Lots of Hard Right UK Conservatives celebrating their leadership choices today, convinced they will be able to stop Reform. So just a reminder that if the Conservatives won every single Reform voter, they *still* wouldn’t have a parliamentary majority.

Lots of people on the left rejoicing at the Tories' decision to put two extremist candidates up for leadership. All I see is our national conversation becoming even more hate-ridden, and the possibility of them even being elected.

I see the same people who brought us 'Don't underestimate Liz Truss' are now bringing us 'Don't underestimate Kemi Badenoch'

9 OCTOBER 1774, PHILADELPHIA: George Washington replies to his old friend Robert McKenzie’s claim that Massachusetts desires “independency”: “I am well satisfyed, as I can be of my existence, that no such thing is desired by any thinking man in all North America.”

James Cleverly’s afternoon m.youtube.com/watch?v=5xAR...

Devon Loch can't lose

YouTube video by drnicko18

"You there, boy! What day is it?" "Why, it's Alastair Sim's birthday, sir!"

today's random theater photo: Mildred Natwick, Jacqueline Clarke, Clifton Webb, Leonora Corbett, and Peggy Wood in Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit (1941)

James Cleverly has been knocked out of the Conservative leadership race. This was their last chance to choose sanity and a path back to electability. Instead they chose suicide. Now they’re offering to members two interchangeable Hard Right candidates backed by Far Right interests.

I can only conclude that Tory MPs are determined to remain in opposition; having arranged to make the leadership contests a choice between the two least electable of those who put themselves forward. The membership will naturally chose the most stupid of those two.

So, as far as I can tell, the following things happened: Cleverly supporting MPs freelancing and voting for their preferred second option *and* organised attempts to shape the ballot all producing the outcome no-one but Kemi Badenoch wanted.

SBstephenkb.bsky.socialOct 9, 2024 2:43pm

And to think, I though this morning's newsletter wouldn't have much of an afterlife.