Anyhoo, I'd much have a lawyer than a liar as Prime Minister.
SKS is both a lawyer and a liar
No redeeming features at all
He annoys you intensely, which is a plus.
He has sufficiently annoyed 200,000 Socialists who have left Labour and will not vote for them in 2024, along with other non member Socialists who wont either.
He has lost the engagement of the young who voted in their millions for Labour in 2017.
So he is down a couple of million votes so needs to win at least 2m Tories over to break even
You think thats a good thing for Labour exceeding the 12.877m of 2017
You are entitled to your view
We've met and got on well so I don't like arguing with you, but I don't think you can really speak for the left in general. I'm more typical, I think - I'd rather we were energetically pursuing interesting policies, I'd like to see the Corbyn issue resolved in a way that enables him to stay on as a Labour MP, but I can see why Starmer's pursuing the course that he's pursuing, and I'll certainly vote Labour. I have lots of left-wing friends inside and outside the party and literally none of them say they won't vote Labour, albeit with various degrees of disgruntlement. The election after that, maybe not - they'll see how he gets on.
Micro-analysing the Mail Online position is a fools errand. During the height of COVID they regularly had pro and anti lockdown pieces at the same time, bemoaning not enough lockdown, right next to bemoaning all this unnecessary restrictions (neither these from columnists).
Remember they work on a business model to pump out 100s of articles every day. Its volume over carefully crafted narrative positions.
No, I don't agree there. They've been absolutely out to get Johnson since around November, or even October. There was nothing like that for Cameron, nor even May.
Not true at all. The Mail and Mail Online through out COVID have been at times THE most critical of Boris handling. Even the likes of the Guardian would be yes this was poor decision, but we do acknowledge this is a difficult situation and other countries also made mistakes type thing, where as the Mail absolutely went for Boris poor handling (often as I say, both from the he's too lax on lockdown vs too harsh on lockdown differing positions within 24hrs when a position would alter).
I pointed this out a number of times over the past 2 years with links to the leading articles they were running.
Micro-analysing the Mail Online position is a fools errand. During the height of COVID they regularly had pro and anti lockdown pieces at the same time, bemoaning not enough lockdown, right next to bemoaning all this unnecessary restrictions (neither these from columnists).
Remember they work on a business model to pump out 100s of articles every day. Its volume game over carefully crafted narrative positions, whatever their under-paid / over-worked young staffers can find on the socials.
Chelsea legends John Terry and Ashley Cole are facing an non-fungible token (NFT) legal storm, with the Premier League taking legal advice after their trophy was used in digital assets promoted by the former team-mates.
I'm shocked that such fine members of society as Terry and Cole have got involved with NFTs.
Everybody and their mum are pumping NFT bollocks at the moment.
I'm not up to date with this pyramid scheme, but I thought NFT monkey jpegs were more popular than NFT testicles?
This is quite shocking polling. Fair comment on journalists, but have the British people never met any lawyers??!!
I am surprised. I thought lawyers had a very bad reputation generally. But perhaps, since politicians make new law, there is a specific reason for the disconnect.
Micro-analysing the Mail Online position is a fools errand. During the height of COVID they regularly had pro and anti lockdown pieces at the same time, bemoaning not enough lockdown, right next to bemoaning all this unnecessary restrictions (neither these from columnists).
Remember they work on a business model to pump out 100s of articles every day. Its volume over carefully crafted narrative positions.
No, I don't agree there. They've been absolutely out to get Johnson since around November, or even October. There was nothing like that for Cameron, nor even May.
Not true at all. The Mail and Mail Online through out COVID have been at times THE most critical of Boris handling. Even the likes of the Guardian would be yes this is poor, but we do acknowledge this is a difficult situation and other countries also made mistakes type thing, where as the Mail absolutely went for Boris poor handling.
That's quite different, though. Since October they've been front and centre with every single disparate Paterson, sleaze and Partygate story, day after day after day, with the same extremely critical framing about trust each time. They want him out.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
The way that some people seem to have invested themselves very personally in Boris Johnson is weird. I don't think there has ever been a person in British politics so undeserving of such loyalty. If he survives, though, it will be because of his ability to reach these voters, undoubtedly.
New: Hearing the prime minister is telling MPs (who say they are getting more time with the PM than they ever imagined) that this is a media / Labour witch-hunt, that he’s been through worse before and that he’s bounced back before and will do so again
In day to day life most peoples engagement with lawyers is bewildering. They seem to find endless problems. We bought our first flat a few years ago and the lawyer found so many problems with the lease etc that it sounded like we were heading towards catastrophe and financial ruin if we went ahead with the purchase. But it was a cheap flat and we needed somewhere to live and now it has doubled in value, along with rents in the area, which we would have needed to keep paying if we were cowed by her dire predictions, none of which were ever realised.
Professionally I have dealt with all parts of the legal profession from high street basement lawyers right up to leading QC's. Their main shortcoming is that they are not doers. But Starmer can't be criticised on this front, being DPP there were clearly a lot of difficult decision making involved. It is harder to think of a better background to prepare someone for the role of PM.
Some of his decisions at the DPP were not the best, though For instance, prosecutions of journalists under some very peculiar old statutes, all of which were thrown out by the courts and criticised in excoriating terms.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
There's a danger of overegging the pudding and that the opposition push this too much. Lab and SNP would have been better to wait for Sue Gray at this point.
You misunderstand Lab and SNP strategy. It is not to depose Johnson but to keep him in office.
New: Hearing the prime minister is telling MPs (who say they are getting more time with the PM than they ever imagined) that this is a media / Labour witch-hunt, that he’s been through worse before and that he’s bounced back before and will do so again
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
Labour are regularly in the mid to upper 40s… in England and Wales. It is their dire Scottish numbers pulling the GB total down. However, FPTP rewards geographical concentrations of votes, so Starmer is well on course.
Eg:
England Lab 46% Con 36% LD 10%
Scotland SNP 45% Lab 22% Con 18% LD 9%
Wales Lab 44% Con 29% PC 11% LD 10%
(Survation/38 Degrees; 14-17 January 2022; sample size 2,036)
Starmer may be on course for most seats but not a majority.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
Micro-analysing the Mail Online position is a fools errand. During the height of COVID they regularly had pro and anti lockdown pieces at the same time, bemoaning not enough lockdown, right next to bemoaning all this unnecessary restrictions (neither these from columnists).
Remember they work on a business model to pump out 100s of articles every day. Its volume game over carefully crafted narrative positions, whatever their under-paid / over-worked young staffers can find on the socials.
Chelsea legends John Terry and Ashley Cole are facing an non-fungible token (NFT) legal storm, with the Premier League taking legal advice after their trophy was used in digital assets promoted by the former team-mates.
I'm shocked that such fine members of society as Terry and Cole have got involved with NFTs.
Everybody and their mum are pumping NFT bollocks at the moment.
I'm not up to date with this pyramid scheme, but I thought NFT monkey jpegs were more popular than NFT testicles?
The Bored Apes jpegs are going for a minimum of ~$250k at the moment. Shakes head. What could possibly go wrong.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
Labour are regularly in the mid to upper 40s… in England and Wales. It is their dire Scottish numbers pulling the GB total down. However, FPTP rewards geographical concentrations of votes, so Starmer is well on course.
Eg:
England Lab 46% Con 36% LD 10%
Scotland SNP 45% Lab 22% Con 18% LD 9%
Wales Lab 44% Con 29% PC 11% LD 10%
(Survation/38 Degrees; 14-17 January 2022; sample size 2,036)
Starmer may be on course for most seats but not a majority.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
Poor Alex Cole Hamilton! For decades the leftist SLDs had solid personal relationships with the Labour hierarchy (Campbell, Kennedy, Dewar, Cook, Brown et al). Then just when Lib-Labbery returns to the arena, they pick a Young Conservative as their leader!
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
There's a danger of overegging the pudding and that the opposition push this too much. Lab and SNP would have been better to wait for Sue Gray at this point.
You misunderstand Lab and SNP strategy. It is not to depose Johnson but to keep him in office.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
Labour are regularly in the mid to upper 40s… in England and Wales. It is their dire Scottish numbers pulling the GB total down. However, FPTP rewards geographical concentrations of votes, so Starmer is well on course.
