#breaking ministerial code

[eaglesnick]

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy. -Alice Walker

Spot the difference.

“Tory MP apologises for failing to report extra earnings on time.” Guardian: 19/10/15)

Tory MP failed to notice receiving £400,00 in outside earnings. (Financial Times: 04/02/16)

Boris Johnson apologises to Commons for failing to declare £52,000 earnings on time." sky news: 06/12/18)

“A Conservative MP has not been formally disciplined despite breaching rules on declaring interests after being lent £150,000 by a businessman for a rental property and then writing to a financial watchdog to praise the same person."  (Guardian: 21/11/22)

“Nadhim Zahawi is under scrutiny over a multi-million pound tax dispute. The Conservative chairman says he made a “careless and not deliberate” error according to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), but he is now facing calls to resign."  (4 news: 25/01/23)

“Rishi Sunak "inadvertently" broke the code of conduct for MPs by not correctly declaring his wife's financial interest in a childminding company set to benefit from government support” sky news: 24/08/23).

Did you spot the difference. No? Of course not, there isn’t any. All of the above failures to declare financial interests or income were all slips of memory and totally unintentional.

It must be really nice to have so much money that you cannot remember how much you have or where you last stashed it. 

[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

[mariacallous]

There is no mystery about Suella Braverman’s views on the European convention on human rights. The home secretary wants Britain to withdraw from it. And she doesn’t care who knows it, even if that means ignoring the evidence, trashing cabinet collective responsibility and breaching the ministerial code once again.

Withdrawal is what Braverman advocated when she ran to be leader of the Conservative party in the summer contest won by Liz Truss. It’s what she advocated “personally” as home secretary at a Tory party conference fringe meeting in October, before she was forced to resign two weeks later for a separate breach of the ministerial code. And it’s what she came super-close to repeating this week when, home secretary once more, she endorsed a Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) report on Channel migration crossings that calls for withdrawal as an option.

There is, though, a major political problem with Braverman’s idée fixe, in and out of government, of withdrawal from the convention. Withdrawal from the European human rights process, of which Britain was a founder under the postwar premierships of Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill, is not actually UK government policy – and Braverman is a senior member of that government.

Nor was withdrawal part of the Conservatives’ 2019 election manifesto, which Rishi Sunak says he regards as his government’s mandate. It was not part of the remit of the human rights review – which had been promised in the manifesto – that was established by the Johnson government in 2020 under Sir Peter Gross. It formed no part of the 520-page report published by Gross the following year, which concluded that Britain’s human rights laws were “generally working well”.

Withdrawal is not part of the bill of rights that was launched by Dominic Raab during his first stint as justice secretary in June either. Under this far-reaching piece of human rights law reform – which flies in the face of the Gross review – Britain would nevertheless remain a party to the European convention and British citizens would retain the right, which they have had since 1966, to take cases to the Strasbourg court.

Raab’s plan remains paused in the Westminster legislative process. It was halted by Liz Truss in September amid reports that officials considered it “a complete mess”. It has not yet had its second reading in the Commons and it has yet to be considered by the House of Lords. But it is due to come back to parliament soon. As recently as 22 November, Raab told MPs that, when it does, “we are staying as a party to the ECHR”.

Not if Braverman gets her way, however. Raab’s commitment is now the subject of an internal Tory party tug of war, in which the home secretary, under pressure over Channel migrant crossings, wants to break with the human rights convention altogether in order to fast-track plans to deport Channel migrants to Rwanda. Withdrawal has long been a goal of the Tory party’s most rightwing nationalists. Braverman is therefore placing herself at the head of a revolt with plenty of potential supporters.

Already this week, Sunak has backed down in the face of backbench attacks on housing policy and onshore wind turbines. Braverman’s decision to write a supportive introduction to the new CPS report, co-written by Theresa May’s former aide Nick Timothy, is thus a high-stakes move on another front. If she loses, it may be a resignation issue, which may cement her claims to be the leader of the party’s nationalist wing.

If she wins, Raab’s future would be the one in doubt. But there are bigger issues at stake in this argument than ministerial personalities. There are at least three of these.

