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UK Politics: Who Pays the Andyman?


Tywin Manderly

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1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

Are we stuck in a catch 22 with this, FPTP will never return a government that would eliminate FPTP?

I think there was some appetite under New Labour to change the system, but of course they won using that system and changing it would have disadvantaged them, so there was no urgent need to do so. The idea of Labour losing Scotland during that period would have appeared far-fetched, so there was no mood to push it through.

If Labour had won this time, electoral reform would have been high on the agenda, with the first-ever UK citizen's assembly called to debate how to handle the issue maturely. Of course, the chances of the Tories doing anything like that are non-existent.

 

 

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Is it really the case, that all this time there was not a single person in all the UK competent enough, energetic enough, intelligent enough, leadership capacity enough, to get her / him self as a replacement for Corbyn?

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45 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It that isn’t the norm after a defeat why is Labour allowing him to do this?

Interesting question. The answer is open to argument, but here is my opinion.

Firstly UK politics has tended to rely on an "unwritten constitution" that has few teeth and relies on politicians voluntarily following it. However the last few years have seen the unwritten constitution flouted repeatedly. This is just one more example of how UK politics has changed.

Secondly Corbyn, and the Momentum group that surrounds and supports him, consider completing their takeover of the Labour party to be vital. (Far more vital than beating Johnson in yesterday's election.) This makes them willing to bend the rules to ensure Corbyn's departure does not weaken their grip.

Thirdly the wider Labour party, which would generally be handing Corbyn the cup of hemlock at this point, has already made multiple attempts to remove him and failed, thus weakening their position. Though I would not be at all surprised to see them mounting another formal challenge to unseat him if he lingers too long.

 

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31 minutes ago, A wilding said:

Interesting question. The answer is open to argument, but here is my opinion.

Firstly UK politics has tended to rely on an "unwritten constitution" that has few teeth and relies on politicians voluntarily following it. However the last few years have seen the unwritten constitution flouted repeatedly. This is just one more example of how UK politics has changed.

Secondly Corbyn, and the Momentum group that surrounds and supports him, consider completing their takeover of the Labour party to be vital. (Far more vital than beating Johnson in yesterday's election.) This makes them willing to bend the rules to ensure Corbyn's departure does not weaken their grip.

Thirdly the wider Labour party, which would generally be handing Corbyn the cup of hemlock at this point, has already made multiple attempts to remove him and failed, thus weakening their position. Though I would not be at all surprised to see them mounting another formal challenge to unseat him if he lingers too long.

 

Why is the wider Labour Party allowing the “Momentum Group” to continue to hold control when they just suffered the worst defeat they’ve had since 1983?

What leverage does this group now have to hold on to their control?

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Point of view from someone who joined the Labour Party back in 2015 to vote Corbyn in (#marxistinfiltrator @dog-days), and continued a member until the local elections of May this year. I've never written or spoken much to anyone about my Labour party membership, and this thread at this time is as fitting a place as anywhere for a kind of obituary. 

My primary motive in joining and voting for Jeremy Corbyn was because he had opposed the Iraq War consistently. The first election I was eligible to vote in was in 2005, and was pretty scarring in some ways as it sunk in quite how little the British electorate cared about what its government got up to abroad. I'd somehow previously had the notion that the UK had moved away from its colonial mentality - in my adult life, I've seen plenty of reasons to suggest that it ain't necessarily so. Despite my lefty politics, I hadn't felt able to vote for Labour in 2005, 2010 or 2015; in my eyes it was still poisoned by the events of 2003.  It was a relief to me to have a Labour leader stand up in the dispatch box following the Chilcot report and say that his party had been wrong. No weaselly, "with the benefit of hindsight...", "had we but known" etc. 

Even so, after agonizing a lot during Owen Smith's leadership challenge, I voted for Smith not Corbyn. I didn't like Smith - to me he seemed rather oily and untrustworthy (but then, so do the majority of politicians elected to high office :dunno:), but at least he was from Ponty, and seemed more likely to win a general election for Labour than Corbyn, whom I still liked more. However, with homeless people increasing on the streets, and elderly people needing help, and many other issues, I started to feel that the most important thing was to get a government in power who wouldn't just hand-out tax cuts to their mates and stoke up xenophobia and fear in general to hide what they were doing. 

I wasn't inclined to blame Corbyn for the results of the Brexit referendum - whatever stupid piece of nepotism put Jack Straw's son in charge of the Remain campaign gets the overall prize. But the unclear position afterwards, and the hopeless way allegations of antisemitism were handled, and the increasing feeling that Corbyn was locked up in his inner circle and unable to engage with what was actually happening, pushed me further and further away.  I voted Lib Dem in the local elections this year. When Alastair Campbell got himself kicked out of the party, I decided I might as well go too - my money could be more usefully spent on a charity. I received a long and pompous copy-and-paste email from the head of my constituency association, which I didn't bother to reply to. And that was that. 

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Patience, Scot, it’s only been a day. A leadership challenge needs a fifth of the Labour parliamentary party to back it, my guess is that if Corbyn hasn’t set a date for his leaving in a month or so we’ll see movement among them to force him out.

It’s worth noting that Michael Howard remained Tory leader for six months after losing the 2005 election, so it’s not unprecedented for Corbyn to stay on for a short while.

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25 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Why is the wider Labour Party allowing the “Momentum Group” to continue to hold control when they just suffered the worst defeat they’ve had since 1983?

What leverage does this group now have to hold on to their control?

The Momentum movement has brought hundreds of thousands of new members to the Labour Party, so they effectively have a democratic lock on the party. What happens next - Momentum continuing to dominate proceedings or a move back to the centre - will be interesting to see.

