Zompist Bboard Again

bradrn wrote: ↑Thu Feb 05, 2026 5:39 am Of course it does; it’s him saying it, isn’t it?

The episode doesn't indicate that this statement is incorrect in any way. Even in my quote, Hacker does not dispute its accuracy.

The show normally draws attention to every lie and misrepresentation. Those are its primary source of comedy.

bradrn wrote: ↑Thu Feb 05, 2026 5:39 am (And it’s quite clear that Hacker does just as much scheming as Humphrey, too.)

Mostly as a reaction against Humphrey's scheming. The show fully centers on the civil service conspiring to undermine politicians and the democratic will of the people. It says so explicitly in almost every episode followed by the laugh track. The main culprit in these conspiracies is Humphrey, who ropes various other characters into his plots. He often intimidates his junior Bernard into playing along. A few times Humphrey needed help from his mentor, the expert conspirator Arnold. Once in Yes, Prime Minister, Arnold gave Humphrey cut-off dates to let him massage the statistics into making the argument he wanted. I think Hacker is depicted as not sharp enough to pull off stunts like this. Other than a small number of times, Hacker is manipulated by Humphrey into scheming against his interests. For example, in Yes, Prime Minister, Humphrey makes Hacker think another politician is challenging his leadership. He does this to halt Hacker's policy initiative.

How weird would it be if, after everything else Starmer has done, or, perhaps I should say, not done, the thing that removes him in the end would be a dead hand reaching out from the grave of Jeffrey Epstein?

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Feb 05, 2026 7:41 am How weird would it be if, after everything else Starmer has done, or, perhaps I should say, not done, the thing that removes him in the end would be a dead hand reaching out from the grave of Jeffrey Epstein?

I don't think this would happen. Back when this first came out, Starmer refused to deny that he'd known about Mandelson's relationship with Epstein when he appointed him. The only reason not to deny it was that he didn't want to be punished later for misleading parliament, so it was already assumed that he'd known, and there are too many Labour MPs for a proper vote of no confidence in the leader government¹, especially since so many don't want to risk an election where they will likely lose their seats and Reform might win. If there were an obvious successor, they might be able to force a leadership challenge, but there isn't: if this had come out a week ago, Andy Burnham might have been able to persuade the NEC to let him fight the Gorton and Denton by-election and then challenge him after a decent interval, probably the local elections in May, but there isn't really an obvious candidate for the necessary 80 MPs to coalesce behind.

¹ Edit: By this I meant a vote of no confidence in the government, rather than a leadership challenge within Labour. My wording should have been clearer.

Ah, thank you for clearing that up.

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Feb 05, 2026 8:30 am Ah, thank you for clearing that up.

It seems the some details of the relationship were publically available since 2023. I don't know if I missed this earlier or if it was reported later, but I would be more worried about him now, as appointing him anyway means both extreme gullability and blinding incompetence, rather than just one of them, and the vetting files are going to be released, and if Mandelson didn't lie outrageously in them, I would be surprised if he stays in office. The honourable thing to do here is to resign, because patronage¹ is one of the most important elements of the royal prerogative², and he's just proved himself terrible at it³, but he'll sadly try to stick around. The best scenario for him is those paper prove that Mandelson is a lier and that a scapegoat prominent member of his team, ideally Morgan McSweeney⁴, also did something dishonest and/or incompetent, which makes Starmer's decision based on the evidence he gave acceptable, but I doubt that's the case.

Tl;dr: You were right; it might happen.

¹ Appointing people to things
² The things which the monarch technically does themself, without parliament, but only on the advice of the PM
³ Well, on advising the queen king on it, but it's the same thing
⁴ His Chief of Staff, who was very close to Mandelson and is hated a large faction of his MPs hate because he's seen as too right wing. He is apparently very close to Starmer though

That reminds me, one of the things about Keir Starmer is that he generally seems to try to do everything in accordance with what he things of as the standard procedures. Now, what's the standard procedure for a high-ranking politician who got publicly caught up in a massive scandal involving powerful people looking the other way on child rape?

Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Feb 05, 2026 12:00 pm and that a scapegoat prominent member of his team, ideally Morgan McSweeney⁴, also did something dishonest and/or incompetent,

And McSweeney has resigned.

No-Longer-Prince Andrew has been arrested on Suspicion of Misconduct in Public Office¹. I thought the ZBB might appreciate this news.


