So, uh, about the UK
It's difficult to talk about the UK at the moment because, and it's hard to give this enough emphasis, IT'S AN ENORMOUS CLUSTER-FUCK AND EVERYTHING IS AWFUL.
To give you some idea, Truss is currently less popular than Putin and is the least popular PM the UK has ever had (in the years that we measured).
There's a bill going through tonight about fracking. But it's been turned into a confidence motion on Liz Truss, and it has full hard /// three line whip, slips withdrawn. (basically, members of the Conservative Party have been instructed to vote in accordance with their party's wishes, and not doing so is serious, and can lead to the MP effectively being expelled from their party.) And the three line whip is against their 2019 manifesto pledge.
Normally, we'd expect to see MPs rebelling against this. Certainly, at the moment, a bunch of them are in the mood to do so.
There's an additional complication here though - a bunch of MPs have sent in letters of no confidence, and that could trigger Yet Another Leadership Race (they've already met the threshold, but they've raised the bar to be half the party needs to send the letters because lol who cares about rules). But, if an MP is expelled their letter no longer counts. So a bunch of MPs are openly saying they're only voting for this fracking bill because they think Truss is hopeless and needs to go.
https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1582672374369226753
https://twitter.com/IanDunt/status/1582762437954375680
Also, Suella Braverman (who managed to be a crueller home secretary than any who've been before her which is remarkable considering the list of utterly hateful cunts who've had the job) was sacked / resigned today.
So, if there's not much talk here from people in the UK it's because nothing makes any sense and everything's changing every day.
Aaaand she's out!
Unbelievably, the lettuce actually won
I'm not a huge fan of the Daily Star but that was a masterful piece of trolling and I bet they're over the moon it worked out.
A fun little chart.
Truss served under more monarchs than any PM in the last 70 years.
The trolling continues
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/breaking-daily-star-lettuce-celebrates-28282527
OK, that's pretty funny.
It still bewilders me how The UK economically shot itself multiple times across several leaderships. Where I originally come from, the UK is seen as one of the places to go for higher education, and a door to a better life either in the west or even at home. Where things are supposed to be better, and people appreciate the role they can take in forming a healthy government. How? Just how did it manage to boot itself out of a great trade deal with Europe, increase tensions between England, North Ireland and Scotland, and when shit is hitting the fan and inflation is high, pour gasoline on the fire by suggesting tax cuts. Honestly how? It really is leaving me stupefied.
The UK does still have fantastic institutions for higher education, and living there can definitely be an opportunity for a better life for many people. I myself lived and worked in London for several years about a decade ago, and greatly enjoyed my time there before finally moving back to Canada.
However, the UK (England specifically) unfortunately also has a large, aging, incredibly nationalistic, bigoted, and xenophobic, lower-middle class population. And it also has several right-wing political parties (Tories, UKIP, etc) and lots of major news organizations (Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, The Sun, etc) that appeals to that crowd, and regularly works to enflame their fears about immigrants, Muslims, transgender people, "leftists", "globalists", etc... in order to keep them perpetually angry/afraid, continue voting right-wing, and distract them while the rich continue to get richer at their expense.
Eh, it is a bit more nuanced than that. There's an issue with rural areas have slightly more representation than urban, and the ruralites tend to be more... let's say conservative rather than bigoted. Although there are plenty of bigots and xenophobes, of course. The angry/scared older people are a problem, although that's probably better stated as the young don't vote. That problem will start to solve itself as the Tories gut the NHS and the elderly die off faster. My parents are, and always have been, vehemently anti-Tory and there's plenty of their generation around now. The traditional wisdom is that people shift to the right as they get older and that hasn't stopped, but I'm sure I read it was slowing down as Thatcher's generation age but don't forget, or forgive. How we get the under 30s to vote I have no idea. If they did, the political landscape here would be completely different.
