The Tories are getting all het up over there in the UK. Suella Braverman put on a fine display.
it’s the Labour Party, it’s the Lib Dems, it’s the coalition of chaos, it’s the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati, dare I say, the anti-growth coalition that we have to thank for the disruption that we are seeing on our roads today.
I do read the Guardian, and I quite like tofu — I had a marvelous spicy tofu-and-shrimp soup from an Indian kiosk this past weekend — so I fail to see what her complaints are all about. I’m not sure that a party that hates immigration so passionately should be accusing others of being anti-growth.
By the way, just this morning it was announced that Ms Braverman is out of a job. Chaos! More chaos! The current UK government is truly the epitome of chaos!
So far…the US has midterm elections next month, and I expect even more chaos here.
Her departure was a resignation.
My letter to the Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/TaWO1PMOF2
— Suella Braverman MP (@SuellaBraverman) October 19, 2022
She was specifically irate that they weren’t dispatching those dirty immigrants fast enough to suit her.
Boy, the Truss government sure is crumbling rapidly.
The internet, as it now functions, is the worst thing for democracy (despite its positive aspects). The problem, of course, is that we don’t all get the same information (unlike the good ol’ days of the three networks). It’s simply a fantastic tool to spread lies and misinformation and never have to be confronted with the truth (if one doesn’t want to be).
Senator Ted Stephens had it “right” when he said it was a bunch of “tubes” because most people never leave the tube(s) they choose.
So someone’s blaming Labour, LibDems and “wokeness” for traffic jams?
Braverman is an an eight- or nine-way tie for ‘worst Tory MP’ so glad she is out. Mind you Shapps — her replacement — is a total incompetent who gave a massive ferry contract to a company that had never owner or operating a ship and then was surprised when they failed to deliver.
@ Raging Bee, Not traffic jams, environmental protestors blocking traffic
Wot? I thought the biggest disruption in the UK at present was the voodoo economical “mini-budget”, and I certainly don’t think that can be blamed on the liberals.
I know nothing about Peter Osborne, but I thought his assessment of the Conservative party and the Truss admin was applicable to American conservatives, mainly Republican but a good number of Democrats. The terms he uses…owned by the rich, empty, incompetent, devoid of leadership…fit Republicans to a tee.
This being the Suella Braverman who went on record (speaking in an interview with the Telegraph, colour me surprised) saying that the British Empire was a good thing and should be celebrated, because it brought infrastructure like railways to Kenya, where one of her parents came from.
You know, I’d usually be on thin ice telling ethnic minority people that they’re a disgrace to their ancestry. As someone whose skin tone is somewhere between magnolia and see-through and whose voice sounds llike C-3PO doing spoken descriptions of pornography for the visually impaired, I’ve not really got any credibility in that area. And yet, I have little compunction where Braverman is concerned, given that the example she chose is so on the nose it beggars belief.
Yes, the Empire gave Kenya railways and a governing bureaucracy – railways to carry the coffee grown on plantations to the ports and a governing bureaucracy to put down uprisings of exploited Kenyans trying to object to their wealth and labour being stolen by their colonial masters. Which it did with brutal and vicious glee well into the Twentieth Century, with campaigns of horrific violence, torture, rape and tens of thousands of executions.
One wonders whether she was entirely ignorant of these facts (difficult, I would imagine, if you have Kenyan family), or chose to ignore them in order to pander to the racism of Telegraph readers, or actually approves of the ghastly history of Kenyan colonial exploitation. None of the options exactly covers her in glory.
So good riddance. Now we just have to wait for the next one, who will in all likelihood be even worse.
@ 2
The right blames “wokeness” for just about everything. Just ask my father. Inflation? Wokeness? Gas prices. Wokeness. His divorce 25 years ago? Wokeness.
@ 7
It’s the same for all quislings: They were somehow able to prosper despite the systemic prejudice of their society and come to the conclusion that said society must be in the right. As for the “losers’ who weren’t so fortunate? Well, life isn’t fair.