¹ I.e. corruption when he was the UK's trade envoy back in the 2000s²
² Yes, I thought we were past giving sinecures to random members of the royal family too, but apparently not

Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Feb 19, 2026 8:10 am No-Longer-Prince Andrew has been arrested on Suspicion of Misconduct in Public Office¹. I thought the ZBB might appreciate this news.


¹ I.e. corruption when he was the UK's trade envoy back in the 2000s²
² Yes, I thought we were past giving sinecures to random members of the royal family too, but apparently not

I'm not sure that it was a sinecure - Special Representative for International Trade and Investment seems to be a job for a working royal, and it seems there's no income explicitly associated with it.

Richard W wrote: ↑Thu Feb 19, 2026 2:19 pm

Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Feb 19, 2026 8:10 am No-Longer-Prince Andrew has been arrested on Suspicion of Misconduct in Public Office¹. I thought the ZBB might appreciate this news.


¹ I.e. corruption when he was the UK's trade envoy back in the 2000s²
² Yes, I thought we were past giving sinecures to random members of the royal family too, but apparently not

I'm not sure that it was a sinecure - Special Representative for International Trade and Investment seems to be job for a working royal, and it seems there's no income explicitly associated with it.

Sorry, I didn't realise it was unpayed. It is a ‘job’ of flying around the world to meet powerful people and mention the word ‘UK’ at least once, which is why I called it that, but I probably shouldn't if his income was entirely derived of his actual sinecure of ‘be born to the Queen but not so as you'd ever actually be king.’

Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Feb 19, 2026 8:10 am No-Longer-Prince Andrew has been arrested on Suspicion of Misconduct in Public Office¹. I thought the ZBB might appreciate this news.

Unfortunately there isn't a nice catchy acronym for this in common use.

alice wrote: ↑Thu Feb 19, 2026 2:52 pm

Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Feb 19, 2026 8:10 am No-Longer-Prince Andrew has been arrested on Suspicion of Misconduct in Public Office¹. I thought the ZBB might appreciate this news.

Unfortunately there isn't a nice catchy acronym for this in common use.

Well, try to make "MiPO" happen, then!

Lērisama wrote: ↑Thu Feb 19, 2026 2:38 pm Sorry, I didn't realise it was unpayed. It is a ‘job’ of flying around the world to meet powerful people and mention the word ‘UK’ at least once, which is why I called it that, but I probably shouldn't if his income was entirely derived of his actual sinecure of ‘be born to the Queen but not so as you'd ever actually be king.’

That's not a sinecure for a grown man, as Prince Harry is widely assumed to be finding out. A good many 'spares' have become king, such as the King's grandfather and great-grandfather.

You know when I said we'd still be talking about Andy Burnham being banned from the Gorton and Denton by-election for a while. Well that was today, and it turns out that not having your most popular local candidate in an election is an excellent way to lose.

The Greens won on 40%, followed by Reform on 30% and Labour on 25%. Somehow the British tradition of, to quote a Guardian article in favour of First Past the Post, ‘trying to calculate your vote by second-guessing what everyone else is doing, while worrying that you might accidentally make things worse,’ actually worked this time¹.

And in a Schadenfreude-shaped cherry on top, the Tories scored their worst by-election result ever and lost their deposit⁴.

¹ I know that Lab + Green > 2 × Reform, so however split the votes for the two parties were, Reform wouldn't have won, but when you factor in the ex-Lib Dem votes² it get dangerously close to possible. Reform won the last by-election with 6 votes, so we're extra sensitive to this now.
² The increase in the Green vote as a percentage of the total vote was identical to the combined decrease. This isn't a coincidence – all three campaign on being the best placed ‘progressive’ party in an area, often in the same place³
³ All three claim to be the best for me, for instance. Depending on the exact election, the Greens or Labour are right.
⁴ All candidates for House of Commons seats must pay a deposit, which they only get back it they achieve at least 5% of the vote. This didn't stop there from being 8 candidates in this by-election who did lose their deposit and 5 from getting fewer votes than the official Monster Raving Loony Part Candidate⁴
⁵ Sir Oink A-Lot

Interesting! Wikipedia says

Compared to the rest of the country, residents of Gorton and Denton are young and have low levels of education. They are less likely to work in professional occupations and household income is low.

Sounds like we're not even talking about "stereotypical" Green voters here.

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Feb 27, 2026 2:52 am Interesting! Wikipedia says

Compared to the rest of the country, residents of Gorton and Denton are young and have low levels of education. They are less likely to work in professional occupations and household income is low.

Sounds like we're not even talking about "stereotypical" Green voters here.

It should perhaps be pointed out that this is a constituency of two distinct halves, and "are young and have low levels of education" only really applies to one half. Or so I read recently.

