phone rings again.
Me: “Are you back safely?”
Him: “Yes, but you will never guess what happened next.” (The truest thing he said all evening.)
Me: “Go on…”
Him: “Well, I slipped out of the room and saw the taxi Emma ordered across the road, so I legged it over and jumped in. However, it turned out it was a different taxi being driven by an Afghan agent called Ahmed.”
Me: “So…”
Him: “Well, he demanded £3,000 for a blow job.”
Me: “And?”
Him: “I legged it back to the hotel and locked the door.”
December 13
Late night “catch-up” pizza with Downing Street aides upstairs in No 10. Joined by the PM, who wanted above all to make sure we tidied the room afterwards. He also wanted to know my most interesting whipping experience so far, so I told him the brothel story. Poor Rishi — he doesn’t believe such things happen.
He is refreshingly straight-laced and tends to see the good in most people. He should work in the whips’ office for a day and that would soon change.
December 20
A suitably straight-faced and standard ministerial security brief reminds us that on no account should we engage in a chat with any unusually beautiful Chinese women (or men, I guess), to which [Scottish secretary] Alister Jack added, “If you think you are punching above your weight, ask yourself why.”
My phone would be a fascinating mine of information.
January 11, 2023
Just before PMQs we get a call to say one of our MPs, Andrew Bridgen, has made a Twitter connection between the vaccine rollout and the Holocaust. No 10 is initially inclined to “demand an apology” but due to Bridgen being an utter knob, we agree the more decisive and meaningful course of action is to suspend the whip with “immediate effect”. The antivaxers go spare; to them our move confirms the Deep State is at work. The reality is he is a malevolent creep whom nobody likes, and we really don’t need him in our party. A massive cheer goes up in the whips’ office when I tell them.
January 19
There is a gathering army of MPs agitated about asylum seeker accommodation being set up in their local towns. They all blame [immigration minister Robert] Jenrick, who looks and sounds increasingly beleaguered. Jenrick thinks the Home Office (HO) doesn’t give a shit whether the scheme works or if our people are offended. In fact, it looks like the HO has deliberately chosen hotels in Tory-leaning areas.
January 30
I get a call from Simon Case, the cabinet secretary. He is concerned certain MPs are being overtly rude about civil servants (at least our people are doing it on the record) and asks, “Could you find a way of getting people to dial back a bit?”
He asserts if there’s “open season” — in which MPs and ministers blame all our problems on the civil service — then we could trigger a go-slow on areas of controversial legislation. In other words, if you are rude to the waiters, don’t be surprised if they eventually spit in your food.
There is also an irony in his comments given the propensity of civil servants to leak shitty stories to the media. We are in a vicious circle, but there are more of them than us.
February 1
Dinner at the Hurlingham Club. Learnt a senior married MP got a bit fruity with a journalist, suggesting her “lovely dress would look better discarded on my bedroom floor”. Groan…
February 6
[Reshuffle day] One lucky cabinet appointee is less grateful than her promotion deserves and more entitled than professionals should be when selected by the PM for high office. “Let’s all agree about one thing,” says the PM. “She is f***ing useless but we can’t get rid of her.”
February 8
The government car service is now becoming a fixation of mine. This time it is the issue of the latest driver’s endless yawning after we had been on the road a few hours, which culminated in the car going so slowly I thought we had actually broken down. I am told not to worry as it was probably the “same guy who couldn’t find the duty-free on the Woolwich ferry”.
And that’s not all. I also hear of a driver whose car was booked by a traffic warden outside a church, fully “ribboned up”, as he was moonlighting as a wedding driver with one of the government Jags.
March 30
As the misconduct stories worsen, I go to see the Speaker about access to the estate by MPs under investigation. There isn’t much he can do. We are powerless to do any more than withdraw the whip.
One of our new, younger whips arrives at the office with a broken rib, apparently the result of an energetic night with his new girlfriend. Oh, to be young again! He is mercilessly teased, but then he shouldn’t have been so honest as to the cause of his discomfort.
April 5
Blackpool MP Scott Benton is “stung” by The Times, offering to ask questions and provide information for money. Unlike some of our cases, this one doesn’t seem to have an innocent explanation, unless rank stupidity is included.
April 26
I really need to see the PM to explain why Suella is not his friend. The problem we have is that the whips’ office is seeing the real Suella but No 10 sees the more house-trained version. We see the leaks, the tearoom briefings and the general lack of solidarity. Troublesome MPs think we don’t know, but fail to understand that almost everyone is talkative. They all tell a friend, who tells a friend who tells a journalist, or even a whip.
A reception in Westminster Hall for the King and Queen. MPs and peers arranged in small manageable groups for a quick handshake and a few moments of instantly forgettable banter — or at least, that was the plan.
Instead, it became a scrum with some MPs manoeuvring themselves so they could have a second or even third attempt at a selfie or, in examples of very poor form, monopolising the King, which included, in one notable instance, producing an envelope of poetry to read.
June 7-8
Harriet Harman calls by to tell me her privileges committee will publish the report into Boris [Johnson] on June 29 and hand it to him on Friday at noon. It will recommend a 20-day suspension, which will almost certainly result in a recall motion and by-election. Brace for impact.
I speak to BoJo, who is questioning whether there is any procedural route by which we can kill off the report or at least vote it down.
In any normal circumstances, a former PM asking for special treatment would be a big deal but this being Boris, it doesn’t surprise me at all.
Worryingly, it doesn’t even annoy me that much either.
So I remind him, as nicely as I can, that it was he who set up this process, he who approved its terms of reference and he who accepted Harriet Harman as its chair.