Eg:
England Lab 46% Con 36% LD 10%
Scotland SNP 45% Lab 22% Con 18% LD 9%
Wales Lab 44% Con 29% PC 11% LD 10%
(Survation/38 Degrees; 14-17 January 2022; sample size 2,036)
Starmer may be on course for most seats but not a majority.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
Presumably you’re absolutely elated with Johnson and his show of leadership prioritising animals over people.
Also - no idea why we are putting so much emphasis on current polls.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
There's a danger of overegging the pudding and that the opposition push this too much. Lab and SNP would have been better to wait for Sue Gray at this point.
You misunderstand Lab and SNP strategy. It is not to depose Johnson but to keep him in office.
It was looking like a no score draw on BBC1 news. Then a late late "pets not people" story defeat for Bozza.
It doesn’t hurt him at all. British people like dogs a hell of a lot more than they like another plane load of Afghan refugees.
Ouch. Cynically amusing but not true in its political implication. It is another lie. Adds to the narrative.
Anybody who is still going to vote for Johnson at this point doesn't give a fuck about the lying. They are not think, 'I was fine with the first 83 lies but this one, the 84th, is too much.'
You may be right about Johnson, but every time this happens Tory ministers and MPs have to defend him, and it erodes a little more away from people's support from them and the whole party.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
There's a danger of overegging the pudding and that the opposition push this too much. Lab and SNP would have been better to wait for Sue Gray at this point.
You misunderstand Lab and SNP strategy. It is not to depose Johnson but to keep him in office.
Ah, so they are playing politics.
And the Tories aren’t?
Nope (certainly not in as naked a way). If Boris is bad for the country he's also bad for their electoral prospects...
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
Labour are regularly in the mid to upper 40s… in England and Wales. It is their dire Scottish numbers pulling the GB total down. However, FPTP rewards geographical concentrations of votes, so Starmer is well on course.
Eg:
England Lab 46% Con 36% LD 10%
Scotland SNP 45% Lab 22% Con 18% LD 9%
Wales Lab 44% Con 29% PC 11% LD 10%
(Survation/38 Degrees; 14-17 January 2022; sample size 2,036)
Starmer may be on course for most seats but not a majority.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
Presumably you’re absolutely elated with Johnson and his show of leadership prioritising animals over people.
Also - no idea why we are putting so much emphasis on current polls.
Con deficit < 10 points = HY loyal to his führer Con deficit > 10 points = HY campaigns for Liz
No principles involved. It’s a numbers game to HY.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Micro-analysing the Mail Online position is a fools errand. During the height of COVID they regularly had pro and anti lockdown pieces at the same time, bemoaning not enough lockdown, right next to bemoaning all this unnecessary restrictions (neither these from columnists).
Remember they work on a business model to pump out 100s of articles every day. Its volume game over carefully crafted narrative positions, whatever their under-paid / over-worked young staffers can find on the socials.
Chelsea legends John Terry and Ashley Cole are facing an non-fungible token (NFT) legal storm, with the Premier League taking legal advice after their trophy was used in digital assets promoted by the former team-mates.
I'm shocked that such fine members of society as Terry and Cole have got involved with NFTs.
Shocking.
Totally unrelated, but some advice to people who make home made porn and worry about revenge porn.
Make sure you record yourself with some live Premier League action on in the background.
If it ever goes public, the PL will have that stuff taken down ASAP for violating their rights.
All a bit reminiscent of that scene in Trainspotting...
In day to day life most peoples engagement with lawyers is bewildering. They seem to find endless problems. We bought our first flat a few years ago and the lawyer found so many problems with the lease etc that it sounded like we were heading towards catastrophe and financial ruin if we went ahead with the purchase. But it was a cheap flat and we needed somewhere to live and now it has doubled in value, along with rents in the area, which we would have needed to keep paying if we were cowed by her dire predictions, none of which were ever realised.
Professionally I have dealt with all parts of the legal profession from high street basement lawyers right up to leading QC's. Their main shortcoming is that they are not doers. But Starmer can't be criticised on this front, being DPP there were clearly a lot of difficult decision making involved. It is harder to think of a better background to prepare someone for the role of PM.
Some of his decisions at the DPP were not the best, though For instance, prosecutions of journalists under some very peculiar old statutes, all of which were thrown out by the courts and criticised in excoriating terms.
Another issue is the belief of *some* lawyers that they are The Philosopher Kings that Plato spoke of. Guardians of The Truth who must never be question by their lessers.
From personal experience - the better the lawyer, the less this kind of arrogance occurs.
A friend is a Magistrate - I've sat in his court to see what happens. Fascinating to see the small pieces of the puzzle..
Anyway, in about 1-in-20 cases you seem to get the defence lawyer who thinks that since the magistrates aren't lawyers or "proper judges", he is superior to them and they should bow before his wisdom.
A favourite was the occasion a chap quoted a piece of law. He then had a visible rage issue when the magistrate consulted the Clerk of the Court, then looked up the law and read out the actual words of the law. Which didn't say what the lawyer had implied they said, when he quote "section blah" etc.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
There's a danger of overegging the pudding and that the opposition push this too much. Lab and SNP would have been better to wait for Sue Gray at this point.
You misunderstand Lab and SNP strategy. It is not to depose Johnson but to keep him in office.
Ah, so they are playing politics.
And the Tories aren’t?
Nope (certainly not in as naked a way). If Boris is bad for the country he's also bad for their electoral prospects...
How sweet. When did you first become interested in politics? Last Tuesday?
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
There's a danger of overegging the pudding and that the opposition push this too much. Lab and SNP would have been better to wait for Sue Gray at this point.
You misunderstand Lab and SNP strategy. It is not to depose Johnson but to keep him in office.
I very much doubt that, whatever anyone thinks of Johnson he is very good at winning elections.
Appearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) on Tuesday, Ben Wallace said: “No-one lobbied me… The Prime Minister didn’t ring up. At no stage, at any stage, did the Prime Minister ask me to make a way for those pets. Not at all. Never.”
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
In day to day life most peoples engagement with lawyers is bewildering. They seem to find endless problems. We bought our first flat a few years ago and the lawyer found so many problems with the lease etc that it sounded like we were heading towards catastrophe and financial ruin if we went ahead with the purchase. But it was a cheap flat and we needed somewhere to live and now it has doubled in value, along with rents in the area, which we would have needed to keep paying if we were cowed by her dire predictions, none of which were ever realised.
Professionally I have dealt with all parts of the legal profession from high street basement lawyers right up to leading QC's. Their main shortcoming is that they are not doers. But Starmer can't be criticised on this front, being DPP there were clearly a lot of difficult decision making involved. It is harder to think of a better background to prepare someone for the role of PM.
Some of his decisions at the DPP were not the best, though For instance, prosecutions of journalists under some very peculiar old statutes, all of which were thrown out by the courts and criticised in excoriating terms.
And he massively failed in the Jummy Saville situation.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
There's a danger of overegging the pudding and that the opposition push this too much. Lab and SNP would have been better to wait for Sue Gray at this point.
You misunderstand Lab and SNP strategy. It is not to depose Johnson but to keep him in office.
I very much doubt that, whatever anyone thinks of Johnson he is very good at winning elections.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results...
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
There's a danger of overegging the pudding and that the opposition push this too much. Lab and SNP would have been better to wait for Sue Gray at this point.
You misunderstand Lab and SNP strategy. It is not to depose Johnson but to keep him in office.
I very much doubt that, whatever anyone thinks of Johnson he is very good at winning elections.
Complacency, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of Tory complacency in the morning.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
Good.
If she wants to act contrary she should abdicate and run for Parliament.
Anyhoo, I'd much have a lawyer than a liar as Prime Minister.
SKS is both a lawyer and a liar
No redeeming features at all
He annoys you intensely, which is a plus.
He has sufficiently annoyed 200,000 Socialists who have left Labour and will not vote for them in 2024, along with other non member Socialists who wont either.
He has lost the engagement of the young who voted in their millions for Labour in 2017.
So he is down a couple of million votes so needs to win at least 2m Tories over to break even
You think thats a good thing for Labour exceeding the 12.877m of 2017
You are entitled to your view
Yup, I'm quite comfortable with people who have a cult-like devotion to particular politicians to feel marginalised. Be it Corbyn, Boris, Trump or whoever. Not that this extends to anyone who voted for either. Just those who seem unable to move on think that Only He Can Fix It. This applies to you, HYUFD, and a few others.
If your politics is a cult of personality, I'm delighted you feel put out.
