General British politics discussion thread

I would have thought people are tired of parties playing politics. The SNP is good at that, making other parties look bad by proposing amendments that they know will put the others in difficult positions, but that will not actually make a difference in people's lives. We saw this with the Gaza vote as well, it was done not to make people's lives better in Gaza but to embarrass Starmer and Labour. A vote that would not compel the government to do anything nor force Israel to stop killing people in Gaza, but it would make Labour look bad and sow division within the party.

The jokes on the SNP though, only 9 MP's and I think the fallout from the scandal will still run and run. They would be better off to start making differences in people's lives and propose amendments that have a hope of achieving change instead of grandstanding for viral moments and tweets that will not achieve anything.

The left of Labour would be better served as well to choose their battles. If Labour does away with the policy in a few months time they will just look silly and will miss the conference as a result. But at least non-member Owen Jones can make a video about it and how absolutely terrible Labour is in wanting children to be poor and they are just Tory-lites.

I remember when Labour member Femi was kicked out of the party and the Corbyn fans were telling him that as a Labour member he should have known he could not say he voted for another party or advocate others do it as well. But now Labour MP's are okay to vote for an opposition amendment and should face no consequence for that? When they ran on the pledge to be fiscally responsible and knowing the mess they are in?

It made me think back on Iain Duncan Smith winning his seat because Faiza Shaheen ran as an independent and got 12K votes, same as the Labour candidate. IDS got 17K votes and is back as an MP and Shaheen and her fans had the gall to blame Labour for him winning his seat. I agree, the way she was treated was abysmal but to not take any responsibility for you running and taking votes from the Labour candidate and having IDS as an MP is just as abysmal. I guess the left just needs to always have someone else to blame for their failures and will never take responsibility when their own actions are the reasons for why things don't always work out.

Parliamentary democracy in the UK is about the government putting prospective bills to parliament and it is perfectly legitimate for MPs to propose amendments to those bills. This has happened hundreds of thousands of times since that democracy was created. It is also perfectly legitimate to oppose those amendments but it is not perfectly legitimate to claim you will do one thing and then do the opposite which is exactly what my MP (Michael Shanks) did.

The rest of your post is a whinge against certain groups or individuals

In an utter surprise to no-one, Labour are about to announce there is a black hole of about £20bn when calculating using their (Tory) fiscal rules. They knew this before the election but kept saying 'no there was no black hole therefore there would be no cuts or tax rises after the election'

The point is they knew this before the election but chose to say otherwise

They didn't know. They suspected; they would have had a very good idea, but they didn't know. The Tories knew. I didn't hear them saying they would have to increase taxes. Instead, their main point of attack was that Labour would raise taxes.

A 20bn hole left by a party that ran on fiscal competence and years of austerity is not Labour's fault nor an excuse. It will take Labour years to try to fix the mess that the Tories have left behind, which means that many of the things Labour would like to do they can't as the resources aren't there.

They did know but chose to play 'party politics' before the election

The elephant in the room is Brexit

Won't fix it or can't fix it? There is no magic solution to the problems that 14 years of Troy mismanagement have landed the country in.

The 20bn is based on current spending. It doesn't factor in new spending like new hospitals, infrastructure, education, or investments in green energy.

20bn just to keep the UK in the state it currently is.

Both Labour and the Conservatives were emphatically told that their plans did not hold up to scrutiny and the only way to deal with it whilst keeping the same fiscal rules was a. tax rises or b. spending cuts or c. a combination of both. The Tories were an irrelevance as there was no circumstance that they would form the next UK government. Labour brushed this aside and stated people including the IFS were misinformed and scaremongering

What do you mean "manage to convince".

It is down to the Tories.

some, but there are much larger factors in play, such as Covid and Ukraine that are out of the UK governments hands, but as I said, they have managed to convince people otherwise.

They may have exacerbated the problems but they did not cause them. The problems were in the UK economy before Covid hit and then Putin invaded Ukraine as they had sluggish growth and the decisions on Brexit meant they were hamstringing themselves without the additional challenges.

Trying to point out Covid and Ukraine as reasons for why they are in their current mess seems like trying to shift the blame.

I finished Rory Stewart's latest book during the week. The final chapters are about the 2019 leadership campaign where he ran as a candidate. He talks about his dismay that he was the only one of the final candidates who talked how impossible what Boris Johnson was proposing at the time was: namely that the UK could leave the EU prior to the end of October 2019, without a deal if necessary, that they wouldn't need to prorogue parliament to do so and they could do all that without affecting the border in Ireland. He knew that people like Savid Javit and Jeremy Hunt knew it was nonsense but they were afraid to go against the popular opinion within the ranks of the party membership (and the journalists writing for the papers that they read).

It looks like Tom Tugenhat is simply following that well worn path of political cowardice.