#Bye Bye Braverman

[rwpohl]

bye bye braverman, sidney lumet 1968

[harrison-abbott]

Suella Braverman sacked as home secretary – UK politics live (theguardian.com)

I often try not to get political. Despite the U.K. having gone so downhill in recent times (or indeed for such a long time). And Westminster has nothing to do with me or anything I usually write about. I’m a good man and a moral person and I try to be good with other people.

For a long time I’ve been totally disillusioned with politics. Because there seems nothing I can do about it, to make changes. Even with mini protest. Or even with the vote.

I engage with literature heavily and I help people out who need it when I can.

But when it comes to people like Suella Braverman. Ha. F*ck off. Good riddance. Nasty piece of shit. Bye bye. Racist bigoted c*nt. Farewell.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Clownfall: Endgame

I am calling it that in the full knowledge that batshit things may yet happen, but listen. Listen. We have a year left before the general election. I am hedging my bets and assuming all that comes in that year will be Tory manoeuvring ahead of that. Let's all hope for a nice quiet year in which everything can fall neatly under that banner, that won't ruin this naming convention.

Previous Reading

Important Terminology - Required Reading

What is a Whip?

How do Whips work?

Shadow Cabinet

Front Benchers, Back Benchers and the Cabinet

What do we need to call an early General Election?

The Adventures of Big Dog the Clown - Suggested Reading

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Elanor’s Guide to Liz Truss - Suggested Reading

Character-based prequel

The Premiership of Liz Truss

The Next Steps - Suggested Reading

The post-Truss contenders

Bye Matt

BoJo Resigns as MP

Alright, that's probably everything. Just nice to have it all in one place, innit? If you would like a nice soothing soundtrack to your reading, here's my recommendation. On with the show!

Clownfall: Endgame

Wednesday

So, let's start with charismatic and charming Home Secretary Suella Braverman! You may remember her from such hits as "Quitting before she could be fired after breaking the law only to be rehired by Sunak almost immediately and without consequence to appease the right wing nutjobs in the party", and "Claiming Pakistani men have a culture that makes them work in abuse rings to target vulnerable white English girls" (I should add that, if you are unfamiliar with Suella Braverman, regardless of what that quote implies, she is not, in fact, white); recently she made the news because she announced that being homeless is a "lifestyle choice". So true, Suella! They could give it up any time they wanted. They could, for example, get together and break in and steal your fucking house.

But in particular, here we're focussing on her recent stance towards the multiple huge pro-Palestine marches that have been taking place in London. So far she has indicated that she wants people who wave Palestinian flags to be arrested, so that's very measured and rational of her; but, last Wednesday (Nov 8th), she decided to write a lil opinion piece in the Times all about how mean and biased and liberal the police are. This is an absolutely fascinating assertion to I suspect literally anyone who has ever been involved with the police. But no! Quoth Suella, aggressive right-wing protesters are "rightly met with a stern response", while "pro-Palestinian mobs" are "largely ignored".

And, she claims, the march on Saturday isn’t simply a cry for help for Gaza, but an "assertion of primacy by certain groups - particularly Islamists - of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland".

Imagine how well all that went down.

Thursday

You are underestimating how that went down, because it emerges that Suella deVille did not, in fact, get any form of validated sign-off or permission from Number 10 before squirting her ill-informed liquid horseshit all over the front desk of the Times news room, and that, Tumblrs, you'll be surprised to learn, is actually quite an important and compulsory part of criticising the police when you are the Home Secretary. Like, there is a Ministerial Code about this. It is very clear. It is in Article 8.2, Tumblrs. Thou Shalt Have Permission From Number 10 Before Making Media Interventions.

“The content was not agreed with Number 10,” a spokesperson for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters, referring to the prime minister’s Downing Street office. The ministerial code is clear that any ministerial media interventions need approval from No 10.

-AlJazeera

And the Tories are furious! The bloodbath forms quickly and loudly and the hounds start baying! Clown noses are flying everywhere! The factions are drawn! Because even now, there are Tories too stupid to understand that whether you agree with someone or not they still have to follow the rules! Also the other parties realise they can offer some actual opposition here, given that Suella has essentially dragged a barrel into the middle of the House of Commons dressed in a fish costume, handed around a set of loaded rifles, and then crawled inside to wait. The result is that the calls for her resignation are both deafening and pleasingly cross-party.

"(This is a) dangerous attempt to undermine respect for police", says Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper. "(It's) irresponsible," says London mayor Sadiq Khan. "The PM's weakness when it comes to standing up to Suella is the most shocking thing in all this," claims a senior Labour source.