The first is Sunak’s diminishing authority over his government. Braverman has clearly interpreted her reappointment in October as proof of the new prime minister’s weakness. He has to balance the Tory party’s many factions. She is driven by faction. He therefore needs her more than she needs him. So she breaks the rules and conventions of office – something Braverman did as attorney general too – to suit herself and her faction. So far, she has been able to get away with it.

This does not merely emphasise Sunak’s weakness as a party manager. It also underlines how the Conservative party is struggling to stem the decline in political trust. Sunak has not yet tried to put his personal stamp on the ministerial code, and he has not appointed an ethics adviser. He badly needs to do both. Otherwise he is at risk of presiding over a period of sleaze scandals such as the PPE inquiry and resignation honours lists. The final months of Tory government will not improve the party’s election chances if it is seen to be a factional free-for-all taking place in an ethical desert.

The second is the way an often chimerical argument about human rights laws encapsulates and stimulates the Tory party’s haphazard retreat into a bubble of English exceptionalism. Whether it is expressed by Braverman or by Raab, the common threads of this are a bogus sense of British victimhood (exemplified by the delusion that Britain is uniquely affected by migration), a belief in greatness frustrated (exemplified by the lies of Brexit), and an impatience with conventional wisdom in favour of reckless contrarianism (exemplified both by Dominic Cummings and Liz Truss).

Frustratingly for the Conservatives who think this way, their doctrinaire belief in the nation as the sole arena of effective governance has developed at the same time as their own party has been consciously reducing the resources of the nation state over the past half-century. It means they long to create a country they have themselves done so much to destroy.

The weakening of the Conservative party’s commitment to the rule of law is the final example. Margaret Thatcher used to invoke the rule of law at every turn. If she did that today, many in her party might be tempted to view her with suspicion. The former attorney general Dominic Grieve pointed out this week that today’s ministers, unlike their forebears, display “a persistent, almost endemic frustration with legal constraints”. The government, said Grieve, was evolving “a novel constitutional principle: that governments enjoying the confidence of a parliamentary majority have essentially a popular mandate to do whatever they like and that obstruction of this is unacceptable”.

This is where the crisis in the Channel meets the pathological victimhood of so much of the modern Tory party. The compulsion to deport migrants to Rwanda is the latest case in which ministers see the law as a hostile opponent. Braverman’s attitude is indicative of a party at ease with the judges cast as “enemies of the people” and with human rights dismissed as the plaything of lefty lawyers. Raab’s bill of rights, for which there is negligible demand outside earnest Tory thinktanks, embodies the same approach. A generation and more after Thatcher, it is now the Conservatives who chafe against the rule of law and Labour who seems more comfortable with it.

[ccnegus]

🚨 Rachel Reeves BREAKS Ministerial Code? Speaker’s Authority Challenged!

[lavelled]

I should have typed: Kamala. One word. She ran a strong campaign. In unscripted moments. In the one and only debate where it was a prosecutorial job of strategized goals for the country. On not using code to justify xenophobic sentiment toward human citizens. There is nothing wrong with her as the more effective operative—I guess the societal shift is about ancient liar, Prince Harry, on the cutting table. As long as you realize that veeped little girl doesn’t exist. I don’t answer to anything closely resembling that, nor does any paperwork for my identity.

I’d prefer that elections impact things like inequality, low-income, unemployment, climate, and crime rather than affluent aristocracy through code. An epistolary story that began four decades ago, or pink pedophilia, shouldn’t be used for civic virtue. I’m concerned that the probability of a coded election means implementation of an agenda that could hurt healthcare, young women, and immigration laws. I’m disappointed. This victory seems like we’re facing dread in radical ideological areas. I often repeat it: I’ve got nothing upon nothing. Job discrimination and university debt at 52. I’ll be wordy on dysfunction and conflict that affect me and those around the world.

