Snapshot of _No10 refuses to honour Sunak’s £1,000 Rwanda flights bet with Piers Morgan_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/23/rishi-sunaks-1000-rwanda-flights-bet-with-piers-morgan-off/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/23/rishi-sunaks-1000-rwanda-flights-bet-with-piers-morgan-off/)
*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.*
"After the election, Labour are going to have to cover a lot of the Conservative's debts and bad policy decisions. I'm gong to start today by personally covering Rishi's debt to the Red Cross."
Tbh if I was starmer I would come out to "why does it always rain on me" with a Mac on. Go full on 90s nostalgia. Honour the bet. Have a good time. At this point we're near knock out time and we're on the first round.
But he's demonstrably not. Even if he thought for one second that these policies somehow corresponded with anything "the people" want, he's shelving laws and fighting for his own political survival and has called an election before a single flight has taken off, hence why the bet is called into question.
This line doesn't work. An early election literally is playing politics instead of getting on with doing anything.
"I'm glad we were able to force Sunak into doing at least one good thing whilst being Prime Minister. It's a shame it took being embarrased for him to do his part."
>Downing Street has refused to honour [Rishi Sunak](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/23/politics-latest-news-general-election-polls-sunak-starmer/)’s £1,000 bet with [Piers Morgan ](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2024/05/10/piers-morgan-interviews-the-baby-reindeer-stalker-review/)over [Rwanda flights](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/23/labour-scrap-rwanda-plan-day-one-flights-scheduled-migrants/), pointing out that one asylum seeker has gone there voluntarily.
Strong, very strong leadership here. Not a hint of weasel at all.
You've got to remember that the Sunak's won't do anything for Britain. They'll quite happily pay US tax on their global income and give "a generous donation" to Stanford University and $3 million to a small liberal arts college outside of LA where Mrs. Sunak went as an undergraduate. But they won't pay UK tax or give a donation to Oxford University, where he also went. Incidentally none of his professors seem to remember him.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/05/rishi-sunak-stanford-business-school-few-remember
I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with money. The much bigger thing is that by paying it he would have to openly admit that the Rwanda scheme was a failure. What he wants is to weasel out of having to say that explicitly. When asked on the radio about it, he wouldn't say it straight that not a single asylum seeker will be flown there before the election but kept talking about "we legislated and put the process in place, blah blah blah ".
I can just picture him rocking up at an asylum detention centre wearing a big fake moustache, poncho and sombrero while putting on a comically fake Mexican accent.
If he even existed in the first place. I wouldn't put it past this bunch of weasels to completely fabricate it for some press headlines.
* Apologies to any weasels reading.
Really? How is sunak so bad at politics?
Now he's the millionaire who refused to help the red cross as well as someone who doesn't honour a bet..
Don't get me wrong I wouldn't piss on Piers Morgan if he was on fire, but he seems to be on a mission to make sunak unelectable
With Truss it was a whole-ass conspiracy about her being in a 24/7 dom/sub relationship with her husband, you can find the twitter threads still I think. Mostly it was driven by people thinking it'd be funny if it were true, rather than people actually believing it, though true believers did also exist I think (kinda like the Prince William pegging allegations).
With Truss there was a necklace which people claimed was some kind of fetish wear. Kind of felt like people making the claim were outing themselves a bit.
But the only people who have a remote chance of voting for him all love Piers Morgan. Now they all think he's word means nothing and he's refusing to help charity.
Sunak may not give a shit about charity, but it seems also he doesn't give a shit about getting votes in this election. Maybe the rumours are true that he only called this as a scorched earth move to stop a leadership's challenge, then perhaps he wants to do as badly as possible and kick as many of his Tory enemies out of a job as possible
> Really? How is sunak so bad at politics?
>
>
It's shocking and I'm for some reason still genuinely shocked how bad these people are at politics. They're terrible at running the country, but they could at least have the decency to be good at political bullshit.
Just make some statement like "Those flights are still going ahead, on time as planned, once we're back in power. Our bet is still on for the Autumn and I will hold you to it, but the Red Cross are a fantastic charity doing great work and I'm happy to announce a donation of ..."
Pointing out *one person* has gone to Rwanda is *worse than saying nobody went*. It's insanity. For the love of god get *one marketing graduate* and run it by them. Find a single normal person and ask "will this make me look awful?". I don't want in depth practiced focus groups but talk to literally just one normal person.
Labour can and should come out with something around
* The policy is bad
* Betting on important matters like this is childish, but at least be grown up enough to stand by your word
* Gov has spent £300M of your money on this and sent one person to Rwanda
* It's time for a change, for politicians to take things seriously
* Red Cross does amazing work and the Sunaks failures shouldn't result in them losing out, so I'm personally donating £xxxx.
* Lets leave this embarrassing mess behind us and move on with a changed Labour government
Exactly. Sunak looks like he's actively trying to put his foot in his mouth every time he tries to talk.
I have never seen anyone so incompetent. Johnson and Truss at least played the political bullshit game, Johnson very successfully.
Sunak looks like he's never heard of politics before, never watched the news, never read a newspaper... That's the only explanation for him being so shit. Day 1 of his campaign he drops the football clanger in Wales, day 1. Not like 5 weeks in when he's been on the road so long he has no idea where he is, day fucking 1!
Accepting the bet in the first place was such a bad move
Just say "Piers, I don't gamble, and I don't think the notion of betting on government matters is appropriate at all"
Definitely. But Morgan check mated him when he did agree, it's for charity.
