A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by Salmoneus »

So, after the summer, politics are ramping back up again. On Thursday, the Withdrawal Bill goes before the House, the first serious test of the government's ability to deliver and control Brexit.

But more exciting for journalists is the fact that, shockingly, the PM has just announced she doesn't intend to resign, and will fight the next election. This has encouraged a new round of talk of getting rid of her, though it's still not clear who could take over.

This in turn has led the PM to leak rumours of an impending reshuffle, and this is relevent to the thread as it displays one way in which politics here is very different from that in the US.

As you know, the Cabinet are (mostly) MPs, and the PM can "reshuffle" the Cabinet at any time, not needing approval from anybody. Since MPs want to be in Cabinet, this gives the PM a sort of power than the President doesn't really have: Presidential nominations to Cabinet have to be approved, and other than at the start of the administration are rare - usually when there's been a scandal, or someone has gotten bored and resigned to look for a better job. And they're often given to people who aren't directly involved in national politics - Governors, former politicians, industry specialists, career civil servants, etc. But in the UK, cabinet ministers are ultimately the most direct rivals to the PM. Remember, the Opposition can only replace the PM in an election, but Cabinet (and her party) can get rid of her whenever they want.

You might think that what a PM should do is punish her most ambitious enemies by kicking them out of cabinet. Sometimes this happens*. But what May is instead rumoured to be planning is to identify her enemies and promote them. Jacob Rees-Mogg, for instance, is apparently in line for a big promotion.

Why? Well, two reasons. The general reason is that it makes rebellion harder. An MP can't just refuse to serve in Cabinet. They'd look disloyal, and like they were putting personal interests ahead of the national interest. They could refuse to serve under the PM, but that would effectively trigger an immediate leadership contest - if you say you don't have confidence in the PM, everyone else will be asked that question, and they'll have to either back her (and hence attack you) or attack her (in which case she's gone and there's a leadership election). And nobody's quite ready for that. Besides, MPs all WANT to be in Cabinet. So they'll say yes. But if you've just agreed to work for someone, you can't immediately turn round and say they're unfit for office. Six months or a year from now you can do that, you can say that they've been impossible to work with, but if you take the job today and then call for her to be sacked tomorrow, you look like a backstabber. Plus, everyone who isn't in cabinet can say that you're not just a hypocritical lickspittle, but you're also part of the problem by serving in the failing regime. So putting someone into Cabinet is a good way to shut them up and keep them on your side, at least in the short term.
But also, more specifically, there's a steep curve of public profile in UK politics. A guy like JRM has fans, and politicos know about him, but the general public only has at best a general impression of him. The PM is counting on the fact that the more power people have, the more the public sees what an idiot they are. In recent times, it's worked with the PM herself, and also seems to be working with Boris Johnson, promoted above his ability to Foreign Secretary just in order to expose him to the harsh light of publicity. So now it may be Johnson's turn to be demoted (allegedly to Party Chairman, a good, respectable job that gives him lots of time with his fans in the grassroots of the party, but which has no power or authority and which is traditionally a poor platform to launch a leadership bid from), while guys like Rees-Mogg get shuffled into the destructive limelight.

However! Actually HAVING a reshuffle is something that may never happen. We're already being told it may be being put off from 'right after Party Conference' to maybe a little time after that. Because when you do reshuffle, you have to demote people out of Cabinet, and out of government, and that then create a new cadre of people who hate you and want you replaced by someone who might promote them again. So the ideal is to always have a reshuffle tomorrow, but never today - that way everyone in an out of cabinet has to work hard to impress the PM, and doesn't dare rock the boat too much lest they lose their job.

So the fluid UK system, compared to the much more stable US system, both gives the PM power (if Trump could just dish out cushy Cabinet posts to anyone he wanted whenever he wanted as rewards, he might have been able to get Trumpcare passed...) and also undermines her (Ryan and McConnell can't easily remove Trump, and most of congress has no personal reason to anyway, as they were never expecting to get jobs from him in the first place).





*Most famously in the Night of the Long Knives, in 1962. One evening, the PM, Macmillan, sacked his Chancellor; the next day, he sacked seven more Cabinet ministers (including the Lord Chancellor and the Secretaries of Education and Defence), before sacking nine junior ministers a few days later, and then laterally-'promoting' his Home Secretary to First Secretary of State (theoretically second in command of the government, but in practice it turned out he was instead in charge of relations with central africa...). The Night badly damaged the PM's popularity, and though it did recover it contributed to the series of disasters (see "Profumo Affair, the") that led to the Conservatives losing power two years later.
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by Salmoneus »

Leadership rumours are surfacing again.

