Voters go to the polls in the UK General Election
- Thread starter Blackleaf
- Start date
Any less so than yours?
It's just about as stupid as the guy who wins a $million at the casino and throws it on a roulette game in hopes of doubling it!
Reshuffle: Theresa May promotes ally Damian Green to key role
BBC News
11 June 2017
Damian Green is the big winner so far as Theresa May seeks to shore up her authority in a post-election reshuffle.
The Work and Pensions Secretary - a friend and ally of the PM - has been made First Secretary of State, effectively her second in command.
Most other ministers have kept their roles - but Liz Truss is moved from Justice to Chief Treasury Secretary.
Commons leader David Liddington takes over as Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor.
Chief Treasury Secretary David Gauke has been appointed Work and Pensions Secretary.
Mrs May had been expected to carry out a widespread reshuffle of her top team after Thursday's general election but her room for manoeuvre has been limited by her failure to win an overall majority.
Most of the cabinet jobs remain unchanged:
Chancellor of the Exchequer - Philip Hammond
Secretary of State for the Home Department - Amber Rudd
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs - Boris Johnson
Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union - David Davis
Secretary of State for Defence - Michael Fallon
Health Secretary - Jeremy Hunt
Communities Secretary - Sajid Javid
International Development - Priti Patel
Transport - Chris Grayling
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy - Greg Clark
Reshuffle: Theresa May promotes ally Damian Green to key role - BBC News
BBC News
11 June 2017
Damian Green is the big winner so far as Theresa May seeks to shore up her authority in a post-election reshuffle.
The Work and Pensions Secretary - a friend and ally of the PM - has been made First Secretary of State, effectively her second in command.
Most other ministers have kept their roles - but Liz Truss is moved from Justice to Chief Treasury Secretary.
Commons leader David Liddington takes over as Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor.
Chief Treasury Secretary David Gauke has been appointed Work and Pensions Secretary.
Mrs May had been expected to carry out a widespread reshuffle of her top team after Thursday's general election but her room for manoeuvre has been limited by her failure to win an overall majority.
Most of the cabinet jobs remain unchanged:
Chancellor of the Exchequer - Philip Hammond
Secretary of State for the Home Department - Amber Rudd
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs - Boris Johnson
Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union - David Davis
Secretary of State for Defence - Michael Fallon
Health Secretary - Jeremy Hunt
Communities Secretary - Sajid Javid
International Development - Priti Patel
Transport - Chris Grayling
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy - Greg Clark
Reshuffle: Theresa May promotes ally Damian Green to key role - BBC News
Gove is back.
Someone is going to die.
He takes over from his fellow Leave campaigner Andrea Leadsom as Environment Secretary.
It was Gove, of course, who knifed Boris Johnson in the back when the pair, along with Leadsom, were competing with May and others to be Tory leader and PM last year after Cameron lost the referendum. Then Gove didn't get enough votes and pulled out. Then Leadsom pulled out of the race because of her comments about women without children, leaving May as the only person standing.
There's never a dull moment in British politics in the 2010s. It's a political soap opera.
When is a Royal going to run for PM or is that too big of a downgrade for any of them do? (ruling from the shadows also brings less backlash once the fall guy has been punished severely.
In wake of Tory upset, Conservative media decides democracy is actually bad
https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/873626394886115328
https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/873626394886115328
I recognize some names in the new cabinet, Boris Johnson and David Davis.. both, as far as i am aware, for a 'Hard Brexit'.
The the pro Europe forces are galvanizing to install a 'Soft' version, inside the Conservative Party and out. The EU leadership is clear. In order to stay in Common Market, Britain will have to allow free access of people. That means the core of Brexit in trade and immigration will be gutted. British sovereignty would be simply a charade for quasi membership without representation (like Norway).
There are other forces at work. Europe is not working and is careening between the forces of globalism and nationalism. Macron appears headed for a Parliamentary majority in France.. but represents the worst of political, economic and cultural liberalism which is failing spectacularly in the West.
This is a rolling revolution.. which will need many refits and restarts, as we saw in the UK. But you can't get around the fact that the entire structure of Global Free Market Capitalism, bitterly antipathetic to the nation state and to Christian morality, is unviable. It cannot be reconciled to West's originating principles.
Those who expected this to be the end of globalism will likely be stymied for a time. But their opposition is disintegrating, slowly but inexorably.
The the pro Europe forces are galvanizing to install a 'Soft' version, inside the Conservative Party and out. The EU leadership is clear. In order to stay in Common Market, Britain will have to allow free access of people. That means the core of Brexit in trade and immigration will be gutted. British sovereignty would be simply a charade for quasi membership without representation (like Norway).
There are other forces at work. Europe is not working and is careening between the forces of globalism and nationalism. Macron appears headed for a Parliamentary majority in France.. but represents the worst of political, economic and cultural liberalism which is failing spectacularly in the West.
