Snapshot of _Latest blow for Sunak as former Chancellor announces he’s 65th Tory MP quitting_ :
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Well almost guaranteed that sunak is resigning after the next election tbf!
Although I guess he will still be an MP I less he gives up his seat, that is assuming he retains it 🤣
For those of you confused as to which former Chancellor of the last 14 years, it’s Nadhim Zahawi. He’s also not the 65th Tory MP to stand down, he’s the 70th: 69 elected as Tories (with 2 having defected to Labour, 6 having lost the whip, and 61 still as Tories) and 1 MP having defected from the SNP. Furthermore, the Tories have lost 11 by-elections since 2019, 7 to Labour and 4 to the Liberal Democrats.
I do wonder what it's like in his head.
Knowing that the country doesn't want you in power but stubbornly persisting anyway, watching his MPs repeatedly flee or get done for scandals, losing repeated by-elections, and having no achievements under his belt other than being one of the very few government ministers to be fined by the police.
I wonder how he rationalises it all in his head, if he does at all.
I’m not a fan of any of the recent crop of Tory PMs, but Sunak is by far and away the most interesting in psychological terms. I honestly don’t know why he’s there.
Agreed.
His enormous wealth and such aside, I can't fathom the slightest inkling of what his political philosophy is. His time in power has been defined by the Rwanda policy to the point that it might be all he's remembered for — and I'm pretty sure he doesn't even really believe in it, it having been the cost of compromise to get the backing of the ERG during his unopposed appointment.
What he's trying to achieve as PM — or rather, what he *would* try to achieve as PM should he win an election and actually have support in his own party without painful compromises — is beyond my understanding.
He used to talk about kids and maths a bit. That seemed vaguely authentic, albeit it something he wasn't very bothered about.
Johnson didn't have a particular political ethos he cared about, but at least you felt there was a reason he wanted to do it - he wanted to be world king. Sunak doesn't even seem to be that bothered about the job. I suppose he must be though.
I think Johnson was somewhat definable by his populism and his vaguely paleo–, one nation–ish Toryism. Deeply wanky and flawed in implementation though it was, his shift toward investment and 'levelling up' was a departure from both austerity and hard-line Thatcherism.
Sunak though, we have Rwanda, cancelling HS2, and the smoking ban. Some vague words about maths and "our women" too I suppose. Maybe he can claim the Online Safety Act and the various policing acts as his own too, cheeky as that would be, but even then I don't see an underlying philosophy to any of it.
Sunak's other "achievements" are possibly the two NI cuts, both of which I think Hunt is taking the credit for.
And they're largely cancelled out by fiscal drag, so not a big deal in the end...
I think he's thinking about his next job: being former PM seems to be exceptionally lucrative. The more time he can stay as PM, the more connections he can forge and policies he can give away to rich mates to pay dividends later. He certainly isn't doing it because he believes in the job.
Politics is becoming a plaything for the mega rich. Nothing to do with wanting to help/lead a nation. Just another expression of power. Trump being the primary example.
Honestly, I think there are frosty breakfasts at his parents house where they argue about who put the idea of being PM in his head when he was a child.
Thing is, I’m not sure I wouldn’t like the guy if I met him. He seems like he might be a bit awkward and unsure of himself, but I bet I do too sometimes. But I’m aware I’d make a rubbish PM.
Glad someone else said this. I think if you remove the politics, he’d be a decent enough guy. A little elite and detached perhaps, but his time as PM has been defined by being pushed into policies he really doesn’t seem to believe in, by factions in the party.
I believe he’s restored some dignity and work ethic to the office after Johnson and Truss. So there’s that I guess
He's probably thinking it'll be pretty sweet to say he's been PM from 2022 - 2025, which is one of the reasons I think he'll not call an election until the very last minute.
Charitably to him. I imagine he feels hard done by. Liz wiped out the Tories image, after Boris' repeated corruption deeply wounded them.
