The All New Adventures of His Majesty's Government

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09philj

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If you are British, or have looked our way over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that all is not well in Westminster. Actually, things are going very wrong for the government, very quickly.

What's going on?
Well it all started when the Conservatives ousted Boris Johnson as their leader and as Prime Minister for being an incorrigible scandal magnet. The various leadership candidates were all various shades of awful, but one of the worst was the haunted Skyrim NPC Liz Truss, who won over the Tories with her unhinged right wing views, demands for aggressive tax cuts, and whiteness. After a brief diversion due to the death of the Queen, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced a "mini-budget" that would aggressively cut taxes for the rich, slightly cut taxes for everyone else, and pay for the budget deficit by borrowing loads of money. This caused the value of the pound to significantly fall, and the value of government treasury bonds to also be devalued. The Bank of England was forced to step in to purchase large amounts of bonds in order to bail out the major pension funds, which were at risk of failing. The media tends to give the Tories a fairly easy ride but sending the whole economy up the spout was too much even for them, and the government suddenly had to answer a lot of awkward questions about what the fuck they thought they were playing at. On Friday the Chancellor was sacked persuaded to resign, and in his resignation letter basically blamed the Prime Minister for everything, and Truss gave one of the worst press conferences in the history of political communications. Truss has now appointed a new Chancellor, the vigorously unexciting Jeremy Hunt, whose first action in the role has been to U turn on Truss's entire economic policy and herald a new age of austerity. The Conservatives have absolutely plunged in opinion polling over the course of their self created crisis. They were already behind when Truss took office, but they've fallen from the poor 31% they had then to a truly catastrophic 24%.

What next?
Some Tory MPs are now pretty much openly plotting to have the Prime Minister removed, even though under party rules technically a vote of no confidence can't be held for a year after she took the job, and other MPs think it would be insane to start their second leadership contest in a year, but the next general election is still two years away, giving Truss a lot of room to do even more damage to their party in the meantime. This is all very funny on the level that the Conservatives are finally digging themselves into an inescapable hole, but not funny at all on the level that they're going to take Britain with them.
 
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Trunkage

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Look, I don't know if I think Truss was remotely the most extreme of the bunch

That being said, Sunak was the better of the two (pretty much by default) and is pretty extreme

To be honest, I don't understand the screeching around getting the King involved to replace Truss. I assume that they just going to Whitlam it but by the sounds of things, they think the Tories retain control somehow. I would have assumed that it would go to Labour or a double dissolution. I dont know the difference in law here.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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...a "mini-budget" that would aggressively cut taxes for the rich, slightly cut taxes for everyone else, and pay for the budget deficit by borrowing loads of money.
...whose first action in the role has been to U turn on Truss's entire economic policy and herald a new age of austerity.
Huh. That's the opposite of how American conservatives work- demand austerity, cut taxes, then blow scads of money and borrow heavily to cover it.

I've never really understood how selecting leadership works in Parliament. How is it decided who can take the PM role?
 

Eacaraxe

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Look, I don't know if I think Truss was remotely the most extreme of the bunch
It only took one look at her necklace for me to realize that ultimately, she may not be the most extreme of the bunch, but she's in an extreme position nevertheless. Coming in behind Johnson, her hands are really tied and it's going to be a struggle to give an out of control party the whipping it needs. It's going to take a lot of discipline, and hopefully opposition doesn't stockade her too harshly in the meantime. But from the rumors I've heard, she at least has an open door policy in her office and she's always ready to receive strong feedback from her MP's.
 

RhombusHatesYou

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I've never really understood how selecting leadership works in Parliament. How is it decided who can take the PM role?
Pretty simple...

For the Westminster System and variations thereof:
Whichever party or coalition controls/has-the-support-of the majority of seats in the lower house (House of Commons in UK) of Parliament gets to form government, and the parliamentary leader of that party (or senior party of a coalition) gets to be Prime Minister.

How the parliamentary leader gets selected varies from party to party... and yes, it does mean a PM can lose their spot to an ambitious colleague with more partyroom support.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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Pretty simple...

For the Westminster System and variations thereof:
Whichever party or coalition controls/has-the-support-of the majority of seats in the lower house (House of Commons in UK) of Parliament gets to form government, and the parliamentary leader of that party (or senior party of a coalition) gets to be Prime Minister.

How the parliamentary leader gets selected varies from party to party... and yes, it does mean a PM can lose their spot to an ambitious colleague with more partyroom support.
Mmkay, I can wrap my head around that, though it seems kind of shaky if alliances fall apart.

Now, how is it that Truss's own party could get her unseated if she's supposed to have (by my understanding) a grace period?
 

Gordon_4

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Mmkay, I can wrap my head around that, though it seems kind of shaky if alliances fall apart.

