Heard yesterday that some backbench Tory MP's are saying that Cameron should appoint Boris Johnson as Deputy PM now as it may bolster the party's poll ratings and electoral chances. Apparently the Deputy PM doesn't necessarily have to be an MP but I though he/she did. What about standing in during PM's Questions in the Commons? I'm sure they could find him a safe commons seat within a few weeks.

 

So what does anyone here think? Silly idea or not?

Edited February 17, 201411 yr by Common Sense

NO

 

NO

 

NO!

NO

 

NO

 

NO!

 

 

LOL. Care to expand at all? :wacko:

What you need to know is that the buffoon act is made up so that he can get support. You can just tell that he's a cold manipulative pig, most recently proven by the refusal to compromise with the tube drivers

Edited February 17, 201411 yr by G R I F F

Nick Clegg doesn't always stand in at PMQs. There is no formal position of DPM. If he had any ministerial responsibility then he would have to be accountable to parliament. Unless the Tories engineer a byelection (which I hope they would lose) then that means giving him a seat in the Lords (Lord Boris of Ego perhaps). Of course, none of this could happen without dissolving the coalition. The whole thing is just yet more whinging by Tories who still - after nearly four years - haven't accepted that they didn't win the last election.

 

 

I think Clegg would have something to say about this and yes it would probably mean dissolving the Coalition.

Edited February 17, 201411 yr by Common Sense

What you need to know is that the buffoon act is made up so that he can get support. You can just tell that he's a cold manipulative pig, most recently proven by the refusal to compromise with the tube drivers

 

This is why I find him potentially very dangerous.

Boris will never be Prime Minister. There's far too many influential people (including Tories) who will stop at nothing to ensure that he'll never get that far. And it's probably for the best.

 

And I very much doubt that Clegg will dissolve the coalition before the next general election. Unless something incredibly earth shattering happens (such as 100 Tories in swing seats mysteriously and unsuspiciously spontaneously combusting leading to by-elections), you're stuck with the Lib Dems in government until 2015.

Boris will never be Prime Minister. There's far too many influential people (including Tories) who will stop at nothing to ensure that he'll never get that far. And it's probably for the best.

 

And I very much doubt that Clegg will dissolve the coalition before the next general election. Unless something incredibly earth shattering happens (such as 100 Tories in swing seats mysteriously and unsuspiciously spontaneously combusting leading to by-elections), you're stuck with the Lib Dems in government until 2015.

We can hope :lol:

It's not happening.

But Boris Johnson is so cute! :wub: I love the way you gets over excited at any little thing like a child.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RphRkM94HEI

 

:lol: He just works the crowd amazingly, everyone was chanting his name! :wub: He needs more recognition for his amazing talent!

I still don't think Boris is even particularly popular outside of London and the south east.

I still don't think Boris is even particularly popular outside of London and the south east.

Indeed, but the issue is that he might make enough of a difference at the margins to get the Conservatives to majority point by bringing back enough 2010 voters and UKIP voters - and he's the sort of figure who'd get the base excited and who could possibly give the Tories an advantage on differential turnout.

 

It really depends what he'd be up against in 2020 though - and if he was running as an incumbent taking over from Cameron in 2017 it'd be a very different proposition. (Here's hoping that doesn't happen...)

As other people said, no chance if it means removing Clegg. Lib Dems have a strategy for an election in May 2015 and wouldn't dare mess it up by dissolving the coalition early.

Indeed, but the issue is that he might make enough of a difference at the margins to get the Conservatives to majority point by bringing back enough 2010 voters and UKIP voters - and he's the sort of figure who'd get the base excited and who could possibly give the Tories an advantage on differential turnout.

 

It really depends what he'd be up against in 2020 though - and if he was running as an incumbent taking over from Cameron in 2017 it'd be a very different proposition. (Here's hoping that doesn't happen...)

 

Imo, Boris has built up his appeal on a Lib Dem-esque platform of trying to be all things to all people. He won over Labour supporters in London by opposing virtually all the major cuts, like EMA. And at the same time he's pretending to Tory activists that he thinks there should be even more austerity (even while opposing virtually every single specific cut), acting like he wants to get out of EU and various other things that gets the grassroots members' hearts racing. He might be able to get away with that type of thing long enough to scrape into government (might), but it would probably all come crumbling down once he got in when he breaks some of his contradictory promises and is exposed as someone who just said anything to win votes.

 

As other people said, no chance if it means removing Clegg. Lib Dems have a strategy for an election in May 2015 and wouldn't dare mess it up by dissolving the coalition early.

 

Yes, a strategy which is working so well that it propelled them to their worst byelection result since World War 2 a few days ago :P

 

I still think it's possible that humiliation in the Euro elections (5th place behind the Greens is surely looking even more likely after the floods) might finally get it to dawn on the Lib Dems just how bad their prospects are, and may well trigger them to oust Clegg/pull out of the government/do a full mea culpa and disown everything they did over the past 4 years and vow never to into government with the Tories again.

Edited February 18, 201411 yr by Danny

I love boris! I'd vote tories if he was in charge - hate that egg head Cameron!

Yes, a strategy which is working so well that it propelled them to their worst byelection result since World War 2 a few days ago :P

 

Given the strategy involves pulling the wagons around and fighting to the death for all their seats and outside of that only putting resources into the most marginal of seats they lost in 2010 and writing off everywhere else, how they did in a by-election in a safe Labour seat isn't really much of a sign of how their strategy's working :P

 

I still think it's possible that humiliation in the Euro elections (5th place behind the Greens is surely looking even more likely after the floods) might finally get it to dawn on the Lib Dems just how bad their prospects are, and may well trigger them to oust Clegg/pull out of the government/do a full mea culpa and disown everything they did over the past 4 years and vow never to into government with the Tories again.