There is also the Murdoch Problem. Any country where News Corp operates suffers from this - UK, Australia, the US and to a lesser extent, Canada. I think New Zealand has mostly got away with it so far, but they have a more sane electoral process which doesn't reward extremism. Murdoch realised decades ago that right-wing anger and fear sells better than actual news. Hence Fox News, the Daily Mail, The Sun and so on. The hate media exists because it makes an old, vile man lots of money, a side effect is that it promotes populist conservatism and in a FPTP electoral system, that will always tend towards extremism.
What's interesting/depressing is that if you poll Britons on issues, rather than party alignment, they consistently poll left-of-centre/mild-libertarian (not in the US sense of the word, but as the opposite to authoritarian on the compass). People like the NHS, the benefits system, worker's rights and so on. They want higher taxes on the rich and corporations. They want regulation about pollution and industrial development and so on. They even like nationalised public services like trains and energy. Britons basically want Labour's 2019 manifesto. But when people get to the ballot boxes there's a significant amount of people who vote to have their own faces eaten. Because Jeremy Corbyn is the actual devil. (or Ed Milliband can't eat a sandwich, or Tony Blair is a war criminal or whatever the Tory psyops people are using that time around)
Also if you don't think Scotland has a decent amount of nationalists I would remind you of the party who has held power there for basically ever have "Nationalist" right in the middle of their name. Most of my family live in Scotland and have even been refused service in shops because they are English!
Yes, the issue is a bit more nuanced than I let on, but let's call a duck a duck, and not mince words; IMO "conservative" is synonymous with bigot in the vast majority of cases. The only question is whether they're the silently judging type who still happily vote in favor of stripping away rights, or the "round them up into camps" type.
On that we can partially agree, at least. If turnout had been 100%, Brexit probably wouldn't have happened. However, at 72.21% turnout with 51.9% voting to leave, the blame doesn't lie entirely with the young people who chose not to vote. There is clearly still a huge swath of the voting public in the UK (mostly England) who are either bigots, or ignoramuses who fell for the anti-EU bullshit being spewed by Farage, Johnson, and the like.
I 100% agree that Murdoch is a problem in the UK, US, and Aus, but I don't know why you're including Canada in that. Murdoch doesn't own any news organizations operating in Canada. He has tried to get his foot in the door up here a few times over the years, but those efforts have (so far) always failed. Postmedia is the major "conservative" media conglomerate of concern up here, but Murdoch has nothing to do with them. So yeah, we have our own media related problems in Canada too, but Murdoch is thankfully not one of them.
As for Scottish Nationalism, or Irish too for that matter, of course those exist as well. Nationalism, Nationalists, and bigots exists in every single country. But it's a matter of scale, and English Nationalism is often based on a belief in their own superiority, whereas Scottish/Irish Nationalism is often based more on totally understandable historical (and even modern) grievances against the English, and largely English controlled Parliamentary rule.
I'm not sure that's true. I have some friends and their families who regularly vote conservative and they're not in any way bigots. They vote for the bigots and in some sense supporting the bad guys makes them one of the bad guys themselves, but they're otherwise not bad people. I know one person who works for a prominent Conservative think tank (personal friends with Theresa May kind of thing) and he's perfectly accepting of people of all walks of life - except socialists. (we don't talk politics because we'd like to stay friends)
I think when things get as extreme as the now openly fascist Republicans in the US, then you can say that all Republicans are essentially bigots. But the UK isn't that far gone. Yet. I hope we never are.
It's mostly the latter. Of the brexit voters I have spoken to it's largely about "taking back control" from the "over-reaching" and "undemocratic" EU and they are anti-immigration not because they don't like the foreigners, but because they genuinely think the country is suffering as a result of immigration. Obviously they are wrong, and it's a subtle but I think important difference between "keep them out because we're short of resources for the people already here" and "keep them out because they're different"
I also encountered quite a lot of people who voted for Brexit because "the man" told them not to. I saw posts on FB the next day crowing about how they'd "stuck it to the elites". Which was sad, that they'd been convinced that's what they were doing.
