British Politics Guide

[Jonlang]

This could be a "strictly speaking, but", but the MP in my constituency announced, on the day the election was called, that parliament has been suspended, and that, within the confines of the law, he was only an "acting", MP, not an actual Member of Parliament, meaning that, for those forty some odd days, he could only really deal with emergencies

I don't know how much this might be the case in the US, but in the UK it seems to be the case that, beyond things previously established (like paying people) and emergencies, the government and its machinations just kind of don't exist? Like, our general elections, from what I can remember, have an upper bound on campaigning (I think it's like 2 or 3 months), so a short term temporary shut-down of government is just sort of the thing, whereas in the US, at least for presidential elections, you've got like a two-year build up. You can't shut down governance for that long every four years

The "quick turn around", then, I imagine, is literally because a) things already half shut down, and b) pretty much every party leader is poised to win (as Masako said as well, we have the odd situation of having the fact that people need to ask someone else to form a government that exists outside of that system). I'm fairly certain, although could be wrong, that there's also a two-week-long limit on "forming a government" that the Commons accepts? So that might speed things along a tad

The PM and the Cabinet are still the Government during this period, but the House of Commons is basically closed and no more bills can be passed. The day-to-day of Government goes on as normal. The only time that there really is no Government is the half an hour or so between the outgoing PM goes to the King and says "I'm off, the new guy's on his way" and the newly elected PM rocks up "hi Kingy, I'm the new PM" and the King "invites" him to form his new Government.

[sangi39]

This could be a "strictly speaking, but", but the MP in my constituency announced, on the day the election was called, that parliament has been suspended, and that, within the confines of the law, he was only an "acting", MP, not an actual Member of Parliament, meaning that, for those forty some odd days, he could only really deal with emergencies

I don't know how much this might be the case in the US, but in the UK it seems to be the case that, beyond things previously established (like paying people) and emergencies, the government and its machinations just kind of don't exist? Like, our general elections, from what I can remember, have an upper bound on campaigning (I think it's like 2 or 3 months), so a short term temporary shut-down of government is just sort of the thing, whereas in the US, at least for presidential elections, you've got like a two-year build up. You can't shut down governance for that long every four years

The "quick turn around", then, I imagine, is literally because a) things already half shut down, and b) pretty much every party leader is poised to win (as Masako said as well, we have the odd situation of having the fact that people need to ask someone else to form a government that exists outside of that system). I'm fairly certain, although could be wrong, that there's also a two-week-long limit on "forming a government" that the Commons accepts? So that might speed things along a tad

The PM and the Cabinet are still the Government during this period, but the House of Commons is basically closed and no more bills can be passed. The day-to-day of Government goes on as normal. The only time that there really is no Government is the half an hour or so between the outgoing PM goes to the King and says "I'm off, the new guy's on his way" and the newly elected PM rocks up "hi Kingy, I'm the new PM" and the King "invites" him to form his new Government.

Thaaaaat makes more sense Thank you muchly

[Ketsuban]

Do I get this right that 9 out of these 14 years of Tory rule happened because too many people thought Ed Miliband looked weird when he was photographed eating a ham sandwich?

I think this would be mistaking a symptom for a disease. The media coverage of the 2015 election was aggressively partisan; they would have taken anything that would work for the purpose of slandering Labour, and they got a bacon sandwich. It wasn't even about Ed Miliband - after he resigned as leader we got the Times describing Jeremy Corbyn and his "Chairman Mao-style bicycle".

[Richard W]

The PM and the Cabinet are still the Government during this period, but the House of Commons is basically closed and no more bills can be passed. The day-to-day of Government goes on as normal. The only time that there really is no Government is the half an hour or so between the outgoing PM goes to the King and says "I'm off, the new guy's on his way" and the newly elected PM rocks up "hi Kingy, I'm the new PM" and the King "invites" him to form his new Government.

I did wonder what would have happened if Sunak had suddenly dropped dead during the campaign. Convention demands that the King appoint someone who can be expected to command a majority in the House of Commons - but that would have been Starmer!

