British Politics Thread

Don’t they usually leave a note explaining if they had to change an online article’s headline because of information they received that caused the change?

Did the first paragraph also not mention “sexual offenses” when it was linked?

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 30th 2024 at 2:17:02 AM

No, it didn't. The original article made no mention of that, which I'm pretty sure the person linking the article explicitly mentioned.

Again, the whole post-fact editing of articles like that really grinds me gears because at times it low-key feels like gaslighting, especially if the outlet outright refuses to mention they changed stuff.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 30th 2024 at 10:19:34 AM

I’ve seen a fair number of people misread, mistake, or overlook something very important in an article enough times that I usually try to read the article myself before I join in about what it says.

My mistake, Mrrph.

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 30th 2024 at 2:24:59 AM

Americans papers might, but the British press don’t believe in admitting to ever having been wrong about anything.

The Guardian used to put "This article was edited [timestamp] to [amendment]" in small print when that happened. Apparently they've stopped.

they made the small print microscopic instead!

I don't see why they would stop? Saying when you edited the article seems like good form for newspapers, helps a reader understand something has changed (and when it changed) and, for the benefit of the newspapers, means they can subtly address a change (and can therefore point at the time it was edited if people question them) without having to directly address whether they made a mistake or not.

But the thing is they wouldn't have to admit the original article is wrong if they said when they edited it. If you look at an article and just see that it's recently been edited, you don't know what's changed. It could be anything from a huge factual mistake to a change in formatting. I'm not disagreeing with you because that's probably the logic the newspapers use, I just don't think that logic makes sense.

Edited by king15 on Mar 31st 2024 at 12:33:31 PM

Because they'd have to admit that the original article was wrong, and the press barons can't have that.

The ‘logic’ is that any note about them editing admits that they might have had all the facts at the time of publication, that’s taken as a sign of weakness and they don’t want to show any weakness.

Question for all the British Tropers:

As some who knows next to nothing about british political parties that are not Tory or Labour, how "electable" are the Lib Dems? Do they offer anything good or substantial? Or are they the typical fence sitters?

Once upon a time, they were seen a a centre-left(ish) third option that didn't have any of Labour's downsides. Extremely electable at a local level, progressively getting better and stronger at national levels.

Then they ended up in coalition with a weakened Conservative party and got blamed - rightly or wrongly- for everything the Conservatives did.

They've never quite recovered. Partly because the subsequent wipeout hit a lot of their newer MPs and their recent leaders have been older politicians tainted by their time in coalition.

Farron's spell as leader didn't help either - the Lib Dems were traditionally less religious and more progressive than the major parties. Then Farron got tied in knots in an interview and started talking about his faith, sexuality and sin.

(I've heard many people say he's not homophobic - including LGBTQ+ folk who actually knew him - but it didn't sound that way at the time)

Edited by Mrph1 on Apr 10th 2024 at 7:25:05 PM

They do have some supporters, but it's still a small minority; they currently have 15 MPs (out of 650 total, beaten not just by the main two but by the SNP and independents, although of course those are a whole other story). They've never been anywhere close to a majority on their own.

Going by my own social circles, a lot of youngish people still haven't forgotten the major increase in university tuition fees passed by the coalition government. There was a thing for a bit about them being an actually anti-Brexit, pro-EU party but that didn't really seem to achieve much.

The Lib Dems are a traditionally Liberal party, the best German comparison would be FDP.

They’re not seen as a natural governing party nationally and have a very geographically dispersed voter base. Electability varies a lot depending on where they are. As for what they offer.

• They’re traditionally socially liberal.
• They’re pro-EU.
• They have a ton of baggage from the coalition, where they were seen to have failed at their major goal (getting PR) while surrendering on things like austerity and tuition fees. Young voters hold a lot of bitterness from having been told the Lib Dems wern’t like other parties and then having Nick Clegg having the party do exactly what a traditional party would do.
• Their rural West-Country base segment have moved away from them over Brexit.
• Currently the party is pushing hard on NIMB Yism. With the party leadership trying to change the party platform to scrap national house building targets (the party’s youth win won the fight this time).

A string of poor leaders haven’t helped. Clegg had massive popularity going into 2010 and destroyed it with the collation and his move to work for Facebook, Farron was just weird and Swinson seemed to be on an ego trip to become PM (I remember during the chaos before the 2019 election there was talk of a potential anti-Brexit coalition of Labour-Lib Dems-Tory Rebels and rumours emerged that she was trying to pressure Labour to make her acting PM under any such arrangement).

Davey is doing fine, but contempt for the Tories is so strong right now that people are looking to vote tactically, which often means Labour. Plus with the failures of austerity is clear there’s some baggage from the coalition still around.

Basically, the Lib Dems suffer from a lack of leadership talent because they're consistently outsiders. So when Clegg got a chance to play, he completely fumbled it. (Though to be fair, Labour and Conservatives would form a coalition before actually allowing proportional representation, because that would put the Lib Dems permanently into government if not permanently into the PMship. But Clegg's unconditional support for the Cameron government was party suicide.)

Labour officially supports moving away from FPTP. Over their first term they should be leading a national debate on what the country's electoral system should be (to be part of the manifesto for the following general election).

It would at least be a cold day in Hell before Labour and the Tories formed a coalition. Even New Labour didn't go quite that far towards the right.

Really, to summarise the Lib Dems' woes over a historical period: the Liberals fell out of favour for Labour back in the 30's, and continued being also-rans until the whole SDP/Labour split, then combined with the SDP when they collapsed, and as soon as they got anywhere near power managed to entrench themselves as whipping boys for the Conservatives who betrayed every single promise they made for a referendum on a voting system nobody wanted.

When your last electoral success was in WWI and all you've really done since then is a series of cockups, no wonder people won't vote for you.

At this point I'm honestly surprised the Lib Dems are still a thing.

I mean, they get enough votes, it just never converts into seats. It's basically their thing—I think the peak was when they first aligned with the SDP?

Getting enough votes to make you think you still have a future, but not enough votes to gain much actual power.

That's a horrible political limbo right there.

Congrats to them for sticking it out for being nonentities for a century, though.

Thanks for all the answers.

Is this the thread to talk about the Cass Review? Because suddenly all the headline I'm seeing are talking about JK being vindicated of all things.

And also that Labour are pledging to implement it's recommendations

"The recommendations include barring under-25s from using gender clinics." <- Which is just inhuman.

Edited by dcutter2 on Apr 11th 2024 at 4:41:28 PM

Probably LGBTQ+ rights in the United Kingdom is more appropriate.

Yes, it's been brought up in that thread ... and since it seems to say that hormone blockers have no demonstrated negative impacts, I am wondering if it's being spun a little.