Sure. No doubt that if the King did it, they would take away that power. But since it would appear to be (for this Canadian/American) a fantastically popular thing to do, I think it could work. Or is the Conservative party/Truss not as unpopular as the polls show?
No matter how unpopular the PM might be, the idea of the Monarchy exceeding their bounds of the implicit contract would be orders of magnitude more unpopular.
Or maybe I’ve misjudged the state of UK politics. And this would actually work.
Like I think now if the Supreme Court of the US decided that Biden wasn’t president, but Trump was, on some complete fictitious grounds, it’s not entirely clear what would happen. Two years ago I would have been sure that 90% of the population and pretty much everyone that mattered would just ignore them and the court would become irrelevant.
I don’t know how (maybe by smooshing “lead” and “UK”?), but this is the second time I’ve glanced at this thread title and read it as: Liz Truss tries to break the UK.
There’s nothing remotely democratic about having the Prime Minister chosen by the members of the Tory party, who have no mandate from the public and are not representative of the public. That’s not democracy; it’s oligarchy.
It is arguable that even after 27 months in the job, he didn’t end up getting any experience. When decisions needed made, he avoided them, he was on (paid for by someone else) holiday a hell of a lot of that time and pretty much relied on the ministers who’s competence was minimal and now form the current government.
The only experience Johnson had (and I won’t refer to him by his first name, he is not my friend) is experience of being the worst prime minister we’ve ever had. Until now.
It really isn’t a joke that Larry the cat could be a better PM.
The loonies who’ve been pushing for bringing his sex-pest enabling, bodies-pile-highing, money in a brown envelope pleasing, criminally convicted, only in it to say he had a good job once, fat old broke pisshead, are vocal but very small.
At first half the country shuddered when he came on the telly. Near the end most of the country shuddered (I know a bunch of “always tories” who are not anymore, because of Johnson). He doesn’t even have much support in his own party never mind the country. He’s done.
The various governments of this parliament are making the Major administration look a model of competence and good government - and that’s saying something.
Majors government was about the most competent of Tory governments of recent memory. Ignoring the ERM pullout (yeah, I can’t provide you with alternatives, but it pretty much stripped all the PC manufacturing from the UK over to the rest of EU as it entered a 15 year massive growth phase), they at least seemed to leave a vaguely stable economy at the end.
Major was a casualty of the anti-EU wing of the party anyway, which lead to Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard all not getting elected for years. Sadly they waited in the wings until they sneaked in their madness when there was an idiot in charge.
I do like those Cassetteboy videos. I shudder to think how much work goes into one of them.
She’s sorry.
Judging by my Twitter feed, her apology and the budget U-turn has sent the hard-right factions in the party into paroxysms of hysterical nonsense, with claims that the “Tory wets” have “staged a coup” and that Hunt is now the de facto PM. Naturally this is all the fault somehow of the EU and Remain, apparently.
The party is imploding, with some demanding that everyone support Truss, some wanting Boris back, some wanting Sunak, some wanting a general election, and some just generally despairing of everything. I wish I had the slightest confidence in Labour - or any other party, really - to take advantage of the chaos. But I don’t.
The opportunity to force a general election just isn’t there for any other party. I forget which general it was who said “When your enemy is making mistakes, don’t interrupt”, but when the government has to all intents and purposes adopted one key Labour proposal (windfall tax) and abandoned the one area where they looked more generous than Labour (energy price cap beyond next April), and Labour is sitting on a 30+% poll lead - what more do they need to do just at the moment?
I can’t help feeling this is all a distraction; an interlude of circus clowning, to distract everyone from something else that’s happening somewhere
They’re trying to distract themselves from the stuff that is happening right in front of them.
Indeed. Much like the GOP, the Tories have purged the upper echelons of the party of the ideologically impure and in doing so have removed pretty much all the competent, reality-based members. And it’s not going well as a result, so they’re all flailing about looking for someone to blame other than themselves.
Yeah, we are very firmly in the:
“By golly, this situation is intolerable and for the only resolution is for somebody to sacrifice their personal advantage for the good of us all! What do you mean, maybe that somebody should be me?” stage.
If they loudly and theatrically defenestrate their latest failed leader, they may be able to prevent the disengaged masses from recognizing that the problem is actually, and has been for probably a decade or more, the party itself. One wonders how many decapitations will be required before the man in the street does the arithmetic.
When Michael Gove is in charge. That’ll be the line.
There’s a thing going around about the Chancellors, like:
July - Rishi Sunak
August - Nadhim Zahawi
September - Kwasi Kwarteng
October - Jeremy Hunt
My response was “Wait until Govember”. I’m now worried that’s going to really happen…
It now appears that they are in the process of messing things up again, too. Two notes from recent U-turns:
- The bankers bonuses limit is STILL being dropped.
- It seems that the cost of living help, which wasn’t a windfall tax on the energy companies, but a loan against future taxes, is up in the air again.
It’s almost as if they are betting they are out of power when the repayment of that hits. But with polls showing them perhaps coming in with 22 seats as the FOURTH party in the UK, they might be becoming the Liberals from 100 years ago, when they were last in power.
Is it too late to place a bet on the cabbage?
Apparently the last day of the last Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, will be a hundred years tomorrow.
I think I see what I see what the Tories are doing now.