There's a lot of idiots. I don't think most of those idiots are bigots. Many of them are, of course! There is still lots of racism and xenophobia here.
But I can't walk down the street if I really think that over half my country are hateful bigots. I can just about manage it if half my country are so stupid as to be easily manipulated by a minority of really bad guys. Watching the way the campaigns were run, it was entirely deliberate manipulation. Dominic Cummings (Leave campaign manager and just about the nastiest person in the country and I'm including Piers Morgan in that list) deserves to be swinging from a lamppost for what he did.
Ah, I apologise, my mistake. I thought he'd got his nasty little claws into you guys as well but I am very glad to hear you've kept him out! quickly googles "how to move to Canada"
So you're saying that these Scots think they're better than the English? ;)
The Northern Irish situation is just... I'm not going there. It's way too complicated.
Maybe I am just being overly pessimistic/cynical, but maybe you're just being overly optimistic too. I honestly don't know where truth lies here... but this stuck out to me:
How can you be sure they're not bad people if you don't talk politics with them. IME talking politics is the only way to find out if someone actually is a bad person deep down, since those sorts of conversations is when they often stop pretending to be so "accepting" of everyone, and instead start saying how they really feel about X, Y, Z groups. And IMO if you feel like you can't actually talk politics with someone, that's not usually a good sign.
Let's take my Eton/Oxbridge-educated friend as an example. He can trace his surname back to the Norman conquest. He used to write for the Telegraph. This dude is as white as uncooked bread but he bleeds blue. Daddy owns half of Hertfordshire. That sort of thing. He's quite an experience. I met him in the backstreets of Bangkok 20-something years ago and we went on a massive multi-day drinking bender.
So this guy supports the Bad Team, the Tory party. He's a fee-paying member. He even works for them sometimes. But that doesn't mean he agrees with everything they stand for. He's strongly in favour of equality (gender, sexuality, race, etc, etc) because that is a fundamentally conservative (small 'c') value. Government has no business telling dudes they shouldn't get married to other dudes, or trans people they're not real people. People should be able to determine things for themselves. He's pro-immigration because the State shouldn't regulate something which the free market can regulate better. He's in favour of sustainable development not just because the science on climate change is clear, but because it's economically sensible and the markets are increasingly taking us that way anyway. He's a conservative by carefully considered ideology, and votes Conservative not because he thinks they are right, but because the other options are more wrong.
I, on the other hand, am an increasingly radical Marxist. We fundamentally disagree on just about everything along the left-right axis. I think he's in bed with actually evil people. He thinks I support people who would destroy this country as we know it (he is technically right about that, as am I about him). So politics is rarely a fun conversation. Hence we tend to avoid it. He has some ideas about how the country should be run that I very much disagree with, and vice-versa. So we just.. don't talk about it. Same way I don't talk music with my friend who loves Ed Sheeran and Coldplay. She is otherwise a lovely person.
Another example is my most vocally brexiteer friend. I've known this guy since we were... five? Something like that. He's not a bad dude. He makes some questionable jokes here and there but he's old school. He says he's anti-woke but he's very much live and let live underneath all the bluster. He's a troll, in the old sense of the word. But at heart he's a decent person. He doesn't understand how the EU works. He's read some tabloid newspapers and believes what he's been told. He wanted to support the NHS to the tune of £350m a week. He's not all that bright. He's not interested in reasoned debate, or evidence. He hoards cryptocurrencies because he thinks the government is trying to spy on all his spending. But this guy gives thousands of pounds a year to women's development charities in Africa. He donates to food banks almost every single time he goes shopping (he hasn't made the connection between voting Tory and having food banks in the first place). He's a good person, he's just a bit thick.
I do agree that for people you don't know, talking politics can reveal things about them you didn't otherwise see. But for people you do, sometimes it's just a topic you don't see eye to eye on, and that can be for many reasons. Sometimes, of course, that reason is because the person you're with is a heartless bastard and should probably be removed from your life asap.
