UK General Discussion Thread: mayy lmao

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Turns out that the LibDems put David Laws forward for a peerage but his name was rejected by the Appointments Commission. Hahahahaha.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Almost certainly the government is used to having a comfortable majority (even if it was made up of two parties) and has yet to adjust to the realities of having a narrow one. Fact is that if there's a non-tiny Tory rebellion then the government will lose any given vote so long as all the Opposition parties turn up and vote the same way.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What the hell?!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm trying to work out who that bizarre story reflects worse on and I'm not sure...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't even have the words.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Good Lord.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Redcar steelworks mothballed (again) - 1,700 jobs lost. Appalling news for the North East.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Sad news, but a long life well lived. RIP.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Lord Adonis apparently. Interesting definition of 'high profile'.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

For those who like electoral trivia (i.e. everyone here), Healey's electoral record in terms of percentage majorities:

Pudsey & Otley 1945 (defeated) - lost by 3.2%
Leeds South East (by-election) 1952 - 26.4%
Leeds East 1955 - 10.5
Leeds East 1959 - 9.1
Leeds East 1964 - 15.7
Leeds East 1966 - 23.1
Leeds East 1970 - 15.3
Leeds East 1974 - 20.8
Leeds East 1974 - 27.7
Leeds East 1979 - 22.2
Leeds East 1983 - 14.5
Leeds East 1987 - 22.2

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I see that the Conservatives are now in favour of wind power.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Closure of Redcar steelworks confirmed. In addition to the massive economic blow this will likely have significant political consequences on Teesside.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Too early to tell on that front, but we're certainly seeing terrible party management.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Its worth noting that - unlike the situation in the 1970s and early 80s - most of the PLP were selected by a full ballot of their respective CLP. As such they are collectively much less vulnerable to the threat of deselection than their predecessors. It is also worth noting that - unlike the situation in the 1970s and early 80s - there is not a massive head of steam behind a campaign of mass deselections; the CLPD crowd are calling for selection rules to be opened up because thats what they've always believed, but there isn't much clamouring for it from the grassroots presently.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Latest news from the March of the Makers.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The man giving the speech at the event that the daughter attends in the first episode, right?

Thats right, yes.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Its a messy issue, but its clear that there's no demand for federalism in England and pretending otherwise is probably not terribly productive. I've argued before that the best solution (or tastiest fudge?) would be to dust off the Redcliffe-Maud report and make appropriate adjustments.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

David Willetts says the Tories are failing the young

It perhaps should be pointed out that he was the minister responsible for introducing £9000 per year university fees...

Indeed. I believe the word to describe his intervention on this matter is chutzpah.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is an interesting point - the main reason why the UK has survived so far is that English national identity wasn't that strong. British national identity was much stronger in the past - holding the country together - and it's fading away.

This has been a popular argument amongst intellectuals for a couple of decades, but it suffers from a fairly major problem, i.e. it is not actually true. In England at least there has never been any distinction between 'Britishness' and 'Englishness'; even the words used to be totally interchangeable. The idea of a fully separate British national identity is/was essentially a Scottish phenomenon.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's a whole industry (I was going to write academic industry, but much of it actually takes place outside academia) devoted to producing substandard research on national identity, so probably. I'm not sure it would be worth reading.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In one of those unpleasant coincidences that sometimes happen, two notable historians have died on the same day: Lisa Jardine and David Cesarani.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Note that only four of the seventeen posts were actually contested (the posts not usually being thought of as mattering at all). No idea which ones.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The police don't actually have a shoot-to-kill policy and it is highly questionable whether one would even be legal...

But he does need to get better at dealing with obvious attempts at gotcha journalism. Like within the next... er... shall we say ten seconds? Pretty soon anyway.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Legally they are not supposed to act like that, however.

Fun fact with the UK is that we don't need a parliamentary approval for war-ever

Given that the Constitution operates via precedent it is questionable whether this is still true.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Time for Livingstone to retire for real.