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Frances Ryan
@DrFrancesRyan
Columnist and journalist . Visiting Fellow . Ambassador . Author of CRIPPLED out now. E: frances.ryan.freelance@guardian.co.uk

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Tory MPs patiently waiting for Boris Johnson to get back from the Caribbean to tell them if he wants to be Prime Minister again is peak toxic ex-boyfriend behaviour.
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Spare us the “at least Rishi Sunak is a grown up” narrative. In the leadership contest, he bragged about shifting money from poor communities to the rich, vilified benefit claimants, and doubled-down on deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. Sunak is not a saviour - he’s a Tory.
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... or maybe your prayers should be with the millions of people who are going to suffer because she crashed the economy with her unhinged attempts to stuff the bank accounts of rich people with more money?
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My prayers are with @trussliz and her family following her resignation, and I give thanks for her public service to our country. We should always be grateful to those who take on the great and difficult responsibilities of leadership.
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There’s many times it’s right to feel sympathy for a politician on a human level. But this is not it. What Truss - and the Tory party - are experiencing is just a little thing called consequences. And it’ll be the rest of us who will face much worse.
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I see we’re already at the “spare a thought for Liz Truss” stage of Tory decline. The same commentators asking for sympathy for politicians are tellingly silent over showing compassion for disabled and poor people. The architects of misery always count more than its victims.
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Every time I hear a Tory MP solemnly warn all this could mean “the Conservative Party cease to exist” I get a little smile creep in and then just start to laugh absolutely uncontrollably. Never felt such joy, babes.
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That’s the sort of selfless public servant Boris Johnson is. He will 100% return from the Caribbean at some point in a few days because some people are saying flattering things about him again.
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BREAKING Boris Johnson is flying back to the UK this weekend', his friends say. Johnson is apparently reading his WhatsApp messages while he is on holiday. One source tells me: "He is thanking MPs for their messages." More: telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/
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The idea that the solution to Truss’s premiership is to go back to the Conservative membership is very much like seeing the police tape up a crime scene and inviting the murderer to return to have another go.
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🚨Boris Johnson expected to run for Tory leadership. (This is not a drill).
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EXCLUSIVE: I'm told that Boris Johnson is expected to stand in the Tory leadership contest He's taking soundings but is said to believe it is a matter of national interest thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-tr
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I love the fact Tory MPs are trying to replace Truss without going back to a members vote. Very much admitting your own supporters are batshit and would elect a turnip if it promised to deport enough asylum seekers.
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Hearing that they will face the worst punishment of all: remaining Tory MPs in 2022.
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⏰We start the morning where we left off last night… with govt in chaos. No 10 sent statement at 1.33am saying fracking vote *was* a confidence vote after all. Tory MPs who broke whip will face “disciplinary action”.
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What on earth? £1000/dose? It's free in so many countries across the globe. It's absolutely awful to be clinically vulnerable in the UK - no mitigations, COVID running rife, and drugs that should be free well beyond most people's reach.
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BREAKING 🚨: The anti-Covid drug Evusheld will be available privately for immunocompromised Britons from today. According to manufacturers Astrazeneca, it will cost patients £1,000 per dose. The news comes after the Government said it would NOT fund the treatment. #Evusheld
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Whilst the impact of the Tory party’s breakdown on the country is very serious, it should never be forgotten that it is also very, very funny.
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Allies of Therese Coffey are denying that she manhandled anyone.
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Home Secretary gone in 43 days. Chief Whip rumoured to have resigned. MPs allegedly physically manhandled into voting for the government. Chancellor sacked. The Tory party is in utter chaos, dying on its arse after 12 long years. Like the last days of Rome, but with less dignity.
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Suella Braverman recently declared it was “her dream” to deport torture victims by Christmas. Truly one of the most grotesque individuals to ever hold high office in this country, a lowest common denominator charlatan who revelled in cruelty and division. 43 days too long.
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“The most vulnerable” is also a deliberately exclusionary, hierarchical term. As I say in my book Crippled, this framing enabled the Tories to cut support over the last decade for people in poverty and disabled people under the guise that “others needed it more.”
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As the Tories reawaken the phrase “the most vulnerable”, a reminder: No one in society is inherently vulnerable. People are vulnerable when the support they need from the state is pulled away. Something the Tories known a little about.
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400 people have died from covid in the last reported week. But no minister will mention it. As the Tory soap opera yet again consumes the country, it’s an utter tragedy that clinically vulnerable people’s lives are collateral damage.
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Deaths due to Covid-19 have begun to rise again in England and Wales amid a wave of infections thetimes.co.uk/article/weekly
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Understand Liz Truss has been informed by Graham Brady the traditional threshold of letters for a leadership challenge has been breached. But he is insisting on a threshold of half the parliamentary party before acting.
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Funny how Tories are always very keen on “difficult decisions” of cutting public services and support for poorest, but never “difficult (actually easy) decisions” of wealth taxes and redistribution. It’s as if austerity is a political choice.
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A screenshot of a Guardian column. The headline reads: At this rate, the next PM will be the chasm where Suella Braverman’s soul should be.
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Suella Braverman: “I’m afraid it’s the Labour Party, it’s the Lib Dems, it’s the Coalition of chaos, it’s the Guardian-reading, Tofu-eating, wokerati - dare I say the anti-growth coalition that we have to thank for the disruption we are seeing on our roads today!”
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It has never been about “the right to protest.” These groups attempt to prevent women from accessing abortion care - whether that’s through psychological trauma by hanging baby clothes around clinic entrances or giving them false information, such as abortion causes infertility.
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This is fantastic news. As I wrote a few months ago, no other form of healthcare would permit harassment and this should be no different. If you think women seeking abortion should have to endure chants of “mummy! don’t kill me!” you think women deserve shame and punishment.
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MPs just voted in favour of national buffer zones outside abortion clinics ! A big win for anyone who doesn't think those seeking abortions should be harassed and bullied at what can be one of the most vulnerable times of their lives @MSIchoices @BPAS1968 @SisterSupporter
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“Long Covid has exposed a raft of mistruths about what illness can and does look like – it can be vague and changeable, benign but life-altering, invisible yet agonising, and punctuated by periods of remission and relapse.” Important by
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I love that Tory ministers are now reduced to having to confirm Liz Truss is indeed Prime Minister.
Heappey, a defence minister, said Liz Truss could not afford to make any more mistakes. Asked how many more errors she could make, he told Sky News: “I suspect given how skittish our politics are at the moment, not very many,” he said. Pressed how many, he said: “I don’t think there’s the opportunity to make any more mistakes.”
He claimed he thought Truss was doing a good job. He said:
She’s very much our prime minister and for what it’s worth I think she’s doing a good job.
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We should not be fooled by the appointment of Hunt. The standard for leadership in this country is now so low that the Conservatives could appoint Hannibal Lecter to steady the ship and sections of the British commentariat would praise him as a “safe pair of hands”.
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The Tories will further wreck public services in order to pay for their disastrous mistakes. Truss is launching Austerity 2.0 and with a mandate so nonexistent that even her own chancellor didn’t vote for her. >> My col.
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