British Politics Thread

I am bothered by the implication that a Johnson government is actually going to be run by these "other people". Based on the Trump experience (who had Bannon and Allison Mitchell "Mitch" McConnell AKA Evil Turtle as his whisperers) any such power behind the throne isn't going to be benign in the slightest.

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Jul 20th 2019 at 11:58:28 AM

It'll be the ERG. Remember a year or so ago when Anna Soubry (still a Tory MP at that point) gave a speech in the Commons about how there'd been an unofficial coup in the Tory Party, and that the party was now run by Jacob Rees-Mogg? Well, JRM has been strongly supporting Boris for PM ever since Boris threw his hat in the ring.

Sir Alan Duncan (A Minister of State in the Foreign Office) resigned today. Not unexpected, given his stance on Brexit.

What was interesting is that he then submitted an emergency debate on whether or not the Commons had confidence in the next Prime Minister. Duncan claims that his action was to try and give Johnson some confidence in his new position as Prime Minister as he expected this vote to be passed. I would agree with this assessment - I can't imagine Tory MPs rebelling against Johnson at this point as a) he's been chosen by the members so has that mandate and b) he hasn't actually done anything yet r.e. committed to No Deal to the exclusion of all else. (It's all rhetoric so far). It would however give a clear message to Johnson - the numbers have not changed, you are running the same minority Government reliant on votes from the DUP and even with their votes your working majority is in the single digits (at time of writing).

Bercow blocked it however, with no reason (yet). One assumes that this is because Bercow doesn't want the emergency debate power to be used to call (effectively) a no confidence vote - that is something that only the leader of the opposition can do. Allowing Duncan's vote could be an opening of Pandora's box.

If that is Bercow's reasoning, I'm more sympathetic. But there really should be a constitutional solution for testing a replacement PMs confidence should there be a change of administration without a General Election. A vote of confidence as opposed to one of no confidence I guess.

Breaking: Jo Swinson is the new leader of the Lib Dems EDIT: now with link

Edited by SebastianGray on Jul 22nd 2019 at 4:31:30 PM

Sadly, my first thought was "who?"

Mine was "What?"

She was the deputy leader from 2017

Cue centrists going "why haven't ye had a female leader yet, Labour" or somesuch nonsense.

So, no change then. Still the party that defends going into the Coalition with the Tories.

I think y'all are being a bit unfair here. Jo Swinson has been there or there about when it comes to the Liberal Democrats for some time now, and she was tipped as the favourite in this election campaign.

I'd also like to think that the decision to go into coalition is slowly becoming old news when compared to the enormity of Brexit et al, and at least on this one the Liberal Democrats are on the right side of history.

Jo Swinson winning does probably pitch the Liberals more to the right as opposed to Ed Davey winning - but then again, Ed Davey voters are probably supporting the Greens who are also on the up.

Eh, the Lib Dems going into coalition with the Tories isn't old news in the face of Brexit, when their propping up of the Tories and their austerity measures are what helped Brexit to happen in the first place.

I don't care about the time they allied with Conservatives,I care about having someone other Labour or Conservative in power,I've had enough of them,I want change

You could argue that, but I think they only contributed to the environment: the decision to hold the referendum and the cluster-f**k that has followed should be owned by David Cameron and the Tories alone.

The only factor the Lib Dems played in that decision making process is the theory that DC only put the referendum in the Tory manifesto as something to barter with in the coalition negotiations post election. The fact the Lib Dems got deservedly smashed resulting in an unexpected outright majority for DC forced his hand into the referendum. Hoist, petard and all that.

What a vacuous and meaningless goal.

Well, entering into a coalition with the Tories got us the whole fixed term mess as a way to prop the damn thing up, and consequently the half a dozen failed votes to get anything done have lead to bugger all reshuffling of the Commons as the tories have been able to just keep smashing their faces on a closed door.

> What a vacuous and meaningless goal.

Not really,if Lib Dems were proper choice (I am aware they stand no chance) I'd vote for them in heart beat,as it is we're stuck between two parties and I don't like either of them but I have to vote for one of them at some point

Life isn't fair

The Lib Dems are currently polling neck-and-neck with Labour, the Tories and the Brexit party, though, so off-hand they stand about as much a chance as the next guy. What would Britain's wonderful electoral system make of such an evenly fractured electoral field?

The very thought would quickly lead to "Reforms" aimed at preserving status quo

"I want change for change's sake" isn't a meaningful goal. The only policy that the Lib Dems would likely carry through if you stuck them in a majority position is close ties to the EU, otherwise you're going for the most status quo of political positions.

I have little faith that any party, winning a majority in a FPTP system, will carry through with its intention to abolish the FPTP system.

If we saw a minority Labour government dependant upon Lib Dem support I suspect that we might see a deal made, votes at 16 and a move to AMS alongside getting rid of the fixed term parliament act.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is politics, but I don't really know where else to put it: people are complaining about... dying sheep pink...? Have standards for "cruel and inhumane" really gotten as low as "go through some oddly coloured water" now?