They're wrong, of course. The most shocking thing is Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey realising he can actually appear in the paper if he plays this right and so surfaces to attempt some politics. "(Sunak) must finally act with integrity by sacking his out-of-control home secretary!" he declares, frightening many MPs who had forgotten he was even in the room with them.

Meanwhile, several Tories approach the BBC anonymously.

"The home secretary's awfulness is now a reflection on the prime minister. Keeping her in post is damaging him," says one. Another straight-up describes her as "unhinged". Another claims the comparison with Northern Ireland is "wholly offensive and ignorant", and really, all of this is permanently triggering that "Heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point" reaction image.

Saturday

Hey, speaking of reaction images, look, Labour has a go:

Well. They tried.

BUT! Do you want to know the INTERESTING bit??!

Enter: Nadine Dorries! Mad shrieking pink harpy who spends her days maintaining a BoJo shrine in her bedroom! Always the most hinged of politicians, let's see what she has to say.

Former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries claimed Ms Braverman was trying to get sacked to give her a platform of martyrdom in service of the right-wing. "The competition is on now for who is going to be the leader of the opposition," Ms Dorries told the BBC.

???!??!?

PERTINENT POLITICAL OBSERVATION FROM DORRIES?!?!?? The most shocking part of this whole affair. Remember that time she yelled at a journalist during an interview about Boris Johnson's latest scandal when he asked her how Johnson was feeling about the whole thing and inadvertently implied they were having an affair when No One Asked? God, wonders never cease. She's even acknowledging the Tories can't win the next GE, look. I'd say this is growth, except I am 100% positive she's just being catty about BlowJo being fired again.

Anyway, the real Saturday issue: it's Armistice Day, and there's a pro-Palestine march planned.

Now, to give context, Armistice Day has a creepy level of patriotic state-worship attached to it in the UK. Some time in October everyone on telly suddenly starts wearing a poppy, and if you don't you get hanged, drawn and quartered by (a) the British press, and then (b) a baying mob outside your living room. You most be performatively sad. You must perform reverence and hero worship and say things like "Never again" all while whole-heartedly supporting current wars. You must talk about "our brave boys", and share the works of dead poets from the trenches, and then completely fail to absorb any of their lessons. If anyone tries to wear the white poppy to distance themselves from the current political appropriation while still commemorating the millions of conscripted casualties, you accuse them of being "woke" and pissing on the worthy dead of WW1. It's a whole thing, and politicians love using it as an excuse to point fingers and mock each other for being insufficiently patriotic if they wear the wrong tie to the ceremonies, or choose to walk with actual veterans rather than a head of the current army, or any number of other things. And then on November the 12th they'll order a drone strike or something.

So, off the bat, you can see how a pro-Palestine rally on the same day was likely to be seen as provocative to some.

"Some" included Sunak! He didn’t (publicly at least) ask the police to ban the protest, but did call on organisers to call it off, claiming the choice of date was “provocative and disrespectful”, because as I say, a march calling for the ceasefire of a genocide is super disrespectful to every sad dead poet in a trench who dreamed of a ceasefire so they could live, or something.

But the inevitable therefore happens, which is that far-right activists agree that it's disrespectful, and so decide to violently target the march to show their respect for the idea of peace on Armistice Day, or something.

Here's the planned route by the organisers:

Note, though, that the Armistice ceremony happens at the Cenotaph - visibly nowhere near the march. These two events actually wouldn't have overlapped, if it weren't for far-right protestors deliberately linking them to stop them being disrespectfully linked, or something.

And that's exactly what happened. From the Guardian:

Perhaps the most striking incident, though, was when far-right protesters charged past police who sought to hold them back from the Cenotaph. In this video, a man shouts “this is fucking our country” in celebration. Whereas the pro-Palestine march had been excluded from the area as a precaution, the far right was not; by overwhelming the police, they supposedly sought to defend the site from an enemy that simply wasn’t there.

(that's quite a good article of the whole thing, actually, I recommend giving it a read.)

Crucially to the clown show, though, several politicians and others accused Suella deVille of emboldening the far-right, which... well, several of the far-right protestors straight up said was the case on the day, so hard to disagree, really.

Rumours of a reshuffle in Whitehall circumnavigate the land so fast the truth gets sucked into a tornado and is declared MIA.  Here's the thing! I've covered a few Cabinet reshuffles by now, Tumblrs, you know the drill. Reshuffles are always deniable until they actually happen – so if, say, a reshuffle was going to happen on Monday 13 November 2023, there’d be no need to publicise it in advance. That way, if things change and politics happen, you don't need to retract anything :)

Because, remember: reshuffles are always controversial.  Yes, some people get demoted, and those people will often kick off, and some people who don't deserve it get promoted, and lots of people kick off.  But the big thing is that a lot more people get overlooked for promotion.