The big beast here is Boris again, who has woken from his quiescent slumbers. The week before The Big Speech by the PM about Brexit, he gave his own "vision" of what Brexit should be - not necessarily agreeing with the PM - in a lengthy article. He allegedly then backed that up by threatening to resign if his demands weren't met. The speech is seen as, while not agreeing with him entirely, nonetheless giving way somewhat to his demands, and he's now apparently "set red lines" that the PM must adhere to over the next two years.

[some details: apparently the two-year transition period the PM is asking for was meant to be longer, and she had been going to leave open the possibility of continued payments to the EU to buy continued access to the single market, but Johnson vetoed this.]

Now, a Foreign Secretary talking about foreign policy shouldn't be a huge thing. But this is foreign policy that the PM has taken personal responsibility for. What's more, it's foreign policy that she specifically took OUT of his remit by appointing a separate Brexit minister outside of Johnson's Foreign Office.

If May sacks Johnson, she's in trouble: it looks like the government's in chaos, plus Johnson still has a huge grass-roots support, even if the shine has come off him a bit over the last year. One MP is quoted anonymously in The Sun as saying that Boris "is a martyr. He put his neck on the line to save Brexit". If he declares war against her, it'll be hard for her to survive. On the other hand, if she doesn't sack Johnson, she's in trouble, because it looks like she's under his thumb. Plus, that won't make his rivals happy.

So far it looks like she's not sacking him (one compromise would be to keep him fo now then sack him when the cameras are turned off, over some trivial issue). But his rivals are clearly angry. The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has openly attacked him for 'backseat driving'. The Brexit minister, David Davis, refused to comment on that attack, except to joke/not-joke that the Brexit car only has two seats, for him and for the PM (so Boris isn't in the car at all). Davis has also claimed that Johnson's article/threats have had no effect on the policies. Old big beasts like Ken Clarke and Lord Hague have condemned Boris in particular and factionalism in general - they're not active power players, but they're famous enough to be heard.

Also angry is the Chancellor, Philip Hammond. Johnson has claimed, it is claimed, that Hammond wanted a five-year transition, and that only Boris saved Brexit by insisting on two years. Hammond, however, is claimed to claim to have always wanted two years. Aides and allies of Hammond have been quoted saying "this is total bullshit", "I fucking hate having to deal with Boris", and "now fucking Boris is gloating."

Also wading into the fight? Sir David Norgrove, Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, who has condemned Boris for "a clear misuse of official statistics". The issue here is the infamous "£350m a week". In the referendum campaign, Leave claimed that with Brexit we would get back £350m every week, which could be spent on the NHS. Since then, people have noticed that a) there isn't £350bn (that's the gross payments to the EU, not taking into account payments back from the EU to the UK), and b) nobody has any intention of spending any of it on the NHS anyway. The number has been quietly shelved. But now Boris' "vision" repeats the claim, and he's even been claimed to have claimed to have forced May to promise that all of the £350m a week that we'll get back (which, reminder, doesn't exist), will be spent on the NHS (which it won't). Freed from the purdah of a referendum campaign, Norgrove has taken the opportunity to, almost without precedent, slap a cabinet minister around the head a bit.

Now, all of this would be pretty chaotic stuff. But for some extra fun? It's just been revealed that Johnson, Rudd, Davis and Hammond were all plotting together to sack May after the election result came in - apparently Hammond texted Boris at 4am to pledge his support if Boris wanted to execute May. Technically this doesn't really matter - it was a long time ago, in political terms, and everyone knew that some plotty stuff was going on, it was inevitable. But the revelation that all these people snarling at each other in public not long ago were plotting together in private, and that they're all on some level willing to backstab the leader they're all so publically devoted to, has come out at a really inapposite time!


