UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

[Suburbia]

Is the British pro-life/antiabortion movement as strong and fierce as the American counterparts and what is the status of abortion rights in Britain? Is there any at all?

It definitely exists, but nowhere near as strong. Abortion has been legal since 1967, although does require two doctors to sign off on it. No serious support for anything bar a reduction in maximum time from 24 weeks, which is very high by European standards, 12 being the norm.

Are the British Conservatives pro-life and Labor pro-choice, or is it different there?

[Silent Hunter]

It's not a wedge issue in the slightest. There are some pro-life Tories, but the matter is a conscience issue - any votes on it would not be whipped. The same applies with capital punishment.

[Suburbia]

Who are the Manchin/Sinema/Collins/Murkowski of the British House of Commons?

I know there are centrist Labor and centrist Tories who are to the center of their partisan extremes......

[Conservatopia]

Who are the Manchin/Sinema/Collins/Murkowski of the British House of Commons?

I know there are centrist Labor and centrist Tories who are to the center of their partisan extremes......

This is actually quite a good question.

The answer is that this phenomenon does not really appear in British politics the way it does in the US.  Rebellions are on more of an issue by issue basis.  MPs don't tend to be judged on their personal voting record as much as US congresscritters.

That being said during the chaos of the Brexit bill there were groups on both sides who would frequently rebel.  Most of these MPs lost their seats in 2019.  This was especially the case on the Labour side where a number of Labour MPs backed May and Boris' Brexit deals for a variety of reasons (supported Brexit, hated Corbyn or represented a heavily-Leave area).  Some examples (not all):

Kate Hoey (left Labour, retired)
John Mann (left Labour, retired)
Melanie Onn (defeated 2019)
Caroline Flint (defeated 2019)
Frank Field (left Labour, defeated 2019)
Ronnie Campbell (retired)
About 4 more I think

Some of those MPs are very leftwing like Campbell while others are more centrist like Mann or Flint although the real Labour centrists mostly supported Remain.

There were a couple of these types of rebels on the Tory side (all these are centrist):

Dominic Grieve (left party, defeated 2019)
Anne Milton (same)
Nick Boles (left party, retired)

[CumbrianLefty]

It's not a wedge issue in the slightest. There are some pro-life Tories, but the matter is a conscience issue - any votes on it would not be whipped. The same applies with capital punishment.

Probably most Tory MPs are still at least moderately pro-life.

Only a few are committed campaigners on it though.

Labour MPs are mostly solidly pro-choice, but there are exceptions - mainly but by no means solely amongst the strongly religious (of various faiths)

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Couldn't find the UK redistrcting thread.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1435213967845208064

[CumbrianLefty]

I *think* its in the International Elections folder? But could be wrong.

[Oryxslayer]

^ I just bumped the thread for discussion.

[Blair]

Some of the lobby have actually covered this issue well. Others not so… I still to this day don’t understand his politics or how he’s become one of the more high profile Westminster lobby journalists.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1435343870284472337

[Silent Hunter]

Labour did actually back a tax rise for the NHS back in 1992, although that was a long time ago.

[afleitch]

https://mobile.twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1435363852703748099

Guardian US publishes interview with Judith Butler in which she slams gender critical activists. That whole section is later removed, writer of the article is given no explanation. Proving that a lack of criticism of the gender critical movement and the refusal to platform anyone who speaks out against it is a feature, not a bug, of UK print journalism.

Still she's trending; Streisand effect in action.

[TheTide]

The government has almost entirely lost the confidence of the right-wing press, judging by the headlines this morning. If Labour were racking up 30 point poll leads then it would feel very like the mid-1990s.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The government has almost entirely lost the confidence of the right-wing press, judging by the headlines this morning. If Labour were racking up 30 point poll leads then it would feel very like the mid-1990s.

What happened?

[Cassius]

The government has almost entirely lost the confidence of the right-wing press, judging by the headlines this morning. If Labour were racking up 30 point poll leads then it would feel very like the mid-1990s.

I agree with you, but I’d argue that the conservative press had already lost patience with the government by the Summer of 2020. Apart from the respite afforded it by the success of the vaccine programme earlier this year, press coverage of the government and Johnson in particular has been almost uniformly negative since then.