Which kind of misses the point of what Clegg was trying to do in making the Liberal Democrats the permanent third party of government acting as a 'centre-ground anchor' - a strategy which has far more to it for a Lib Dem wanting to get their policies enacted than the old strategy of carping a lot, winning by-elections and being pious. Well, they still do the whole piety thing which is why so many of their MPs are so utterly punchable - but Clegg's the first Lib Dem leader since Ashdown who's had anything remotely approaching a strategy for making the Lib Dems relevant beyond winning over audiences in Question Time, even if he's gone a needlessly self-destructive way of doing it (of all the sacred cows to slay to prove you're capable of coalition...honestly). For the Lib Dems to rule out ever going into government with the Tories again would be lovely for me as a Labour activist, but it's totally unrealistic as it would totally reduce their future raison d'être as a party to existing just to affect Labour Party policy.

Which kind of misses the point of what Clegg was trying to do in making the Liberal Democrats the permanent third party of government acting as a 'centre-ground anchor' - a strategy which has far more to it for a Lib Dem wanting to get their policies enacted than the old strategy of carping a lot, winning by-elections and being pious. Well, they still do the whole piety thing which is why so many of their MPs are so utterly punchable - but Clegg's the first Lib Dem leader since Ashdown who's had anything remotely approaching a strategy for making the Lib Dems relevant beyond winning over audiences in Question Time, even if he's gone a needlessly self-destructive way of doing it (of all the sacred cows to slay to prove you're capable of coalition...honestly). For the Lib Dems to rule out ever going into government with the Tories again would be lovely for me as a Labour activist, but it's totally unrealistic as it would totally reduce their future raison d'être as a party to existing just to affect Labour Party policy.

 

The Lib Dems had much more influence in the years before they went into government than they've had since imo. They were one of the leading forces in turning public opinion on Iraq, and they were singlehandedly responsible for the Gurkhas thing. I can't think of anything they've done over the past few years which has had as much influence as either of those things. It's well-established by this point they've had precisely no impact on government policy, and they've given up the influence they had in shaping public opinion which they atleast had before.

 

The idea that getting into government is an end in itself and it doesn't matter what you do just so long as you get into government, which the leaderships of all the main parties seem to subscribe to (with the Lib Dems having rapidly become the worst offenders), is very depressing. Call me idealistic, but whatever happened to politicians fighting for specific causes and principles, rather than just wanting to further their own ambitions? It's enough to make anyone become a convert to "Russell Brandism".

The Lib Dems had much more influence in the years before they went into government than they've had since imo. They were one of the leading forces in turning public opinion on Iraq, and they were singlehandedly responsible for the Gurkhas thing. I can't think of anything they've done over the past few years which has had as much influence as either of those things. It's well-established by this point they've had precisely no impact on government policy, and they've given up the influence they had in shaping public opinion which they atleast had before.

 

The idea that getting into government is an end in itself and it doesn't matter what you do just so long as you get into government, which the leaderships of all the main parties seem to subscribe to (with the Lib Dems having rapidly become the worst offenders), is very depressing. Call me idealistic, but whatever happened to politicians fighting for specific causes and principles, rather than just wanting to further their own ambitions? It's enough to make anyone become a convert to "Russell Brandism".

Precisely no impact on government policy? Several Lib Dem pet policies - the pupil premium, the increase in the personal allowance, the ending of the detention of children of asylum seekers, the National Green Investment Bank, scrapping the DNA database and ID cards and cutting the maximum detention period without trial to 14 days - have come in as a result of them being in government (possibly ID cards aside, but I think the Tories disagreed with all the rest). The Gurkhas thing was a win for them yeah, but essentially irrelevant compared to the amount of their manifesto they've managed to get enacted as policy in government. Now, you might not think that's at all worth the damage the Conservatives have done as a result of the Lib Dems putting them in government - and I'd agree - but it's totally inaccurate to say they've had no impact on government policy, and a little patronising to say 'whatever happened to politicians fighting for specific causes and principles' when there are a lot of Lib Dems who've devoted a lot of time to getting these niche issues on the agenda and realistically never had a hope of getting them as policy without being in government. That's not exactly 'getting into government with no end in itself', especially as the party, in my experience, is dominated by a membership filled with esoteric single-issue/pet policy fanatics (moreso than any other party, possibly outside of the Greens).

 

Now, if I were a Lib Dem member and could somehow stomach what the coalition had done already, I'd take being able to enact pet policy with compromises on other big issues (which I thought might be enacted more extremely by that party in any case) in a heartbeat, over winning one niche issue on the immigration rights of Nepalese volunteer soldiers after 1997, claiming to be an opinion-changer on Iraq when the WMDs turning out to not be there kind of did that job anyway, and being deeply whiny and self-righteous all the time without the faintest bit of practical influence over what a government did.

If the word Deputy was taken out it would be perfect :)

 

Boris would be one of the all time great PM's, he has transformed London and made it a safe place to be, he has the charisma and dynamic personality to attract inward investment and more billionaires to set up businesses here, he is the true heir to Maggie policy wise unlike Major and Cameron and he is also incredibly popular particularly with under 25's

 

Wish Cameron would go now, Boris leave London to his deputy, Zak Goldsmith carry out his threat to step down, Boris take over Zak's seat and become pm