British Politics Guide

[evmdbm]

Obviously he had a work event to attend

[Raphael]

So, just to be sure that I'm not misunderstanding something here - the whole story started with reports of one party, and then, the deeper people dug, the more parties came to light? So that, in the end, it was parties all the way down?

[Richard W]

Might I ask how one accidentally attends a birthday party?

It's secretly arranged for you at your place of work. You can't back out without offending people.

[sangi39]

So with an active police investigation, lower approval ratings than May ever had, and growing distaste within Johnson's own party, do we still think the Tories will wait until summer to replace him?

Honestly, right now? Maybe? Despite the release of the "Gray Report" (redacted), as far as news and overheard conversation goes, it seems to have been dying down. If the next PM is meant to be Sunak, I'd expect people here especially to be kicking off a ton, but I'm just not seeing it.

Again, though, that's based on a very, very narrow view of "what does everyone else think".

[Richard W]

A somewhat tin hat question, but can an alien be leader of the Conservative party? Can an alien be UK Prime Minister? I have visions of Priti Patel stripping Rishi Sunak of British citizenship on the grounds that she's not satisfied that he isn't Tanzanian (I'm pretty sure he isn't) and that having him as prime minister would not be conducive to the public good (I think there are millions who would agree).

[doctor shark]

A somewhat tin hat question, but can an alien be leader of the Conservative party? Can an alien be UK Prime Minister? I have visions of Priti Patel stripping Rishi Sunak of British citizenship on the grounds that she's not satisfied that he isn't Tanzanian (I'm pretty sure he isn't) and that having him as prime minister would not be conducive to the public good (I think there are millions who would agree).

I think that's a bit of a surprisingly complicated issue, owing to the fact that Commonwealth citizens who have ILR (or who meet other residence requirements, though not sure what) in the UK technically do have the right to vote for and stand for election to the House of Commons. (Notably, Tanzania and Kenya, where Sunak's parents are from, are Commonwealth countries, so...) That said, Tanzania has a much stricter "no double nationality" law and Kenya didn't allow double citizenship until 2010, so I don't think there'd be a claim there, or at least on paper.

Still, that is a very troubling provision, allowing one to be stripped of citizenship if one "might" have a claim to foreign nationality. I mean, for that matter, I "might" have a possible claim to Irish citizenship*; were I a British national, would that put my British nationality in danger? I guess that's one good thing about the US: it's not impossible, but it's extremely difficult to involuntarily lose US nationality.

*My grandmother on my mother's side has Irish descent, but the Irish ancestor(s) is/are too far back to claim automatic citizenship. However, under Irish nationality law, the Minister of Justice can naturalize anyone of Irish descent without regards to residence in Ireland, though me attempting for Irish nationality now would probably be counterproductive.

[Richard W]

If Patel decides Sunak is Tanzanian, he could end up obviously stateless until he won his court appeal and had his British nationality restored. Indeed, she could decide that Boris Johnson was French because his father has always been French. She could claim that French practice, which probably shows that he is not, is contrary to French law. It would be a false claim, but that's irrelevant in the short term.

The Irish maintain that being an Irish citizen and being entitled to Irish citizenship are not the same thing. Some people in the UK rely on the distinction to be allowed to do their jobs. Being entitled to Irish citizenship is only a threat to one's British nationality if one has a guardian or was naturalised as British. As I read the law, if one is of Jamaican, Nigerian or Thai descent, engaging in serious organised crime puts one British nationality in jeopardy. I think Jamaican or Nigerian nationality can be renounced; it appears that Thai nationality obtained by descent cannot.

[bradrn]

A somewhat tin hat question, but can an alien be leader of the Conservative party? Can an alien be UK Prime Minister? I have visions of Priti Patel stripping Rishi Sunak of British citizenship on the grounds that she's not satisfied that he isn't Tanzanian (I'm pretty sure he isn't) and that having him as prime minister would not be conducive to the public good (I think there are millions who would agree).