“But I was in India and I wasn’t concentrating,” comes the reply. “I left it all to the whips.” Not sure that will wash, even if it were true.
June 14
Embarrassment over in No 10 as the prime minister goes on a “dawn raid” with the Border Force with a view to getting some “man of action” photos of the PM arresting illegal immigrants. Everyone lines up as planned and hammers down the doors only to find the bleary-eyed occupants had all the correct permissions and paperwork. Whoever in the Home Office signed that off needs a quiet word. They never miss a chance to f*** up.
July 6
The standards committee publishes its report on Chris Pincher (accused of groping a young man), concluding with an eight-week suspension. He is finished. On the face of it, the sentence seems unbelievably harsh given he has lost his job, all his money and most of his friends. On the other hand, maybe we are all discovering that “squeezing people’s arses” is not acceptable, however fleetingly or however drunken the circumstances.
July 19
It’s about 9pm and we are mid-meeting in the PM’s office when his phone rings. We sit in silence as he has a rather oblique conversation with someone in which he tells them to “take the package to the black gates halfway up Whitehall and someone will meet you”. Faintly alarmed, Rupert [Yorke, deputy chief of staff] asks him to explain and it turns out to be his Nando’s order as he hadn’t eaten all day. Rupert reminds him that as PM he can ask other people to do that kind of thing, but he seemed rather hurt by the suggestion.
October 22
Veteran MP Peter Bone [Wellingborough] rings to say he is about to be suspended for six weeks (triggering yet another recall petition) for bullying a young lad in his employment over the past ten years or so. He says it’s all a bit of a misunderstanding, but the allegations include the suggestion they shared a hotel room together ten years ago while on a trip to Madrid. Peter was 60 and the lad was not yet 25, so the claims he exposed himself and had a habit of making the lad sit with his hands between Peter’s legs as punishment for wrongdoing will eliminate much chance of any public sympathy. He is very calm and utterly convinced of his own innocence. Anyway, as per usual, whip suspended.
October 25
An urgent summons to the Speaker’s office, which is never a good sign especially when head of commons security Alison Giles is there too.
The news is that Crispin Blunt [Reigate] has been arrested on suspicion of rape, incitement to rape and possession of class A drugs. Will this ever stop? Crispin is a former army officer. The whips’ office cannot think of a more unlikely perpetrator of this kind of crime, thus already revealing a degree of unconscious bias.
October 31
Among today’s HR joys is the report that a departmental Spad went to an orgy over the weekend and ended up taking a crap on another person’s head.
To make matters worse, in a separate incident a House employee went to a party dressed as Jimmy Savile and ended up having sex with a blow-up doll, for which he has been subsequently dismissed. Just another day at the office, I guess.
November 13
RS rings Suella [to sack her in the reshuffle]. After some token pleasantries all hell breaks loose. He puts her on speakerphone and everybody is listening in around the table, laden with discarded notes, open packets of No 10 biscuits and half-drunk cups of coffee.
Once RS has made clear his intentions, there comes this ghastly ten-minute diatribe of vindictive and personal bile.
It’s hard to know how to react at moments like this, or where to look. Part of me feels that this is a private call and that we are all eavesdropping, but the other part realises that for the protection of the PM and the government there needs to be a note taken and a record saved. So, we sit in astonished silence, doing our best not to grimace, smile or give any indication of what we feel.
November 27
Dr Caroline Johnson [Sleaford and North Hykeham] comes to berate me. Her purpose: to raise the two key questions of “felching” and solar panels, topics that rarely feature in the same sentence. Apparently, she explains, the rather unusual practice of felching is being taught to kids who are too young to be subjected to that kind of thing.
The good doctor has a point and is on the warpath, so I promise to raise felching (and solar farms) at the highest level.
February 1, 2024
Off we go to the honours committee again. It’s a much feistier meeting than last time. One prominent Labour MP seeking an upgrade to his knighthood gets defeated — rightly. One of our chaps’ CBE campaign gets similar short shrift by the lay members. I really don’t know what he’s done, but something he shouldn’t have on a foreign trip by all accounts, so that’s him done for.
February 20
Kemi pops in for a chat about trans stuff — I try, but I cannot find a mutually useable wavelength. She is another one who lives in a permanent state of outrage. It must be so tiring.
February 26
A Times journo is sniffing round a story in which one of our MPs (Mark Menzies, Fylde) has allegedly managed to acquire thousands of pounds from a campaign account to pay two dodgy blackmailers who were holding him hostage in the middle of the night (not another one).
The elderly lady who had control of the association’s campaign account thinks it was a loan and the MP in question believes it to be a donation. Either way, it smells fishy. CCHQ starts an investigation. The story involved a lot of money, and I am quite certain the intention of donors and members was not for the cash to be used like this.
April 16
RS and I have a late night one-to-one. He confesses to being fed up on occasions but still determined. He is not certain how or even whether he would contest a confidence vote, for reasons of pride, I guess. We talk about what we might have done differently, whom we wished we had sacked earlier, but neither of us are sure anything would have made much difference in the end. We are nearly 15 years in and on our fifth PM. We have lived through a pandemic and a war in mainland Europe. It’s a miracle we are still standing at all.
April 30
Met one of our 2019 colleagues who resides in a safe seat. They want to trade the seat for the House of Lords. “Give me a peerage and I will give up my safe seat,” they say.
Me: “Sorry, that’s not really on the table.”
Them: “Well, you are all bastards and this is unfair.”
I explain the Lords is not a right, especially for people who have made a rather modest impression over their four-and-a-half-year stint. Another example of the sense of entitlement that has crept into our world and for which we are now paying a heavy price.