--------------

Meanwhile, there have been a few mutterings over goings on in Scotland. A while back, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party (structurally autonomous, though affiliated to the national Labour Party), came out as a lesbian, and this has cause some unrest. First, because she now claims that she was outed against her will by a left-wing newspaper - she says that, yes, she has always told everyone who asked that she was a lesbian, in multiple interviews, but that it was meant to be kept secret from the public. Specifically she says she told the paper that she'd rather they not tell people about it because she didn't think it mattered. The paper has apologised. Others, however, have suggested that a) if a politician makes a statement on the record, it's legitimate to report it, and you can't take it off the record retrospectively, and if she didn't want it on the record she shouldn't have answered the question on the record, it would have been easy enough to ask for the question not to be asked (since everyone In The Know already knew the answer), and that b) if a politician really wants something taken off the record for personal reasons, maybe a general comment about "I don't think it really matters" maybe isn't the best way to communicate that, and that perhaps as a result setting a theoretically friendly activist paper up for lynching for having failed to understand that hint isn't entirely fair.
And on a sillier level, second: nobody really cares that she's dating a woman, or even that she broke up with her long-term partner just a few months after proposing to her, but apparently there's been some disquiet among Labour activists that she did this to go out with another MSP (member of the scottish parliament)... from a rival party. Labour aren't in their happy-clappy love-your-neighbour phase right now, it's fai to say.

Anyway, she didn't officially give that as a reason for resigning. She didn't really give much of a reason at all, but she's specifically denied that she resigned because she was about to be sacked by Corbyn-allied activists. She's the third leader of the Scottish Labour Party to resign in the last three years!

So now they need a successor. The frontrunner from her right-wing branch of the party is a guy who's been attacked for the fact he was until right now the co-owner of a company that refused to pay workers a living wage. And his supporters are blaming the acting leader of the party for setting him up (making a public statement about the party needing to side with the people, not with millionaires, while knowing that the frontrunner for the leadership is a multi-millionaire with a record of exploitation).

And now the acting leader has turned on the former leader, very politely, by complaining about the the fact that she resigned having given him only ten minutes notice...
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by Raphael »

Salmoneus wrote:
Now, all of this would be pretty chaotic stuff. But for some extra fun? It's just been revealed that Johnson, Rudd, Davis and Hammond were all plotting together to sack May after the election result came in - apparently Hammond texted Boris at 4am to pledge his support if Boris wanted to execute May. Technically this doesn't really matter - it was a long time ago, in political terms, and everyone knew that some plotty stuff was going on, it was inevitable. But the revelation that all these people snarling at each other in public not long ago were plotting together in private, and that they're all on some level willing to backstab the leader they're all so publically devoted to, has come out at a really inapposite time!
Did those revelations also tell the world why nothing came of those attempts?

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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

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Raphael wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:
Now, all of this would be pretty chaotic stuff. But for some extra fun? It's just been revealed that Johnson, Rudd, Davis and Hammond were all plotting together to sack May after the election result came in - apparently Hammond texted Boris at 4am to pledge his support if Boris wanted to execute May. Technically this doesn't really matter - it was a long time ago, in political terms, and everyone knew that some plotty stuff was going on, it was inevitable. But the revelation that all these people snarling at each other in public not long ago were plotting together in private, and that they're all on some level willing to backstab the leader they're all so publically devoted to, has come out at a really inapposite time!
Did those revelations also tell the world why nothing came of those attempts?
Apparently, the idea was for a Johnson-Davis-Hammond triumvirate, but Davis wouldn't co-operate if Johnson was going to be the PM. At the same time, May decided she wasn't going to resign voluntarily. So they backed off, with Johnson planning a more substantial campaign, but Rudd was then gathering support from the moderates. Apparently there was a final attempt by four junior ministers to force May to resign after Grenfell, but she called their bluff.

There's an old saying in the Tory Party that he who that wields the knife never wears the crown. If there are two contenders, nobody wants to be the one to bump off the old leader, in case sympathy goes to their rival. So unless someone's really confident, or they can agree to do it together, or they can get some unimportant third party to sacrifice themselves to do it, there's kind of stasis.
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

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Apparently, the idea was for a Johnson-Davis-Hammond triumvirate
What about a May-Hammond-Clarkson triumvirate? :P
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

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Pole, the wrote:
Apparently, the idea was for a Johnson-Davis-Hammond triumvirate
What about a May-Hammond-Clarkson triumvirate? :P
That's sort of what we have at the moment, if you'll accept Johnson in blustery-simpleton place of Clarkson...
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by linguoboy »

Sal, I wish I knew how you made these descriptions of power politics so compelling. Every time you post, I end up reading it all the way through even though this is normally the kind of news that bores me into a coma. (Keeping abreast of the German election was like a nasty homework assignment that I couldn't get myself to do for love or grades.)

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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by alynnidalar »

Same.
I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

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Same. Sal has a way with words and a knack for analysis - I don't always agree with him, but his analytical posts are always a great read.