Fair enough. Thanks for opening up, and sharing your perspective and experiences. I have some people like that in my life too (esp growing up in a Conservative Catholic household), but to be totally honest, I genuinely don't think of them as being good people even though they aren't directly committing any evil deeds themselves. They're not necessarily bad people, per se, but no matter how good-hearted or well-intentioned they may be, and despite how much charity they may do, they're not actually good people either since their actions, donations, and unwavering support of certain organizations are allowing those organizations to continue to commit evil deeds writ large.
Update: my brexiteer/Tory voting friend has just announced he will never vote Tory again. He'll probably vote UKIP rather than Lib Dem/Labout but that's fine. A vote for UKIP is a vote not for the Tories. I'll take that as a win.
I get the whole "people supporting the bad guys are bad guys themselves" thing, I really do, and I certainly know people who fall into that category. But there's degrees of bad. Although I also think that sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
It's tricky.
Ignorance can easily be weaponized by driving a perception of scarce resources. When people believe resources are scarce, they easily shift inwards towards their in-group as a social instinct. What I don’t understand is how people can look around them, notice how the UK is worse off now than it was 15 years ago, and, still, not connect the dots with the party they’re voting in power.
I don't know if I would consider someone switching their vote from Tory to UKIP as a win (other than in the very short term), but okay. I suppose it's slightly better than them going with the full-on Britain First Christofascists, but it's still not very reassuring.
It's a win because UKIP stand zero chance of winning any seats. They are (well, were) very noisy but they've never elected an MP. A wasted vote is better than a vote that helps a Tory win.
UKIP are dead since Brexit. They were a concern back in the day because they were instrumental in pulling the Overton window to the right/anti-EU side, but they're nowhere now. You never hear from them. I'd be surprised if they can even afford to field candidates in all that many places come the next election.
True, but I wasn't really thinking strictly in terms of the next election, I was also thinking about the potential for the further radicalization of your friend, and all the people like him also now moving from Tory to UKIP. They are not going to get better as people by getting in closer with that crowd.
It's almost like isolationist conservative policy is a bad idea or something...
https://twitter.com/freespirited_p/status/1582810449065959424?s=20&t=CnscAg-zSwyQvxSZXo-iEw
Charles Walker:
"I think it's a shambles and a disgrace, I think it is utterly appalling"
"You seem quietly furious ..."
"I'm livid. And, you know, I shouldn't say this, but I hope all those people who put Liz Truss in number 10, I hope it was worth it I hope it was worth it for the ministerial red box, I hope it was worth it to sit round the cabinet table, because they damage they have done to our party is extraordinary"
"It's very difficult to convey but you look furious about this"
"I am, I am, I've had enough, I've had enough of talentless people putting a tick in the right box not because it's in the national interest but because it's in their personal interest to achieve ministerial position and I know I speak for hundreds of back benchers who right now are worrying for their constituents all the time but also for their own personal circumstances because there is nothing as Ex as an ex-MP, and a lot of my colleagues are wondering, as many of their constituents, how they're going to pay the mortgage if this all comes to an end soon".
This is, for the Conservative Party, apocalyptic.
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1582802339484008449?s=20&t=CnscAg-zSwyQvxSZXo-iEw
"Uh oh - @RhonddaBryant tells @SamCoatesSky that he has photos on his phone of Tory whips manhandling MPs to force them to vote with the govt"
https://twitter.com/AvaSantina/status/1582802758528212992?s=20&t=CnscAg-zSwyQvxSZXo-iEw
"I saw members being physically manhandled"
can somebody explain me all this? I found this on the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/oct/19/liz-truss-pmqs-jeremy-hunt-inflation-pensions-triple-lock-politics-live
but to be honest I dont really understand anything? there was a motion by labour to get fracking banned? did they loose? what is a whip? what is a tripple whip? what is a vote of confidence? why is that connected to a Motion by an opposition party? how do you manhandle somebody to vote? how should that work? it just does not make any sense to me, our system here seems to work so differently.
i kind of need an ELI5 of this situation and the way british parliment votes.
