British Politics Thread

Yeah...but then, you KNOW it is bad when even the Daily Mail sides against the government in this.

Not really hypocritical. The Mail doesn't have a problem with people coming in from countries that aren't on their "undesirables" list (which in practice is just certain parts of the Commonwealth).

Today, Theresa May's premiership exceeds the length of Sir Antony Eden's.

Is that significant?

I guess only in that she managed to be longer in power than what is considered the most incompetent of all prime ministers.....

Anyway, anyone listening to James O'Brien today? I got a good laugh out of the fellow whose solution for the Irish border was to tag all the people who have to cross it daily.

I've been steering clear of listening to any of it. Reading it is bad enough. xP

The border question isn't a skip fire — it's a fire in a hazardous waste processing plant. <_<

Now I'm left morbidly curious about just how bad Sir Anthony was.

I think anyone who came after Churchill is viewed as being a lesser since he was leading a country after a war and people were still looking to Churchill

edited 20th Apr '18 4:00:09 PM by Ultimatum

Basically the only thing he is famous for in the short time he was in office is the planning of and utter failure that was the Suez Crisis, showcasing to the whole world the diminished power of post-war Britain.

P.S: Watch The Crown if you're interested in this stuff.

edited 20th Apr '18 4:36:30 PM by Grafite

Churchill's reputation comes mostly from the war years. He's had his own share of controversies: for example, during the 1945 election (which he lost to Attlee), he called the Labour Party the 'Gestapo' (alienating him from his own supporters as well as the opposition) and he had a habit of answering foreign policy issues with military responses, which led to accusations that he was unable to cope with Britain's decline as a world power. As an opposition leader, he supported closer integration with Europe (he wanted a United States of Europe) and he also wanted the US to launch a nuclear strike on Russia.

On the other hand, Clement Attlee's reputation comes mostly from the post-war years (after Churchill's war years, but before Churchill's second term): for example, social reforms his government enacted, in particular, the creation of the NHS and the welfare state, and reform of how political parties govern Britain.

In 2004, a survey of political scientists and historians declared Attlee the most successful C20th prime minister (with Churchill and Lloyd George taking second and third place respectively — no prizes for guessing who comes last out of twenty).

edited 22nd Apr '18 1:55:16 PM by Wyldchyld

To be fair, he apparently was a pretty good foreign minister...but as Premier, her really failed. He thoroughly botched up the Suez Crises, which was the biggest embarrassment in British History until Brexit) and then decided to take a vacation in the middle of it for health reasons (to be fair, he really was ill, but then he shouldn't have run for job). The problem with both him and Churchill post war was that they were fairly old men and unable to really tackle the problems of a country in decline, at least regarding its colonial power. They still saw GB as this all powerful country. If this hadn't been the case, Churchill had made sure to be involved in what were the early beginning of the EU, looking for close connections with the direct neighbours instead of worrying about the US above everything else, and Eden had been more diplomatic during the Suez crisis instead of trying to start a war through dirty tricks.

I guess Thatcher comes fourth, despite her actions being seen more critical nowadays?

edited 20th Apr '18 10:50:24 PM by Swanpride

Thatcher comes fourth, yes. The question was about how successful these prime ministers were not whether the respondents supported or criticised each prime minister's policies or political ideologies.

edited 22nd Apr '18 1:52:29 PM by Wyldchyld

Rt Hon Carwyn Jones AM announces he will step down as First Minister for Wales. [1]
HM The Queen celebrates her 92nd birthday. [2]

edited 21st Apr '18 5:18:42 PM by TommyR01D

I think you mean AM.

Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer made an interesting point today. What will it take for a Minister to resign in this day and age?

Obviously we have had several resignations recently but they were all due to a scandal of a personal nature. I don't remember the last time a Minister resigned due to a failure of government policy.

So why this shift? What has changed to allow gross incompetence to be something that is allowed in our political masters? Is it because our standards have been lowered too far? Is it because politics has become too personal and theatrical, so it is all about personalities and their intentions - never their actions? I'm genuinely curious as to what people might think on this one.

I think that collective responsability has expanded, alongside the role of the PM.

A failure of government policy to do good isn’t seen so much as a reflection of the individual minister as a reflection of the government as a whole and the PM in particular.

The ministers are by and large implementing policy as instructed by the PM, the policy is a failure, the minister’s implementation of the policy is spot on.

I suspect that it's just to difficult to correctly attribute blame for a screw-up nowadays.

More to the point, there’s been a collective discovery over the past few years that a number of democratic conventions are just that -conventions. There’s nothing actually compelling you to resign for malice or incompetence, and the increasing political polarisation of the country makes it particularly inadvisable if it might let Those Bastards get any sort of foothold.

All excellent points - so excuse me for a moment while I play devil's advocate.

It always seemed to me that seeking the resignation of a Minister was a means for the Prime Minister to stamp their authority on the scandal. Even if the scandal was a result of a policy decision sacking the Minister in charge would give enough political breathing room to perform that handbrake turn with at least a little dignity. Now it seems that an apology is enough to brazen it out.

I take the point on how personal politics has become. Famously some politicians are seemingly invulnerable due to the ruckus they would cause on the backbenches. But even that is usually overstated and only applies to a select few. And​ultimately sacking a Minister isn't going to reduce your majority.

Thing is we’re not getting U-turns on the major issues, the Tories are sticking to the heir policy of burning everything.

There’s no point in firing the relevant minister then keeping the same horrible policies, and the Tories aren’t going to get rid of their horrible policies.

Okay, so getting down to the nitty gritty of the Windrush scandal.

Amber Rudd should be expendable.

Her grouping in the party is Theresa May's group. It's not like sacking a prominent Brexitier like Johnson or Gove. Nor is the Home Office linked politically to Brexit - it only has to deal with the ramifications not set the agenda.

Heck, given her wafer thin majority I wouldn't be surprised if she wanted to step away from Government so as help her re-election campaign.

So why hasn't she been sacked? Is she that useful as a lieutenant for May? Have Labour successfully pushed Rudd out of the picture as suggested so that any blame falls on Rudd's predecessor, so everyone knows that Rudd would just be a scapegoat?

I'm just saying that someone should resign for this. So if not this, then what?

Honestly, the only person who should be resigning for this is the idiot that caused it.

So, May.

Rudd hasn’t been sacked because as far as the Tories are concerned nothing wrong has been done, the policy of trying to get rid of as many immigrants as possible is what they want. It might not be what the public wants but it’s what the Tories want.

The Home Secretary who oversaw the Windrush card destruction and creation of the hostile environment policy was Theresa May, not Amber Rudd.

So, it would seem that the Daily Mail have shut down at least one website that sells HRT hormones in the name of "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!" (I'm not going to link to the article and give them clicks, but you can google it if you like).

Problem is, a lot of trans people rely on them to get their hormones. Even developed countries can make it a pain to get them thanks to a shortage of specialists, and whatever you think of people who transition without medical guidance, the risks are nothing compared to the risk of suicide.

Not to mention, a lot of transgender people will be at serious risk if they lose access to their hormones. Especially if they've had surgery or undergone mandatory sterilisation which many Scandinavian and European countries require before a change of documents can be acquired — including some which have few, if any, specialists available) — if your body doesn't have one set of hormones, things break down pretty quickly (quite literally, in the case of bones).

Of course, if this were any other paper, we might be able to assume good intentions, but...

edited 22nd Apr '18 6:16:47 PM by Bisected8