Comments

  2. quotetheunquote says

    Well, hearty congratulations to the lettuce!

    To the Right Honourable Minister of the Crown, congratulations of a sort as well – she’s the new record holder for the shortest time in office of any British PM. Way to go!

  4. says

    I loved sonofrojblake’s response to this in Mano Singham’s blog:

    “It will be entertaining to see how the Tories will find someone even worse. I trust them, though.”

    It’s always good to find someone you know you can trust, innit?

  6. says

    I can almost hear the feverish discussions in top Tory circles:

    “Bloody ‘ell, we have to make another decision?”

    “We gotta find another way of punting this to someone else without giving up our own power, and without taking any responsibility.”

    “And how’s that? The Tory donor beauty contest didn’t work, and we can’t do it with a referendum like we did with Brexit — everyone would just say ‘if you’re doing it that way, let’s have an actual election,’ and there’s no way that would work for us.”

    “Wait, I think I’ve got it…how about we let the House of Lords vote on it?”

    “Wait, what? Bloody ‘ell, that’s so stupid NO ONE will expect it! And it sounds democratic-ish and appealing to old-school tradition at the same time.”

    “And it sticks to our ‘we’re listening to everyone and doing what everyone wants’ shtick too.”

    “Yes, and the Lords wouldn’t have any energy for a real debate, and they’d do it all behind closed doors anyway.”

    “That’s brilliant! Totally genius plan! Why that’s almost on the level of that Elon Musk chap! Let’s do it!”

  7. Louis says

    Braverman, Badenoch, and Johnson possibly all going to stand/have indicated that they will stand for leader.

    Since 2010: Cameron/Clegg (coalition) -> Cameron -> May -> Johnson -> Truss -> ???

    It is possible to be worse than Truss. Just so you know. Badenoch or Braverman would not be an improvement. Johnson unfettered AGAIN would not be an improvement.

    Shit.

    Louis

  9. weylguy says

    The failure of the Truss “Cut Taxes on The Rich and Cut Domestic Program Spending” ideology was a welcome if not unpredictable end to her political aspirations. I’m wondering what impact it will have (if any) here in America, where GOP leaders are champing at the bit in anticipation of enacting their own same ideology.

  10. robro says

    If it’s anything like the other prominent departures from her government, it will be a white man. BJ is a natural, of course, if only to follow the pattern.

  11. says

    Liz Truss took her cabinet to a farewell dinner after she resigned. The waiter asked “What would Madam like to order?”
    Liz Truss replied “I’ll have roast Neff and it must be British beef”
    “And the vegetables Ma’am?” asked the waiter.
    Looking at her cabinet Liz replied “They’ll have the roast beef too”

  13. chrislawson says

    Raging Bee@3–

    Okay, now that that silly-assed experiment has failed, maybe the Tories could try electing a new PM the NORMAL way…?

    They can’t. The Tories have made themselves so poisonous that any potential leader that would have been tolerable to the electorate has long since been squeezed out of contention, and the only other option would be to call a general election which on current polling they would lose so badly that they wouldn’t even be the official opposition party. Yep, recent polls give more seats to SNP than the Tories!

  14. Ed Seedhouse says

    It’s not clear to me if that’s a lettuce or a cabbage in the picture. Either one would do less damage, at least.

  15. birgerjohansson says

    When Boris ran in 2019 all wanting to be a tory MP had to pledge loyalty to whatever crap Brexit deal he negotiated. That move purged the Tory MPs of anyone with vestigal integrity.

  16. says

    @3

    Okay, now that that silly-assed experiment has failed, maybe the Tories could try electing a new PM the NORMAL way…?

    They did.

    The members of one party elected someone agreed upon by a majority of themselves to represent and govern the entire electorate — not just those-who-agree-with-that-party-but-aren’t-members, but the entire electorate, including members of the Cheap-Royalty-White-Rat-Catching-and-Safe-Sewage Party and those who can’t find a party they identify with and those who aren’t members of a party because they’re too busy actually catching the rats in their minimum-wage-supporting housing (for dinner). With, one might add, no audit or oversight at all over the balloting process or vote-counting.

    Fortunately, Over Here we rebelled against that nonsense. We’d never do anything like that. Well, except elections for Speaker of the House, Majority Leader of the Senate (and, for that matter, the Minority Leaders in both houses), and such, whom we would then immediately (via a statute voted on by those persons in response to a second health crisis in the White House in 30 years and promptly buried) place in the line of succession to the Crown Presidency by statute behind the Vice President. OK, so I guess we would and do do things like that.

  17. says

    Jaws: Actually, no, they didn’t. The normal way is for the MPs of the majority party to elect their leader, from among their own, and that leader becomes the PM. When BoJo resigned, however, the Tory MPs apparently didn’t have the guts or energy to take a stand on this matter, despite having PLENTY of time and forewarning to do so; so instead they punted it to a sample-population of Tory supporters, who made a horse-race-beauty-contest out of it and gave us Truss, whom the Tory MPs had to support despite not having (or wanting) any say in the choice of their “leader.”

