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United Kingdom

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muriel_volestrangler

(104,634 posts)
Wed Aug 26, 2020, 08:51 AM Aug 2020

Choosing Tony Abbott as UK trade envoy 'staggering', says Labour [View all]

The shadow trade secretary, Emily Thornberry, has condemned reports that Boris Johnson is preparing to appoint the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott to a senior trade role, calling Abbott a “Trump-worshipping misogynist”.

The Department of Trade declined to comment publicly on Wednesday but insisted no decision had yet been made, after the Sun reported that Abbott would be given a leading role on the board of trade.

Abbott has questioned the existence of the climate crisis, suggesting in 2017 that global warming was “probably doing good”, and compared environmental policies with “primitive people once killing goats to appease the volcano gods”.

He gave a speech to the rightwing Heritage Foundation in Washington DC in January, saying Donald Trump’s presidency had been “quite a success” and his methods were “crude but effective”.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/26/choosing-tony-abbott-uk-trade-envoy-staggering-says-labour

We have enough shit politicians who have been given the boot in the UK; why send out to Australia for one of their worst?

On 14 September 2015, Malcolm Turnbull, the Minister for Communications, resigned and stated his intention to challenge the Liberal Party leadership in a leadership spill. A party-room meeting held that evening saw Abbott defeated by Turnbull on a 54–44 vote. According to The Economist, his demise was a result of poor opinion polling, policy U-turns and gaffes and mean-spirited politics.[180]
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On 18 May 2019, during the federal election, Abbott lost his seat of Warringah to independent candidate and former Olympic skier Zali Steggall. This came despite the seat being traditionally conservative (it had been held by the Liberals and their predecessors without interruption since 1922).[4] Abbott went into the election holding Warringah on a seemingly insurmountable margin of 61 percent. However, he lost over 12 percent of his primary vote from 2016, and finished over 4,100 votes behind Steggall on the first preference count.[203] This deficit proved too much for Abbott to overcome, and Steggall defeated him on Labor preferences.[204]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Abbott#September_2015_leadership_spill
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