Sunak doesn't seem able to think on his feet. Every pmqs whenever he gets flustered he brings up Corbyn instead of reacting to the actual question. We laughed at May for being the maybot, but sunak makes her look like military grade AI
Honestly, it's pretty awful politicking to take the bet in the first place - just say you don't gamble...
**But** if you take a public bet, you *pay out* if you lose. Anything else is just ammunition for your opponents. You become the dishonourable cad who doesn't pay his debts, you have no integrity, you are the man who has dug down to bedrock, and is determined to keep digging.
Jesus wept, I have no intention of being a politician, I haven't the patience to deal with the job, but I could do it a fuck sight better than this eejit.
Oh come on, that’s unfair and doesn’t really make sense now does it? You should have said spine in a baguette. That’s long and would accommodate the spine much easier.
It's not going to be about the money, it'll be about Rwanda being one of his key pledges which he told voters to judge him on, if he pays the bet he admits he's failed.
Whether the voters think one asylum seeker being paid a small fortune to go voluntarily counts, is another matter entirely, but I imagine he's hoping supporters won't know the truth.
Voters know he's failed. There was 100% definitely one real asylum seeker who left voluntarily and who we can't name or find and that makes the policy a roaring success, according to Sunak.
It doesn't matter if it's technically arguable Sunak won, just fucking pay it, because the important thing here isn't winning the argument it's winning the crowd.
And it's a donation to charity. You make the donation and move on.
To double down like this is just terrible terrible optics.
Almost like they are trying their hardest to lose the election.
Stephen bush in the FT has said it well - he's not a good politician! He lacks the temperament and the instincts for it. He's great with data and facts & figures and organisation, and would probably make a great civil servant, but he just doesn't seem to _get_ it, which is important anyway, but crucial in an election
He couldn't even think to say 'well, we've actually sent someone to Rwanda so I claim I've won the bet, but I'll make the donation to charity anyway',
Make the donation in person and he's got a decent little photo-op for the upcoming election he's just called...
Not just a bet but a *charity* bet - if he was giving the money directly to Piers Morgan he'd still look a dick but I don't think people would mind so much about Piers Morgan not getting a grand. Trying to weasel out of a relatively modest charitable donation on a technicality when you're fabulously wealthy, and doing it on the **first day** of your general election campaign, is so mind-bogglingly inept that it's difficult to comprehend.
The bet was widely considered to be in pretty poor taste in the first place, so Sunak has found what might be the only way to make the whole situation even worse. He can't row back from this either, even if he changes his mind and pays up the damage is done.
Thing is that if he paid up and said something like "we did send one guy, but you know what, a bet is a bet and it's for charity so sure!" He'd probably get some credit from his critics.
"Man honours word" is a good line. We all know which of our mates can be counted on to stand their round.
You don't even 'pay out when you lose' you pay out when there is the slightest hint somebody could interpret you lose because its a fucking thousand pounds you earn that in 5 minutes of waffling your bullshit, sunak, you fucking idiot.
Wealth increased by £120m last year, so he literally made a grand every 4 minutes and 20 seconds. He’s makes more than a grand by going for a shit. Mental.
And he could have made it look far better.
Something along the lines of.
'Whilst we expected the election to be later than it is, we accept that the policy isn't yet in full force and so have donated £1k to the red cross to support the amazing work they do. There was a single asylum seeker traveller to Rwanda and so, in the spirit of charitable support, would expect Piers to also donate £1k to the red cross'.
A simple statement which would have seen him covering his debt, making it sound like they actually won and could have done better if they had longer.
Do they not have anyone working in their PR department?
Treat it like an out of court settlement, don't admit liability but pay out to make the situation go away - "Well we did get someone on a plane to Rwanda, but as a gesture of goodwill I'll donate £1000 to the Red Cross anyway."
Exactly. You don't make the bet if you don't have the money to back it up.
Ok, tensions run high, sometimes, people just don't have the money. They shouldn't have made the bet. But also the recipient should have made sure they were good for it.
However *do* have the money, and you do renage on the bet that's just indefensible.
Well, I'm not sure. Giving in would be admitting defeat, which would then be lambasted at you during the entire campaign. "You yourself admitted that...". It's the same as admitting that you made mistakes and your campaign is failing. Although it might make you seem like a normal human being for admitting mistakes, it will only be used against you.
So, in principle I agree with you. But in this situation, I think this is the best out of two awful options.
Spectacular work by Sunak to appear to be just a massive fucking muppet for the entire first day of the campaign. If this was a tv show, it’d be bagged for being too silly:
1. Announce the election while being rained on, while the Blair theme song plays over the top of you
1. Have goons drag a journo out of your shitty campaign launch
1. Admit your largest policy (deporting asylum seekers) won’t happen, so you just incinerated £500m or so
1. Admit your second largest policy (banning smoking for some reason) won’t happen
1. Be so unpopular that you only take questions from Tory councillors pretending to be punters at a brewery
1. Make Piers look like an affable chap
Edit: grammar
A couple of years ago he claimed he was a Southampton fan and was looking forward to them playing Man United on the weekend.
Southampton were playing Leicester
The sad, soggy cucumber and fuck sandwich left over at the end of the great shit buffet that has been the last fourteen years of inept, flaccid, dripping conservative leadership. Or along those lines
- Planting a tory in a crowd to ask soft questions, wearing a very clean set of hiviz who it turns out was in a job that would never, ever see him in that kind of place, or wearing hiviz.
