My gf is from the UK. She expected him to resign already two days after he became PM.
Hopefully a more acceptable successor appears soon.

Not sure there is a acceptable successor the majority will be the people around him who equally believe that kind of behaviour is acceptable

Some might even be more scary in my opinion

Jade for PM??

Yippee! Just worried who might replace him

CayceStars wrote:

BJade wrote:

lliam wrote:

My gf is from the UK. She expected him to resign already two days after he became PM.
Hopefully a more acceptable successor appears soon.

Not sure there is a acceptable successor the majority will be the people around him who equally believe that kind of behaviour is acceptableSome might even be more scary in my opinion

Jade for PM??

Jade slowly taking over the world?

you know I will

Hopefully an irreparable divide emerging in the Tory party, though. Could finally be the end of its dominance.

Red Wall Vs Blue Wall
Johnson apologists Vs Johnson opposers.

The divides are, surely, becoming unsustainable.

Brexit, though far from resolved, was the only issue that United the party and it's less salient now. Most (regardless of stance) do accept that debate has finished now

I have mixed feelings about his going.

On the one hand I am glad he is to stand down as PM. I have always thought his only real skill was in promoting himself and the extent to which he clung on when it was apparent he should go is ample evidence of his Narcissism.

Even before becoming PM, before the referendum, he supported Brexit having himself previously said that the UK's problems had nothing to do with the EU and were down to short term thinking and lack of investment. Then, once it was time to implement the results of the referendum, he left it to Theresa May, a remainer, to attempt to implement it probably because he knew the UK didn't hold all the cards and that the EU would not come begging as previously claimed. With the rest of the party, he failed to back Theresa May, then, once PM himself, closed a deal that was no better than anything she had proposed. Since then he has talked about breaking international law because of the difficulties with Northern Ireland.

In handling the COVID-19 pandemic, practically everything he did was too late, he wasted large sums of public money on contracts which seemed to deliver little of value, and was quoted as saying that he was happy for the bodies to pile up. Or, in other words, that his already rich friends in business getting even richer was more important to him than people's lives. Then he was a hypocrite in making rules for the UK population, even HM the Queen, to follow, at quite some emotional cost in some cases, whilst ignoring them himself and allowing government advisers to do the same. Then, when found out, he lied about it.

He has also made numerous claims that have been fact checked and found to be false.

Then, to top it all, he appointed someone as Deputy Chief Whip who was suspected of touching up other men without their consent and, once this was found out, once again lied about it claiming not to have known when it is clear he did know and looked the other way.

On the other hand, the reason he is stepping down, particularly as leader of the Conservative party, now is that it has got to the point where the rest of the party see a significant risk that the country would not want to see him in office and that if the party went into the next election with him as leader, the electorate would vote for someone else. I personally think the country would benefit from a change of government so in a pervese way it may have been better had the Conservative party kept him on and lost the next election.

Perhaps, that he has stayed on as long as he has, means even his own party cannot see an obvious successor so maybe there is still a change they will be forced to field a weak candidate.

I am not sure the Conservative party have ever been united on Europe. There have always been sceptics. What I think happened with Brexit is that UKIP were getting some votes which gave renewed hope to the Eurosceptics within the Conservative party. Unable to unite the party behind a policy of remaining, Cameron put it to the people, hoping they would vote to remain and he could silence the Eurosceptics again but the result was to leave. He clearly didn't expect that and resigned.

As for why there has been that split within the party, my assessment is that Europhiles saw the benefit of EU membership in the free trade that was allowed to happen. Others could see that the free movement of people meant cheap labour for some UK businesses. Eurosceptics didn't like that the EU was prepared to act directly to benefit its citizens rather than simply favouring business and hoping that enough crumbs make it to the poor for them to survive. Examples include insisting on countries signing up to the European Declaration on Human Rights, working hours directives, minimum standards in employment legislation, information privacy directives, etc. And some just wanted all power unto themselves which explain both centralising and removing control from local councils whilst grabbing power back from the EU.