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Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago

They might not advance Tory prospects in the short term but if it halted Penny Maudaunt’s bandwagon and highlighted the virtues of Kemi Badenoch they have served a useful purpose. Exposure of the candidates to the sort of vacuous and biased interrogation they can expect regularly has some merit.
We now know Rishi presents well whatever one might think of his policies, Liz is surprisingly wooden and robotic and certainly could do with intensive coaching in this area if chosen as PM and PM’s performance does nothing to contradict the other reports of her general uselessness in action however pleasing to look at she may be. All this should help in chosing the next PM.

Last edited 1 year ago by Jeremy Bray
Arkadian X
Arkadian X
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

Amen to that!

David McKee
David McKee
1 year ago

Precisely so.
This is a version of reality TV. It might be entertaining as Big Brother or Love Island, but in politics it does no one any favours at all. Conservative MPs need to get into a huddle and come up with two names for the wider Party to choose from. With any luck, they will come up with credible candidates with no skeletons in the cupboard. We don’t need TV cameras peering over their shoulders as they do it.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

You can’t have candidates with no skeletons in the cupboard, when the party itself is a corpse.

David McKee
David McKee
1 year ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

Then that will make the next election interesting. It will be Zombie Apocalypse!

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago
Reply to  David McKee

Yeah, but when do we get to the onscreen fornication? That’s what I’m looking forward to.

Last edited 1 year ago by polidori redux
John Tyler
John Tyler
1 year ago

Well said! However, I would prefer no head-to-heads at all; they don’t match the workings of our parliamentary system.

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago

Here, here. There is afr to much trying to make out system like the US, hence the call that we need an election if the leader of the party in power changes – the PM is not a president, we do not (or should not) vote for him/her, it is our local candidates and their party’s manifesto that we vote for.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago

Despite my earlier comment I agree that we ape too much that originates in the US and that the previous manner that the Conservative Party dealt with change of leadership while in government was less disruptive and emphasised the party nature of our politics where we vote for a party not simply the leader. I do so despite the disadvantage that it tends to throw up leaders who have upset fewer of their parliamentary colleagues than the rest and thus produce bland rather than outstanding replacements.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
1 year ago

Yep, even the Pope couldn’t cope, so he went for a more opaque process. The best bet is, Tory MPs send up the white smoke after a few days, once their deliberations have reached a conclusion. They can then pass over the final decision to the membership, who can follow their own version of the same process, while the ’22 committee members get busy with the clean up at Westminster, mop the blood off the floors, etc.

Last edited 1 year ago by Prashant Kotak
Arkadian X
Arkadian X
1 year ago

If you were watching from Scotland you couldn’t watch it AT ALL. I had to reset my fire TV and tell it I was in London to be able to see it.
Just as well they are not doing the sky one as I don’t have sky…
Anyway, I thought the second debate was better, but rather undignified, especially the opening and closing remarks. It did look like a game show.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
1 year ago

Debates harm politics, in my opinion, because they seem to provide useful information but in fact don’t. Good debaters are good at debate, but not necessarily anything else relevant to being a leader.
What should get attention is each candidate’s ability to get things done. That’s hard to judge, but not impossible. Debates shed no light on that subject.