May 22
General election announcement day. We have made it, just about. We are wounded, but still alive. Journos descend on No 10. The rest of us stand nervously in the cabinet room huddled around the big screen. The speech itself is decent and respectful but the rain hammers down, turning RS’s suit into a shiny sodden mess. (I’m not sure what happened to the wet-weather plan we discussed only yesterday.)
May 30
CCHQ is in candidate overdrive. We have roughly 160 seats to fill by June 7. Off to the research department for a propriety check. We do 30 a day at least. Some good, some awful and inevitably a fair few fail the vetting process.
Dick pictures mainly, but also inappropriate comments on X and a few dodgy financials.
In one assessment, aides are required to judge whether a candidate’s defence that a photo of his penis had been sent in error to a contact, rather than his doctor as intended, is enough to allow him to apply for seats. It isn’t.
July 4-5 (election day)
I sit out the final moments of my Commons career in my friend John Kilcoyne’s Range Rover [in the car park of Llanelli leisure centre while Hart’s count is taking place], watching the news reports of a Labour landslide as each return is declared. It is brutal, but we all know how this goes.
With formalities concluded [Hart loses his seat in Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire] and as the early morning light starts to show, John and I head for London, for there is one important task still to complete.
At around 9am, we congregate in the hall of No 10 to “clap out” Rishi and Akshata. And with that we are instructed to place our passes in the cardboard box and leave the building.
When is it publ;ished?
The blonde cunt will be on Only Fans next!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2 ... photo-opBoris Johnson is charging £121 for a handshake and a photograph before a live event in Edinburgh.
The former Conservative prime minister will appear at the Usher Hall on 2 September for an event titled An Evening with Boris Johnson, which will also allow guests to take part in a question and answer session.
Audience members are charged separately for a meet-and-greet ticket in addition to tickets for listening to him speak, which range from £53.90 to £159.90, with the higher price guaranteeing VIP seats.
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Hal Jordan
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Shouldn't have read that in the office, I lost it at the revelations of the head-crapping orgy goer.
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inactionman
- Posts: 3398
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I can just see some Civil Servant giggling as they were setting that up for a fall.Embarrassment over in No 10 as the prime minister goes on a “dawn raid” with the Border Force with a view to getting some “man of action” photos of the PM arresting illegal immigrants. Everyone lines up as planned and hammers down the doors only to find the bleary-eyed occupants had all the correct permissions and paperwork. Whoever in the Home Office signed that off needs a quiet word. They never miss a chance to f*** up.
The whole thing reads like The Office meets The Thick of It. I do detect some sympathy for Sunak, and Braverman sounds every inch the horrific arsehole most people had her marked down as.
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tabascoboy
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And in a surprise to no-oneSlick wrote: Wed Feb 19, 2025 1:59 pm It says the book is out on the 27th Feb.
Loved this line:
Kemi pops in for a chat about trans stuff — I try, but I cannot find a mutually useable wavelength
RS rings Suella [to sack her in the reshuffle]. After some token pleasantries all hell breaks loose. He puts her on speakerphone and everybody is listening in around the table, laden with discarded notes, open packets of No 10 biscuits and half-drunk cups of coffee.
Once RS has made clear his intentions, there comes this ghastly ten-minute diatribe of vindictive and personal bile.
It’s hard to know how to react at moments like this, or where to look. Part of me feels that this is a private call and that we are all eavesdropping, but the other part realises that for the protection of the PM and the government there needs to be a note taken and a record saved. So, we sit in astonished silence, doing our best not to grimace, smile or give any indication of what we feel.
It's easy to understand why Armando Ianucci says it'd be impossible to write The Thick of It now.inactionman wrote: Wed Feb 19, 2025 2:08 pm
I can just see some Civil Servant giggling as they were setting that up for a fall.Embarrassment over in No 10 as the prime minister goes on a “dawn raid” with the Border Force with a view to getting some “man of action” photos of the PM arresting illegal immigrants. Everyone lines up as planned and hammers down the doors only to find the bleary-eyed occupants had all the correct permissions and paperwork. Whoever in the Home Office signed that off needs a quiet word. They never miss a chance to f*** up.
The whole thing reads like The Office meets The Thick of It. I do detect some sympathy for Sunak, and Braverman sounds every inch the horrific arsehole most people had her marked down as.
And are there two g’s in Bugger Off?
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sockwithaticket
- Posts: 9227
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The real takeaway from that is how deeply unprofessional so many of them were and how little recourse there is to actually discipline MPs.
Which isn't particularly revelatory, but increasingly I feel that there needs to be some sort of centralised HR overseeing MPs and nothing in that excerpt has changed my mind. Something quicker and more effective than the existing complaints process (that takes months if not years over allegations of sexual impropriety towards non-MPs working at the Palace of Westminster).
Which isn't particularly revelatory, but increasingly I feel that there needs to be some sort of centralised HR overseeing MPs and nothing in that excerpt has changed my mind. Something quicker and more effective than the existing complaints process (that takes months if not years over allegations of sexual impropriety towards non-MPs working at the Palace of Westminster).
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mat the expat
- Posts: 1552
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I'd opened a new tab to quote itSlick wrote: Wed Feb 19, 2025 1:59 pm It says the book is out on the 27th Feb.
Loved this line:
Kemi pops in for a chat about trans stuff — I try, but I cannot find a mutually useable wavelength
You can feel the exhaustion
Badenoch had another 'mare at PMQ's today. She really is useless at it thanks to what aappears to be a mixture of arogant overconfidence on her part and a complete lack of preparation.SaintK wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2025 11:54 amShe's coming out with all the guff that Frog Face uses in a bid to court Trump and Vance.Biffer wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2025 11:46 am Badenoch claiming that fiscal weakness led to the fall of the Roman Empire. Jolly good.
