Does anyone really believe that the Shires would vote for someone with Indian Heritage for PM?

[Soph0571]

Could the tory leadership race be more depressing? Liz Truss is an intellectual lightweight, a quisling and there is nothing more dangerous than a zealous convert to a cult. The cult of course that I refer to is the ERG Brexit. Sunak is also a right wing, pull up the drawbridge after me, typical selfish Tory of the right wing sort. That he is being portrayed as the left wing choice in the right wing press is a joke. This race is between two far right candidates who will continue the destruction of the union that has been gathering pace for the last 12 years.

Liz has already won this race and her tax policy is not what is going to do it. We know that the Tory party has been hijacked by UKIP Gammons - who have made it their life's work to stop any brown or black people landing on our shores. We know that the tory party membership are generally made up of far right deluded old people - who trend to the right of the MPs who represent them - and in this climate that is saying something. Do we really think a combined gammon and blue rinse of the shires brigade will vote in a person of Indian Heritage? Not for one minute do I think this a possibility. Although they are both awful they will pick to worst of the rotten bunch because they are far right cray cray racist nasty - and of course the polling proves this.

Good grief. Truss for PM? Trade war and UK PLC insolvency in 3..2...1...

[nitpicker]

1. What is PLC?

[Soph0571]

2. here you go...

What Is a Public Limited Company (PLC)?
A public limited company (PLC) is a public company in the United Kingdom. PLC is the equivalent of a U.S. publicly traded company that carries the Inc. or corporation designation. The use of the PLC abbreviation after the name of a company is mandatory and communicates to investors and to anyone dealing with the company that it is a publicly traded corporation.
1

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Well, depends if you mean "Tory members", or "the Shires"

Yes, Tory members favour Truss; I wouldn't necessarily put that down to racism, since, as you point out, she has been the more "Brexit is brilliant" cheerleader type over the past few years.

Sunak may be of Indian heritage, but he also went to Winchester and Oxford, and worked for investment banks and hedge funds. That's the kind of CV Tories like, especially after the flighty, stranger-to-the-truth journalist career of Johnson turned out to show his true colours. I wouldn't rule him out yet - it depends if Truss can continue to convince the Tory members that she is heavyweight enough to be PM - they seem to think so now (thanks to the Daily Mail, perhaps) but she could easily make gaffes over the next few weeks, or her Lib Dem and remainer past may start to make her look "unreliable" in their eyes.

As to the feelings of "the Shires", we can look at a poll for "would do a good of bad job as PM?" for the South region.

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2022-07/Ipsos%20Conservative%20leadership%20polling%20PUBLIC.pdf

(very good/fairly good/neither bad nor good/fairly bad/very bad)

Starmer: 10/17/20/14/31
Sunak: 9/25/22/17/17
Truss: 12/18/24/13/16

So the typical person in the South slightly prefers Sunak to Truss, I'd say (depends on how you weight 'very' v. 'fairly', I suppose). He also slightly leads her in the 'voted Con in 2019' column.

[T_i_B]

4. A lot of grassroots Tories were all for Kemi Badenoch...

...so I don't think it's that which is the issue so much as the wider "culture wars" bollocks that dominates the right wing press and the thinking of much of the Tory grassroots. Which was something that Kemi Badenoch was able to tap into and Truss is making a concerted effort to do the same.