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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Ladbrokes offering 50/1 that Cameron will be next Foreign Sec
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Ladbrokes offering 50/1 that Cameron will be next Foreign Sec and 16/1 that he’ll return to the cabinet by end of 2019
I’m not quite sure how we should take the reports first in the Sun and then in other media outlets about the former PM’s desires. The Standard reports:
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The most pertinent bit from The Sun story.
In a separate development, the ex-Tory boss’s old nemesis Boris Johnson has also told his friends he has given up hope of becoming the next Tory leader.
But Boris still hopes to be “in the mix” for a Cabinet job under Mrs May’s successor.
Political friends say the former London Mayor is unlikely to even enter the next leadership race.
One said: “If Boris think the chances are against him, he won’t go for it. He deosn’t want to be humiliated by coming fourth or fifth”.
I suppose he thinks that he would be quite good at it.
Cameron made the most catastrophic political misjudgment since Chamberlain accepted Hitler's word at Munich.
His career is over.
In favour: he's of working age, very experienced, a smooth operator, adds gravitas and stability to any Cabinet, would not be a threat to any leader including Theresa May and would give any leader including Theresa May additional options that they don't currently have (eg moving Philip Hammond). Oh, and politics look as though they could be very choppy indeed, with Brexit hitting shortly and a hung Parliament allowing all kinds of shenanigans.
People are talking about the Lord Home precedent. It's the wrong precedent. Look at the Peter Mandelson precedent. And relations between David Cameron and Theresa May (and indeed most of his party) seem much better than those that Lord Mandelson and Gordon Brown had enjoyed.
Put it this way. Imagine at New Year the Prime Minister comes back from a walking holiday in Maidenhead to put Jeremy Hunt in the Treasury and David Cameron in the Foreign Office, sending Philip Hammond to spend more time with his spreadsheets. It would be hailed as a masterstroke and, I suspect, be pretty popular among the Tory faithful.
If something looks like a pretty smart move, it's better than a 16/1 shot that it will happen.
But no doubt Osborne is up for it....
https://twitter.com/AlbertoNardelli/status/1058135218060713984
I mean if you thought Andrew Bridgen was a c**t now just imagine what he'd be like with Cameron or Osborne as Foreign Secretary.
So they've moved onto other pastures.
https://twitter.com/TSEofPB/status/748471159621095424
Give it 5 years.
Where's the story come from? Is it a Number 10 wheeze to prevent a challenge to May by holding out the prospect of a better challenger coming along shortly? Sorry but I just can't see it. Of course, that might change when we see the New Year Honours list.
For now Cameron can stick to his ocean research role with John Kerry
https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2018/11/conhomes-survey-davis-tears-a-chunk-off-johnson-who-now-leads-javid-by-less-than-a-point.html
Why would the security services have to ask permission to investigate?
There was some investigation of Banks and a Russian connection which came to nothing.
He knows he'd get beaten like Zanzibar in the Anglo-Zanzibar war.
https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2018/11/cox-is-hoisted-shoulder-high-to-the-top-of-our-cabinet-league-table.html
I agree with Meeks' reasoning - but would want a much much bigger price for George than 16-1.
1. Why they needed permission i.e. what did they need to do that they couldn't do using their powers.
2. The legal/factual basis for the request.
3. Why it was refused and who advised Mrs M on it. There will likely have been legal or other advice given.
It is, for instance, possible that there was not a good enough basis then for whatever the security services were asking for but that more information has come to light leading to yesterday's announcement.
Jumping to conclusions without the facts is enjoyable - especially for an opposition - but not necessarily illuminating. Or edifying.
And we should be wary, shouldn't we, of having politicians automatically granting the security services whatever they want. On other occasions - and if they held consistently to their oft-proclaimed principles - Labour would be making exactly this point. After all, the spokesman for the Labour leader has said that one should not, after Iraq, believe what the security services tell us (vis a vis Russia and the Skripals). But now, apparently, they are to be believed unquestioningly when it comes to a UKIP donor. Hmm..... Ad hominem policy-making is not usually a good idea.
And, finally, boring as this is: Mr Banks - odious man though he appears to be - has not yet been found guilty of anything and deserves the same presumption of innocence as everyone else.
Plus having the Supreme Governor of the Church of England on one side of the note and an avowed atheist on the other would seem a mite dissonant.
As Alastair says, Cameron was a smooth operator, but he was sadly let down by one gigantic misjudgement which has set the UK back a generation and legitimised xenophobia and closed, nationalistic thinking, when it looked for all the world that such reactionary views were on their way to becoming a detail of history.
Hawking would be far more appropriate and although he was also an atheist he was more tolerant of the religious and focused on his science first
The number of people who mourn his having got the EU badly wrong - and so having to leave the stage - is significant. The number of people who would actually want him back at the heart of Government is insignificant.
I just don't have a problem in principle with a former PM, even ones who did poorly and would have that thrown in their face, from returning or sticking around. Some people might make very good Ministers even if they were bad PMs.
Dawkins is a strident atheist precisely because he is a first-rate scientist. He is tolerant of the religious, indeed he spends much of his leisure time enjoying religious artifacts and architecture. He simply points out that religious people are misguided and celebrates the miracle of humanity instead. It is a shame that there aren't more like him.
As for the idea - presumably he's recently been binge-watching Designated Survivor and felt an affinity to Cornelius Moss...
Sorry, @Carolus_Rex beat me to it...
Could it be there might be a different driver other than Brexit in other EU countries and that might be in play to a lesser extent here too?
On standing, he could well decide now or never and brazen his way through whatever embarrassment will come his way.
On MPs he needs a chunk of ERG following and a small coterie of non ERG fans in the early rounds, and could get through the final 3 way round with around 80 MPs, against other candidates with their own flaws. The MP round is classic reality show format and we've all seen weaker contenders scrape into later rounds doing just enough at each turn..
On the membership, many see through him, but he also had backers and again may be against another flawed candidate, not an unspecified ABB ticket.
By rights be should be out of the race with his record. But, in reality, he is not.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/02/how-to-win-texas-2018-senate-beto-orourke-ted-cruz-222147
For a start, Jeremy Corbyn refused to share a platform with Tory Remainers or even Labour Remainers like Tony Blair.
It was Corbyn's sabotage of the campaign that truly delivered Leave.
https://i2-prod.birminghampost.co.uk/incoming/article3904742.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/kirsty-bertarelli-860026653.jpg
The public was asked a question, the public gave its answer. Just because you don't like the answer doesn't mean Cameron should have found a way to weasel out of it.
I must have missed the law which mandated that everyone must be an Anglican. Perhaps you could point me to such a law. I’d hate to be a law-breaker.......
He has become a rather cantankerous old soul, but I'd say (a) he's earned it, and (b) that shouldn't detract from the past.
If the HS really made a decision like that for political reasons, they’d want to have their back covered - if they had any sense- and get the PM to sign off on it.
[Edit: Dawkins cannot appear on a UK banknote because he is not dead. The monarch is the only living person allowed on a UK banknote]