Not really answering the point about where he is going to find the 12.9m plus though.
It is quite easy to find zillions of Social Democrats* in this country. Hence 1997.
In order to govern a democracy you need to construct a coalition. In FPTP this means the coalition is within a party, generally.
Purists will always lose.
*In the European sense. Left of centre, somewhat higher taxes and public spending, fix the problems sensibly stuff.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
There's a danger of overegging the pudding and that the opposition push this too much. Lab and SNP would have been better to wait for Sue Gray at this point.
You misunderstand Lab and SNP strategy. It is not to depose Johnson but to keep him in office.
I very much doubt that, whatever anyone thinks of Johnson he is very good at winning elections.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results...
Appearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) on Tuesday, Ben Wallace said: “No-one lobbied me… The Prime Minister didn’t ring up. At no stage, at any stage, did the Prime Minister ask me to make a way for those pets. Not at all. Never.”
In day to day life most peoples engagement with lawyers is bewildering. They seem to find endless problems. We bought our first flat a few years ago and the lawyer found so many problems with the lease etc that it sounded like we were heading towards catastrophe and financial ruin if we went ahead with the purchase. But it was a cheap flat and we needed somewhere to live and now it has doubled in value, along with rents in the area, which we would have needed to keep paying if we were cowed by her dire predictions, none of which were ever realised.
Professionally I have dealt with all parts of the legal profession from high street basement lawyers right up to leading QC's. Their main shortcoming is that they are not doers. But Starmer can't be criticised on this front, being DPP there were clearly a lot of difficult decision making involved. It is harder to think of a better background to prepare someone for the role of PM.
Some of his decisions at the DPP were not the best, though For instance, prosecutions of journalists under some very peculiar old statutes, all of which were thrown out by the courts and criticised in excoriating terms.
And he massively failed in the Jummy Saville situation.
Although he wasn't a personal friend of his, like Thatcher. Her great instincts for people shown there.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
Appearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) on Tuesday, Ben Wallace said: “No-one lobbied me… The Prime Minister didn’t ring up. At no stage, at any stage, did the Prime Minister ask me to make a way for those pets. Not at all. Never.”
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with a PM Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories. Remember the Queen asked at a dinner why we needed to stay in the EU pre referendum
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories
Only on Europe rather than social policy, I think. Remember Thatcher's bust-up with her.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
Labour are regularly in the mid to upper 40s… in England and Wales. It is their dire Scottish numbers pulling the GB total down. However, FPTP rewards geographical concentrations of votes, so Starmer is well on course.
Eg:
England Lab 46% Con 36% LD 10%
Scotland SNP 45% Lab 22% Con 18% LD 9%
Wales Lab 44% Con 29% PC 11% LD 10%
(Survation/38 Degrees; 14-17 January 2022; sample size 2,036)
Starmer may be on course for most seats but not a majority.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
A 7% Labour lead now wouldn't fill me with any confidence that they'll get any sort of lead by the time a general election comes around. They ought to be 15-20% ahead in mid-term, like Kinnock was.
New: Hearing the prime minister is telling MPs (who say they are getting more time with the PM than they ever imagined) that this is a media / Labour witch-hunt, that he’s been through worse before and that he’s bounced back before and will do so again
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
Labour are regularly in the mid to upper 40s… in England and Wales. It is their dire Scottish numbers pulling the GB total down. However, FPTP rewards geographical concentrations of votes, so Starmer is well on course.
Eg:
England Lab 46% Con 36% LD 10%
Scotland SNP 45% Lab 22% Con 18% LD 9%
Wales Lab 44% Con 29% PC 11% LD 10%
(Survation/38 Degrees; 14-17 January 2022; sample size 2,036)
Starmer may be on course for most seats but not a majority.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
Presumably you’re absolutely elated with Johnson and his show of leadership prioritising animals over people.
Also - no idea why we are putting so much emphasis on current polls.
Con deficit < 10 points = HY loyal to his führer Con deficit > 10 points = HY campaigns for Liz
No principles involved. It’s a numbers game to HY.
True. Except I would campaign for Sunak not Liz if Boris went
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
That's because it is a constitutional monarchy. Politicians (essentially) tell the monarch how to exercise the powers.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with a PM Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories. Remember the Queen asked at a dinner why we needed to stay in the EU pre referendum
Th claim that the Queen is a Leaver is base on her (allegedly) asking the awkward question - "What are the benefits of Remaining?"
It should be pointed out that many Remainers (including myself) believe that Remain lost, precisely because that question wasn't answered well. Asking the question doesn't make you a Leaver.
In day to day life most peoples engagement with lawyers is bewildering. They seem to find endless problems. We bought our first flat a few years ago and the lawyer found so many problems with the lease etc that it sounded like we were heading towards catastrophe and financial ruin if we went ahead with the purchase. But it was a cheap flat and we needed somewhere to live and now it has doubled in value, along with rents in the area, which we would have needed to keep paying if we were cowed by her dire predictions, none of which were ever realised.
Professionally I have dealt with all parts of the legal profession from high street basement lawyers right up to leading QC's. Their main shortcoming is that they are not doers. But Starmer can't be criticised on this front, being DPP there were clearly a lot of difficult decision making involved. It is harder to think of a better background to prepare someone for the role of PM.
Some of his decisions at the DPP were not the best, though For instance, prosecutions of journalists under some very peculiar old statutes, all of which were thrown out by the courts and criticised in excoriating terms.
And he massively failed in the Jummy Saville situation.
It wasn't just Saville, there was some absolutely disastrous handling of cases by the CPS after all that blew up.
William Roche, how his case got to court, it was embarrassing for the prosecution as it was found the witness accounts just couldn't possibly be true e.g. he was on set when he was supposed to have committed offences, he never owned or had access to a car and property that were allegedly used. Also one witness account, it was their partner who basically answered all the questions during the police interviews, which soon got pulled apart by the defence. The CPS hadn't done even the most basic of checks around the facts.
And the other end, Rolf Harris. He nearly got away with it, because again the prosecution again had done such a shit job preparing the case. They hadn't found any proof he was at an event where it was claimed he abused a young girl. It was only a member of the public who sent in footage half way through the trial to ensured he got convicted. If the judge hadn't allowed that new evidence to be admitted, he more than likely would have been found innocent.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
Cummings always comes back in when this happens. Has he got any more to keep on doing that, I wonder.
He won't need to quite yet, because the report will be out soon.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
Labour are regularly in the mid to upper 40s… in England and Wales. It is their dire Scottish numbers pulling the GB total down. However, FPTP rewards geographical concentrations of votes, so Starmer is well on course.
Eg:
England Lab 46% Con 36% LD 10%
Scotland SNP 45% Lab 22% Con 18% LD 9%
Wales Lab 44% Con 29% PC 11% LD 10%
(Survation/38 Degrees; 14-17 January 2022; sample size 2,036)
Starmer may be on course for most seats but not a majority.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
Presumably you’re absolutely elated with Johnson and his show of leadership prioritising animals over people.
Also - no idea why we are putting so much emphasis on current polls.
Con deficit < 10 points = HY loyal to his führer Con deficit > 10 points = HY campaigns for Liz
No principles involved. It’s a numbers game to HY.
True. Except I would campaign for Sunak not Liz if Boris went
I don't think the polling position is recoverable if Boris somehow manages to cling on. People make comparisons with Thatcher recovering strongly from her unpopularity pre-Falklands, and also to Blair in the fuel crisis of 2001. Leaving aside the fact that there's not going to be a second Falklands, and that Boris is no Maggie, and that the fuel crisis was superficial and temporary, such comparisons miss a crucial element: the issue isn't just about voters' view of Boris, it's about the government falling apart. Whatever now happens, the on- and off- the record comments by large numbers of Tory MPs, including notably the small but important Scottish contingent, can't be unsaid or removed from the internet. Everyone now knows that Tory MPs think Boris is a rule-breaking liar and have lost confidence in him. (They should never have placed confidence in him, of course, but that's by the by). How can the government function against that background? It will just keep coming up again and again, and the various rebel factions will be squabbling repeatedly, sucking all the air out of the political space.
That of course is a parallel with Corbyn, who similarly lost the confidence of his MPs. That wasn't quite as damaging, since Labour were in opposition so didn't need to function as a governing party, but it was still a significant element in Labour's travails.
Will another leader be able to recover the situation? Bloody hard, certainly, but at least there's a possibility if it's someone clean and competent, and if (it's a big 'if') the party unites behind him or her.
