British Politics Guide

[mèþru]

And it still is racist, tapping into anti-German hysteria. Or classist, going by the old trope of no one of aristocratic origin can be a good person.

[Salmoneus]

Anyway, I think I have to give a little bit of kudos to the new PM: in sacking (/accepting the resignation of) 17 ministers in one day, he's set a record for turnover. On the one hand, he didn't have a say in a few of those. But in fairness, the speed and extent of the changes indicates that he did have a plan, and that he's willing to expend energy and make enemies. It would have been easy for a PM in his position to have cowed away from making the changes he wanted, and it's to his credit that he's felt able to take these bold steps.

On the other hand, some of the appointments really are eyeopening. First, there's Patel. This, let's remember, is a woman who was sacked for breaking the ministerial code and lying to parliament in order to cover up her conducting her own secret diplomatic policy with a foreign power against the policies and instructions of her own government and prime minister - treason, in other words. You have to feel for the poor anti-Semites in the Labour party, getting expelled for their lunatic conspiracy theories while in the background, at the same time, one of the great offices of state is given to somebody who actually is known to have betrayed her country by secretly taking political instructions from the Israeli government - their heads must be exploding about now!

And then there's our new Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, a man sacked for breaking the Official Secrets Act by leaking classified information from a top secret meeting with the intelligence agencies, a crime punishable by two years in prison if conducted by anyone not in the conservative party. [he then "swore on the lives of his children" that he was innocent, despite everyone knowing he was caught red-handed, so THERE'S a guy you can trust!]

Both Patel and Williamson would in ordinary times not only be excluded from any political positions for life, but would probably have been prosecuted.

[mèþru]

Was it ever determined that Israel gave instructions in those meetings? I thought she was making statements to the Israeli government that had not been approved or even known to the UK government. Still treason, but without Israeli culpability. I didn't get the impression that she colluded with Israel in Israeli media, much of which would be quick to call out crimes done by Bibi whether there was substance or not to the allegations.

[Richard W]

While I'm no supporter of Boris, I don't think that labelling him with the non-Anglo-Saxon birth-surname of an ancestor is a particularly good look. Yes, he's of multiethnic origin, but there are much better reasons to dislike him than the nationality of his grandfather.

On nationality issues, is there any evidence beyond his word that he is no longer a US citizen? One wouldn't trust an Australian politician who claimed to no longer be a British citizen. I'm not entirely convinced he isn't a Turkish citizen, though he may be in the grey area of being entitled to become one. At least Priti Patel seems to be British only - though it's conceivable that her department mistakenly thinks she's a dual national - she may be entitled to an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) visa.

Indeed, there are much better Turk-connected reasons to dislike him - his raising of the prospect of massive Turkish immigration is one.

[Richard W]

Because "Alexander de Pfeffel" still sounds white...

Because the male line takes us back to Kemal, which was also his paternal grandfather's original surname. "Raab" also sounds white, but it doesn't look British. As far as I can tell, both these guys have British ancestry going back a long way.

[Raphael]

How does someone end up with a name like "de Pfeffel", anyway? It's as if someone was named "von Richelieu" or "MacHigginbottom".

[Linguoboy]

How does someone end up with a name like "de Pfeffel", anyway?

Switzerland.

[Raphael]

Ah, thank you!

[anteallach]

How does someone end up with a name like "de Pfeffel", anyway?

Switzerland.

In this case, I understand that it was originally "von Pfeffel", but that some of them ended up in France and changed the "von" to "de". Johnson's German aristocratic ancestry is known in a reasonable amount of detail; back when he was regarded as much as a celebrity as a politician he was a subject of the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?

[Linguoboy]

How does someone end up with a name like "de Pfeffel", anyway?

Switzerland.

In this case, I understand that it was originally "von Pfeffel", but that some of them ended up in France and changed the "von" to "de".

Yeah, it was a different branch of the paternal side that passed through Switzerland. The daughter of Hubert Freiherr von Pfeffel was born in Paris and thus was known as Marie-Louise de Pfeffel rather than Marie Luise von Pfeffel.

It must be awfully flattering for Trump that Johnson is so often compared to him, since for all his buffoonery and casual racism, he actually has a distinguished past and a respectable CV.

[Salmoneus]

So, the new government's had its first scandal.

No prizes for guessing: it's Patel again. The problem this time was that after being sacked from the government, she accepted a "job" as a corporate "advisor", without first getting permission from the relevant oversight body. She did eventually apply for, and receive, permission, but the ministerial code clearly states that this sort of back-dated permission is unacceptable. Needless to say, however, it'll be permitted.

Oh, and in this "job", if you're wondering how legitimate it was, she was charging an fee of £1,000 per hour.

Of course, being flagrantly corrupt isn't even theoretically a problem for modern government ministers, but they are meant to register their corruption in a timely fashion.



