In the US, we have buffoons trying to stumble into the highest office in the land; in the UK, all the buffoons (the ones who were rah-rah for Brexit) seem to be frantically scrambling away to avoid becoming prime minister. Farage, Johnson, Gove, all making epic pratfalls in their desperate race to avoid being tagged “it”, and now Leadsom has bailed out. That leaves Theresa May holding the bag.
I have to wonder how awful May must be to want a job even the clowns want to shirk.
May doesn’t have a great reputation on civil liberties. She’s also the only one of the Tory leadership candidates who hinted that threatening deportation of EU citizens might be a bargaining chip in Brexit negotiations. Yet, she was the least worst of the candidates.
I only turned away from the news feeds for an hour or so, and she suddenly became our next PM. I don’t think that most of Britain knows what the hell is going on with our politics, either.
Well, that’s one way of putting it… OK, she’s somewhat better than the average Dalek.
The fact that May really was the “least worst” is terrifying.
It seems to me that Theresa May is keen to be PM now because she was not in favour of leaving the EU in the first place and sees it as important that the person in charge isn’t a rabid pro-Brexiteer. With someone in the Remain camp calling the shots, we’re less likely to give away the family silver all at once and compound an already terrible decision. All the pro-Brexit candidates faced having to go through with their awful decision and suffer the backlash of it – May can sell her premiership as a noble effort to curb the worst of the damage.
Though it must also be recognised that it’s not only the job of PM they’re competing for here – it’s just as much about being leader of the Tory party.
On the other hand, I’m not sure it’s entirely correct to say that Gove is one of the ones scrambling not to be left in power when the music stops. He shafted Boris’s chances for his own shot at being PM and stood aside from the race only when it became apparent what an odious little twerp everyone else in the party thought he was. He wanted the job, he just realised that nobody would give it to him.
Britain needs to take their idiot voters and failing currency and go already. The only thing the EU should offer them is maybe a promise to take some of their refugees when their economy collapses and they fall into a complete dictatorship. They have nothing of value to offer and were never anything other than a drag on the EU.
Though, of course, she is pretty awful. She’s basically Cameron redux but less overtly Old Etonian and not made of plasticine. We are unlikely to see any major shift in Tory thinking under a May premiership.
Anyone remember Walton? He’s an immigration lawyer in Britain now and, shall we say, does not have good things to say about May.
cartomancer, @3: Gove didn’t stand aside, he was resoundingly booted in the second round of voting, receiving only 48 votes out of 313.
Oh, I get it. PZ, it’s just like American presidential politics.
I think many politicians are biding their time. There’s a significant risk that a winter of discontent is coming to whoever’s the PM (May). Perhaps Tories let the woman be the face of failure.
I can’t understand it either. Many Brexiters were moaning about unelected EU officials (MEPs are elected) and yet they get a PM that has not been elected. Judging by May’s performance as Home Sec. I wouldn’t be encouraged if I were a Tory.
Well, just like American presidential politics if the Republican party were picking the next president without reference to the voters.
Farage was never in the running for PM. He stepped down because he’d achieved what he got into politics for.
Don’t worry, PZ, I shall explain it all for you.
See, when a mummy clusterfuck and a daddy clusterfuck love each other very much and want to wreck a nation, they hold a referendum in a very special way….
@ #10: All PMs are elected by the MPs of their party, not the voters.
.. and meanwhile the main Opposition Party, presented with what should be an open goal seems intent on tearing itself apart …
Dianne (@ 6) – don’t suppose Walton’s comments are somewhere public that can be linked to, are they? I’ve been wanting to find resources that will help me explain to my OH why May is not exactly a good thing, despite being the best of a very bad bunch.
On the plus side, despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left about electability, I think the coming doomgasm could do wonders for Corbyn’s chances of being the next PM, assuming he stays as Labour leader. (I’m actually not sure where I stand on electability. I kind of suspect that those talking about how Corbyn is unelectable are stuck in the 90’s with a D-Ream soundtrack (which, amusingly/heartbreakingly [delete as appropriate] may be a suitable musical choice for the next GE) and don’t realise that actual socialism might actually sell in a political world where austerity is so obviously failing everyone so badly. On the other hand, if I’m wrong about that, we’ll be stuck with Fuck The People politics for another half decade.)
@me, 17
Sorry. From Labour. There’s more to the left than Labour, as you know perfectly well, me.
Re: Don Quijote (#10):
No, that’s fine. The Brexit-politicians are happy because they do not have to preside over what they have wrought. Can’t have that on your resume, can you?
And the average Brexit-voter probably doesn’t care that much about this one issue but just fell for the the package of lies the campaign came wrapped up in. Maybe the unelected officials were important to some individual voters, but more likely it was just the cumulative effect of all the falsehoods, definitely-not-promises* and grand rhetoric that swayed them.
*To paraphrase any Leave-campaginer: ‘I never said that, stop showing video clips of me saying that!’
