UK General Discussion: Rishecession

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I'm sure many people who are only light followers of politics assume/assumed that Lucas is the leader of the Green Party. It is or was a similar case with Farage and UKIP (and its various other names).

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I don’t know what to say…

https://twitter.com/timesradio/status/1666706260744388610?s=61&t=I1DE8_cg7gm...

In fairness, there are people who avoid Greggs because it is (in their minds) full of Working-Class Scum™️. Almost all such people happen to reside in the political journalism bubble. Not that that has anything to do with Sebastian Payne.

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Carol Vorderman has seemingly become one of the most vocal anti-Tory celebrities. Interestingly, she was strongly anti-Labour/right-wing in general in the run-up to the 2010 election (giving a rather embarrassing performance on Question Time in the process). All of this makes one suspect that if she supports a football club, then it is Manchester City.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg has been knighted.

Patel a Dame, Ben Houchen and Shaun Bailey to the Lords.

Quite a list even by the standards of these things.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1162124/Resignation_Honours_2023.pdf…

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On the same day as his 'friend' Nadine Dorries.  Lol.

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Nicola Sturgeon has been arrested.

Absolutely fantastic.

I'll refrain from using a line of a late and great football commentator ("This is getting better and better and better"...or perhaps - "They think it's all over...it is now").

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Wild that in the last 72 hours, we've seen key, totemic figures in the Greens, Conservatives and SNP all either announce the end of their political careers, or have them effectively neutralised.

Starting to assume there's a monkey's paw hidden away in Starmer's desk drawer. Either that - or being a party leader in the 2019 election is actively hazardous to your fate. In which case, someone should warn Siân Berry.

Swinson's fate was short and merciful, in that it took place on the night itself.

[TheTide]

Wild that in the last 72 hours, we've seen key, totemic figures in the Greens, Conservatives and SNP all either announce the end of their political careers, or have them effectively neutralised.

Starting to assume there's a monkey's paw hidden away in Starmer's desk drawer. Either that - or being a party leader in the 2019 election is actively hazardous to your fate. In which case, someone should warn Siân Berry.

Swinson's fate was short and merciful, in that it took place on the night itself.

How is Swinson faring now? What is life like post-politics for her?

She has moved into academia (as I thought before I looked it up).

The Lib Dems really should have stuck with Cable (or convinced him to stay on) in 2019 or elected Davey rather than her. They would have almost certainly have picked off a few more (ugh) 'Blue Wall' seats.

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45% of people think the proposed 90 day suspension would not have gone far enough. For all the talk about Boris being the British Trump, the reality is you cannot escape the British publics love of law and order and hate of politicians!

https://twitter.com/yougov/status/1669346121179889665?s=61&t=I1DE8_cg7gmZrch...

The hatred of politicians (or cynical views towards politics in general) is the key point. Even someone as relatively uncontroversial and bland as Joe Biden seems to have around a fifth of the population that loves him (as opposed to merely approving of him) and of course Trump seems to have up to a third. The hatred of them appears to be more based on them being on the 'wrong side' rather than on a general view of them being part of a rotten political culture (the unpopularity of Johnson is mostly based on him being seen as a particularly good example of this).

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The very funny context for those unaware is that Ewing is the son of Winnie Ewing- one of the most high profile SNP figures in the 70s who really started the first wave of panic among Labour about Scotland.

After she lost in '79 iirc it basically caused a nasty bout of SNP infighting which led to the strange (even by Labour standards) internal culture- a sign of that was that in 1990 Alex Salmond (yes him!) was in a leadership race against Winnie Erwing. Salmond won and was then replaced in 2000 by someone who would remain as Deputy leader of the SNP until this year!

In 1990 Winnie Ewing was no longer an MP (though still a MEP) It was Margaret Ewing, her daughter in law, who Salmond defeated - IIRC it was seen as a bit of a surprise result at the time.

The 1990 leadership election had similar campaign style, membership engagement and ideological factions as this years. It even had the same factional figures such as Neil and Sillars heavily briefing against Salmond.

With Humza, interestingly being 'the Salmond' (and note Salmond has not been particularly critical of him) as the more left wing, member engaging candidate.

It's really striking how much the conservative, rural, "little Scotland" wing of the SNP revolves around the Ewing family. Kate Forbes was a significant departure in that sense.

By ghoulish coincidence, Winnie Ewing has died (at the age of 93).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65988094

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I'm surprised he (Sunak) allowed that to be taken. He's clearly quite insecure about his height - note this picture (taken just after the 1922 Committee confirmed him as the leader) and the camera angle.

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The timing shows, once again, that he's a useless politician. See also when he resigned and then lost his seat in a by-election and his joke of a Mayoral campaign.

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There are a lot of reasons to be critical of Zac Goldsmith, but the line about Sunak's lack of interest in environmental issues is spot on.

He's an odd character. Originally seen as a fresh, liberal face of conservatism (despite sharing his father's views on the EU) he then ran a baiting campaign for London Mayor. Always been an environmentalist. One of Johnson's most staunch allies. Lacking in charisma and personality despite being telegenic and articulate (in this sense he reminds me of the current Heir to the Throne, who also has an eccentric father as it happens).

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It is funny how different people decide at different ages that they've had enough of politics. She's south of 30, but look at who the two main candidates are likely to be in the next U.S. presidential election.

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I assume the moderators are grateful that a certain other subject isn't being discussed. Pretty sure the name will be known officially soon anyway.