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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

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Same
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

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Aww, thanks, people. That's really sweet. [and unexpected!]


And in British political news, we have some theoretically important developments! Though the emphasis there may be on theoretically...

So, after a long and viciously bitter campaign, UKIP have elected their new leader, and it's.... nobody anyone has heard off. [When the two highest-profile UKIP figures have to independently appear on TV to reassure people that their leader is "a man of real substance" (per Farage) or "a very substantial figure" (per Hamilton), it doesn't bode well...]

This is a surprise, because the bookies were confident it would be Anne Marie Waters, who ended up getting only around 20% of the vote (the guy who was meant to be her closest competitor came third). Then again, after Brexit and Trump, the bookies tend to assume the worst - you'd probably get surprisingly good odds on Goebbels winning the next general election right now, on a joint Nazi-ISIS ticket...

Waters - a "proudly British" lesbian, feminist Irishwoman who migrated to the UK after stints living in Germany and the Netherlands - represents the hard edge of UKIP in her denunciations of the EU, immigrants, and above all Muslims. The co-founder of Sharia Watch and of Pegida UK, she views most politics as a struggle against a Muslim/paedophile conspiracy to achieve "world domination"; she sees Islam as both a military organisation and a disease, and is a support of Le Pen and Wilders, and a writer for Breitbart, and her campaign has been openly assisted by current and former members of the BNP and EDL. Water began her career in the Labour party, but left four years ago when she accused the party of sheltering left-wing elements; she was twice deselected (prohibited from standing for election under the UKIP brand) by UKIP leaders.

She has, unsurprisingly, reacted to her defeat by branding it a victory for "Jihad" over the forces (i.e. her) of "Truth".

Instead, the new leader will be Henry Bolton, or "Henry Bolton OBE [union jack emoji]", as he calls himself on twitter. Until now, the greatest claim to fame of Bolton, whose only former political experiences have been failing to be elected as a Lib Dem MP, failing to be elected as a UKIP district councillor, and failing to be elected as a police and crime comissioner*, was that his wife (one Tatiana Smurova) once gave birth on a train. His other relevent experiences include a stint in the British army, a longer period in the TA**, and some time as a police officer, as well as a period as an EU bureaucrat - this is all quite vague because nobody has literally any idea of who the man is. However, he was personally backed by Farage, so, here he is.

[Bolton, for his part, hailed his victory as saving his party from being "the UK Nazi Party".]

For the non-Kipper observer, this is both bad and good. Good, because one of England and Wales' leading parties isn't now run by a total Nazi. Bad, because a win for Waters would probably have doomed the party. It would have ensured that one of their chief millionaire backers, Arron Banks, would not return to supporting the party. It would have, hopefully, crossed a line in the public impression of the party and tarred it with too much bigotry to shake off. In more concrete terms, it was heavily rumoured that Nigel Farage, who predicted that a win for Waters would kill the party, was personally planning to launch a new, rival party in order to destroy UKIP.
[Bolton has already expressly denied holding the leadership only temporarily until Farage chooses to return]

Nevertheless, it shouldn't be thought that this marks any reversal on the subject of Islam: several of the candidates made Islam the main topic of their campaigns, and even Bolton has made speeches warning of the existential threat posed by Islam, though he has held back from the kind of blanket condemnations of Muslims that Waters has indulged in. Since his election yesterday, he has insisted that Brexit must be the primary issue for the party; but the party chose to instead begin their party conference with a debate on the terrible threat posed to the nation by the rising tide of female genital mutilations.

It's possible, however, that none of this matters. Bolton will be their fourth leader in a year: Farage resigned, his successor resigned after 18 days protesting that she couldn't continue "banging her head against a wall" any longer, Farage returned, Farage left again, and his next successor resigned after losing all 145 council seats they held and seeing their national vote plunge from over 12% to under 2%.

Then again, the party's not dead yet. The media certainly treat it as a major force in British politics - Bolton's had more coverage in a day than Lib Dem leader Vince Cable has had in months. And this isn't entirely delusional. Although their main issue may, in theory, have been resolved, the demise of UKIP leaves a gaping void in right-wing politics, and Bolton will be hoping that UKIP can rise again to fill it. The paralysis of Theresa May, and her inability to follow through on her intimations of a more centrist, nationalist-populist ("One Nation", in old Tory parlance) Tory party, are leaving open a door that six months ago looked to be closing fast.

