Tory party falling apart?

[loobylou]

I think he'll pave the way for some other poor fool...

Plenty of those to choose from.

I'm not convinced. Wealthy fools? Yes. Lots of those.

[quasimodo]

So you think JRM can successfully position himself as the anti-establishment candidate? Looking forward to that...

Why not? I didn't predict the outcomes of the last two general elections or the referendum and neither did many commentators much more knowledgeable and experienced than I am. If someone had come up with predictions three years ago that we'd have a Conservative majority government followed by a referendum result to take us out of the EU, followed by Theresa May as PM followed by another Conservative government with no overall majority, they'd have been considered far-fetched. And that doesn't even begin to explain how Boris ended up as Foreign Secretary.

I've come to accept that anything, no matter how ridiculous or unpalatable (and JRM is clearly both), is possible. I have neither the time nor the crayons to deal with UKIP but the way things are going I can foresee their resurgence as the realities of Brexit begin to bite. Something will have to be held to blame for the immediate and medium-term pain that Brexit will bring, and it won't be the establishment. JRM, Farage and co will happily court votes from those too stupid to understand the realities of the situation and won't reject the support of those for whom nationalism is confused with patriotism. I don't think Brexit will work. Not just because I'm ideologically opposed to it, but because I just cannot see how the current farce of a government, left unchallenged by a rabble of an opposition, can possibly implement a successful exit or the things that we will need to do over the coming years. As soon as the referendum result was known, we should have set up a coalition government for a five year period or similar. Brexit is too important to leave to the Tories who can't even keep their own party together on the subject and Labour don't present a credible alternative in their current state.

Great post! (Though I still have the naiveté / optimism to hope that Labour might get it together to be credible enough at the next election).

I don't know how Labour will get it together ?

Constituency after constituency is being taken over by momentum and this is a greater takeover by the hard left than when the militant tendency was in the ascendancy in the mid 1980's which helped keep Labour out of power from 1979 until 1997.It took Tony Blair who moved the party to the centre before they were able to secure 3 successive electoral victories.At the moment Labour cannot even agree the internationally accepted definition of what constitutes anti semitism and deal with this issue.We haven't yet got to reelection contests for existing MP's.

Politics from the rhetoric has moved many on each side of the political spectrum to the extremities. Brexit is only part of the equation.The Conservative party's future in power is inextricably linked with the issue and at the moment are handling it very poorly.Its a summer of machinations within the party while Rome burns.