Unbridled joy? Schadenfreude? Anger?
The public won't forgive the Conservatives for propping Boris Johnson up for so long.
Conservatives have spent months defending him instead of focusing on the cost-of-living crisis & the crisis in our NHS.
Trust in the Conservative Party has gone and it will not be coming back. pic.twitter.com/3i0p54dbPz
— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) July 7, 2022
Johnson may have gone but the stain on the Conservative Party can't be removed that easily. This cruel callous Government must go
— Ed Davey (@EdwardJDavey) July 7, 2022
So Boris Johnson has finally resigned after debasing the role and our democracy further in his final days. There is absolutely no way he should remain in a caretaker role whilst a new leader of the @Conservatives is selected – they own this shameful denouement.
— Wendy Chamberlain MP (@wendychambLD) July 7, 2022
Johnson may be going but he will leave a stain on the Conservative Party that can't be removed. The public won't forget that Conservative MPs have for years backed and defended him, supported his divisive agenda and failed to tackle the urgent problems facing our country. 2/2
— Daisy Cooper MP š¶ (@libdemdaisy) July 7, 2022
Finally the truth catches up with Boris Johnson.
The rest of the Conservative Party left wondering why they didn't act over his support for code-breaking Patel, the bungled attempt to save Paterson, the wallpaper, the cover-up, the parties, the cover-up…..
— Helen Morgan MP š¶ (@HelenMorganMP) July 7, 2022
There should be no question of Boris Johnson staying on as caretaker.
The Conservatives must use the momentum from their newfound backbone and elect a different interim Prime Minister.
— Jamie Stone MP (@Jamie4North) July 7, 2022
And not a squeak from the Conservative Party or Boris Johnson.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Scandic
The Joy of Six 1276
West End Ward Thursday Surgeries #dundeewestend
India - the centre of the known world (once upon a time)...
Jack Nicholls
Nick Baird
Mary Fulton
Nonconformistradical
11 Comments
It becomes so easy to speak out against Boris – and have these messages amplified by the press – when the public and Tory-supporting press have moved on but his leadership was just a result of where Westminster and Tory Party have been heading for decades. Sadly, we know a professional Tory with the same bad policies would still be Prime Minister but they really shouldn’t be.
James Butler of London Review of Books summed it up as follows:
“Fewer ministers than ever care about their departments, as the internecine vortex of Westminster and dreams of a slot on Question Time suck in most of their attention. This has been especially true since 2016, though the problem is of longer gestation. It doesnāt entirely explain why Britain, after twelve years of Conservative government, is run-down, stagnant, expensive, underpaid, unequal, corrupt, socially fractured, backward-looking, hungry and fearful. But it doesnāt help. It will take far more than dislodging Johnson to change that.”
Indeed George. It will take a comprehensive recovery of the Liberal Democrats to pre 2010 levels to do that.
But if we get it right and undermine the Conservative rural vote in Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Northumberland, Cheshire, Norfolk, etc etc etc. We can do it.
We have to.
We need a general election asap, not just a change of conservative leader. 12 years of Tories have left the country broken as George Thomas says
Already comments are being made by Conservatives which attempt to downgrade the significance of what has happened. They will engage in a major damage limitation exercise of course. We heard one on radio this morning saying that Boris has now ‘seen sense’; I don’t think he has, because he has been forced to announce his resignation against his will and still wants to carry on as caretaker. Other comments similarly show the Conservatives lack of proper understanding of what has gone wrong, not only with the PM but the whole leading team of their party. Comments that they tried to get him to change or that partygate was not that big an issue, that it is the public mood against them etc.. If they had said more about the way they have tried to hold up a PM who has behaved so badly and admit that this was wrong then maybe we could respect them in spite of it all. As Michael Heseltine and Malcolm Rifkind said on Tuesday Newsnight programme, it all started with the party electing him as leader in spite of what they knew about him.
Most of all, we can accuse the Conservatives of trying to prop up a PM who like Trump, wants to hold on to power no matter what the rules or conventions are and no matter what corrupt behaviour it takes in order to do so.
More specifically, blame originates with the MPs who nominated someone unsuitable, allowing their party members to make a bad choice. That applied to Corbyn as well as Johnson.
Nigel Jones 7th Jul ’22 – 11:02am:
ā¦that partygate was not that big an issue,ā¦
It wasnāt an issue at all when reported in the newspapers at the time.
Only (much) later did it become a pretext for a witch-hunt.
āRishi Sunak settles in as Downing Stās Captain Sensibleā [20th. June 2020]:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-settles-in-as-downing-sts-captain-sensible-t7xr2689g
āBoris Johnson ‘left door open’ for Lee Cain and Dominic Cummings to returnā [15th. November 2020]:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/11/15/boris-johnson-lee-cain-will-continue-friends/
@JimDaper 11:35
Seconded wholeheartedly
I am in Greece and have spent much of the day watching BBC news. So far I have not seen a single LibDem MP or peer interviewed. I am sure our press team is doing its best to get someone interviewed, but surely we should now be complaining about the clear bias being shown by the BBC to our party which has taken 3 seats of the Conservatives in the last year or so.
I agree with David Evans that we have to get our act together in order to regain the many seats taken from us by the Tories in 2015 plus a few more where we made progress in 2019 but didn’t manage to win.
We also need to be trying to get back seats from the SNP in Scotland by putting a realistic and comprehensive case that there is a real alternative to independence if Ms Sturgeon insists the next GE is a referendum on independence. A federal UK with a written constitution is what we should be pressing for.
Resignations due to personality flaws rather than policy flaws are always the wrong way round in my opinion. Some of the personal attacks and insults are quite nauseating. The reason these Ministers/MPs wanted Mr Johnson gone was they were afraid of losing their own seats. This resignation will not necessarily benefit the Lib Dems as they could appoint a successor even further to the right and more populist and if you read some of their profiles sometimes it’s better the devil you know. Labour are likely to grow in support but I am not looking forward to seeing them back in government either. Alok Sharma should throw his hat into the ring, he comes across as measured from what I’ve seen and heard of him.
Well said Mick – I particularly like the clear link you have made to the Scottish Problem which offers a real positive way forward.
@Mick Taylor
Definitely saw Ed being interviewed late morning I think it was.