Though when the main Tory cheer leading website comes out with a leading article like this you have to wonder just how long she'''ll be around?https://conservativehome.com/2025/02/ ... e-party/Does Kemi Badenoch actually want to lead the Conservative Party?
This seems a bizarre question to ask. After all, it’s not that easy to climb the greasy pole. Even with her lackadaisical approach to campaigning for the job, Badenoch still needed to win over enough MPs and party members to to the top. Then again, she was run far closer than two years as the frontrunner might have led one to expect her to be. The Movement is losing its touch.
One of Starmer's come backs after sshe congratulated him on taking her advice on the aid budget
I’m going to have to let the leader of the opposition down gently. She didn’t feature in my thinking at all.
I was so busy over the weekend I didn’t even see her proposal. I think she’s appointed herself, I think saviour of the western civilisation. It’s a desperate search for relevance.
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Rhubarb & Custard
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What Badenoch is trying to tee up is £20-30 million in funding per annum coming from special interests in the USA, and just as importably lock that funding away from Reform
Brvaerman now saying she can never really be English because she's brown. She's not complaining abut racism here, she's saying what she believes to be true.
How far down the rabbit hole do you have to get, and how little respect for yourself must you have, to do this?
How far down the rabbit hole do you have to get, and how little respect for yourself must you have, to do this?
And are there two g’s in Bugger Off?
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tabascoboy
- Posts: 6803
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Biffer wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:31 am Brvaerman now saying she can never really be English because she's brown. She's not complaining abut racism here, she's saying what she believes to be true.
How far down the rabbit hole do you have to get, and how little respect for yourself must you have, to do this?
To be completely fair, as much as it sticks in my craw, I could say exactly the same thing. British yes, English no.Braverman says: "...I don’t feel English because I have no generational ties to English soil, no ancestral stories tied to the towns or villages of this land..."
The problem with Braverman is not though whether or not she or anyone else considers if she is English, but simply being a useless opportunist shitwitch
Last edited by tabascoboy on Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Paddington Bear
- Posts: 6648
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- Location: Hertfordshire
English is both an ethnicity and a nationality, some of us possess both, some don’t
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember with advantages, What feats he did that day
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Rhubarb & Custard
- Posts: 2346
- Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:04 pm
How many might know what the Conservative Party is and what country it operates in.Sandstorm wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:10 am If I was American and a MAGA supporter, I might say that there's too much DEI in the Conservative Party at present. But I'm not.
Anyway, it might be like the brown/female hires Trump has made, useful cover.
Pretty much your last line 100%, doubt there are many people left in UK who are really upset about someone’s colour or English or British or Scot’s or whatever, but being useless bastards is far more of a worry. Islamophobia is a whole different kettle of fish however, Reform have been clever in that respect to hoover up ukip bnp votes without being seen to be bigots themselves , ‘look who our chairman is ‘ etctabascoboy wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:08 amBiffer wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:31 am Brvaerman now saying she can never really be English because she's brown. She's not complaining abut racism here, she's saying what she believes to be true.
How far down the rabbit hole do you have to get, and how little respect for yourself must you have, to do this?To be completely fair, as much as it sticks in my craw, I could say exactly the same thing. British yes, English no.Braverman says: "...I don’t feel English because I have no generational ties to English soil, no ancestral stories tied to the towns or villages of this land..."
The problem with Braverman is not though whether or not she or anyone else considers if she is English, but simply being a useless opportunist shitwitch
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sockwithaticket
- Posts: 9227
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From what I heard on Politics Joe, Labour took the decision on friday and Badenoch's 'proposal' was sent in on saturday.SaintK wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2025 1:43 pmBadenoch had another 'mare at PMQ's today. She really is useless at it thanks to what aappears to be a mixture of arogant overconfidence on her part and a complete lack of preparation.SaintK wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2025 11:54 amShe's coming out with all the guff that Frog Face uses in a bid to court Trump and Vance.Biffer wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2025 11:46 am Badenoch claiming that fiscal weakness led to the fall of the Roman Empire. Jolly good.
Though when the main Tory cheer leading website comes out with a leading article like this you have to wonder just how long she'''ll be around?https://conservativehome.com/2025/02/ ... e-party/Does Kemi Badenoch actually want to lead the Conservative Party?
This seems a bizarre question to ask. After all, it’s not that easy to climb the greasy pole. Even with her lackadaisical approach to campaigning for the job, Badenoch still needed to win over enough MPs and party members to to the top. Then again, she was run far closer than two years as the frontrunner might have led one to expect her to be. The Movement is losing its touch.
One of Starmer's come backs after sshe congratulated him on taking her advice on the aid budgetI’m going to have to let the leader of the opposition down gently. She didn’t feature in my thinking at all.
I was so busy over the weekend I didn’t even see her proposal. I think she’s appointed herself, I think saviour of the western civilisation. It’s a desperate search for relevance.
She's been gifting Starmer, not a man blessed with an ear catching turn of phrase or much humour, opportunities to rather funnily put her down and expose her exaggerate sense of self-importance.