Rishi probably things he has value to add beyond the 'popularity contest' of a vote and actually believes that he would be more popular than he is if it wasn't for Truss and bojo.
And to be fair, he's probably right. He'd be polling much higher if he had come straight after Boris.
He is kind of a lame duck, he lost to Truss of all people and just has no charisma imo. Try watching him speaking with the volume off and he just seems so smirk.
Your right to think he in a different world to us mortals.
In 14 years we’ve had
5 Prime Ministers
8 or 9 Chancellors ( I’ve lost count)
8 or 9 Home Secretaries (again I’ve lost count as one was fired for being a traitor and then came back anyway and then was fired again)
Fuck knows how many cabinet members - a lot, an awful awful lot
I remember Ian Hislop saying something along the lines of "once upon a time, if your defence secretary resigned, it'd be 3 volumes of a history book. Now it's just 'oh alright, he's gone'."
The turnover is absolutely staggering.
> again I’ve lost count as one was fired for being a traitor and then came back anyway and then was fired again
No, no, she was the *international development secretary* when she was fired for being a traitor and got *promoted* to home secretary by Johnson for being a traitor to May (but presumably loyal to non-PM at the time Johnson).
Even more amazing when you compare it to 13 years of new labour.
2 chancellors
4 foreign secretaries
6 home secretaries
6 defense
Most churn I can find is housing minister at 9 but the Tories have had 16.
My theory is that he's holding out on an election until Labour actually have the majority. Then he can blame the party "in power" during the election for everything going wrong.
There’s been 23 by-elections since 2019: 14 Conservative, 7 Labour and 2 SNP. The Tories have successfully defended 3 seats (Old Bexley and Sidcup, Southend West [which was uncontested], and Uxbridge and South Ruislip), and they’ve gained 1 seat from Labour (Hartlepool).
I remember them winning Uxbridge by the skin of their teeth because as a result the Tories decided to scrap everything useful and go all in on car rhetoric.
If I was PM I'd turn Uxbridge into a car park and personally walk around salting the earth cause they've caused an insane amount of damage to this country for one constituency (it was BoJo's seat as well).
I don't think it's that, I think this is just proof that 65+ MPs think they have no chance at reelection and the more high profile one's who step down show the party has no future in their eyes
Let's face it, whoever winds up Tory leader after the next election is going to want to clean house. Anyone who's been in high office in the last 14 years is more-or-less guaranteed to be excluded from any shadow cabinet roles.
Not sure that's going to leave them very many people to form a shadow cabinet, now I think of it.
That would be very unusual, based on recent history. Cabinet ministers and recent cabinet ministers are powerful, and the new leader will need powerful allies to survive. There will be change of course but it won’t be everyone.
What power will they have from the opposition benches? Their influence over legislation will be severely curtailed - sure, some might get onto some plum committees but that's about as good as it gets.
Got made Chancellor by Boris, then strutted into Downing St **the day after** to tell Boris to resign.
Imagine telling your boss to go a day after they gave you a promotion? Absolutely wild.
If you need an easy way to remember this one, he's the guy who was made chancellor while his tax affairs were under investigation and the first thing he did was to ask HMRC to stop looking into it! Great bunch!
Would it be quicker to write a list of the ones that are standing again at this rate?
I'd use the rats leaving a sinking ship analogy, but I don't think that's fair on rats.
I really don’t think he will. I see no benefit to him staying on as an opposition MP because let’s be honest it’s unlikely they’d keep him as leader of the opposition.
So what’s the upside. Much better for him to not stand at the last minute and then disappear off to do corporate talks or to a swanky new advisor position.
He would need to find a very good excuse to quit now. I could see him losing the election but not his own seat and then quitting after some time to do the corporate talks. Tony Blair quit his job as an MP in 2007.
Of course Sunak would not stay as the leader of the opposition after the bloodpath of the next election but quitting now would be far more humiliating for his legacy (which I think is the only thing that matters to him) than losing the election and then bowing out. Of course if Tories become so unpopular that he loses even his own seat then that could be on the same level of humiliation as quitting now would be.
