He always was the front runner….
It looks like his party will give him the job and the Brit’s will ahem their own version of bombastic Donald Trump….
Barring a surprise of historic proportions, Boris Johnson will be announced on Tuesday morning as leader of the U.K.’s Conservative Party, and the country’s next prime minister.
Why it matters: The face of the campaign to leave the EU in 2016, Johnson will be tasked with solving the Brexit puzzle that stymied Theresa May and plunged the U.K. into a political crisis. He’ll also attempt to steady the so-called “special relationship” with the U.S. — and he’s just the man President Trump wanted in the job.
[BBC News, Sunday evening/Monday morning]
Voting will close later in the Conservative leadership contest, with the UK’s next prime minister set to be announced on Tuesday.
Party members will have until 17:00 BST [= noon EDT] to return their ballots for either Jeremy Hunt or Boris Johnson, regarded as the frontrunner in the contest.
The winner and successor to Theresa May is due to take office on Wednesday.
On Sunday, Philip Hammond told the BBC he intends to resign as chancellor if Mr Johnson becomes PMprime minister.
Mr Hammond told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show he could not “sign up” to Mr Johnson’s Brexit strategy, which requires leaving the EU before 31 October, with or without a deal.
His announcement followed Justice Secretary David Gauke reiterating in the Sunday Times that he would also resign this week for the same reason.
‘Sense of mission’
Mr Johnson has said the UK must leave the EU by the new Brexit deadline of 31 October “do or die, come what may”, while Mr Hunt has said he is prepared to further delay Brexit, if required, to get a new withdrawal deal.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson insisted a deal could be reached by 31 October if the country “rediscovers its sense of mission”.
“We can come out of the EU on 31 October, and yes, we certainly have the technology to do so,” he wrote.
“What we need now is the will and the spirit.”
Meanwhile, with the next prime minister due to be announced this week, two former Labour prime ministers have warned about what they see as the dangers of leaving the EU without a deal.
Writing in the Times, Tony Blair said a no-deal exit could range from being “very difficult” to “catastrophic”.
“No one knows with certainty the impact of no deal for the simple reason that no developed nation has ever left overnight its preferential trading arrangements in this manner,” he wrote.
Mr Blair added that there was “no prospect” of a new deal with the EU that Mr Johnson would approve of, arguing that a second Brexit referendum was the solution.
Gordon Brown, meanwhile, is to claim in a speech in London that leaving without a deal would push the British economy “off a cliff”.
Last week, MPs approved measures aiming to stop the next prime minister suspending Parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Hunt has ruled this out as a way to ensure Brexit takes place before the end of October – but Mr Johnson has not done the same.
On Sunday, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith – who is managing Mr Johnson’s campaign – said the issue was a “complete red herring”.
He said the suspension – or prorogation – of Parliament was not “the real debate” because MPs had already fixed the 31 October exit date in law.
¶ Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats will announce the winner of their own contest to find a new leader, replacing Sir Vince Cable.
Either deputy leader Jo Swinson or former energy secretary Ed Davey will be announced as the party’s next leader on Monday afternoon.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49065490
America and the British are so close we even copy each other politically?
Respondents to a voluntary survey of Conservative Party members by Conservative Home (an independent forum for Tories) seem to have broken about 2-2 or 3-1 for Boris Johnson over Jeremy Hunt for Party Leader in the Commons and thus Prime Minister.
https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2019/07/our-final-next-tory-leader-survey-johnson-73-per-cent-hunt-27-per-cent-say-those-members-who-have-voted.html
These numbers where a given….
Despite Brexit and no response about a domestic situation he’s gonna be the man.….
{Let me send that out again without angled brackets that caused the printout to omit a couple of elections. The previous post can then be deleted.}
While it wasn’t true either before or afterwards, the parallels (with very different ideologies) were so striking that, between 1951 & 1997, half a dozen swings in one country would immediately precede a similar swing in the other country’s very next election.
1951 Churchill (C) 1952 Ike (R)
1960 JFK (D) 1964 Harold Wilson (Lab)
1968 Nixon (R) 1970 Ted Heath (C)
1974 Wilson (Lab) 1976 Carter (D)
1979 Thatcher (C) 1980 Reagan (R)
1992 W. Clinton (D) 1997 Tony Blair (Lab)
In the steps of William Gladstone …
Jo Swinson has become the first female Liberal Democrat leader, after decisively beating Sir Ed Davey in a poll of party members.
She won 47,997 votes, against her opponent’s 28,021.
The 39-year old, who succeeds Sir Vince Cable, said she was “over the moon” to have been elected and was “ready for the fight of our lives”.
She told activists the UK’s future lay in the European Union and she would do “whatever it takes to stop Brexit”.
As well as being the first woman to take charge of the party, Ms Swinson is also its youngest ever leader.
Describing Boris Johnson, the frontrunner in the contest to be the next Conservative leader, as “unfit to be prime minister”, she said her party was ready to return to government.
“I stand before you today not just as leader of the Lib Dems, but as a candidate to be prime minister. There is no limit for my ambition for our party, our movement and our country.
“I am ready to take my party into a general election and win it.”
The BBC’s political correspondent Jessica Parker said Ms Swinson’s victory speech was met with rapturous applause.
Ms Swinson, who has been the party’s deputy leader since 2017, was a business minister in the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition government.
She regained her East Dunbartonshire seat in 2017 after losing it two years earlier.
She told supporters her party, which came second in the recent European elections on the back of its support for another Brexit referendum, had enjoyed a remarkable turnaround over the last two years and it was clear “liberalism is alive and thriving”.
She said the UK’s vote to leave the EU marked a “retreat” from the world and a challenge to the “liberal values” and “fundamental freedoms” her party had historically championed….
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49076118
Link for full story above:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49076118
Boris Johnson has been elected new Conservative leader in a ballot of party members and will become the next UK prime minister.
He beat Jeremy Hunt comfortably, winning 92,153 votes to his rival’s 46,656.
The former London mayor takes over from Theresa May on Wednesday.
In his victory speech, Mr Johnson promised he would “deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn”.
Speaking at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in London, he said: “We are going to energise the country.
“We are going to get Brexit done on 31 October and take advantage of all the opportunities it will bring with a new spirit of can do.
“We are once again going to believe in ourselves, and like some slumbering giant we are going to rise and ping off the guy ropes of self doubt and negativity.”
Mr Johnson thanked his predecessor, saying it had been “a privilege to serve in her cabinet”. He was Mrs May’s foreign secretary until resigning over Brexit.
The outgoing PM in turn congratulated her successor, promising him her “full support from the backbenches”.
US President Donald Trump also tweeted his congratulations to Mr Johnson, adding: “He will be great!”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49084605
2 to 1…..
This was NO surprise….
Post coming….
The Brits’s get their own Donald Trump……