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Paddington Bear
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- Location: Hertfordshire
https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1895134070784352344
This is quite funny, maybe we should release a series of shorts from Saturday - Alex Mitchell LEATHERS the ball
This is quite funny, maybe we should release a series of shorts from Saturday - Alex Mitchell LEATHERS the ball
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember with advantages, What feats he did that day
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fishfoodie
- Posts: 8723
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I don't think she'll last till Christmas.sockwithaticket wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:57 amFrom what I heard on Politics Joe, Labour took the decision on friday and Badenoch's 'proposal' was sent in on saturday.SaintK wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2025 1:43 pmBadenoch had another 'mare at PMQ's today. She really is useless at it thanks to what aappears to be a mixture of arogant overconfidence on her part and a complete lack of preparation.SaintK wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2025 11:54 am
She's coming out with all the guff that Frog Face uses in a bid to court Trump and Vance.
Though when the main Tory cheer leading website comes out with a leading article like this you have to wonder just how long she'''ll be around?
https://conservativehome.com/2025/02/ ... e-party/
One of Starmer's come backs after sshe congratulated him on taking her advice on the aid budgetI’m going to have to let the leader of the opposition down gently. She didn’t feature in my thinking at all.
I was so busy over the weekend I didn’t even see her proposal. I think she’s appointed herself, I think saviour of the western civilisation. It’s a desperate search for relevance.
She's been gifting Starmer, not a man blessed with an ear catching turn of phrase or much humour, opportunities to rather funnily put her down and expose her exaggerate sense of self-importance.
She hasn't laid a glove on Starmer in any PMQs since the GE, & it's not for lack of opportunities, but because she isn't nearly as clever, or as good at Politics as she obviously thinks she is !
The Tories might not want another Leadership race, so they'll probably go down the route of a Coronation after finding an excuse to ditch Badenoch, but they have to start looking like an Opposition soon; & one that could actually win another GE in the next 10-15 years, or else the donors, & their money will go to Frogface Inc, & his gang on Nazis.
There's local Elections, & probably a couple of By-Elections going to happen soon, & the Tories need start performing better in them, or else Kemi's only notable achievement will be lasting a bit longer than Truss.
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Rhubarb & Custard
- Posts: 2346
- Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:04 pm
why running out of adverbs?Paddington Bear wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 8:39 pm https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1895134070784352344
This is quite funny, maybe we should release a series of shorts from Saturday - Alex Mitchell LEATHERS the ball
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Paddington Bear
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- Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:29 pm
- Location: Hertfordshire
I assume he meant verbsRhubarb & Custard wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:05 pmwhy running out of adverbs?Paddington Bear wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 8:39 pm https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1895134070784352344
This is quite funny, maybe we should release a series of shorts from Saturday - Alex Mitchell LEATHERS the ball
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember with advantages, What feats he did that day
Also, importantly, a language.Paddington Bear wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:37 am English is both an ethnicity and a nationality, some of us possess both, some don’t
I think the French have a better appreciation and understanding of this and when I read Macrons book he talked about the community of French speakers, the shared literary history of France and stuff like that. I forget what broader point he was making but it stuck with me how important language is to identity.
In that sense I'd venture an English speaker in the Anglosphere who is well versed in the English canon and English history is more English than someone who is born in England but in every other respect does not have any credentials.
Culture, language, history, shared values, that's all important stuff unless you think of identity in crudely reductionist terms. The whole subject is incredibly nuanced and complicated and it grates somewhat that the people who are most enamoured with identity politics engage with it in such a superficial manner.
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fishfoodie
- Posts: 8723
- Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:25 pm
Language is ridiculously overrated as a symbol of identity, & Culture. As a Countryman of mine put it, "England and America are two countries separated by a common language".Hugo wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:04 pmPaddington Bear wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:37 am English is both an ethnicity and a nationality, some of us possess both, some don’t
Also, importantly, a language.
I think the French have a better appreciation and understanding of this and when I read Macrons book he talked about the community of French speakers, the shared literary history of France and stuff like that. I forget what broader point he was making but it stuck with me how important language is to identity.
In that sense I'd venture an English speaker in the Anglosphere who is well versed in the English canon and English history is more English than someone who is born in England but in every other respect does not have any credentials.
Culture, language, history, shared values, that's all important stuff unless you think of identity in crudely reductionist terms. The whole subject is incredibly nuanced and complicated and it grates somewhat that the people who are most enamoured with identity politics engage with it in such a superficial manner.
You could obviously say the same of England & Ireland, or America & Canada, Brazil & Portugal, etc, etc, etc.
What matters is the shared expectations & values of the citizens; that's what binds them together, not a shared language.
Just look at the reaction of Canadians to the suggestion that they should just become another US State, because they aren't a "real" Country anyway. The ignoramus suggesting it just showed how he knows the square root of fuck all about what your average Canadian thinks of as their identity as a citizen, & what their culture is, whether they are of European descent, or Asian, or 1st Nation.
Language drives culture and values and all the other stuff though. Culture is downstream of language.fishfoodie wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:24 pmLanguage is ridiculously overrated as a symbol of identity, & Culture. As a Countryman of mine put it, "England and America are two countries separated by a common language".Hugo wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:04 pmPaddington Bear wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:37 am English is both an ethnicity and a nationality, some of us possess both, some don’t
Also, importantly, a language.
I think the French have a better appreciation and understanding of this and when I read Macrons book he talked about the community of French speakers, the shared literary history of France and stuff like that. I forget what broader point he was making but it stuck with me how important language is to identity.
In that sense I'd venture an English speaker in the Anglosphere who is well versed in the English canon and English history is more English than someone who is born in England but in every other respect does not have any credentials.
Culture, language, history, shared values, that's all important stuff unless you think of identity in crudely reductionist terms. The whole subject is incredibly nuanced and complicated and it grates somewhat that the people who are most enamoured with identity politics engage with it in such a superficial manner.