Yes, and yes they lost. It wasn't even close, not a single Tory rebelled.
EDIT: as per @pallas comment here the above is incorrect. Several Conservative MPs abstained from voting. My information when writing this post was incorrect.
The whips are the government's "enforcers". It's a role in Parliament, held by an MP. The job of the whips is to "whip" the party members into line. If the government wants a particular motion to pass (or not), it's the whips who go around the MPs and convince them to do what they're told. Sometimes that's by offering them things in exchange - "vote for this and we'll see about that thing you want" or sometimes it's just by threatening the members (or worse, but we'll come to that).
MPs can have the whip "withdrawn", which essentially means they are suspended from the party. This is - usually - the threat of last resort and what was used on tonight's fracking vote. One aspect of this threat is that in some cases MPs might feel strongly enough about an issue to risk (temporary) withdrawal of the whip but right now if they do have it taken away they then can't lodge letters of no confidence (this is a Tory-party way of voicing serious discontent with the leadership) with the party management committee. At least one MP has said he voted with the whip so he could lodge that letter.
A "triple-line" whip literally means the required action by MPs has been underlined three times in the memo (email or whatsapp today). Must be important! In practice it means that this is serious and the harshest punishments will be doled out for those that rebel.
A vote of (no) confidence is Parliaments formal way of saying "this person is not fit to do their job, they do not have the confidence of this house" (which effectively means their own party). It's usually reserved for Prime Ministers, I don't remember anyone lesser getting one. As I understand it, it can only really be a standalone motion, the government can't just attach it to something else.
To attempt to frame this evening's vote on fracking as a vote of confidence in Liz Truss was ultra-shitty because banning fracking was a manifesto pledge in the last election and lots of Tory MPs - especially the new ones - have constituents who voted for them on that promise. If the fracking wells re-open, a lot of current MPs may well lose their seats come the next election. But saying "this vote is effectively (if not actually) a confidence vote in the PM" AND enforcing a three-line whip, the government pretty much forced a load of it's own MPs to, if not actually fall on their own swords, at least to stumble closer to them. It was very bad politicking by Truss's government, and really highlights how bad they are at playing the Westminster game.
You literally push them into the "Aye" or "Nay" chamber. In Westminster, MPs vote by going and standing in a particular room. Of course you can leave again if you've been pushed but there are allegations (and supposedly video footage) of actual physical violence being used on MPs. This is, as far as I know, unprecedented and genuinely fairly shocking even by the usual low standards of the Conservative party. One of Truss's most senior aides is under investigation although given it's his own party and office investigating him, I'm sure it'll all just be a big misunderstanding.
Honestly I don't recall such levels of clusterfuckery in the House and the clusterfuck bar has been accelerating towards orbit at great speed in recent years.
thank you for your explenaition.
so just that I understand correctly, sombody can be thrown out of the party because they did not vote party line in a (tripple) whipped cause? that seems so absurd to me, as straying from party line is quite common in our parliment, especially on divisive issues.
I think it's more like being suspended temporarily than thrown out completely. People can be thrown out of their parties but it's pretty rare and it would probably be for something much more serious than one vote. Different parties will have different rules and procedures for that.
MPs are allowed to vote against their party, the triple-line whip is not rare, but not exactly common ether. It's probably not the best idea to rebel too much if you want to progress your political career, although there are tactical reasons for doing so, because all parties are to some degree factional.
I imagine you live in a country with a slightly less fucked electoral system than ours. Which is nearly all of them.
Is the whip an official acknowledged position within the party or is it more of an unspoken role? I would wager given the current circumstances with Truss, the whip holds more power than her in the government.
It's an official position. Truss's chief whip resigned last night. Then unresigned a bit later, because apparently yesterday wasn't fucky enough.
