Next Prime Minister

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

This one maybe (re Brexit thread).

[Kevin S]

Hahaha. So Grayling was chairman for 20 minutes. What a clusterfuck.

[Ginger Yellow]

Strong and stable.

[Kevin S]

Brokenshire resigns as Northern Ireland secretary - health reasons.

[Kevin S]

Brandon Lewis becomes Chairman. For the next few minutes at least.

[elguapo4]

Health reasons, he's fucking sick of the lot of them

[Ginger Yellow]

So, it seems like all the interesting rumours were untrue. No move for Johnson, Davis, Rudd, or Hammond. Even Javid just gets a slightly different title for the same job. Any chance Grayling might be moving somewhere other than party chair?

[NHH]

You can't announce a reshuffle and then not give any red meat; lots of people seeing news of people they didn't know existing move to jobs they barely knew existed to be replaced by people they didn't know existed isn't a reshuffle. She can't actually do a reshuffle because the red meat isn't allowed by the precarious balance within the parliamentary party, and can't even do a reasonably meaty version because she has to give half the noneentities sacked non-jobs in the party.

[Snake Plissken]

Are you telling me that Theresa May is appearing to do something strong and decisive and actually doing nothing of the sort? I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

[Benjm]

So, another failed attempt to bridge the gap between May's image of herself as a strong leader and the reality of how limited her power is. Her stupidity also extends to seeing her refusal to learn from everything she touches turning to shit as evidence that she's not a quitter. It'd be funnier if she wasn't still the Prime Minister.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Sounds like Greg Clark, who's been briefed against for a couple of weeks, was supposed to walk from Business. He hasn't. Not that many front pages were waiting on his fate.

Grayling surely can't survive, can he? He cleared off and left Network Rail to defend his policies.

Pleased that Britannia Unchained hack, Chris Skidmore, has left the government.

[Tubby Isaacs]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-of-toby-young

The government has nothing better to do than drum up support for Toby Young, it seems.

How is it worth using political capital on him?

[Ginger Yellow]

At this point the only political capital that May seems to care about is the stuff that matters to Tory backbenchers. They, women aside, seem to like Young.

Meanwhile, Hunt's been handed the poisoned chalice of social care, which presumably is a Javid style rebranding more than anything.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It puts him far more on the hook for stuff that's traditionally down to LAs.
Surprised he agreed to it.

[Ginger Yellow]

But they haven't actually taken the powers/responsibilities away from the LAs, have they? It's just that now people have someone to point to and blame.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Gauke to Justice.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

It seems Clarke refused to move from Business, and Hunt refused to move from Health (presumably to Business). Grayling may well have refused to go to party chair. Greening is in there now, presumably refusing to move.

Even if they did get the boot they could just do the George Costanza trick of turning up for work the next day as if nothing had happened, except unlike George these lot would probably pull it off.

[Lurgee]

Remember how Jeremy Corbyn had a reshuffle back in January 2016 that went on for days? How that was described as clear evidence of his utter uselessness and hopelessness and mustgonowishness?

[Tubby Isaacs]

This one's going to be over quickly, by the look of it.

I bet Gauke bit the PM's hand off when offered a move away from Universal Credit. Greening might not fancy that shit sandwich.

[Tubby Isaacs]

But they haven't actually taken the powers/responsibilities away from the LAs, have they? It's just that now people have someone to point to and blame.

That's quite a big difference, surely?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Marc Stears @mds49

Is someone who can be out-negotiated by Jeremy Hunt really going to get a great Brexit deal?

So speaks an advisor to Ed "captain chaos" Miliband.

[Ginger Yellow]

That's quite a big difference, surely?

For Hunt, yes. For everyone else, not as far as I can tell. But I could be wrong.

[Tubby Isaacs]

For Hunt, yes. For everyone else, not as far as I can tell. But I could be wrong.

That's what I meant.

Unbelievably Grayling, who cleared off to Qatar leaving Mark Carne and Richard Branson to take the heat for him, has kept his job.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Greening apparently refusing to move to DWP. Defending Toby Young is a cakewalk compared to defending Universal Credit.

[Tubby Isaacs]

In 2018, the impact of Tory austerity is hitting home with the public, most tragically with the most serious NHS winter crisis yet.

And yet the Government’s big plan for the new year is to dodge the real issues and reshuffle the pack in a pointless and lacklustre PR exercise.

It’s simply not good enough. You can’t make up for nearly eight years of failure by changing the name of a department.

Corbyn could add "Tory Hard Brexit" to this, couldn't he?

I know I've said this a few times before.