You could obviously say the same of England & Ireland, or America & Canada, Brazil & Portugal, etc, etc, etc.
What matters is the shared expectations & values of the citizens; that's what binds them together, not a shared language.
Just look at the reaction of Canadians to the suggestion that they should just become another US State, because they aren't a "real" Country anyway. The ignoramus suggesting it just showed how he knows the square root of fuck all about what your average Canadian thinks of as their identity as a citizen, & what their culture is, whether they are of European descent, or Asian, or 1st Nation.
All English speaking countries are more closely aligned on diplomacy, intel, defence etc precisely due to a shared language and the shared traditions that result from that.
Last edited by Hugo on Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Two very good friends of mine were telling me at the weekend that it’s time for Boris to come back.fishfoodie wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:00 pmI don't think she'll last till Christmas.sockwithaticket wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:57 amFrom what I heard on Politics Joe, Labour took the decision on friday and Badenoch's 'proposal' was sent in on saturday.SaintK wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2025 1:43 pm
Badenoch had another 'mare at PMQ's today. She really is useless at it thanks to what aappears to be a mixture of arogant overconfidence on her part and a complete lack of preparation.
One of Starmer's come backs after sshe congratulated him on taking her advice on the aid budget
She's been gifting Starmer, not a man blessed with an ear catching turn of phrase or much humour, opportunities to rather funnily put her down and expose her exaggerate sense of self-importance.
She hasn't laid a glove on Starmer in any PMQs since the GE, & it's not for lack of opportunities, but because she isn't nearly as clever, or as good at Politics as she obviously thinks she is !
The Tories might not want another Leadership race, so they'll probably go down the route of a Coronation after finding an excuse to ditch Badenoch, but they have to start looking like an Opposition soon; & one that could actually win another GE in the next 10-15 years, or else the donors, & their money will go to Frogface Inc, & his gang on Nazis.
There's local Elections, & probably a couple of By-Elections going to happen soon, & the Tories need start performing better in them, or else Kemi's only notable achievement will be lasting a bit longer than Truss.
All the money you made will never buy back your soul
Did you take the time to tell them that they're fucking idiots who are cursing their kids future and deserve to be kicked down the street? Friends should be able to tell each other when they're being really, really fucking stupid. It's the value of having friends.Slick wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:36 pmTwo very good friends of mine were telling me at the weekend that it’s time for Boris to come back.fishfoodie wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:00 pmI don't think she'll last till Christmas.sockwithaticket wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:57 am
From what I heard on Politics Joe, Labour took the decision on friday and Badenoch's 'proposal' was sent in on saturday.
She's been gifting Starmer, not a man blessed with an ear catching turn of phrase or much humour, opportunities to rather funnily put her down and expose her exaggerate sense of self-importance.
She hasn't laid a glove on Starmer in any PMQs since the GE, & it's not for lack of opportunities, but because she isn't nearly as clever, or as good at Politics as she obviously thinks she is !
The Tories might not want another Leadership race, so they'll probably go down the route of a Coronation after finding an excuse to ditch Badenoch, but they have to start looking like an Opposition soon; & one that could actually win another GE in the next 10-15 years, or else the donors, & their money will go to Frogface Inc, & his gang on Nazis.
There's local Elections, & probably a couple of By-Elections going to happen soon, & the Tories need start performing better in them, or else Kemi's only notable achievement will be lasting a bit longer than Truss.
And are there two g’s in Bugger Off?
I laughed, called them a pair of cunts and ordered them to get the beers.Biffer wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:48 pmDid you take the time to tell them that they're fucking idiots who are cursing their kids future and deserve to be kicked down the street? Friends should be able to tell each other when they're being really, really fucking stupid. It's the value of having friends.Slick wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:36 pmTwo very good friends of mine were telling me at the weekend that it’s time for Boris to come back.fishfoodie wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:00 pm
I don't think she'll last till Christmas.
She hasn't laid a glove on Starmer in any PMQs since the GE, & it's not for lack of opportunities, but because she isn't nearly as clever, or as good at Politics as she obviously thinks she is !
The Tories might not want another Leadership race, so they'll probably go down the route of a Coronation after finding an excuse to ditch Badenoch, but they have to start looking like an Opposition soon; & one that could actually win another GE in the next 10-15 years, or else the donors, & their money will go to Frogface Inc, & his gang on Nazis.
There's local Elections, & probably a couple of By-Elections going to happen soon, & the Tories need start performing better in them, or else Kemi's only notable achievement will be lasting a bit longer than Truss.
All the money you made will never buy back your soul
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Rhubarb & Custard
- Posts: 2346
- Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:04 pm
I wondered if there was a clever joke I was missing, or even just a simple one. Still, at least it's not like he's a real journalistPaddington Bear wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:14 pmI assume he meant verbsRhubarb & Custard wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:05 pmwhy running out of adverbs?Paddington Bear wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 8:39 pm https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1895134070784352344
This is quite funny, maybe we should release a series of shorts from Saturday - Alex Mitchell LEATHERS the ball
That's one way to approach it tbfSlick wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:56 pmI laughed, called them a pair of cunts and ordered them to get the beers.Biffer wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:48 pmDid you take the time to tell them that they're fucking idiots who are cursing their kids future and deserve to be kicked down the street? Friends should be able to tell each other when they're being really, really fucking stupid. It's the value of having friends.Slick wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:36 pm
Two very good friends of mine were telling me at the weekend that it’s time for Boris to come back.
And are there two g’s in Bugger Off?
