Christopher Whiteside MBE is a Conservative activist. He was Conservative candidate for Leeds North East in the 2024 General election He has served as a County, City & District, Borough, Town and Parish councillor, and has also been a school governor and health authority member. He is currently an Egremont Town Councillor. He lives and works in the North of England, particularly dividing his time between Cumbria and Yorkshire.
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its just pathetic isn't it.
He cant cling on as PM until October, the conservative party has to stop him somehow. Hell even remove the whip, kick him out. If its going to take a while to elect a new leader then put Raab in the top spot for now as a caretaker, he wont run as a candidate so hes the obvious choice.
It pains me to agree with Dominic Cummings, but he has hit the nail on the head with his tweet.
“I know that guy and I'm telling you – he doesn't think it's over.
He's thinking 'there's a war, weird sh** happens in a war, play for time play for time, I can still get out of this, I got a mandate, members love me, get to September.
If MPs leave him in situ there'll be CARNAGE."
I don't agree with Cummings - there is no way back now and I do not think it is possible that the PM does not understand this.
Once the leadership election starts - on Monday - the PM cannot stop it, and when it concludes the new leader will have a majority in the commons and Boris will not.
In this case the PM has been forcefully removed, kicking and screaming all the way. Then at the end gives a speech like that, one in which he blames everyone but himself and its worth taking note that he NEVER once says he has resigned, as either Conservative leader or PM. He says its time to start to look for a successor, but he never says I have resigned. I honestly believe he still thinks he can worm his way out of this and carry on, its one of the very few things i have ever agreed with Cummings on.
Its not really an acceptable position to leave him in number 10 for any length of time.
One thing though. Johnson still thinks he could beat Starmers
Labour in a general election tomorrow. The totally mad thing here is on that he is probably right.
I still don't think Boris actually won his landslide election, it was less a landslide to Johnson, It was more a landslide away from Corbyn.
If there was a constitutional mechanism to put Dominic Raab in as caretaker PM now, I suspect it would be invoked - thought I don't think it would have been had Boris recognised the writing on the wall when almost everyone else did and agreed to go on Tuesday night.
The thing is, we are stuck with the rules as they are - and frankly, the propensity for trying to change the rules whenever they are inconvenient is one of the things which there has been far too much of over the past three years, which undermined trust in the PM, and which I hope his successor will move away from.
Boris may not have managed to make himself utter the words "I resign as Conservative leader," but that was the practical effect of his agreeing with Sir Graham Brady to start the process of electing his successor.
I have met Sir Graham. He has survived in that job for a decade, except for a brief pause when he stood for the leadership himself, because he is one of the regrettably few MPs in parliament whose integrity and discretion almost all his colleagues trust.
This may sound like a contradiction, but it isn't: Sir Graham Brady also knows where even more bodies are buried than Boris Johnson does. I don't believe he would let Boris Johnson reverse what he did by agreeing to start the process of electing a new leader and in the unlikely event that I am wrong and he tried stop that process, I don't believe that the parliamentary party in its present mood will elect a 1922 committee executive next week which would let him.