[Spoonman]

And had he not been such a coward in the first place and dealt with Farage and the cranks in his own party he’d not have needed a referendum

All this carnage inflicted on the nation and the Tories this week are back to 2015. And 2007, 2001, 1997, 1991. And who didn’t see it coming?

If growing up reading & watching the British media has taught me anything, when a Tory led government is in power and the basic things like the economy aren't going well, trail as many eyes and ears over to distract from it, usually by trying to undermine any PM or contender that isn't just a little bit left of Mussolini. The current Tory bun-fighting as well as the last number of years are all the evidence that you need.

To me, there needs to come a point where Starmer speaks up about all the Tory infighting being a major distraction from the bread & butter - he's mostly wise in keeping his own powder dry given the environment he's in, but I feel that at some point he'll have to go in for a kill beyond that of a well experienced forensic lawyer. Hopefully, he'll have help within the Labour party for that.

[Andy McDandy]

That's one of the great myths that need busting - the idea that the Tories are the party of small government, laissez-faire, sit back and just let the market chug away. Because for all they blether on about Labour and the nanny state, nobody interferes like the fucking Tories. Why? Because they're judgemental arseholes. Section 28's just the tip of it. PCCs - why politicise the police when there were perfectly good police boards that were genuinely representative of communities and just quietly did their thing? HE and education in general - there's more meddling done in the names of restoring rigour and Our Fucking Island Story, not to mention free speech on campus, telling individual SUs what to do, fiddling with the curriculum, just fucking interfering wherever possible. And then there's Universal Credit. They really took the cake with that one - taking loads of different systems, combining them into one, and making it even more labyrinthine and complex in the process.

Yeah, Labour put targets on everything, but at least in the bits of LG I worked in up to 2010 you had operational control at a local level which worked.

Yeah, yeah, I know - Tories meddle with Other People, while Labour tell People Like Us that maybe not calling people names is the way forward. But on any objective level, it's the Tories who want in on your life.

[Spoonman]

Thinking out loud here...

...Cameron's first trip to Brussels as UK Foreign Minister's gonna be interesting.

[Youngian]

That won’t go down well with Joe Public. Never believed Osborne was a hand for hire finished with politics, especially with the morons in charge he lost the party to. Or is that Lord Osborne? They’ve probably been plotting in Dave’s shed for the past seven years for the right moment to strike.

David Cameron will turn to his long-term political ally and friend George Osborne for advice in his new role of Foreign Secretary, friends have told i.

The former prime minister has kept in close contact with Mr Osborne after both men left parliament several years ago, and are understood to have confided in each other about their careers. https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/david ... le-2755051

[Watchman]

Father-in-law says, get someone in who’ll follow orders

India presses David Cameron over protests at high commission in London
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... SApp_Other

[Bones McCoy]

Yeah

Is this the same David Cameron?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... d-cameron/

Thankfully there have been a fair few journalists who have actually put in a "but..." however some are so desperate the Tories keep office they can barely hide their excitement at any slight change.

Remember we are less than 2 months since Sunak trashed green pledges, wanted blanket bans on 20mph zones and was blabbering on about meat taxes, and we are supposed to now believe thats all changed again and that's just fine and that this is the "Real Rishi".

The media of the Westminster Bubble, have certainly swallowed it; hook, line and sinker.

[Bones McCoy]

That's one of the great myths that need busting - the idea that the Tories are the party of small government, laissez-faire, sit back and just let the market chug away. Because for all they blether on about Labour and the nanny state, nobody interferes like the fucking Tories. Why? Because they're judgemental arseholes. Section 28's just the tip of it. PCCs - why politicise the police when there were perfectly good police boards that were genuinely representative of communities and just quietly did their thing? HE and education in general - there's more meddling done in the names of restoring rigour and Our Fucking Island Story, not to mention free speech on campus, telling individual SUs what to do, fiddling with the curriculum, just fucking interfering wherever possible. And then there's Universal Credit. They really took the cake with that one - taking loads of different systems, combining them into one, and making it even more labyrinthine and complex in the process.

Yeah, Labour put targets on everything, but at least in the bits of LG I worked in up to 2010 you had operational control at a local level which worked.

Yeah, yeah, I know - Tories meddle with Other People, while Labour tell People Like Us that maybe not calling people names is the way forward. But on any objective level, it's the Tories who want in on your life.

They also divert significant chunks of the budget down the "friends and family" lane.
This massively increases the apparent cost of dong business to the public sector.