I read that Prince Harry and his date participated with a video at the Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children on November 7th. I’m shocked that the complicit bathroom stall duo wasn’t invited for an in-person seminar on the sexual exploitation of little girls. Prince Harry discussing the topic of online safety for children. His high-paying Twitter CEO job is to monetize and sensationalize tweets of racism, ignorance, and aggression toward kids and adults who prefer not to think about it, but do think about it and often kill themselves. Was he given an award and a new 10-part Netflix series?

How’s Charlie, the pervert pediatrician? I never noticed the rigorous affixing of certain words near King Charles’ snaking news coverage. Being chopped, freshly chipper, crochet, cabbage, largely intact, pay postage, hindered, neutered, major abdominal surgery, squeaky toy, knitting knighting, breaking off chunks. I suppose the composition is aimed at a younger Windsor. Harry gives the Internet a sprinkling of his confessional content by using the vomit emoji, which means upchucked. Harry inherited a doghouse business as a baby from his pedo dad, Chuck.

How’s your Foundation charity? In May, there was something about bullshit missing donations. California’s DOJ really spends funds investigating a quid pro quo breeding organization, sure. How’s the spouse? Galloping ahead pretending you’re an actual couple—you have zero interest in your wife, no matter what you might want us to believe. I’ve caught you calling her an unsussexful trollop and a cuntress. The most English medieval castle of wordsmithing.

Harry’s ilk, however, is more hypnotic graduation march toward sex-centric literacy and Playboy models. Subject to his vulgarian tweets when trapped in his webcam ménage for about 12 years, I still can’t believe he’s curtsying nobility. Ennoblement that is misinformed. The adult film industry isn’t taboo nor is it meant to be weaponized for a one-sided argumentation with Tom Cruise, a man not provoking you on the Internet. These are real actors in a cinematic business who are working to provide for their family. You show up, spilling one’s guts, using sex and ownership flippancies, hardcore code, your buye buye lewdness, and you upset them.

I’ve mentioned that performers have hurt themselves. Mercedes Grabowski, born to a military family, changed her name to August Ames and was a Canadian pornographic actress. In 2017, she got caught in a tweetstorm, displeased with the performer on her next film, saying: “Choose who YOU want to work with. Do agents really not care about who they’re representing? I do my homework for my body.” I was on Twitter, chatting with you. I don’t know if it was her or you, the boss, who scribbled it. Her page is still visible. I do know that a twitterer intensely criticized her feminist tweets, and a day later, she hanged herself in a California park. She was 23.

Twitter CEO, Prince Harry, got escort-service married one year later.

There is an uptick of clickbait and shitposting—absurd media to optically attention grab youths in the 15-19 age group on all electronic media. There are real online predators in the deepest circle of hell. There is also Henry Charles Albert David Mountbatten-Windsor. He is CEO of the big blue web that is a Twitter marquee where he pens double-faced formula to gratifyingly seek retribution against an absentee middle-aged actor through those online instead: children. He extends his reach to BetterUp, an online mental health and digital coaching firm where he serves as Chief Impact Officer. Better, Twitter: sounds like a confession. Most of the time it’s not “just kids being kids.” It’s Prince Harry goading your children through jazz hands and the routine of surgical face masks that is his own perjury. Him: I’m exposing lies in italicized text font, you can’t squeal. His overflow of emotion is mainly due to being irredeemable and also his marriage.

2018 was a horrible, no good, bad year.

14-year-old Adriana Kuch of Bayville, New Jersey killed herself due to cyber bullying. 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III, son of Megan Garcia, recently shot himself in the head because he thought a Game of Thrones chatbot told him to.

Team Meghan: Have you noticed the significant print exposure, articulated, of your client? Do you intend to only advertise exfoliation cream and not a fraudster divorce—if so, why?

Celebrities have been cancelled or fired due to digital obscenities they didn’t write. A mild stab at a joke from Prince Harry that resulted in scandal. I’ll show picturesquely. I want to mention UK artist and abstract painter, Sarah Cunningham, 31, who died last week. Her body was found on the tracks of the Chalk Farm Station in Camden. No foul play.

Your dishonest, catastrophic marriage belongs in the adult history books. Divorce.

K

Red boat shoes 2012 Instagram:

Onion layers of Hawaii luau or Harry u lie:

All posts authored by Prince Harry.