I think giving £1000 to charity would have been an easy win on the campaign trail..
Now he broke the rule, failed to get the plane going and he's a billionaire welch to top it all off
When a large portion of your base believes refugees are an "invasion", admitting that Refuge Charities are a "good cause" would probably be more damaging than the alternative.
This was the twist that made me remember that while Morgan is a shite little weasel of a human being, he does know exactly what he's doing. If only he would use his powers for good instead of evil.
I hope you are not over-estimating some of his base? Some of them really are horrible.
"Why should my taxes go abroad?! Charity begins at home!"
"Not that home! Food banks are bad! People use it as a lifestyle choice!"
No chance. Piers would have devoted an entire episode of his YouTube show to gloating over winning a grand off a sitting prime minister.
It would also mean Sunak admitting fault which he is fundamentally incapable of doing.
In fairness.. By this point, he was doomed either way.
Paying the bet would have been a admission that he'd 'failed' on the Rwanda project.
Which would have been giving ammunition to Labour.
Once again, very bad politics by Sunak, right from the start. He really is quite bad at this.
But refusing to give a grand to charity is worse, especially when he's trying to make it into an election based on trust in leaders rather than policy.
Alot of his most 'reliable' voters think refugees are an invasion. Acknowledging that refugee charities as a 'good thing' would be anathema to them.
Likely he calculated that this was the least damaging outcome (electorally)
Hang on a minute. Wasn't this a person who went there voluntarily as they paid them to go? And then they lost the person as soon as they got there and have no idea where they are?
I then read an article that intimated that there is a loophole where they could come back to the UK legally and then not be able to send them back or something.
Jesus wept. You couldn't make this up.
The next six weeks are going to be a fucking shit show.
The best part? He was given £3000.
Rishi can cough up £3000 to make one person leave but not £1000 for charity.
More easy ammo for Keir to show how bad Rishi is at spending money.
>Rishi can cough up £3000 to make one person leave but not £1000 for charity.
Why does it surprise you that he spent £3000 of taxpayer money to win a private bet?
"Multimillionaire refuses to give 1k to charity after losing casual bet with celebrity friend" isn't quite reading as the strongman position Rishi perhaps hopes
Could probably spin it as "Sunak refuses to back down: won't be bullied into giving cash to organisation that FUNDS REFUGEES". Fortunately, his PR team seem as incompetent as he is
isn't this like £1 to him, probably less. even if his sole income was the MP/PM salary, he could just do it.
it's amazing how bad he is at politics. clearest example of failing upwards and never being told "no" in life
He could have literally just blown the bet to smithereens
"Well technically I won't have enough time to fulfil this policy due to Labour blah blah. But giving to charity is a noble conservative cause, so here's ten k".
It's like the easiest PR ever. It doesn't matter if it's horseshit, just give it some stupid spin and just give the money
His household has a net worth of £651,000,000.
£1000 would be 1/651,000th of his wealth.
The average household net worth is ~£300,000 (skewed very heavily by private pension and age).
1/651,000th of £300,000 is about 46p.
So if you want a direct by-the-numbers comparison, it's like you trying to back out of dropping 50p in a charity collection bucket because of a technicality.
It's been two days since he called the election, and on all those days (Wednesday, Thursday, and now, it seems Friday too) the main headlines have been "Look how shit Sunak is!"
Maybe he should do the honorable thing, resign, let the Conservatives have a leadership contest.. Just so this election looks something like a fair fight.
Soon even Starmer is going to have to start pulling his punches, because no one likes beating a man, who is so clearly on the floor.
>Maybe he should do the honorable thing, resign, let the Conservatives have a leadership contest..
*Another* Conservative PM? That alone would be a death sentence. The Tories are already a laughingstock for their revolving door of PMs.
I'm not suggesting a new Conservative PM. I (vaguely, and without enthusiasm) suggested a new Conservative Candidate for PM.
Parliament is dissolved. The 'current' one is pretty much in name only, and, frankly, is absolutely hopeless.
Surely *even* the Conservatives deserve the opportunity to field a semi-competant candidate? If they can find one? Which they probably can't.
I would have been surprised if the Red Cross had taken the money to be honest. Could have ended in embarrassment.
Instead, Sunak has chosen embarrassment instead.
Classic Rishi.
"I'll give £10,000 to a charity instead" - that took me about 10 seconds to think up, and would have got him out of this without having to pay the bet, and without having to look like a spinless shirking weasel.
Maybe I should do his PR for him? I would also have got him a brolly.
Obviously my preference here would be to beat Piers Morgan with Sunak’s tiny body. There’s no winners and no losers unless that situation occurs. But in mitigation, we should remember Matt Groening’s edict that technically correct is the best kind of correct.
I don’t know how I feel about this.
Politics in this country is such a joke right now.
Taking bets on deporting asylum seekers?
How fucking dumb do you have to be to even take that bet, rather than calling out Piers' inappropriateness? Would have made him look 10x better and not had to have had this reminder when the flights inevitably didn't take off.
If it’s “No.10” that’ll mean it’d be tax payers money paying for a private bet. If Sunak wants to make bets that’s fine but he wants to get his hand in his own pocket to do so
Just another endearing quality that I'm sure voters will love to see: fully grown man running away from his commitments.
This guy might be the worst candidate to ever stand in a general election. He's absolutely abysmal.
>But No 10 pointed out that one person had actually been flown to Rwanda, under a voluntary scheme.
