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Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
Wow, when you’re 1-2 seats short of a majority and can’t cooperate with any of 4 other parties or 1 other person, that’s an impressive level of screwing up.
This smacks to me of SNP factionalism - Yousaf is caving to the more reactionary wings of his own party, undoing all the unification efforts of Salmond and Sturgeon.
25 years or so ago, before Devolution, the SNP were known as the Tartan Tories, not a viable centre left option for Scots. Could be they're headed back that way.
I support and vote SNP but I'm actually a Green Party member so I'm gutted by this, it's awful.
Figure of Hourai
I mean, that point is why I've always distrusted the SNP (and consequently everything they've ever proposed as part of independence). I just didn't expect it to actually show up because presenting itself as one homogenous party has always been so important.
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That's FPTP (or even regional AMP) for you - you can't always vote for who you want.
Ideally, the Tartan Tories and the Scots Free Labour would be two separate parties in a big messy Holyrood. But instead the SNP are a broad coalition who've been steered by the center-left.
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
Figure of Hourai
Oh, yeah, but a lot of the "and then we'll do this, this, and this" type planning assumed continuity with this homogenous party.
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A procrastination in of itself
With the Scottish Greens now being a pro-independence left-wing party it’s not absurd for the SNP to shift to the right.
The problem then is how you form a Scottish government, along independence-unionist lines (so Green-SNP) or along left-right lines (so SNP-Tories)?
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
Figure of Hourai
Well, given that they just torpedoed the "let's split along independence" combo, I guess it would mean fracturing and doing it on a left-right axis. That way you get to run the government normally except every time an election comes around.
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Stupid question time: is a SNP-LD agreement possible right now?
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
Figure of Hourai
The Lib Dems were saying they're going to support the vote of no confidence, so not much chance of turning around to support the SNP.
Basically, they kicked out literally the only party they've been friendly with.
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For all the awful shit Alex Salmond did, the one good thing was unifying the SNP and allowing someone to pick up the pieces after the Labour shit show at the start of Devolution. The problem is, he only had one successor (Sturgeon) and she had none, so there was no continuity plan whatsoever.
That was always going to lead to this.
he/him
Conservative ex-health minister Dan Poulter defects to Labour.
Given that he's standing down at the election, it's probably not just a bid to keep his seat.
Figure of Hourai
Ah, so he's a doctor and is outraged about the Tory attitude to the NHS. That explains it.
Edit: Actually, all this reminds me that Sunak is being really dumb dragging out the election. He's basically caught in a negative spiral, where the prospects are making support waver, which makes the prospects worse, and I don't know if the normal media has started wavering yet...
"Avoid election hoping that Labour will have some disaster before January that can stop this" doesn't seem helpful.
Edited by RainehDaze on Apr 27th 2024 at 10:49:44 AM
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meow
Wow. This seems so unnecessarily self-inflicted but then maybe it's been jump before pushed from the start.
Figure of Hourai
The only way he was staying in power was if he persuaded the person who opposed him as a leadership candidate and then left the party upon losing to offer support. So, this really just seems like a matter of pride—same with the whole Greens thing. "You didn't make me/leave me, I chose to do it."
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The best hope the SNP have now is getting John Swinney to stand as leader. He very sensibly stayed out of the farce last time around, recognising that leadership was a poisoned chalice, but he might actually be able to steady the ship this time. It's also possible the Greens might back him, if their issue was more personal against Yousaf than against the party/government as a whole.
Swinney, as Sturgeon's deputy and probably the Only Sane Man of the SNP leadership, might be who they need. Kate Forbes is a raging homophobe and Salmond way off the deep-end, so appealing to either of them for support is futile at best.
Tief girl with eartude
Meanwhile, in the South...Starmer's gone openly transphobic, and supports banning trans women from hospital wards.
Jeez. The SNP was the main proponent of Scottish independence right? Leaders like these make me start to doubt the original cause
A procrastination in of itself
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Random Twitter posts aren’t a source, can you provide a source for what he’s said so we can discuss?
Edited by Silasw on Apr 30th 2024 at 7:38:46 PM
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
Figure of Hourai
Less the proponent and more a party that exists for that single purpose and came to be broadly centre-left despite being a very broad coalition. The way the additional member system works meant that the Scottish Greens picking up a lot of support in the regional lists didn't take the entire left wing of the party with it, though it does show the issues the system has with being proportional.
But that means its actual policy positions and political inclinations are only as stable as the leadership. Thus, the current mess.
Edited by RainehDaze on Apr 30th 2024 at 7:58:07 PM
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This one has the video of him actually talking.
Keir Starmer continues to U-turn on trans rights – he’s now backing Rosie Duffield
In an interview with Good Morning Britain on Tuesday (30 April) the Labour leader threw his support behind the gender critical views of Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield – beliefs he has previously criticised.
When asked if it was “right or wrong for Rosie Duffield to say women have a cervix” Starmer replied: “Biologically, she of course is right about that.” This is a shift from comments he made in 2021 where he said such statements were “not right”.
Edited by Deadbeatloser22 on May 1st 2024 at 8:05:12 PM
"Yup. That tasted purple."
Foreign Troper
First Asylum Seeker has been (voluntarily) flown to Rwanda
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian
Not actually an asylum seeker. A student who was already looking to move out there to work with an NGO who has now received three grand and lodgings for five years to make it look like the plan is working.
"Yup. That tasted purple."
Yeah they were desperate for something to happen before the local election votes tomorrow, even though it really stands up to no scrutiny whatsoever.
The Scottish Government has won the vote of no confidence, though that was pretty much inevitable since the Greens were no longer interested in having it since Humza resigned (their grudge was against him for ending the Bute House agreement more than the SNP itself).
As noted above, the SNP are a party bound by an issue, but comprised of multiple factions. The recently dominant one has been centre-left (essentially filling the gap that the weak and insipid Scottish Labour were supposed to be in), but they're by no means the only ones. Some in the party are full on nationalist "Scotland can stand alone against the world" (or they think it should), others are basically Tory but don't like Westminster for whatever reason, some are pretty far left...
Such a party is probably not really sustainable long term because no individual, or small group of individuals, can remain at the top past a certain point, and as soon as there's any change to an established status quo it's like trying to remove part of a house of cards, and it inevitably collapses. Salmond could be replaced with Sturgeon but Sturgeon only remained in power by not having a clear successor, so there was no one to replace her with. The very obvious flaw in that strategy has now come to pass.
@Raineh Daze: Referring to the SNP's little own goal there.
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.