Replying to something alice posted in the US politics thread:

alice wrote: ↑Thu Apr 09, 2026 2:49 pm Here in the UK, for example, it looks unlikely that N*g$L F@r*g!'s R£f]rm P%rty will poll above 30%, and enough of the remaining 70% is sufficently repelled and knows how to play the electoral system to keep them out. Indeed, recent opinion polls suggest the far right are losing support.

It might still be a good idea to try to get a really strong movement going that tries to get the commons to switch to the Northern Irish Assembly electoral system* before the next general election. Mobilize memes, come up with catchy tunes, get celebs on board, spread the word through word of mouth, whatever. Slogans, graffiti, mass mobilization. If I was British, that's probably what I'd try now.

*That is, the system for filling seats in the legislature; not the procedures for forming an executive.

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Apr 09, 2026 3:14 pm Replying to something alice posted in the US politics thread:

alice wrote: ↑Thu Apr 09, 2026 2:49 pm Here in the UK, for example, it looks unlikely that N*g$L F@r*g!'s R£f]rm P%rty will poll above 30%, and enough of the remaining 70% is sufficently repelled and knows how to play the electoral system to keep them out. Indeed, recent opinion polls suggest the far right are losing support.

It might still be a good idea to try to get a really strong movement going that tries to get the commons to switch to the Northern Irish Assembly electoral system* before the next general election. Mobilize memes, come up with catchy tunes, get celebs on board, spread the word through word of mouth, whatever. Slogans, graffiti, mass mobilization. If I was British, that's probably what I'd try now.

*That is, the system for filling seats in the legislature; not the procedures for forming an executive.

Many opinionated opinion columns on this subject have been and are being written¹. Ironically, it might not even help, because FPTP is really gameable, and the left has been burnt enough times since the 70s to do tactical voting information campaigning, sometimes even blending into not campaigning in seats where another left-wing party could win if the left vote coalesced around it⁴, while apparently many Reform supporters would never consider voting Tory⁵ and vice versa. Given I'd be very surprised if Starmer let voting reform go through⁷, this may be our only hope¹³.

¹ Noöne can agree on their preferred form of PR though. Scotland, Wales² and Northern Ireland all use their own systems, of course. I like the the NI system³.
² Starting with the Senedd election this May.
³ And local councils in Scotland, don't forget them!
⁴ Sometimes leading to embarrassing situations where the Tories were doing so badly that seats that weren't considered winnable enough suddenly became winnable.
⁵ Because everyone still hates them, although these days they tend to come second to Farage/Starmer⁶, even if their actual hatedness hasn't decreased much.
⁶ Delete as appropriate.
⁷ One of the Lib Dems and Greens will try⁸ to amend the Representation of the People Bill¹¹ to introduce some form of PR, but Labour has a large enough majority that very many people, or enough very senior people, or both, would have to threaten to break the whip¹² to vote for it to make him cave to an idea pu forward by the people currently doing quite a good job of setting themselves up to ‘steal’ his voters.
⁸ Or possibly have already. It is way harder than it should be to find a list of amendments for a bill which actually includes the text of the amendment rather than just calling it really helpful Amendment №x, so unless it gets reported on⁹ or I get bored enough to search for the bill in Hansard¹⁰.
⁹ And it quite possibly wouldn't, because it wouldn't pass.
¹⁰ The offical record of parliamentary debates, although the MPs debating do tend to assume you know what the bill means.
¹¹ Giving votes to 16 & 17 year olds, and many other small changes to electoral law.
¹² Vote against the party's command.
¹³ Sqeals in horror.

So how likely would you consider Reform winning the next parliamentary elections? Based on everything I have read, they have gained an alarming degree of popularity over the past few years with a clear plurality of voters (around thirty percent) supporting them and that support is only increasing. It seems quite plausible to me that they could win an outright majority of seats simply by winning pluralities across the country. Even winning a plurality of seats would probably suffice to form a government, though, since the other parties could hardly form a coalition given their vast differences.

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Apr 09, 2026 4:20 pm So how likely would you consider Reform winning the next parliamentary elections? Based on everything I have read, they have gained an alarming degree of popularity over the past few years with a clear plurality of voters (around thirty percent) supporting them and that support is only increasing. It seems quite plausible to me that they could win an outright majority of seats simply by winning pluralities across the country. Even winning a plurality of seats would probably suffice to form a government, though, since the other parties could hardly form a coalition given their vast differences.

Did you read anything mentioned above about strategic voting? At all?