Posts by Rich of Observationz
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The UK conservatives have almost never elected the frontrunner as leader (since they acquired a formal method, pre-1964 the leader just emerged).
Usually, any politician who has been in cabinet a while and is seen as a front runner has sufficient enemies that they can't win. Heath, Thatcher and Major were all fairly minor figures who'd recently reached shadow cabinet office. (and then there was the period, post Major when they elected a succession of freaks and wierdos like Hague and Dunkin Donut. Not sure that's over).
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No monarch has been forced to abdicate for a long, long time
80 years this December? And for unwisely choosing a partner, rather than any political infelicities. (Though there was an undercurrent of that, and he wound up spending much of WW2 in aristocratic exile in the Bahamas, which was considered to be somewhere he couldn’t be suborned by the Germans from).
I suspect if the unelected monarch took a stance on this, then those who disagreed would take every opportunity to get rid of them and probably the monarchy as soon as they were in a position to do so. And the only clearly stated ideology of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Windsors is the continuation of their dynasty.
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Speaker: The Government you Deserve, in reply to Australopithecus,
You are quite correct. I don't know how Bosworth Field lodged itself in my head.
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Speaker: The Government you Deserve, in reply to BenWilson,
Well, the dwindling number of constitutional monarchies (I exclude quasi-absolute monarchies like Thailand) do follow the approach that the sovereign is required to have no opinion (and/or, as in the case of Sweden, an explicit exclusion from taking a constitutional role).
I doubt Charles III will get beheaded. But he might well either be personally asked to abdicate, deposed by Act of Parliament or force a republic into play.
Why is one random person (chosen from an inbred, isolated and privileged family) considered an effective check and balance? You don't go to a hereditary dentist...
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The royals might not learn much at their public schools (private tutor in the case of her Maj) but they do study British history.
It's almost 400 years since the Battle of Bosworth Field settled the question of parliamentary sovereignty and got the first King Charles' head lopped. I don't think there's much of an appetite to revisit this.
Especially not on an issue where the populace is more or less equally divided - whichever side the queen intervened on, it'd ensure that 50% of the population developed a firm sense of republicanism almost overnight.
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I find it kinda ironic Monbiot going on about democracy when his core deep-green ideology (that we should give up all modern advances and live in darkened caves eating kale) is infinitely unlikely to ever be approved of by an electorate (unless they'd reached the point where caves and kale were a luxury).
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Pretty confrontational.
If Eagle runs against Corbyn, I think she'll struggle to win the 40,000+ votes she needs, against a background of the Chilcot enquiry reminding the electorate (which hasn't changed since last year) of the war.
If Corbyn gets banned from standing (which would probably involve a court challenge) then basically the PLP are end-running the ability of the members to choose the leader - they're pretty much trying to sack the membership.
In that case, we might see a rule change attempt put before conference: firstly to give an incumbent leader the right to contest an election (or possibly removing the PLP from the nomination process altogether) and secondly introducing primaries for sitting MPs.
It's rather reminiscent of the situation in 1980/81 when the founders of the SDP decided early on they were leaving and were waiting for an appropriate trigger. (Ironically, this was the radical decision of the party conference to remove the exclusive power of the PLP to elect the leader).
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Russell Brown,
FPP prevents any of it.
Only three parties have ever been in government in the UK during the nearly 400 years since they stopped being an absolute monarchy: Tories/Conservatives, Whigs/Liberals and Labour. The Liberal => Labour transition occurred in the late 19th and early 20th century as working class man and women gradually gained the right to vote and thus led to the growth of the Labour party.
The hurdle to be jumped for a new party to gain office 9or even opposition/influence) is huge, The SDPs best result was 23 MPs (on 25% of votes) and the LibDems was 54 MPs on 23% of the vote (due to a higher concentration of votes in winnable seats).
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In a sensible political system, the rump PLP (made up of Blairites, Brownites, careerists and those who don't really care if the government bombs foreigners and throws people out of jobs so long as they use the correct language around their chosen identity group) would accept the loss of Labour, found their own party and contest the next election.
(Alternatively Momentum would morph into a Podemos/Syriza type party and contest the election).
That is broadly what would happen in NZ if a party's parliamentary and grassroots support became irretrievably alienated (in the case of the Greens, it would self correct as the list gets reset each election by the membership).
However, the UK's voter-chosen FPP system means that parties are forever, so that option will be vigorously resisted.
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(UK) Labour won in 1974 though. Not because they were particularly united (the Healey supporters were widely at odds with the Bennites) or because the mass of the UK population were particularly in love with them - they won because of a crisis.
It was more of a material crisis than today (thus far) - the miners were on strike, the "coal dependent" electricity supply was cut off half the time and businesses were on a three day week. Labour won the election because they offered to fix this (by giving the miners the money).
If UK Labour could manage to offer a fix for the EU situation (basically, concede acceptance of all EU rules without actual membership in return for market access) then, once businesses start closing in droves, they could win without much in the way of public love.
(The challenge then would be to do what Wilson and Callaghan failed to do and capitalise on this with an Attlee-style program of radical and lasting change).