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→ Party leaders unite against Stonehenge vandalism
Finally, something everyone can agree on. UK party leaders Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer, Nigel Farage and Sir Ed Davey have put aside their differences and all spoken out to call for harsh punishment of the Just Stop Oil protesters who sprayed orange cornflour over Stonehenge today.
Just Stop Oil are a disgrace.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) June 19, 2024
The PM kept things brief. Keir Starmer was cutting. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage used the vandalism as an excuse to attack a rival party: “These people should go to prison. It is alarming that many Labour MPs support the aims of this dangerous organisation.” Then, there was notorious law-and-order advocate Davey, who managed to combine the best bits from his rivals’ statements: “The damage to Stonehenge is a total disgrace and the full force of the law should be brought down on the perpetrators.”
Even former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher got involved: “Don’t fuck with the stones man they have mystical powers hope they all wake up tmoz and are all orange toads [sic].” Safe to say that Gallagher’s agreement definitely maybe won’t help Sunak.
→ Former Obama official questions American ‘primacy’
Is Pax Americana officially coming to an end? Now, even liberal internationalists are starting to call that worldview into question. In a lengthy piece for Foreign Affairs, Barack Obama’s former foreign policy speechwriter Ben Rhodes argued that the US should “abandon” its “mindset of American primacy”.
According to Rhodes, the US needs to “pivot away from the […]Western-centric view that has caused [the Biden] administration to make some of the same mistakes as its predecessors”, citing a continuation of Trumpist policies on Cuba and Venezuela as examples.
But Rhodes also displayed flashes of self-awareness, warning that Trump’s “rhetoric” about the Deep State “strikes a chord with voters who wonder why so many of the politicians who promised victories in Afghanistan and Iraq were never held to account”. Just don’t expect Rhodes to be flying the MAGA flag anytime soon…
→ Will Rishi Sunak lose his seat?
Every time a new poll shows the looming Tory disaster, Rishi Sunak must think it can’t get any worse. A poll from Savanta this afternoon suggests it can.
NEW Savanta MRP for @Telegraph
Lab projected for 382 majority
Cons fighting with LDs to be Official OppositionSeat forecast
Lab 516 (+316)
Con 53 (-319)
LD 50 (+42)
️SNP 8 (-40)
PC 4 (+2)
⬜️Other 0 (-1)17,812 UK adults, changes to last GE notional results pic.twitter.com/JNfSE82XQr
— Savanta UK (@Savanta_UK) June 19, 2024
In what the Telegraph is calling a “bloodbath”, it predicts that three-quarters of the Cabinet are on track to lose their seats. Crucially, though, this includes the Prime Minister’s supposedly safe seat of Richmond in Yorkshire. Should this come to fruition, Sunak would become the first sitting prime minister ever to lose their seat. Forget the Portillo moment: we could soon be seeing the Sunak moment.
This the most dramatic polling to date, placing the Tories on a measly 53 seats to Labour’s gargantuan 516. The ubiquitous phrase “supermajority” doesn’t do that figure justice. Some have speculated that Sunak, expecting defeat, called the election just in time for his children to start the new American school year. Remaining PM was a long shot, but he may be back in California even sooner if he loses his seat…
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