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Uh, anyone in the UK willing-and-able to comment on this?
From my warped, media-driven perspective across the pond, like... it looks something like this.
Boris Johnson is a frighteningly intelligent person who managed to become PM and pull off Brexit, freeing the UK from the placid bureaucratic tyranny of Brussels but also from a variety of economically beneficial arrangements with the continent
During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Boris Johnson ultimately failed to heed Dominic Cummings, turning about-face on a number of lockdown policies which Boris did not, apparently, regard himself as bound by (channeling a lot of U.S. Democrats here)
The economy, predictably, suffers; whether this is due to COVID, Brexit, both, or neither, is a question that will help many economics professors secure tenure
Maybe there is some philandering by someone important in here somewhere? Recollection vague...
A bunch of people resign from positions in Boris' administration
Liz Truss becomes PM
Six weeks later, someone gets manhandled in the Commons over a vote?
Liz Truss resigns as PM
Maybe Boris is coming back?
It's just not clear to me, at all, how Boris managed to get himself removed in the first place; it feels like he was removed for little tiny stupid stuff after massively succeeding on all the issues that genuinely mattered to him and his supporters. He apparently should have heeded Cummings on COVID (and perhaps many other things, too) and it looks like Boris reaped the consequences without actually learning his lesson. But Truss is apparently just wildly incompetent, or maybe she's just catching the blame for what is really Boris' economy?
What's really happening, there. Help me out.
These are all my observations as a britbong.
When the UK voted to leave the EU, this caused a political stalemate in the UK's lower chamber that lasted 2 years. Theresa May, who became PM after Cameron resigned, did not have the numbers required to pass her deal and invoke Article 50, which was to agree to a settlement with the EU and terminate all other aspects of EU membership. This was unpopular with those parties to the left of the Tories, who wanted to remain part of the EU and those on the right of her own party, who wanted to leave the EU without any concessions offered. She quit in the spring of 2019, after a third failed attempt to push her deal through the House of Commons.
Boris wins the resulting leadership election. His plan, partially concocted by Dom Cummings was to force a GE and campaign on the basis that, if given a majority, he would end the deadlock and leave the EU under a repackaged version of May's deal. In December, he won an 380 seat majority, and passed A50 just before the new year.
In 2020, the coof hits. The original plan of the UK government, which is to encourage individual measures such as handwashing and voluntary distancing, is thrown out for the lockdownist policy that originated in China and was copied by countless other nations. Cummings is of the impression that, if we had done this earlier, we could have reduced the number of deaths. I disagree highly, the UK does not have the culture, geography, nor the dystopian panopticon required for the results seen in east asian countries and its primary hobbies consist of Greggs and Alcoholism, but that is another topic for another time. I also do not think it is the reason he was eventually knifed.
Dom Cummings is exiled from the government as he and Boris' wife Carrie took huge dislikings to each other, resulting in interfactional squabbles until Carrie's faction won. He is now on the outside looking in.
During the winter of 2020 while the country is in Lockdown and the common citizen is denied freedom of association, Boris and his colleagues host several parties at Number 10. This is leaked to the press a year later around the time a fourth lockdown is being proposed. After several months of political obstructionism, Boris is eventually fined, issues a weak apology and moves on.
In the Spring/Summer of this year, a story emerges about a sex pest in the Tory party having molested several people at an event. It is revealed that Boris ran interference and prevented action from being taken against this person. Tory MPs, sick and tired of having to defend the actions of the PM and his inner circle, propose a VoNC, which he passes with the worst numbers for a PM to date. His cabinent shortly resigns in quick succession, and he gives up the ghost and resigns.
After his own leadership election, Liz Truss wins. Liz Truss is, as was discussed on the subreddit, extremely stupid. She appoints longtime ally/adultery partner Kwasi Karteng as Chancellor (chief money guy), who unveils a budget with tax cuts and spending rises funded by borrowing. This is the event that caused the pound to crap itself and nearly killed off the pension industry. Truss eventually U-Turns and replaces Karteng with Jeremy Hunt, who immediately undoes the budget and replaces it with one reminiscient of the pro-Austerity Cameron government. Her position still awful, she elected to resign today.
Boris is being suggested primarily as a replacement for Truss by the membership, who are rural pensioners with opinions far to the right of even the populist public.
Huh. For some reason I thought Cummings was the architect of the original approach, and that the draconian lockdowns marked the beginning of the end for Cummings. But maybe that was based on my impression of his comments to media when he broke lockdown to be near relatives when his wife got sick.
Oh, that piece he did 'apologising' was so bad. He clearly had nothing but contempt for the whole idea, and his 'excuse' that he had to travel halfway across the country with his family, while his wife was sick with Covid, was that they needed the grandparents to look after the kids while she was sick.
What, you can't manage to look after your kids yourself, Dominic? Or hire nannies/au pairs/agency staff to do so?
This at a time when ordinary people can't leave their houses, can't visit their sick grannies, are told that if they do anything at all they will be responsible for spreading a deadly plague - and then this guy breaks rules with gay abandon because hey, rules are for the little people.
Correct, rules are for little people. The modern rejection of this idea has lead to the "little people" suffering the most...
Ironically your continued presence, and it's deleterious effect on the Sub would seem to support this claim.
@ZorbaTHut, @TracingWoodgrains, Et Al. Perhaps you'd like to offer a rebuttal?
Inasmuch as I have a rebuttal, it's that I would strongly prefer not being pinged into old feuds you choose to dredge up out of context, particularly given that you've also indicated my continued presence here is undesirable. Leave me out of your fights, please.
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