His most ardent supporters would say that Rishi Sunak is a cautious man (if you'll allow me a moment to express my own view on the matter, Tumblrs, if you'll forgive this crumb of personal opinion amongst my otherwise impeccable journalling of greatest integrity, I once did a teambuilding task with my students where they had to build the best possible bridge out of uncooked spaghetti and pieces of marshmallow, and I personally would liken the structural integrity of his spine to the losing team's entry), and reshuffles will spread a lot of disappointment to Tory MPs who lose – or fail to gain – a cabinet position.

So, all in all... regardless of Suella's idiocy...

There's no guarantee of a reshuffle. Rumours are just that - whether they prove to be true or not remains to be seen.

Week Commencing Monday 13th November, 2023

New week, new challenges! And it's going to be a big week this week. On Wednesday (tomorrow, at time of writing), three big things are going to be announced, and these announcements will colour everything else this week:

One.  The Supreme Court decide whether the government will be allowed to enact their plan to send some migrants claiming asylum in the UK to Rwanda, a signature Braverman plan that human rights campaigners (including many in Rwanda) have been trying to block for ages.

It’s a massive deal anyway – a flagship government idea that’s been bogged down in the court, and we’ll finally have an answer one way or another.  For what it’s worth, the Tories aren’t confident about winning it, either.  The optimists among them reckon it’s a 50/50 chance, the pessimists reckon it’s 70/30 against, so it's iffy at best.

But here's the thing!

Plenty of Tories have always disliked Suella.  Others could handle the odd outburst she has, but can’t stomach the sheer number of them lately - the Lib Dem non-entity man was absolutely right that she is rapidly growing out of control and just does not know when to shut the entire fuck up.

Which means! If the Supreme Court allows the Rwanda plan, Braverman could become emboldened, like a far-right protest injuring police officers to defend the cenotaph from people who are nowhere near it and have no interest in it.  Do we want an emboldened Braverman?? Well; no, obviously. I also don't want dysentery, or rotten meat, or a serial killer in my neighbourhood. But it's a question even Tories are asking themselves, which is notable.

Plus, even if the court allows it, there will still be months of planning, and lawyers might still prevent the plans in the long run...  But psychologically, the issue is this: the government wants this win, but probably doesn’t benefit from Braverman feeling victorious.

Two.  We’ll get inflation figures.  The government promised to halve inflation, and it seems likely they’ve managed this.  Expect them to massively celebrate this, to distract from the promises they haven’t kept e.g. waiting lists in England, competent governance, etc.

Three.  Voting on a ceasefire in Israel seems likely for Wednesday.  It’s the SNP’s idea, and it won’t affect government policy (they won’t support a ceasefire – they claim it’ll empower Hamas).

But it’s a big deal for Labour, even more so than the Tories.  A Shadow minister has already resigned over the war.  A bunch of frontbenchers want a ceasefire, but that isn’t Keir Starmer’s policy, a man who is calling for the colours of the Israel flag to be shown at sports matches to show that "we stand in solidarity with Israel", because you can really count on Starmer to fuck up everything he touches.  So what do they do?  Abstain?  Claim they had a prior commitment??  We might see more resignations, basically.  Big day for Starmer.

So! With all that in mind...

Monday

8.43am

Oh look. Timestamps are back. I wonder if that suggests anything?

Suella Braverman is sacked as Home Secretary.

But! Sunak is accused of waiting too long! Which he demonstrably did!

He should have made the decision after the illegal article that she shouldn't have written and triggered a far-right rally on fucking Armistice Day.  Instead, remember that 'cautious' descriptor I talked about?? He waited until the tide had turned against her completely, and now looks like he (a) was too much of a useless wimp to fire her until he was sure people would still like him and pat his dick and tell him he's a Good PM, and (b) only fired her because he caved in to that appalling lefty liberal cabal that somehow these days includes the Metropolitan Police of all fucking people, and she'd have been able to stay otherwise.

Shout out to the best comment from Reddit:

u/nowonmai666: Doesn't she normally get sacked on a Friday so she can have the weekend off before being reappointed?

Anyway, that's the big risk now: Braverman’s supporters can claim she was only fired because Sunak caved in to the left.

8.56am

Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns claims Sunak only sacked Braverman because he caved in to the left.