This seems spot on. Imagine someone like Douglas Ross in Scotland having to campaign for the re-election of a Cons Govt led by Boris. As it happens, I don't think the Scottish Tories will suffer a wipe-out in the May local elections. They are protected by the AV system, the fact that they under-nominated last time and missed some wins, and the distance Ross has managed to put between the Scottish party and Westminster. A general election is a very different matter though.
One of many reasons why I don't expect Boris to fight the next GE, even if he manages a reprieve now.
Point of information: Scotland’s local elections are decided by Single Transferable Vote (STV), not Alternative Vote (AV).
It is unimaginable for Ross and his entire Scottish Parliamentary group to campaign for a Johnson-led party at a UK GE after every single one of them demanded his resignation. If Johnson is still there then, Ross will have to go. But who on earth could replace him?
Agree re May. The SCon VI is looking remarkably robust, vis-à-vis ECon VI.
Agree also re SCon under-nomination last time: they missed some sitters.
I think there was genuine surprise at how well SCon did in 2017 and, interestingly, they have done very well in council by-elections since then, regardless of the prevailing political environment. The change in their fortunes driven by Ruth Davidson seems to be pretty well baked-in despite Boris's best efforts. No return to when they were stuck in the mid-teens during the McLetchie/Goldie era. S'pose it could change but does seem that Scotland marches to a different drum beat.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
It's fairly questionable in Shakespeare whether this is meant to reflect poorly on lawyers or on the character speaking them.
It's probably a bit of both. The character is part of the Jack Cade Rebellion, which is portrayed as flawed, a threat to order, extremely violent... and not totally without justification. So I think it would probably have been recognised as a humorous comment in that it picks up on a widely held view of lawyers as elitist shysters, but also as recognising that it would be a very bad idea in practice.
And it seems to me that remains and is evident in the polling OGH reports. Saying lawyers are "competent", "decisive" and "strong" doesn't mean you're terribly affectionate towards them. It suggests they are something of a necessary evil.
And this is part of Johnson's problem using the line. In the context of a chaotic governing party which is riven with in-fighting, pointing to your opponent's comparative competence and strength isn't ideal.
"Lawyerly" is a better criticism to point out someone's lack of sympathy and connection with ordinary folk... but that's not where the debate is just now. Indeed, ironically, it is the PM floundering for clever legal arguments as to why behaviour every normal person knows is inexcusable is somehow okay.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
Cummings always comes back in again when this happens, usually. Has he got any more, I wonder.
Yes, you have to keep feeding the pack.
He must have more, but I suspect it will be more of the same.
He might have been better sending a big file to the Met in the first place and got a big hit instead of letting herd immunity to the story build up.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
That's because it is a constitutional monarchy. Politicians (essentially) tell the monarch how to exercise the powers.
Yes. Which is why it's a fantasy that the Queen will get involved and dismiss a PM. She'll not get involved and wait for him to resign.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
While the build-up of Russian forces is very concerning, there have been Russian troops in Ukraine, and Moldova and Georgia, for years. Russia has already invaded European soil and they're still there, in occupation. It's occasionally puzzling when you see people only waking up to the problem this month.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories
Only on Europe rather than social policy, I think. Remember Thatcher's bust-up with her.
The Queen is economically centrist and One Nation, remember she got on far better with John Major, Ted Heath and Harold Wilson and Macmillan than she ever did with Thatcher certainly.
However she is also a traditionalist and was not a great fan of Blair I suspect. Given the fact she was well over 65 in 2016 and a non graduate she would almost certainly have voted Leave had she had a vote.
Charles and William and Kate I suspect would have voted Remain. Harry pre Meghan would have probably voted Leave, post Meghan would be a staunch Remainer. Camilla I suspect would have been a Leaver too, as would Philip (the Queen Mother certainly, she was a huge Thatcher fan, far more than her daughter and was wary of the Germans until her death)
I can't help note that double-O, astronaut, drug dealer and convicted fraudster are all missing from the list of professions, so can we really take the survey seriously?
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories
Only on Europe rather than social policy, I think. Remember Thatcher's bust-up with her.
The Queen is economically centrist and One Nation, remember she got on far better with John Major, Ted Heath and Harold Wilson and Macmillan than she ever did with Thatcher certainly.
However she is also a traditionalist and was not a great fan of Blair I suspect. Given the fact she was well over 65 in 2016 and a non graduate she would almost certainly have voted Leave had she had a vote.
Charles and William and Kate I suspect would have voted Remain. Harry pre Meghan would have probably voted Leave, post Meghan would be a staunch Remainer. Camilla I suspect would have been a Leaver too, as would Philip (the Queen Mother certainly, she was a huge Thatcher fan, far more than her daughter and was wary of the Germans until her death)
'she was well over 65 in 2016 and a non graduate she would almost certainly have voted Leave had she had a vote'
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
Labour are regularly in the mid to upper 40s… in England and Wales. It is their dire Scottish numbers pulling the GB total down. However, FPTP rewards geographical concentrations of votes, so Starmer is well on course.
Eg:
England Lab 46% Con 36% LD 10%
Scotland SNP 45% Lab 22% Con 18% LD 9%
Wales Lab 44% Con 29% PC 11% LD 10%
(Survation/38 Degrees; 14-17 January 2022; sample size 2,036)
Starmer may be on course for most seats but not a majority.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
Presumably you’re absolutely elated with Johnson and his show of leadership prioritising animals over people.
Also - no idea why we are putting so much emphasis on current polls.
Con deficit < 10 points = HY loyal to his führer Con deficit > 10 points = HY campaigns for Liz
No principles involved. It’s a numbers game to HY.
True. Except I would campaign for Sunak not Liz if Boris went
I'm sure there are things which are more futile than trying to ascribe personal political views to members of the Royal Family, but I can't immediately think of any.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories
I doubt this. As head of the CoE you'd expect HMQ to be broadly aligned politically with Jesus - a social democrat as we agreed earlier.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories
I doubt this. As head of the CoE you'd expect HMQ to be broadly aligned politically with Jesus - a social democrat as we agreed earlier.
Not sure that holds. Political affiliation doesn't always run in the family.
I'm sure there are things which are more futile than trying to ascribe personal political views to members of the Royal Family, but I can't immediately think of any.
Trying to convince HYUFD that it is futile is a strong contender.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
It has been headline news for far too long and people are fed up with it. The cake thing yesterday was just stupid. People may be beginning to feel sorry for Johnson. Murders get hardly any news coverage yet a man eating a slice of cake on his birthday 20 months ago got wall to wall coverage
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
That's because it is a constitutional monarchy. Politicians (essentially) tell the monarch how to exercise the powers.
Yes. Which is why it's a fantasy that the Queen will get involved and dismiss a PM. She'll not get involved and wait for him to resign.
Rather like the stuff at the start of the coalition. All the Queen was going to do was appoint as PM whoever could command a vote of confidence in the new parliament.
People tried to twist it all kinds of ways, in their heads, to get the outcome they wanted.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
Cummings always comes back in again when this happens, usually. Has he got any more, I wonder.
Yes, you have to keep feeding the pack.
He must have more, but I suspect it will be more of the same.
He might have been better sending a big file to the Met in the first place and got a big hit instead of letting herd immunity to the story build up.
The thing is, it seems to me that Cummings is in touch with a disenchanted mole, or group of moles still in government. Remember that the most recent allegations are from 2021, long after he was gone. Because Cummings, in turn, is a very good co-ordinator, and also has a hotline to the press, the instability of Boris's regime may just run on and on, I think.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
While the build-up of Russian forces is very concerning, there have been Russian troops in Ukraine, and Moldova and Georgia, for years. Russia has already invaded European soil and they're still there, in occupation. It's occasionally puzzling when you see people only waking up to the problem this month.
Can't argue with that, although the problem creeps ever nearer. Though with the energy prices as they are, it will have a direct effect on many, not just 'a small piece of land somewhere east'.
[Does anyone who opposed fracking ever wonder if just possibly it might have been better to have an independent supply, even if only in the short term?]
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories
Only on Europe rather than social policy, I think. Remember Thatcher's bust-up with her.
The Queen is economically centrist and One Nation, remember she got on far better with John Major, Ted Heath and Harold Wilson and Macmillan than she ever did with Thatcher certainly.