#15 –
That’s not at all surprising, given where the Labour Party is right now. Their leader, Corbyn, represents the left-leaning grass roots element of the party and wants to make Labour back into the force for progressive, socialism it was before the Blair years. Most of the MPs, however, are centrist or centre-right Blairites whose careers began and prospered as Blair turned Labour into a kind of Tories Lite in the late 90s. The grass roots Labour supporters voted for these people because they were not the Tories, and thus marginally better, but there has always been massive dissatisfaction with Labour’s swing to the right. Even more so after Blair’s and Brown’s cosseting of the bankers made the financial crisis of 2007-8 worse, and were followed by half a decade of Tory austerity. The current battle is between Old Labour and New Labour for control of the party, and it’s so damaging because both sides have an important element of the party’s power base in their hands (members on the one hand vs. MPs on the other) and neither can really bring the other in line very easily.
Athywren, #18
It’s true that there is more to the Left in this country than just Labour (and, as I said myself, more to Labour than just the Left, more’s the pity). Sadly, I’m not sure any other left-wing parties are in any position right now to capitalise on the dissatisfaction with right-wing austerity policies. The Lib Dems lost all left-wing credibility when they got into bed with the Tories in 2010, and have paid for that with the loss of four fifths of their MPs. I doubt they’ll recover from that for decades, if they ever do. The Greens are making gains (I voted for them myself in 2015, though as I was voting in Brighton Pavilion they actually stood a chance), but are still tiny and unlikely to get many MPs thanks to our fptp voting system. The socialist workers’ party and the others are far too small to worry about.
My fond hope is that Corbyn weathers the storm, the Labour supporters abandon most of the discredited Blairites and refuse to re-elect them come the next General Election, and Labour once again becomes a substantial and unashamedly left-wing party (with progressive candidates elected as MPs on an anti-austerity, anti-isolationist platform). Sucking in talent and support from disaffected Lib Dem voters and left-leaning folk across the country, hopefully. As someone who has previously only voted Lib Dem, apart from last year in Brighton, I have to say that Corbyn’s approach to politics resonates with me much more than pretty much anyone else on the scene right now, and perhaps more than anyone did since Tony Benn.
Dianne @ #4 As a Brit I can totally understand this point of view (I am frankly embarassed by my country right now), but please remember that not all of us are “idiot voters”. Like 16 million other people I voted remain and am really quite distressed to be being dragged out of the EU against my wishes by people with no plan and no clue.
Shardman @22: That’s why I suggested that allowing refugees from the UK entry into the EU would be a good concession for the EU to make: to give the sensible people a way out. I mean, my ancestors did that and we only regret it every 4 years or when we’re sick.
Actually, I have no idea why voters in Britain aren’t calling for the leave politicians heads on platters, preferably not literally. Within hours the leave politicians were renouncing every promise that they’d made about how things would be better (for ANY value of “better”, including fewer dark skinned people being allowed in), the stock market had crashed, and the pound had taken a nose dive. Why aren’t people throwing pies at Johnson, Gove, and Farage? Why aren’t bankers rioting in the streets over their lost income? Why aren’t the Scots gearing up to defend Hadrian’s wall? Oh, wait, they kind of are.
cartomancer (#3) –
You make it sound like she could be another John Major. Don’t raise our hopes up too high.
ajbjasus @ 15: This is entirely unsurprising and predictable based upon England’s performance at the European Championships — the Second Brexit.
All seriousness aside, what disburbs me more than anything else is not the Right Honorable Gentlewoman’s record on immigration per se, but her flagrant disregard for the rule of law… despite being in charge of the ministry that bears ultimate responsibility for all prosecutions. What makes this problem worse is that those of us on the western short of the Pond do not comprehend just how pervasive and common the Home Secretary’s personal intervention in/approval of prosecution-related matters is. The Home Secretary is traditionally a lot more “hands on” than any state Attorney General, let alone the federal Attorney General (please give it up for Douglas Hurd… and the Birmingham Six…), and from what I have seen and has been reliably reported to me by counsel Over There, the Right Honorable Gentlewoman has been a micromanager to nobody’s benefit except perhaps her own.
This world simply doesn’t need another titular leader with such disdain for the rule of law, which — however imperfect it is (and it’s really imperfect) — is the only realistic alternative to armed conflict for settling disputes… whether between or within nation-states.
So, what is the chance May will be the UK’s Kim Campbell?
Campbell became the leader of Canada’s Progressive Conservative Party in 1993. and hence became Prime Minister, replacing Brian Mulroney. But “Lyin’ Brian” had become so unpopular that when the federal election was held that year the party managed to elect only two Members of Parliament, having elected 156 in the previous election. Campbell effectively became the sacrificial lamb.
Dianne @ #23 Half the country are extremely angry at Boris, Gove, Farage et al. and would love to see them pay for what they have done. Unfortunately since they have all resigned or gone into hiding there is very little anyone can do. They have broken every promise they made. Some, like giving £350 million to the health service every week was broken within an hour of winning the vote.
The other problem is that the other half of the country have a pathalogical hatred of the EU which is stoked by our newspapers which are almost all (with the exception of the Guardian) right wing, populist and rabidly anti-European. To a lot of people a crashing economy, political chaos and collapsing currency are all worth it if they can leave the EU. The same people will be very disappointed when the great British Utopia, fully sovereign and free from Europe doesn’t materialise.