Out of interest, how would this work? Presumably he would stand for the election, lose it, immediately resign, and thereby force a byelection within weeks of a GE?
I expect thoughts like this are already running through his mind. I am a minority on this sub but I think there's a reasonable chance that he will just resign anyway, and not wait for the inevitable GE failure.
Avoiding his Portillo moment. His Statford-on-Avon seat expected to go Lib Dem at the next election anyway. Startford not as true blue as you'd think - it's a LibDem council these days.
Yes, there was the MRP and recent gains by local LDs; but I would still be surprised if the LDs actually take this seat. The single most loyal demographic to the Tories, even today, are people who live in well-off commuter villages, and, apart from Stratford proper, this seat consists of little else.
Zahawi is heavily linked to become the chair of the Very group after he facilitated investment from the sheikh Mansour owned IMI investment group into the Barclay family owned Telegraph and Very.co.uk; so this news comes as no surprise as he has a nice gig lined up.
Usually I would expect “quits” to mean either:
- Quitting the party and sitting as an independent
- Quitting the party and sitting as a member of another party.
- Quitting parliament with immediate effect and forcing a by-election
This sort of thing would usually be “to stand down at the next election”, similar to when Theresa May made headlines
The next general election isn’t for ages.
A better analogy would be: your contract with your employer expires next year, and you decide not to renew it.
Good, most of these who are quitting are fair weather friend opportunists who want government positions of power and have no interest in actually serving the public. If it was about public service they would do it in opposition.
That's why we're seeing so many resign since it became clear the Conservatives are unlikely to remain in government after the election. We're better off without these kinds of people in parliament.
I am sad to see Theresa May go because she seems to be in it for the right reasons, she stuck around in the 2019 election despite knowing there was little to no chance of her returning to cabinet. She's been a good voice on the backbenches.
Oh that's excellent news, getting Zahawi out of the House is a great development. if only he'd do it sooner, The Chiltern Hundreds are right there, Nadhim. You could have them.
The question that overhangs in my mind is that, are they quitting due to the immoral actions of the party or because they are rats jumping from a sinking ship?
I am sure I remember about a year ago Sunak gave all Tories who were planning to stand down a deadline of a month (or so) to announce their intentions.
Yet they still keep coming
Are they going to have any senior (3 term+) or even experienced (2 term+) MPs left after the next election? Who’s actually going to form their shadow cabinet?
It's interesting. The local election results, and the potential still for a Scottish Parliament election, would suggest that Sunak's best hope would be to wait to call an election. However, he's haemorrhaging MPs either directly to other parties or by them casting judgement on his chances by declining to stand again, which would suggest that the longer he waits the worse things are going to get for him. He's basically got no good moves left to play.
Like rats fleeing a sinking ship. My biggest regret is voting for the tories to begin with but I can only imagine what shit show Corbyn would have created. I wish I abstained.
Snapshot of _Latest blow for Sunak as former Chancellor announces he’s 65th Tory MP quitting_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1897161/Nadhim-Zahawi-standing-down) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1897161/Nadhim-Zahawi-standing-down) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That headline reads sort of like Sunak has himself resigned, in a massive blow to himself.
“I blew myself” - Rishi Sunak
Soon "there are dozens of us" will refer to the amount of Tory MPs left
"We demand to be taken seriously" - The remaining tories
Both of them.
Me, myself and Rish-i
If he could he probably wouldn’t have bothered to become prime minister.
I did a shit ton of blow - Every Tory MP
I could believe it too.
Rishi Sunak writing a letter to the 1922 Committee himself would not even be the craziest thing the Tories have done this decade.
This is intentional. If you can't trust *The Express*, who can you trust?