However she is also a traditionalist and was not a great fan of Blair I suspect. Given the fact she was well over 65 in 2016 and a non graduate she would almost certainly have voted Leave had she had a vote.
Charles and William and Kate I suspect would have voted Remain. Harry pre Meghan would have probably voted Leave, post Meghan would be a staunch Remainer. Camilla I suspect would have been a Leaver too, as would Philip (the Queen Mother certainly, she was a huge Thatcher fan, far more than her daughter and was wary of the Germans until her death)
'she was well over 65 in 2016 and a non graduate she would almost certainly have voted Leave had she had a vote'
A classic of the genre!
I think there's actually some polling to suggest the over 65 age group strongly leaned towards Leave, but that the oldest age group within that (90+, which the Queen was, just, in June 2016) were the other way. The suggested logic is that they were adults during the Second World War, and remembered the lead up to it quite well. As such, they tended to weigh unity more heavily than sovereignty.
But I don't pretend to be able to guess the Queen's personal view from that - she's not exactly your average nonagenarian.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
While the build-up of Russian forces is very concerning, there have been Russian troops in Ukraine, and Moldova and Georgia, for years. Russia has already invaded European soil and they're still there, in occupation. It's occasionally puzzling when you see people only waking up to the problem this month.
Putin has been quite careful to modulate his behaviour, shifting the window of what is acceptable, bit by bit.
A measure of his success in this is that if he takes the Russian border to the Dnieper, it is far from clear whether there will be universal condemnation for his actions.
A vignette - in the 90s, I was at university. UCL in fact. There were a lot of angry young Muslim gentlemen there. Angry because in the slaughter of Yugoslavia, Europe had stood aside and let the Serbs do their thing. Some of these angry gentlemen latter progressed to somewhat forthright expressions of their anger at the matter.
Makes me wonder if in a decade or 2 there will be numbers of bright eyed, angry young Ukrainian men, in various countries....
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
It has been headline news for far too long and people are fed up with it. The cake thing yesterday was just stupid. People may be beginning to feel sorry for Johnson. Murders get hardly any news coverage yet a man eating a slice of cake on his birthday 20 months ago got wall to wall coverage
Yes, we're all really cross with him for eating a slice of cake. As opposed to lying through his teeth about rules which the rest of us were expected to follow.
You might also consider that choices about news are made by Johnson's fellow... journalists.
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories
I doubt this. As head of the CoE you'd expect HMQ to be broadly aligned politically with Jesus - a social democrat as we agreed earlier.
No, as I said earlier Jesus was a social conservative, although yes he might be a social democrat economically but focused on work and helping the poor in a practical way not just welfare dependency. Jesus would likely be Brownite Labour economically.
The Old Testament however is more Tory than the Tories
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories
Only on Europe rather than social policy, I think. Remember Thatcher's bust-up with her.
The Queen is economically centrist and One Nation, remember she got on far better with John Major, Ted Heath and Harold Wilson and Macmillan than she ever did with Thatcher certainly.
However she is also a traditionalist and was not a great fan of Blair I suspect. Given the fact she was well over 65 in 2016 and a non graduate she would almost certainly have voted Leave had she had a vote.
Charles and William and Kate I suspect would have voted Remain. Harry pre Meghan would have probably voted Leave, post Meghan would be a staunch Remainer. Camilla I suspect would have been a Leaver too, as would Philip (the Queen Mother certainly, she was a huge Thatcher fan, far more than her daughter and was wary of the Germans until her death)
'she was well over 65 in 2016 and a non graduate she would almost certainly have voted Leave had she had a vote'
A classic of the genre!
I think there's actually some polling to suggest the over 65 age group strongly leaned towards Leave, but that the oldest age group within that (90+, which the Queen was, just, in June 2016) were the other way. The suggested logic is that they were adults during the Second World War, and remembered the lead up to it quite well. As such, they tended to weigh unity more heavily than sovereignty.
But I don't pretend to be able to guess the Queen's personal view from that - she's not exactly your average nonagenarian.
Yes, the late Harry Leslie Smith, often in the media, was definitely one of those.
I'm sure there are things which are more futile than trying to ascribe personal political views to members of the Royal Family, but I can't immediately think of any.
If we ruled out futile political speculations on PB we’d have about 3 comments a day
My bet:
Queen: Leave The Late D of E: Leave Charles: Remain Andrew: Remoaner, wanted a 2nd vote Anne: Leave Edward: Remain Wills: Remain Kate: Leave Harry: Leave Megan: Not sure how Brexit benefits her, so probably Remain
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
While the build-up of Russian forces is very concerning, there have been Russian troops in Ukraine, and Moldova and Georgia, for years. Russia has already invaded European soil and they're still there, in occupation. It's occasionally puzzling when you see people only waking up to the problem this month.
Can't argue with that, although the problem creeps ever nearer. With the energy prices as they are, it will have a direct effect on many, though, not just 'a small piece of land somewhere east'.
[Does anyone who opposed fracking ever wonder if just possibly it might have been better to have an independent supply, even if only in the short term?]
Additional British supplies of gas would only make a minimal difference, if any (given the price of extraction) to the current high market prices for gas.
However if we'd given the go-ahead for tidal, and done more to build wind turbines more quickly, or built an interconnector to Iceland to access their geothermal power - or any of a number of other steps to leave behind fossil fuels - then we'd be using a lot less gas, and be a lot less exposed.
We should be encouraging investment in replacements for fossil fuels, not more fossil fuels.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
It has been headline news for far too long and people are fed up with it. The cake thing yesterday was just stupid. People may be beginning to feel sorry for Johnson. Murders get hardly any news coverage yet a man eating a slice of cake on his birthday 20 months ago got wall to wall coverage
The trouble with that logic remains that, whilst one has sympathy for people who couldn't have birthday parties, the reason they couldn't is that the man who WAS, secretly, having one forbade it.
I agree the anger isn't as raw as it was when the story first broke, but it's bubbling along and feeding into a divided party narrative as well.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
Cummings always comes back in again when this happens, usually. Has he got any more, I wonder.
Yes, you have to keep feeding the pack.
He must have more, but I suspect it will be more of the same.
He might have been better sending a big file to the Met in the first place and got a big hit instead of letting herd immunity to the story build up.
The thing is, it seems to me that Cummings is in touch with a disenchanted mole, or group of moles still in government. Remember that the most recent allegations are from 2021, long after he was gone. Because Cummings, in turn, is a very good co-ordinator, and also has a hotline to the press, the instability of Boris's regime may just run on and on, I think.
The first thing Boris needs to do now that he's triumphed is to root out the disloyal members of the Cabinet and preferably replace them with less competent ministers who will be less of a threat.
New: Hearing the prime minister is telling MPs (who say they are getting more time with the PM than they ever imagined) that this is a media / Labour witch-hunt, that he’s been through worse before and that he’s bounced back before and will do so again
In day to day life most peoples engagement with lawyers is bewildering. They seem to find endless problems. We bought our first flat a few years ago and the lawyer found so many problems with the lease etc that it sounded like we were heading towards catastrophe and financial ruin if we went ahead with the purchase. But it was a cheap flat and we needed somewhere to live and now it has doubled in value, along with rents in the area, which we would have needed to keep paying if we were cowed by her dire predictions, none of which were ever realised.
Professionally I have dealt with all parts of the legal profession from high street basement lawyers right up to leading QC's. Their main shortcoming is that they are not doers. But Starmer can't be criticised on this front, being DPP there were clearly a lot of difficult decision making involved. It is harder to think of a better background to prepare someone for the role of PM.
Some of his decisions at the DPP were not the best, though For instance, prosecutions of journalists under some very peculiar old statutes, all of which were thrown out by the courts and criticised in excoriating terms.
And he massively failed in the Jummy Saville situation.
It wasn't just Saville, there was some absolutely disastrous handling of cases by the CPS after all that blew up.
William Roche, how his case got to court, it was embarrassing for the prosecution as it was found the witness accounts just couldn't possibly be true e.g. he was on set when he was supposed to have committed offences, he never owned or had access to a car and property that were allegedly used. Also one witness account, it was their partner who basically answered all the questions during the police interviews, which soon got pulled apart by the defence. The CPS hadn't done even the most basic of checks around the facts.
And the other end, Rolf Harris. He nearly got away with it, because again the prosecution again had done such a shit job preparing the case. They hadn't found any proof he was at an event where it was claimed he abused a young girl. It was only a member of the public who sent in footage half way through the trial to ensured he got convicted. If the judge hadn't allowed that new evidence to be admitted, he more than likely would have been found innocent.