[in other UKIP news: their leader in Wales, disgraced corrupt former-Tory sleazebag Neil Hamilton, has himself provoked some headlines by dismissing the female leaders of other parties in the Welsh assembly as "political concubines" who had "sacrified their virtue" to the male leader of Labour in Wales. But, he suggested, fortunately for them the Labour leader was impotent. He's a charming man.]


*a pointless job recently introduced: elected by the people from a list of candidates nobody has heard of, to do a job nobody understands, with no clear responsibilities or powers.
** the Territorial Army. They were basically the Army Reserves, and thus have now been renamed "the Army Reserve".
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

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Salmoneus wrote:*a pointless job recently introduced: elected by the people from a list of candidates nobody has heard of, to do a job nobody understands, with no clear responsibilities or powers.
It's aperçus like this that keep me reading. (And that allow me to forgive you for reminding me that Neil Hamilton exists.)

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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

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I'm eagerly awaiting Sal's pithy comments about Boris's latest pitches to be leader of the Conservative Party, and Ruth's heretical views on leaving the EU...
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

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alice wrote:I'm eagerly awaiting Sal's pithy comments about Boris's latest pitches to be leader of the Conservative Party, and Ruth's heretical views on leaving the EU...
It's hard to know what to say, when everything keeps on being weird.

For those following at home, Johnson has launched yet another article about his Vision for a Glorious Brexit, still without consultation with the PM - this time, she has publically confirmed that she had no notion of what he was going to write, and reports say her department were only given a draft minutes before publication - in a modern British government, where every comma of every boring speech at a button factory that every junior minister's spokesman ever gives has to be vetted word-by-word by the PM's personal advisors, this is just astonishing. This may all not seem strange to our friends in the US, where a President and a Secretary of State can seemingly conduct entirely separate foreign policies with only occasional pauses to insult one another through the media or on Twitter, but in the UK it's a big, probably unprecedented (at least in recent decades) thing.

Normally, if a Foreign Secretary repeatedly and obviously challenged the Prime Minister's leadership in this way (albeit not in so many words - Johnson hasn't actually told the PM she's wrong in public, he's just pre-determining in public what he thinks she must do), and in an area he doesn't even have responsibility for at that, she would sack him on the spot.

So, Lord Hesseltine (a big beast, former deputy leader, the prime minister they never had, Thatcher's nemesis, pro-Europe) has helpfully waded in and attacked both of them, saying that Johnson ought to be sacked, and that May is too weak to be able to do so. Both claims are probably true, but one isn't meant to say them out loud when one is a respected old party grandee. Nor should Grant Schapps, former party chairman, be echoing Hesseltine's comments; every time May is called 'weak' without her being able to respond just weakens her farther.

Nobody knows what Johnson is playing at. One theory is that he's got no idea what he's doing or what the trouble is. Another is that this is just a temper tantrum of sorts - he was excluded from the talks about the PM's "Florence Speech"*, and maybe he's just venting his views in public because he wasn't asked them in private. Alternatively, he may be trying to gradually weaken the PM, or he may be about to launch a coup. A particularly interesting theory is that he's actually trying to force the PM to fire him - a difficult play, but one that makes sense on paper. If he gets May to fire him, particularly on an issue where he has grassroots support, it gives him free licence either to launch an immediate attack, or to gradually organise a backbench rebellion, without him look like he's stabbing her in the back. However, the line between provocative enough to get him sacked, and so provocative that even his supporters recognise that he was disloyal, is a precariously fine one.

May, asked explicitly, refused to answer the question of whether Johnson was "unsackable" (if she says he's unsackable, she admits she's not in charge; if she says he's sackable, people expect her to sack him, and it makes her look even weaker when she doesn't). Hammond, however, the Chancellor, has stepped in to say "nobody is unsackable". While this technically isn't an attack on Johnson, everyone knows who he was talking about. But does needing her Chancellor to step in to defend her really make her look stronger? Hammond and Johnson, incidentally, have both publically denied the earlier story about Hammond previously offering to support Johnson, which again makes May look weaker - they wouldn't need to set the record straight in public if they didn't think a leadership election were around the corner.

In other 'tell-all book about the election' news: turns out, the PM did actively lie to the Queen (claiming to have the DUP's support when she didn't), and the Queen is not happy about it - not just because it's a gross constitutional violation and an attempt to manipulate her, but also because it meant that the Queen's Speech was delayed and the Queen had to miss some of the racing at Ascot, which is the poor woman's only real hobby. The Prime Minister herself, however, was apparently in a worse state, breaking down crying repeatedly; her aides even worked on a plan to bring in someone from the SAS to give her special pep talks so she could get through the day. In one way, this is all old news - a summer is a long time in politics - but both the contents of these revelations and their timing seem to further undermine May.