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fishfoodie
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I can see him standing as the Tory Candidate in a By-Election, mostly because there's a sizable contingent in the Tory membership that still hasn't got the message of how toxic he is Post-Partygate, but the Parliamentary Party don't want him back, & while the UK elected Churchill again after kicking him out, the manner of his departure was dramatically different than the Bumblecunts.Slick wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:36 pmTwo very good friends of mine were telling me at the weekend that it’s time for Boris to come back.fishfoodie wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 9:00 pmI don't think she'll last till Christmas.sockwithaticket wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:57 am
From what I heard on Politics Joe, Labour took the decision on friday and Badenoch's 'proposal' was sent in on saturday.
She's been gifting Starmer, not a man blessed with an ear catching turn of phrase or much humour, opportunities to rather funnily put her down and expose her exaggerate sense of self-importance.
She hasn't laid a glove on Starmer in any PMQs since the GE, & it's not for lack of opportunities, but because she isn't nearly as clever, or as good at Politics as she obviously thinks she is !
The Tories might not want another Leadership race, so they'll probably go down the route of a Coronation after finding an excuse to ditch Badenoch, but they have to start looking like an Opposition soon; & one that could actually win another GE in the next 10-15 years, or else the donors, & their money will go to Frogface Inc, & his gang on Nazis.
There's local Elections, & probably a couple of By-Elections going to happen soon, & the Tories need start performing better in them, or else Kemi's only notable achievement will be lasting a bit longer than Truss.
This is the classic time for putting in a caretaker to just get the Party thru the next GE, & get them on an even keel, & to give any future leader a few years to develop. The problem is that there's a dearth of candidates for even that relatively simple role, so you'll probably end up with "Honest Bob" leading them into the next Election, & that'll just make either the LibDems, or the scumbags the opposition, depending on what the Economy looks like.
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Rhubarb & Custard
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- Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2020 4:04 pm
Their problem is whether they'll have a party, Reform, Labour and the Li Dems could strip away what's left, so they mayn't have 3-4 years to start to get back on an even keel. Still, if they fold that might be the first genuine Brexit benefit!
Also entirely possible of course Reform will fold like a pack of cards inside the next 6 months (days really, who knows with Farage) and the crisis will be over for Kemi and Co.
Also entirely possible of course Reform will fold like a pack of cards inside the next 6 months (days really, who knows with Farage) and the crisis will be over for Kemi and Co.
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fishfoodie
- Posts: 8723
- Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:25 pm
I wonder if Frogface is caught in a quandary that he doesn't know what to do with Reform ?Rhubarb & Custard wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 11:14 pm Their problem is whether they'll have a party, Reform, Labour and the Li Dems could strip away what's left, so they mayn't have 3-4 years to start to get back on an even keel. Still, if they fold that might be the first genuine Brexit benefit!
Also entirely possible of course Reform will fold like a pack of cards inside the next 6 months (days really, who knows with Farage) and the crisis will be over for Kemi and Co.
I mean he's fundamentally just another grifter, but here he is with the potential to actually have a viable Political Party; but to have it, he needs to change it from Farage Inc to a proper Party, & that means they might get rid of him; but if he does that then he has to put in some money & build a proper membership to do the campaigning etc that happens in other Parties, because the lack of that was ultimately what fucked up things for them in the last GE. They were a shambles & didn't vet candidates, didn't have polls & didn't target seats, & didn't do the nuts & bolts that could have given them 45 Seats, instead of 5(?).
I think he was previously aiming for just grifting in the US to present himself as the Le Pen of England, guzzling up vast amounts of money while never getting anywhere, but now he knows he actually has a chance to supplanting the Tories, but he doesn't want to spend his own money; hence him making cow eyes at Space Nazi !
More importantly, hell have to actually have policies and potentially be part of a future government. He doesn't want that, he wants to shout from the sidelines because he knows none of his shit will actually work.fishfoodie wrote: Sat Mar 01, 2025 10:04 pmI wonder if Frogface is caught in a quandary that he doesn't know what to do with Reform ?Rhubarb & Custard wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 11:14 pm Their problem is whether they'll have a party, Reform, Labour and the Li Dems could strip away what's left, so they mayn't have 3-4 years to start to get back on an even keel. Still, if they fold that might be the first genuine Brexit benefit!
Also entirely possible of course Reform will fold like a pack of cards inside the next 6 months (days really, who knows with Farage) and the crisis will be over for Kemi and Co.
I mean he's fundamentally just another grifter, but here he is with the potential to actually have a viable Political Party; but to have it, he needs to change it from Farage Inc to a proper Party, & that means they might get rid of him; but if he does that then he has to put in some money & build a proper membership to do the campaigning etc that happens in other Parties, because the lack of that was ultimately what fucked up things for them in the last GE. They were a shambles & didn't vet candidates, didn't have polls & didn't target seats, & didn't do the nuts & bolts that could have given them 45 Seats, instead of 5(?).
I think he was previously aiming for just grifting in the US to present himself as the Le Pen of England, guzzling up vast amounts of money while never getting anywhere, but now he knows he actually has a chance to supplanting the Tories, but he doesn't want to spend his own money; hence him making cow eyes at Space Nazi !
And are there two g’s in Bugger Off?
except for MAGA america - at least diplomatically and i'm pretty sure intel as well now with a rusian asset like Gabbard in charge. Defence alingment yes, but surely as much to do with American military dominance of NATO as for any language reasons. Also igoring the non english speaking countries who are closely aligned to america, the likes of Japan and south korea. That's anyway going to change with MAGA hostility to any american overseas deployment and the Trump's pro russian policy.Hugo wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:34 pmLanguage drives culture and values and all the other stuff though. Culture is downstream of language.fishfoodie wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:24 pmLanguage is ridiculously overrated as a symbol of identity, & Culture. As a Countryman of mine put it, "England and America are two countries separated by a common language".Hugo wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:04 pm
Also, importantly, a language.