9.00am

Neil O'Brian, Pharmacy Minister, quits to live out his stated dream of being a back-bencher with less power.

*sus*

9.09am

Nick Gibb, Schools Minister, quits to live out his stated dream of being more diplomatic, or something.

*sus*

9.42am

The Lib Dems decide to build on the success of their leader getting to be on telly for his one comment on Thursday and call for a general election.  Says Ed Davey: “It was the Prime Minister’s sheer cowardice that kept her in the job even for this long. We are witnessing a broken party and a broken government, both of which are breaking this country.”

Good job! They're having such a good few days.

Anyway remember the Tories don’t have to have a general election until December 2024, though, thanks to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (2011), which was passed by the coalition government of Tories and, um, Lib Dems.  In which Ed Davey served for three years.

Hmm.

9.43am 

James Cleverly (remember him?) returns to the Cabinet and is appointed Home Secretary. The party attempts to appear trendy by experimenting with emojis:

This appointment is probably because Tory strategists wanted him in a domestic role to help the party’s chances in the next election; as Surprising Political Pundit Nadine Dorries told us, of all fucking people, the race is now on to lead the opposition.

But hey, this is not likely to lead to any more changes -

10.03am

FORMER PRIME MINISTER, BREXIT-TRIGGERER AND PIG-FUCKER DAVID CAMERON BECOMES FOREIGN SECRETARY

!!!!!!!!!!!!

And look! Another emoji! They're so hip!

(Side note... the balls on this one are astounding, actually. The UK political system has been in chaos ever since Cameron, and he was the first domino. This is not a well-loved former hero that will be greeted warmly by the unwashed masses.)

Awkward though, since just last month Sunak claimed that we’d lived through “30 years of a political system that incentivizes the easy decision, not the right one.”  It would be a terrible shame if a journalist was to ask David Cameron whether he agreed with the Prime Minister on that, given that Cameron’s job is to support the Prime Minister now.

Especially since Cameron took to Twitter last month to explicitly criticise Sunak for breaking the Tory promise to deliver High Speed 2.

(Cameron tweeted this criticism last month.  Labour MP Angela Rayner however promptly retweets it now lol suck a dick Dave, but try a human one this time)

Also, fun fact, Cameron has just come out of a large-scale lobbying and corruption scandal. Given the state of Sunak, though, that's actually probably what got him the job.

BUT!!! Here's an even funner fact: the man is not an MP. He left politics after he accidentally triggered Brexit and then it came out he'd once face fucked a dead pig's head while it was held on the lap of another Tory; he's been living it up in the lucrative world of after-dinner speaking, as these people do.

So can you do that?? Can you hold a Cabinet position if no one at all has voted for you??

Yes, turns out.

Don't be alarmed by that, though:

But, convention holds that anyone who becomes a Cabinet member while not being an MP needs to be a Peer - that way, if they do bad and naughty things, they can't be held accountable by the House of Commons but they can be held accountable by the House of Lords. Only problem is, Hameron is not a lord...

10.13am

The reshuffle, bafflingly, continues. Jeremy Hunt will remain as chancellor.

For the first time since 2010, the top four positions in government – Prime Minister (Sunak), Chancellor of the Exchequer (Hunt), Home Secretary (Cleverly) and Foreign Secretary (Cameron) – are all held by men.

10.18am

Lots of people tweeting about the historic context of Cameron’s appointment.  Here’s my favourite:

10.48am

David Cameron is given a life peerage, so his proper name now is Lord Piggledick.

10.52am

Health secretary Will Quince quits.  He wasn’t planning to stand for re-election anyway though, so this one is probably not a shock. But it's important that no one else resi-

11.04am

Decarbonisation minister Jesse Norman resigns.

...

...

...

Time for a

✨Conspiracy Theory✨

Between Quince and Norman – as well as Neil O’Brien and Nick Gibb – we’re seeing several mid-ranking ministers resign, despite being generally regarded as fairly competent.

It’s possible they were fired in private, and they’re publicly resigning to save face.  But here’s another theory.

MPs aren’t allowed to seek commercial employment for six months after resigning from the government.

So hypothetically, if you were going to lose your seat in a general election, you’d want to have resigned six months earlier so you can still get a job.

If that’s what these guys are doing, it suggests we’re on track for a May 2024 election...?

11.05am

11.12am

Remember Cameron's financial scandal? Quick background here: David Cameron was specifically vice-chair of a £1bn China-UK investment fund.

So let’s see what throwback former leader Iain Duncan Smith thinks of Cameron’s return:

“I am astonished at this appointment. It seems to send a signal to China that we are pursuing business with them at all costs and any costs. Those who have been sanctioned now feel more abandoned than at any time. Those facing genocide and persecution will feel more abandoned than at any time.”

