The Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, quit on Monday, hours after the resignation late on Sunday night of the minister in charge of Brexit negotiations, David Davis. A third member of the government, Steve Baker, a junior minister in Davis' Department for Exiting the European Union, also resigned.
Only three days ago, May appeared to have agreed on a deal with her fractured Cabinet on the UK's post-Brexit relationship with the EU. That plan is now in tatters and her political future appears uncertain.
I'm not familiar with the internal workings of the UK government, how did this clown get a cabinet position in the first place? Like he is so obviously self-serving and uninterested in actual...
I'm not familiar with the internal workings of the UK government, how did this clown get a cabinet position in the first place? Like he is so obviously self-serving and uninterested in actual governance, even by US standards.
He got the job because the PM Theresa May appointed him. Which just switches us to why did she appoint him? To answer that, well... The Conservative party has had pro and anti-EU factions since...
He got the job because the PM Theresa May appointed him. Which just switches us to why did she appoint him? To answer that, well...
The Conservative party has had pro and anti-EU factions since forever. Their infighting brought down John Major's Government prior to Tony Blair winning power (in 1997!). In recent years The UK Independence Party (UKIP) has been gaining support at the expense of the Conservative party. As the UK has FPTP this is especially bad news so...
As part of his election campaign David Cameron promised the UK population a referendum on our EU membership. This is despite him having no desire for the UK to leave! His previous government had been a coalition and the polling suggested a second coalition was likely. In such a scenario the brexit referendum could be easily traded away... Fiendishly clever! All that had to happen is the UK voters not return him a majority...
Which of course they did, thus it was we had a referendum which the majority of our government did not want, as such they did no planning for an out result. They made no firm statements on what they could or would negotiate for after an out result. This allowed the ideological Brexiters to offer the moon on a stick. Ideological Brexiters like David Davis, who were also joined by perhaps more opportunistic Brexiters like Boris Johnson & Gove.
Johnson has historically been fairly pro-EU, but the polls suggested the vote would be very close. Would David Cameron firm believer in remain be secure in his leadership should the public return a close result? Or could some floppy haired charmer argue that in order to bring the party together he should lead it? All that had to happen was the public vote for remain but with a close margin to avoid the absolute cluster-fuck that would inevitably come from trying to unwind a 50 years of single market access into the second largest economy in the world... Ha!
Immediately after the result David Cameron resigned in a: "lol good luck with that mate." manner. A leadership election for the Conservative party was immediately triggered. Boris ran but was betrayed by Gove also standing. This left Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom, Leadsom claimed in an interview that being a Mother (Unlike May) she had a greater stake in society. After a large backlash she pulled out of the running. Leaving Theresa May as the only candidate. This is important since normally the membership of the party would vote on candidates selected by the MPs... So May who did not campaign to leave is Prime Minister not only without a General Election but without even a vote of her parties members!
It therefore seems likely to me that she put David Davis in charge of Brexit negotiations and Boris Johnson as FS because if she didn't her premiership would be constantly undermined by their opportunistic complaints that Brexit was not being done 'properly'. Given them sufficient rope to hang themselves with their own incompetence.
Seems to have worked out wonderfully, bit of a shame the same can not be said of her early A50 triggering and General Election gambit. Those however are other stories...
I'm not super well-versed in UK politics either, but I think it was a situation where nobody else wanted the job. Johnson was a big Brexit proponent during the campaign. It has been a losing...
I'm not super well-versed in UK politics either, but I think it was a situation where nobody else wanted the job. Johnson was a big Brexit proponent during the campaign. It has been a losing proposal since day one, so nobody who is competent and wants a future in politics wants to be involved in the process.
I'll be fairly surprised if she makes to the end of this month, let alone next. Despite this being the most transparent power play from Bojo since the last one, the problem is if not Boris, then...
I'll be fairly surprised if she makes to the end of this month, let alone next. Despite this being the most transparent power play from Bojo since the last one, the problem is if not Boris, then who?
Gove?
Leadsom?
Rees-Mogg? (even just typing his name makes me feel a bit sick)
Tagging could use some kind of decomposition / integration system imo. Like if you tag something as "uk" and "politics" a "uk politics" tag could reasonably be synthesized. Likewise if something...
Tagging could use some kind of decomposition / integration system imo. Like if you tag something as "uk" and "politics" a "uk politics" tag could reasonably be synthesized. Likewise if something is tagged as "uk politics" "uk" and "politics" could be derived from it.
Not necessarily. I posted a news article recently which was about palm oil, so one of the tags I applied to that was, strangely enough, "palm oil". Deriving the tags "palm" and "oil" from that tag...
Likewise if something is tagged as "uk politics" "uk" and "politics" could be derived from it.
