Boris talking about buses was a (transparent) ruse to get news stories published using the terms “Boris” and “bus”, thereby pushing older stories about Boris’s Brexit bus* further down internet search results.
*The one that said by leaving the EU, the UK would save £350m a week that it could then spend on the NHS - needless to say, this hasn’t happened.
That strikes me as unusually sophisticated for a politician. Maybe he is a genius.
I don’t think Boris Johnson is an idiot, though his appearance seems designed to make you think he is.
It’s all carefully staged. Ask John Oliver.
I know. I saw that segment
What’s the segment?
It strikes me as the ONLY thing they can do. They can’t do anything else.
I was trying to Google for you Jacob Rees-Mogg in the expenses scandal + his bedroom tax.
As I remember it, he claimed £7m of the taxpayer’s money to renovate his wife’s 300 bedroom house, while instituting the “bedroom tax” for people receiving housing benefits if they dared to have an extra bedroom. Yes that’s right, 300 bedrooms and yes at the same time.
I found it surprisingly hard to find and I’m sure I never used to. But maybe I’m misremembering details and not googling well? I’m pretty sure it used to be right there on his Wikipedia page?
This particular scandal is not directly relevant to Liz Truss; I was just trying to facilitate your rabbit hole of absurd British politicians. Jacob Rees-Mogg is currently Secretary of State for Business, biding his time until his next wildly hypocritical move that will make him millions and make everyone else poorer.
Loathed as I am to defend the utterly absurd Rees-Mogg, that particular ‘scandal’ was always based on absolutely nothing. His wife’s family had sold Wentworth Woodhouse in 1989 (although they do retain the surrounding land). The current owners, to whom the grant was made, are a charity which is restoring the house for the wider benefit of South Yorkshire. One might debate whether this was actually the best use of public money. But it is clearly a wholly public-spirited project in a part of the country usually overlooked when the government is dishing out big grants to cultural projects.
Ah thanks, that must be why it’s not on his Wikipedia page.
He is so absurd it’s hard to remember when his outrageous behaviour is not entirely true.
I just watched Chris Bryant saying that Jacob Rees-Mogg was in the group of Tories “manhandling” an MP in the voting lobby. I’d despair but I’m beyond it, so I’m trying to delight in anything that gets us closer to rock bottom.
Ah so the idea is that his apparent buffoonery is actually a strategy. I mean, that’s way more clever than I would have guessed.
One thing that strikes me is how lame the slogans seem to be. I mean “Make America great again” is vile dishonest xenophobic fascism, but I can at least understand what it appeals to. But “Get Brexit done”—I can’t imagine that even really appealing to the worst in people. It’s just kind of boring.
It makes sense if you appreciate just how sick to death the entire nation was with the endless arguments over Brexit over four years. Most could not understand why it was so difficult to do because they had been told it was really simple. Like just cancelling a monthly subscription. It turns out that withdrawing from an international trade treaty involving 28 countries that had been in place for four decades is a bit more complicated . The Conservative party could not agree on a way forward under May.
Johnson her successor proposed that he was the man to make the issue go away and the public bought it in a general election.
They have been disappointed.
Just like riding a horse off a cliff is really simple.
Said another way …
Like “MAGA”, “GBD” was a simple slogan providing a simple solution to an underlying vexing neuralgia the susceptible public had been suffering under for a long time.
it’s the “Lebensraum” of our times.
You’re applying presidential analysis to a parliamentary system. No-one ever casts a vote for the Prime Minister. You vote for the party group that you want to form the government. The leader of the party is generally a key part of the decision for individual voters, but if the PM ceases to hold office, that doesn’t mean that the government automatically ends. If the former PM’s party still has a majority in the Commons, then that is the democratic choice. How that party chooses the next leader will vary considerably within parties, and within parliamentary systems.
If your test for democracy is that the people vote directly for the head of government, then I don’t think any current parliamentary system is a democracy.
As far as I can remember, the last time a king dissolved Parliament entirely on his own bat was James II in 1687. It didn’t work out well for him.
The question the monarch always asks: “Does my current Prime Minister have the confidence of the House of Commons?” If yes, then the monarch does not interfere and leaves it to the elected members of the Commons to decide what happens.
As of today, according to Wikipedia, the Conservatives under Truss have 357 seats out of 650 seats. That’s a clear majority. The monarch should not dissolve Parliament as long as the elected members of the Tory party have a clear majority.
I missed seeing about the fracking vote. Guardian reports it was 326 votes opposing the Labour motion to 230 for the motion, 40 Tories not voting. That’s certainly cause for concern for the PM, but the key takeaway is that even with all the turmoil in the markets and the sacking of the Chancellor, she had the confidence of the House in the most recent vote.
The King should take no action, and let the elected members carry out their duties.
I fear you’ve misunderstood my point Good Sir.
My comment involved the various candidates for next PM who would stand in an election by the party faithful to choose the next PM. Much as they just did when Truss replaced Johnson after a multi-round election process held in September. The concern I had was with the expressed plan of the several candidates themselves to meet in private wherein all but one would agree to withdraw. Obviating the party members’ vote entirely.
I fully accept that in most (all?) parliamentary systems, and in the UK’s in particular, the PMs aren’t elected by the polity at large. The polity elects a majority party and then the majority party members elect a party leader who goes on to be PM.
But in this case a half-dozen self-appointed party insiders would hand-pick the next PM from among themselves and present their decision to the country and to their party as a fait accompli. That’s quite the “democratic deficit” as UK political punditry has it.
Yes, but they can come closer. These events in Britain suggest that a new rule be implemented: When there’s a new Prime Minister and there hasn’t been a general election in the last 6 months, new general election must be held within the next 3 months. (Adjust those time periods as desired.)
That’s not a perfect rule, since it doesn’t handle the case of a party changing their leader within 6 months of the last election. But elections too close together are not desired, so I’m not sure what’s to be done in that case.
But there’s nothing remotely democratic about having a new Prime Minister chosen by a vote of party members. That would be a textbook example of oligarchy, not democracy; party members have no mandate from the public, do not represent the public and are not accountable to the public. If a new PM is chosen by the parliamentary party, by MPs, well, they at least have been elected to their office and they have a constitutional role which party members do not have.