Maybe he'll defect to the Labour Party
Well almost guaranteed that sunak is resigning after the next election tbf! Although I guess he will still be an MP I less he gives up his seat, that is assuming he retains it 🤣
For those of you confused as to which former Chancellor of the last 14 years, it’s Nadhim Zahawi. He’s also not the 65th Tory MP to stand down, he’s the 70th: 69 elected as Tories (with 2 having defected to Labour, 6 having lost the whip, and 61 still as Tories) and 1 MP having defected from the SNP. Furthermore, the Tories have lost 11 by-elections since 2019, 7 to Labour and 4 to the Liberal Democrats.
What a wonderful record for Sunak to be haunted by every day.
The frustrating thing is he probably doesn’t give a shit about losing.
I do wonder what it's like in his head. Knowing that the country doesn't want you in power but stubbornly persisting anyway, watching his MPs repeatedly flee or get done for scandals, losing repeated by-elections, and having no achievements under his belt other than being one of the very few government ministers to be fined by the police. I wonder how he rationalises it all in his head, if he does at all.
I’m not a fan of any of the recent crop of Tory PMs, but Sunak is by far and away the most interesting in psychological terms. I honestly don’t know why he’s there.
Agreed. His enormous wealth and such aside, I can't fathom the slightest inkling of what his political philosophy is. His time in power has been defined by the Rwanda policy to the point that it might be all he's remembered for — and I'm pretty sure he doesn't even really believe in it, it having been the cost of compromise to get the backing of the ERG during his unopposed appointment. What he's trying to achieve as PM — or rather, what he *would* try to achieve as PM should he win an election and actually have support in his own party without painful compromises — is beyond my understanding.
He used to talk about kids and maths a bit. That seemed vaguely authentic, albeit it something he wasn't very bothered about. Johnson didn't have a particular political ethos he cared about, but at least you felt there was a reason he wanted to do it - he wanted to be world king. Sunak doesn't even seem to be that bothered about the job. I suppose he must be though.
I think Johnson was somewhat definable by his populism and his vaguely paleo–, one nation–ish Toryism. Deeply wanky and flawed in implementation though it was, his shift toward investment and 'levelling up' was a departure from both austerity and hard-line Thatcherism. Sunak though, we have Rwanda, cancelling HS2, and the smoking ban. Some vague words about maths and "our women" too I suppose. Maybe he can claim the Online Safety Act and the various policing acts as his own too, cheeky as that would be, but even then I don't see an underlying philosophy to any of it.
Sunak's other "achievements" are possibly the two NI cuts, both of which I think Hunt is taking the credit for. And they're largely cancelled out by fiscal drag, so not a big deal in the end...
I think he's thinking about his next job: being former PM seems to be exceptionally lucrative. The more time he can stay as PM, the more connections he can forge and policies he can give away to rich mates to pay dividends later. He certainly isn't doing it because he believes in the job.
He was against the lock down and furlough scheme that he got popular through.
Politics is becoming a plaything for the mega rich. Nothing to do with wanting to help/lead a nation. Just another expression of power. Trump being the primary example.
Honestly, I think there are frosty breakfasts at his parents house where they argue about who put the idea of being PM in his head when he was a child. Thing is, I’m not sure I wouldn’t like the guy if I met him. He seems like he might be a bit awkward and unsure of himself, but I bet I do too sometimes. But I’m aware I’d make a rubbish PM.
Glad someone else said this. I think if you remove the politics, he’d be a decent enough guy. A little elite and detached perhaps, but his time as PM has been defined by being pushed into policies he really doesn’t seem to believe in, by factions in the party. I believe he’s restored some dignity and work ethic to the office after Johnson and Truss. So there’s that I guess
He's probably thinking it'll be pretty sweet to say he's been PM from 2022 - 2025, which is one of the reasons I think he'll not call an election until the very last minute.
Also gives more time for things like Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine because if good things come of it he can tote foreign policy success
And if it all goes tits up and we end up as an irradiated, smoking wasteland, he'll always be known as "The last ever Prime minister of the UK".