Now, how is it that Truss's own party could get her unseated if she's supposed to have (by my understanding) a grace period?
Probably because that is a Tory Party Policy rather than an ironclad rule of Westminster Government procedure. Australia went through five Prime Ministers with only one election.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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Probably because that is a Tory Party Policy rather than an ironclad rule of Westminster Government procedure. Australia went through five Prime Ministers with only one election.
Really? Yikes. As an American, I can't visualize the kind of chaos and uncertainty that kind of thing could have caused, unless those PMs were basically carbon copies of each other. We don't see nearly that kind of turnover in our politics, even if sometimes we might want to.
 

Gordon_4

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Really? Yikes. As an American, I can't visualize the kind of chaos and uncertainty that kind of thing could have caused, unless those PMs were basically carbon copies of each other. We don't see nearly that kind of turnover in our politics, even if sometimes we might want to.
It doesn't tend to affect the day to day business of government because most of that is carried out by civil servants. Truthfully its often a bit of a show, because they party in question starts airing dirty laundry and stuff to get the public on their side. Its hilarious most of the time because it lasts less than a week. Although I think on one occasion it got serious enough that the Governor General nearly came in to dismiss the Government. An event that has only happened once in our history so far.
 
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Dalisclock

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Pretty simple...

For the Westminster System and variations thereof:
Whichever party or coalition controls/has-the-support-of the majority of seats in the lower house (House of Commons in UK) of Parliament gets to form government, and the parliamentary leader of that party (or senior party of a coalition) gets to be Prime Minister.

How the parliamentary leader gets selected varies from party to party... and yes, it does mean a PM can lose their spot to an ambitious colleague with more partyroom support.
So does the House of Lords play into this, or does it?

I'm kinda confused what the House of Lords really does, because I know they're not elected and they're not just the British version of the US Senate despite being the upper house. Sorry if that sounds dumb. AFAIK it's pretty unique to the UK.
 

meiam

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So does the House of Lords play into this, or does it?

I'm kinda confused what the House of Lords really does, because I know they're not elected and they're not just the British version of the US Senate despite being the upper house. Sorry if that sounds dumb. AFAIK it's pretty unique to the UK.
Lord don't really factor in that, or if you're asking about how they get appointed, Lord buy their position are appointed by the current government, the UK doesn't really have a constitution so most things aren't really set in stone and the house of lord is one of the place where this is really obvious. There's not really any rule on who can be in it or even how many people are in it, so usually just as a government his leaving they appoint a bunch of donor or journalist/public figure who shill for them.

Anyway, what a shitshow. There really should be a way for the public to be able to trigger a general election. It's crazy how nothing the UK did after brexit as worked out well but it doesn't seem like the people who voted all in on brexit seems to be able to add the two of them together.

Where I live atm we've just had a similar situation where the PM of the province was just replace by the party and they selected probably the dumbest person they could pick. She hasn't even been in the position for a week and she's already managed to say enough dumb stuff for a lifetime (latest was to question who was responcible for the Ukraine war, you might be wondering why she's opining on foreign mater when that's entirely outside her competence, good question).
 

RhombusHatesYou

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Hence why it was - nominally - a hilarious pantomime sideshow: they didn’t effect shit. Of course it was also an international embarrassment of massive proportions. But if you don’t laugh you weep I suppose.
It wouldn't have been so embarassing if more Australians understood our own system.
 

Thaluikhain

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Really? Yikes. As an American, I can't visualize the kind of chaos and uncertainty that kind of thing could have caused, unless those PMs were basically carbon copies of each other. We don't see nearly that kind of turnover in our politics, even if sometimes we might want to.
In Australia, the party votes for a leader, the people vote for members of parties, and the party/s that win get to call their leader the PM. And they can vote for another one if they want, but only a few years ago did that start becoming a thing.

In practice, this means the party doesn't have to support the PM, the PM has to support the party. or get replaced. At least until people got sick of all the changes and they decided to stick with the PM they had, which allowed him to be the worst PM in memory.
 

Chimpzy

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All this focus on US politics, it's good to be reminded that politicians are, in fact, trash everywhere.

We should know, ours spent like a third of the last dozen years bickering over which parties get to be in the government.
 

Thaluikhain

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All this focus on US politics, it's good to be reminded that politicians are, in fact, trash everywhere.
Eh, dunno. I think it's a problem that big, high-profile and culturally important countries have truly awful leaders at the moment, which normalises awful leaders, while the decent ones run countries nobody can remember. If it was the otehr way around, people would expect better from their politicians.
 

Baffle

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What next?
Some Tory MPs are now pretty much openly plotting to have the Prime Minister removed, even though under party rules technically a vote of no confidence can't be held for a year after she took the job, and other MPs think it would be insane to start their second leadership contest in a year, but the next general election is still two years away, giving Truss a lot of room to do even more damage to their party in the meantime. This is all very funny on the level that the Conservatives are finally digging themselves into an inescapable hole, but not funny at all on the level that they're going to take Britain with them.
If they kick her now they've got two years of the new guy to make it look good; if they wait a year people might still be thinking about Truss come the next election (which I think Labour will win either way, though the chalice is now less poison than it is a WMD). Jeremy Hunt concerns me because I suspect he might actually be competent in a completely amoral way.
 
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