This is a rolling revolution.. which will need many refits and restarts, as we saw in the UK. But you can't get around the fact that the entire structure of Global Free Market Capitalism, bitterly antipathetic to the nation state and to Christian morality, is unviable. It cannot be reconciled to West's originating principles.
Those who expected this to be the end of globalism will likely be stymied for a time. But their opposition is disintegrating, slowly but inexorably.
Last edited:
It would be cheaper and faster to just have the Queen appoint one and she can give her subjects the same warning Scotland got in their attempt to break free.
Don't think it is democracy that is 'bad' It is the PEOPLE and the crazy decisions they make both when in power and when voting. May should never have called that election. ( the PEOPLE arrogance factor) and she misjudged the mood of the people. It all started with Cameron's gamble to have the referendum about Brexit. He lost that gamble too.
Yes but the Conservative supporting Media in Britain has decided Democracy is bad when they lose........
https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/873626394886115328
]
The British Ruling Class Is in Full Panic Mode
The Tories had decided to use Brexit to smash what’s left of the welfare state. Where are we now with Brexit?
Key figures on the right of British politics are now saying that, to stop Jeremy Corbyn, they have to be prepared to ditch everything. They have to be prepared to ditch what is called “hard Brexit,” which is walking away from Europe without a deal. They have to be prepared to ditch austerity. We’ve had seven years of spending cuts and attacks on the welfare state, and they’ve got to be prepared to ditch that.
They’re in full panic mode.
As a reporter on British politics and economics, I haven’t seen the ruling class of England in a panic like this for a long time. They realize that their defense lines are falling away. The normal defense lines for British capitalism run not just through the Conservative Party, but also through the Labour Party. But once Corbyn took control of Labour and decisively moved its political programs to the left, the only thing standing between the working class and young people on one side, and the minority and the elite on the other, is the Conservative government. And that just effectively fell apart. It’s a minority government, with no power to legislate.
So they are frantically trying to scramble together what is called the “soft Brexit” middle of politics. You’re seeing strange alliances form now between Conservatives and the centrists in Labour and the Liberal Democratic Party, which is our third party. They are trying to put together some kind of proposal that keeps Brexit on the road, but steps back from the extreme route that Theresa May was pursuing. So Jeremy Corbyn has changed the whole dynamics of the European Union.
www.thenation.com/...
The Tories had decided to use Brexit to smash what’s left of the welfare state. Where are we now with Brexit?
Key figures on the right of British politics are now saying that, to stop Jeremy Corbyn, they have to be prepared to ditch everything. They have to be prepared to ditch what is called “hard Brexit,” which is walking away from Europe without a deal. They have to be prepared to ditch austerity. We’ve had seven years of spending cuts and attacks on the welfare state, and they’ve got to be prepared to ditch that.
They’re in full panic mode.
As a reporter on British politics and economics, I haven’t seen the ruling class of England in a panic like this for a long time. They realize that their defense lines are falling away. The normal defense lines for British capitalism run not just through the Conservative Party, but also through the Labour Party. But once Corbyn took control of Labour and decisively moved its political programs to the left, the only thing standing between the working class and young people on one side, and the minority and the elite on the other, is the Conservative government. And that just effectively fell apart. It’s a minority government, with no power to legislate.
So they are frantically trying to scramble together what is called the “soft Brexit” middle of politics. You’re seeing strange alliances form now between Conservatives and the centrists in Labour and the Liberal Democratic Party, which is our third party. They are trying to put together some kind of proposal that keeps Brexit on the road, but steps back from the extreme route that Theresa May was pursuing. So Jeremy Corbyn has changed the whole dynamics of the European Union.
www.thenation.com/...
I hate to disappoint the Remoaners who don't like the way democracy went and think that this election gives them a green light to water down Brexit, but Labour's Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer was on The Andrew Marr Show this morning and told Marr that he and his party recognise that Britain will be leaving the European Union, will be leaving the Single Market and the Customs Union and want to end freedom of movement.
The Remoaners need to realise that the election result wasn't a vote against Brexit, it was a vote FOR it. The two parties who are in favour of leaving the EU, leaving the Single Market and the Customs Union and who want to end freedom of movement - the Conservative Party and the Labour Party - took by far the most votes and the most seats, whereas the anti-Brexit parties, such as LibDems and the SNP, did abysmally (the SNP lost 21 seats).