I cannot believe I am about to say this.

But.

I agree with Iain Duncan Smith *spits on floor*

11.50am

Former Tory deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine is asked to sum up the return of Cameron, and says it’s the “clearest signal that the sort of right wing lurch that we’ve seen and the anti-European movement that we’ve seen has been put to bed, and that will get a message across to people”.

12.13pm

A Tory MP is worried that Cameron’s return will turn back the clock on Brexit and Johnson’s election.

“It is very alarming. I am predicting a softening on small boats, a softening on legal migration. I would not be surprised if the ban on conversion therapy returns.”

... Don’t threaten me with a good time.

Anyway, let’s see how the public actually sees Cameron compared with other PMs!

Yeah, not sure people will mind if Cameron’s not Boris Johnson.

12.43pm

ITV political editor Robert Peston walks past a minister of state.  The minister’s on the phone, but takes a moment to heatedly shout at Peston, “The PM just sacked me!”

I guess some days are easier than others as a journalist

12.47pm

Therese Coffey resigns as environment secretary!!!!

*choirs of heavenly angels sing*

You'll remember her of course, Tumblrs - she was one of the thugs manhandling people into the 'right' voting lobbies to force their vote on the day of Liz Truss' fracking law. Rumour has it she still has the Whip handle in her ass.

A lot of people seem to be resigning today! But don't be fooled. In almost every case, it’ll be because they were told to resign.  They’ve been sacked, but they resign to save face. A last mercy from their benevolent leader.

My guess: Tessie here is terrible at media skills, so – get rid of her before she hurts general election chances. This, too, is a pattern.

12.52pm

Rachel Maclean sacked as Housing Minister! Fun fact, numbers fans: it took Doctor Who 33 years to make it to eight Doctors, but since the 2019 election, the Tories managed eight Housing Ministers in just under 4 years

trololol

1.15pm

Jeremy Quin quits as Minister for the Cabinet Office.

1.37pm

Times Political Editor Steven Swinford reports that No 10 is struggling to find a new housing minister (owing to rumours the job is cursed). Several people have turned it down, including Jeremy Quin. It is incredible to me that they didn't line someone up before sacking the last guy.

Kemi Badenoch and Michael Gove are apparently unhappy that Rachel Maclean was removed from the role. I for one do not care about the opinions of Kemi Badenoch or Michael Gove.

2.04pm

Health Secretary Steve Barclay becomes Environment Secretary.  This is effectively a demotion for him. It is our 5th Environment Secretary in four years. Chasing that Housing Minister record! It took 19 years for Doctor Who to have five Doctors

2.15pm

Richard Holden appointed new Conservative Party chairman.

A 2019-intake Tory MP, he led the charge against Sir Keir Starmer over Beergate, which did damage Starmer a bit (albeit not much, given that it turned out Starmer had complied with lockdown regs, and the accusation was nakedly to try and distract from Partygate).  So this appointment looks like more strategy to win the next election - someone not known enough to be hated, with what passes in the modern Tory party for a proven track record.

This could be a sign that the Tories intend to at least try to shore up the Red Wall votes? As unlikely as the Tories are to keep those seats.

That said, Holden’s seat disappears in a boundary change next election, sooooo … we'll see what they do there.

2.24pm

Victoria Atkins appointed Health Secretary, replacing Steve Barclay who’s moved to Environment Secretary. She's a relative unknown but also considered actually competent. Massive middle finger to Steve Barclay

2.37pm

Laura Trott (formerly in pensions) promoted to Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

2.42pm

Science minister George Freeman resigns.

3.18pm

YouGov conducts a snap poll: is the appointment of David Cameron as Foreign Secretary a good decision or a bad decision?

Good decision: 24%

Bad decision: 38%

Don't know: 38%

So that's going well

3.24pm

Greg Hands is made a business minister after losing the Tory chairman role.

John Glen moves from chief secretary to the Treasury to become the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General.

3.39pm

With Cameron being a Lord now, he’ll be based in the House of Lords rather than the Commons.  The most recent Cabinet Minister to be based in the Lords was former Brexit minister Lord Frost, who did weigh in on the matter:

“[T]hough I was not running a whole Department too. I don’t think it works well to have a lead Cabinet Minister answering questions and defending their Department solely in the Lords. The Lords is not a fully party political environment - nor should it be - and voters are owed proper political scrutiny. In our system, that can only happen in the Commons.”

I cannot believe I am about to say this.

But.

