General British politics discussion thread

Really sorry to be pedantic but bugbear is one word.

:pac:

Sad for the workers of NI. Their stand today probably won't even register with 99% in London.

Do they actually think the election being a few months away rather than now wil change anything.

They all know the party is going to lose the next election, and badly. But at least some of them hope to be re-elected themselves. If they vote against the government now, that means they lose the whip and, if it doesn't get restored, that's a bar to standing as a Tory candidate at the next election. Few, if any, of them would have any chance of being re-elected as independents.

Early on in a Parliament, losing the whip is not such a problem; people who lose the whip for rebellion have a reasonable chance of having it restored to them after a year or so of grovelling. At this time in the cycle, it would be a bigger issue. They'd be banking on their rebellion leading to a heave against Sunak, a new leader more in sympathy with them, and an early restoration of the whip, because if Sunak survived the heave he would certainly not be minded to smooth the way back for them.

Rachel Reeves hoping to woo those voters on over £100,000 a year with the aspiration of Tax Cuts and make Labour the party of Wealth Creation. Might encourage a few more rich donors as well.

Edit:

Reeves: "The Labour Party is now the party of wealth creation in British politics and I want us to be ready to work together from day one on rebuilding our country"

"....my instinct is to have lower taxes", asked if she agreed that she wanted lower taxes on workers “across the spectrum”, including those earning above £100,000, the shadow chancellor responded: “Yes”.

Is what she said, seems like an aspiration to me, but if people think that's "Red Tory" then that's up to them.

With regards to it being a 'proposal' 'commitment' 'hope' 'hint' etc. Labour don't put forward concrete anything, so that's all we have to go on.

Pass the salt. This is the torygraph..

Boris backing his old chum Trump to end the war in Ukraine by.... (checks notes).... sticking it to Putin??

He also had this zinger about the prospect of a Trump victory - “In the cocktail parties of Davos, I am told, the global wokerati have been trembling so violently that you could hear the ice tinkling in their negronis,”. That would be the Davos that he has repeatedly attended as a minister and PM?

£1m a year he's getting for this guff...they should be taxing the hell out of that.

Labour Friends of Israel is a long-established group within the parliamentary Labour Party, and it has a fairly wide membership. Generally 20-25% of the parliamentary Labour Party are associated with LFI; a higher proportion of shadow cabinet members. It's not just a parliamentary group; ordinary members of the Labour Party can affiliate to it, and it has local branches.

In the past it tended to foster links between the UK Labour Party and the Israeli Labor Party, especially when the ILP was the dominant party in Israeli politics. But that hasn't been the case for a long time now and, with the decline of the ILP, LFI has put more focus on the bilateral UK/Israel relationship, and on UK foreign policy with respect to Israel.

It's not an uncritical supporter of Israel; it favours a two-state solution to the Palestinian question and at least some members call for recognition of a Palestinian state, and this has led the present Israeli government to regard it as somewhat hostile.

There's a corresponding organisation on the other side of British politics; the Conservative Friends of Israel. It claims 60-80% of Tory MPs are members. Some commentators regard it as more unquestioning in its support of Israeli policy than LFI is.

I listened to that interview this morning and to say it was appalling is putting it mildly, she really is clueless, I bet Khan couldn't believe his luck when she was announced as the Tory pick.