For data’s sake, 3 days before wedding:

Lucrative microphone victim:

Files in iClout:

Stork wedding, taxpayer banknotes:

Morning sickness, Netflix lies:

Miscarriage of justice, Netflix lies:

I know she doesn’t. The interviewed initiative, “No Child Lost to Social Media.” Harry, CEO of Twitter, goads kids to their deaths and Meg is lap style deep in royal legalese that she isn’t allowed news or Internet access:

Meghan McCain didn’t write it; we’re privy to Harry’s decimated fruit fetish:

Roseanne Barr didn’t write it; Harry’s racist cretinism did; she wouldn’t insult a beloved sister:

Harry’s upending wedded bliss month; wasn’t great for the tv star either:

Ken Jennings didn’t write the 2014 wheelchair discrimination tweet; Prince Harry did:

Ken doesn’t tweet romantic interludes about Stormy in his downtime; Harry haikus:

Prince Harry gloats of taxpayer financial abuse while invalidating credible cancer patients. A male triangle of crown rot:

Divorce.

[beyond-far-horizons]

Remember your voting ID folks and remember (because of voter suppression) student ID cards and oyster/rail cards ARE NOT VALID. Check which are and vote the Tories out!

Let's pay Cameron, May, Bojo, Truss and Sunak back for all the devastation they've caused our country.

Remember Austerity, Brexit, targeting people on benefits (disabled, old, mentally ill people). Remember hiding Russian interference in the Brexit vote, targeting innocent refugees and migrants, Truss and the rest ruining the economy, targeting judges for trying to stop Bojo illegally proroguing Parliament. Remember Bojo delaying lockdown by not attending Cobra meetings, letting his dad (not an expert or an MP) go on TV telling people to go to pubs, remember all the thousands that died needlessly, remember them partying whilst we grieved alone respecting the laws THEY made, remember them lying about it and trying to cover it up. Remember Bojo protecting Dominic Cummings for travelling whilst infected with Covid and lying about sightseeing at Barnard Castle during lockdown. Remember those smirking Home Secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman targeting the most vulnerable amongst us and increasing racist hate with things like the Rwanda scheme forcing suicidal refugees to be deported. Remember the sewage dumped in all our beautiful rivers and seas and the water companies making millions. Remember the Covid VP lane where Tory chums with no expertise were fast tracked to produce deficient PPE during a once in a century pandemic endangering our front-line workers and costing us - the UK payers - *billions*.

Remember school children forced by an incompetent 'Education' secretary back into to schools during a pandemic and having their lives and results messed with. Remember Sunak trying to open a new Coal mine when the Climate crisis is about to make life on this planet uninhabitable. Remember that he's consistently lied that it will help the UK when in reality all the fuel will go abroad for a profit. Remember he and his wife are obscenely rich and are helping to sell our National Health Service off piece by piece to private companies like the US. Remember he lives a lot of the time in the US. Remember he's specifically said he's going to target vulnerable groups like migrants, refugees, people on welfare benefits and trans people to divide and conquer so he can stay in power. Remember all the 'Health' Secretaries that have fought with our NHS workers trying to force them to accept a real terms pay cut and the same with the rail workers forcing them to strike. Remember Bojo working with Steve Bannon and getting on with Trump. Remember the Tories never allowing a General Election despite Bojo having to resign because of corruption and lies. Remember all the lies, lawbreaking and breaking the Ministerial code. Remember them taking away our rights and freedoms like the Right to Protest.

It's PayBack time! Get them out! Show them we won't stand for their hate, elitism, lies and cruelty.

If you’re in the UK and of voting age please make sure to be aware of your polling location, what you need to bring and when you need to go. Also please look at polling in your area and tactical voting plans. I know none of the options are great just now, but we cannot let apathy allow even worse candidates to take seats from the Tories.

JULY 4th

[aptechvisaglobalimmigration]

Express Entry candidates suffer due to an IT glitch - Aptech Visa

After the implementation of National Occupation Classification 2021 the express entry system has been facing IT glitches as per the sources from IRCC revealed. This is also inclusive of candidates in PNP.