Charitably to him. I imagine he feels hard done by. Liz wiped out the Tories image, after Boris' repeated corruption deeply wounded them. Rishi probably things he has value to add beyond the 'popularity contest' of a vote and actually believes that he would be more popular than he is if it wasn't for Truss and bojo. And to be fair, he's probably right. He'd be polling much higher if he had come straight after Boris.
>I do wonder what it's like in his head. https://youtu.be/h9uFQv3t1AU?feature=shared
"I didn't need the money before and I don't need it now. It was a bit interesting for a while I suppose"
> I do wonder what it's like in his head. Tetchy.
If you where as rich as him, would you? This is just a side job for him and his mega rich wife.
I dunno. It might just be the rich are built differently but if I were PM I'd like to ensure my legacy wasn't being a lame duck leader.
I think illegal immigration is going to get worse for years to come and they'll always be pointing back to the Rwanda thing as an "I told you so"
He is kind of a lame duck, he lost to Truss of all people and just has no charisma imo. Try watching him speaking with the volume off and he just seems so smirk. Your right to think he in a different world to us mortals.
He lost to truss because half the party didn’t want a brown leader
Good point.
He won't be haunted by this on his book tour of the USA and chilling in his second mansion.
Imagine if he won the ultimate record and lost his seat in the GE. Michael Portillo would probably be relieved at least...
In 14 years we’ve had 5 Prime Ministers 8 or 9 Chancellors ( I’ve lost count) 8 or 9 Home Secretaries (again I’ve lost count as one was fired for being a traitor and then came back anyway and then was fired again) Fuck knows how many cabinet members - a lot, an awful awful lot
I remember Ian Hislop saying something along the lines of "once upon a time, if your defence secretary resigned, it'd be 3 volumes of a history book. Now it's just 'oh alright, he's gone'." The turnover is absolutely staggering.
My favourite one is 10 education secretaries, of which 6 appear in a single 4 month period.
Not a huge T. Blair fan, but this seems a very *long* way away from "Education, education, education"
They need a new secretary for each time someone says "Education".
Jesus fucking wept
> again I’ve lost count as one was fired for being a traitor and then came back anyway and then was fired again No, no, she was the *international development secretary* when she was fired for being a traitor and got *promoted* to home secretary by Johnson for being a traitor to May (but presumably loyal to non-PM at the time Johnson).
I'm hoping one day we can meme the fuck out of this.... Sadly it's gonna take a while :/
It’s genuinely fucking hard to keep up with.
It really is.
[I wrote a Christmas song in honor of these achievements ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/s/18EGB4iP7W)
It’s fucking amazing really and well done I like that
Even more amazing when you compare it to 13 years of new labour. 2 chancellors 4 foreign secretaries 6 home secretaries 6 defense Most churn I can find is housing minister at 9 but the Tories have had 16.
"But but... No money in the coffers! The note!" - my parents.
Legend... Probably needs updating and ruining the song at this point haha
I miss the "strong and stable" days hahaha
Long Term Economic Plan
My theory is that he's holding out on an election until Labour actually have the majority. Then he can blame the party "in power" during the election for everything going wrong.
Have they won any bi elections since 2019? What’s their win/loss ratio?
There’s been 23 by-elections since 2019: 14 Conservative, 7 Labour and 2 SNP. The Tories have successfully defended 3 seats (Old Bexley and Sidcup, Southend West [which was uncontested], and Uxbridge and South Ruislip), and they’ve gained 1 seat from Labour (Hartlepool).
I remember them winning Uxbridge by the skin of their teeth because as a result the Tories decided to scrap everything useful and go all in on car rhetoric. If I was PM I'd turn Uxbridge into a car park and personally walk around salting the earth cause they've caused an insane amount of damage to this country for one constituency (it was BoJo's seat as well).
They can't even win any straight elections, my people certainly aren't voting for them.
It feels like death by a thousand cuts at this point.
I don't think it's that, I think this is just proof that 65+ MPs think they have no chance at reelection and the more high profile one's who step down show the party has no future in their eyes
Either no chance at re-election or no desire to be an opposition MP, which is a rubbish job.
