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

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Could be Orbanism. Could be a sop to the ERG that Johnson will ignore. We'll see what legislation actually gets proposed in the Queen's Speech.

My guess is it's somewhere in between, like (barf) introducing US-style partisan appointment of Supreme Court justices but leaving the constitutional system otherwise the way it is.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The PM appoints the justices already, but from a pre-made list; he can only make two rejections and if he does, the third gets the position.

My understanding is that this is still seen as a largely nonpartisan and nonideological system; the Archbishop of Canterbury is chosen in much the same way, and nobody sees that as a party-political office (although iirc there have been cases of probably-politically-motivated decisions being made surrounding it).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

We also need a more catchy thread title!

BomaJority?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Or "The Right Honourable Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero"?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1208036791623831552

You know what? McDonnell is valid.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Harry and Meaghan?

Hello.

Lol at that being news , anyway the real monarch of the UK now is Boris Johnson, just like how it was Blair from 1997-2005 and Thatcher was in the 1980s

Well...yeah, a British PM with a strong majority can do to the country essentially whatever the hell he or she likes, to a point that even US Presidents with pronounced authoritarian leanings like FDR or Trump could only dream of, but to say that that constitutes being "the real monarch" shows a pretty off-base understanding of what the British monarchy is (ostensibly) there for.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's time to start the rejoin campaign today.

At what point and under what circumstances is the British body politic allowed to start focusing on other issues?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's time to start the rejoin campaign today.

At what point and under what circumstances is the British body politic allowed to start focusing on other issues?

When my side unequivocally wins.

So, never.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Being a member of the EU is obviously voluntary, but there are other (often informal) mechanisms by which certain EU institutions have a habit of treating member states coercively, and that needs to change (either by weakening some of those institutions or by imparting more democratic legitimacy to the EU itself or both). Not that this made Brexit any less stupid of an idea.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It would certainly do a lot for his kleos, that much is certain.

But here’s hoping he makes it.

As a leftist, I hope he pulls through partly because of what dying would do to his kleos.

But also because I genuinely don't think he deserves to die of coronavirus, especially at a relatively young age.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Accepting that he had some valid historical insights, despite all that was wrong with him, is quite another IMO. And to respond to an earlier post, that's not really true of Franco is it?

It's not true of Franco, no, but if somebody who was ideologically predisposed to think it was--a Traditionalist Catholic politician like JRM, or even a run-of-the-mill RIGHT-WING #POPULIST --tweeted out a postmortem happy birthday to the guy, I sort of doubt the likes of Vince Cable would retweet it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Compared to Lenin’s brutal suppression of his opposition, Franco was a moderate liberalizer.

Let's please not go here.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Mark Drakeford and Llafur Cymru may as well be the captain and crew of the Special Boat Squadron as far as the UK (indeed much of the Welsh) electorate are concerned. The Welsh Parliament is essentially a minuscule dot on the face of UK political reporting, the focus of which will very much be on Johnson and the government getting their nuts roasted by Keir Starmer and feet shot by... themselves. Regardless of the performance of the devolved governments in this crisis (and they will, as always, seek to nationalise their failures whilst localising their, few, successes), the focus in the media will be very much on the UK government’s handling of the pandemic.

There's also the reality that it is very difficult for public health policy in Wales to be that different to England for reasons beyond even Scotland: the border is porous (because it is not a historical border at all) and a large proportion of people in Mid Wales and also on Deeside use hospitals on the English side of it.

I believe you've mentioned before that quite a bit of the population of Mid Wales, including people who if asked would say they're as Welsh as Dylan Thomas, was actually born in Shropshire or Herefordshire because that's where the maternity wards are; am I remembering that right?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Boasting to hacks about being a "terminally offline" leadership has actual real world consequences?

Who knew??

I wonder why Biden's offline-ness is one of his greatest strengths but Starmer's is proving to be a liability. Does it have to do with the different way parties are structured in the UK? The heavily messaging-focused talent set required to be a successful LOTO? Both?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Except the 'politics' comes from the authors own work.

Quite. Pratchett did, of course, have his more small 'c' conservative aspects (or as he liked to put it, in his mischievous way, he was 'so left wing that I'm coming back at you from the right'), but in this case they actually led him to the position that can be clearly inferred from his work; that his family and associations state that he held.

Shades of C.S. Lewis arguing for decriminalizing homosexuality on the quintessentially Tory grounds of disliking "interferers and busybodies". Although obviously Pratchett wouldn't have had anything like the same personal and philosophical views on the matter as Lewis.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

How did repealing the Fixed-Term Parliament Act work exactly? I'm far from an expert on British constitutional law, but my understanding was that the royal prerogative to dissolve the legislature was a matter of common law, which once codified by the Coalition was forever annulled because the legislature cannot create common law.

The law that repealed it explicitly said that 1. it was restoring the situation as if the FTPA had never been passed and 2. this was non-justiciable. It might not technically have been "constitutional" because of the understanding of common law you mention, but this is the UK we're talking about.