Isn’t there some question mark over Starmer’s reluctance to prosecute cases like Rotherham?
I recall some allegations to that effect. I should probably google to find out but I can’t be arsed as I am impatiently waiting for the first gin martini of the evening to arrive
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
It has been headline news for far too long and people are fed up with it. The cake thing yesterday was just stupid. People may be beginning to feel sorry for Johnson. Murders get hardly any news coverage yet a man eating a slice of cake on his birthday 20 months ago got wall to wall coverage
Yes, we're all really cross with him for eating a slice of cake. As opposed to lying through his teeth about rules which the rest of us were expected to follow.
You might also consider that choices about news are made by Johnson's fellow... journalists.
My point was that the continued negative news coverage may be turing into a positive for Johnson.
No. Starting watching it, but he seems to be saying lots of words very quickly, and not clearly clear was his central criticism is.
The easiest criticism of jpeg NFTs is the actual image isn't even stored on the blockchain at the moment, only a link to a decentralised image storage system. In 99.9999% of cases you are just buying a link with possibly some IP claim to the image, maybe....
As I said before, there is something in the idea, but current stuff is tulip mania.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
Labour are regularly in the mid to upper 40s… in England and Wales. It is their dire Scottish numbers pulling the GB total down. However, FPTP rewards geographical concentrations of votes, so Starmer is well on course.
Eg:
England Lab 46% Con 36% LD 10%
Scotland SNP 45% Lab 22% Con 18% LD 9%
Wales Lab 44% Con 29% PC 11% LD 10%
(Survation/38 Degrees; 14-17 January 2022; sample size 2,036)
Starmer may be on course for most seats but not a majority.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
Presumably you’re absolutely elated with Johnson and his show of leadership prioritising animals over people.
Also - no idea why we are putting so much emphasis on current polls.
Con deficit < 10 points = HY loyal to his führer Con deficit > 10 points = HY campaigns for Liz
No principles involved. It’s a numbers game to HY.
True. Except I would campaign for Sunak not Liz if Boris went
Are you sure he isn't an Atheist?
He is Hindu
Which. In terms of religious belief is an almost meaningless term.
I'm sure there are things which are more futile than trying to ascribe personal political views to members of the Royal Family, but I can't immediately think of any.
If we ruled out futile political speculations on PB we’d have about 3 comments a day
My bet:
Queen: Leave The Late D of E: Leave Charles: Remain Andrew: Remoaner, wanted a 2nd vote Anne: Leave Edward: Remain Wills: Remain Kate: Leave Harry: Leave Megan: Not sure how Brexit benefits her, so probably Remain
Queen: definitely L D of E: probably L, but he'd want Greece and the UK tied together, so not a definite Charles: R Andrew: he'd want as much young 'totty' in the UK as possible, so R Anne: L Edward: genuinely no idea Wills: R Kate: R (because she knows that she has to support her husband, even when he's mistaken) Harry: Where's the party? Meghan: My friend Oprah said that Brexit was a terrible thing
Constitutionally there was no need for a ballot at all. The PM remains in office until a VONC in Parliament. Thatcher could have ignored her party's 'local poll' and stood her ground. "I'm staying until HoC passes a VONC'" she might well have said. How many Tory MPs would have failed to support her?
This is not irrelevant to the current situation. The Conservative Party is nothing more than a voluntary association. It has no constitutional significance at all.
If the Conservative Party elects a new leader and the PM doesn't resign, HMQ will be having a word.
There is no point the incumbent PM not resigning as there would shortly be a confidence vote in the Commons and they would lose. The only point would be if there is some doubt about the state of the House or just bloody mindlessness.
There was speculation around the time Johnson took over that he would be able to ignore a vote of no confidence going against him in the Commons, wait out the two weeks, and force an election in preference to allowing a different PM take over.
That might be the scenario he would suggest in an attempt to keep MPs fearful of losing their seats in line.
That appears to be what happens under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. It isn't a mechanism to force the PM to resign and it's unclear whether the result of codifying the form of confidence motion has been to make it impossible for the house to indicate its support for a successor (they can only stave off an election 14 days after a no confidence vote by voting confidence in HM Government, not a notional alternative government - so the previous government has to have resigned first).
Another instance of the FTPA messing up the constitution.
I think in such a scenario (renegade PM holding the house to hostage) the only way to prevent a GE would be for the house to vote confidence in HMG. I don’t think the FTPA has messed with the convention that a PM who loses the confidence of the house has to tender his or her resignation to the monarch, though it is unclear at what point the confidence is lost (I.e at the point of the VONC or the 14 days elapsing).
Whatever the confusion in that situation, I think a monarch is correctly executing their powers to dismiss the PM if they were to establish that an alternative government could be formed. So if the Tory Party MPs were to notify her that they would get behind an alternative figure as PM, and there were enough of them to sustain a majority in the HoC, whatever Boris’ position on the matter I suspect the dismissal would take place and a new PM would take over, to table a vote of confidence in HMG and stop the 14 days elapsing.
Of course all of this would be a complete mess and in many ways our crisis moment just like the storming of the Capitol. Our constitution does rely on the PM of the day having a sense of fair play and knowing when the game is up, for the most part.
I don't think it's confusing, beyond the fact that the name of the act isn't really what it does. The old system gave the PM a weird prerogative that they could abuse, and the FTPA fixes this.
Without FTPA: PM can call an election whenever they like, technically they're within their rights to call an election to prevent themselves from being replaced by a new leader.
With FTPA: Parliament is in the driving seat, so if the majority of MPs want to kick out their PM and substitute someone else, they can. The mechanism is: Vote of confidence to dismiss the old PM, indicate to The Queen (by a formal vote or a letter or whatever) that they support someone else, and that person becomes PM.
If MPs go ahead and vote to repeal the FTPA, they're writing a blank cheque to their PM, who they know only cares about himself, to send them on a kamikaze run to save his own job. It's probably not in their best interests to let him do that.
Under FTPA a vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM - it simply sets the clock ticking for a GE.
That's what I said: The vote of confidence doesn't dismiss the old PM (likewise under the old system). Doing that *then finding somebody else who can command a majority* dismisses the old PM. The difference is that with the FTPA, MPs unambiguously get a chance to do that, whereas without it the rejected PM may be able to dissolve parliament instead.
But under FTPA the only thing that stops an election is a vote of confidence in "HM Government" - not "somebody else". You can't vote confidence in them until they are appointed, and they can't be appointed unless the PM resigns or is dismissed. Agree that the rejected PM can't dissolve parliament, but that's what happens automatically 14 days later.
If MPs find someone they support the PM resigns or is dismissed. What do you think the 14-day period is for, just to give everyone a chance to see if they change their minds?
FTPA isn't a great bit of legislation and I think it was drafted assuming that a PM would behave honourably in line with convention and resign. The 14 days are to allow time to find someone who can command the confidence of the house - I've not gone back to Hansard or the explanatory notes to the Bill to check but my best guess is that nobody raised the question if what would happen if a PM refused to resign. There might be some other authority that makes it sufficiently clear that a PM has to go in that case such that HMQ would dismiss him if he doesn't resign, but I've not seen anything to that effect.
The thing is that, in principle, a PM might be able to assemble a new coalition of MPs to support them, after losing a confidence vote, so I don't think you'd necessarily want it to be automatic that they had to resign.
You could imagine a scenario where a Labour PM was reliant on the Lib Dems for a majority, lost their support, but was able to form a new majority by doing a deal with the SNP.
The key missing link is for the Commons to have a way of indicating whether they do have confidence in anyone else, so that person can take over.
That’s where HMQ comes in.
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
HMQ demonstrated over prorogation that she is a paper tiger and will not act contrary to the advice of the PM.
I’m sure she’s sick to the back teeth with the lot of them.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
Leaving aside her probably genuine belief that the job is her God-given duty, the only thing worse for her than dealing with the politicians would be seeing her son balls the whole thing up.
I think a King Charles would get on quite well with Starmer, an eco warrior who wants to modernise the monarchy and probably I suspect a Remainer though he accepts the result like Starmer allegedly now does. Charles also getting more woke, see his apology for slavery in Barbados.
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories
I doubt this. As head of the CoE you'd expect HMQ to be broadly aligned politically with Jesus - a social democrat as we agreed earlier.
