General British politics discussion thread

serfboard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120000531#Comment_120000531

But it's not like only the membership gets to choose - they only get to choose from the remaining candidates chosen after parliamentary party selection. If you are going to attribute blame, make sure to include those MPs who voted for her too!

Ahwell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120000854#Comment_120000854

Oh I do, all 113 of them, but this was the first time the membership didn't vote for the MPs first choice. The same would probably have happened with Sunak v Johnson.

ancapailldorcha

Jesus, they're getting closer and closer to attacking the one sacred cow that exists in this country.

https://twitter.com/DmitryOpines/status/1603387445080358916

Isabel Oakeshott, a woman who likely hasn't worked a single day in her life was going on about how a lot of nurses just stand around on tea breaks. The NHS occupies this bizarre, privileged space where it's never to be either criticised or adapted to the challenges it faces and it holds the same position with Britons regardless of their ethnicity or culture. In a country this individualistic, it's truly an anachronism.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120000397#Comment_120000397

Howard was unopposed, so there was no membership ballot. Sunak was similarly unopposed. So, in the end, was May.

But they were all chosen under a system in which any opposition would have resulted in a membership ballot, and this obviously effects who will offer themselves or what chance they might have. Even if unopposed, they are all the product of a system in which the ultimate choice lay with party members.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120000911#Comment_120000911

MPs do have a signficant role (and responsiblity). But, knowing that the final choice rests with members, MPs are incentivised to vote, not for the candidate they think will be the best leader, but the candidate they think will be the best leader who can win a membership vote, which is not the same thing.

serfboard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120002091#Comment_120002091

I don't agree with your argument about MPs voting for someone who can win a membership vote - if that was the case then, in the contest that Truss won, they should have voted for Penny Mordaunt, who apparently was hugely popular with the membership.

Mordaunt made it all the way to the fifth ballot, but was beaten by Truss by the votes of eight MPs. (Sunak 137, Truss 113 and Mordaunt 105). And the MPs knew, or should have known, that Sunak was not that popular with the membership, and applying your logic, they should not have voted for him - but they did.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120001212#Comment_120001212

I'm laughing at the idea of them trying to portray nurses, paramedics and train drivers as "enemies of the ordinary people". All of the strikers are ordinary people. You'd wonder when the penny is going to drop that the Tory Party, the right wing press and their assorted billionaire and millionaire pals are the real enemies of the people.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004055#Comment_120004055

Seems to be dropping when we look at the polls. They've been othering people relentlessly since the referendum. It's all they know how to do at this point. They've done it to human rights lawyers, asylum seekers, judges, the unemployed, the working classes, Labour, the SNP and virtually everyone else.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004074#Comment_120004074

These are certainly challenging times for the Mail, Express and Telegraph and the right wing grifters who regularly appear on TV. The UK appears to be going to hell in a handcart and yet the only people they aren't blaming are the Tory Party and their many media and millionaire pals.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003815#Comment_120003815

The point is that MPs have to take into account whether the candidates that appeal to them can win a membership vote. There is no point in voting for your dream leader if you expect that he will be beaten in a membership ballot — rationally, you are better off voting for the barely-acceptable leader who can defeat the wholly unacceptable leader.

Even if there is, at the end of the process, no membership ballot — as was the case when May was chosen, for example — MPs who are voting in the earlier rounds cannot know that there will be no membership ballot, so — if they are not to waste their votes — they have to vote for candidates who they think can win a membership ballot.

Which means that Tory leadership candidates are effectively screened on the basis of what MPs think will be acceptable to the — wildly unrepresentative — Tory party rank-and-file membership. However attractive a candidate may by as regards the talents and aptitudes required to be a good Prime Minister, if he cannot appeal to the largely male, largely white, largely wealthy, largely Southern, largely Brexit-supporting Tory membership he is very unlikely to win the support of MPs.

Sam Russell

Remember, the Tory Party went with the thirteenth Earl of Home to be PM in 1963 when he was not even a member of the HoC.

How out of touch were they then compared to now?

cml387

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120013645#Comment_120013645

In fact Sir Alec turned out not to be as bad a PM as one might have imagined. Only lost narrrowly in 1964 to super slick Harold Wilson, and subsequently served as foreign secretary in Heath's government. They turned to Home because they didn't want Rab Butler (for various reasons).

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120014660#Comment_120014660

Well it is the Tories after all. You can't expect them to promote a butler over a lord.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120014939#Comment_120014939

He was an Earl, not just a Lord, but a thirteenth Earl type of Lord. Not many of them about.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120014660#Comment_120014660

In fairness Home (if I remember correctly) did ironically reform some of the procedures they used for selecting leaders.

rock22

And this crowd want to give the membership even more say

"Cruddas led a campaign over the summer to have Johnson reinstated as a leadership candidate. He is now funding the newly-formed Conservative Democratic Organisation, which aims to give members more power over MP selections and leadership elections. He said that thousands of members were already involved and that he would use his “deep pockets” to ensure the party changed course."