May herself has responded to accusations that Boris is back-seat driving by announcing that the government is driven from the front. Because having to declare on TV that no, honestly, I am in charge, belief me, really strengthens your aura of command. One minister has, allegedly, anonymously told the sun: "either she sacks Boris or she goes. It's that simple." After all, she continues to exist only to prevent an open war in her cabinet to replace her; if there's going to be a war anyway, and she can't shut it down, she no longer has any purpose.

Boris, meanwhile, has just been the subject of a documentary, following him around for the last year. I haven't seen it. In it, or at least in the media spin for it, it was revealed that he's told friends that May will be gone within the year, and that rich Tory backers will leave the country unless she's removed; he's also joked, before the election, about her subservient relationship to her (now former) advisors, sadly saying "that's 'modern slavery' right there...". This, however, has been rather drowned out in the public coverage by reports of an incident in Burma, in which Boris, having been invited to a temple to pour water over a statue of what he calld "a very big guinea pig" and ring a bell - at which point he started spontaneously reciting a Kipling poem about the Burmese roads "calling back the British soldier". The ambassador had to step in to stop him:

"You’re on mic,” said the ambassador. “Probably not a good idea...”
"What? The Road to Mandalay!??"
"No," confirmed the ambassador. "Not appropriate."
At which point the crestfallen Boris went back to playing with his mobile phone, muttering "Good stuff." **

[Still, it's better than other efforts of his in the realm of poetry, like when he composed a limmerick abotu President Erdogan having sex with a goat. When asked whether he had apologised, he explained that nobody in the Turkish government had "seen fit to raise [the subject]" to his face, so there would be no need to apologise. The man may be a buffoon, but he does at least have panache...]

Lib Dem leader Vince Cable has helpfully joined calls for Boris to be sacked, claiming the man has "Trump-like characteristics." Johnson himself has lamented that he's not able to tweet the way Trump does.



So, with one thing and another this is a great time to hear from Ruth Davidson, leader of the Conservative Party in Scotland, and rumoured to be a future PM herself (if she wants the job). She's lambasted Boris' used of the £350m figure, and called for Brexit to be handled by "sensible people" in future. 20 minutes ago, she said that any of her MSPs even 'thought' about writing something without telling her first, they'd be 'out on their ear', because 'nobody is unsackable'. Harmony reigns at the Tory party conference!

In response to all this, May has launched a desperate effort to shore up her position by appealing directly to Da Yoof: freeze tuition fees, increase the repayment threshold (that is, increase the allowance before you start having to pay back the loans), and put more money into 'Help to Buy' (where the government combats rising house prices by subsidising house buying, raising demand while keeping supply low and directly giving developers more money for increasing house prices further). These policies have however been attacked as insanity that would create a 'black hole' in the national finances that could only be filled by a 'magic money tree' - at least, that's what the Prime Minister said about the policies a few months ago when it was Labour proposing them. Now, because there are no detailed costings or money-raising proposals attached, they're perfectly sensible ideas.



Honestly, it's kind of like watching someone lowered slowly into a lion enclosure covered in raw meat. So far, the lions haven't realised they can jump, but this will not end well..
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by alice »

Mmmmm, that was just what the doctor ordered. Another detail is that Bombardier, one of Northern Ireland's biggest employers, has just been hit with a sizeable tariff by the USA despite the PM's entreaties. This will not be welcomed by the DUP.

In fairness, if the stress gets too much for poor Theresa and she quits, I won't blame her.
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by hwhatting »

a limmerick abotu President Erdogan having sex with a goat
What, is that a meme in the UK as well? There was a big scandal about something similar in Germany last year. It wasn't a limerick and it contained a whole range of insults besides accusations of goat abuse; it wasn't composed and recited by a German ministser, but by a TV comedian, nevertheless it created a big inter-governmental scandal. I mean, what was Erdogan supposed to think - if everything shown on Turkish TV represents government positions, that surely must be true in Germany as well...