Utterly off-topic, really, but I feel the need to highlight this from cartomancer at 7: ‘As someone whose skin tone is somewhere between magnolia and see-through and whose voice sounds llike C-3PO doing spoken descriptions of pornography for the visually impaired…’
That was a cheerful thing to read; thanks. (And thanks, too, for your always very spot-on comments).
specialffrog@3,
No, that was Chris Grayling. Grant Shapps reminds me of Joseph Heller’s description of one of his characters in Catch-22 (I quote from memory):
Some are born mediocre, some achieve mediocrity, some have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
In case anyone should come to the conclusion that Suella Braverman is a paragon of integrity, I’d like to remind you that she was Attorney-General before she was Home Secretary and when in that position of high responsibility she claimed that it is legal for schools to discriminate against trans kids. This did not go down well but, Tories being Tories, it didn’t stop her from being promoted.
@KG #11:
In all fairness, Shapps has gone by so many names (eg Michael Green, Corinne Stockheath and Sebastian Fox) in order to hide his business affairs that it’s very easy to confuse him with other mendacious incompetents.
Rich woods@13,
That’s true – I’d forgotten his a.k.a. record.
Rich Woods — I had to look up Shapps using multiple names, which I vaguely remember reading about. Here’s Wikipedia’s summary:
You gotta love the doublespeak of “over-firmly denied”. I think that’s generally called lying. That’s as good as a Republican might do. That he’s still in a governing position speaks volumes about the decay of democracy
@KG: Thanks. I was getting my ferry fiascos mixed up. Shapps was the P&O fiasco.
It’s now reported, although not yet confirmed, that the government’s chief whip and deputy chief whip have resigned. This follows scenes in the Commons in which Troy MPs are reported to have been dragged into the voting lobby to oppose a Labour motion opposing fracking, which Truss has pledged to start up again in England.
Incidentally, one of Braverman’s nicknames is Suella de Vil. Someone on a Guardian comment thread just urged everyone to spare a thought for the Dalmatian puppies quivering in terror now she has more time to pursue her outside interests.
The “disruption on our roads” she is referring to is probably the Extintion Rebellion protests, they have been bocking roads and bridges to bring home the importance of action on climate change. In other words exercising their right to good old fashioned protest, which of course the Tories hate.
It could be worse. Braverman is just prejudiced against the dirty foreigners. Back in the day, it could have been a Tory junior health minister prejudiced against anyone from north of Leicester: E
dggwina Currie.† It’s really too bad that the revival of Spitting Image has been so tame; the Eggwina character was spot on in 1988. At which time I read the Grauniad, The Times, and the Daily Telegraph (because my job required it); didn’t eat much tofu; and, because of my clothing and haircut if nothing else, was wrongly presumed to be a Reaganite rather than woke.† Makes curried eggs sound like a good thing for dinner, doesn’t it? Same principle as Braverman railing against tofu…
Further to #17, it has now been officially denied that the Tory chief whip and deputy have resigned.
Braverman is, sadly, my MP. (I did not vote for her). I’ve written to her several times to urge her to take the correct action on this or that issue. (She never has). I don’t think she reads her constituent’s emails; I think she has minions for that, but either way, the impression I’ve got from the replies is that she is intent on one thing – and that’s her own ascent to power. Her replies always read like the right thing to say to get noticed by her betters.
I’m quite sure that her resignation today is to position herself best for the next shift in power. She wants power; probably she fancies the top job. She knows she won’t hold on to power by being on Truss’ side now. That’s why she resigned.
I was writing a children’s story about a rabbit in a wheelchair when my fingers slipped and I accidentally wrote a 2000 word, racist screed against immigration. Realizing my error I tried to delete the article, but my cat then jumped upon my computer’s keyboard. I regret to say that said story was then accidentally sent to thirty of my fellow MPs from my personal email account.
That is all I have to say on the matter.
Ms Braverman is mighty swarthy.
rabbitbrush #24
馬鹿
@6. robro :
They also perfectly fit the regressive, racist, “conservative” LNP pollies here in Oz too. Scummo, our thankfully no-longer PM especially.