Quote

 

It’s worth noting that Michael Howard remained Tory leader for six months after losing the 2005 election, so it’s not unprecedented for Corbyn to stay on for a short while.

 

I think that was a very different situation. Howard was parachuted in as a caretaker leader after Iain Duncan Smith's leadership collapsed into chaos and it was well-understood that a Conservative victory in 2005 was improbable, with the Tories not expected to win or even mount a serious challenge (the fact they actually did "as well as they did" - about the same as Labour yesterday - was a bit of a surprise), so him staying on for a further interim period was expected beforehand.

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So if BJ is now the PM for five years, does that mean there will be no parliamentary elections during that span or does it just mean he will still be PM even if his party lost an election before the five year window is up?

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17 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So if BJ is now the PM for five years, does that mean there will be no parliamentary elections during that span or does it just mean he will still be PM even if his party lost an election before the five year window is up?

No parliamentary elections during that span, unless (according to the Fixed Terms act) there is a two-thirds majority for an early election. I.e. only if Boris wants one.

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Piers Morgan’s latest column is a beauty. Apart from calling out Remoaners for the undemocratic whiners they are, and telling Hollywood celebs to but out of politics, he also points out that Corbyn is so radical he makes AOC look like a centrist. 

Why are there so many Marxists in the world these days? A discredited ideology that just won’t die.

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3 hours ago, karaddin said:

The PM is only PM due to being the leader of the party with enough seats to form government, there's no election for 5 years.

My understanding is the PM is the PM until he or she is replaced by someone else. So if this election had been a hung parliament Boris would still be PM until some group of parties would get a majority in Parliament to vote for a new PM. Only if Boris lost his seat would he not be PM the day after the GE if no party got an outright majority.

 

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Piers Morgan’s latest column is a beauty. Apart from calling out Remoaners for the undemocratic whiners they are, and telling Hollywood celebs to but out of politics, he also points out that Corbyn is so radical he makes AOC look like a centrist. 

Why are there so many Marxists in the world these days? A discredited ideology that just won’t die.

Because capitalism is failing the vast majority of humanity. While it works extremely well for a few it depends on exploitation of masses of people to benefit the few, which makes it long term unstable.

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Why are there so many fascists in the world? Surely that's the bigger concern here. And I'm not actually asking, just love the guy that believes in the ideology we fought a world war to defeat and was synonymous with evil is baffled by people that believe in an ideology based on helping people instead of killing them.

7 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

My understanding is the PM is the PM until he or she is replaced by someone else. So if this election had been a hung parliament Boris would still be PM until some group of parties would get a majority in Parliament to vote for a new PM. Only if Boris lost his seat would he not be PM the day after the GE if no party got an outright majority.

Yeah, I'm not 100% on the British approach, I was just going for a simplistic answer stating that its tied to parliament and the election for parliament, not a separate election.

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31 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

My understanding is the PM is the PM until he or she is replaced by someone else. So if this election had been a hung parliament Boris would still be PM until some group of parties would get a majority in Parliament to vote for a new PM. Only if Boris lost his seat would he not be PM the day after the GE if no party got an outright majority.

If Boris lost his seat, he'd still actually be PM until a replacement is formally appointed. The PM doesn't actually need to be an MP. They just need to command a majority of MPs, though convention requires them to be an MP.

(Alec Douglas-Home in 1963 was an interesting example. He was appointed PM while in the House of Lords, resigned his seat, and ran for the House of Commons in a by-election, all while remaining PM. Between his resignation from the Lords and his arrival in the Commons, the UK had a PM outside Parliament).

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4 hours ago, Jeor said:

No parliamentary elections during that span, unless (according to the Fixed Terms act) there is a two-thirds majority for an early election. I.e. only if Boris wants one.

The Tories are repealing the FTPA (thank Christ...), so the next election will be any time Boris wants, up until the end of 2024 (potentially early 2025 if they want to take things to the extreme).

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5 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

The Tories are repealing the FTPA (thank Christ...), so the next election will be any time Boris wants, up until the end of 2024 (potentially early 2025 if they want to take things to the extreme).

Ah ok, well that's one way to do it then. I take it a vote of no confidence is still also an appropriate way to force a new election, although that's more by convention than anything else, so not really reliable in this day and age.

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33 minutes ago, Jeor said:

Ah ok, well that's one way to do it then. I take it a vote of no confidence is still also an appropriate way to force a new election, although that's more by convention than anything else, so not really reliable in this day and age.

I believe a VONC is legally tight and not simple convention that can be defied on a whim, but the PM stays as PM until the people who passed the NC motion come up with a replacement. So a VONC is symbolic unless the majority can agree on a new PM. A VONC doesn't automatically oust the PM.

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Why are there so many fascists in the world? Surely that's the bigger concern here. And I'm not actually asking,

I know you're not asking, but the answer is the same as my answer to his question. Capitalism has failed the masses and people are gravitating towards alternatives, some are going kumbaya Marxist, others are going scorched earth fascist. 

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2 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I know you're not asking, but the answer is the same as my answer to his question. Capitalism has failed the masses and people are gravitating towards alternatives, some are going kumbaya Marxist, others are going scorched earth fascist. 

That definitely covers a lot of the increase. Some of them are just bigoted shits of course, but they were already fascists before the last few years. There's also the weird internet nerd/gamer/manosphere recruitment angle that seemed to start with a bizarre self radicalising for the lulz that quickly turned into the real thing. Some of them wind up there from falling through the cracks of society, ie being failed by capitalism as you say, but not all.

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