By not pulling the trigger on Article 50 (the process by which a member of the EU starts to actually, legally leave) Cameron has handed a poisoned chalice to the next PM. They will have to either start the process, which promises to be very damaging to the economy over the two years of the process and beyond, or find excuses to not pull the trigger, which promises to be damaging politically.
This was done primarily to scupper BoJo’s chance of becoming next PM (since apparently it’s all about Cameron and Johnson, and not about leading the country), but it’s also set off the current mess where the players are concentrating on their game of Musical Chairs crossed with Pass-the-Parcel and trying to figure out if the parcel contains a valuable prize, a no-prize or a booby prize. To go for PM at this point indicates either supreme arrogance crossed with Dunning-Krueger (Leadsom) or just supreme arrogance (possibly May). Or just possibly, that they actually have a coherent plan to lead the country out of this mess and into hospital where we can sort out this self-inflicted foot-wound. (Possibly too many metaphors there.)
Dianne @23: https://youtu.be/MUdHSIGA4To
That’s Boris Johnson being booed the morning after the Brexit vote.
dianne @ #11
To me it’s just like American presidential politics if you include Democrats. I have never voted for someone so much as against some idiotic alternative.
You have to pass a test to become a UK citizen and be able to vote. No such proof of competence if you’re born British, of course. Perhaps that explains our success in voting for idiots and for idiotic situations which scuttle the entire island.
Sometimes I wonder if all Brits should have to pass a test before being allowed to vote. (Then I start to worry that I might not pass, so I stop wondering.)
Jaws @ 25. As an aside Bobby Charlton from the English 66 World cup winning team was asked if his side could beat Iceland, and by what score – his answer was “1-0. The questioner expressed his surprise that the margin would be so low, to which Bobby said “Yes, but we’re all in our 70s now”
@31: We tried having a test before you could vote in the US once. It didn’t work out so well.
#31 – I keep hearing people suggest some form of qualification being required to vote. Sorry thats not democracy. We’ve already go what seems to be some movement to have Brexit overturned ‘for the good of the country’. While I hate the idea of brexit even more than I hate the idea of May it really is only one step from there to saying ‘you cant vote for him/her for the good of the country’ and then we will be begging for a chance to vote for a May.
OptimalCynic
So that must be why he left politics. Oh that’s right, he didn’t. He continues to not sit in his EU seat collecting EU taxpayer money. Such a principelled man he is!
A few years ago, I came accross a study that showed women were put disproportionally in a position of power when things were going south and the position was vacated. It was more focussed on companies, were a new CEO was appointed (when the company was in heavy waters, the chance of the new CEO being a women was much higher then when things went well), but I think it is appropriate here.
@Dianne #33 and Madtom #34 — totally agree: a qualification to vote is an appallingly undemocratic idea. Fun to think about, but a really bad idea on so many levels.
To summarise our incompetency (as an electorate): As a country we allowed ourselves to be fooled by a bunch of barely-credible politicians who sold us barely-believable ideas based on almost-entirely transparent bullshit. We’ve just got ourselves a new LGBT-phobic human rights-hating Prime Minister (who is slightly to the left of Ghengis Khan and … we’re grateful for that) for whom nobody voted, and we are very likely to have an early general election to vote in a new government which will be unrepresentative of the majority of the electorate. (First past the post, and all that.)
So that’s the democracy we’re upholding. And we wonder why people can’t be bothered to exercise their democratic rights most of the time. When we do vote in unprecedented numbers, like this referendum, the whole farrago was so poorly planned that it leaves not just a nasty taste in the mouth, but a large shovelful of rancid horseshit and fetid flies too).
I’m *definitely* for any sort of system which holds elected representatives to account. They’re all getting away with it, and too many people are already suffering. Not a metaphor.
For any readers in the USA: look at us, laugh at us, learn from our mistakes, please.
fat chance that I am afraid
uncle frogy
At least there will be quick change of PMs.
May is confirmed as head of the Conservative Party.
Cameron has confirmed he will turn in his resignation to the Queen on Wednesday.
@timgueguen#26
Yes, I too thought of the unfortunate Prime Minister Campbell; in hindsight, it really does look like she was intended to be, in @cartomancer’s words “left in power when the music stops”.
However, otherwise not really a fair comparison – she’s a rather nice person, from what I’ve heard.
@cartomancer #3:
But… but… what about all those times when he said he didn’t want to be PM? Are you trying to tell me that he lied?
I want to be a fly on the wall when he hands in his resignation to Brenda. I want to see his face when she asks him, “And how long will it be before Scotland hands me their resignation from the Union?”
I suppose Cameron’s legacy won’t be quite as bad as Blair’s, if only because his conceit won’t have killed as many people.
#36 zenlike – As mentioned by timgueguen in #26, that is exactly the scenario that occurs in Canadian politics. Kim Campbell as prime minister is the best known example; and for BC premiers, there is Rita Johnson, who got to be premier for 7 months. Christie Clark (ptui) was also stationed for this position when Glen Campbell (ptui!) kited off to the UK, but thanks to incompetency on the side of the left (and also a split of the vote on the left) to everyone’s surprise she managed to win the next election. Alison Redford, the former Albertan premier, managed to hang onto the spot through an election as well (the Conservative party had been ruling in Alberta for over 40 years – it was generally believed they could run a potted plant and win), but the Conservative downward spiral continued and she was turfed after one term. Nonetheless sometimes the sacrificial ass manages to win the race. Which is probably why women are willing to be the sacrificial ass in the first place, as they’re unlikely to get another chance at the big seat – and sometimes they manage to hang on to it.
