British Politics Guide

[mèþru]

Meanwhile, we look forward to the Conservatives lambasting Labour for being hopelessly divided...

Jeez, it's just seven people, and I doubt that they'll have many more followers. Is 7 MPs in a chamber of over 600 hopelessly divided?

[chris_notts]

On the plus side, the 7 may well have helped reduce funny-tingeism in the party by taking Angela Smith with them.

[dewrad]

[For those who don't remember: it's widely thought Umunna must have some sort of Issue, personally or in his family. He ran for the 2015 labour leadership, and was considered a frontrunner, but withdrew after only three days declaring himself "uncomfortable" with the "scrutiny" from the press that his campaign had entailed. It's never been clear what exactly he didn't want scrutinised...]

My money's on him being a woofter.

(What the fuck is going on?!?!? Just in general? I mean, largest constitutional crisis since Charles I and the Labour party decides to split? The actual fuck?)

[Linguoboy]

My money's on him being a woofter.

Is that the accepted term for bears in UK English?

[Salmoneus]

If I had to guess, I'd go with 'family member has undisclosed mental health condition and/or white collar crime issue'. He seems to me like a guy who (unlike that idiot Oaten) wouldn't run if he didn't think he was clean, so I think it's something he was told afterward. Or else he just had a breakdown himself or something.

(What the fuck is going on?!?!? Just in general? I mean, largest constitutional crisis since Charles I and the Labour party decides to split? The actual fuck?)

To be fair, the Tories are on the verge of double-splitting - a current minister and a gaggle of other MPs are apparently boasting that they'll join The Independent Group if the PM doesn't remove the no-deal option. (I doubt they will, but they might). And from the other said, there's the ERG.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems probably would be splitting, but there's only eleven of them as it is, so....


[regarding there only being seven: the SDP began with just four...]

EDIT: oh, and Derek Hatton's back. Labour would have been vindictive (ad possibly criminal) to keep him out, and it's not like he'll have any power, but it's terrible timing, image-wise.

[chris_notts]

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems probably would be splitting, but there's only eleven of them as it is, so....

Maybe they have split and no-one's noticed yet.

I doubt the Conservative MPs will split, personally. The more I think about it, the more I think that it's not in them. But that doesn't mean their base won't split. Especially if May is actually successful in pushing her deal through, I can imagine a large minority splitting off to form a protest voting block, maybe in favour of Nigel's new party.

[Frislander]

DIT: oh, and Derek Hatton's back. Labour would have been vindictive (ad possibly criminal) to keep him out, and it's not like he'll have any power, but it's terrible timing, image-wise.

Refresh my memory.

[Salmoneus]

DIT: oh, and Derek Hatton's back. Labour would have been vindictive (ad possibly criminal) to keep him out, and it's not like he'll have any power, but it's terrible timing, image-wise.

Refresh my memory.

The guy Neil Kinnock is talking about in his famous 1985 speech. [It's a fantastic speech, but it seems there's no video of most of it. Sadly, modern British politics probably has no one who has either the oratory to deliver a speech of that kind, nor the courage to deliver a speech over the boos of their own conference. And for all that it's famous for the criticism of Militant, it's incredibly fiery toward the Tories, much more so than any modern speeches would be.]

Anyway, Hatton was an agent of Militant, and deputy leader of Liverpool council. The council refused to obey the law and launched a rebellion against the central government, in part by unilaterally deciding to operate a deficit budget. This meant that the council immediately went bankrupt, which meant that it had to issue redundancy notices to its entire workforce overnight. [the workers, needless to say, retaliated by threatening to go on strike until they stopped being redundant, to which the council presumably observed that the workers didn't know what 'redundant' meant...]. In 1986, he was purged from the party.

Of course, being a devout Trotskite Marxist agitator, he has since gone on to be a wealthy international property developer and new media entrepeneur.

[Salmoneus]

The IG is now up to eight - Jean Ryan, leader of Labour Friends of Israel, has defected. Again, she'd been VONCed and faced deselection in any case, so it's not a shock.

More interestingly, papers are reporting that three (named!) Tory MPs may join the IG in the next day or two.

[Owain]

A third is a cause celebre, Luciana Berger. She's been in the news recently fighting for her inalienable right to be a Labour MP - her local party attempted to hold a VONC in her due to her refusal to support any Labour policies and suspicion that they was planning to leave the party, but the VONC had to be withdrawn and the local party was then suspended, because Berger is Jewish.