Something remarkably similar happened a few years ago in Australia. There is an obscure rule (section 44(i) of the Australian Constitution) stating that dual nationals cannot be a member of Parliament. Everyone had forgotten about this up until a couple of years ago, when someone noticed that one MP was a citizen of New Zealand. It was eventually discovered that quite a few politicians had dual citizenship through various means, often without them even knowing. (A surprising number of countries confer citizenship by descent, it turns out.) The Supreme Court eventually ruled that anyone with citizenship of another country is ineligible, even if they had no idea they were citizens, or had renounced it since election. At this point various others with dual citizenship resigned. By the end of it all, no less than fifteen politicians had either resigned or been kicked out, though most came back later after having renounced citizenship. Of course, none of them were stripped of Australian citizenship in any way, though I do recall one wag saying that North Korea need only extend citizenship to all Australian members of Parliament to permanently disable our government.

[Richard W]

A surprising number of countries confer citizenship by descent, it turns out.

Actually, Australia and India are unusual in that their first generation born overseas don't automatically acquire citizenship at birth.

[Moose-tache]

A somewhat tin hat question, but can an alien be leader of the Conservative party? Can an alien be UK Prime Minister? I have visions of Priti Patel stripping Rishi Sunak of British citizenship on the grounds that she's not satisfied that he isn't Tanzanian (I'm pretty sure he isn't) and that having him as prime minister would not be conducive to the public good (I think there are millions who would agree).

It's like Karl Marx said: "British politics is just American politics but pettier and with lower stakes."

[hwhatting]

engaging in serious organised crime puts one British nationality in jeopardy

Does being a member of BoJo's government count? (Sorry, I had to ask.)

[Richard W]

engaging in serious organised crime puts one British nationality in jeopardy

Does being a member of BoJo's government count? (Sorry, I had to ask.)

As Bojo has publicly stated that he does not consider the British government to be corrupt, on the balance of probabilities it may well do.

[Frislander]

So, something even more wild than even I thought we could see has gone down over the past weel. This day last week, in a session of the House of Commons, Boris Johnson threw out an actual far-right conspiracy theory at the Leader of the Opposition.

Some background here (deriving from the BBC's fact-checker article). Brits and Brit-watchers will be aware of Jimmy Saville, Britain's most notorious sex offender. Most important here is that the general public awareness of his crimes only came out after his death, but there were some allegations brought against him during his lifetime. Near the end of his life (between 2007 and 2009), in particular, a small number of allegations were brought to Surrey Police, who consulted lawyers from the Crown Prosecution Service, but no actual prosecution was made on the basis that at the time the victims concerned were unwilling to testify in court. At this point in time Keir Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions. The conspiracy then claims that Starmer somehow 1. knew about the investigations and 2. was somehow implicated in the failure to proceed. This of course is in spite of the fact that the investigation both failed at the local level and did so on a procedural technicality which would not have been within Starmer's power to resolve and were very much failings on the part of the local police force and prosecutors.

So anyway, we come to last Monday. The PM's very much struggling - his personal popularity has massively tanked from the revelations about the various parties and he's clearly looking for some way to "get back" at Starmer, who's actually been on pretty good form recently (say what you want about the man but in these particular circumstances his lawyer experience is coming in very handy). So he takes the Trumpian path, picks the nuclear option, if you will. He reaches for this conspiracy that up until now had only existed as a brain fart on British QAnon boards. He brings it up to his advisors, who by all accounts tell him in no uncertain terms that this is not acceptable.

He does it anyway.

In fact, he does it twice.

He threw it out first on Monday as part of his usual what-aboutistic response to any question he gets in Parliament. Everyone is appalled but the next day apparently Downing Street stands by him. Then he does it again, this time at PMQs, claiming that Starmer had somehow accepted responsibility for the failure to prosecute. This of course is all part of his "Let us not forget, Mr Speaker, this X which is why the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition is definitely just as morally bankrupt as I am" strategy, which is basically the only way he seems to be able to appear reasonable against his political opponents.