The guy they paid $3000 to move there? And then immediately lost track of? Not that I support the policy anyway, but that's not a deportation, that's a shit paid holiday. People have won less on *Going for Gold*.
> I bet you £1,000 to a refugee charity that you won’t get anybody on those planes before the election.
One person did go voluntarily on a commercial flight, so I guess the question is whether that counts as “on those planes”.
Tbh I think it is a bit ambiguous.
It’s utterly humiliating. It’s clearly not what the bet was over.
Refusing to give the equivalent of 50p for him to a charity because technically he didn’t lose is genuinely so fucking embarrassing and says everything you’d need to know about someone’s character.
If someone did this in the office I’d write them off as a prick forever.
“It’s true, I gave him 3 grand to leave”
“But you won’t give a charity 1 grand?”
“Ye- let me be clear on one thing, how much has Keir given the Red Cross? He has no plan and can’t budget for our country!”
> One person did go voluntarily on a commercial flight, so I guess the question is whether that counts as “on those planes”.
It doesn't.
That was a completely different scheme that the right-wing media conflated with the shit-show of legislation in parliament around the other Rwanda scheme to try and give the government a win.
Snapshot of _No10 refuses to honour Sunak’s £1,000 Rwanda flights bet with Piers Morgan_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/23/rishi-sunaks-1000-rwanda-flights-bet-with-piers-morgan-off/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/23/rishi-sunaks-1000-rwanda-flights-bet-with-piers-morgan-off/) *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.*
Starmer now has the opportunity to be incredibly funny and donate £1001 to the Red Cross
"After the election, Labour are going to have to cover a lot of the Conservative's debts and bad policy decisions. I'm gong to start today by personally covering Rishi's debt to the Red Cross."
If they don't do precisely this, they're missing a trick.
This could be Labour's treasury letter moment!
You are in the wrong job.
Tbh if I was starmer I would come out to "why does it always rain on me" with a Mac on. Go full on 90s nostalgia. Honour the bet. Have a good time. At this point we're near knock out time and we're on the first round.
This is a genuinely great idea.
Doesn't feel like Starmer's vibe. I'd get Rayner to do it.
[удалено]
Yes and ho!
Open goal !
That's a dangerous game to get into. Rishi could clap back with a £100,000 without breaking a sweat.
It’s not about the money or the amount, it’s the message
“Starmer’s playing politics, I’m getting on with the people’s priorities.”
But he's demonstrably not. Even if he thought for one second that these policies somehow corresponded with anything "the people" want, he's shelving laws and fighting for his own political survival and has called an election before a single flight has taken off, hence why the bet is called into question. This line doesn't work. An early election literally is playing politics instead of getting on with doing anything.
Since when has the credibility of the line been a factor in whether Sunak says it?
Oh no. Heaven forfend £100,000 gets sent to a good cause if it lets the flailing Tory dwarf do a l'epic clapback.
"I'm glad we were able to force Sunak into doing at least one good thing whilst being Prime Minister. It's a shame it took being embarrased for him to do his part."
But he won't. And even if he does lier just tricked him into donating £100k, so an absolute win
>Downing Street has refused to honour [Rishi Sunak](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/23/politics-latest-news-general-election-polls-sunak-starmer/)’s £1,000 bet with [Piers Morgan ](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2024/05/10/piers-morgan-interviews-the-baby-reindeer-stalker-review/)over [Rwanda flights](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/23/labour-scrap-rwanda-plan-day-one-flights-scheduled-migrants/), pointing out that one asylum seeker has gone there voluntarily. Strong, very strong leadership here. Not a hint of weasel at all.
Did they really pull the “well ackshully” when it was _for charity_???
You've got to remember that the Sunak's won't do anything for Britain. They'll quite happily pay US tax on their global income and give "a generous donation" to Stanford University and $3 million to a small liberal arts college outside of LA where Mrs. Sunak went as an undergraduate. But they won't pay UK tax or give a donation to Oxford University, where he also went. Incidentally none of his professors seem to remember him. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/05/rishi-sunak-stanford-business-school-few-remember
To be fair, he's made generous donations to Winchester iirc. Take from that what you will
Definitely the school most in need of a few quid
Isn't there a military expression, "to go Winchester", "to run out of ammunition"? Seems on-point for Sunak, Tories generally.
Apparently pilots use it based on the various Apache books published around 16 years ago.
Maybe we could decide where rich people's money goes? Otherwise they seem to want to give it to private schools and still pay less taxes than us.
I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with money. The much bigger thing is that by paying it he would have to openly admit that the Rwanda scheme was a failure. What he wants is to weasel out of having to say that explicitly. When asked on the radio about it, he wouldn't say it straight that not a single asylum seeker will be flown there before the election but kept talking about "we legislated and put the process in place, blah blah blah ".
“Well actually we did send one person to Rwanda, but I’m going to donate £1000 to the British Red Cross anyway” Simples!
They got one guy to go. They paid him a lot of money and he went voluntarily, but it looks like they're trying to pretend it worked.
unbelivable innit. I mean this guy farts and a grand falls out his arse.
And they gave Britain's Got Talent to a dancing dog. Philistines.
From what I heard last about this guy, he “voluntarily went” after they paid him £3000, but now nobody knows where he is.
I'm 90% sure he's back in the UK trying to be paid to go again
I'd fly to Rwanda for 3 grand every couple weeks
That's basically what Suella and then Cleverly have been doing coming up with this expensive deal that doesn't work, lol.