She having had racist death threats against her hidden from the police and herself by the Labour Party, and the motion having been put forward by a bloke who says the Jews did 9/11 and called her a "disruptive Zionist". The chair of the CLP being a big fan (and fellow Rothschild conspiracy theorist) of David Icke as well.

The IG is now up to eight - Jean Ryan, leader of Labour Friends of Israel, has defected. Again, she'd been VONCed and faced deselection in any case, so it's not a shock.

More interestingly, papers are reporting that three (named!) Tory MPs may join the IG in the next day or two.

This has led to a war over the Young Labour Twitter account as members of the committe tweet about how wonderful this is for Palestine and retweet each other's replies to Ryan expressing upset over rockets being launched at Israeli nurseries telling her this means she considers Palestinians less than human, as well as retweeting similar stuff from notorious anti-Semite Asa Winstanley, who has in the past accused the current Chair of Young Labour of being an Israeli agent on the basis she's a Jewish member of Labour's Jewish affilate.

[zompist]

More interestingly, papers are reporting that three (named!) Tory MPs may join the IG in the next day or two.

That would put them at par with the Lib Dems, which doesn't say much for either group.

Also, if my calculations are right (that May needs 322 votes and would have 324) it's kind of moot unless 3 more Tories defect, right?

[Owain]

More interestingly, papers are reporting that three (named!) Tory MPs may join the IG in the next day or two.

That would put them at par with the Lib Dems, which doesn't say much for either group.

Also, if my calculations are right (that May needs 322 votes and would have 324) it's kind of moot unless 3 more Tories defect, right?

Given this group wouldn't really have time to organise a party to contest an election, I doubt they want that just yet.

[Owain]

In other news, Shamina Begum has questionably legally been stripped of her British citizenship.
Whatever I think of her, this strikes me as a very bad precedent, and one I suspect is mostly intended by Javid to boost his cred for the Tory leadership race by throwing red meat to the right, knowing it'll almost certainly be overturned in court.

[mèþru]

Not the Labour Friends of Israel! I really, really want that group to stay in the party and gain influence within it. At least Tom Watson's still there.

[alice]

In other news, Shamina Begum has questionably legally been stripped of her British citizenship.
Whatever I think of her, this strikes me as a very bad precedent, and one I suspect is mostly intended by Javid to boost his cred for the Tory leadership race by throwing red meat to the right, knowing it'll almost certainly be overturned in court.

Basically, yes. You just have to see the front pages of the papers to be sure of it.

As for Labour and the Jews: there is, and has been for quite a while, a substantial section on the Left who can't comprehend anything in between "unequivocal support for Palestine and opposition to Israel" and "unreconstructed Zionist".

[zompist]

Three Conservatives have indeed joined the Independent Group: Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen.

[mèþru]

I'd have guessed that the "funny tinge" remarks would have set the IG on fire and caused no one to announce their joining at least a month, but I guess I've underestimated British casual racism once again.

[Frislander]

I'm not sure there'll be that many more joining after this, particularly from the Tories, unless Amber Rudd and Nicki Morgan decide they can't stay either and take a bunch more MPs with them, but even then many of them will be annihilated by their local associations if they do.

[chris_notts]

I'm not sure there'll be that many more joining after this, particularly from the Tories, unless Amber Rudd and Nicki Morgan decide they can't stay either and take a bunch more MPs with them, but even then many of them will be annihilated by their local associations if they do.

It seems like a genuine no deal decision, or at least lack of prevention, by TM would cause at least a couple more to leave completely, and at the very least would cause her government to disintegrate.

It's unclear whether anyone from the ERG would leave if she managed to push her deal through its current form. I think it's more likely they'd stay in, since they have more influence that way and there's still all to play for (for the rest of the UK excluding NI) in the next stage of negotiations post-withdrawal.

It's looking genuinely impossible for her to keep this coalition of lies and contradictory promises going much longer. She has to choose the ERG or the moderates, and whichever side isn't chosen will make governing impossible for the other side.

[zompist]

May doesn't want No Deal; she wants Her Deal. If she can't get that, plan B is Her Deal. This is also plan C.

That is, she's running out the clock; promising a vote in mid-February means she's counting on Her Deal looking better and better as time runs out. That is... unlikely, but she doesn't seem to be considering any alternatives.

At this point, a good day for May is one where she goes to bed as PM. The party can't throw her out, and Parliament failed to. And there's not exactly another deal on offer from anyone. Success!

The one thing she could do is cancel Brexit, or ask for a delay. But she's got it into her head that Brexit Must Be Done-- besides, her own party would split if she tried to cancel. As for a delay, that isn't compatible with her strategy of playing chicken with Her Plan.