And as for all this talk of "the extreme route that Theresa May was pursuing" - there is no extreme route. There's either Brexit - which the British people want and voted for - or there's no Brexit. All this talk of "hard" or "extreme" Brexit and "soft" Brexit only came about after the Remoaners lost the referendum. There were no such terms before and during the referendum. The Remoaners invented the terms to try and overturn the referendum result. Before and during the referendum there was just either Brexit or no Brexit. What the Remoaners call "hard" or "extreme" Brexit is just the Brexit that the people voted - to leave the EU, the Single Market, the Customs Union, the ending of free movement, the ending of British payments to the EU coffers and the ending of EU bureaucrats making our laws. What the Remoaners now call "soft" Brexit isn't Brexit at all. That's just a fudge. It is, in effect, keeping Britain in the EU. The Remoaners need to realise that May and the government are pursuing an "extreme" Brexit - or "Brexit" as it is most commonly called - because that is what the British people voted for and still want.
Leading article
No, the election was not a rebellion against Brexit – or ‘austerity’
The Tories must not lose their nerve after this election failure: Conservative policies work
The Spectator
People march with EU flags (image: getty)
The Spectator
17 June 2017
The lessons to be learned from the Conservatives’ poor showing in the election could fill more pages than the national curriculum. Don’t unleash on the public a manifesto which has not even been tested among senior ministers. Don’t think you can get through a seven-week election campaign by endlessly repeating the same mantra, especially when you are being ridiculed for it. Don’t underestimate how quickly public opinion can change. Sell yourself, your party and its ideas, rather than just attacking your opponent.
Yet there is a serious danger that Theresa May and the rest of the Tory Party could pick up the wrong message. There is a growing narrative that the Tories lost their majority because voters did not really want Brexit, even though four in five voted for parties whose manifesto promised Brexit. The party of Remain, the Liberal Democrats, did not manage to rally many people to its cause. The country has moved on from the EU referendum even if certain politicians (and David Cameron) have not.
The more interesting discussion is about what Britain would look like after Brexit, a conversation the Tories did not really start. Which brings us to the next wrong lesson from the election: that the public have voted against ‘austerity’. It must be tempting for MPs who have survived an electoral fright to think that opening the spending taps could save them from oblivion. But piling debt on to the next generation is as immoral now as it was in 2010, when a combination of recession and Gordon Brown’s overspending nearly collapsed the economy.
‘Austerity’ is just a populist phrase to describe good economic sense. There is nothing really austere about our public spending, which has grown year-on-year. In spite of cuts to some budgets, the government is still borrowing about £50 billion a year — overall government debt has doubled since the crash to stand at £1.7 trillion. Paying interest on that debt already costs more than educating our children, and almost as much as defence. And that is with interest rates at historic lows.
An internal Labour Party report into why Ed Miliband lost in 2015 concluded that the Tories' triumph was not in spite of ‘austerity’ but because of it: ‘Labour lost because voters did not believe it would cut the deficit.’ Why would voters who two years ago rejected Labour spending plans now accept Jeremy Corbyn’s much more irresponsible plans? Perhaps because the Conservatives did not raise the subject until the final week of the campaign, and only then with the facile jibe about Corbyn’s ‘money tree’.
Theresa May’s single biggest error was the failure to provide proper costings in her manifesto, which robbed her of any authority to criticise Labour’s figures. It allowed Corbyn to get away with promising largesse to various parts of the electorate (such as a £10 per hour national minimum wage) without proper scrutiny. Had it been applied, the size of Labour’s tax bombshell might have focused minds. The argument was, and is, there for the making: the corporation tax rate has plunged, yet UK companies are paying more tax than ever before. The 50p rate of income tax was abolished and, as a result, the highest-paid are shouldering an ever larger share of the tax burden. Since the cuts started, eight jobs have been created in the private sector for every public sector role that has been shed. The Conservatives lost their nerve in the campaign and failed to make the case for conservatism. It would be disastrous if, as a result, they felt they had to ditch it altogether. The point about Tory reforms is that they were progressive; welfare reform was tough, but it helped so many back to work that the incomes of the lowest-paid rose faster than any other group under David Cameron. Conservative reforms led to record employment, and forced inequality to a 30-year low.
The Tories can proudly talk about social justice, fairness and equality — and show how Conservative reforms are the surest route to success. If the party has a nervous breakdown now, and decides (for example) that this election result was somehow a demand for a soft Brexit, then it will make a bad situation far worse. Jeremy Corbyn has presented himself as some kind of novel political force, yet his success is really down to a trick which is as old as democracy itself: bribing the people with their own money.
What is new is that no one challenged him. Where it took Gordon Brown a decade to ruin the public finances, Corbyn and John McDonnell would, between them, achieve that in months. Yet the Tories never make that point.
Thankfully, Jeremy Corbyn did not win the election, and — at least for now — Labour will not have the chance to do as it has always done in office: spend and borrow its way into an economic crisis. That is why the Conservatives almost always lead the polls when it comes to questions of economic competence. The tax cuts worked, welfare reform led to a jobs boom. But an addiction to self-flagellation (and an obsession with Brexit) has stopped the Tories from playing their strongest card.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06...not-a-rebellion-against-brexit-or-austerity/#
Last edited: