How delicious!
I need cheering up today…so who is it who needs their botty whipped then??
To all of the Conservative haters on here I would ask who you think should lead your choice of party, surely not the chap who lied his way out of Beergate, aided by a large amount of political shenanigans in Durham, a man who takes the knee to a group of radical racial fanatics, a man who cannot give the definition of “woman”, and a man who’s paymasters are currently holding the country to ransom with a series of unwarranted politically motivated strikes, which threaten the livelihoods of the very people they say they are trying to protect, and all of that without a word of condemnation from your choice of leader?
Well good luck with that… 
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I am respectfully disagreeing with this bit. I am not a “rabid Conservative hater”, I simply have no regard for any politicians, since they only serve their own purposes and not ours. But the strikes are necessary to get people to sit up and listen and pay the workers (who have been keeping this country going all through lockdowns) their due worth - especially with these horrendous price rises. Everyone is struggling, and these strikes aren’t to gain extra money, its what they deserve. If anyone needs a jag with a pokey stick, it’s the top CEO’s of energy companies who refuse to reduce their profits.
I must have missed the rabid hate, but there are certainly some here who take a dim view of them.
Right, so you seem to feel that it is easier to compare the Conservatives with someone you consider to be worse, than it would be to defend them. 
Yeah, you too, Barry. 
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Is there any “rabid Conservative haters” on here?
That description sounds a bit strong for the posts I’ve read on this thread.
I don’t hate all Conservatives nor do I hate any of the Candidates standing for the Leadership election. I neither support nor hate the last Tory Party Leader (I didn’t trust or respect him because of his deceitful track record but I have often conceded that he could be charming and amusing, when things were going his way.)
As for the candidates now vying for the Tory Party Leadership, I started this thread to discuss both their strengths and weaknesses, who is standing and who is supporting them, what each of their chances of being elected are and what each candidate is saying they will do to deal with the current issues UK is facing.
I expect there will be critical posts but all candidates will have their detractors and their supporters - that is the nature of politics.
And not thinking much of these Candidates does not automatically mean one supports the Labour Party either!
Whatever is said on this thread will not have much effect on the outcome of the Leadership Contest, as only MPs and Tory Party members get to vote - but as Rishi said in his campaign speech today, the conversation about who should end up as Tory Party Leader should not be restricted to just the Tory Party because who becomes the PM affects the whole country, so we should all be able to voice an opinion, even if we don’t get a vote.
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Hi @PixieKnuckles ,I would make the point that although a conservative I do not agree that everything is right with the world at the moment, in fact much is wrong and I would like to see that changed. However, the reality of the argument is that the whole world has been turned upside down with the global pandemic, and the war in Ukraine has all but exasipated an already bad situation, so many of these things are out of our control as a country, as the whole world is feeling the effects of a global situation!
Regarding your belief that the strikes are necessary to claw back what’s owed, whatever happened to the well over a hundred billion used over the pandemic to shore up jobs and livelihoods? I agree many mistakes were made and many unholy shady deals should have been avoided, but as a country could we have done more for working people for the last two years? What is there really to repay? The basic economics of inflation is that if everyone gets a pay rise in line with inflation then that will just increase inflation, not a hard equation. So no, in my view the strikes are not warranted and are purely political in nature, which is also in the view of the union leaders by the way who are doing nothing but fighting a class war which really is all they ever want, and which they themselves are well insulated from with their £100k plus salaries and with no regard for the collateral damage affecting the rest of the population. The ultimate result of this mentality is that it will be the working man that loses his job when the final straw breaks the camel’s back… remember the way of the miners, they too thought they could run the country…
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My apologies for using inappropriate terminology, I will now edit it from my post…
Hi @Harbal ,
“Right, so you seem to feel that it is easier to compare the Conservatives with someone you consider to be worse, than it would be to defend them. ”
I thought were discussing leaders and their fitness for the job? Just thought I’d widen the debate… 
OK, back on topic now…
Okay, Barry, just as long as you are deflecting the issue on purpose. I was just worried that it might be accidental. 
