Can you think of a Prime Minister worse than Johnson?

I would say MOST leaders maizie

Maybe not, gillybob but a number of national leaders are dealing with it rather better than Johnson is.

As an aside, as an employer I tend to do the things my employees would not do . I wash the cups, floors and clean the loos for goodness sake .

Neither myself or my DH have had any income for 8 weeks now . 2 of my employees are enjoying 80% of their wages for staying home and the other is on full wages .

I don’t recall a prime minister ever having to deal with a global pandemic before ?

Now is a very good time to drag parliament into the 21st century. I think it’s been working well with internet links. I also think it’s time we had a new style of parliament with no filibustering, sabre rattling and baying mobs. It’s no longer amusing.

I can't believe you are serious, GG13.

Just because the Blessed Boris 'defied' the virus by shaking hands with all and sundry, against scientific advice it doesn't mean that 600+ MPs have to be ridiculously foolhardy when it's been perfectly workable to conduct parliament with the aid of technology.

He's not 'leading from the front', he's desperately seeking the support of his baying sycophants at PMQs and indifferent to the risks to MPs and their families.

The House of Commons does not have enough seats for all MPs, let alone 2m apart.

Also MPs come from all over the country so could be superspreaders of the virus.

Why should they not continue to work from home? Unlike surgeons, bin men and supermarket workers, their work only involves discussions, meetings, letters, speeches, reports.not physical work. All who can work from home should continue to do so and that includes MPs.

Our NHS, Bin Men, Super Market Workers, Butchers, Bakers, Greengrocers, Posties, Care Workers, Teachers, Critical Builders, Builders Supply’s and Teachers are/have been working throughout lockdown so should our MPs be in Parliament, only fair.

As an employer I have never asked an employee to do something I wouldn’t do, time to lead from the front.

The government is trying to force MPs back
to work in Westminster irrespective of health risks. Many Mps and their constituents will be disenfranchised. Another blow against democracy.
www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/31/mps-furious-about-forced-return-of-physical-voting-to-commons

The people who voted for him obviously don't care for their country, which is a shame, because I care.

Johnson is a charlatan, who has lied, is incompetent and has delude people that he is intelligent.

For some reason best known to themselves, people fell for it.

I think he will only go if he wants to go, bit that is possible, I doubt the position is what he thought it would be. Be careful what you wish for indeed.

I reckon that after another winter of chaos with the virus, and then a further economic crises plus supply shortages post no deal Johnson will be gone by next summer.

Not that him and his ilk will mind they will have got even more wealthy on brexit.

That bastion of the right wing The Spectator thinks Johnson isn’t a fit leader

www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-isn-t-fit-to-lead/amp?__twitter_impression=TRUE

varian, in regard to your post @13:56 today the trade unions voluntarily gave up the block vote in all ballots many years ago.

Also, anyone who holds the position of General Secretary of the Labour movement is now not allowed to hold any other position within the movement so as to not hold preference for any other body.

As with all organisations things have moved on in the Labour movement since the 1970s just as they have in all other organisations.

There are also good and bad in all organisations, just think of Jeremy Thorpe and Cyril Smith of the Liberal Party during that era, totally scandalous and seen as the corruption of the positions they held at that time.

What utterly astounds me is that given articles by people like Max Hastings and the sort of reports that have become public knowledge by the Eton Headmaster, all saying roughly the same thing about Johnson, is the fact that he somehow has fooled so many people into believing the absolute opposite of what his character is really like.

I think Tories particularly the grandees tried to worn people but I guess it was the brexit message that landed us with the worse prime minister ( I don’t even feel right using the title for him) ever.

All power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely - and trade unionists are no more of an exception than Tory SPADs.

Grandad may have more of a starry eyed view of the trade union movement than some of us who lived on Tyneside in the 1960s.

One of our neighbours was the all-powerful Andrew Cunningham, union leader in North East England, who died in 2010 at the age of 100. At the height of his career in 1971 he held the following positions:

Member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party
Chairman of the Chester-le-Street and the Northern Region Executive of the Labour Party
Head of the Northern District of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers (NUGMW) (the biggest union in the north-east, succeeding John Yarwood MBE)
Alderman of Durham County Council
Member of the Chester-le-Street town council
Chairman of Durham Police Authority
Chairman of Newcastle Airport Consultative Committee
Member of the Northumbrian River Authority
Member of the Peterlee New Town Development Corporation
Member of the Tyneside Passenger Transport Authority

His role with the GMWU in particular gave him considerable influence, via the Trade Union block vote, in the selection of Labour Party parliamentary candidates. The Poulson scandal also destroyed the careers of T. Dan Smith and the Conservative Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling. Cunningham was sentenced to five years imprisonment, reduced to three on appeal. He was paroled from Ford Open Prison in June 1976.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cunningham_(politician)

Anniebach, I am perfectly happy making posts on this thread if only to correct the inaccuracies that you continuously and deliberately post. ??

Start your union thread* grandad43* and a thread of your attacks on the labour leader.

I think that's partly true Mazie, his tactic has always been to hide, however I think he is also a fundamentally lazy man, that cant be underestimated.

As is usual Anniebach gets her facts completely wrong in her post @08:46 today. She posts on the "the damage the unions have done when they have control of the Labour party". However, the trade unions have never had control of the labour Party. Indeed it was due to the lack of influence the trade unions held in 1979 within the Labour Party that led to the winter of discontent.

That dispute came about due to James Callahan's policy as Labour Prime Minister of instructing the wages councils and Joint industry councils of that era to restrict their pay increases to within three and a half percent at a time when inflation was over twelve percent in the overall economy.

The above meant that Britains thirteen and a half million trade unionists were to be used as the sole means of bringing inflation under control while all others were to sacrifice nothing.

During the twelve years of the Blair/Brown administration not one section of the fifteen anti-trade union legislation bills brought in by the Thacher/Major administrations were removed, while still the trade unions gave much funding to the Labour Party.

So, does the above look and sound anything akin to the trade unions controlling the Labour party.

GranddadBrian I would one hundred percent agree with your assessment of the Cummings/Johnson performance of the last week.

I would just add that I believe this is also the Johnson "unmovable Premier act" being made ready for a no-trade deal exit from the European Union at the end of this year.

Also, a very large welcome to the forum GranddadBrian from me if you are a new member.

It could be he is able to work it out for himself, he has been
doing it for years.

Ilovecheese, your post @11:39 today.
???

Waffling and incoherent messages are not what is needed from the UK’s Prime Minister.

You know, there is a theory that he is doing this on purpose; blocking questions, not giving any answers, spending lots of time out of sight and generally ensuring that government actions are not open to scrutiny. He's doing it, obviously, so that a lot that is being done, such as awarding government contracts to cronies ans party donors without putting them out to tender, which the electorate might not approve of but have no power to prevent.

He's able to do this because there is absolutely nothing that can force him to act differently. There's no sanction on a PM for failing to answer questions, hiding away from the electorate, or not following usual administrative procedures. None at all.

It could be that puppeteer Cummings is playing a very clever game... telling him to 'just act dumb'