[Jonlang]

The PM and the Cabinet are still the Government during this period, but the House of Commons is basically closed and no more bills can be passed. The day-to-day of Government goes on as normal. The only time that there really is no Government is the half an hour or so between the outgoing PM goes to the King and says "I'm off, the new guy's on his way" and the newly elected PM rocks up "hi Kingy, I'm the new PM" and the King "invites" him to form his new Government.

I did wonder what would have happened if Sunak had suddenly dropped dead during the campaign. Convention demands that the King appoint someone who can be expected to command a majority in the House of Commons - but that would have been Starmer!

If the PM dies, the party just elects a new leader and they become PM. If this were to happen during purdah then the campaign for a new party leader would likely take longer than the campaign for the general election. It's never happened so how it would actually pan out is anyone's guess.

[Ketsuban]

I would expect the deputy PM (at the time Oliver Dowden) to assume the role of acting PM for the purposes of the election, forming a coalition government (in the event of a hung parliament) and the leadership contest.

[Raphael]

I'm trying to come up with something snarky to say about this, but can't. "Reform UK under pressure to prove all its candidates were real people": https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ar ... eal-people

[sangi39]

I'm trying to come up with something snarky to say about this, but can't. "Reform UK under pressure to prove all its candidates were real people": https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ar ... eal-people

They went so hard on "reform" they tried to reform reality itself

[jcb]

For all intents and purposes, Reform UK is UKIP. Farage jumped ship because once they got what they wanted - the UK is formally independent of the European Union - UKIP has no real reason to exist. It might as well be a rebrand as far as he's concerned.

So why didn't he just rename the party instead of creating a new one?

I'm trying to come up with something snarky to say about this, but can't. "Reform UK under pressure to prove all its candidates were real people": https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ar ... eal-people

Comparing the photos from this page ( https://www.gbnews.com/politics/reform- ... ing-ai-bot ), the first definitely looks like his face got smoothed in photoshop, and possibly slimmed down to look slightly less chubby.

[MacAnDàil]

Reform UK used to be called the Brexit Party, by the way.

And GB News is like a UK Newsmax. But new. And their viewers vote more for Labour than Tory or Reform despite the views of the channel.

[Lērisama]

Hey, how's that "Labour Party" of yours going? Directly implementing socialism and reversing everything the Tories did, right?

(An excuse to talk about UK politics! Aha!) Kind of, but not really. Reeves is behaving like a radical¹ who promised to be a Tory² before the election, and is scared of being seen to break her promises, so she blamed the tax rises on the irresponsibility of the Tories³, and she's made a huge show of making "difficult decisions" and not hving enough money to do things that would please her backbenchers⁴, and only a small show of changing how debt is measured, so she can borrow for infrastructure investment (and both do more of it, and free up money for other things) without breaking her self-imposed rules on debt.

This still makes it more left-wing than the last labour government, who only did the pretending to be Tories bit – there's no noises on the lines of "We don't mind if you're filthy rich, so long as you pay your taxes" any more, and even now, the right-wing rags are full of angry pieces by rich people on how much the budget will cost them, sometimes disgised as small farmers (there was a slight change to inheritance tax rules on agricultural land – it used to be exempt, and now it's only heavily preferrentially treated)

¹ In the old-fashioned British sense. I think the closest American term would be progressive, but over here that is mainly used by those who don't see much difference between our three left-wing parties and wish they'd get along better and possibly merge (and so all three would stand for exactly the policies of the progressive who wants it to happen)
² A traditional Tory, like one from before Thatcher, bot the weird nationalist/"supply side" idiots we have now⁵
³ True, but it was already common knowledge, to the point where the IFS (influential think tank) accused both Labout and the Tories of a “conspiracy of silence” (although I think the extent was slightly greater than previously thought)
⁴ MPs not in the government, or front bench (because that's where ministers sit in the House of Commons)
⁵ I am still quite angry at the last Tory government for everything it did, if you want a more objective analysis ask me again in about 10 years (at least)