Well, that puts you in the same boat as most British people these days.
So far as I can tell, a bunch of nationalistic, crypto-racist (where not openly racist) little Englander idiots lied to a truly epic, Olympic level, managed to stampede fearful and/or ignorant voters into voting to essentially destroy the future prosperity of the UK by a sliver thin margin, and now we are all locked in to the UK ship of state as it is sailed over Niagara bloody falls because the referendum outcome is considered sufficient to affect massive constitutional change even though the out vote only won by a 2% majority as a proportion of the UK voting populous. Leaving the sixteen million of us who voted with our brains instead of other parts of our anatomy up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
Having gotten their way, the so called ‘Brexitiers’ promptly reneged on essentially every promise they made and every threatened scenario they claimed in order to sway the electorate. Having smugly admitted to their lies, they variously disappeared into the political undergrowth, one assumes waiting until such time as they fondly imagine this catastrophe will all blow over. Farage resigned as leader of the despicable UKIP (again), Boris Johnson seized on Gove’s run for the Conservative leadership as an excuse to get clear of the political blast zone, and Leadsom made obnoxious comments about motherhood leaving her better placed to be Prime Minister than the childless May, and then scuttled off into a dark corner when the reasonable backlash against her remarks hit.
It all seems to be of a pattern to me – the Brexit idiots either are only now beginning to realize how much damage they have truly done to the UK, and don’t want to be in the hot seat when the consequences really hit home, or knew full well what they doing, mean to profit from it, but don’t want to be in the firing line when the collapse they have engineered comes to pass. Like all able scavengers, they have no intention of risking their own hide in the process of getting fat.
May, for all her faults being pro-Remain, would make for a fine ablative shield for the Brexitiers – if things aren’t as bad as they might be, they can hail Brexit as a success and claim the ‘credit’. If the likely disaster is as bad or worse than every informed commentator says it will be, then they can sit back and put the blame on a pro-Remain Prime Minister fouling up the exit negotiations.
May gets the poisoned chalice, while they get to avoid the consequences of their actions and still remain close enough to the seat of power to seize on any opportunities that may present themselves. It is all very neat form their perspective.
Dianne @6 and katybe @16
Bumping the request for a link to Walton. If he has a blog, I’d read it.
One of the most coherent commenters here on uk politics – once you dialed out the royalist tendencies.
Or, if you prefer, right now UK politics is kind of like Game of Thrones if the knives were political rather than literal. Both the Conservative and Labour parties are having their own versions of the Red Wedding, with any number of political careers getting knifed in the back and the peasantry (voters to you and me) getting lied to and trampled all over by all sides in the process.
Sadly, Sean Bean is not involved. If he were, naturally his political career would have been first to die, promptly followed by those of anyone even tangentially associated with him…
Gregory Greenwood:
That’s pretty accurate. The only thing you left out was said fearful and/or ignorant voters being primed by what seems to be a concerted effort, over quite a number of years now, to paint all immigrants in a bad light and/or being treated better than UK residents, which has largely gone unchallenged by any major political party or figure in Westminster. Examples include that if they come to Britain to work, they’re stealing jobs, but if they don’t, they’re sponging off the benefits system (which leaves them damned if they do and damned if they don’t), and thanks to EU rules, they get jumped to the front of the queue for council houses, so they get given the pick of what’s available (which is simply completely untrue, but this doesn’t stop it being something that ‘everybody knows is true’).
I am, as mentioned upthread, an immigration lawyer practising in England and Wales. I can say honestly that Theresa May – who has been in office as Home Secretary for the entire time I’ve been in practice – is one of the most purely evil people in British politics.
Her officials have forcibly returned many young Afghans to Kabul, ripping them apart from foster carers and support networks in the UK and dumping them in a city where they live in daily fear of Taliban attacks amidst a collapsing economy with no jobs, opportunities or decent housing. She’s fought in the courts – successfully – to return patients on kidney dialysis by force to countries where they will die within weeks from withdrawal of medical care. She’s persecuted my friend Aderonke and many other LGBT asylum-seekers fighting for survival. She maintained the Detained Fast Track, where many asylum-seekers were railroaded through an unfair process and had their claims refused within days while being held in detention, until it was finally defeated in the courts last year. She continues to detain many people – including torture survivors and mentally ill people – in appalling conditions. In the Immigration Act 2014 she deprived most “foreign criminals” – a category which includes some people who have lived in the UK since early childhood and/or have families and children here – of the right to appeal their deportation orders before they are deported. In the Immigration Act 2016, in provisions not yet in force, this will be rolled out to almost all non-asylum immigration cases. She’s fought to return many Iraqi asylum-seekers on the assumption that they can live safely in Baghdad, where the Shi’ite militias are murdering Sunnis on a daily basis. And so on. This is an abbreviated list of her crimes. I could talk about this all day.
I fear for the future: she may or may not be a morally worse person than Cameron overall, but she’s certainly more authoritarian.