[CumbrianLefty]

https://mobile.twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1435363852703748099

Guardian US publishes interview with Judith Butler in which she slams gender critical activists. That whole section is later removed, writer of the article is given no explanation. Proving that a lack of criticism of the gender critical movement and the refusal to platform anyone who speaks out against it is a feature, not a bug, of UK print journalism.

Still she's trending; Streisand effect in action.

Several very influential TERFs at Graun Towers, of course.

[Blair]

Spending on health and care is expected to reach 40% of day to day Government spending by 2024.

The implications of this for the rest of the public realm are well quite worrying.

[Cassius]

With all the discussion of Sunak’s ‘turn to rigour’, I’m a little surprised (in certain respects), that there hasn’t been any talk of selling off a portion of the gold reserve to retire some of the pandemic debt quickly (especially given that only a tiny proportion of the electorate would care about such a move). As far as I’m aware the BofE currently has gold assets worth about £200 billion, so selling off even half of that (a la Brown) would put a considerable dent in the pandemic debt burden. I suppose the issue here is that a) finance chappies and backbenchers would criticise the government for having gotten a bad deal since the price will no doubt continue to rise in the long term, and b) trying to replenish the gold reserve in future (given that gold rarely declines in price for long).

[Conservatopia]

We should bring back the days of privateers - they could plunder the Spanish Main for us and bring back booty to pay for the NHS.

[Blair]

With all the discussion of Sunak’s ‘turn to rigour’, I’m a little surprised (in certain respects), that there hasn’t been any talk of selling off a portion of the gold reserve to retire some of the pandemic debt quickly (especially given that only a tiny proportion of the electorate would care about such a move). As far as I’m aware the BofE currently has gold assets worth about £200 billion, so selling off even half of that (a la Brown) would put a considerable dent in the pandemic debt burden. I suppose the issue here is that a) finance chappies and backbenchers would criticise the government for having gotten a bad deal since the price will no doubt continue to rise in the long term, and b) trying to replenish the gold reserve in future (given that gold rarely declines in price for long).

Still gets mentioned by voters as a reason to not vote Labour ironically- although I saw someone say in all seriousness that they knocked a door where the resident said they stopped voting Labour because Ramsay McDonald formed the national Government.

[Boobs]

I saw someone say in all seriousness that they knocked a door where the resident said they stopped voting Labour because Ramsay McDonald formed the national Government.

What a horrifically quaint country. I actually cannot think of a comparable example for the US.

[Estrella]

This thing I saw in another thread made me wonder:

Blue Labour is a mixture of red-brown cranks and Cambridge theology students (but I repeat myself).

Nobody in the UK has referred to Red Tories since about 2014.

How does C of E clergy typically vote? And how about Catholics or other Protestant denominations?

[YL]

This thing I saw in another thread made me wonder:

Blue Labour is a mixture of red-brown cranks and Cambridge theology students (but I repeat myself).

Nobody in the UK has referred to Red Tories since about 2014.

How does C of E clergy typically vote? And how about Catholics or other Protestant denominations?

A ComRes poll published in January asked how clergy voted in 2019.  Sample sizes were tiny, so I'll give absolute numbers rather than percentages, and many pinches of salt are required.  For Anglicans the sample size was 50 and the results were:
Lab 20, LD 13, Green 6, Con 3, SNP 2, Other 1, "prefer not to say" 5

The second largest sample size is for "Pentecostal (AOG, Elim, RCCG, Hillsong, Other)" at 49:
Con 24, Lab 6, SNP 4, LD 3, Green 2, Other 2, "prefer not to say" 8

Other sample sizes are even smaller, e.g. 11 for Catholics (and of those 11 five preferred not to say).

(Tables are linked from this page.)

[Blair]

Looks like there’s no reshuffle and it was, to quote Peter Mannion, a way of getting MPs to behave and eat their truffles.

[Zinneke]

Looks like there’s no reshuffle and it was, to quote Peter Mannion, a way of getting MPs to behave and eat their truffles.

I know this a tangent but Peter Mannion is a better character than Malcolm Tucker. There I said it.

[Cassius]

Peter Manyum.