British Politics Thread

I’d argue that “Leave lied during the campaign” is also a legitimate point.

Yes you’re right that arguing the point of the refurendum and the rules of it is something to be done when the refurendum bill passed, but it was argued then and we were shut down.

Also the “we all do what you decide” was put out by the Leave campaign and Cameron’s “Leave is the better option based on the lies we’ve told you but vote Remain anyway” campaign.

Edited by Silasw on Jul 16th 2018 at 8:15:03 AM

Whut? We have way more than "some Russian bots"...we have the systematic collection of user Data from Facebook which was weaponized in a organized disinformation campaign. And if you follow the money in the leave campaign, you will most likely end up in Russia too, but independent from this explosive question, if you have a vote, one side breaks the rules for the vote and then said side scores a narrow victory, and all this is revealed by an independent body which looked into the matter and deemed that the rules were broken, naturally the result of the vote is invalid. This shouldn't even be a question.

Hell, I remember that we over here once repeated the voting in a district because election campaign posters hung too close to the ballot boxes. And that might have been a honest mistake, but it might have influenced the voters. And here we are talking about an outrageous break of the spending rules. They exist for a reason, without them there is no democracy.

Right so what the fuck just happened in parliament? Because I'm hearing the ERG locked us into a no-deal exit by three votes or something.

If I understand it correctly the hardliner managed to push through an amendment to the white paper regarding the customs union due to one of them resigning (apparently the UK is now our of a defence minister) and three insisting on the amendment or something….

I don't think that it matters. May's plan was unrealistic from the get go, the EU would have never accepted this deal without free movement. In my eyes there is no compromise to be found, either Brexit is cancelled of the UK crashes out...and the latter scenario is still the most likely outcome.

Edited by Swanpride on Jul 16th 2018 at 3:09:20 AM

BBC says two ERG amendments got through by majorities of three, "no collecting EU tariffs unless they reciprocate" and "US has to have a separate VAT system after Brexit". What that means depends on what the EU says at the negotiating table, although to be honest that deal was a tremendous mess anyway so it can't really be MORE rejected. On the slight upside, the Minister for Defence Procurement quit. At this rate May's going to have to spend those five extra days of summer recess searching for the more sane backbenchers to replace half her government.

Edited by DeathorCake on Jul 16th 2018 at 10:17:19 AM

Also on the upside: May can now blame the last minute amends if the EU rejects the whole deal, so the finger is now pointing in the direction of the hard-line Brexiters.

I actually wanted to write that they now have the "Schwarze Peter" again, but then realized that there isn't a fitting translation for the phrase...basically if you imagine them playing Old Maid, the hardliners now hold the Old Maid again.

Bloody hell what a mess, three Labour M Ps voted with the government on both amendments, that’s the bill’s majority right there, also I’m seeing reports that at least Tim Farron and Vince Cable missed the vote.

Kate Hoey really annoys me over this, she represents a diverse, poor and urban area (Vauxhall) yet insists on being a hardcore Brexiter, I’d be happy to see her face deselection.

Edited by Silasw on Jul 16th 2018 at 10:53:44 AM

So yeah, we basically saw the government engage in a controlled detonation of their own white paper.

Hoey is a particularly nasty relic of Kinnock’s Labour - there’s been bad blood between her and the Corbyn faction since she got her parliamentary membership. Martha Osamor, a famous civil-rights campaigner and Corbyn’s close friend, was supposed to get the Labour candidacy for that seat, but the leadership put Hoey in instead because Osamor was too ‘radical’ (read: black). She’s also accepted a great deal of money from Arron Banks, ‘the man who bought Brexit’, who is almost certainly a Russian asset.

Trump giving the sue the EU to May is quite amusing.

On what court she would be suing the EU on?

This, given how this was Trump being serious it shows what kind of moron he is. He thinks that everywhere else works just like it does in the US where you can sue other people and companies.

He really doesn't have any idea of the world outside the US and even his idea of how things work in the US is bad.

UKIP councillor found guilty of murdering wife after she confronted him over his affair with their son's partner.

Yeesh. It's like something out of a Soap Opera.

Or a Law and Order episode.

...Does Law and Order count as a Soap Opera?

Is Law & Order: UK still a thing? They sounds like a Ripped from the Headlines just waiting to happen.

That paragraph at the end has me in stiches. Sure. He's fundamentally a decent man in a horrible situation. Decent men often screw their son's partners and then murder their wives for getting snippy about it — it's a simple mistake to make.

