The Politics Thread

[DramatistDreamer]

My Aunt (God rest her soul) lived in London for 32 years before she became disillusioned with England and repatriated back to the West Indies but since her children still live there, had she been alive today, I think she would be unsurprised yet disgusted by where the U.K. is today. No better than what it was socially and politically than what it was before. Shame.

[DRW50]

 

[I Am A Swede]

Boris Johnson

 

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[Cat]

I hope your Aunt never experienced the heinous injustice that is the Windrush scandal -- where members of the West Indies diaspora (and their families) who worked in hugely-important public services were forcibly deported as an F You for their decades of service. She would have been truly heart-broken by this final insult. And just to be clear -- deported by the current callous, cruel and nasty government.

 

Why am I not surprised in the least by this. He thinks he is entitled to power by near-birthright.

[Vee]

 

[DramatistDreamer]

My Aunt was part of the Windrush generation. A nurse who worked for the NHS for decades before deciding that she’d had enough of England. The Windrush scandal mainly affected the children of those who came on the Windrush, most migrated on a parent’s documents, while the U.K. never bothered to grant most of these children their own documents giving them legal status. 
My Aunt’s views toward England had pretty much hardened in the last decades of her life. Once she left England, she never bothered to return, though her children still live there. I doubt my Aunt would have been surprised at what England has (re)turned out to be. She lived there during Enoch Powell and the Brixton riots. She likely would have viewed England as being exactly what she thought it was all along.

[DRW50]

 This is really frightening stuff.

 

[DramatistDreamer]

Another front page for tomorrow.

[Vee]

Still bleeding more loyalists straight through the night to morning over in the UK.

[Vee]

And now:

There seems to be some fog of war atm as to whether he is simply resigning as Tory leader, PM or both, or whether he will remain in the PM seat until autumn awaiting a replacement. I have my doubts the latter will hold up for long.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Vee

[Cat]

 

Still selfishly holding the UK hostage. What a great PM!

And this waiting until autumn BS could be code for MPs going on their summer vacations and not wanting a leadership contest disrupt that. They could easily elect a new leader by early-to-mid August if they wanted.

Speaking of leadership contenders, the list of loons vying for the top job is actually quite chilling. Johnson purged the party of anyone with brains, because it would show him up for the hollow do-nothing he is. He also packed it with (what he thought were) yes-men loyalists. So now we have someone as vapid and incompetent as Liz Truss being spoken about as a contender. Really? Would they be able to drag her away from her mirror long enough to campaign?

[DramatistDreamer]

Wasn’t Truss showing herself as loyal to Johnson, at least publicly? Probably a calculated move on her part, but doesn’t that make her look less than competent?

Also, what a bloody mess! Totally on brand for Boris Johnson though.

[Cat]

I'm glad your Aunt parted ways with the UK on her own terms (but not before having likely gone through many indignities). I thought for sure the UK had entered a new era in the 90s and mentalities were slowly changing, but that was clearly a superficial mirage. Enoch Powell looms large over the current populist lot of self-enriching chancers (Farage, Patel, etc). The mask that hid some of Britain's worst faults from the world has been more-or-less ripped off now. 

Exactly this. She doesn't want to be seen to be holding the knife that stabs him in the back, because she thinks that would work against her in a leadership contest. The vainglorious coward jumped onto a plane to Indonesia on Tuesday on the pretext of 'foreign office business,' but as soon as she landed over there, she jumped on another plane to come back. Oil deal with Indonesia be damned! 

Truss never wastes a moment to remind the general public how vain and incompetent she is at all times. And yet she is one of the favorites going into this possible leadership race. That says something about the Tory party members. Truss parrots the hard-Brexit line, so she's already a contender. Another hard Brexiteer, Steve Baker, is a climate-change denier. Priti Patel is exceptionally cruel and nasty, so obviously they adore her. It would be nice to think semi-adults like Sajid Javid and Rushi Sunak might sweep this, but the party faithful voted for Boris in droves so...

Basically, the UK Tories and US RP could be defined as 'kissing cousins born of twin sisters.' There are some scary similarities.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Cat

[Vee]

LOL:

 

 

 

[janea4old]

I haven't been following British politics in the past few years.  US politics became so F'ing exhausting when Tr*mp got elected that simply checking the headlines was so traumatic.  I would go onto the Guardian's "world news" page daily to get some sense of what was happening in the rest of the world but I didn't see the nuances.

I was aware of Brexit in generalities but not specifically.  I was horrified that there were anti-international sentiments in Britain in parallel to the crap happening in the US but I simply didn't have the mental bandwidth to follow everything.  I was aware that Boris Johnson supported Brexit, which told me that he's a bad person, but I didn't know anything more.

I miss being aware of the rest of planet Earth, like I used to be for most of my life!
Since Biden got elected, I started to get caught up with things, but there is so much I missed.

I'd try to read stuff on bbc.com regarding British politics but everything referenced stuff they assumed anyone would already know - but I didn't.

Can someone give me the Cliff Notes version or "for Dummies" edition of what led up to Boris Johnson stepping down? I don't know who any of the ministers are.  I feel stupid.   I've tried researching but I'm just lost.