Plan B Forum

at about 3am Eastern time Zone, USA, this morning the BBC announced the Conservative party will call for a confidence vote on the Prime Minister this week, based on social gatherings after the mandated Covid lockdown.

Here in USofA we can't even get serious when the president calls for the killing of his Vice President.

snailgate.

For background, there are two types of no-confidence vote in the UK. The first and most serious is a parliamentary vote where all MPs vote on whether they have confidence in Her Majesty's government. If they lose that, then a new general election is mandatory. The one here is just among Tory (Conservative) MPs on whether they have confidence in BloJo as leader of their party and hence as PM.

Results are in: Johnson 'won' with 59% of the vote while 41% voted against him. In theory this means he stays as leader and PM; but in practice it shows that he is badly wounded or, to use another metaphor, holed below the waterline. Three predecessors had similar results: Thatcher in 1979, John Major in 1985, and Theresa May in 2018. All of them actually did better in percentage terms than Johnson, but all lasted only a few months more in office - the 'win' was the writing on the wall.

Johnson of course has already painted this a victory but no-one thinks he is fooling anyone except perhaps himself. I give him six months. The reality is that it is very difficult to understand who there might be in the Tory party with sufficient gravitas (!!) to succeed him. Lynn Truss would be comedy gold.

The UK needs a sane leader to meet the moment in history when the USA falls to fascism. Funny hair guy isn’t that leader.