No timetable has been provided for these resolutions, despite the fact that the IRCC claims that the department is carefully studying these problems and working to fix them. As new information becomes available, the IRCC promises to update the candidates.

In the most recent Express Entry draw, some candidates who weren't qualified earned ITAs.

The IRCC is aware that the system may sometimes tell clients they meet the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) Qualification Criteria (MEC) even if they have insufficient Canadian work experience.

Several ITAs were improperly distributed to applicants during the round of invites on November 23rd, including some PNP applicants.

It appears that the system problem has also affected PNP candidates trying to update their Express Entry profiles to reflect NOC 2021.

Some Express Entry profiles cannot get ITAs because of the fake code 93888. To guarantee that these candidates may still be evaluated under NOC 2016, IRCC created this fictitious code as a workaround.

                          Need Help? Talk to our immigration experts

There was no Express Entry draw

It is unknown if the missed Express Entry draw last week on December 7 had anything to do with these IT troubles.

Also read:

💡 Canada will accept 500,000 immigrants annually by 2025

💡 Learn all about the upcoming changes in Express Entry in 2023

IRCC was contacted by CIC News to learn what the system malfunction might mean for applicants going forward and when Express Entry draws will resume.

All-program Express Entry drawings resumed in July of this year after an 18-month break starting in December 2020. Since draws resumed, the IRCC has been inviting candidates on Wednesdays every two weeks.

Candidates expressed their annoyance on social media after the anticipated draw on December 7 did not occur.

To date, draws have taken place on Wednesdays, but there is no law that specifies how often or when they will take place. As a result, IRCC ministerial guidelines specify that draws will occur "approximately every two weeks". It is completely within the discretion of the IRCC.

With each draw, Canada has extended invitations to more applicants. Since July, eleven draws have occurred. 4,750 candidates were invited to the most recent two draws on November 9 and November 23.

With CRS scores of 557, 1500 applicants were selected for the first draw on July 6. The most recent CRS score was 491 on November 23, and since then, it has decreased with each draw.

                           Click here to check express entry points

NOC 2016 officially became NOC 2021 on November 16, 2022, according to IRCC.

Candidates for Express Entry who are NOC 2016 skill types 0, A, or B must have job experience in those categories. The Training, Education, Experience, and Responsibilities (TEER) system has been implemented as part of IRCC's transition to NOC 2021.

By replacing the outdated NOC system with a new NOC and Training, Education, Experience and Responsibilities (TEER), the Canadian government will be able to achieve four goals: better understanding of the Canadian labour market; improved occupational forecasting; better analysis of national labour supply and demand; and more targeted and specialized job training and skill development for Canadians and foreigners.

Candidates who had already submitted a profile to the IRCC Express Entry pool were invited to individually change their NOCs to the new NOC 2021. Every position (job) listed in the IRCC profile has to have this change done. Candidates won't be eligible for an invitation to apply if they don't comply with this requirement (ITA).

You can also read the latest Canada Immigration News and Draw Updates here. if you are interested in studying in Canada then for more info, please click study abroad consultants in Delhi

                   Talk to our 👩‍💻 immigration expert at #AptechVisa

                             ☎️ +91-7503832132, +91-9131059075

Also read:

💡 How to Create a Canadian Express Entry Profile?

💡 Program for Federally Skilled Workers

💡 Migrate to Canada through Express Entry and Calculate Your CRS Points

Source Url: https://aptechglobalimmigration.blogspot.com/2022/12/express-entry-candidates-suffer-due-to.html

[cloudtales]

Entire UK government breaks ministerial code by failing to declare interests

Entire UK government breaks ministerial code by failing to declare interests

Rishi Sunak’s failure to appoint ethics adviser means ministers are unable to comply with twice-yearly requirement Source: Entire UK government breaks ministerial code by failing to declare interests

[jhamazamnews-blog]

Dominic Raab: Deputy PM says he has 'behaved professionally at all times' and denies breaking ministerial code after bullying allegations | Politics News