This is just sheer situational tragedy... of getting caught — and, then fucking up even worse.

Decent.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jul 17th 2018 at 8:34:01 PM

The news played the 999 call the guy made after he killed his wife. It is really disturbing.

To add to the disturbing... it's people who make calls like these who talked us into Brexit. And, refuse to let us reverse that "decision".

Did the Tories screw over new mother Jo Swinson on pairing? If so, things are going to get nasty

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jul 17th 2018 at 1:41:28 PM

As a translator for an NHS Health Board and (therefore) as someone who sees a lot of NHS documents every day, I have to challenge your comment here Swanpride, even if it is a fortnight old, because I've seen and translated so much text that points to the opposite of what you said. There's a huge attempt to shift the care model from simply treating the ill as they fall ill in primary care services and acute hospitals over to encouraging healthy life choices that will prevent many illnesses, more focus on care in the community rather than prolonged hospital stay, raising awareness of alternative forms of treatment and overall decentralizing care so that less of it is done by the big hospitals where all the queues are, and moving more and more of it into the community.

Well, if there is a huge attempt for a shift NOW doesn't this point to me being right about what the NHS did beforehand? But it is good to hear that there is effort made in the right direction. It is not like the NHS can't be improved into something great.

The devolved governments have worked with the NHS in those regions to engage in preventative care for years. NHS England hasn't been allowed to do that to the same degree.

Yeah, the Health Boards themselves admit what you're saying was a problem, so I'm not gonna disagree with you there! But IIRC they're taking cues and best practice from (and studying) other systems that have more decentralised and community-oriented care like the Nordic countries, so as far as I'm concerned, they're on the whole moving in the right direction.

That explains a comment made by an American friend of mine who said that most of her English friends are constantly moaning about the NHS. The devolved branches seem to be doing a lot better than NHS England in terms of performance and budget, no doubt thanks to a lack of a Conservative government calling the shots...

So Barnier has reacted to the White Paper...you know, the thing over which the British government has quarrelled for what, three weeks now?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/20/france-minister-nathalie-loiseau-brexit-concessions-theresa-may-commons

To nobodies surprise (well, nobody who isn't a British politician) he has rejected it.

You know what vexes me about the whole thing? That the hard Brexiters really want to drive the UK down a cliff is terrible, but I at least get the self-serving motivations behind it. That the soft Brexiters somehow belief in a bespoken deal, well, that was to be expected, those people never really "got" the EU. But the Remainers, they should know better, but even them don't get the fix they are in. They are convinced that there will be some last minute deal, I guess because that's what they are used to. They still haven't understood that this time around the EU has zero reason to protect their interest and every reason to protect its own interests and especially the interests of Ireland. And while they all don't get in how deep of a trouble they are, they are burning through time and the UK speeds towards a catastrophe.

For the nth time: nobody who was strongly Remain is in a position to actively do anything, since they are neither in active government, on the Tory front bench, nor are they in the cabinet.

We keep telling you how the conventions of government here work (or, in this case, are being played with), but you don't take it in.

The long and the short of it is: there are people in both Houses of Parliament who are well aware what a cliff we're facing and exactly how bad the drop will be. The problem is: they're being frozen out and ignored. Including by the press.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jul 20th 2018 at 7:28:59 PM

But they are perfectly able to give sound-bites, and so far every time I hear one of them they end their long explanation of why there is a problem with "I am sure there will be an agreement in the end, everything else is not imaginable". Maybe they are whistling in the woods, but I get the impression that it still hasn't quite sunk in how difficult the situation is. At the very least they could try to push for a vote on which ones of the options the Eu has offered so far should be the basis for negotiation instead of helping the Tories to waste time on a paper which the EU won't accept anyway (and which was close to unreadable in the German version, btw, luckily the Germans involved in the negotiation speak fluent English anyway)

And if the Press doesn't want to talk to them (which I doubt, I am sure the Guardian would run an article with a warning like this and people like James O'Brien (who also still hasn't quite gotten it) certainly invite them), they could still talk to their voters.

Edited by Swanpride on Jul 20th 2018 at 11:33:43 AM

Sure, they should just supply the right-wing press with as much ammunition against them as possible in symbolic and futile gestures of defiance.

Or how about not? It doesn't achieve anything. If you can't do anything, might as well just stay out of the way so nobody can (easily) blame you.