I think the French have a better appreciation and understanding of this and when I read Macrons book he talked about the community of French speakers, the shared literary history of France and stuff like that. I forget what broader point he was making but it stuck with me how important language is to identity.
In that sense I'd venture an English speaker in the Anglosphere who is well versed in the English canon and English history is more English than someone who is born in England but in every other respect does not have any credentials.
Culture, language, history, shared values, that's all important stuff unless you think of identity in crudely reductionist terms. The whole subject is incredibly nuanced and complicated and it grates somewhat that the people who are most enamoured with identity politics engage with it in such a superficial manner.
You could obviously say the same of England & Ireland, or America & Canada, Brazil & Portugal, etc, etc, etc.
What matters is the shared expectations & values of the citizens; that's what binds them together, not a shared language.
Just look at the reaction of Canadians to the suggestion that they should just become another US State, because they aren't a "real" Country anyway. The ignoramus suggesting it just showed how he knows the square root of fuck all about what your average Canadian thinks of as their identity as a citizen, & what their culture is, whether they are of European descent, or Asian, or 1st Nation.
All English speaking countries are more closely aligned on diplomacy, intel, defence etc precisely due to a shared language and the shared traditions that result from that.
and presumably excluding all the non-white majority english speaking cuntries, or are the 100 of millions of indians, saffas, malaysians, botswanans, jamiacans etc who speak fluent english since childhood more closely alligned to each other, to the USA and the UK. English is a global language, cultural ties between speakers are variable
actually i think most brits are culturaly closer to other western europeans compared to many, if not most, Yanks with their hostility to "socialized medicine" and their love of guns and jesus
Having visited the US and Europe France, Belgium and Germany, many times in recent years I can confirm I'm far more comfortable and have far more in common with the latter than the US. Yes we speak the same, sort of, language as the US but culturally we are far closer to France, Belgium, Germany than we are the US. Language has feck all to do with it.Calculon wrote: Sun Mar 02, 2025 2:21 amexcept for MAGA america - at least diplomatically and i'm pretty sure intel as well now with a rusian asset like Gabbard in charge. Defence alingment yes, but surely as much to do with American military dominance of NATO as for any language reasons. Also igoring the non english speaking countries who are closely aligned to america, the likes of Japan and south korea. That's anyway going to change with MAGA hostility to any american overseas deployment and the Trump's pro russian policy.Hugo wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:34 pmLanguage drives culture and values and all the other stuff though. Culture is downstream of language.fishfoodie wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:24 pm
Language is ridiculously overrated as a symbol of identity, & Culture. As a Countryman of mine put it, "England and America are two countries separated by a common language".
You could obviously say the same of England & Ireland, or America & Canada, Brazil & Portugal, etc, etc, etc.
What matters is the shared expectations & values of the citizens; that's what binds them together, not a shared language.
Just look at the reaction of Canadians to the suggestion that they should just become another US State, because they aren't a "real" Country anyway. The ignoramus suggesting it just showed how he knows the square root of fuck all about what your average Canadian thinks of as their identity as a citizen, & what their culture is, whether they are of European descent, or Asian, or 1st Nation.
All English speaking countries are more closely aligned on diplomacy, intel, defence etc precisely due to a shared language and the shared traditions that result from that.
and presumably excluding all the non-white majority english speaking cuntries, or are the 100 of millions of indians, saffas, malaysians, botswanans, jamiacans etc who speak fluent english since childhood more closely alligned to each other, to the USA and the UK. English is a global language, cultural ties between speakers are variable
actually i think most brits are culturaly closer to other western europeans compared to many, if not most, Yanks with their hostility to "socialized medicine" and their love of guns and jesus
I think we have to accept the right wing, billionaire facists have taken over the US in a coup and it might not recover from this. There will be significant social unrest in the US once the huge swinging cuts in social security, healthcare, Gov employment, etc begin to have a real impact upon the lower and middle classes and they struggle to buy food, buy goods, survive financially and get healthcare. The move to rid the US of DEI is a cover for establishing a more racist society and there will be race riots again if they continue as is. Mass immigration will be ramped up with 'holding/internment camps' filled up with 'illegals who will be dumped in Mexico and South America. Meanwhile the US economy, after an initial surge, will collapse as the loss of labour has an impact. The US army will be put on the streets to 'keep order' and this will trigger huge constitutional issues. This is want Trump and his bampot zealots want ... an excuse to declare martial law and scrap any forthcoming elections. It will get very very nasty indeed!
Meanwhile the debate about whether the US should leave NATO and the UN will escalate. Putin is all smiles!
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fishfoodie
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- Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2020 8:25 pm
Well he'll be all smiles until he realizes if he'd put off invading Ukraine until the Traitor was in office, he would probably have succeeded in his original plan, & not have had his army, navy & economy fucked up; but I suppose when you know you're dying, you don't want to delay.dpedin wrote: Sun Mar 02, 2025 10:26 am ...
Meanwhile the debate about whether the US should leave NATO and the UN will escalate. Putin is all smiles!
Cracks starting to appear at the top of Reform?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2 ... p-styleReform UK is facing a split at the top after Nigel Farage called one of his most prominent MPs “utterly completely wrong” for calling him the “messianic” leader of a protest party.
Farage hit out at Rupert Lowe after the Great Yarmouth MP and former Southampton FC chair criticised his leadership publicly in an interview.