No, as I said earlier Jesus was a social conservative, although yes he might be a social democrat economically but focused on work and helping the poor in a practical way not just welfare dependency. Jesus would likely be Brownite Labour economically.
The Old Testament however is more Tory than the Tories
In day to day life most peoples engagement with lawyers is bewildering. They seem to find endless problems. We bought our first flat a few years ago and the lawyer found so many problems with the lease etc that it sounded like we were heading towards catastrophe and financial ruin if we went ahead with the purchase. But it was a cheap flat and we needed somewhere to live and now it has doubled in value, along with rents in the area, which we would have needed to keep paying if we were cowed by her dire predictions, none of which were ever realised.
Professionally I have dealt with all parts of the legal profession from high street basement lawyers right up to leading QC's. Their main shortcoming is that they are not doers. But Starmer can't be criticised on this front, being DPP there were clearly a lot of difficult decision making involved. It is harder to think of a better background to prepare someone for the role of PM.
Some of his decisions at the DPP were not the best, though For instance, prosecutions of journalists under some very peculiar old statutes, all of which were thrown out by the courts and criticised in excoriating terms.
And he massively failed in the Jummy Saville situation.
It wasn't just Saville, there was some absolutely disastrous handling of cases by the CPS after all that blew up.
William Roche, how his case got to court, it was embarrassing for the prosecution as it was found the witness accounts just couldn't possibly be true e.g. he was on set when he was supposed to have committed offences, he never owned or had access to a car and property that were allegedly used. Also one witness account, it was their partner who basically answered all the questions during the police interviews, which soon got pulled apart by the defence. The CPS hadn't done even the most basic of checks around the facts.
And the other end, Rolf Harris. He nearly got away with it, because again the prosecution again had done such a shit job preparing the case. They hadn't found any proof he was at an event where it was claimed he abused a young girl. It was only a member of the public who sent in footage half way through the trial to ensured he got convicted. If the judge hadn't allowed that new evidence to be admitted, he more than likely would have been found innocent.
Isn’t there some question mark over Starmer’s reluctance to prosecute cases like Rotherham?
I recall some allegations to that effect. I should probably google to find out but I can’t be arsed as I am impatiently waiting for the first gin martini of the evening to arrive
That is more iffy ground......The likes of Nadine Dorries have tried that line of attack and it doesn't really stand up to examination.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
It has been headline news for far too long and people are fed up with it. The cake thing yesterday was just stupid. People may be beginning to feel sorry for Johnson. Murders get hardly any news coverage yet a man eating a slice of cake on his birthday 20 months ago got wall to wall coverage
Yes, we're all really cross with him for eating a slice of cake. As opposed to lying through his teeth about rules which the rest of us were expected to follow.
You might also consider that choices about news are made by Johnson's fellow... journalists.
My point was that the continued negative news coverage may be turing into a positive for Johnson.
I think the suggestion that news can be so unrelentingly bad for someone that it's good for them is, er, interesting.
No. Starting watching it, but he seems to be saying lots of words very quickly, and not clearly clear was his central criticism is.
The easiest criticism of jpeg NFTs is the actual image isn't even stored on the blockchain at the moment, only a link to a decentralised image storage system. In 99.9999% of cases you are just buying a link with possibly some IP claim to the image, maybe....
As I said before, there is something in the idea, but current stuff is tulip mania.
I think the central criticism is it's a scam. But maybe there is some interesting tech in there.
I do think that some of the public are getting fed up with the endless reporting of this party stuff. Yesterday's story regarding the birthday cake with everything else that is going on in the world was pushing it too far. To have headline news that a man had a bit of birthday cake whilst at work whilst Russia is on the brink of invading the Ukraine is a bit silly.
Labour to be below 40% after everything that has happened over the past 3 months is pretty poor. They should be mid 40s regularly. Corbyn got 40% at the 2017 GE
Labour are regularly in the mid to upper 40s… in England and Wales. It is their dire Scottish numbers pulling the GB total down. However, FPTP rewards geographical concentrations of votes, so Starmer is well on course.
Eg:
England Lab 46% Con 36% LD 10%
Scotland SNP 45% Lab 22% Con 18% LD 9%
Wales Lab 44% Con 29% PC 11% LD 10%
(Survation/38 Degrees; 14-17 January 2022; sample size 2,036)
Starmer may be on course for most seats but not a majority.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
Presumably you’re absolutely elated with Johnson and his show of leadership prioritising animals over people.
Also - no idea why we are putting so much emphasis on current polls.
Con deficit < 10 points = HY loyal to his führer Con deficit > 10 points = HY campaigns for Liz
No principles involved. It’s a numbers game to HY.
True. Except I would campaign for Sunak not Liz if Boris went
Are you sure he isn't an Atheist?
He is Hindu
Which. In terms of religious belief is an almost meaningless term.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not that surprised. The whole affair is not very important compared to what's going on in Ukraine, and also the related gas price crisis.
No. Starting watching it, but he seems to be saying lots of words very quickly, and not clearly clear was his central criticism is.
The easiest criticism of jpeg NFTs is the actual image isn't even stored on the blockchain at the moment, only a link to a decentralised image storage system. In 99.9999% of cases you are just buying a link with possibly some IP claim to the image, maybe....
As I said before, there is something in the idea, but current stuff is tulip mania.
wait, really? I had assumed the image was at least encoded in the blockchain!
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not that surprised. The whole affair is not very important compared to what's going on in Ukraine, and also the related gas price crisis.
Having a Prime Minister who thinks he's above the law is definitely a problem.
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
It has been headline news for far too long and people are fed up with it. The cake thing yesterday was just stupid. People may be beginning to feel sorry for Johnson. Murders get hardly any news coverage yet a man eating a slice of cake on his birthday 20 months ago got wall to wall coverage
Yes, we're all really cross with him for eating a slice of cake. As opposed to lying through his teeth about rules which the rest of us were expected to follow.
You might also consider that choices about news are made by Johnson's fellow... journalists.
My point was that the continued negative news coverage may be turing into a positive for Johnson.
It may be shoring up his diehard defenders, yes. To paraphrase Dura Ace earlier though. Can't see anyone thinking I am disgusted with him for lying 82 times. But this 83rd one is really too much negative coverage. It has moved me back to voting for him.
I'm sure there are things which are more futile than trying to ascribe personal political views to members of the Royal Family, but I can't immediately think of any.
If we ruled out futile political speculations on PB we’d have about 3 comments a day
My bet:
Queen: Leave The Late D of E: Leave Charles: Remain Andrew: Remoaner, wanted a 2nd vote Anne: Leave Edward: Remain Wills: Remain Kate: Leave Harry: Leave Megan: Not sure how Brexit benefits her, so probably Remain
Queen: definitely L D of E: probably L, but he'd want Greece and the UK tied together, so not a definite Charles: R Andrew: he'd want as much young 'totty' in the UK as possible, so R Anne: L Edward: genuinely no idea Wills: R Kate: R (because she knows that she has to support her husband, even when he's mistaken) Harry: Where's the party? Meghan: My friend Oprah said that Brexit was a terrible thing
Edward worked in the arts and media so I reckon Remain, almost certainly. All his friends in that circle will be Remain
Kate is the daughter of quite Leavey people, I suspect, and will also have been guided by the Q, I have her down as a secret Leaver, she probably fibbed to Wills
Harry surely Leave: back then he was a lairy lad in the army. They are all Leave
Piquantly he met Megan a month after the Brexit referendum, I imagine she converted him to Remain instantly, but too late
Some rather surprising stuff on my Facebook feed today. Normally there isn't much politics on it other than what the few very vocal left-wingers who have for years been putting our messages to bash the Tories (and more recently how we should be wearing masks forever).
Today an old work colleague based in the North put out a message saying to stop making such a fuss about birthday cake when there are more important things. Also mentioned if it weren't for Boris getting is out the EU then we would all still be waiting for vaccines. Even as a Brexiteer that's a bunch of rubbish as they are just as well vaxxed now as we are, just a bit later. Even more surprising to me was the number of people who commented to support them.
I am very surprised that there are so many people who are willing to give Boris a pass on all this recent news.
I'm not sure it is a pass, but having a massive media circus about a cake and where exactly Sue's document is stored at this precise minute whilst Russia is preparing an invasion on European soil might be beginning to grate.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
The facebook feed suggests that No10/CHQ are starting the social media fight back. It will be interesting to see how this develops.