Not necessarily. I posted a news article recently which was about palm oil, so one of the tags I applied to that was, strangely enough, "palm oil". Deriving the tags "palm" and "oil" from that tag wouldn't be appropriate. People searching for articles about oil would probably want to read about OPEC rather than orangutans. Similarly, I've tagged articles with "gig economy" ("gig"?) and "royal commission" ("royal"?).
Yes of course, I didn't mean that all tags should be separated into words, just that there are some cases where it makes sense. I've since learned that tags are (or are going to be?) hierarchical,...
Yes of course, I didn't mean that all tags should be separated into words, just that there are some cases where it makes sense. I've since learned that tags are (or are going to be?) hierarchical, which seems to resolve the issue fairly nicely.
I'm not familiar with the internal workings of the UK government, how did this clown get a cabinet position in the first place? Like he is so obviously self-serving and uninterested in actual governance, even by US standards.
He got the job because the PM Theresa May appointed him. Which just switches us to why did she appoint him? To answer that, well...
The Conservative party has had pro and anti-EU factions since forever. Their infighting brought down John Major's Government prior to Tony Blair winning power (in 1997!). In recent years The UK Independence Party (UKIP) has been gaining support at the expense of the Conservative party. As the UK has FPTP this is especially bad news so...
As part of his election campaign David Cameron promised the UK population a referendum on our EU membership. This is despite him having no desire for the UK to leave! His previous government had been a coalition and the polling suggested a second coalition was likely. In such a scenario the brexit referendum could be easily traded away... Fiendishly clever! All that had to happen is the UK voters not return him a majority...
Which of course they did, thus it was we had a referendum which the majority of our government did not want, as such they did no planning for an out result. They made no firm statements on what they could or would negotiate for after an out result. This allowed the ideological Brexiters to offer the moon on a stick. Ideological Brexiters like David Davis, who were also joined by perhaps more opportunistic Brexiters like Boris Johnson & Gove.
Johnson has historically been fairly pro-EU, but the polls suggested the vote would be very close. Would David Cameron firm believer in remain be secure in his leadership should the public return a close result? Or could some floppy haired charmer argue that in order to bring the party together he should lead it? All that had to happen was the public vote for remain but with a close margin to avoid the absolute cluster-fuck that would inevitably come from trying to unwind a 50 years of single market access into the second largest economy in the world... Ha!
Immediately after the result David Cameron resigned in a: "lol good luck with that mate." manner. A leadership election for the Conservative party was immediately triggered. Boris ran but was betrayed by Gove also standing. This left Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom, Leadsom claimed in an interview that being a Mother (Unlike May) she had a greater stake in society. After a large backlash she pulled out of the running. Leaving Theresa May as the only candidate. This is important since normally the membership of the party would vote on candidates selected by the MPs... So May who did not campaign to leave is Prime Minister not only without a General Election but without even a vote of her parties members!
It therefore seems likely to me that she put David Davis in charge of Brexit negotiations and Boris Johnson as FS because if she didn't her premiership would be constantly undermined by their opportunistic complaints that Brexit was not being done 'properly'. Given them sufficient rope to hang themselves with their own incompetence.
Seems to have worked out wonderfully, bit of a shame the same can not be said of her early A50 triggering and General Election gambit. Those however are other stories...
I'm not super well-versed in UK politics either, but I think it was a situation where nobody else wanted the job. Johnson was a big Brexit proponent during the campaign. It has been a losing proposal since day one, so nobody who is competent and wants a future in politics wants to be involved in the process.
If May holds on to the job through August I will be surprised. I just hope it's not Boris that takes her place.
I'll be fairly surprised if she makes to the end of this month, let alone next. Despite this being the most transparent power play from Bojo since the last one, the problem is if not Boris, then who?
Gove?
Leadsom?
Rees-Mogg? (even just typing his name makes me feel a bit sick)
Another election!
/s
Weird, I’m filtering out the politics tag yet still get this in my feed.
Added a politics tag to it, so it should be filtered now for you or anyone else filtering it out.
Tagging could use some kind of decomposition / integration system imo. Like if you tag something as "uk" and "politics" a "uk politics" tag could reasonably be synthesized. Likewise if something is tagged as "uk politics" "uk" and "politics" could be derived from it.
I think
politics.ukis the right tag to use in that case, but I could be wrong (and I don't know how tag filtering behaves with dotted tags).Not necessarily. I posted a news article recently which was about palm oil, so one of the tags I applied to that was, strangely enough, "palm oil". Deriving the tags "palm" and "oil" from that tag wouldn't be appropriate. People searching for articles about oil would probably want to read about OPEC rather than orangutans. Similarly, I've tagged articles with "gig economy" ("gig"?) and "royal commission" ("royal"?).
Yes of course, I didn't mean that all tags should be separated into words, just that there are some cases where it makes sense. I've since learned that tags are (or are going to be?) hierarchical, which seems to resolve the issue fairly nicely.
Maybe you need to filter out "comedy", "tragedy" and "farce" as well.