UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[JimJamUK]

Also Humza Yousaf:
https://twitter.com/TheScotsman/status/1780668002490278329

I see the Scottish Greens are doing a great job getting the Scottish government to actually do stuff on climate change.

[Torrain]

Peter Murrell has been charged with criminal offences relating to embezzlement of SNP party funds in Operation Branchform:

[darklordoftech]

I think this is a pretty natural fissure for liberal parties. "Ban smoking" is a pretty archetypical social liberal policy as a social good while "don't ban smoking" is pretty a solidly classical liberal-to-libertarian position on liberty grounds, so I'd expect a typical liberal party that contains both tendencies to have internal debate.

If you're the type of "liberal" who supports something like this, why would you be a Lib Dem rather than a Labour MP?

[CumbrianLefty]

Well, there is and always has been such a thing as social liberalism.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Elements in the Liberal Party of old were once strongly in favour of the prohibition of alcohol. There are strong arguments for and against severe restrictions on tobacco sales - now that we know what we know, now that consumption is doing to a relatively small minority etc - both based in the liberal political tradition.

[CumbrianLefty]

Meanwhile, our PM was genuinely scraping beyond the bottom of the barrel yesterday - scaring sick and disabled people to get a few headlines in the captive right wing press, when at this point nothing he says on the topic is actually going to come into effect before the GE anyway.

[JimJamUK]

Meanwhile, our PM was genuinely scraping beyond the bottom of the barrel yesterday - scaring sick and disabled people to get a few headlines in the captive right wing press, when at this point nothing he says on the topic is actually going to come into effect before the GE anyway.

A lot of what he said could form the starting point of sensible changes, but given it will inevitably end up as a savings exercise it wouldn’t in practice. The discussion by Sunak/the media that PIP needs more focus on adaptations/treatment rather than cash ignores the fact that this support ‘should’ already be provided by the NHS and Adult Social Care, and that PIP is de facto an income replacement benefit for disabled people who cannot work (and cannot live a decent life on ESA/Universal Credit alone).

[Blair]

Have I become a massive boomer, or am I right to be really surprised at the ultra online reaction around Labour's very boring announcement on shop thefts?

I really don't understand why a lot of people seem to insist that all those stealing are desperate mothers feeding their children? The vast majority of shop in my experience is either petty crime, or organised crime; or a combination of both!

The thefts I have witnessed have tended to be off large amounts of meat, or alcohol & there's equally a much higher amount of violence than people seem to think in these crimes.

 

[CumbrianLefty]

I'm so (not) in the loop that this has almost totally passed me by

Still haven't seen whatever the supposedly so "offensive" thing was.

(though maybe you could have woken up the TIGMOO thread for this, its what it is there for after all)

[Blair]

On another aside I was recently doing some research (a fun sunday!) which involved reading some autobiogs of famous stage & TV actors and quite surprised me how many were Conservatives; I wondered if this was just an anti-tax thing from the 60s, or if there was some reason?

It's up there with the relative shock you get when you tell people that, no before the 1980s, a lot of gay men especially in London supported the Conservatives!

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

Certainly I'm probably leagues away from Rory on most actual policy, but if all Conservatives were this grounded and 'considered', especially compared to certain strains in my own country, the world would be a much better place.

Good conversation. Didn't expect to see him /w Alex but I'm glad it happened.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On another aside I was recently doing some research (a fun sunday!) which involved reading some autobiogs of famous stage & TV actors and quite surprised me how many were Conservatives; I wondered if this was just an anti-tax thing from the 60s, or if there was some reason?

Social background in some cases (why would a man like Rex Harrison, whose father was a Lancashire cotton broker back when that meant something, not have been a Conservative?), tax issues in quite a few cases (Peter Sellers being the obvious one), and in the case of those who came up through Variety something older and more tribal: the old Liberals never liked disreputable entertainment, and the Labour Party was as much (after a certain point - the populist turn of Jeremy Thorpe I suppose - more) of an heir to all that than what was left of the Liberal Party. Against that, of course, there were always actors with normal Labour and Liberal opinions and a certain group on the harder Left. There's also the curious fact that some well-known actors of the period who one might have assumed were Conservatives were not: Alec Guinness for instance.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Incidentally, there are signs that Guinness may have been One Of Us, so to speak: his (delightful) published diaries indicate that he followed elections quite seriously, even local elections, and seemingly for their own sake.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Welcome to Rwanda

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6Dztz7tKXS/

I guess it's better than Bradford.

[CumbrianLefty]

Ho ho very satirical.

Sunak now says he expects the first flights there in "10 to 12 weeks", but there is surely scope for the timetable to slip further. And even optimistically that puts it into early July.

