UK Politics Thread

[Jimbuna]

I found this to be most entertaining

Clarke caught discussing Tory 'fiasco'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_...lines/36718454

[Oberon]

Meanwhile in the Private Eye:

[STEED]

Originally Posted by STEED

I'm off for another holiday so a few predictions I shall make..

JC will still be running Labour next Saturday next week. and I think Fox will be the first to be eliminated from the Tory leadership. And I think Leadsom could be a thorn in Gove's side.

Well I know its not Saturday but hey I was right about Fox getting the chop and Crab made the right move leaving the race. Leadsom clearly is a thorn in Goves side so will he make it or not we shall see latter tonight.

Gove's dirty campaign may get him into the final two.

Michael Gove ally's email to Tory MPs asking for votes to beat Leadsom

http://www.itv.com/news/2016-07-06/m...g-for-support/

Just to add yes JC will still be running Labour unless he is abducted by aliens.

[STEED]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

I found this to be most entertaining




http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_...lines/36718454

Knocking back some expensive wine helps.

[MGR1]

One from Kezia Dugdale, SLab leader:

Dugdale: UK must allow Scottish independence vote if people want it.

This seems to be part of a continuing process for Slab. Unless they become more pro-independence, or (very) soft on the Union they haven't a snowball's chance in hell of getting any of their former Clyde Valley heartland constituencies back.

Likewise, Ruth Davidson has also called for the UK Government to refrain from blocking any potential IndyRef:

Second Scottish independence referendum should not be blocked, according to Ruth Davidson.

Ruthie and the Scottish Conservatives also have a major headache. The result of the Brexit Referendum and the current state of the Tory Party has pulled the rug out from under them, massively undermining their Pro-UK position (from the Times):

In 1789, a young advocate called Thomas Muir made a fateful decision. At the height of the Dundas despotism, when Pitt’s man in Scotland held the nation in the grip of Tory hegemony, the young lawyer decided the weavers of East Dunbartonshire would benefit from a political education in Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man.
Up with this kind of “rabble rousing”, Scotland’s reactionary establishment would not put. Fearing a Jacobin hiding under every dockleaf, ready to take their property and their heads, they indicted Muir for sedition. Tried before the reliably garrulous Lord Braxfield, Muir was convicted and transported to Australia. Reflecting on this authoritarian spasm, Lord Cockburn observed that Scotland “had wonderfully few proper Jacobins” in the 1790s, despite official fever dreams about the sans-culottes of Leith and Lanarkshire on the march.
Contemplating the state of the Conservative Party, its ancient regime swept aside, knocked Cockburn’s wry quotation back into my mind. Like Saturn, the European referendum campaign is still devouring its own children. But less obviously, it has also gobbled up perhaps the last prime minister able to speak with credibility and feeling on the importance of the British Union. Whatever you made of his talents and his terrible choices, Mr Cameron was an authentic unionist with a warm — albeit rather patrician — feeling for this country.
The same cannot be said for any of his likely successors. With the exception of the wounded Michael Gove, the mark of Cain still shining on his forehead, none of the candidates to replace David Cameron has ever shown much affinity for Scottish sensibilities. This Tory leadership race, like the European campaign, seems animated by the altogether different question: “Who now speaks for England?” From some dusty wynd in Edinburgh, Lord Cockburn’s ghost whispers. There are marvellously few proper unionists in this Conservative government. In Andrea Leadsom and Theresa May, the brash English nationalist wing is in the ascendant.
You can understand, therefore, why Ruth Davidson has been a picture of woe since the result, veering erratically between depression and aggression, struggling to fit her tone to the times. Her “strong opposition” spins aimlessly. Her party’s 2016 manifesto thundered: “We will oppose any attempt by the SNP to hold a second referendum during this parliament, no matter the result of the EU referendum this June.” In the wake of the Brexit vote, Ms Davidson has modulated the tone. Or completely reversed gear. “Constitutionally, the UK government shouldn’t block” a second independence referendum, she said.
You might try to distinguish between “opposing” and “blocking” another poll, but such sly, lawyerly distinctions sit uneasily alongside Ms Davidson’s unmerited reputation as a plain-speaking political scrapper.
The dominant Remain caucus in Scottish Conservatism finds itself in a ghastly spot. Ms Davidson and her circle would surely be content for the UK to cut a deal which leaves the channels of free European trade open, in exchange for the free movement of persons. The snag? None of the contenders for prime minister can countenance any such deal.
Many Scottish Tories may privately share Professor Colin Kidd’s despairing reflection this week, on their predicament. “I have learnt from bitter experience as a Scottish unionist”, Professor Kidd wrote, “that the biggest problem we confronted was not the SNP’s dubious case for independence, but the words and needs of our supposed friends in England.” It will only get worse.
What becomes of Ms Davidson’s “blue-collar” Tories, when Prime Minister Leadsom launches her new vision for a new British prosperity, “liberating” the economy by sanctioning firms to unfairly dismiss their workers, to pay them less than the minimum wage, and dish out P45s to women with the temerity to fall pregnant while in post? What say Scotland’s “liberal Tories”, when Ms May stands outside Downing Street, and announces the next innovation in the flinty-eyed authoritarianism which has characterised her entire career in the Home Office? Is all this quietly to be borne? Is some heavy play of Scottish Tory distinctiveness to be made? And to what end?
For all of her shallow affability, Ms Davidson’s strategy thus far has been fundamentally unoriginal. It was Mr Gove who put the point perceptively in 2009. Reflecting on how Margaret Thatcher’s Scottish MPs positioned themselves during the 1980s, Mr Gove observed that “they presented themselves to Scottish media opinion as — essentially — Scotland’s protectors.”
As Mr Gove noted: “One of the consequences of that was people got the impression that somehow Margaret Thatcher and the ideas that she stood for were inimical to Scottish values — and therefore Scottish Conservativism could only survive by holding Thatcherism at bay, rather than by adapting Thatcherism to Scottish contours.”
Is Ms Davidson’s pitch, decades on, so radically different? Having cynically crucified Scottish Labour and the Liberals during the recent Holyrood campaign as plastic patriots, her party having pitched the Union — carelessly, irresponsibly — into peril, all she can now say is: “I know my Westminster colleagues are ghastly. Vote Tory.” This isn’t a winning line. No wonder Brexit has robbed Scottish Conservatism’s happy warrior of her joie de vivre. The European referendum is Ms Davidson’s albatross. The weight of it may yet drive her political career into the dirt.

