General British politics discussion thread

Is there no kind of standards commisioner, or watchdog, or anybody that can put an end to this absolute bollox?

I remember the first time I got a sense of his character. It was when he was running against Liz Truss for the leadership and they were in a TV debate. He got ridiculously prickly at the mildest bit of pushback from the host . Up until that point I only really knew him as the Chancellor who seemed popular for opening the financial spigots during Covid lockdown. This narkiness though seemed to show something else. An arrogance at being challenged. Likely someone who didn't like criticism. Maybe someone with a fragile ego. Possibly someone who had faced no real resistance in his career before.

After he became leader I tuned into the first PMQs. He had promised a new way of politics when campaigning to be leader. Instead though he immediately jumped straight into the Boris Johnson playbook of sneering comments about Starmer designed to placate the right-wing media. The sad thing about him is that that demographic never really saw him as one of their own no matter how often he repeated their inane culture war talking points.

He'll be no loss to British politics. He'll just be a mere footnote in history, saved from historical opprobrium by the two abominations that preceded him as PM.

For Starmer it was a bit of a knee-jerk. No doubt that people betting on themselves to win is rife.

Sunak doubles down and refuses to answer a question by Sam Coates as to wether he had informed Tory MP Craig Williams of the date of the GE.

Never thought I would hate listening to anyone more than Boris Johnson, once he started his shtick, but the robot Sunak is quickly becoming way worse than even Johnson. Here he is trying to deflect on whether he told Craig Williams the date of the election, even when told there is no reason not to tell as he would not prejudice any investigations as they are not going to a jury as this will not go to a jury trial, and the robot starts going…

Rightly or wrongly he may still have dug a massive hole for himself as by all accounts betting on yourself is rife across the political spectrum and now he has set the standard in my opinion far too high too quickly for what happens to those who do it.

The Economist is as much a publication about politics as it is about finance & economics. This government has lost all political credibility. Not only that but since the last election they scored the massive economic own-goal that was the Truss mini-budget. Only the most naked of partisan publications (Telegraph & Express) that have already lost all credibility could back them in this election.

I bet Nigel Farage is shocked, shocked to discover that there are racists in the Reform party.

Pride flag on the front of a police car it seemed to upset him.

Was a serious question. Thanks for taking the time to answer it.

On UK social media, it's the party of choice for the racists and far right types : Farage knows full well who his supporters and voting base are.

Quoting a Reform candidate, do you have the court details?

The event happened in early April, and was in court the same week. It's reported here, though that report (in the Jewish Chronicle) doesn't characterise the demonstrators as "anti-Israel", but as "pro-Palestine", a distinction likely to escape the notice of a Reform candidate. While the report does quote someone as saying that Lady Starmer was "effectively forced out of her own home", in fact she wasn't in the home at the time, and the protesters didn't communicate or engage with her in any way — there's nothing to suggest that they even recognised her when she turned up. The protest was non-violent. The specific demand was that Starmer should express support for an embargo on arms exports to either side in the conflict.

As the report - which Lloyd-Jones doesn't appear to have read - makes clear, the protesters were arrested, charged, tried and convicted. This hardly bears out the hyperventilating that "Britain is broken".

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