I think it's important to note that several Tories certainly rebelled against the whip (whether or not it was still there) on this vote. They did do by abstaining, not voting aye. They would have, then would not have, then would or would not have depending on what party leader you asked, then would have, had their party membership suspended or removed for this (in any normal situation, abstaining on a three line whip would have resulted in punishment). There was so much chaos in the voting and vote recording that the intent of abstentions and non-votes became rather unclear on some cases, but presumably the party knew.
In hindsight, of course, the real rebellion here amongst the Tories was that the PM's handling of the vote and whip had them force her to resign.
Interesting. I'm sure that the result I saw, which was only an hour or so after the division, didn't have any abstentions listed. Perhaps the chaos meant they had the numbers wrong, it was one of the news sites not an official Parlimentary source.
I would say that abstention barely counts as rebellion, even if the party might feel differently. If it doesn't affect the outcome - and those few MPs would have gone into it knowing pretty much what the outcome would be - it's just theatre.
Either way, thanks for letting me know and I apologise for not being more thorough in the first place.
Such was the chaos that list of members with no votes recorded is bizarre, and was a matter of some bafflement in many news sources at the time. Some Tories were abstaining in protest (eg, Skidmore, Richardson, and Crouch publicly stated this before the vote), while others made much less sense, beyond known excused absences despite slips being withdrawn (Johnson, Wallace). Bizarrely, Truss did not have her vote recorded initially—there were rumours that she had forgotten to tap her card properly—and later had her vote added to the record.
The main point of this, I suppose, is that it isn't right to say that "not a single Tory rebelled". Yes, the rebellions were of limited use, and could be argued to be theatre (I would argue that Skidmore's, at least, was not, while Crouch's appears to have been), but there were Tories who publicly stated they would rebel, and then, by the usual interpretation of a three line whip, rebelled.
Fair point. I've edited my top-level comment.
I think you could honestly say that about every single government on the planet right now. For all the debate about which form of government works best, they all wind up with the same bad outcomes. :P
Whips are something in US politics as well (and in general). Basically, they're the people inside a political party who get votes for party initiatives. They convince party members to vote on party lines. In the US, you'd better believe whips in the Democratic caucus were heavily pressuring Manchin and Sinema for the climate bill, for instance.
Vote of (no) confidence is a somewhat weird thing since it's half by convention in the UK but basically Parliament votes, and if they vote in confidence, the ruling government stays, if they vote no confidence, then the ruling government needs to resign and/or start a general election.
The motion to get fracking banned is seen as a proxy for the vote of no confidence of Truss's government. The minority coalition of course cannot pass a vote of no confidence alone - they need defectors from the other coalition. If the conservative coalition voted in favor of the fracking ban, that would be seen as an indication that a vote of no confidence could win.
As to "manhandling", we'll have to see. Usually whips are more lobbyist than anything else - have dinners with people, call in favors, make arguments, make deals, that kind of thing. Physically "convincing" lawmakers to vote is definitely, uh, new ground for the modern age anyway.
The fracking thing is really complicated.
The Conservative Party made a manifesto promise in 2019 to ban fracking. They won the election. But there's been a lot of change within the party, and the new leadership is strongly against any kind of government interference with business. So, the Labour Party put forward a thing to ban fracking. The current Conservative Party told its members that this vote is being seen as a vote of confidence in Truss. So, they've insisted that all Conservative MPs MUST vote against it -- even though they're voting against the promise they made in that 2019 manifesto.
Some of the Conservative MPs have signed letters of "no confidence" in Truss. The Conservative Party have some weird rules about how to get rid of their leader, and this system starts when enough MPs write a letter of no confidence.
So, now those MPs are in an odd situation. They can vote against Truss in this pseudo-no confidence vote, but if they do they'll "have the whip withdrawn" - effectively, they'll be kicked out of the party. And if that happens it means their letters don't count. They've got to decide which is more effective, the vote or the letter.
It doesn't really matter, because it's pushed an already fragile party over the edge and now MPs are openly revolting against their party, and many of them are voluntarily leaving politics at the next election.