It's not the type of dye itself. It's the dipping method that's used to achieve a fully dyed sheep and the act of using animals as advertising props (part of the argument that helped get rid of animal circuses and the use of monkeys for street performances and ads such as PG Tips).

Adverts that use live animals, such as the Andrex puppies, tend to do so with very close monitoring by animal rights organisations to make sure they don't run afoul of them.

Jo Swinson has traditionally been on the right-wing of the Lib Dems, even before the coalition years. So, it may have been a good leadership speech, but it does contradict her voting record (not just her coalition record). We will therefore have to see if her leadership record is different to her historical voting record.

Voting record summary:

• Against: fracking regulation, raising welfare benefits in line with inflation, raising minimum wage (she supports the 'it'll cost jobs argument),
• For: austerity measures (e.g., slashing council budgets by over 50%, reducing spending on welfare, health, education, and training for young people), the Tories scrapping good climate change and renewable energy policies and funding in favour of Tory PR measures that weren't as effective as the measures they'd scrapped ^note So her Climate/Environmental record looks decent on the surface but isn't so good in practice, NHS privatisation, gutting the rights of charities to engage in political campaigning, cutting corporation tax,
• Individual actions of note:
  • she supported the privatisation of the Royal Mail (notable because some of these votes pre-date the coalition and occurred while Gordon Brown was PM),
  • she opposes gender action measures (positive discrimination to achieve gender balance); she's been very pro-active on this ever since she was first elected in 2005, so this pre-dates the coalition years. Her arguments for opposition range from 'women just need encouragement and confidence then everything will be all right' to 'gender quotas damage business performance' to 'businesses don't need to be told what to do, they can therefore be trusted to adopt measures voluntarily'.
  • she supported Nick Clegg's infamous U-Turn on tuition fees (something that a lot of Lib Dem MPs tried to oppose, despite being in coalition),
  • she supported Cameron's push to give employees shares in the companies they worked for by taking away those employees employment rights (notable because this was not something a lot of coalition Lib Dems supported, but she was one of the ones who did),
  • she tried to deregulate the certification of street trading and had to reverse course due to the level of criticism she came under,
  • she was the employment minister who defended the coalition government's employment tribunal policy that later got declared illegal by the Supreme Court because it prevented workers from being able to use employment tribunals (the policy was forcing workers to pay an up-front cost of £1200 to be able to attend tribunal; it resulted in a 79% drop).

Good points:

• She opposed the Iraq War and has consistently voted for investigations into it, she supports lowering the voting age to 16, and she has a good record on LGBT+ rights and parental leave rights.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jul 22nd 2019 at 8:15:49 PM

She’s the one behind the attempt to basically scrap employment tribunals? Holy shit, I just kinda assumed that that was a Tory idea implemented by a diehard Tory, I also didn’t know how insanely high the charge was due to it having been ruled illegal by the time I came to try and use employment tribunals.

Sorry, I forgot to correct that one before I hit the post button. She wasn't the minister behind it. I've corrected my post now.

What happened was that the Tories wanted the policy. Swinson wasn't behind it, but she became one of the faces of it. As a junior employment minister, she was expected to help sell the policy publicly. In government, MPs are supposed to adhere to collective responsibility: whatever complaints you have behind the scenes, you back it in public or you resign in protest. She did her job and helped sell the policy in public, which included actively defending the policy when concerns and criticisms were raised.

The Supreme Court killed the policy in 2017. When that happened, Jo Swinson argued that she'd had nothing to do with the policy, that she had always opposed it, and that she was glad to see it shot down by the courts.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jul 22nd 2019 at 8:17:47 PM

She's worse than I thought. Tory-lite indeed.

Jo seems to have hit a watershed while being forced to be a face for that farce; she's still way too right of left for me to be comfy with, don't get me wrong — but, she seems to have ditched some of her earlier blinkers and takes a somewhat less hard approach than she used to (not hard to do, that).

I'm still not enamoured of her win, however... because I'm of the dirty social democrat side of things, not the ludicrously tight-arsed liberal with their heads in the flipping sand.

I distrust this list towards conservativism. The Lib Dems are at risk of becoming Tory-Lite or Nu-Tory. I don't like it.

Unfortunately, it's been happening for well over eighteen months. Jo is a symptom of it as much as a driver.

Getting into that coalition was a fucking disaster; the Eton Old Boys got more claws into the Lib Dems.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jul 22nd 2019 at 8:45:41 PM

Unfortunately for the Lib Dems, what survived the 2015 GE massacre was the very right-wing of the party that had mostly supported the coalition policies. Most of the Lib Dems that were ousted by the voters were MPs who had opposed much of what the government was doing.

Swinson actually did lose her seat in 2015 — the LD donors that would have been responsible for helping her fund her constituency campaign refused to back her for being too right wing and donated to the Labour Party that year instead. The SNP took her seat, but she won it back in the 2017 GE.