Now shit really hits the fan, because not only do Tory MPs resume their calls for him to resign (letters have starting going into the 1922 Committee once again), but now his advisors start resigning. The first to go, in fact, is one Munira Mirza, who has been with him as part of his core group of advisors since he was Mayor of London, because yeah this is how bad it is, that people who have stuck with him through ll that's come before will draw the line at this. Four others soon follow. Some parts of the media try to claim that Mirza was in fact fired as part of Johnson's purported shake-up of the staff at No10 in a bid to shed any and all responsibility for the parties, but her publication of her own resignation letter in The Spectator soon laid that one to bed.

Now Johnson's trying to put together a new advisory team. The first to come in, as reported today, is one Guto Harri [ˈgitɔˈhariː], who is probably most famous outside of the Cambrosphere for being fired from GB News/GBeebies for expressing support for black footballers taking the knee before playing (he's also apparently a native Welsh Speaker, of which I was previously unaware). Apparently, when he arrived at Downing Street the PM, upon being asked by Harri if he would survive, broke into the Gloria Gaynor song "I Will Survive", because of course he did.

And now tonight Keir Starmer has been accosted by antivaxxers claiming he himself is somehow a paedophile because of course he was.

[Raphael]

Thank you for the update, Frislander.

[Raphael]

Unrelated to any recent developments: I just learned that at some point, somewhere in the UK, some people, apparently politically somewhere on the right, had a campaign against wheelie bins.

Which makes me wonder: where else did those people want to put their trash?

[Ketsuban]

Unrelated to any recent developments: I just learned that at some point, somewhere in the UK, some people, apparently politically somewhere on the right, had a campaign against wheelie bins.

Which makes me wonder: where else did those people want to put their trash?

A google found me articles from 13 years ago, so if what you're referring to is that then it dates to when they were initially introduced in the UK; the predictable backlash from conservatives was about wanting "traditional" metal bins back. The use of wheelie bins which can be collected mechanically was introduced because of lawsuits from binmen over workplace injuries from lifting said metal bins by hand.

I do think it's a bit weird that the bins are issued by the council and you only get one of each type per household—we not-infrequently overflow our green bin and have to put stuff in specifically a transparent bin bag (because of people putting nappies and the like in the wrong place) but you're not allowed to just buy another bin.

[Raphael]

Traditional metal bins - ah yes, that explains it. Thank you!

[Travis B.]

Here we have robotically collected plastic wheelie trash and recycling cans, and I have never, ever heard anyone make a fuss about it (and I live in a rather conservative county by WI standards). Note that the wheelie trash and recycling cans are owned by the city and are lent to homeowners and renters for free (e.g. at one point one of our cans got crushed by some large vehicle, and we got a new replacement from the city for free). However, yard waste is still collected by hand from whatever bins one has on hand (one just has to paint a big X on it).

[Raphael]

It's black(-ish) wheelie bins for regular trash, blue wheelie bins for paper, black(-ish) wheelie bins with brown lids for yard waste, and yellow/transparent bags without any bins for recyclable plastics here.

and I have never, ever heard anyone make a fuss about it (and I live in a rather conservative county by WI standards).

Now that's interesting. Tells us something, in case we didn't know it yet, about the ability of right-wing leader/influencer types to create outrage among their followers - or, as in your case, to not create such outrage by simply never getting the idea to do so.

[hwhatting]

It's black(-ish) wheelie bins for regular trash, blue wheelie bins for paper, black(-ish) wheelie bins with brown lids for yard waste, and yellow/transparent bags without any bins for recyclable plastics here.

You're in Hamburg, right? Here in Bonn it's all bins (blue is paper, yellow is plastic packaging waste, green for garden waste, and black for the rest), but you can put extra trash (probably with some limitations, I never tested that) in colour-coded plastic bags. In Lower Saxony, where my mother lives, it seems to be all colour-coded bags, no bins anymore. AFAIK, the rules can vary even by municipality, depending witb whom they have the waste-removal contract.