Comments
I pointed this out a number of times over the past 2 years with links to the leading articles they were running.
On current polls he will at least need LD confidence and supply to get most legislation through, even if he avoids needing the SNP too.
So for the second time in a decade the LDs would be Kingmakers again, only this time likely for Labour not the Tories
Anyway, your point isn’t really relevant here. Not even the DUP are daft enough to prop up a lame-duck liar, who has totally shafted them in the last two years.
FuckYourDeadMotherInLawUlsterPlebGate was the final straw.
Also - no idea why we are putting so much emphasis on current polls.
Con deficit > 10 points = HY campaigns for Liz
No principles involved. It’s a numbers game to HY.
So fed up she might go after her now-tainted jubilee?
From personal experience - the better the lawyer, the less this kind of arrogance occurs.
A friend is a Magistrate - I've sat in his court to see what happens. Fascinating to see the small pieces of the puzzle..
Anyway, in about 1-in-20 cases you seem to get the defence lawyer who thinks that since the magistrates aren't lawyers or "proper judges", he is superior to them and they should bow before his wisdom.
A favourite was the occasion a chap quoted a piece of law. He then had a visible rage issue when the magistrate consulted the Clerk of the Court, then looked up the law and read out the actual words of the law. Which didn't say what the lawyer had implied they said, when he quote "section blah" etc.
Oh dear
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/ben-wallace-prime-minister-kabul-taliban-afghanistan-b978747.html?amp
If she wants to act contrary she should abdicate and run for Parliament.
In order to govern a democracy you need to construct a coalition. In FPTP this means the coalition is within a party, generally.
Purists will always lose.
*In the European sense. Left of centre, somewhat higher taxes and public spending, fix the problems sensibly stuff.
Autonomy founder is wanted in the US on 17 counts of fraud over $11bn sale to Hewlett-Packard
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/01/26/mike-lynch-fails-high-court-bid-delay-extradition-usa/
The Queen however was probably a Leaver, she is more suited to Boris' Tories. Remember the Queen asked at a dinner why we needed to stay in the EU pre referendum
Also is getting more time with BJ necessarily going to make mps feel more warmly towards him, unless they're very shallow?
Ah, ok, fair enough.
The whole thing is starting to look like a confection, even if at its base is a truth about what No 10 is currently like.
It is the 24 hour news problem again.
“Bold prime minister intervenes to save stranded dogs from dog-hating Islamic terrorists”
Yes, that’s just terrible for Boris. As @Dura_Ace says the British public will likely approve. Expect a further Tory uptick in the polls
It should be pointed out that many Remainers (including myself) believe that Remain lost, precisely because that question wasn't answered well. Asking the question doesn't make you a Leaver.
William Roche, how his case got to court, it was embarrassing for the prosecution as it was found the witness accounts just couldn't possibly be true e.g. he was on set when he was supposed to have committed offences, he never owned or had access to a car and property that were allegedly used. Also one witness account, it was their partner who basically answered all the questions during the police interviews, which soon got pulled apart by the defence. The CPS hadn't done even the most basic of checks around the facts.
And the other end, Rolf Harris. He nearly got away with it, because again the prosecution again had done such a shit job preparing the case. They hadn't found any proof he was at an event where it was claimed he abused a young girl. It was only a member of the public who sent in footage half way through the trial to ensured he got convicted. If the judge hadn't allowed that new evidence to be admitted, he more than likely would have been found innocent.
He won't need to quite yet, because the report will be out soon.
It's probably a bit of both. The character is part of the Jack Cade Rebellion, which is portrayed as flawed, a threat to order, extremely violent... and not totally without justification. So I think it would probably have been recognised as a humorous comment in that it picks up on a widely held view of lawyers as elitist shysters, but also as recognising that it would be a very bad idea in practice.
And it seems to me that remains and is evident in the polling OGH reports. Saying lawyers are "competent", "decisive" and "strong" doesn't mean you're terribly affectionate towards them. It suggests they are something of a necessary evil.
And this is part of Johnson's problem using the line. In the context of a chaotic governing party which is riven with in-fighting, pointing to your opponent's comparative competence and strength isn't ideal.
"Lawyerly" is a better criticism to point out someone's lack of sympathy and connection with ordinary folk... but that's not where the debate is just now. Indeed, ironically, it is the PM floundering for clever legal arguments as to why behaviour every normal person knows is inexcusable is somehow okay.
He must have more, but I suspect it will be more of the same.
He might have been better sending a big file to the Met in the first place and got a big hit instead of letting herd immunity to the story build up.
However she is also a traditionalist and was not a great fan of Blair I suspect. Given the fact she was well over 65 in 2016 and a non graduate she would almost certainly have voted Leave had she had a vote.
Charles and William and Kate I suspect would have voted Remain. Harry pre Meghan would have probably voted Leave, post Meghan would be a staunch Remainer. Camilla I suspect would have been a Leaver too, as would Philip (the Queen Mother certainly, she was a huge Thatcher fan, far more than her daughter and was wary of the Germans until her death)
Paris Hilton and Jimmy Kimmel talk about Bored Ape NFTs, which cost minimum of $250k.
https://twitter.com/etienneshrdlu/status/1485956332989693953?s=20
A classic of the genre!
People tried to twist it all kinds of ways, in their heads, to get the outcome they wanted.
[Does anyone who opposed fracking ever wonder if just possibly it might have been better to have an independent supply, even if only in the short term?]
But I don't pretend to be able to guess the Queen's personal view from that - she's not exactly your average nonagenarian.
A measure of his success in this is that if he takes the Russian border to the Dnieper, it is far from clear whether there will be universal condemnation for his actions.
A vignette - in the 90s, I was at university. UCL in fact. There were a lot of angry young Muslim gentlemen there. Angry because in the slaughter of Yugoslavia, Europe had stood aside and let the Serbs do their thing. Some of these angry gentlemen latter progressed to somewhat forthright expressions of their anger at the matter.
Makes me wonder if in a decade or 2 there will be numbers of bright eyed, angry young Ukrainian men, in various countries....
As opposed to lying through his teeth about rules which the rest of us were expected to follow.
You might also consider that choices about news are made by Johnson's fellow... journalists.
The Old Testament however is more Tory than the Tories
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10442957/Family-mother-two-stabbed-death-Maida-Vale-brand-driver-hero.html
My bet:
Queen: Leave
The Late D of E: Leave
Charles: Remain
Andrew: Remoaner, wanted a 2nd vote
Anne: Leave
Edward: Remain
Wills: Remain
Kate: Leave
Harry: Leave
Megan: Not sure how Brexit benefits her, so probably Remain
However if we'd given the go-ahead for tidal, and done more to build wind turbines more quickly, or built an interconnector to Iceland to access their geothermal power - or any of a number of other steps to leave behind fossil fuels - then we'd be using a lot less gas, and be a lot less exposed.
We should be encouraging investment in replacements for fossil fuels, not more fossil fuels.
I agree the anger isn't as raw as it was when the story first broke, but it's bubbling along and feeding into a divided party narrative as well.
I recall some allegations to that effect. I should probably google to find out but I can’t be arsed as I am impatiently waiting for the first gin martini of the evening to arrive
The easiest criticism of jpeg NFTs is the actual image isn't even stored on the blockchain at the moment, only a link to a decentralised image storage system. In 99.9999% of cases you are just buying a link with possibly some IP claim to the image, maybe....
As I said before, there is something in the idea, but current stuff is tulip mania.
D of E: probably L, but he'd want Greece and the UK tied together, so not a definite
Charles: R
Andrew: he'd want as much young 'totty' in the UK as possible, so R
Anne: L
Edward: genuinely no idea
Wills: R
Kate: R (because she knows that she has to support her husband, even when he's mistaken)
Harry: Where's the party?
Meghan: My friend Oprah said that Brexit was a terrible thing
To paraphrase Dura Ace earlier though. Can't see anyone thinking I am disgusted with him for lying 82 times. But this 83rd one is really too much negative coverage. It has moved me back to voting for him.
Kate is the daughter of quite Leavey people, I suspect, and will also have been guided by the Q, I have her down as a secret Leaver, she probably fibbed to Wills
Harry surely Leave: back then he was a lairy lad in the army. They are all Leave
Piquantly he met Megan a month after the Brexit referendum, I imagine she converted him to Remain instantly, but too late