British Politics thread

Salomé wrote:

Is it possible that the Labour party could split, with the union-base/grassroots on one side and the old Blairite wing on the other?

In the 80's we had a Split in Labour called the SDP - eventually it ended up joining the then Liberals but never quite gathered the voice it craved - a similar split and merge might revitalise the corpse of the SDLP but there is much less to merge with and somehow I feel the kind of 'courage of conviction' needed to make the leap/stand is something almost entirely absent in modern politics.

It must be wonderful to wage and win a campaign founded on blatant lies and/or fatuously nieve and/or promises knowingly undeliverable and then elect to wander off and leave the mess to someone else to sort out (or not as the case may be)......at least the usual polotical route is to soldier one

Boris and now Farage ... who next?

BBC News Page

I suppose we should count our blessings that they're gone although the cynic in me has these poised to return when they can blame someone else for not delivering on their own gibberish.

Opportunist git Farage basically saying 'Brexit achieved and the 2 main parties in disarray over same ... my work here is done!' doesn't surprise me at all, but I think Boris' utterly disingenuous 'Oooh no, I'm not the man to lead the party ... did I give the impression I wanted to?' behaviour since the result is a fucking disgrace.

It is, as is Gove's stabbing in the back. Read on Saturday in the Times that he's keen on being leader but doesn't personally have faith in himself to be leader.

An unholy mess since the referendum generally. Labour and the Tories, UKIP to a point and all the while I clean forgot the Lib Dems were kicking about until they said they'd run on a promise to have a referendum to get back in.

Interesting election you folks had. May has found out that hubris is a cunt of a thing.

Hung parliament is a bitch. I would have told May that her slim 17 seat majority WAS TOO SLIM to go dicking around with...and now the complacency has bitten you in the arse. I feel a bit sorry for her though.

Dejected tory I am...

A short piece on Northern Ireland politics for the uninitiated, after the announcement by Theresa May of an alliance with the DUP in light of the hung parliament....

The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is much older than the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and has its origins from the Irish Unionist Party. It was formed out of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, opposed Home Rule and ruled Northern Ireland for over 50 years as the majority party between 1921 (when Northern Ireland was founded as a separate state after the partition of Ireland) and 1972, when the Stormont parliament was prorogued by the Edward Heath Conservative Government.

They again were the majority party at Stormont when devolution was returned to Northern Ireland under First Minister and UUP Leader David Trimble 1999-2002, and Seamus Mallon of the moderate nationalist SDLP after the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Since then, its fortunes have dwindled, being the more moderate party within NI unionism. The Rev Dr Ian Paisley created the Protestant Unionist Party in 1970 to fight the 1970 General Election. He took North Antrim from the UUP and held it until he stood down in 2010. His son Ian Paisley Jnr then took over and still holds the seat today. The DUP was formed in 1971 out of the PUP that preceded it. From 2003 the DUP was in the ascendancy and when devolution was restored in March 2007 the DUP and Sinn Fein were the largest parties, the two hardline parties in NI. This power sharing Executive collapsed in early 2017 after Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness resigned as a result of the DUP's handling of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scandal massive overspend. There was a Stormont Assembly election in March 2017 where Sinn Fein did very well and the DUP just about managed to  stay the biggest party in the assembly. There is still no government in NI at devolution level, but direct rule has not as yet been imposed from Westminster. The parties have until the end of June 2017 to reach agreement on this and there might be another Assembly election in the autumn again.

There are also some smaller unionist parties like the more hardline Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) (formed in 2007) and the more socialist-minded Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) (formed in 1979) but they have little representation in Stormont. The TUV has a sole MLA, Jim Allister, Party Leader, in North Antrim.  

Hope that goes some way towards explaining the complexities of Ulster politics!

Interesting info. Thanks, Secret Files.

Many of the DUP's members are deeply conservative God-botherers, with it having the sort of effect on policy-making you might expect.

For example ... in the Republic Of Ireland (a country that didn't even decriminalise homosexuality until 1993), gay marriage was legalised in 2015. But it's still a no-no here in Northern Ireland.

I think Hertfordshire remained Tory.

Corbyn makes me want to puke.

CJB wrote:

Interesting election you folks had. May has found out that hubris is a cunt of a thing.

Yeah, her advisors need to be shot. Idiots.

bh

I'd still not vote for them! If it was The Saturdays, maybe!

Erica Ambler wrote:

At last, a Labour MP I can support.



Must we fling this heterosexism at our kids?

Why does he look like the progeny of a couple of decades of inbreeding?

n

Not to say anything of leftist dogma.

Erica Ambler wrote:

At last, a Labour MP I can support.



Must we fling this heterosexism at our kids?

Like it for sheer balls alone. Well you know, that balls, not Ed.

Erica Ambler wrote:

At last, a Labour MP I can support.



Must we fling this heterosexism at our kids?

Prime Minister Rees-Mogg, upon being elected, should form a unity government with Labour under this bloke. It's Britain's only hope.

Your internet history has a way of catching you with you!

What exactly did this MP do to invite this level of scrutiny?

n

So he made some "No Fat Chicks" online posts?

I guess I'd mostly be amused at the fact that he himself doesn't exactly look like Adonis.

n

Erica Ambler wrote:

Colin Firth scrubs up nicely with a shade of red on his kisser.

n