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All fair points, but at the end of the day…if I were part of a Union, I would be supporting them 100% to fight for me, because it seems this Government doesn’t want to. It might be a simplistic view, but true. Boris Johnston and his ilk simply cannot relate to working people because they have never been in that position. So if anyone is making it a class war, I have to say it’s our own government who is doing it. 
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So you think it was a class war when they were supporting millions of jobs and livelihoods? What short memories we have. What is that bit in the funereal speech in Julius Caesar by Mark Anthony, “the evil that men do lives on after them, the good is oft interred with their bones”… 
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Please, folks, let’s not de-rail the thread by arguing about what is on-topic and off-topic - such an argument would itself be “off-topic”, so can we just accept that posters sometimes mention loosely related topics whilst responding to the main topic.
It happens in real life conversation too - providing the thread wanders back on topic again and folk don’t keep trying to deliberately change the subject, we can allow a bit of leeway for natural discussion, can’t we.
I raised the topic because I am interested to hear everybody’s opinion, whatever their political views are.
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Regrettably, some posters don’t know the meaning of “topic” … they just have an axe to grind … 
Priti Patel has announced she will not be standing in the Tory leadership race as she ruled out a last-minute bid for the top job.
The Home Secretary had been urged by more than a dozen MPs to stand as a unity candidate for the right of the parliamentary Conservative Party, but she has now confirmed she is not going to enter the fray before nominations close tonight.
Ms Patel said: "I am grateful for the encouragement and support colleagues and Party members have offered me in recent days in suggesting that I enter the contest for the leadership of the Conservative Party. I will not be putting my name forward for the ballot of MPs.
"As Home Secretary I have always put the security and safety of our country and the national interest first and my focus is to continue working to get more police on our streets, support our amazing security services to keep our country safe and control our borders.
“As a lifelong and committed Conservative, I will always make the case for freedom, enterprise and opportunity and work with colleagues to deliver these values in Government.”
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Good on her, she would just have split the right wing vote and I don’t think she would have stood much of a chance anyway…
That’s the best news that I’ve had all day … 
Unless that means that everyone dislikes her equally, I don’t understand it.
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I just hope that it doesn’t come down to Sunak and Hunt, that really would be Hobson’s choice. My hope would be that the final two in the ballot of members would be Badenoch and Truss, and at the moment I’m undecided with both being strong candidates. Truss probably has the edge for me at the moment with her wider experience, particularly in international matters…
Truss, internationally:
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19893997.ukraine-crisis-liz-truss-mocked-geography-gaffe-russia/
Ukraine crisis: Liz Truss mocked for geography gaffe by Russia
Liz Truss’s latest foray into international diplomacy has not gone to plan after she was given a lesson in basic geography.
The UK Foreign Secretary was mocked by Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, for failing to know the difference between the Baltic and Black seas, which are more than 700 miles apart.
It came as another senior Kremlin official dismissed British diplomacy as “absolutely worthless”.
Truss, who is due to travel to Moscow once she recovers from coronavirus, told the BBC’s Sunday Morning show that “we are supplying and offering extra support into our Baltic allies across the Black Sea”.
Zakharova noted that the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania lie off the Baltic Sea, not the Black Sea, which is hundreds of miles to the south.
“The Baltic countries are called so because they are located precisely off the coast of this [Baltic] sea. Not the Black [Sea],” the Russian official wrote on Facebook. “If anyone needs to be saved from anything, then it is the world from the stupidity and ignorance of Anglo-Saxon politicians.”
Schoolboy error … 
Badenoch, experience:
Kemi Badenoch served as Minister of State for Local Government, Faith and Communities and Minister of State for Equalities between 2021 and 2022.
So, international affairs might well be a challenge, but, domestically, she may well have some friends:
Badenoch worked as a software engineer at Logica. She went on to work at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group as a systems analyst before working as an associate director at Coutts and later as a director at The Spectator magazine.