[Youngian]

Father-in-law says, get someone in who’ll follow orders

India presses David Cameron over protests at high commission in London
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... SApp_Other

These trade agreements if even reached won’t be worth shit to a country that’s abandoned its leverage. But east of Suez geopolitics gets Tory todgers working and you’ll notice the headbangers given prominence to being too pro China. Meanwhile they can’t even get Brexit done to check imports at Dover.

Free trade agreement talks have completed 13 rounds, with neither country able to yet reach the middle ground and with a January deadline looming.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... iled-state

Marina Hyde on Cameron 2: Electric Boogaloo.

He is now foreign secretary, and after his full-spectrum triumph in Libya it will certainly be interesting to see what Mr Failed State achieves in that role. Sorry, that’s unfair – Lord Failed State.

This is not like shifting the deckchairs in 1912, an hour after the iceberg had hit, but like doing it now, in 2023, when David Cameron’s form has been largely consumed by molluscs, and fish have been swimming in and out of his cavities, along with the various Treasury committee members who in 2021 probed his lucrative lobbying of ministers on behalf of the now-collapsed Greensill Capital. These days, he’s arguably more reef than man.

As Andy Warhol once remarked, in the future every single Conservative MP will hold a vital UK government brief for 15 minutes – and this has surely now been so comprehensively achieved that we are downcycling former prime ministers into vacant jobs. Fifteen people alone have been housing minister since May 2010.

Sunak comes across as a man who has only had one good idea in his entire political career (the furlough scheme), and is forever trying and failing to have another one, convinced that he’ll strike it if he just drills into a bit more detail/rummages deep enough in the bag of yesterday’s men.

[Andy McDandy]

And there's more, Crace the Face joins in with a steel chair!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... id-cameron

Now he had been asked to take over as home secretary. That was a thankless fucking job. Just being driven in cars to detention centres. Nothing the government did was going to stop the small boats. This was just Sunak’s endgame. Spinning out the futility till the next election. And Jimmy Dimly had no choice but to go along with it. He didn’t have the self-worth to resign.

It was Big Dave Cameron. But what was he doing there? He’d last been seen there in 2016 when he’d whistled his way back into No 10 after single-handedly wrecking the country. Mmm. Perhaps he was on his way to do some more dodgy lobbying for Greensill. Things hadn’t panned out well for Big Dave in the intervening years. He’d just drifted aimlessly from non-job to non-job. “I used to be prime minister,” he would say sadly to anyone who would listen.

“I’ve rather scraped the bottom of the barrel. I’ve hunted around the gene puddle of talent that is the Tory party and concluded that not one of them is fit to be foreign secretary. So I’d like you to give it a go. It’s not that hard a job. Hell, how could it be if Jimmy D’s done it for a year without starting a war? And obvs, you’d get a peerage thrown in. Though, to tell you the truth, I thought you’d have one already by now. So what do you say? You wouldn’t even have to answer departmental questions or appear in the house. So there would be no accountability at all!”

It will be like bringing back the old team. The austerity years are here again. People will be thrilled to be reminded of why no public services work any more. So let’s do it. It’s only for a year after all. Let’s face it, we’re bound to lose the next election.

So that just left the dregs. The desperate who would take any job. Anything. What a shit show. Imagine Grant Shapps as defence secretary. Or Esther McVey as minister for common sense. Has Sunak ever met her? Or watched her show on GB News? She’s senseless. This is the end, beautiful friend … the end.

[Youngian]

This is the end, beautiful friend … the end.

Twitter gammons are treating this week as if the Brexit Berlin Wall has come down. In the long term they’re probably right. There’s always that Brexit that went to a different school that Tice and Farage are offering.

[kreuzberger]

Poor old Deciduous Dave; two-and-a-bit days into the new job and he finds out that he'll have to travel the globe, selling that Rwanda is a "safe country."

I think that I would be rather good at it...

On the other hand, that precious peerage is in the bag, so there is nothing to stop him telling Ricky Shortpants to go fuck himself.

[Spoonman]

One from the archives...

10982043_1580519672200379_3945820087933975482_n.jpg (37.77 KiB) Viewed 11871 times

[mattomac]

I see moderate Dave lasted 2 days

[Youngian]

Dave healing culture war divides as a nation unites in contempt for him.

[mattomac]

He's gone to Ukraine today

[Bones McCoy]

He's gone to Ukraine today

Maybe time for a spot of tennis with the Russians while he's there.

[The Weeping Angel]

We used to be a proper country

[Youngian]

Kinda glad he’s back in case time has clouded what an awful man and politician he is

Rwanda bill will ‘get the job done’ and stop small boat crossings, says David Cameron https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... id-cameron

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's for courts to decide, says David Cameron, who complains about a court being asked to decide. I'm sure his patter used to be less bad than this.