Dominic Raab: Deputy PM says he has ‘behaved professionally at all times’ and denies breaking ministerial code after bullying allegations | Politics News

Dominic Raab has insisted he has “behaved professionally at all times” despite facing growing allegations of bullying and intimidating behaviour. Yesterday, a number of the deputy PM’s former private secretaries told the BBC they were preparing to submit formal complaints about his behaviour. Newsnight was also told that Mr Raab used his personal email account for government business at two…

[eaglesnick]

Second-Rate Britain 4

By any stretch of the imagination Britain is far from the most corrupt country in the world. The United Kingdom is the 18th least corrupt nation out of 180 countries, according to the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International. Not too bad you might think, but in 2017 we were rated the 8th least corrupt country in the world. Clearly something has gone wrong.

“Peoples indifference is the best breeding ground for corruption to grow.”  Delia Ferreira Rubio.

Is this the reason the UK is becoming more corrupt and not less? Everyone in the Conservative Party knew Boris Johnson was a serial liar when they elected him as leader in 2019. Most of the general public who voted Tory in the last general election knew he was a serial liar when they elected him Prime Minister.

A majority of the British electorate WERE indifferent to Johnson’s lying, and this has set the tone for UK politics for the last five years. But it was not only the electorate that turned a blind eye to Boris Johnson’s lying.

“Its not just Boris Johnson’s lying. It’s that the media let him get a way with it. The prime minister’s falsehoods are mostly left unchallenged. If this goes on, the integrity of our politics faces collapse." (Guardian 18/10/19)

This is exactly what has happened. Scandal, sleaze and corruption have been the hallmark of Tory government for the last five years.

 In 2019, Johnson unlawfully prorogued Parliament, in an attempt to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny of his Brexit deal

Priti Patel, Home Secretary, was found to have broken the ministerial code during an enquiry into allegations of bullying.

Conservatives were accused of cronyism during the pandemic, issuing billions of pounds worth of contracts to their friends and supporters

In 2020, Johnson’s staff began to break Covid lockdown rules

 Matt Hancock forced to resign for breaking Lockdown rules.

The Partygate scandal broke, with Johnson denying any rules or guidelines had been broken. 

Former Tory Minister, and close friend of Johnson, Owen Paterson was found to be in “egregious breach" of lobbying rules, involving two companies paying him £100,00 per year.

Simon Case, the UK’s most senior civil servant, forced to stand down because he had attended one of the Downing Street lockdown parties he was charged with investigating.

In 2022, The Deputy Chief Whip of the Conservative Party was forced to resign after allegations that he had groped men.  It was reported that Johnson knew of this behaviour but had failed to take action.

Other dubious actions regarding Johnson involved payments around the refurbishment of Johnson’s flat: questions around who paid for his luxury Mustique holiday: an £800.000 loan and the political appointment of Richard Sharp as BBC Director General: a life peerage given to the son of a Russian oligarch despite the security forces telling Johnson it would be a security risk.

The list could go on, as there are many more examples of sleaze and corruption under Johnson’s period as PM.

We all know that his own party eventually forced Johnson out of office as even they had had enough of continuing Johnsonian scandals. The Johnson era culminated in the Parliamentary Privileges Committee investigating whether Johnson had deliberately lied or recklessly misled Parliament over the Partygate Scandal.  This committee has yet to issue its verdict.

It is interesting to note that it was lying to Parliament about partying that was Johnson’s final undoing. All of the other scandals, often involving large sums of money or turning a blind eye to unethical and ministerial code-breaking behaviour, went largely uncensored.

Is Johnson’s downfall a turning point? No, Johnson’s premiership has set the new low standard of behaviour in public office, and we can expect to fall further down the World Corruption Table.

From Sunak’s wife claiming non-dom status to save millions of pounds in UK taxes, to Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi breaching the ministerial code by hiding the fact he was being investigated for tax avoidance, sleaze is still the order of the day. Suella Braverman was forced to resign from one government for breaching the ministerial code only to be reappointed by another. From allegations of bullying by Gavin Williamson (forced to resign) and Rishi Sunak’s right-hand man Dominic Raab (ongoing enquiry), the current Tory administration is besieged by ongoing scandal.