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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by Frislander »

Salmoneus wrote: =Water began her career in the Labour party, but left four years ago when she accused the party of sheltering left-wing elements
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha :mrgreen: is it me or are the people with the most abhorrent politics often the funniest, simply because their ignorance lands them in the most ridiculous situations? (see also Boris).
*a pointless job recently introduced: elected by the people from a list of candidates nobody has heard of, to do a job nobody understands, with no clear responsibilities or powers.
Bloody hell, how long ago ws that? I like forgot they even existed in like a month!
This may all not seem strange to our friends in the US, where a President and a Secretary of State can seemingly conduct entirely separate foreign policies with only occasional pauses to insult one another through the media or on Twitter, but in the UK it's a big, probably unprecedented (at least in recent decades) thing.
Bloody hell this is actually how things work? I'm like what kind of country has a system of government that allows two of the most important people in the government to disagree on things like this while at the same time allow highly mathematical politicking with legislation and the most egregious gerrymandering anywhere in the world.
Normally, if a Foreign Secretary repeatedly and obviously challenged the Prime Minister's leadership in this way (albeit not in so many words - Johnson hasn't actually told the PM she's wrong in public, he's just pre-determining in public what he thinks she must do), and in an area he doesn't even have responsibility for at that, she would sack him on the spot.
I'm sometimes tempted to think like as if everything's running normally (which is admittedly what they'd like you to think), so thanks once again Sal for reminding me that it's not.
So, Lord Hesseltine (a big beast, former deputy leader, the prime minister they never had, Thatcher's nemesis, pro-Europe) has helpfully waded in and attacked both of them, saying that Johnson ought to be sacked, and that May is too weak to be able to do so. Both claims are probably true, but one isn't meant to say them out loud when one is a respected old party grandee. Nor should Grant Schapps, former party chairman, be echoing Hesseltine's comments; every time May is called 'weak' without her being able to respond just weakens her farther.
Honestly at this point Hesseltine's opposition to anything the government says regarding brexit is pretty much a given isn't it?
[Still, it's better than other efforts of his in the realm of poetry, like when he composed a limmerick abotu President Erdogan having sex with a goat. When asked whether he had apologised, he explained that nobody in the Turkish government had "seen fit to raise [the subject]" to his face, so there would be no need to apologise. The man may be a buffoon, but he does at least have panache...]
[/quote][/quote]

I actually really liked that one and I still remember this by heart. Its goes like this.

There was a young man from Ankara
Who was a terrific wankerer
Till he sowed his wild oats
With the help of a goat
And didn't even stop to thankera
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by Salmoneus »

I forgot to say: more news today! Well, I meant to say 'tomorrow', but now it's 'today'. Today, Boris will be delivering a speech entitled "Let the Lion Roar!".

I can't see that anything could go wrong...
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by hwhatting »

There was a young man from Ankara
Heh, that one has at least deniability, if a certain not-so-young man from Ankara feels that it's about him...

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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by mèþru »

He's actually from İstanbul, but never mind.

Also, this just happened.

This thread should probably be renamed, by the way.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by mèþru »

Salmoneus wrote:"Let the Lion Roar!"
What, is this A Song Of Ice and Fire? Is Corbyn Stannis?
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by Salmoneus »

mèþru wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:"Let the Lion Roar!"
What, is this A Song Of Ice and Fire? Is Corbyn Stannis?
The lion is the symbol of Britain (and of England specifically). The English football team, for instance, has a crest of three lions. Our Olympic and Paralympic teams ("Team GB") have as logos lions in the colours of the union jack. The Premier League has a symbol of a lion with a crown on. Many monuments, and even just notable buildings (like corporate HQs and the like) have lion statues outside - most famously the lions of Trafalgar Square. Eggs produced and sold in the UK have lions painted on the side to show that they conform to food standards and probably don't contain salmonella. And so forth. The lion has represented both England and Scotland since the 12th century - in England, it was particularly popularised by Richard the Lionheart (king of England), while the Scottish version was associated with William the Lion (king of Scotland). The lion has been understood as representing Britain in the popular imagination in the form of political cartoons since at least the 18th century (along with the Russian Bear, the French Cock, the Persian Cat, the duplicitous American Serpent, and so forth).

I'd say it's more widespread than the idea of the American Eagle - because the Lion is often used even where America is shown as Uncle Sam (although John Bull is a more direct analogue to the latter).


Oh, and UKIP have just changed their logo to be more or less the Premier League's lion, but with shading suggesting the colouring of Team GB's lion.
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by Salmoneus »

So anyway, the PM has given a Strong and Stable Speech that has quashed and quelled all queries about her leadership, her strength, and her unparalleled powers of organisation and competence.

Only joking.

