British Politics Thread

Uh...I'll echo Rational Insanity. What the FUCK?

This is not what I expected coming into the British Politics thread...

Edit: This pagetopper is a 3 out of ten. What am I surprised about? You'd have to see the last page to find out.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 25th 2019 at 6:13:04 AM

They're doing it for the attention it brings them,likely hoping people will focus them instead of the failure they helped support

The Letwin amendment passed by about 25ish votes. So if the bill passes, Wednesday might FINALLY have something other than a yes or no to May's desires.

What's the Letwin amendment?

Its basically taking control of Brexit from the Government

M Ps present house business on Wednesday, not the Government. Specifically focuses on Breakfast.

Why are they focusing on Breakfast?

Brits gotta have their eggs and grits.

Because the UK might be dining in hell soon.

Edited by raziel365 on Mar 25th 2019 at 3:35:34 AM

Bold of you to assume that eating isn't already hell here.

We got any idea how the business will be presented? A threshhold for number of M Ps backing an idea? Speaker’s choice? A parliamentary focus group? Party leaders from each party put ideas toward?

Also anything from Corbyn on if Labour will be using the chance to put forward a clean People’s Vote vote?

Okay, tonight's business.

1. Labour's amendment to obtain time this week in the House to debate alternatives was not moved. That means Corbyn declined to bring the motion forward to be voted on.
2. The Letwin Amendment, which is that Parliament takes control of House business from the government on Wednesday to hold a series of indicative votes to see what parliamentary majority exists for a range of options (to be decided, but see below).
   1. This passed: Ayes 329, Noes 302, majority: 27.
3. The Beckett amendment, which is that Parliament must vote on a course of action if we reach 7 days before a No Deal Brexit happens (due to no agreements) between supporting the No Deal, or seeking a second extension.
   1. This failed: Ayes 311, Noes 314, majority: 3.
4. The Liddington Amendment was then re-voted because it's the amendment that Letwin is (to be repetitive) amending.
   1. This passed: Ayes 327, Noes 300, majority 27.

So, breakdown:

Speakers select a short-list from all proposed options to be voted on. As a result, important subjects may have several different proposed amendments in the hope that one will be selected. When two highly similar amendments get selected for voting, there's usually a strategic withdrawal of one in favour of the other. The withdrawal of the Labour amendment is likely to be because of this reason: Labour had already declared support for the Letwin amendment, so it made sense to remove the Labour amendment and focus on Letwin.

Once the Liddington motion had been passed with the Letwin amendment, the Speaker opened the House for responses. He started with a point of order from the Leader of the Opposition.

Corbyn congratulated Letwin and his co-signers on the work they'd done to pass the amendment and made it absolutely clear that Wednesday has to be meaningful so that Parliament can finally decide what its way forward will be, which will require cross-party support to bring the options to the vote. He made it clear that has to include a People's Vote.

Now, exactly how Wednesday is going to work will need to be decided. Earlier today, in response to a question, Letwin suggested that they might consider everyone voting on all the options in one go. In other words, there won't be sequential individual votes, everyone will vote on everything from their first to least preference to ensure that there's an unambiguous result for each option. That's just one suggestion right now, so we'll have to see how that unfolds.

After Corbyn's response, Bercow gave permission for a Conservative back-bencher to speak. I didn't get his constituency and I only vaguely recognised his face, so I can't recall his name right now. The backbencher's response, however, was to very bitterly asked what consequences the house will now bring against Letwin for what he's just done. Bercow, obviously, indicated that wasn't for him to decide. However, while Bercow was responding to this, he got heckled by another Tory backbencher. I didn't catch what the heckler said, but it resulted in Bercow retorting that the man was never a very good Whip when he held that job.

The House was reduced to uproar for a while, in response, so Bercow had to apologise for his comment, but the Tories are clearly quite angry that the Letwin amendment has succeeded. They tried to take it out on Bercow, and they clearly are going to take it out on Letwin, too.

We should bear in mind at this point that May has already indicated early today that she has every intention of ignoring whatever Parliament decides on Wednesday.

Some of the suggested options for voting that have been floated by MPs over the past few days include:

• Some other soft deal option that isn't May's deal and which doesn't include her red lines (which means Single Market access or Customs Union will be involved).
• No Deal Brexit.
• People's Vote (the most floated question being: May's Deal versus Remain).
• Revoke Article 50.

These are the main four things that have been floated. Given that Corbyn has now stated that a People's Vote has to be one of the options on Wednesday, that's almost certainly going to get voted on. My guess is that all four will go through the vote on Wednesday, since they're the four Parliament keeps wrangling over. There may be a further breakdown of 'soft Brexit' into a range of options, such as Norway, the Labour option, Canada++, Customs Union, etc. We'll have to see.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Mar 25th 2019 at 11:36:34 AM

Oops...

Man we need a better system of parliamentary vote counting...

We need a better system, full stop. Parliamentary procedure has needed updating in most areas for decades.

Just remember, anything that weakens the government is an assault upon tradition.

> Man we need a better system of parliamentary vote counting...

lets get rid of parliament altogether,who needs em to run he country anyway it working just fine before they came along and we would''nt be in this mess in the first play if weren't for them /sarcasm

Three ministers resigned from government so that they could vote for Letwin (Richard Harrington (Business), Steven Brine (Health), Alistair Burt (Foreign Office)).

Three out of those four options are all going to absolutely enrage the ERG.

I'm liking those three options already. As long as I get to see the ERG lose their shit in impotent rage.

I'm particularly interested to see if Letwin goes for simultaneous votes or STV or what.

Since Bercow basically said "up to you" on how the procedure for these indicative votes should go.

Something that's making me feel a little queasy: now and again, I get these little stories crossing my feed or dripping into my ears about Gove's odds of ousting/ replacing May.

The guy's definitely making a bid, isn't he? xP

As a candidate, he's down there with Grayling in my estimation.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Mar 26th 2019 at 1:06:27 PM

So how full of shit is Gove compared to Grayling? I mean, I only remember Gove because of his "Enough of Experts" yap, but I'm drawing a blank on Grayling.

This clusterfuck is actually making me feel grateful for the efforts of Oliver Letwin. Christ. Sure, someone else almost certainly would have brought basically the same amendment absent Letwin, but it's odd seeing my old MP being actually useful.

This should have happened shortly after the referendum, though.

Grayling's incompetence is legendary but I've never known anyone work in one of Gove's posts and not hate his work either, especially in education. Students, teachers, admin staff and grounds team all loathed him to a man. Honestly I'd take Grayling, if only because he might accidentally bring about True Communism while attempting to cut red tape post-Brexit.

Edited by DeathorCake on Mar 26th 2019 at 1:26:18 PM

Yeah, Grayling is just incompetent, while the impression I get from Gove is that he's actively destructive.

I get the impression that Grayling is more incompetent out of laziness while Gove is incompetent out of arrogance. He is also a nasty little backstabber while Grayling is more a useful follower. Which makes Gove more dangerous.