I wasn’t entirely aware of the extent of Theresa May’s unpleasantness as Home Secretary. Probably comes from being too wound up with the awful excrescences of Gove in education, Jeremy Hunt in health and Irritable Duncan Syndrome in work and pensions to notice.
One wonders, though, whether making her PM might not be a good thing for our immigration system, given that her replacement as Home Secretary probably isn’t going to be as bad as she was. Unless they can find someone as heartless and cruel to replace her, which with the Tories is always a possibility.
quotetheunquote@40 yeah, the impression I get is that Campbell is closer to Joe Clark on the temperament spectrum than John Crosby.
Gregory Greenwood — Perhaps some English parts of the UK should follow Scotland’s example. For example, from info I’ve seen on the vote, London voted to remain.
@cartomancer, 49
Did you know that Tory is an Irish word meaning brigand?
I have no particular reason for asking this question, obviously. I am an entirely neutral party with no deeply held beliefs on the matter at all. True story.
Zmidponk @ 47;
You are absolutely right – a big heaped dollop of good old fashioned xenophobia and racism was a critical ingredient in the Brexitier strategy, and to that end they were ably abetted by much of the popular press over here that have been pushing a knee-jerk, paranoid and deeply bigoted narrative about immigration ‘ruining Britain’ for not just years but decades now, with the frothing furor only heating up in the run up to the referendum, with not a day going by without screaming anti-immigration headlines being plastered over pretty much all of the red tops.
The looming ruination of the UK has been wrought in no small part by how easily elements of the UK electorate bought into that racist and discriminatory narrative, and their gullibility and rancid bigotry has condemned the rest of us.
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Walton @ 48;
I didn’t realize quite how morally repugnant May was until this leadership struggle started, but the more I find out about her past record of policies and voting the more repugnant I find her to be. I honestly think she is worse than Cameron (quite a feat in itself with his track record), though worryingly is probably no worse than any of the other Conservative leadership hopefuls who have now fallen by the wayside. Either way, she is essentially going to be anointed as the new PM without any democratic mandate in the next few weeks at the most – just another charming legacy of the Brexit idiots we can all look forward to.
————————————————————————————————————————————-
robro @ 51;
Some areas of the UK voted mostly to remain as you say, with Scotland, Northern Ireland and London notable among them. Scotland might get another referendum on independence (though it is far from guaranteed), but there is no way the Westminister Parliament would contemplate such mechanisms for any other part of the UK, least of all the Capitol (though I must admit that the notion of the idiots who got us into this mess having to pay rent to the new city state of London in order to continue sitting in the Houses of Parliament amuses me no end). The further potential break up of the UK would be something of a hard political sell to the powers that be.
Either way, I live in Wales, and for some reason utterly mystifying to me Wales mostly voted to leave the EU, even though Wales was a major recipient of EU monies and an out vote runs directly counter to the glaringly evident self interest of pretty much everyone who lives here.
Athywren, #52
I did know that as it happens. It’s kind of relevant to me, because I come from a proud line of Irish brigands on my father’s side (and Kentish pirates on my mother’s so she tells me!). I’m fairly sure my ancestors were small potatoes compared with the current crop of Tory robber barons though, and doubtless don’t deserve being compared to such shady characters…
That’s OK – nor do we.
You seem to be suffering from the almost universal south-of-the-border inability to see anything north of the Tweed! While it’s by no means socialist, the SNP – the third largest party at Westminster – is certainly well to the left of most Labour MPs (campaigned on an anti-austerity manifesto in both 2015 and 2016, opposed the illegal war in Iraq, opposes the renewal of Trident, explicitly welcomes immigration to Scotland…). And unlike both the leading Brexiters, and Cameron’s cronies, Nicola Sturgeon seems actually to have had a plan in readiness for the possibility of a Brexit victory – combined with a much more substantial Brexit defeat in Scotland, which all the polls predicted. By broad consent up here, she’s “played a blinder” – a united party behind her, a 92:0 vote in the Scottish Parliament approving her attempt to find a way for Scotland to stay in the EU, hobnobbing with EU dignitaries while the Tories and Labour are consumed by their internal divisions. Note that I’m a member of a rival party – the Scottish Greens – and didn’t give the SNP my vote even when there was no SGP candidate standing in my Holyrood constituency (I voted Labour, because I approved of their sitting MSP).
Incidentally, tomorrow Labour’s NEC (National Executive Committee – its constitutional body between conferences) will decide which of two methods of political suicide it prefers. Now a formal challenge has at last been made to Corbyn, it has to decide whether he is automatically on the ballot paper which will go out to members and supporters, or has to get a quarter of the party’s MPs and MEPs to support him to be on it. If he is on it, the likelihood is that he’ll win again, and a considerable proportion of the parliamentary party will break away. If he isn’t (it’s unlikely he could get enough support), there will be outrage among the membership, probably a legal challenge, and quite possibly a majority of the members will write his name in – if there’s a contest at all; but if no-one else puts their name forward, so there is not, and Angela Eagle (who came fourth in the sontest for deputy leader held alongside the leadership contest Corbyn won) is installed without consulting the membership at all, outrage will be redoubled, and many of the local parties and possibly trades unions will refuse to recognnise the result. either way, the temptation for May to go for a snap general election will be huge, although I think she’ll still resist it – given the twists and turns of the past three weeks, who can say what might happen?
