UK General Discussion: Rishecession

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Guessing the Tory conference will be make or break for Truss-Kwarteng. But unless she absolutely bullheadedly refuses to reverse (entirely possible with her Thatcher cosplay personality) I think rebels would be satisfied with dumping Kwarteng and doing a U-turn on the mini budget. 3 PMs in a year would be a bit much.

What if it's just two PMs in a year?

In other words, how early could Boris Johnson conceivably return?

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Would this constitute loss of supply or is this too minor an issue to meet that standard?

To use the British term, Conservative MPs voting to deny supply to the government would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.

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The Times (Shipman) reporting that Graham Brady isn't inclined to allow a 1922 rule change permitting a VoNC in Truss' first 12 months unless the rebels number half of the parliamentary party, a figure currently equating to 178 MPs.

This is an incredible article. I was going to quote some of it but there are too many great bits. I'm looking forward to what happens when Labour picks up eight seats on the same day.

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Nobody gives a quote like "anonymous Tory MP" does.

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Dan Hodges suggesting that Brady told Truss to sling her hook in their meeting earlier.

On the other hand, the meeting with the “One Nation” group appears to have gone smoothly. Arch creep Haremcock looking to worm his way back into power. I think a plausible outcome is that Truss is kept on as a puppet by the legacy Cameroon faction (CEO of this group being Jeremy Hunt) of the party as some sort of lobotomised meat puppet:

I can believe that some influential Tories might think this, but surely the party as a whole isn't this deluded. If you had to come up with a way to make the numbers worse than they already are, one way to do it would be to have faceless Tory elites imposing austerity while hiding behind a figurehead prime minister with single-digit approval.

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My assumption is that he'll retire from the Commons to "chase the bag" and do the Canadian thing of waiting for the opportune moment to return. If that moment never comes, well, it's a lot less embarrassing (and more lucrative) to stay out of Parliament.

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If the prime minister can get The Spreadsheet on her side then Tory MPs will be powerless to stop her.

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https://twitter.com/dril/status/568056615355740160

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Random question for UK posters: what is the UK football equivalent to the Cleveland Browns?

Different organization makes direct analogy impossible, because no team could be as bad for as long as the Browns have been. The best analogy to the Browns' winless season is Derby County's 2007–08 season (one win and eight draws in thirty-eight games), which was the worst season by an English team at the top level in a very long time.

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Trying to explain this to a friend who knew about the lettuce but hasn't been keeping up otherwise, and I'm finding it really difficult to convey all aspects of the madness. Just astonishing how the vote was handled - and how bad Truss is at running her own government.

Yes, I had an awfully hard time tonight explaining to a friend who doesn't know the names of a hundred different Conservative MPs why exactly it's so funny that Grant Shapps is Home Secretary now.

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https://twitter.com/PeoplePolling/status/1583343851150114817?s=20&t=-pD-dqLP...

Plugged these numbers into Electoral Calculus (taking into account the Scotland crosstabs):

Party	2019 Votes	2019 Seats	Pred Votes	Gains	Losses	Net Change	Pred Seats
CON	44.7%	365	14.0%	0	365	-365	0
LAB	33.0%	203	53.0%	350	0	+350	553
LIB	11.8%	11	11.0%	8	3	+5	16
Reform	2.1%	0	5.0%	0	0	+0	0
Green	2.8%	0	6.0%	0	0	+0	0
SNP	4.0%	48	5.7%	9	0	+9	57
PlaidC	0.5%	4	0.8%	0	0	+0	4
Other	1.1%	0	4.6%	1	0	+1	1
N.Ire		18		0	0	+0	18

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There will also, undoubtedly, be 'sectarian' voting in various directions in some measure even during a Tory defeat, if Sunak is still leader. Any model will need to drill down with specific polling.