From the Observer last Sunday

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/17/tories-at-risk-from-rightwing-insurgency-warns-donor-lord-cruddas

The article makes for depressing reading. I think Starmer is on a hiding to nothing, trying to appease red wall voters who support these extremes. It appears, for some, that nothing short of mobilising the gunboats to deal with refugee boats crossing the channel will do.

serfboard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120016952#Comment_120016952

I'd have a different read of that article - he's basically arguing that Reform are going to split the right-wing vote, and I can't say that I disagree with him on that. Good news for the Labour party if that's the case.

In order to counter that, he's arguing that the Tories should become even more right wing than they are now - as if, for instance, describing people arriving in dinghies as an "invasion" isn't right-wing enough!

The party has suffered a "drag to the left" under Sunak. What a load of nonsense.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120018922#Comment_120018922

Sunak is disliked and distrusted for a variety of reasons. They see him as an 'outsider' and 'global elitist' and not a fellow right wing English nationalist. His support for Brexit was centred around him genuinely believing in global trade deal opportunities - the average Tory voter and Brexiteer couldn't give a toss about this (despite paying lip service to it) and wanted instead to halt immigration from the EU and to stop refugees coming.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120018922#Comment_120018922

Sounds much like Goldsmith's Referendum Party in 1997. Ex-Conservatives who were throwing the toys out of the pram, and most likley would not have voted otherwise.

L1011

The more times they do a "we're being split on the hard right, we need to go harder right" the more chance that a major split on the centre right happens. Ed Davey's Lib Dems are not the home for those voters, but someone else could be.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120021185#Comment_120021185

The problem then is that you have yet another split in the non-Tory centre and leftwards voting demographic. The Tories have had the luxury of unity for too long. So long in fact that their endless bloviating about foreigners is catching up with them in the form of a challenger from the right who won't beat them but might split their vote sufficiently to enable a Labour win.

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119997266#Comment_119997266

Isn't that just odd...a whole country next door just sort of ..absent

You'd expect either negative or positive bias...but instead we are like some sort of blind spot in the English education system

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120022352#Comment_120022352

Same applies to the weather forcastes. We only appear as a blank outline.

FraserburghFreddie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120022808#Comment_120022808

I remember Oliver Cromwell in the school curriculum but we never knew anything about any other wars in Ireland(independence or civil) which is pretty poor as Scotland and Wales featured heavily.

Not sure about the weather forecast thing though Sam,why show the weather of a foreign country?

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120023555#Comment_120023555

Weather is not limited by national boundaries. Cyclones move across continents and it is handy to depict them wherever they are - even on a foreign country. Ch4 and Sky used to include Ireland.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120022352#Comment_120022352

All of the colonies are a blindspot. They might teach that the empire ruled a third of the world but not too keen to say how it happened or was maintained.

Talk a lot more about the wars with no territory gain like against France or Germany which I'm sure helps ferment that victim complex the Brexiters have.

FraserburghFreddie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120023609#Comment_120023609

Fair comment,especially with the increase in hurricanes coming off the Atlantic in the last few decades.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120023612#Comment_120023612

Having moved to London I always get a laugh when I point out that UK banknotes are unsuitable for vegans and that this is a case of the government not learning anything from the 1857 mutiny. Otherwise yes I am unusual in that my school actually mentioned things like Amritsar..

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120021223#Comment_120021223

Brexit UK seems way too divided to be split on simple binary lines. If they had PR, you'd probably have various shades of right wing parties in the Commons - at least one hard right one and perhaps a far / extreme right one as well, alongside a centre right one (ditto with the left wing vote also).

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120023987#Comment_120023987

Depends on the PR system. A multi-seat STV system like ours would tend to see parties with 5% or more support (based on No. 1 votes) would get proportional representation. Smaller than 5%, only regional or local parties would win seats.

If they adopted the ludicrous system they used for the EU elections, then the party list system gets the party chief and accolades in, but it is not really democratic because the voter cannot select the candidates - just like FPTP. Hardly much of an improvement.

In STV, success tends to solidify the vote and leads to further success. So parties would tend to hold their ground by slowly moving left or right depending on the success of the individual candidates and their quality and leadership.

FraserburghFreddie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120023966#Comment_120023966

I'm slightly perturbed as the accusation of the British harping back to days of empire is frequently leveled on a number of boards threads.

It's also worth pointing out India is a proud member of the commonwealth,obviously not bearing grudges for millennia.

Apparently the company manufacturing the none vegan bank note material supplies 23 other countries.