  19. robro says

    larpar @ #18 — “What’s the Head of Lettuce’s position on taxes?” The Head of Lettuce has never paid taxes, never will, and will not require any lettuce (or cabbage) to pay any taxes ever. As for the people who rely on public assistance (aka tax money) to do things like heat their homes, feed their children, breath their air, then let them eat toast…or cake but that may be too expensive.

  20. robro says

    Per the Washington Post on the head of lettuce…”The question was all over British social media. Who would survive longer: the United Kingdom’s prime minister, Liz Truss, or a wilting head of lettuce with a shelf life of just 10 days? By Thursday at lunch time, Britain had its answer. It was the lettuce.”

  21. says

    Most right wing politicians know full well that Reagan economics and Thatcher economics are con jobs to funnel more wealth and power to the rich. They know that so they know they need to implement those policies covertly and only when they have the pundits all in place with their carefully crafted scripts to continue the con job over the public.
    Truss, IMHO, actually thought all that supply side hogwash was true and she was way way way too overt in implementing it without all the proper talking points in place. She just assumed she could implement it without the mandatory propaganda to go with it. She also lacked the charm and charisma of Thatcher and Reagan. Not to mention how Thatcher and Reagan were masterful in using war to inflate their poll numbers.
    The sad thing is is that her party still promotes that economic model and the next PM will just work to implement it more covertly.

  22. tacitus says

    Johnson apparently plans to run

    I suspect there’s enough Tory MPs who don’t want him back to prevent him from making the final two for the paid-up Tory party members to choose from.

    He would very likely win the run-off if he makes it that far. He was already more popular than the previous final two, Sunak and Truss, last go around.

    It would be a terrible indictment of the Conservative Party’s inability to find anyone better qualified to run the country, as if we needed any additional confirmation…

  23. tacitus says

    Raging Bee: The Tories have been using the same system for electing their party leader for over 20 years. They always narrow it down to the final two and then pass it on to the paid up Tory party members as a whole. It’s not really a sample. If you paid your membership dues, you get a vote.

    Mind you, they would have re-elected Johnson last time around, if they could, and probably would again, this time, not that I think the MPs will give them the chance.

  27. Rich Woods says

    @Pierce R. Butler #24:

    Is Zombie Elizabeth Windsor eligible?

    The dead have no place in politics and consequently can only be appointed to the House of Lords.

  28. KG says

    Mind you, they would have re-elected Johnson last time around, if they could, and probably would again, this time, not that I think the MPs will give them the chance. – tacitus@23

    You may well be underestimating their idiocy. He is being seriously talked of as likely to get the 100 nominations needed to get past the initial hurdle.

  30. specialffrog says

    It seems that Johnson will get the 100 votes necessary and if the membership gets to choose between him and Sunak then Johnson will almost certainly win.

  31. Louis says

    @Tacitus #23, and KG #28,

    There are 357 Tory MPs.

    People who believe Johnson is unelectable as leader have to believe that there are (in essence) fewer than 179 utterly venal, criminal, deviant, selfish evil pigshit thick fucks in 357 people.

    This would be tricky even with a group of 357 normal people, I mean, have you met people?^ But this is 357 Tory MPs. That’s 714 utter scumbags.

    Louis

    ^I jest. Most people are meet are lovely.

  32. Paul K says

    When history looks back at this past several years, (if there’s a history to look back), I hope its take is ‘What the fuck? How did all that happen? It’s great that we got past that insanity.’ But I keep asking myself in the here and now how much farther we can go down the road of crazy. If you had told me that just months after his humiliating departure, Boris Johnson would be seen by some as a kind of returning savior, I would not have thought it possible; not this soon, anyway.

    Why do I keep doing that?

  33. KG says

    Louis@30,
    No, there have to be fewer than 100 who will vote for (strictly speaking, nominate) Johnson. And although all 357 can reasonably be described as “utterly venal, criminal, deviant, selfish evil pigshit thick fucks”, that’s quite possible, because it’s almost certainly in their selfish interest in keeping their seats in the Commons to support “eat out to kill granny” Sunak, or if his skin colour is just too great a barrier (although his extreme wealth makes him look a lot whiter to Tories), Mordaunt. If they put Johnson back in, they risk having to push him out yet again, or seeing him sanctioned for lying to the Commons and (if the sanction is sufficient, I can’t remember the exact terms) having to fight a by-election for his own seat. Sunak will “reassure the markets” by starving a couple of million paupers, and dig in for the next two years, during which he, and the Tory MPs, will hope for Starmer to be caught in flagrante with an underage goat.

  34. rietpluim says

    It deeply worries me that every time you think they’ve hit the bottom, they come up with someone worse. Lord have mercy on us all.

  36. KG says

    StevoR@35,
    Johnson is undoubtedly worse than himself! That is, if reinstated he would feel he had triumphed over his enemies, and could be even less restrained by rules and conventions that, in his eyes, were never meant to apply to him.