I know it's bad for me to be glued to it like I have been today, and I know I really shouldn't view politics like television drama... But goodness me, it's been incredibly entertaining watching the leopards eat the faces of the Conservative party today. I have long since bypassed misery about the situation, embraced the fact that I can do sweet fuck all about it, and descended into maniacal laughter at each new bit of absurd news.
One of the most hilarious things of all is that Ed Milliband waited over 7 years for this tweet, and it still came too early.
As someone who's been pretty removed from UK politics for the past few years, can you fill me in on Ed Milliband?
Fairly unobjectionable ex-leader of the Labour party, lost to the Conservatives under David Cameron in 2015. Notable for three things:
Being painted by his opposition as the bringer of chaos and destruction to the nation, in contrast to their "strong and stable" leadership. Said opposition then called the Brexit referendum the following year and against all odds have still managed to go downhill from there.
Being pilloried in the press for his inability to eat a bacon sandwich.
Commissioning a giant stone tablet with their election pledges carved in, which has since mysteriously disappeared.
He was quite unfortunate during that campaign, and I believe he's gone on record as saying that he spent a lot more time listening to his comms advisors than perhaps he ought to. If you listen to him speak now, he's much more passionate and articulate, with a good sense of humour. It's a shame we didn't get a PM Milliband, but if Labour do win the next election, I think he'll make an outstanding cabinet minister.
His podcast Reasons to be Cheerful is also well worth a listen.
Relevant take:
Or, more seriously:
Even if such a thing is subjective, some sort of way of getting a seriously unpopular government out of power faster would be a pretty good idea, at least in the context of the modern Conservative party and similars. There's vote of no confidence and dissolving parliament and in republics there's impeachment and subsequent special elections but these things are political processes that depends on MPs elected before the people turned against them. Maybe having an option where any legislator can get a few hundred thousand signatures in favor a popular referendum on dissolving parliament and then having 60% of the public vote for it nationwide allows the UK electorate to dissolve parliament right now without a damn for the Tories, but that's speculation.
It's such a shambles. I dread to think what's coming next.
Not a single one of those Tory cowards voted for the motion to ban fracking. But on the other hand the Chief and Deputy Whips both resigned.
Although for a bit of light relief in what has been an astonishingly fucked up day even by recent standards, here's Krishnan Guru-Murphy calling Steve Baker a cunt
My money is increasingly on the lettuce
This country will probably still be trying to recover from the last decade of Conservative rule after I'm dead and gone. But then, thanks to the Conservatives, that could be any time in the next decade.
When can we stop blaming individual actors and just acknowledge the conservative party is a steamy pile of shit?
So, yes, but Truss, Kwarteng, Patel, Raab, and Skidmore wrote a book ten years ago called "Britannia Unchained" where they set out their libertarian small government minimal taxes ideology, and then they got power and had the chance to test these ideas out and the markets tanked. When even ultra-wealthy Conservative voters are saying "we don't want these tax cuts, they're making us look bad" you know something's up with that particular brand of Conservatism.
They're just unserious people.
Here's a party political broadcast from Thatcher. There's a lot to dislike about Thatcher and what she did to the country, but here she wants to address real problems, she's got a coherent set of ideas, she lays out her plan, her plan has a plausible mechanism of action and looks across the whole of society, and it's more detailed than "low tax more growth vibes he he". We live in a world of 3 word slogans, and her slogans are things like "We shall give real help with deposit for 1st time home buyers". She's not treating the audience like they're idiots.
Like I say, she was very harmful to the UK, but at least there's something in her advert to have a discussion about.
The conservative party is a steaming pile of shit in USA also, and I don't hear good things about Australia either.
Moving from New Zealand to USA 20 years ago, the common thread back then was Murdochs News Corp. Fox News is just awful.
The hole in my theory is the UK, most people seem to watch the BBC for news.
But in the last decade, social media allows well funded sources to spread lies, which neatly coincides with when the conservatives re-emerged.
So I guess the question is, did conservatives in the UK start becoming angrier, more partisan, hating on the BBC and slightly unhinged from reality in the last ten years?