[the idea behind the rules here is basically that ex-ministers shouldn't be allowed to take up advisor "jobs" within a certain period of leaving government, because we all know that what they're being paid for is insider information they were privy to in government (plus the usual hope of influence, of course).]

[Raphael]

I'm a bit unclear on the rules concerning disolutions of Parliament since fixed terms were introduced. Is it theoretically possible that there might be a successful VONC, but still no majority for new elections?

[anteallach]

I'm a bit unclear on the rules concerning disolutions of Parliament since fixed terms were introduced. Is it theoretically possible that there might be a successful VONC, but still no majority for new elections?

No. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act means that if a VONC is passed, there is a short period to form a new government and then otherwise there is an election.

What could happen is that there could be something which historically would have been regarded as equivalent to a loss of confidence, but which doesn't fit the strict definition in the Act, and no majority for an election. That could be very messy.

[Raphael]

I'm a bit unclear on the rules concerning disolutions of Parliament since fixed terms were introduced. Is it theoretically possible that there might be a successful VONC, but still no majority for new elections?

No. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act means that if a VONC is passed, there is a short period to form a new government and then otherwise there is an election.

What could happen is that there could be something which historically would have been regarded as equivalent to a loss of confidence, but which doesn't fit the strict definition in the Act, and no majority for an election. That could be very messy.

Thank you!

[Richard W]

What could happen is that there could be something which historically would have been regarded as equivalent to a loss of confidence, but which doesn't fit the strict definition in the Act, and no majority for an election. That could be very messy.

Weren't we in that situation with Theresa May? I suspect Boris depends on hope and distrust for support.

[Salmoneus]

Yes, essentially the problem is that if some people don't want an election, they can block every single piece of legislation, but still just vote for the government in a VONC. Before the FTPA, the PM could simply designate a piece of legislation as a VOC, so that you couldn't vote it down without voting down the government*. This meant that if there was no majority to remove the government, the government would be able to function by forcing through key legislation. But now, we've separated the VONC process from the actual process of legislation, so people can block legislation while simultaneously blocking elections.

This is a terrible idea.

It would be nice if MPs could change it. But they can't, because nobody has a majority and yet they all refuse to have elections.

[Raphael]

After the Lib Dems won a by-election in a seat previously held by the Tories, the Government's majority now apparently stands at 1 (one).

Now, don't get me wrong, if I was English, I'd probably support the Lib Dems right now, although I have my disagreements with them, because with the other two main parties being led by Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, IMO I wouldn't have much of a choice. But, that said, why on Earth does a British political party have a logo that looks like an Australian road sign? It struck me as pretty weird when I saw the photos of cheering Lib Dem supporters on the Internet.

[Salmoneus]

My understanding is that the lozenge signs used to be a traditional form of campaign sign for all (or many?) parties in the UK (and in Ireland), and that the Lib Dems simply retained theirs as other parties drifted into more modern-looking rectangles; as a result, the lozenge or 'diamond' has become iconic for them. The diamond is obviously amber (/yellow/orange/etc... they've never been able to agree on just one colour), and if your sign is amber you pretty much have to write in black (or, the lib dems insist, "charcoal"). And when you have a yellow and black diamond sign, you can't really avoid looking at least a little bit australian.

However, annoyingly I can't right now find any evidence for this account. I'm sure I've seen old diamonds for other parties, but I can't find any right now. [unfortunately, search terms like party names, 'election', 'campaign', 'diamond', 'sign' and 'lozenge', 'history' are all way too common to give anything usefu].l

[Salmoneus]

Anyway, yes, as Raphael says, the majority is now down to 1. The Tories took the unusual step of fielding a candidate who had recently been convicted of multiple charges of fleecing the public through fraudulent expenses claims. He nearly won.


Meanwhile, the Conservatives have announced that they'll be eliminating the whole "market economy" thing. In order to deal with Brexit, the government will commit to buying agricultural products, in unlimited amounts, at prices fixed by the government (and then presumably destroying most of it). Aside from the usual questions about whether the government should be distorting the economy by propping up failing businessness by providing economically-unjustified prices year after year (and not just subsidies, but an outright promise to buy), there are also concerns that this might lead to massive culls - because farmers know they can get a high price if they slaughter their animals this year, but may worry about the guaranteed price being abandoned, or lowered, in future years. The fact that most of the meat from the slaughtered animals would then just be burned adds a somewhat grotesque element.

[dhok]

Doesn't a majority of 1 bode well for a GE? The Tories are sunk in the polls, so virtually everybody else can stand to gain from an election (though not everybody else will), and all you need to do is convince one reasonable Tory MP in a safe seat, perhaps somebody who privately loathes Johnson (there are surely candidates)...or perhaps a member of the DUP, given that a no-deal Brexit would surely hand seats over to nationalists in NI.