The world has finally gone to hell in a handcart

[Derek Hardballs]

Now we find that the Tories, having let the evil genie out of the bottle marked "Brexit", having woefully failed to make the best of the situation once it happened, are going to vote for Boris as PM because he is the best bet for their beleaguered party. Their only chance of stopping Corbyn (Corbyn FFS sake, not a proper human being) from winning a General Election.

This post goes right to the heart of it.

Such is their lack of clarity and conviction, Tory MPs have (probably) facilitated the route to the party leadership/PM for a man who the majority of them would probably prefer not to have to consider; the membership will duly add the finishing touches by confirming Johnson as their preference. The Tory-voting electorate in its entirety wouldn't make the same choice, but somehow this seems to escape both the MPs and the party members and there may yet be a reckoning at the polls.

Farage has once again managed to dictate the agenda for the Tories; exactly as he did in 2015, when Cameron was panicked into promising an ill-advised plebiscite (and he was warned that it was indeed ill-advised). Add to that a paranoia about Corbyn and you have a party whose direction is being almost completely defined by a rump of hard right MPs, together with some outside influences and barely at all by any sense of conviction or identity.

Meanwhile, those of us on the centre-left - equally paranoid about Corbyn - are desperate for some kind of realignment; a genuine social democratic alternative. One we would probably then decide not to vote for anyway, because FPTP would make doing so pointless. That said, PR would, right now, hand The Brexit Party an awful lot of seats (and a lot of awful MPs) so that would hardly be a panacea.

Checkmate

Great post.