Actually, nobody really knows what her speech to Conference said, because everyone was too busy laughing at her.

The two main themes of the commentary? First, the fact that a TV celebrity "commedian" and serial attention-seeker was able to wander up to the Prime Minister while she was delivering her televised speech, hand her a P45*, and tell her that Boris sent him, all without anybody thinking to stop him. [he then was allowed to wander off into the crowd until he found and spoke to the Foreign Secretary himself.]

And second, the fact that she is now literally as well as metaphorically weak: she was barely able to get through the speech due to constant coughing and loss of voice. This is presumably just a cold she's picked up, but it doesn't look good at a time when she needs to be giving the impression of strength and power. But what looks worse? The fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to get up partway through her speech to pesonally give her a cough sweet. Yeah. THAT makes you look organised.

Of course, if that hadn't happened, perhaps more attention would have been paid to the fact that she was speaking in front of a sign saying "Building a country that works for everyone". Or that DID say that at the beginning of the speech, but that by the end of the speech said "Building a country that works or everyon" [sic], because the 'f' and the 'e' fell off behind her as she was speaking. A strong and stable government, this, just not one that's able to competently glue two pieces of plastic together even for their biggest publicity opportunity of the year...

[oh, and Boris apparently had to be told to stand up and applaud the PM by Amber Rudd. Who, in other news, has totally not comissioned private opinion polls in her constituency in preparation for a leadership bid. I mean, she totally HAS comissioned private opinion polls, but that's just a coincidence, she's totally not planning to run for the leadership, no. (Rudd is generally considered a future prospect, but her own majority** is pathetically tiny, and the party won't pick her as leader if they think she might lose her seat at the next election, since that would be a nightmare news story)].


*a 'P45' is the standard government form provided to employees when they leave their employer, and which they in turn provide to their next employer. It enables companies and the government to streamline the payment of taxes (certain taxes are paid directly out of wages by the employer before they reach the employee/taxpayer).


**do Americans and others use this term commonly? A politician's majority is their margin of victory (usually expressed in total votes, not percentages) over their nearest rival in their own consituency at the most recent election. So they might 'increase their majority', for instance, or have their majority 'slashed'. A seat that regularly sees small majorities is a 'marginal' constituency. I'm sure Americans (and others) must refer to these concepts, but I don't know if they use these terms exactly. Obviously, since all our politicians are locally elected, including our PM, and from (by American standards) very small and often volatile constituencies, we probably worry about a politician's majority more often than in the US...
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by Pole, the »

mèþru wrote:This thread should probably be renamed, by the way.
I don't know about this one, but the other one (“upcoming” German election…) definitely should.
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Re: A Very Brief Explanation of the British Election

Post by Frislander »

Salmoneus wrote:
mèþru wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:"Let the Lion Roar!"
What, is this A Song Of Ice and Fire? Is Corbyn Stannis?
The lion is the symbol of Britain (and of England specifically). The English football team, for instance, has a crest of three lions. Our Olympic and Paralympic teams ("Team GB") have as logos lions in the colours of the union jack. The Premier League has a symbol of a lion with a crown on. Many monuments, and even just notable buildings (like corporate HQs and the like) have lion statues outside - most famously the lions of Trafalgar Square. Eggs produced and sold in the UK have lions painted on the side to show that they conform to food standards and probably don't contain salmonella. And so forth. The lion has represented both England and Scotland since the 12th century - in England, it was particularly popularised by Richard the Lionheart (king of England), while the Scottish version was associated with William the Lion (king of Scotland). The lion has been understood as representing Britain in the popular imagination in the form of political cartoons since at least the 18th century (along with the Russian Bear, the French Cock, the Persian Cat, the duplicitous American Serpent, and so forth).
Less relevant because they're not a symbols for the country in the same way but they're also on the arms of the universities of Cambridge & St Andrews (the latter of which is also an ancient university, even if Americans haven't heard of it; it was founded in 1413 in Fife in Scotland, and it's where William & Kate Duke and Duchess of Cambridge went).
Salmoneus wrote:Actually, nobody really knows what her speech to Conference said, because everyone was too busy laughing at her.
Oh my, I've been missing the news recently (because Cambridge and also tv license, and the fact that despite having the BBC News app on my phone) but yeah.
hand her a P45*
I actually have no idea what this is even as a British person could you explain what this is this Sal?

Also bloody hell that's who Lee Nelson is in real life? I knew Keith Lemon was a persona but that came as a surprise to me.
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