Our TV news isn’t too egregious, and I think the BBC as a stabilising presence helps a lot there even for other broadcasters.
Our newspapers, on the other hand, are horrifying. Print may be dying, but between the fact that the old people who vote still read it and their very successful pivot to the web, The Daily Mail and The Sun are primary news sources for an appreciable number of voters.
And yes, I absolutely think it’s got worse in the last decade. The discourse around Brexit, particularly, was where things really came to a head for me. There wasn’t even a pretence of reasonableness, just slogans and yelling.
Sorry, I should have been more clear and less sassy in my first post. I'm frustrated that the Conservative party seems to be able to point at whoever is currently at the helm and say "They were shit!!! Let's kick them out!" and their voting base goes "Yeah, what a lunatic! Anyway, who is next?"
It would be great if we could replace "Truss gov does X thing" with "Conservative government does X thing". Truss is a symptom not the disease. It feels like letting them place everything on the head of Cameron, May, Johnson, or Truss just lets them continue with politics as usual as we continue to mock the stupidity of the current lacky.
I’m wondering why Conservatives haven’t decided on a different leader yet, and whether Conservatives are in a coalition government or have enough votes on their own?
Also, at what point will there be new elections?
No coalition, just an absolute majority for the Conservative party (56% of the seats on 44% of the vote, thanks FPTP).
At this point I think most of us are fully expecting a new leader relatively soon, but two Prime Ministers from the same party both being booted out in disgrace within a couple of months is not a great look, to say the least, so the party are kind of at a loss - if Truss's fuck ups were even slightly less extreme I'd expect them to stick by her for that reason alone. I'm sure anyone whose name might be in the ring is also acutely aware of the risks of being anywhere near this whole debacle, which has got to complicate things further.
As for new elections: January 2025 is the legal limit, but the Prime Minister herself has the power to call one earlier, and a simple majority of MPs can also pass a motion of no confidence in the government that will (almost definitely) trigger a general election. You'll notice that either of these would depend on at least some of the current government voting to go into an election that'll destroy them. This would also be different to the party membership vote of no confidence in the leader that others are talking about, which is an internal process to replace Truss within the party.
Ah, their leadership situation is a mess. I might not fully have this right but I think what has to happen is this:
The parliamentary party has to submit a number of letters to their management committee. Rumour is this has already happened, but they quickly changed the threshold so they wouldn't have to act.
Then the parliamentary party votes on kicking out Truss. If this vote happens she's toast. Which is probably why it hasn't happened yet. The Tories might hate Truss but they hate looking bad even more, and they would look so bad.
Then, once that vote has happened, I think they have a mechanism by which they can decide on a new leader internally within the Parliamentary party. That's how Theresa May got in. If this doesn't work, they have a contest and the party membership gets to vote. This is what recently happened when Boris stepped down. 180k people got to choose the PM (and somehow they chose Liz Truss!). Rumour is they are trying to change their own rules so they don't have to involve the membership because the membership clearly cannot be trusted. Which... I kind of get. But y'know. Democracy..
The Conservatives have a large majority in Parliament. However, they are pretty fractured internally so that's not a guarantee of passing anything much. that the triple whip was deployed this evening has only deepened those fractures. It's unlikely, but not impossible, the party is tearing itself apart. We can only hope.
Next election is January 2025. It is possible for Parliament to call an election before that, but as that requires a majority vote and many Tories would very likely lose their seats if there was an election now, it's highly unlikely such a vote would pass.
is there no "president" who can dissolve parliament?
The monarch is the head of state in the UK, so the power to do so rests with them. If they actually used that power outside of the times they’re expected to (requested by the PM, majority vote of no confidence in government, or five years since the last election) I imagine we’d be a republic within the week!
The Prime Minister (well, technically the King, but the PM acts on his behalf) can do it on their own. Or it can happen by a majority vote in Parliament.
Neither of which is going to happen. We just have to sit back and watch as our government tears itself and the country to pieces.