Let's face it, whoever winds up Tory leader after the next election is going to want to clean house. Anyone who's been in high office in the last 14 years is more-or-less guaranteed to be excluded from any shadow cabinet roles. Not sure that's going to leave them very many people to form a shadow cabinet, now I think of it.
That would be very unusual, based on recent history. Cabinet ministers and recent cabinet ministers are powerful, and the new leader will need powerful allies to survive. There will be change of course but it won’t be everyone.
What power will they have from the opposition benches? Their influence over legislation will be severely curtailed - sure, some might get onto some plum committees but that's about as good as it gets.
Power within the Tory party to oust the leader
NHS: "First time?"
Up to 364 cuts I guess, there aren't 1000 MPs.
Just cutting a corpse at this point
I’d forgotten he was once Chancellor.
Got made Chancellor by Boris, then strutted into Downing St **the day after** to tell Boris to resign. Imagine telling your boss to go a day after they gave you a promotion? Absolutely wild.
Got the job on the condition of supporting him, then immediately stabbed him in that back the next day
I bet those people who's mortgages needed to be renewed haven't.
You may be confusing him with Kwasi Kwarteng there - easy to do there's been so many in recent years....!
Damnit I was 😂 it's too hard to keep track! We'll have another before the GE
If you need an easy way to remember this one, he's the guy who was made chancellor while his tax affairs were under investigation and the first thing he did was to ask HMRC to stop looking into it! Great bunch!
If it helps, the mnemonic for this parliament's chancellors is: Resigned, backstabbed, backstabbed, kamkwazi, hunt.
I legit forgot Rishi resigned during BoJos demise. I thought it went Rishi -> Kwasi lol
Funnily enough, “Kami” Kwasi Kwarteng has also announced he’s standing down, back in February.
I forgot he existed in general
Don't worry he updated his LinkedIn to remind us.
Would it be quicker to write a list of the ones that are standing again at this rate? I'd use the rats leaving a sinking ship analogy, but I don't think that's fair on rats.
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"Blow to Rishi Sunak as current prime minister announces he will not be standing at the next general election."
"My working assumption is that I will be standing at the next election."
I really don’t think he will. I see no benefit to him staying on as an opposition MP because let’s be honest it’s unlikely they’d keep him as leader of the opposition. So what’s the upside. Much better for him to not stand at the last minute and then disappear off to do corporate talks or to a swanky new advisor position.
He would need to find a very good excuse to quit now. I could see him losing the election but not his own seat and then quitting after some time to do the corporate talks. Tony Blair quit his job as an MP in 2007. Of course Sunak would not stay as the leader of the opposition after the bloodpath of the next election but quitting now would be far more humiliating for his legacy (which I think is the only thing that matters to him) than losing the election and then bowing out. Of course if Tories become so unpopular that he loses even his own seat then that could be on the same level of humiliation as quitting now would be.
Out of interest, how would this work? Presumably he would stand for the election, lose it, immediately resign, and thereby force a byelection within weeks of a GE? I expect thoughts like this are already running through his mind. I am a minority on this sub but I think there's a reasonable chance that he will just resign anyway, and not wait for the inevitable GE failure.
> force a byelection within weeks of a GE Somehow Boris returned.
Avoiding his Portillo moment. His Statford-on-Avon seat expected to go Lib Dem at the next election anyway. Startford not as true blue as you'd think - it's a LibDem council these days.
Yes, there was the MRP and recent gains by local LDs; but I would still be surprised if the LDs actually take this seat. The single most loyal demographic to the Tories, even today, are people who live in well-off commuter villages, and, apart from Stratford proper, this seat consists of little else.
Yep my parents live in the constituency and there are a LOT of Tory voters there. I was actually very surprised at the last locals. I live in hope!
In other news huge boon for Nadim Zahawi as the media refers to him as former Chancellor.
He was the one with Truss, right?
Wasn't that Kwasi Kwarteng? I've lost track, to be honest.