I agree with Lord Frost *spits on floor*

The SNP had already called this out, with MP Stephen Flynn claiming, “The UK is not a serious country.”

4.21pm

Conservative MP Lee Rowley appointed the 16th housing minister in the past 13 years. Even counting David Tennant twice, that's more than all the Doctors Who we've ever had, and that took almost 60 years.

5.16pm

Sky News’s Tamara Cohen reports that Sunak sacked Braverman by phone this morning!  Downing Street says there won’t be any exchange of letters between them - this is almost unheard of. Politics runs on paper trails! Everything happens through formal letters! By phone!

It means we’re denied insight into their differences.  But Cohen reckons we’re likely to hear from Braverman on Wednesday, as the Supreme Court rules on the Rwanda scheme.

6.03pm

Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, former Education Minister, submits no-confidence letter in Rishi Sunak.

It's almost like, in the absence of Dorries, she's decided that someone needs to step up and have a tantrum and that someone might as well be her. It is, actually, an extremely funny letter, as these letters go. Normally they're written with a sort of furious earnestness wrapped in formal language. I presume that Andrea Jenkyns MP, former Education Minister, was aiming for something similar, and the first paragraph manages it. But by the end you sort of start to wonder if this was supposed to be a letter she wrote with her therapist to get her feelings out:

My favourite line, when pulled in isolation, is "Yes Boris Johnson, the man who won the Conservative Party a massive majority, was unforgivable enough."

Yeah, Andrea babes. You're bang on there.

6.05pm

Esther McVey is appointed as Cabinet Office minister.  Not a full cabinet member, but she will attend cabinet meetings.

This is notable: unlike a lot of today’s appointments, she’s on the right of the party.  Her role will be to represent the government on TV and radio as much as possible, talking about gender/culture/British colonial history issues (i.e. she’s anti-woke and a screaming bigot).

In other words, with Braverman gone, McVey is an offering for the populist right of the party to try to appease them.

6.15pm

Sunak tweets about the new cabinet, claiming they’ll make “the right decisions for our great country, not the easy ones.”  So it looks like that’s the new slogan, and we're pressing on with austerity

6.27pm

Tim Loughton, a Tory MP on the “One Nation” wing (i.e the David Cameron side) responds to Andrea Jenkyns’s letter of no-confidence by tweeting:

“Where can we submit a letter of no confidence in the Pantomime Dame?”

(It’s Andrea he’s publicly referring to as a pantomime dame there. A lil joke from the Tories for you)

6.31pm

Paul Scully sacked as minister for London. Didn't know that one was a position.

9.43pm

Sunak says that only a two-state solution will allow a new future for Israel/Palestine.  This is, um, not what the Prime Minister of Israel wants.  Who knows whether the Prime Minister of Israel will survive this crisis anyway – but these are big words from Sunak.  Cameron’s influence? Maybe? Interesting either way

10.03pm

And then - PLOT TWIST!!!

According to ITV political editor Robert Peston, a senior government source reveals that Cameron was approached on TUESDAY. 

Which means plans were underway to get rid of Braverman not only before the far-right violence on Saturday, but before her anti-police article on Wednesday.  It seems she lost her job not because of what she said about police after all; but because she claimed homelessness was a lifestyle choice.

Well well.

11.05pm

And the day finishes with Andrea Leadsom back in government (as Under Secretary of State for Health and Social Care) which nobody saw coming!  Pretty demeaning to the other 300 Tory MPs who could have been given this.

The final response from numerous Tories: they are feeling jilted and insulted because David Cameron being brought back when he's NOT EVEN AN MP, RISHI suggests that they themselves are not good enough to be in government.

No one tell them

[crynwr-drwg]

HA BYE FUCKER

[glamfellens]

I’m like 12 hours late but BYE SUELLA BRAVERMAN DONT LET THE DOOR HIT YA

[anthonysstupiddailyblog]