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Huw Edwards has been named by his wife, saying that he has been suffering from mental health issues. Both the Met and the BBC have ended their investigations.

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Some people are going to be in very big trouble.

Oh a certain British institution has sealed it's fate. And it's not the Beeb.

The BBC itself doesn't come out of this well for following the lead of the said rag in its reporting of this.

The mother of the initial person and Jeremy Vine haven't come across completely well either.

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The issue isn't so much regulatory changes (which are fairly likely anyway and, for whatever it's worth, relations with The Sun are really very cold: Starmer pressed the 'go' button on the prosecution of the present CEO of News UK when he was DPP and she only got off by throwing one of her co-defendants under the bus in the most spectacular manner imaginable: I wouldn't read much into the odd staffer-written piece with the by-lines of Shadow Cabinet members attached)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/09/rupert-murdoch-keir-starmer-labour-party-power-no-10

Sorry but I just don't think Starmer will be the knight of the realm valiantly tackling the ills of the British politico-mediatic elite. All the indications are he will run a steady ship but will not actually tackle the underlying issues to make the political culture in the UK a healthier one. House of lords reform, wrestling the press from oligarchs, getting rid of tax havens, some form of more proportional representation...all of these are actually net benefits for rank and file Labour members, but the paranoia about wanting to please the select few and not having armageddon headlines on the second day in office is too strong a force for him to actually act.

How would proportional representation benefit Labour Party members?

Let their votes actually count towards the composition of parliament for one?

*I suspect that even during periods of labour government, labor members dispraporinately live in conservative/non-swing seats.

The Labour membership makes up less than 2% of the electorate.

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I thought AV is the system used in Australia which lost a referendum here in 2011?

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And - to respond to another post - would Blair have done the same in this situation prior to 1997? The answer is of course - and totally obviously - YES, and probably then some. He was incredibly cautious prior to that election, to the frustration of many just as with SKS now.

He wrote (well, had an aide write: it was his by-line though) a rather silly piece in The Sun about how Labour would 'slay the Euro dragons' or something during the election campaign, which caused the then-editor of The Independent Andrew Marr (who, back in those days, was firmly on the centre-left and quite liberal) to hit the roof. And this man was, once in office, the most pro-EEC/EU Prime Minister we've ever really had.

What is he (Marr) now?

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It has had by far the steepest drop in quality of any of the 'broadsheet' papers. It used to prize itself on its extremely high standards (e.g. Caradog Prichard was a sub-editor during the postwar period!) and this was a major sales-point even for people who disagreed with its politics. Under Conrad Black's ownership its editorial line shifted hard to the Right(though it was always a Conservative paper, of course), but the quality of its news coverage and analysis remained very high, while its sports coverage was widely admired and the features were decent as well. But after the Barclay Brothers bought it... oh dear.

There's a scene in the film The Beach (2000) where a character requests a copy of the paper. There is an initial awkward pause, before he clarifies that he wants it "for the sport".

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Kinda wild how, in that period between Blair’s first victory, and Michael Howard wrestling control from IDS, that they seem to have been changing the Shadow Chancellor and Home Sec once a year on average.

If there’s a reason for Hague holding 5 serious reshuffles in 4 years, beyond flailing in panic at the dire polling, and repeatedly rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, I’d be curious to hear what was going down.

The line up for the 2001 election in retrospect looks like some sort of Spectator wishlist. Widdecombe at the Home Office? IDS at the MOD? It just feels… bizarre.

But then, if Hague could be convinced to do the whole log flume thing (for the uninitiated - google it, it’s worth it), maybe he just had awful advisors, and untested instincts.

Theresa May became Shadow Education and Employment Secretary in 1999, just two years after she had been elected to the Commons. At the time I think it was pretty unusual for someone with so little parliamentary experience to rise to a major frontbench position in either of the major parties. It's become more common in recent years.

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The Telegraph which is essentially now the country gent equivalent of "Radio Milles Collines" is calling for open vandalism over ULEZ.

ULEZ is the trans panic in a microcosm. An issue that riles up a certain, usually old and predominantly white demographic who have both free time and a penchant for being online which overlaps with most British establishment journalists, elevated into an issue of concern with column inches in every paper every day, but in reality isn't an issue of concern and doesn't poll in line with it's inflated importance.

And like the trans panic is given a veneer of respectability as it's not really red top fodder either.

That eventually becomes a monomania that collapses into adjacent conspiratorial thinking.

I'm pretty sure those who are 'riled up' with the opposing view/s on these kinds of matters are also predominantly white, mostly because this is an 80%+ white country.

This reminds me of a post I saw recently about the Tory Party being racist because the overwhelming majority of its MPs are white. Well, it could be argued that the Tory Party may be racist, but not because of that.

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So, over the past week or so, this country has seen:

- Its air traffic control system break down
- Various schools being forced to close due to being on the brink of literal collapse
- Its second largest city declaring itself bankrupt

All is well and good.

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British stereotypes about New Zealand still reflect how the country was before Rogernomics (and, no, we didn't notice that it was in a structural economic crisis either) and if people are away of that whole period, the tendency is to assume that our fellow post-socialist state had a Thatcher-to-Blair experience like we did, but perhaps a little nicer. Ah well.

If Britain had gone through a similar experience, it would have had a Labour government in the 1980s with John Redwood as Chancellor followed by a Tory government with John Major as Prime Minister and Margaret Thatcher as Chancellor.