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UK politics general discussion

Jeremy Hunt now confirmed as chancellor.

Chris Philip has been sacked as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and replaced with Edward Agar.

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What a time to be alive.
 
Matt N said:
Interestingly, Truss herself is holding a solo press conference at 2:30pm.

This is thought to be reversing the mini-Budget, but would that warrant a whole press conference on its own? I wonder if she might announce anything else…

I must admit, I’m incredibly surprised by how quickly the Truss ministry has seemingly imploded. Following the turbulent late Johnson era, I was hoping that the Truss era could bring stability and a relatively constant government once again, but it appears that Truss’ time as PM could be even more stormy than Johnson’s…

The fact that people are already heavily debating her demise on her 39th day in the job is truly unprecedented stuff… I do feel somewhat sorry for Liz Truss, seeing as she’s only been in the job for 1 month, but it must be said that it has been one pretty turbulent month what with everything that has gone on in the aftermath of the mini-Budget…
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Why are you surprised? The markets are in chaos, she needs to come out and do something to settle everything. She needs to be shown to doing far more than a U turn, more of a hand brake turn and accelerate away as quickly as possible.

How on earth do you feel any sympathy for her? At what point did someone point a gun to her head, force her into the mini budget and then to stick with it for all this time?
 
One of the greatest people on the earth passing comment on one of the worst

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Possibly the greatest moment in the Today programme’s history courtesy of Miriam Margolyes. <a href="https://t.co/QKaBxseznv">pic.twitter.com/QKaBxseznv</a></p>&mdash; Dino Sofos (@dinosofos) <a href="
From: https://twitter.com/dinosofos/status/1581186908419665920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
">October 15, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
Apparently the petition to “call an immediate general election” has now hit 618,000 signatures and is being debated in Parliament tomorrow, for what it’s worth…

According to that link, Liz Truss has also changed her phone number numerous times over the last few days, therefore meaning that she is now unreachable by Cabinet ministers…
 
Matt N said:
Apparently the petition to “call an immediate general election” has now hit 618,000 signatures and is being debated in Parliament tomorrow, for what it’s worth…
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A waste of parliamentary time, that’s what it is.
There’s about as much chance of a GE in the next six months as me winning the lotto jackpot the next 3 weeks running.
 
Well, there have been considerable developments… 3 Tory MPs have now publicly called for Truss to go: https://news.sky.com/story/liz-trus...-game-is-up-as-pressure-mounts-on-pm-12722139

More interestingly, however, it is believed that Sir Graham Brady could have received up to 100 letters of no confidence in her leadership, according to MPs: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/u...o-confidence-in-liz-truss-mps-believe-1915033

Sir Brady will not yet have seen how many letters have been sent, as it is currently the weekend and he is currently away on a foreign holiday, but I guess we’ll find out when he returns tomorrow…
 
BigT said:
A waste of parliamentary time, that’s what it is.
There’s about as much chance of a GE in the next six months as me winning the lotto jackpot the next 3 weeks running.
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The time is already set aside for these petitions and it’s the job of parliament to debate the points raised by these petitions. It won’t lead to a GE but it’s not a waste it time (it’s not like they spend a lot of time sitting anyway so if they are struggling with time they can always increase the session length…

Matt N said:
Well, there have been considerable developments… 3 Tory MPs have now publicly called for Truss to go: https://news.sky.com/story/liz-trus...-game-is-up-as-pressure-mounts-on-pm-12722139

More interestingly, however, it is believed that Sir Graham Brady could have received up to 100 letters of no confidence in her leadership, according to MPs: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/u...o-confidence-in-liz-truss-mps-believe-1915033

Sir Brady will not yet have seen how many letters have been sent, as it is currently the weekend and he is currently away on a foreign holiday, but I guess we’ll find out when he returns tomorrow…
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As the rules stand it doesn’t matter how many letters are in as a leadership challenge cannot happen for 1 year after a leader is voted in. The 1922 committee will have to vote to change the rules if they want a leadership election.
 
Dave said:
As the rules stand it doesn’t matter how many letters are in as a leadership challenge cannot happen for 1 year after a leader is voted in. The 1922 committee will have to vote to change the rules if they want a leadership election.
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For what it’s worth, both Theresa May and Boris Johnson were deposed with this rule supposedly protecting them from another challenge… and both resignations happened at least in part because Sir Graham “gave them wise counsel” (which I’m led to believe means that he advised them to resign due to much of the parliamentary party being against them, and he threatened to change the rules to allow for another VONC if they didn’t resign).
 
The government have descended into chaos. Since Brexit, it's been one thing to the next - infighting, poor decision making, rule breaking. Just crazy.

Whilst a GE anytime soon is like turkeys voting for Christmas, the UK cannot function like this.

The Conservatives need a reset.
 
I don’t think a snap general election occurring soon is as much of a ludicrous possibility as some suggest myself.

Yes, it could be argued that such a move could prove electoral suicide for the Conservatives in their current form, but the clamouring for one is definitely there. Practically every opposition party is calling for one, and even a considerable number of Tory MPs are calling for one, saying things like that Liz Truss needs a mandate for what she’s imposing upon the country, an election would be the right thing “for the good of the country”, and even that it might do the Conservative Party some good to spend some time in opposition.
 
Matt N said:
For what it’s worth, both Theresa May and Boris Johnson were deposed with this rule supposedly protecting them from another challenge… and both resignations happened at least in part because Sir Graham “gave them wise counsel” (which I’m led to believe means that he advised them to resign due to much of the parliamentary party being against them, and he threatened to change the rules to allow for another VONC if they didn’t resign).
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Yes but that wasn’t because of a critical mass of letters, that was the mythical whiskey and pistol conversation the Tory party partake in.

If the leader chooses to drink the whiskey and shoot the messenger then you can’t actually force them out unless you change the rules.

Question is how desperate is Truss?
 
I can't see why the Conservatives would go for a general election at this point. There's absolutely no benefit to them to do so (unless they specifically want to lose and dump the mess onto a Labour government)

Since the Fixed-terms Parliament Act was repealed I think the power to call a general election is now exclusively with the Prime Minister. Even if the entire house voted for an election it would count for nothing from a legal perspective.
 
Alsty said:
I can't see why the Conservatives would go for a general election at this point. There's absolutely no benefit to them to do so (unless they specifically want to lose and dump the mess onto a Labour government)

Since the Fixed-terms Parliament Act was repealed I think the power to call a general election is now exclusively with the Prime Minister. Even if the entire house voted for an election it would count for nothing from a legal perspective.
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Sort of.

If the house votes that they have no confidence in the government then there is a fixed period of time (can’t remember what) where someone else from the majority party has to be able to command the confidence of the house with another vote, if that fails then the minority parties can in theory try to form a government (they don’t usually try, WW2 was the last time that happened with the government of national unity), if no-one can command the confidence of the house the monarch is forced to call another election.
 
Didn't the Fixed Term Parliament Act change the rules on no confidence votes? Wasn't it a simple majority before and now something like 60% no confidence to win or did I dream that up?
 
Matt.GC said:
Didn't the Fixed Term Parliament Act change the rules on no confidence votes? Wasn't it a simple majority before and now something like 60% no confidence to win or did I dream that up?
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No it’s always been a majority only. The 60% rule was the way a government could call an election under the fixed term parliament act.
 
I'm not sure the population will stand for Austerity v2. People can see through the claims that "we're all in it together".

Services are already so chronically underfunded I don't know what else they think they can cut.
 
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