Anthony's Stupid Daily Blog (840): Fri 5th Jul 2024

I was realy tempted to stay up to watch the results of the election start piling in because normally if I don't stay up and watch the whole thing it ends up disastrous. be that a Trump victory or the LA Lakers getting thrashed but thankfully Labour won by a landslide. This win means that Sunak lied to us: a Labour won WAS a foregone conclussion. He just couldn't help trying to pull the wool over our eyes one last time before getting booted out could he the smug little bastard? The one thing that's bugged me about this whole election even though I knew I was going to get the result I wanted as that this loss means nothing to Sunak. Sure his ego and his intellectual superiority may have taken a bit of a bashing but the guy's wife is worth half a billion pounds and she spoils the shit out of the cunt. He's hardly going to be sulking around the house in his dressing gown is he? He's going to be living it up in his holiday home in Hawaii, although since this stupid twat doesn't know that you get wet if you go out in the rain hopefully he also doesn't know that you get burned if you go on the beachwithout any sun lotion. Well it's it’s finally over. The Tories have claimed their final victims…well except for the animals that will die so Suella Braverman can eat their cocks when she goes on I’m A Celebrity.Bye bye Tory cunts, fuck the lot of you. Oh and fuck all the people who voted Labour this time but voted for Boris Johnson last time, you wankers are almost as much at fault. That fat fuck lied through he yellow teeth all the way through the last election and you fucking idiots bought into all of it and the deaths of all the people who died from covid because of Johnson's ignorance and selfishness are just as much down to you as they are to him.

Tuned into tonight's Hollyoaks which featured Zoe preparring to get her scan to make sure the baby she's having with Hunter (or more likely Prince) is okay. WHile she was talking to Sally we got this really unintentionally racist moment:

Zoe: I’m a bit nervous about my scan Sally: One of us will come with you. It’ll be good to meet our new clan member

………….Sally does realise she said this to a black woman right? Later on we got more bollocks from Kitty and Beau as the former burned all the items she still had belonging to Ivy, the woman whose identity she stole and Beau struggled to shake the guilt from killing Declan. At one point Kitty was looking at a doll she was given by her long lost mother which she'd held onto since childhood and I put the following hypothetical exchange on Twitter: Kitty: I held onto this doll for so long thinking if I did my mum would find her way back to me Beau: Why has it got a tracking device in it?

[lboogie1906]

Godfrey MacArthur Cambridge (February 26, 1933 – November 29, 1976) was a stand-up comic and actor. Alongside Bill Cosby, Dick Gregory, and Nipsey Russell, he was acclaimed by Time in 1965 as “one of the country’s foremost celebrated Negro comedians.”

His parents, dissatisfied with the New York Public School System, sent him to live with his grandparents in Sydney, Nova Scotia during his primary school years. When he was 13, Cambridge moved back to New York and attended Flushing High School in Flushing, Queens.

He studied medicine at Hofstra College, which he attended for three years before pursuing a career in acting.

His memorable film roles include The Last Angry Man, The President’s Analyst, and Watermelon Man, in which he played the lead character. He had a starring role in Cotton Comes to Harlem, as well as its sequel, Come Back, Charleston Blue. He made a cameo appearance in Bye Bye Braverman and Friday Foster. His other film appearances included roles in The Busy Body, The Biggest Bundle of Them All, The Biscuit Eater, and Beware! The Blob, and Whiffs.

He appeared on several network television programs, including Car 54 Where Are You? The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, The Monkees, and Police Story. He had a small speaking part on The Phil Silvers Show. He gave an acclaimed performance in Night Gallery. He perhaps reached his largest television audience in a series of comical commercials for Jockey brand underwear.

He appeared in The Blacks: A Clown Show, giving a performance that earned him an Obie Award. He did a stock version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

He had major success as a stand-up comedian. By 1965 he was earning “as much as $4,000 a week...in all respects, a headliner, working the best places, such as San Francisco’s Hungry i and Hollywood’s Crescendo.” He appeared on The Tonight Show and The Hollywood Palace. His routines were imbued with biting sarcasm and the trenchant topical humor that was common in comedic circles at the time. He was noted for comic lapses from standard educated speech to Black street-speak. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[falsenote]

Bye Bye Braverman (1968)

[sagindie]

Jessica Walter and George Segal

[tcm]

The Longevity of George Segal by Susan King

Newer generations of audiences primarily know George Segal as a sitcom actor who played the publisher of a fashion magazine on the NBC comedy series Just Shoot Me!, and for the past six seasons, the amiable grandfather always eager to give advice on ABC’s The Goldbergs. But to baby boomers, he was one of top leading men of the 1970s. He may not have reached the heights of Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, Robert Redford or Al Pacino during the decade, but nobody could do romantic comedy better than Segal. He was charming, adorable, sexy and a bit world-weary. Sort of a neurotic New York Jewish Cary Grant with a fabulous head of thick air.

Segal starred in such comedies as 1970’s WHERE’S POPPA? (the funniest scene is when Ruth Gordon pulls down his pants and bites him on the tuchus) and THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT, THE HOT ROCK (‘72), BLUME IN LOVE (‘73) and A TOUCH OF CLASS (‘73), for which he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor and his costar, Glenda Jackson, took home the Best Actress Oscar.