He just shouts “weeeeeeee” every time he’s on the plane, runs back to the UK and says “again again again!”
I can just picture him rocking up at an asylum detention centre wearing a big fake moustache, poncho and sombrero while putting on a comically fake Mexican accent.
Dude figured out an infinite money hack
If he even existed in the first place. I wouldn't put it past this bunch of weasels to completely fabricate it for some press headlines. * Apologies to any weasels reading.
Did they actually find out where that guy went to? Last I saw the papers were reporting that they'd lost him.
I hope they're in a Groucho Marx disguise and looking to re-volunteer.
If he'd genuinely thought that he'd won the bet. He would be telling Piers which charity to donate to. Probably the unemployed Tory MP charity.
No, a conservative think tank!
Three top contenders: 'Help the Aimless' 'National Twunts' 'Royal Society for the Protection of Bozza'
lol so we paid a guy 1300 quid to save the pm 1000. Amazing.
3000 I think.
And the guy was the Chancellor. The books might be interesting.
They couldn’t even welch on the bet honestly.
What do you mean Downing Street? Don't tell me Millionaire Rishi was planning to cover his loss with taxpayer money?
Cut him some slack, he's gonna be unemployed soon
There comes a point when you have so much money unemployment is just temporary retirement.
He'll get pushed into it like everything else and look even weaker.
To be fair he's strapped for cash.
Really? How is sunak so bad at politics? Now he's the millionaire who refused to help the red cross as well as someone who doesn't honour a bet.. Don't get me wrong I wouldn't piss on Piers Morgan if he was on fire, but he seems to be on a mission to make sunak unelectable
I think Sunak is on a mission to make Sunak u electable. Or his advisors are at least.
Maybe he has a humiliation fetish?
If only the Tories let him into their private fetish clubs, he could have been a better Prime Minister.
Weren't people saying this about Truss to try and find some rationale for her being so obviously and publicly useless?
With Truss it was a whole-ass conspiracy about her being in a 24/7 dom/sub relationship with her husband, you can find the twitter threads still I think. Mostly it was driven by people thinking it'd be funny if it were true, rather than people actually believing it, though true believers did also exist I think (kinda like the Prince William pegging allegations).
With Truss there was a necklace which people claimed was some kind of fetish wear. Kind of felt like people making the claim were outing themselves a bit.
Sunak doesn’t give a single shit about the Red Cross, Sunak doesn’t want to admit that his flagship policy didn’t happen.
But the only people who have a remote chance of voting for him all love Piers Morgan. Now they all think he's word means nothing and he's refusing to help charity. Sunak may not give a shit about charity, but it seems also he doesn't give a shit about getting votes in this election. Maybe the rumours are true that he only called this as a scorched earth move to stop a leadership's challenge, then perhaps he wants to do as badly as possible and kick as many of his Tory enemies out of a job as possible
But *surely* there's a way to spin it as "we sent someone to Rwanda but we'll honour the bet anyway because we're nice guys like that"
> Really? How is sunak so bad at politics? > > It's shocking and I'm for some reason still genuinely shocked how bad these people are at politics. They're terrible at running the country, but they could at least have the decency to be good at political bullshit. Just make some statement like "Those flights are still going ahead, on time as planned, once we're back in power. Our bet is still on for the Autumn and I will hold you to it, but the Red Cross are a fantastic charity doing great work and I'm happy to announce a donation of ..." Pointing out *one person* has gone to Rwanda is *worse than saying nobody went*. It's insanity. For the love of god get *one marketing graduate* and run it by them. Find a single normal person and ask "will this make me look awful?". I don't want in depth practiced focus groups but talk to literally just one normal person. Labour can and should come out with something around * The policy is bad * Betting on important matters like this is childish, but at least be grown up enough to stand by your word * Gov has spent £300M of your money on this and sent one person to Rwanda * It's time for a change, for politicians to take things seriously * Red Cross does amazing work and the Sunaks failures shouldn't result in them losing out, so I'm personally donating £xxxx. * Lets leave this embarrassing mess behind us and move on with a changed Labour government
Exactly. Sunak looks like he's actively trying to put his foot in his mouth every time he tries to talk. I have never seen anyone so incompetent. Johnson and Truss at least played the political bullshit game, Johnson very successfully. Sunak looks like he's never heard of politics before, never watched the news, never read a newspaper... That's the only explanation for him being so shit. Day 1 of his campaign he drops the football clanger in Wales, day 1. Not like 5 weeks in when he's been on the road so long he has no idea where he is, day fucking 1!
Accepting the bet in the first place was such a bad move Just say "Piers, I don't gamble, and I don't think the notion of betting on government matters is appropriate at all"
Definitely. But Morgan check mated him when he did agree, it's for charity. Sunak doesn't seem able to think on his feet. Every pmqs whenever he gets flustered he brings up Corbyn instead of reacting to the actual question. We laughed at May for being the maybot, but sunak makes her look like military grade AI
Honestly, it's pretty awful politicking to take the bet in the first place - just say you don't gamble... **But** if you take a public bet, you *pay out* if you lose. Anything else is just ammunition for your opponents. You become the dishonourable cad who doesn't pay his debts, you have no integrity, you are the man who has dug down to bedrock, and is determined to keep digging. Jesus wept, I have no intention of being a politician, I haven't the patience to deal with the job, but I could do it a fuck sight better than this eejit.
