Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Looks like the Yard of Smarm has made it to Chancellor.

Couldn't happen to a worse person...

How many ‘Hunt’s not a politician to be underestimated’ column pieces will we have to suffer? Hacks who had the same take on Kwarteng, Truss, Johnson and May.

I'm sure I heard Andrew Marr describe him as "well-respected" on the radio earlier. I suppose he seems not as crackpot as the rest of the cabinet but he's really the best they've got to be chancellor, or is he the only numpty that would serve under Truss?

Hunt's probably assuming Truss'll be gone very soon...and who better than the Chancellor to be anointed as her successor?
Alternatively, he may be a hypocritical turncoat - he is a Tory after-all.

The Brexit headbangers are getting very angry towards Remoaner Hunt in a way they don’t towards Truss. Does he taunt the ERG about their failure in the tea room?

Oboogie wrote:Hunt's probably assuming Truss'll be gone very soon...and who better than the Chancellor to be anointed as her successor?
Alternatively, he may be a hypocritical turncoat - he is a Tory after-all.

Thing is though, the last three successors came from the Home and Foreign offices. We could have Braverman or Cleverley as PM

Dalem Lake wrote: ↑Sat Oct 15, 2022 12:22 am

Oboogie wrote:Hunt's probably assuming Truss'll be gone very soon...and who better than the Chancellor to be anointed as her successor?
Alternatively, he may be a hypocritical turncoat - he is a Tory after-all.

Thing is though, the last three successors came from the Home and Foreign offices. We could have Braverman or Cleverley as PM

Only if a majority of Tory MPs believe they would be popular with the electorate.

God bless Miriam Margolyes and all who sail in her:

Oboogie wrote: ↑Sat Oct 15, 2022 12:41 am

Dalem Lake wrote: ↑Sat Oct 15, 2022 12:22 am

Oboogie wrote:Hunt's probably assuming Truss'll be gone very soon...and who better than the Chancellor to be anointed as her successor?
Alternatively, he may be a hypocritical turncoat - he is a Tory after-all.

Thing is though, the last three successors came from the Home and Foreign offices. We could have Braverman or Cleverley as PM

Only if a majority of Tory MPs believe they would be popular with the electorate.

No one is quite sure what they believe.

Sue-Ellen does have that end of show quality about her, effectively Quest or Really have bought the rights after BBC had dumped it to iPlayer in its last series of contract.

Very childish, hard not to laugh...

I wonder if Jeremy Hunt was the first person she offered the job to or did other candidates give her the brush off? Surely appointing somebody like Rees-Mogg would have kept the right wing nutjobs in the party happy.

Whatever she did, he's in charge now. Let's be under no illusions; what he says, goes.

satnav wrote: ↑Sat Oct 15, 2022 8:17 pm I wonder if Jeremy Hunt was the first person she offered the job to or did other candidates give her the brush off? Surely appointing somebody like Rees-Mogg would have kept the right wing nutjobs in the party happy.

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Sat Oct 15, 2022 9:03 pm

satnav wrote: ↑Sat Oct 15, 2022 8:17 pm I wonder if Jeremy Hunt was the first person she offered the job to or did other candidates give her the brush off? Surely appointing somebody like Rees-Mogg would have kept the right wing nutjobs in the party happy.

As Miriam might say, Javid gave the Lettow-Vorbeck response.

Later, when Hitler offered him the ambassadorship to the Court of St James's in 1935, he "declined with frigid hauteur"; the suggestion for the nomination as ambassador to the Court of St James had come from retired Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen during a visit to Berlin.

During the 1960s, Charles Miller asked the nephew of a Schutztruppe officer, "I understand that von Lettow told Hitler to go fuck himself." The nephew responded, "That's right, except that I don't think he put it that politely."

So Hunt’s now the defacto PM. Liz will become like that invisible Liverpool Council Leader (Hamilton?) who was supposedly deputy leader Hatton’s boss.
Hunt’s arrival will show whether the public are having a temporary sulk with the Tories or if they are toast (if polling doesn’t move much in their favour).

Honest, straight talking Jeremy Hunt has spent much of the last 24 hours talking about the need for more efficiency savings in government departments. Why can't he just call a spade a spade and admit that the government will be making lots of redundancies and decimating services?

satnav wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 2:56 pm Honest, straight talking Jeremy Hunt has spent much of the last 24 hours talking about the need for more efficiency savings in government departments. Why can't he just call a spade a spade and admit that the government will be making lots of redundancies and decimating services?

That would contradict the basis of the Tories biggest lie. (It's a heavily contested title).
The idea that if you pay less / provide less funding for a service it will "become more efficient".

"Become more efficient" is a direct lift from Truss' last press conference.

My own experience with public services in higher education and defence were of reduced funding leading to foolish short term economies that made everything run far less efficiently.

A classic example was transferring hardware maintenance contracts to cheaper providers.
Then discovering that they didn't have engineers with the necessary security clearance to visit the site and perform maintenance.

Becoming more efficient is easier to swallow - who wouldn't want a bit more efficiency? Sounds better than "putting your kids out of work".

When I was with Warwickshire Libraries, we had lots of efficiency savings. One plan was to lease mobile libraries from a company and to outsource their repairs/MOTs etc to a garage in Lincolnshire, because this meant a lower annual spend than owning and maintaining the vehicles ourselves. Thankfully we were able to argue that a) £30,000 (or whatever) as a lump sum was better than £6,000 every year for 10 years, and b) that we had an entire motor pool of apprentices who would jump at the chance to fix the vans as part of their jobs. Sanity prevailed, but it didn't always.

At last a newspaper to the point with their pithy and accurate political analysis

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Sat Oct 15, 2022 4:14 pm Very childish, hard not to laugh...

I’m not entirely convinced all of them are “accidental”