And decreased government spending to attack inflation.
Minus a general election, does the law have any actual reference to the parties? My expectation would be that it says things like “largest faction” or “majority faction” rather than “those who ran as a Tory when they were campaigning, during the election”. I.e. all it would take for a non-Tory government would be for some one of the Tory divisions to split off and go to the other side, so that it becomes the majority party.
Or is there some legal obstacle to that?
If you’re looking at a crushing defeat in the election, two years hence, it’s not like there’s really any bonus to party allegiance. You might as well start on the path to resuscitating your name, before the general.
A Johnson promise is simply a lie undelivered yet.
We’ve got the new levelling up department in Wolverhampton. Apart from relocating a bunch of people from London to somewhere they can buy a ten bedroom mansion for the price their old single room flat, it hasn’t done a thing. I think it was also the department of housing, but was renamed to Levelling up. So just more nonsense apart from a government department moved there. Which might make up for the Inland Revenue place which got closed down a few years ago. I think Gove was in charge for a year. Does nothing.
“Levelling up” was nonsense. Hasn’t happened. Will not happen. How many times does Johnson have to be shown to be selling another imaginary bridge to the moon before people realise its all snake oil?
Can you explaing “levelling up” in 20 words or less? I’m not completely clear from context. TIA.
The utterly crapulous UK electoral system minimised the power of voters so as to maximise the power of the dominant political parties, always exactly two in number. Most voters vote by party loyalty; the candidate’s personal qualities matter only at the margins, unless they are incredibly good or incredibly bad. MPs candidates do defect from one main party to the other, though that is a rare event. But I cannot think of a single example where an MP has done so, and had then been re-elected from the same constituency on behalf of his new party.
Mind you, that is not what has to happen for a general election to be called. A GE will be called if the government loses a vote of confidence. This means that government MPs don’t have to quit the party and join the opposition party; it’s sufficient that they simply don’t vote for the government, or vote against the government, in the vote of confidence. But it’s pretty much a career-ending move in most circumstances; an MP who does this will almost certainly be denied his party’s nomination at the election. They can run as an independent, but would be very lucky indeed to win, because the crapulous electoral system (see above) hugely devalues votes cast for candidates who do not belong to one or other of the two dominant parties.
Astoundingly, thanks to the FPTP electoral system, the Tories might come out of the next election not even being the official opposition. Some models predict they’d get fewer seats than the SNP.
I’ve worked some jobs where the better answer was to bail out than to be part of the slow, miserable, saddening implosion.
If you’re going to fail, why have it suck longer? And, you can always move districts to somewhere that you’d be competitive.
But wasn’t that simply a shift from domestic programs to miltary spending, resulting, actually, in a near-tripling of debt?
Heh - maybe this can get derailed into a 1999 thread.
By custom and convention the sovereign appoints whoever is seen to command a majority in the House of Commons (in practice, of course, the election results make clear who that should be, and officials at the Palace and No.10 settle the procedural arrangements before the new PM goes to the Palace). Your understanding as to how a majority might evaporate is correct - previous periods of instability in the early 1920s and the 1931 economic crisis saw movements a bit like that. 1931 put George V on the spot, and he was far more active in promoting the National coalition that emerged than would probably be tolerated now.
Statute law, AFAIK, only recognises political parties as such in relation to the mechanics of elections and spending limits.
The Tories sow inequality between regions and classes favouring London/the South and richer regions. “Levelling up” was a Boris Johnson lie/policy to bring the regions and classes that his own party left behind as a matter of policy, to the same level as the better-off in London, without diverting money away from London.
Sorry that’s more than 20 words!
Thanks! I think I get the gist. Basically, promise them everything, but give them nothing.
My impression at the time—and again, my knowledge of British politics is very shallow—was not that Labor was excessively leftist, but that it had no coherent messaging on Brexit and Corbin himself was ambivalent.
Who gets to decide when there is a vote of confidence? Do the minority parties in the Commons have any say?
If it’s completely up to the prime minister, that seems like a pretty weak valve for democratic pressures.
We will give more money to the north. We will. Why are you laughing?
I’m laughing because you were so much more succinct than @gracer.
Their manifesto for the 2017 election surprised me by its moderation, and indeed it helped lose May her majority. But in 2019, they seemed to go bonkers with a new (uncosted) policy promise every day. Plus, as you say, the not very convincing papering over of divisions over Brexit and Corbyn’s personal deficiencies - tin-eared, stubborn self-righteousness and students’ union style attitudinising on foreign policy.
I don’t know whether this helps but it’s actually the name of a government department. I suspect it might be like the equivalent of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Interesting name for it. Kinda like “cleaner” and “carer,” right? 
Nice callback.
Apparently it used to have more of a grownup name— Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
I guess because if the merger between the executive and legislature in the parliamentary system, all the big government departments can be completely restructured by any prime minister.
In the American system, it’s much more difficult to do that, which, good for us.
Interesting. That would seem to say that if Charles was feeling fairly enterprising and willing to involve himself in the real world of British politics, he could try to single out a prospective PM that he thought get could a majority across all the MPs from all parties and work behind the scenes to build a coalition.