It’s getting nearer to that time again! We’ve had Christmas, New Year and Easter. Next on the list of our favourite recurring traditions is half way through a Parliament when Tories bow to that dark, inner self-interest - and half of Westminster gets a bit, err, stabby. Gets earlier every term. Indeed, if Sadiq Khan really wants to get a handle on knife crime in London, he should think about installing metal detectors in Whitehall. Be-Cuz-DAAAMMNN. Wont be long til we start seeing people get off the No12 early, having seen the rife cocaine use and manz gettin’ shanked - then jump immediately back on, like “sorry mate, thought this was Peckham”. Of course, once upon a time, British Prime Ministers served full terms. Remember that? Two or three full terms, in fact. Blair was only pushed to step down when the further-Left Brownites grew weary of his Centrism and world stage showboating. “Him and Bush. Fuck me. Two fuckin’ dicks doing their best to de-stabilise the world,” one Labour insider* fretted. Or as I called them: two “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. I like the way I said it better. *no labour insider said that, it was the setup to the double entendre of ‘weapons’. This isn’t the fucking Times, you bellend. Anyway, Blair and Thatcher stepped down around midway through their third terms. David Cameron austered that down to halfway through term two. Theresa May inherited a majority from “Dave” (when he ran away after the referendum) but then lost it in her own General Election - so, that’s one and a half terms for each. Now, true to type: Boris Johnson once again looks set to have met expectations, by lowering them. By the time he leaves office (with 1922 Committee letters rumoured to be piling by the day) he will likely be the only PM in living memory to have won an 80-seat majority - only to be ejected from it in under three years of the same fucking Parliament. But Who Will Replace Him? Well if you’ve listened to the podcast and/or read any of these blogs, you’ll know my penchant for looking at no confidence votes like a chessboard - or Black White Clever Pitch, as Nadine Dorries calls them. Your bishop is “The Press Turning on Johnson”. Your rook is “A Scandal”. Your Knight is “An Upstart Challenger”. One of these in isolation is rarely enough to administer a full-on check-mate. No, it’s not impossible, but equally it’s not probable. Two together, increases the odds substantially. And all three, working together, make it the most likely outcome. So what do we have now? As of late April, the Press are largely on Johnson’s side. STEM papers (Sun, Telegraph, Express, Mail) happily retail pro-Govt comment at every opportunity. Today’s headlines on the News Stans News Stands range from “Boris: I Am The Leader Britain Needs!” (Express) to not mentioning Johnson at all (The Sun) to the Mail calling Partygate ‘a farce’ to the Telegraph putting Patel front and centre, bashing the BBC. What about challengers, though? Well the truth is, there is no obvious challenger. Much was said of Rishi Sunak before his wife’s non-dom tax status and his own American residency were leaked. Between his glossy social media and pandemic Furlough schemes, he had about *as* positive an image as it’s possible for a Tory to attain. The Peoples Psychopath, humourist Jim Felton described him as. But now? Well, now he just looks like someone moonlighting as Chancellor until the real gig comes in. Prepare yourselves for the 2023 headline: Silicon Valley Reaches Diversity Target By Hiring Eton Educated Billionaire Of Asian Heritage. With Sunak out the picture, there is no obvious ambitious, charismatic and ungrateful prick on the sidelines waiting to plunge the metaphorical knife. For fans of the literal as much as the metaphorical: there is no Boris Johnson waiting in the wings, ready to Boris Johnson Boris Johnson. So with no Press (bishop), no Upstart (knight) - all we’re left with is the rook, the Scandal. And although we’ve got about 57 chessboards’ worth of rooks right now (2nd jobs, misuse of public funds, breaking his own lockdown laws, lying to parliament, losing #neverLabour seats in bi-elections, the £350m bus, 200k Covid deaths, inadequate PPE, VIP fast lane, Track & Trace, £11bn Covid Fraud, ‘Bodies Pile High’, Afghan withdrawal, blackmailing MPs etc etc) - you’d hope there might be someone, just ONE fucking person in the Tory party a few of them could vouch for. But conversely, the ‘senior party sources’ are more often quoted shrugging ‘Well, who else is there?’ (tantamount to ‘we are ALL worse than that’). For what it’s worth, dear reader, here are my five that I think are at least, AT THE VERY FUCKING LEAST, not *as* bad as Boris Johnson. Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) Ellwood is an ex Army guy. He’s been vocally critical about the Johnson administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, supportive of the vaccine rollout, voted Remain -and is seen as a realist over Partygate, Conduct, Standards etc, declaring a Confidence Vote ‘inevitable’ now. He won praise last year for grilling the PM on defence spend. You can watch that clip here. Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) Tugendghat is another ex Army guy. Seen as a centrist conservative and one of the few remaining Tory moderates. He voted to remain in the EU referendum and although he supported May’s withdrawal agreement, has been *so* critical of Johnson, that he’s rumoured to be one of the PM’s most loathed fellow conservatives. For that alone, he should be cemented in the running. Johnny Mercer (Plymouth Moor View) Mercer is ANOTHER ex Army guy. Wait, do I have a thing for military men? Weird. Mercer resigned from his (junior) ministerial role in protest at the way the PM had failed to deliver on promises to veterans who’d served in The Troubles. He described being in the conservatives now as like working for a really shit company. Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) In all honesty, to me, Hunt decimated his place as in any way suitable for the job of PM back in the Cameron and May govts. He bought the NHS to its knees in the Austerity years. Junior Doctors were overworked, underpaid, left in droves; everything from A&E waiting times, staff morale, Winter Crisis admissions, no. of available hospital beds, cancer referral times - almost everything got significantly worse in his time as Health Secretary. But cynical minds may wonder - does all that make him a bad health secretary? or an incredibly efficient Tory? If it’s the latter, and in contrast to the current Cabinet’s ability, you have to wonder whether having a guy who excelled in his role under someone else’s agenda might succeed in a similar capacity in a more Huntian, pragmatic (parties), compassionate (Afghanistan) capacity? Brass tacs: did Hunt savage the NHS because he hates public healthcare? Or because Theresa May told him to? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love the idea of Jeremy Hunt as PM. But he has (at least appeared to show) shades of empathy around Afghanistan & Partygate. He's critical of the worst aspects of Johnsonism. He appears to understandpolicy. And look, if it’s the choice out of him vs Patel, Raab or Truss - Hunt would at the very *least* leave us feeling that we weren’t all paying the price for some childish game of "biscuits" seeded forty years ago. I know I KNOW... is that really the bar you're working to, Aid? is that really what we should accept from our Political Leaders? 'Oh he's not *as* murderously demonic as the others, SCORE!'. Clearly that's not the bar I want to work to. That's why I'll vote Labour. But if the Tories want to stand any chance of winning back centrist votes or regaining the public's confidence, that is their bar that they are working to. Hunt is objectively not *as* bad as Johnson. And despite songs you may have heard shanty'd in bars around Westminster, his recent conduct lead me to believe he's probably not a total c***. Could be wrong though. Has been known to happen in the past. Perhaps this 'bar' thing is the temperature check the Conservative party (and its donors) need. With such a dearth of talent (see 2019 exodus) at the same time as the vacuous reality of right wing populism begins to manifest, Tories have to ask themselves: “How do we show the electorate that we’re not ALL cartoon toffs and careerist sociopaths?” when that is, in reality, what almost ALL of them are.