Only  last week

“Former British cabinet ministers Matt Hancock and Kwasi Kwarteng were among the top Tory lawmakers who were duped into offering their services for up to 10,000 pounds by a fake South Korean firm, amidst a row over MPs taking second jobs.” (wionnews:26/03/23)

Some of these actions may not be illegal under UK law, but I would argue many of them are morally corrupt. And as Pope Francis said, ”Corruption is paid by the poor”. While our politicians are either busy feathering their own nests, or defending the privileges they already enjoy, it is ordinary decent people who suffer.

I would like to think that Kirk Cobain's believe that it is "the duty of youth...to challenge corruption" had some traction in the UK but I would be disappointed.

[ceevee5]

Rishi can’t fire her, because he made her Home Secretary six days after having to resign for breaking the ministerial code. He knew exactly who he was appointing. All that she does is a reflection on his bad judgement.

Do ppl outside the UK know how absolutely fucking deranged our home secretary has gone over the last few days. The media are theorising that she’s deliberately trying to get fired from government so she can launch her own leadership campaign as some martyr for the far-right. She is openly calling for peaceful protests to be made illegal. She wants to ban charities from helping the homeless.

This is the second most powerful member of our government.

[danteskygod]

I'll tell you what. It takes a lot to make me properly angry, but the notion, the actual notion, that there are some members of the Tory party who are contemplating supporting Boris Johnson, a man that they literally forced out of power just four months ago, back into 10 Downing Street is just the absolute straw.

Forgetting the fact that;

he is a criminal, found guilty of breaking his own covid lockdown laws

he consistently lied about the fact that he broke said laws

his government paid millions and millions of taxpayers' money to their friends and relatives for PPE that didn't work and had to be destroyed

he agreed to waive the need for that money to be paid back into the government coffers

he didn't sack his Home Secretary after she broke the Ministerial code when found guilty of bullying and intimidation of her staff

he paid a woman he was alleged to have been having an affair with large sums of public money and allowed her to attend trade trips with him whilst he was London mayor (and lied about it)

He illegally tried to close down Parliament

Brexit

he lied about knowing an MP's history of inappropriate behaviour when he appointed him as a government minister

he was sacked from a previous job as a journalist for making up a quote i.e. lying

And these are just the things that have come to me off the top of my head. There are so many more.

Boris Johnson is not coming back because he loves the Tory Party.

Boris Johnson is not coming back because he loves the British public.

Boris Johnson is coming back because he loves Boris Johnson.

[llamagoddessofficial]

So how you feeling about the shit going down in ur country rn? Bc as an American it's both hilarious to watch but also your government currently *doesn't have enough people to function* and that's kinda worrying to think about

Overjoyed, honestly. I don't care what happens now, I'm just glad that idiot is out. I do appreciate all the people who reached out to congratulate me on his resignation!

For those of you who don't know about the (ex!!!) prime minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, here's a list of his best moments;

Went to parties with his buds during lockdown (while going to see your dying relatives in hospital was banned) and was fined for it, making him the first PM in UK history to break the law while in office

Lied about the parties, said they never happened

Silently changed the ministerial code that said he had to resign after breaking the law, so he wouldn't have to go

Quoted a far-right conspiracy theory about the opposition leader having connections to a famous UK paedophile when he was questioned about his partying

Overturned rules on what can get a parliament member sacked so he could save his buddy who was in trouble for illegally lobbying for a big food company

Originally wouldn't let Ukrainian refugees into the country if they didn't have a UK relative

Tried to (and is still trying to) send asylum seekers to Rwanda

Promoted a sex offender to a high office position despite knowing the guy had ongoing cases against him, guy proceeded to offend again several times, told everyone he didn't know about the inital offences... turned out he did

Made numerous racist comments I won't repeat here

That's just the worst of it, I didn't even get into him using taxpayer money to refurbish his apartment or refusing to tax oil companies. Hopefully you all can understand why I'm so chuffed he's finally gone.