#55 – Sorry, candidates for Labour leader need not a quarter of MPs and MEPs, but 20%, which comes to 51; and apparently the NEC may not decide as early as tomorrow.
Nick Gotts, #54
Hey, I was born in Kent, I’ve lived most of my life in Somerset and have occasionally lived in Brighton, Surrey and Oxford – never mind the Tweed, I never pay attention to anything north of the Cotswolds!
After reading several pro-Brexit commenters it seems really clear that the whole vote was just a proxy for action against foreigners and immigrants. Wether the EU was less bureaucratic or more democratic or not seems to just have been a red herring, in fact I’ve read several Brexiters who’s ideal endgame is for the UK to have every economic obligation and encumbrance of an EU member, excepting the free flow of people.
These people don’t give a fuck about their country’s “independence,” the whole principle was just a shibboleth for nativists to identify each other.
#37, EigenSprocketUK
It isn’t obvious that such a thing will happen. If it could, Cameron would have been able to call for one already. The problem is the Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011 which must either be repealed or parliament must vote, twice, to state that they have no faith in the government. May can’t call for a general election on her own if the rest of her party (which have a reasonable majority in parliament) feel that it would be better to eg. kick her out and install a new tory prime minister.
@Anym #59, section two of that act also allows two-thirds of the MPs to vote for an early date. That way, not requiring a vote of no confidence.
Seems unlikely that MPs would vote against that because it would look like they were voting to stay bogged down in undemocratic economic disaster-dithering for two years.
EigenSprocket@60,
Until they’ve
decided on their method of political suicidesorted out who their leader is, I’m sure Labour would not support a fresh election – they would tell the Tories they’d be willing in a few months, ask again then. And I think they could get away with that, politically: the Tories would be widely seen to be trying to start a fight with someone who clearly wasn’t ready – most unsporting. In any case, Labour MPs would probably prefer to risk the opprobium rather than the high probability of losing their seats. Moreover, I don’t think Theresa May wants an election. While the Tories, with their famous instinct for power, have papered over the cracks, they are still deeply divided. The big question for Brexiters – and one that would be foregrounded in an election – is whether they will accept continuing free movement of labour from the EU in order to retain access to the European Single Market.Not quite. Apart from the method EigenSprocket points out, there doesn’t need to be a second vote; the condition is that a vote that “This House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government” is not followed within 14 days by a vote that “This House has confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”.
cartomancer@57,
Have you been following me around? ;-) I was also born in Kent (well, Orpington, which was Kent at the time, later absorbed into Greater London) and have lived in Brighton and Oxford – fine towns both, and which I notice voted Remain – there’s even a petition started for Brighton and Hove to leave the UK!. I’ve also lived in Leeds and Ceredigion, both of which voted Remain, although Calderdale spoils the record. In any case, come up here and help us with a renewed push to shake off Tory rule forever! It looks increasingly as though you’ll be voting Tory to keep UKIP out if you stay down south!
So can May, if she so chooses, request that her own party vote no confidence in order to trigger an election? IIRC, Schröder did that once in Germany and it was considered legal, though sleazy.
May has quite specifically stated that she doesn’t want an early election (despite lambasting Gordon Brown’s lack of democratic mandate when he took over from Tony Blair). A significant number of MPs are primarily concerned with their own careers, and in the current tumultuous climate most would be rightly worried that an early general election would bring defeat at the ballot or, in the case of the Red Tory backstabbers in the Labour party, deselection before they even got put before the electorate. The legislative prerequisites for an early GE are simply not going to happen.
To return to the OP, May is, as has been pointed out, a vile person. She hates foreigners, anyone disadvantaged, the poor, anyone who wants to use pesky “human rights” to oppose her and generally anyone without the weight of privilege behind them. Or, to put it more succinctly, she’s a Tory.
dianne@64,
AFAIK, yes, she could do that – and I think it would be considered “legal but sleazy” here too. Perhaps more so than in Germany, as it makes the Act the Tories voted for only a few years ago farcical. Although IIRC, it was insisted on by the Tories’ coalition partners at the time, the Liberal Democrats, to ensure that the Tories wouldn’t take advantage of a favourable moment to call an election, win an overall majority, and kick them out of government.
Thank you for those links, Walton.
To go slightly off topic, I wondered if you could answer a question I’ve had for a while. About 12 years ago, I had a temping job working for a refugee legal charity at an immigration “reception centre”. One of the things I was most shocked to learn was that when the initial assessment interviews were carried out by home office representatives, they were carried out by people only authorised to say no, and had to go up to their boss’ boss to authorise a yes, something which only happened once in the time I was there. And then people complained about how costly the appeals process was when completely unreasonable rejections were overturned by judges. Is it still the case that the initial decision is made by someone without the authorisation to make a meaningful decision? Because that’s always seemed to me to be not only inhumane, but also inefficient – I’d have thought sooner or later, someone would have decided it was better to get it right the first time round and save money!
@Nick Gotts, 66
Well… that went well.