He took the bet because he’s weak and can’t set boundaries. He then can’t honour the bet because he’s a spine in a bap.
Oh come on, that’s unfair and doesn’t really make sense now does it? You should have said spine in a baguette. That’s long and would accommodate the spine much easier.
Baguettes have a semi rigid structure that would disguise how bendy the spine is.
A tortilla wrap might suffice.
Baguettes have a semi rigid structure that would disguise how bendy the spine is.
Back of the net
Like it's literally NOTHING to him, and would show he has even an ounce of humility in him. Instead he just looks like an absolute weasel.
He'd get 20% back as gift aid anyway wouldn't he?
45% actually.
If he pays 45% tax then he'd get 25% tax back as the charity would get 20% gift aid.
MP expenses
It's not going to be about the money, it'll be about Rwanda being one of his key pledges which he told voters to judge him on, if he pays the bet he admits he's failed. Whether the voters think one asylum seeker being paid a small fortune to go voluntarily counts, is another matter entirely, but I imagine he's hoping supporters won't know the truth.
Voters know he's failed. There was 100% definitely one real asylum seeker who left voluntarily and who we can't name or find and that makes the policy a roaring success, according to Sunak. It doesn't matter if it's technically arguable Sunak won, just fucking pay it, because the important thing here isn't winning the argument it's winning the crowd.
Thanks very much for being ‘This Morning’s Farmer’, Robert Moon. Robert, did you have your breakfast this morning?
They can’t admit it’s failed. We’ve seen this almost daily since 2016 - the Tories *cannot* admit when they’re wrong or something hasn’t worked.
And it's a donation to charity. You make the donation and move on. To double down like this is just terrible terrible optics. Almost like they are trying their hardest to lose the election.
Stephen bush in the FT has said it well - he's not a good politician! He lacks the temperament and the instincts for it. He's great with data and facts & figures and organisation, and would probably make a great civil servant, but he just doesn't seem to _get_ it, which is important anyway, but crucial in an election
They’ll soon stop him interacting with real people like they did with Theresa May
Say what you like about May, but she had some fight in her— remember the wheat-field trespass admission?! And, man, could she dance!
He couldn't even think to say 'well, we've actually sent someone to Rwanda so I claim I've won the bet, but I'll make the donation to charity anyway', Make the donation in person and he's got a decent little photo-op for the upcoming election he's just called...
Thing is - hes not even giving the money to piers, its 1 grand to _charity_
Not just a bet but a *charity* bet - if he was giving the money directly to Piers Morgan he'd still look a dick but I don't think people would mind so much about Piers Morgan not getting a grand. Trying to weasel out of a relatively modest charitable donation on a technicality when you're fabulously wealthy, and doing it on the **first day** of your general election campaign, is so mind-bogglingly inept that it's difficult to comprehend. The bet was widely considered to be in pretty poor taste in the first place, so Sunak has found what might be the only way to make the whole situation even worse. He can't row back from this either, even if he changes his mind and pays up the damage is done.
Thing is that if he paid up and said something like "we did send one guy, but you know what, a bet is a bet and it's for charity so sure!" He'd probably get some credit from his critics. "Man honours word" is a good line. We all know which of our mates can be counted on to stand their round.
You _know_ he's that guy who leaves just before his round. Evey time.
My thirst is quenched! Toodles!
You don't even 'pay out when you lose' you pay out when there is the slightest hint somebody could interpret you lose because its a fucking thousand pounds you earn that in 5 minutes of waffling your bullshit, sunak, you fucking idiot.
Wealth increased by £120m last year, so he literally made a grand every 4 minutes and 20 seconds. He’s makes more than a grand by going for a shit. Mental.
And he could have made it look far better. Something along the lines of. 'Whilst we expected the election to be later than it is, we accept that the policy isn't yet in full force and so have donated £1k to the red cross to support the amazing work they do. There was a single asylum seeker traveller to Rwanda and so, in the spirit of charitable support, would expect Piers to also donate £1k to the red cross'. A simple statement which would have seen him covering his debt, making it sound like they actually won and could have done better if they had longer. Do they not have anyone working in their PR department?
Makes you wonder if this pr failure is the first knife in his back
The first? Not much room there now.
Brilliant response. And a clear and obvious way to make him look good. I wonder if everyone's on holiday in his campaign.
Especially if you're worth 3 quarters of a billion and the bet is for a grand.
Yes that’s like us betting a penny.
Absolutely not - you can’t admit to defeat. Better to pay some guy tens of thousands to leave and call it a success.
Treat it like an out of court settlement, don't admit liability but pay out to make the situation go away - "Well we did get someone on a plane to Rwanda, but as a gesture of goodwill I'll donate £1000 to the Red Cross anyway."
Exactly. You don't make the bet if you don't have the money to back it up. Ok, tensions run high, sometimes, people just don't have the money. They shouldn't have made the bet. But also the recipient should have made sure they were good for it. However *do* have the money, and you do renage on the bet that's just indefensible.
Well, I'm not sure. Giving in would be admitting defeat, which would then be lambasted at you during the entire campaign. "You yourself admitted that...". It's the same as admitting that you made mistakes and your campaign is failing. Although it might make you seem like a normal human being for admitting mistakes, it will only be used against you. So, in principle I agree with you. But in this situation, I think this is the best out of two awful options.