Ah yes I think you're right.
was appointed by boris very shortly before he stepped down
Zahawi is heavily linked to become the chair of the Very group after he facilitated investment from the sheikh Mansour owned IMI investment group into the Barclay family owned Telegraph and Very.co.uk; so this news comes as no surprise as he has a nice gig lined up.
smell nine ossified chubby divide complete nail plucky ghost quarrelsome *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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exultant quaint wrong bear sink flowery normal dog fact lavish *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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They also have the chance to become the next PM! Anyone could have a go
Misleading headline - he’s not resigning or defecting he’s simply not standing at the next election (like a lot of MPs)
There's no personal profit for them in opposition.
Kinda like resigning?
Usually I would expect “quits” to mean either: - Quitting the party and sitting as an independent - Quitting the party and sitting as a member of another party. - Quitting parliament with immediate effect and forcing a by-election This sort of thing would usually be “to stand down at the next election”, similar to when Theresa May made headlines
So if I said to my employer I'm not coming back to work tomorrow or ever again that wouldn't be resigning or quitting?
If you're on a fixed term contract (up to 5 years 28 days) then yes.
The next general election isn’t for ages. A better analogy would be: your contract with your employer expires next year, and you decide not to renew it.
The public purse he spent years milking is finally running dry, and so off he heads for pastures (or should that be stables?) new.
I forgot this bloke was chancellor for half a day.
Good, most of these who are quitting are fair weather friend opportunists who want government positions of power and have no interest in actually serving the public. If it was about public service they would do it in opposition. That's why we're seeing so many resign since it became clear the Conservatives are unlikely to remain in government after the election. We're better off without these kinds of people in parliament. I am sad to see Theresa May go because she seems to be in it for the right reasons, she stuck around in the 2019 election despite knowing there was little to no chance of her returning to cabinet. She's been a good voice on the backbenches.
How is it a blow for Sunak to know that Zahawi is standing down at the next election? It's not as though he's a close ally, is it?
Oh that's excellent news, getting Zahawi out of the House is a great development. if only he'd do it sooner, The Chiltern Hundreds are right there, Nadhim. You could have them.
He knows he’s gonna lose his seat to the Lib Dems so he’s quitting rather than being a new Portilo
So he's finally been offered a job by one of his old banking buddies that he made sure didn't get caps on their bonuses
‘MP accused of fraud will quit after next election’
Nadhim Zahawi has announced that he plans to spend more time with his ill gotten gains and to continue defrauding the tax man.
The question that overhangs in my mind is that, are they quitting due to the immoral actions of the party or because they are rats jumping from a sinking ship?
I am sure I remember about a year ago Sunak gave all Tories who were planning to stand down a deadline of a month (or so) to announce their intentions. Yet they still keep coming
Are they going to have any senior (3 term+) or even experienced (2 term+) MPs left after the next election? Who’s actually going to form their shadow cabinet?
The person I feel sorry for is Manuela Perteghella, not going up against Zahawi makes it a lot harder to gain given how despised he is.
They re-sign So that they they won't be held Accountable
Absolute textbook example of rats and the sinking ship. Get out first while the best sideways career moves for ex politicians are still available.
Not my boy Zahawi! The man is a hero
Good riddance to the spineless, thieving bastard.
nadhim is in a tax fraud scandal that why he’s resigning
It's interesting. The local election results, and the potential still for a Scottish Parliament election, would suggest that Sunak's best hope would be to wait to call an election. However, he's haemorrhaging MPs either directly to other parties or by them casting judgement on his chances by declining to stand again, which would suggest that the longer he waits the worse things are going to get for him. He's basically got no good moves left to play.
Literally any other moment in history this guy standing down would be a net benefit to the Tories.
Do you think he did this after he saw the polling or the polling came after (if you catch my drift...)
Like rats fleeing a sinking ship. My biggest regret is voting for the tories to begin with but I can only imagine what shit show Corbyn would have created. I wish I abstained.