This resignation letter isn’t a resignation letter, it’s a letter telling Liz Truss to resign, but in the form of a resignation letter.
Cleanup needed on this aisle, the usual disgusting piece of shit stinking it up.
@ mattsc aka transphobic bigoted nazi troll :
You whose words will soon be gone from here.
Banned rightly for your vile hate.
Shouldn’t really bother with you attention seeking hater.
Sucks to be you. Get mental health help.
Really. Do.
That’s all I’ve got to say to you.
PS. That old, unoriginal homophobic slur – surprised in its not already in the banned word filter here..
@ 29. Paul Durrant : technically, I think its both.
“Pretending that we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them, and hoping things will magically come right is not serious politics”
She’s just talking about herself there. Not about the PM. No, no, no. That would hav been disrespectful, suggesting the PM wouldn’t own up to her mistakes. Surely a minister wouldn’t suggest that…
Sir Graham Brady, chair of the powerful backbench 1922 Committee, has gone into No 10 to meet Liz Truss. The bottle of whisky and the pearl-handled revolver were presumably concealed under his coat!
I’m really wondering what is mattsc trying to obtain here.
He will obviously not convince anyone of anything here, his posts will be deleted soon enough…
He seems to need an enemy, someone who will answer him.
He’s so over-the-top I genuinely find him more fascinating than disturbing.
Why the threats of violence? Why the insistence on how inferior we are?
Is it a way to assert his (non existent) power over us?
To find meaning in his superiority?
Hey Americans, remember 2016 when the UK said “Hey! Watch us shoot ourselves in both feet!” and the USA said “Hold my beer!”. Then came 2020 when you guys in That America saw some sense, and we in the UK were still blasting away. Well, just to update you, we still have the gun, we’re past the knees and are currently taking aim at our collective genitalia.
YAY!
Louis
A Downing Street spokesperson claims the meeting with Brady is at Truss’s instigation. The deputy PM, Thérèse Coffey*, and the chair of the Tory Party, Jake Berry**, have joined the meeting. I’m imagining all three visitors telling Truss her time is up and she must resign, while she lies on her back drumming her heels on the floor and screaming that she doesn’t want to.
*Who is also a personal friend of Truss, Minister of Health, a smoker with links to the tobacco industry, and has admitted giving unused antibiotics to relatives and friends (which is not only stupid and potentially dangerous, but illegal).
** Who recently told people who couldn’t afford the energy price rises they could either cut their energy use, or get a better-paid job.
Truss has resigned as Prime Minister! Shortest time in office in UK history (44 days) says the Guardian – I’ll check that.
She’s got a few more days in office as Prime Minister. She’s resigned as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party.
I thought so – the Duke of Wellington’s second administration lasted just 23 days (17 November – 9 December 1834) – but he had been PM before, serving for 2 years and 299 days between 1828 and1830.
I’ll continue to comment on The Infinite Thread.
KG@45, According to Ye Pffft of All Knowledge, Trussamanic’s time as PM is the shortest ever, by quite some distance; George Canning is next-shortest, at 119 days, dying in office in 1827. That seems to have been a bad year for PMs with Frederick Robinson (“The Viscount Goderich”), Cannin’s replacement, lasting only 144 days before being replaced by Arthur Wellesley (“Duke of Wellington”). The Grauniad says they said they “will step down after a week-long emergency contest to find her successor” (Liz Truss resigns as prime minister), but that is a Nasty Partydroid bellowing, so we’ll see…
me@49, w.r.t. @47, make that “total time as PM (to-date)”.
Yup! She’s gone. The lettuce outlasted her..* Truss’es departure covered by Aussie ABC here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-20/uk-prime-minister-liz-truss-resigns-from-office/101559618
Good riddance to another terrible tory PM and here’s hoping the UK gets an election that can follow our example of being an anti-regressives landslide.
See : https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/world/europe/liz-truss-lettuce-stream.html