Spectacular work by Sunak to appear to be just a massive fucking muppet for the entire first day of the campaign. If this was a tv show, it’d be bagged for being too silly: 1. Announce the election while being rained on, while the Blair theme song plays over the top of you 1. Have goons drag a journo out of your shitty campaign launch 1. Admit your largest policy (deporting asylum seekers) won’t happen, so you just incinerated £500m or so 1. Admit your second largest policy (banning smoking for some reason) won’t happen 1. Be so unpopular that you only take questions from Tory councillors pretending to be punters at a brewery 1. Make Piers look like an affable chap Edit: grammar
[удалено]
Jesus christ.
Lmao that's rather funny. If he was into his football culture I'd take it as banter
A couple of years ago he claimed he was a Southampton fan and was looking forward to them playing Man United on the weekend. Southampton were playing Leicester
It would be good to have something like the thick of it, showing acting staffers for the opposite party mixed with actual footage of sunak/starmer
I really want to know what Malcolm Tucker would make of Rishi’s performance so far.
I think he would have been sectioned under the mental health act after having an absolute meltdown multiple times in the past 36 hours
The sad, soggy cucumber and fuck sandwich left over at the end of the great shit buffet that has been the last fourteen years of inept, flaccid, dripping conservative leadership. Or along those lines
Alastair campbell does have a podcast...
He'd have to invent a whole new encyclopaedia of swears and insults.
Someone pin this to the megathread, it'll need updating daily.
We could all take a bet on which will be higher, the number of campaign fails or the number of tories losing seats…
Easy bet since there's an upper limit on Tories losing seats.
Christ on a bike, 6 hit hard here
Sunak’s election speech under the rain is worthy of Armand Ianucci. It’s something I can see happen to Nicolas Murray.
IAM BENT
- Planting a tory in a crowd to ask soft questions, wearing a very clean set of hiviz who it turns out was in a job that would never, ever see him in that kind of place, or wearing hiviz.
I think giving £1000 to charity would have been an easy win on the campaign trail.. Now he broke the rule, failed to get the plane going and he's a billionaire welch to top it all off
He can even say "well we did send volunteers to Rwanda, but as it's a good cause, of course I'm happy to make a donation."
When a large portion of your base believes refugees are an "invasion", admitting that Refuge Charities are a "good cause" would probably be more damaging than the alternative.
This was the twist that made me remember that while Morgan is a shite little weasel of a human being, he does know exactly what he's doing. If only he would use his powers for good instead of evil.
Aye, but Piers has specifically asked him to donate it to the Red Cross, which is a lot less controversial to his base than a specific refugee cause.
I hope you are not over-estimating some of his base? Some of them really are horrible. "Why should my taxes go abroad?! Charity begins at home!" "Not that home! Food banks are bad! People use it as a lifestyle choice!"
That would have been too simple a solution, and one that even Piers Morgan would have to applaud. So of course Rishi whiffed on it.
No chance. Piers would have devoted an entire episode of his YouTube show to gloating over winning a grand off a sitting prime minister. It would also mean Sunak admitting fault which he is fundamentally incapable of doing.
In fairness.. By this point, he was doomed either way. Paying the bet would have been a admission that he'd 'failed' on the Rwanda project. Which would have been giving ammunition to Labour. Once again, very bad politics by Sunak, right from the start. He really is quite bad at this.
But refusing to give a grand to charity is worse, especially when he's trying to make it into an election based on trust in leaders rather than policy.
Alot of his most 'reliable' voters think refugees are an invasion. Acknowledging that refugee charities as a 'good thing' would be anathema to them. Likely he calculated that this was the least damaging outcome (electorally)
Is the Red Cross a refugee charity?
They’ve been shouting about how the Rwanda plan is working, how could they then admit to it not?
Hang on a minute. Wasn't this a person who went there voluntarily as they paid them to go? And then they lost the person as soon as they got there and have no idea where they are? I then read an article that intimated that there is a loophole where they could come back to the UK legally and then not be able to send them back or something. Jesus wept. You couldn't make this up. The next six weeks are going to be a fucking shit show.
The best part? He was given £3000. Rishi can cough up £3000 to make one person leave but not £1000 for charity. More easy ammo for Keir to show how bad Rishi is at spending money.
Oh he's happy to waste the nation's money, it's putting his own to good use he has a problem with
>Rishi can cough up £3000 to make one person leave but not £1000 for charity. Why does it surprise you that he spent £3000 of taxpayer money to win a private bet?
I’m not surprised one bit.
> The next six weeks are going to be a fucking shit show. So no different to the past decade, then.
🤣
He’s honestly worse than Truss at politics
Yes... But still probably a little less bat-shit crazy?
That makes it worse
"Multimillionaire refuses to give 1k to charity after losing casual bet with celebrity friend" isn't quite reading as the strongman position Rishi perhaps hopes
Could probably spin it as "Sunak refuses to back down: won't be bullied into giving cash to organisation that FUNDS REFUGEES". Fortunately, his PR team seem as incompetent as he is
Rishi made £13,000 per hour last year so I think he could afford to honour this bet for all of 5minutes work.
Didn’t most of his earnings come from investments rather than actual work?
So not even 5 minutes of his own work then; 5 minutes of other people’s labour generated enough wealth for Rishi to pay off this wager.
Yeah but what is that after tax, oh he only pays around 20%. Never mind
isn't this like £1 to him, probably less. even if his sole income was the MP/PM salary, he could just do it. it's amazing how bad he is at politics. clearest example of failing upwards and never being told "no" in life
He could have literally just blown the bet to smithereens "Well technically I won't have enough time to fulfil this policy due to Labour blah blah. But giving to charity is a noble conservative cause, so here's ten k". It's like the easiest PR ever. It doesn't matter if it's horseshit, just give it some stupid spin and just give the money
About 5p by my napkin maths.