Segal, now 85, told me during an interview I did with him in 2011 for the Los Angeles Times at the famed eatery Musso & Franks that he had “no notion I was going to take a comedy direction.” In fact, one of his first major stage roles was in 1956 in Jose Quintero’s legendary off-Broadway production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, starring Jason Robards in his signature role of Hickey.

And when he began in features in the early 1960s, Segal starred in such dramatic fare as 1965’s SHIP OF FOOL; Mike Nichols’ superb WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (‘66), for which Segal earned an Oscar nomination for supporting actor; the 1966 thriller THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM and that same year, CBS’ broadcast of Arthur Miller’s DEATH OF A SALESMAN.

Segal was also a popular guest on daytime and evening talk shows where he got to demonstrate his goofy charming side. He’d always bring out his banjo and sing the 1909 song “The Yama Yama Man.” Housewives and mothers—mine included—fell in love with him.

And so did director Jack Smight, who, Segal noted, thought he would be perfect for his 1968 dark comedy NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY. Segal was pitch perfect as Morris Brummel, a tough-nosed New York detective out to kill a flamboyant serial killer (Rod Steiger) with major mother issue.

Hollywood realized they had a romantic leading man on their hands.

The depth and breadth of Segal’s talent—both comedic and dramatic—can be seen in Bryan Forbes’ searing 1965 World War II drama, KING RAT. Segal plays one of the 10,000 American, Australian and British prisoners at a Japanese POW II. But Segal’s Captain King is a ruthless hustler who runs the black-market operation in the camp. Segal’s skill is also present in Robert Altman’s underrated CALIFORIA SPLIT (‘74), a comedy with dramatic overtones with Segal and Elliott Gould as gamblers who bond over the gambling tables.

Segal is in full flower as a romantic leading man in Paul Mazursky’s comedy BLUME IN LOVE. He plays a divorce attorney who falls in love with the beautiful Nina (Susan Anspach), marries her, cheats on her then tries to win her back after they divorce. The film also stars Marsha Mason in her film debut and a delightful Kris Kristofferson.

At the time of my interview, Segal and the late Mazursky were still the best of friends and met for breakfast several times a month. “I just saw him this morning,” he noted. “I meet these geezers at the Farmer’s Market. We usually talk about showbusiness, the old days and what’s happening now.”

Segal didn’t turn his back on dramas in the 1970s, as witnessed with Irvin Kershner’s superb 1970 dramedy LOVING, in which he plays a commercial artist living in the suburbs with his wife (Eva Marie Saint) and their kids while not dealing very well with a mid-life crisis.

Segal also starred in Sidney Lumet’s 1968 dramedy BYE BYE BRAVERMAN, a box-office flop the filmmaker didn’t like: “It should have been a soufflé, but it turned out a pancake.” The film about four Jewish intellectuals—Segal, Jack Warden, Sorrell Booke and Joseph Wiseman—that travel to a friend’s funeral in a cramped Volkswagen Beetle, may not have excited the critics either, but it’s a wonderful opportunity to catch an early comedic turn by Segal as a public relations writer. Time singled out Segal: “As the story’s central character, actor Segal shows flashes of a comic talent hitherto unexplored by Hollywood.”

By the end of the 1970s and early 80s, Segal’s career slowed because his films weren’t burning up the box office. “Most of us get about 10 years at best [at the top],” Segal confessed. “As you get into playing father roles, the parts dry up because, I don’t mean to say it’s a sex thing, but you have that testosterone vitality. But there are certain actors, like Jack Nicholson, who crested and just kept going. I am in another group, whatever that group is, but I have been tremendously lucky. You just have to keep bellying up to the table.”

[this-is-a-love-story-isnt-it]

Parenthood 5x07

Hank Rizzoli- king of segues 😂

[rwpohl]

*

prince of the city, sidney lumet 1981

[citizenscreen]

Director Sidney Lumet and George Segal during the filming of BYE BYE BRAVERMAN (1968)

[magicwhistle]

794- BYE BYE BRAVERMAN (1968) Four writers travel through Brooklyn for funeral of friend. Seinfeld for those who have actually met (or are) Jewish people and lived in New York. A must for location nerds and chance to see Sorrell Booke not being Boss Hogg.

[chiara13]

Miles Heizer as Drew Holt Braverman in Parenthood 1x09 "Perchance to Dream" and as Alex Standall in 13 Reasons Why 2x13 "Bye"

[alesario]

Sidney Lumet, left, with George Segal in Brooklyn in 1967 during the filming of "Bye Bye Braverman." Credit Sam Falk/The New York Times