Mike.

[Oberon]

Looks like we're going to have Theresa May as PM then, so how long will it be before the snoopers charter makes a come back?

God help the police too.

[Jimbuna]

Whichever of the two are eventually successful they would be well advised not to try and emulate Maggie.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Whichever of the two are eventually successful they would be well advised not to try and emulate Maggie.

There's a definite sub-group in the Tory party though that want the glory days of Maggie back, and they're pushing hard for it, and since Labour is still not exactly certain what it's doing, they could feasibly push quite hard and face only internal Tory resistance.

Theresa May is a concern though, particularly for those who are concerned with the privacy and freedom of the British individual, and indeed, for the police force who have suffered the most at her hands.
We might find ourselves wishing for Dodgy Dave to come back.

[STEED]

This Tory leader contest is rather interesting that is to say "May" has the backing of the party and in most part the general public but "Leadsom" is more popular with the party members and its them who will cast their vote on who shall win.

"May" as pointed out by Oberon has made mistakes but she has more experience. She was never rolled out in the referendum even so she was committed to the remain vote which would suggest she was not really pro EU. On saying that there is a point here, "May" is in no rush to bring about Article 50 and has suggested directly or in directly delaying it until next summer.

But here is the crunch point, lets say she has won the contest and if she delays after March 31st 2017 then the situation changes as Article 50 will need the backing of 14 EU States for the UK to leave. As said if she wins is she playing a game of poker for high stakes?

"Leadsom" A junior minister pro leave with moderate experience has nothing that I can see to loose for.

Dirty campaign ahead or will it be a straight fight we shall see.

[BossMark]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Whichever of the two are eventually successful they would be well advised not to try and emulate Maggie.

Well at least there's no pits for them to close, thatcher saw to that....

[STEED]

Looks like a clean contest is off as the cat claws come out..

Leadsom: Being A Mum Gives Me More Of A Stake
In highly personal remarks, the mother of three says she is sure the Home Secretary must be "really sad" not to have children.

http://news.sky.com/story/leadsom-be...stake-10496432

[STEED]

Labour's Angela Eagle has said she will announce a bid for the party leadership on Monday morning.

http://news.sky.com/story/eagle-to-c...rship-10496779

Far too late in the day, my money is on old JC to stay put.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by STEED

http://news.sky.com/story/eagle-to-c...rship-10496779

Far too late in the day, my money is on old JC to stay put.

Rgr that and an eventual split of the party....unless the unions withdraw their backing for JC.

[Moonlight]

What something or other is Angela Eagle going to bring to the table, oh yes I know, the same menu that has lost the Labour Party the last 2 elections and all its credibility as well.

Its time something radical was brought to the table me thinks, all MP's supporting this Eagle bird should all resign and start a new political party.
We can have a mini general election then and she can morph the old New Labour Party manifesto into the New New Labour Party manifesto, what a bloody fiasco this is and these muppets think they have the intellect to run the country on our behalf, you won't be getting my vote you bloody morons.

[MGR1]

I do feel a bit sorry for non-Conservative voters in England.

There isn't any party that ordinary working class voters can support. As in Scotland, Labour are a very bad joke. I can see UKIP probably trying to fill that gap by continuing to tap into the resentment the population feel about Europe, "the establishment", globalisation and the general lack of control that people feel about their lives.

In short, what the SNP have done in Scotland, though without the euroscepticism in their case. Or the general anti-foreigner nastiness that seems to occuring in parts of England. I guess it helps that we have our own Parliament, something that Blair and Co should have set up for England when devolution was first mooted. It may have limited powers compared to a genuine national government, but it at least it gives Scotland a voice that England doesn't have.

Mind you, it's backfired a bit as many Scots, particularly SNP supporters, now view Westminster in the same light that people in England view Brussels.

That last bit should be food for thought, methinks!

Mike.