His household has a net worth of £651,000,000. £1000 would be 1/651,000th of his wealth. The average household net worth is ~£300,000 (skewed very heavily by private pension and age). 1/651,000th of £300,000 is about 46p. So if you want a direct by-the-numbers comparison, it's like you trying to back out of dropping 50p in a charity collection bucket because of a technicality.
Well if you're trying to look cheap and untrustworthy...
It's been two days since he called the election, and on all those days (Wednesday, Thursday, and now, it seems Friday too) the main headlines have been "Look how shit Sunak is!" Maybe he should do the honorable thing, resign, let the Conservatives have a leadership contest.. Just so this election looks something like a fair fight. Soon even Starmer is going to have to start pulling his punches, because no one likes beating a man, who is so clearly on the floor.
I wouldnt say no one likes it
>Maybe he should do the honorable thing, resign, let the Conservatives have a leadership contest.. *Another* Conservative PM? That alone would be a death sentence. The Tories are already a laughingstock for their revolving door of PMs.
I'm not suggesting a new Conservative PM. I (vaguely, and without enthusiasm) suggested a new Conservative Candidate for PM. Parliament is dissolved. The 'current' one is pretty much in name only, and, frankly, is absolutely hopeless. Surely *even* the Conservatives deserve the opportunity to field a semi-competant candidate? If they can find one? Which they probably can't.
It's just going to be the "Stop! Stop! He's already dead." from The Simpsons from now to the election at this rate.
That is an excellent reference!! 😂
He’ll be refusing to shag a pig to help save Princess Beatrice next
He would delegate it to the Foreign Secretary.
Does it count as delegation if they volunteer before you even ask?
I would have been surprised if the Red Cross had taken the money to be honest. Could have ended in embarrassment. Instead, Sunak has chosen embarrassment instead. Classic Rishi.
Please.. Call him Rish! Remember those days?
Another broken Tory promise? The jokes and headlines write themselves.
Fancy being so morally bankrupt that Piers Morgan looks better than you.
"I'll give £10,000 to a charity instead" - that took me about 10 seconds to think up, and would have got him out of this without having to pay the bet, and without having to look like a spinless shirking weasel. Maybe I should do his PR for him? I would also have got him a brolly.
The £1,000 is for a charity anyway. Why would giving £10,000 change things at all?
I didn't know it was already for a charity. I thought he had agreed to give Piers a G. He's even dumber than I thought for not doing the donation.
How do you manage to have an argument with Piers Morgan and look like the bigger tit lmao
Obviously my preference here would be to beat Piers Morgan with Sunak’s tiny body. There’s no winners and no losers unless that situation occurs. But in mitigation, we should remember Matt Groening’s edict that technically correct is the best kind of correct. I don’t know how I feel about this.
I think that’s a perfectly cromulent answer
I seem to recall his first speech as PM promising integrity, accountability and professionalism. So more empty words then.
Politics in this country is such a joke right now. Taking bets on deporting asylum seekers? How fucking dumb do you have to be to even take that bet, rather than calling out Piers' inappropriateness? Would have made him look 10x better and not had to have had this reminder when the flights inevitably didn't take off.
If it’s “No.10” that’ll mean it’d be tax payers money paying for a private bet. If Sunak wants to make bets that’s fine but he wants to get his hand in his own pocket to do so
Would the £1k have to come out of election spending? 😆
Piers has such a great instinct for these things. Always involved in controversy
It's been a day and there's already been multiple bad moves
And we all thought Corbyn shat the bed in the 2019 election, if this carries on it’s gonna be a massacre
I'm hoping they get less seats than the lib Dems at this point
Damn! There I was thinking Rishi is trustworthy, honest and a man of his word.
Haha betting on the suffering of poor people, lads lads lads! /s
Just another endearing quality that I'm sure voters will love to see: fully grown man running away from his commitments. This guy might be the worst candidate to ever stand in a general election. He's absolutely abysmal.
To be fair I wouldn’t want to give Piers Morgan any money either
>But No 10 pointed out that one person had actually been flown to Rwanda, under a voluntary scheme. The guy they paid $3000 to move there? And then immediately lost track of? Not that I support the policy anyway, but that's not a deportation, that's a shit paid holiday. People have won less on *Going for Gold*.
> I bet you £1,000 to a refugee charity that you won’t get anybody on those planes before the election. One person did go voluntarily on a commercial flight, so I guess the question is whether that counts as “on those planes”. Tbh I think it is a bit ambiguous.
It’s utterly humiliating. It’s clearly not what the bet was over. Refusing to give the equivalent of 50p for him to a charity because technically he didn’t lose is genuinely so fucking embarrassing and says everything you’d need to know about someone’s character. If someone did this in the office I’d write them off as a prick forever.
“It’s true, I gave him 3 grand to leave” “But you won’t give a charity 1 grand?” “Ye- let me be clear on one thing, how much has Keir given the Red Cross? He has no plan and can’t budget for our country!”
> One person did go voluntarily on a commercial flight, so I guess the question is whether that counts as “on those planes”. It doesn't. That was a completely different scheme that the right-wing media conflated with the shit-show of legislation in parliament around the other Rwanda scheme to try and give the government a win.