[Storr]

"A British parliamentary researcher has been charged with spying for China alongside another man.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced Monday that Christopher Cash — who was employed as a researcher by Conservative foreign affairs committee chair Alicia Kearns — has been charged with “providing prejudicial information to a foreign state, China,” alongside another man, Christopher Berry."

"“Christopher Berry, 32, and Christopher Cash, 29, will be charged with providing prejudicial information to a foreign state, China, and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday, 26 April.”

"Cash was arrested in March last year and said he was “completely innocent” in a statement released by his lawyers when the arrest became public in September."

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-conservative-party-researcher-spy-china-christopher-berry-christopher-cash/

[Pericles]

Ho ho very satirical.

Sunak now says he expects the first flights there in "10 to 12 weeks", but there is surely scope for the timetable to slip further. And even optimistically that puts it into early July.

I guess he's going long with the election timing then.

[CumbrianLefty]

Despite the continuing speculation otherwise, that remains the default and likeliest scenario.

[Torrain]

Humza Yousaf has called a rare emergency cabinet meeting - which comes ahead of First Minister’s Questions at lunchtime…

Edit: per STV, the SNP are ending the coalition agreement with the Greens.

Going to be a tough day for Yousaf, who spent yesterday warmly defending the deal, and telling reporters that SNP members didn’t need or want a vote on the deal. Yousaf presented himself as the only candidate who’d maintain the coalition during the leadership election, so he’s got a lot of backtracking to do…

This was only Tuesday:
https://twitter.com/ginadavidsonlbc/status/1782785024737124619

[Torrain]

To be clear - if the SNP and Green membership have turned against the deal, this is the only thing Yousaf could do. The SNP membership voting the deal down would be tantamount to a vote of no-confidence in Yousaf, certainly in the media’s eyes.

He kinda has to jump before he’s pushed. But it’s going to make him look weak, and more than a tad foolish, to use his own words from last year:

If you don't, you end up not just in a minority government, but I have to say one of the most toxic parliaments I've ever been in, in terms of, I'm afraid, the opposition who will not look to co-operate with the SNP very often, even if there's a good reason to do so.

I can't imagine being the new leader of the SNP and the first thing I do is destabilise the government by going into a minority government and having to rely on Douglas Ross and Anas Sarwar to pass Bills.

[EastAnglianLefty]

What would have been the mechanism for the SNP membership to vote? They didn't have a vote on the initial agreement and Yousaf was opposed to them having a vote now.

If the Green membership had rejected the agreement that would certainly have hurt Yousaf, but I'm not convinced that publicly burning his bridges with the Greens having just been defending them is a better option, particularly as it makes him look dependent on the right of his party. He had a difficult hand but this looks like a poor way to play it.

[Torrain]

That's fair. The optics are awful either way, and Yousaf flip-flopping makes a mockery of his leadership campaign. But at least by taking the initiative, he can avoid the Greens taking the moral highground, as well as a month of uncertainty in the run-up to their late-May EGM, or letting the anti-coalition forces in his own party strengthen - which could further imperil his leadership.

Inevitably, the Scottish Tories have called a vote of no-confidence in the First Minister.

The Greens have been pretty frosty to him today - Lorna Slater (co-leader) has described him as "caving to reactionary forces within the SNP", acting in a "weak and hopeless manner", "selling out future generations", and saying Yousaf can "no longer be trusted".

I imagine they'll cave and abstain rather than vote to remove him (as presumably will Alba's Ash Regan, rather than risk an election), but there is a bit of political theatre ahead.

[YL]

If the Greens abstain then the motion fails. But if they, Labour and the Lib Dems vote for no confidence and Regan abstains, it would pass 64-63. So how cross the Greens are could be important…

[Torrain]

If the Greens abstain then the motion fails. But if they, Labour and the Lib Dems vote for no confidence and Regan abstains, it would pass 64-63. So how cross the Greens are could be important…

Per the Scotsman:

• Labour and the Lib Dems have said they’ll vote Yousaf down.
• Regan has written a personal letter (of demands) to Yousaf, and has said she’ll vote depending on how Yousaf responds.
• Greens are meeting this afternoon to decide how they’ll vote.

After the Lorna Slater confidence vote, and some defection rumours, I may have set up a Fergus Ewing alert, but I highly doubt even he’s willing to go *that* kamikaze.

[afleitch]

Effectively he chose to take control of a Green 'controlling vote' which would likely have seen the agreement end. The core media narrative is entirely out of his control. It also makes sense, to some extent, to do this prior to the GE campaign.

While it makes getting to May 2026 legislatively tougher, any triggered earlier election would only fill the gap to May 2026 anyway.

On that point there has been a great deal of disgruntlement over Labour and the Lib Dems voting in favour of the big media circus legislation; the GRA, Hate Crime bill then memory holing it and leaving the government to hang. There's more bills of that nature in the pipeline, so it might help somewhat that there's no formal coalition and more deliberate cross party legislation.