Nick Gotts, cartomancer and other UK pharyngulites on this thread – if you ever have a pub meet-up, I want to come! I might not have all that much to say, but I surely want to listen.
(Corbyn*-inclined Scot living in England here).
*one of the innumerable things that are pissing me off about the press/media coverage is the way Corbyn-inclined people are being painted as indulging in a cult of personality. It’s annoying because it seeks to downplay or outright deny the fact that for the most part people favour him because of his policies in combination with integrity.
I was party to a discussion recently in which one person was visibly surprised when I said what I cared about were his policies, not him-as-an-individual (I do rate him more highly than most other politicians, of course, but not because he’s Corbyn – because for years he’s demonstrated integrity and consistent alignment with policies I support).
I was debating whether to post this here or in the eugenics thread. It sorta fits both.
In parliament during May 2016, the UK suicide committee (Farage, Johnson, Cameron, etc.) attacked Bank of England Chief Mark Carney for predicting recession, economic slowdown and the decline of the pound if the “leave” vote won. They claimed he was “campaigning for remain”.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36273448
The BoE’s post “brexit” report is out, and is even more bleak than Carney’s predictions. For those who don’t know, Carney used to run the Bank of Canada. Canada suffered no bank failures during the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/bank-of-england-july-financial-stability-report-brexit-eu-referendum-2016-7
It’s just like the aggressive and cannibalistic chickens. They got the mob rule they wanted and also ended up with reduced productivity. Way to go.
dianne @4
Kindly go fuck yourself. That kind of casual denigration of entire countries is exactly the kind of thing that got us into this mess in the first place.
Sincerely,
One of the 48% of voters who voted “remain”
@Momentary Lapse #71: shardman already said the same thing, but much better, at 22. Without the implicit hypocrisy of “kindly” too.
opposeablethumbs@69,
Well I’d be up for that! I get down to London fairly often, and less often to other places, where I have friends or family.
Back on topic, Labour’s NEC has decided by 18-14 that Corbyn does not need 51 nominations from MPs or MEPs to get on the ballot paper (somewhat to my surprise, and I think to Corbyn’s) . It also decided that only those who joined the party (or, I assume, became registered supporters or are members of affiliated trades unions who pay the political levy) before January 12th this year can vote (over 100,000 have joined since the referendum). It would not be surprising if either or both of these decisions were challenged in court – the first by anti-Corbynites, the second by some of those thus denied a vote (material encouraging people to join promises them a vote in leadership elections and says nothing about a qualifying period). But if they are, my guess is that the courts will say it’s nothing to do with them – judges are generally reluctant to be seen to be interfering in party politics.
@Nick Gotts, 73
Apparently (and this is based on twitter info about which I have done zero checking, so take it with a Mt Everest of salt) those of us who joined within that period or are/were considering joining will still be able to vote if they join a union (assuming they’re not already a member) and, while I don’t know about others, I know Unite have options for “community memberships”, for those who’re on a low income or unemployed, if that’s a concern.
I have to admit that I can see the motivation for locking down votes to only long-term supporters, but I’m seriously pissed about the fee to, presumably, get that bar lifted. Yeah, sure, they want to be sure those voting aren’t Tory stooges or whatever, but £25 is totally achievable, except for among the unemployed and underemployed voters and members who had for so long felt their voice was, and would always be unheard, but finally felt a glimmer of hope because of Corbyn. And also those in that camp who desperately want him out for the sake of electability. I may have a bias. It kind of sounds like Labour’s NEC saying, “yeah, you were right, your voice won’t be heard, and we’ll make sure of that.”
Maybe they have a point about Corbyn. Maybe they’re right that Labour is unelectable under him. (I’m not convinced, but I’m also not secure enough in my support of him to be unthinkingly in favour of testing it out.) But this kind of thing? Silencing those who felt they had been given a voice after so long unheard? That seems like a really good way to generate grudges and permanently lose voters.
I know I’ve had feelings of giving up on the Labour party (Who, aside from that one time when I voted for a Green candidate for MP, and the time when I picked a Conservative candidate for PCC as 2nd choice (The other options were UKIP, and a guy who wanted to “run it like a business,” FFS! I swear, that’s the only reason I did it! I SWEAR!!) I have always voted for) based on their actions over the last couple of weeks, and I’ve always felt politically involved. I can’t imagine how this must feel for someone who only recently felt like their voice matters.
Athywren@74,
The news reports I’ve seen and heard so far were quite unclear about the conditions for union members and affiliated supporters – the BBC Radio guy seemed to be implying only fully paid-up individual members from before 12th January would be able to vote; I have my doubts about whether the NEC has the competence to make such a radical change to the leadership election rules. I guess it’s likely to be clarified tomorrow.
Well, that’s been the message from the anti-Corbynites all along. The irony is that it was the right that pushed through the one-person-one-vote rules, to reduce the influence of trades union leaders. They presumably didn’t reckon on the members having minds of their own.
I’m not by any means an unqualified admirer of Corbyn – I don’t think he has made the impact he could have done, in the referendum campaign above all – and to some extent, as a Scottish Green Party member and independence campaigner I look on Labour’s internecine turmoil with a certain detachment; but the majority of the PLP were clearly determined from the first to oust Corbyn at the earliest opportunity – and chose a point where the Tories were themselves in disarray. That’s unforgiveable. It’s very hard to see Labour winning the next election, whatever the outcome of the current battle; although with the degree of instability in British politics generally, almost nothing looks like a safe bet!