Con gain Leicester East

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Liz Truss is one of the few Prime Ministers that I genuinely believe was an empty-headed person lacking in brain cells. She wasn't robotic like Theresa May because of a mere social awkwardness but because there simply wasn't any extra level of thought beyond the pathetic soundbites.

Absolutely. It's been known for decades but she kept inexplicably being elevated.

The country is reeling from dubious Cameron era selection processes.

Even from America you could tell during the summer leadership campaign that she didn't seem like the sharpest tool in the shed. It's unusual that she got this far because normally women in politics are held to a much higher standard than men and women who seem incompetent can't get anywhere. I don't understand how she kept moving up, but anyway the new Home Secretary is probably evidence that whatever Conservative Party processes led to Prime Minister Liz Truss have not been changed.

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I did not know that Malcolm Fraser was 6'4". So was Gough Whitlam, apparently!

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Today a Lord's Private Member Bill backed by both major parties passed one of its final hurdles. It aims to combat so-called "family voting", whereby the patriarch of a family stands over the females in a household amd instructs them on how they should vote. The bill effectively closes a loophole which will allow presiding officers to intervene if they believe family voting is going on.

Family voting took place in 25% of observed polling stations at the last election and disproportionately affects Bangladeshi families, though it of course takes place across many demographics.

I wouldn't expect any change to election results but it's interesting nonetheless, not least because private members bills becoming law is rare.

Meanwhile in our country we are embracing this sort of voting.

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Also

https://mobile.twitter.com/rosscolquhoun/status/1600461810473357312

Interesting, very out of kilter with most recent opinion polling if accurate.

From someone from Quebec, totally expected after that Court decision. Being told by a court "no, you can't do that, only the central government can" is one of the greatest fuels for independentism.

Perhaps, but as we saw in Quebec, voters will eventually get tired of the debate about independence, and move on to bread-and-butter issues.

When did Quebec voters move to bread-and-butter issues? Admittedly I don't consume much of the francophone Quebec press, but as far as I can tell the last federal and provincial election in Quebec were both dominated by cultural issues: women wearing head coverings and immigrants speaking English and the like. I don't know what the current Quebec government has done in terms of economic policy but I can certainly tell you what it's campaigned on in cultural policy.

The Quebec independence movement became irrelevant because right-wing nationalists in Quebec achieved total victory on cultural issues, rendering independence unnecessary from their standpoint and consigning left-wing nationalism to oblivion. I don't know what the equivalent of that in Scotland would be, which sort of gets to the point that Conservatopia made. In any case I don't think the "resolution" of the Quebec issue in Canada is a model for any other country.

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Presumably it would work a lot like it worked in Canada after the 1993 election.

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Who will be the first Tory to cut the Gordian knot by pointing out that all of these problems could be solved by tearing up the Good Friday Agreement and getting rid of Northern Ireland?

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I figured when Liz Truss became prime minister that it would mean a combination of extreme right-wing economic policy and lowest-common-denominator social policy. I guess she was turfed before she got to the second part of it, so we're getting it now.

The constant with this government, now that it has gotten Brexit done, is that it thinks that voters are morons. I guess the "STOP THE BOATS" iconography worked for Scott Morrison? I can't think of any other explanation.

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lmao this is like when the worst excesses of the Australian right try to make dumb American culture wars a thing

We're through the looking glass here, people.

I think that the concept of "cultural cringe" can now safely be retired by Australians.

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I didn't know that the SNP was a democratic centralist organization.

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Yeah… lots of questions out of this event. What happens if the SNP win the popular vote but Labour wins more seats - or vice versa? Is Yousaf really suggesting that a mandate of 34-38% might be enough to basically unilaterally start secession proceedings?

Honestly, I think this is all probably more about keeping activists onside - under current polling, than any real strategy. Because this approach just seems …implausible.

A related way to read it is that the SNP doesn't expect to win a majority of seats at the next Westminster election.

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A poll earlier this week had Labour up 25 points nationally and yet media people are still clinging to the hung parliament dream.

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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?