Hey Nick et al – who knows, stranger things have happened :-)
There must be a fair few UK Pharyngulites! If anyone happens to envisage a possibility of a group pub meet-up some fine day, at a reachable location (just by way of example for me, realistically, it would have to be somewhere in London – which of course is useless for many others I expect), maybe PZ would allow it to be posted in a brief OP so everyone would see it (like many of us, I imagine, I usually at least see all the headings but not all the comments in every thread).
@Athywren
Yes, it’s a shitty move and obviously will mainly disenfranchise the poorest. And apparently it was never on the agenda but was passed at the end of the meeting under AOB – after several people had already had to leave. (I can’t verify that personally as I was told last night at a rally, but I think there’s info on line).
opposeablethumbs@76
Actually, almost wherever you are in Britain, London is relatively reachable, so it would be the obvious place to meet.
Nigel Farage will be attending the Republican National Convention.
SC@78: Seriously? Why?
According to him, because he knows a lot of Republicans, will “be interested to hear what Donald Trump has to say in his big speech,” and believes Brexit offers lessons for the US.
Oh. I’m not sure which of those reasons is the most ominous.
Drumph agrees with Farage that BREXIT was a Good Thing!!!!
He even told the Scots that they were taking their country back by BREXITing. Even though the Scots voted overwhelmingly against BREXIT (ie Remain), and voted marginally against leaving the UK.
Drumph has his head so far up his “out of sunshine” that he has no knowledge of anything in the world. Pulling fantasies of mass protest outrages (e.g. moments of silence for Dallas shooter, celebrations on 9/11/2001) out his arse and other BS.
EigenSprocketUK@73
shardman didn’t really say anything about disparaging entire countries, so he didn’t say the same thing as I did, even though there may have been some overlap in content. Furthermore the use of “kindly” is tonally inconsistent with the rest of the sentence, but that is not what “hypocrisy” means.
Thanks for playing.
@Momentary Lapse #84:
Dianne(4) was, as Shardman(22) swiftly pointed out, tarring an entire country as idiots on the basis of what 52% voted for on the EU membership referendum. Shardman took the hyperbole in good faith, pointed out where this was wrong, and responded reasonably.
You(72) however, arrived over a day later to say “kindly go fuck yourself … sincerely, one of the 48%”, and added nothing to the debate. I’ve no idea why you bothered saying ‘kindly’ and ‘sincerely’ about fucking off: yes, perhaps that phrasing wasn’t hypocrisy but it’s certainly dysfunctional and it makes you look like a complete pillock.
Now, another day later, you’re back to throw a dictionary at me and a dismissive ‘thanks for playing’. Perhaps you think you’re a first-rank blog-warrior and that I’m not. You are half right. I’m certainly a fool for replying to you because you’ll just be back with your riposte this afternoon or tomorrow. And I won’t care.
And Boris Johnson is the new Foreign Secretary. Of course.
SC@86,
Thus, Theresa May announces her intention to troll the world! She was supposed to be a “safe pair of hands”. Does Boris know where the bodies are buried?
Nick and SC@86 and 87: Yeah, I’ve been wondering why that was a good idea, even in May’s mind.
dianne@88,
I’ve seen it suggested that the idea was: “You got us into this mess, Boris, now deal with it”. But that would itself be indicative of a level of immaturity and spite that does not bode well – quite apart from May’s abysmal record on civil liberties and migrant rights. There’s a petition concerning one egregious example here.
It’s not even really Boris that will be dealing with the Brexit mess. That dubious honour falls to David Davis, as “Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union”.
More on Boris Johnson’s unique diplomatic skills.
Dunc@90,
Despite the fact that he’s a Brexiter and on the right of the party, David Davis is one of vanishingly few Tory politicians for whom I have any respect at all. He does appear to have a genuine concern for civil liberties, and in a fine piece of irony, is currently involved in a case in the European Court of Justice (the EU’s highest court) stemming from an action he took in the UK courts along with Tom Watson, deputy leader of the Labour Party, against the surveillance powers in the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 – which was pushed through by none other than Theresa May.
@Nick Gotts, 92
He’s my MP!
I have never voted for him, and I think I’d eat my own shoes rather than vote for him in the future. I did once say I was proud of him, though. He is… light and shade. He has argued in favour of the death penalty. He also argued that air strikes in Syria were a bad idea and voted against them, because, rather than acting to defeat ISIS and other groups, they actually seem to have the effect of increasing their recruitment numbers. He voted against the repeal of section 28 (which forbade the promotion of “the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” (got to love those pretended family relationships!) until its repeal in 2000 in Scotland & 2003 everywhere else (in the UK)). He also resigned as an MP in protest against infringements on civil liberties (he also stood again for the same party in the same seat in the by-election that followed his resignation, but… *shrug*).
He is… definitely not the worst politician who ever lived, and I don’t think I’d throw an egg, or even any form of produce at him if I saw him walking down my street. I’m not convinced I actually like him, though.