#which is interesting bc we just had elections and the more centre-left and liberal government won

[whisperofthewaves]

today's shaping to be great, I dreamt there was a quiet authoritarian coup in my country and I was being followed by surveillance robots, and in the end me and two of my friends were presented to the new head of the state in his private office to personally supervise us taking a new patriotic test which was a couple of pages long and full of disgusting blatant propaganda

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I'm an American reading your Boris Johnson posts which I think are so interesting and hilarious. I don't know a lot about UK politics and was wondering if you wouldn't mind doing a quick rundown of the Torys and labour parties (mostly bc I want to read your version) but if you don't have the time or inclination I will do my own research! Thank you!

Sure! Okay this is SUPER BRIEF, like I cannot stress enough how brief this is but:

Labour

The red ones. So Labour began in the early 1900s at the point when a lot of workers rights and voting reforms and all that stuff was gathering steam as we moved out of the Industrial Revolution. It was basically a bunch of socialists, trade unionists and others. Then after the last Liberal government in 1923 which was a bit of a disaster, they took over as the main alternative party to the Tories, and have held that position ever since.

Their most notable era was after WW2, where they created a metric fuckton of nationalised infrastructure - the NHS, rail, water, national parks and countryside access rights, etc. At that point there were two generations massively scarred and traumatised by war who had fought for the country, and now wanted the country to take care of them in return. That was the prevailing attitude of the working class of the day, and Labour (PM was Clement Atlee, but the NHS was the brainchild of Welsh boy Aneirin Bevan, he's a good boy is our Nye) cashed in.

Second most notable era, though, was the late 90s - Tony Blair. Our Tony was of Tory stock but changed his mind because he loves Poors. He decided that, to get a Labour government again, the party needed to be more moderate to convince voters, so he should create the more right-leaning New Labour. This has dramatically shrunk the Overton window and moved Labour to the centre-right. It worked - he was the one who took us to war in Iraq, supposedly for those pesky WMD that never seemed to materialise, but like, a few years ago he went on a bland daytime TV chat show and Fern Britton asked him if he'd have done it anyway even without the rumour of WMDs and he said yes. So, uh. There's that. It was all very dramatic, and journalists started demanding to know how this TV presenter had wrung such a confession out of him, and she was like "Well... I don't think anyone had actually asked him before." He’s a full on war criminal, anyway.

And then, recently, we had Jeremy Corbyn in charge. He was remarkable because he's actually a left-of-centre politician, though fairly unremarkable by those standards, but the Overton window is such that everyone promptly accused him of being a communist for saying we should have free internet. In the 2019 General Election he produced a fully-costed manifesto for new public services, and the Tories just said the words "We don't have a magic money tree to pay for all of this, guys, look at our manifesto in which we promise stuff without explaining where the money will come from," and that actually worked because British people are criminally fucking stupid. Meanwhile the Labour party itself hated Corbyn so much it kept trying to ban new members who wanted to vote for him in a really quite dazzling display of corruption. The BBC let a Tory donor publicly announce that Corbyn was an antisemite because he was pro-Palestine, and then that fell into hysteria and became a whole thing on all sides, and then after the General Election he stood down as party leader and Labour promptly kicked him out of the whole party. The whole thing was honestly an absolute fucking shitshow.

Now we have Keir Starmer, ex-lawyer. Sometimes he does okay, but mostly he has all the oppositional abilities of an ice cream wafer.

The Tories

The blue ones. So the Tories are older than Labour by a considerable margin. The original party to have the name (it's Irish and means "outlaw/robber") were a bunch of tedious royalist dickhead Jacobites who wanted to stick with the system of Let The King Rule in the late 1600s, at the point when Let The King Just Be a Figurehead was now the system. In the 1800s they became the Conservatives and Unionists, and then the modern Conservatives around WW1, but oddly and appropriately the Tory nickname has still stuck.

Anyway they are very right-wing, and really rose to power during both world wars. Churchill was a Tory, and he did such wonderful things as sending in the British army against striking Welsh coal miners, and intentionally causing a famine in India during WW2 so the supplies would come to Britain instead. Classy lads. In the 70s/80s Margaret Thatcher took over, and spent her time aggressively undoing all the socialist stuff that Labour did by privatising water, rail, etc, and beginning the sell-off of the NHS. She also decided she hated British working class industry, including the coal mines, and so shut them all down without remotely trying to replace them. This has done untold damage to the working class and poor areas of the UK, chief among them Wales, where two thirds of the working population worked in the mines. We now have areas where unemployment is in the fourth generation, and entire ghost towns in the countryside. Plus, she was BFFs with Reagan, which should tell you all you need to know about the rest of her tenure.

In the modern day, they took over just after the recession under David Cameron, who promptly instigated austerity measures that have dramatically widened the gap between rich and poor and crippled the economy. David Cameron was also revealed to have fucked a pig once while in uni. He held the Brexit referendum to try and convince people to keep him in charge because he thought we’d vote remain, and then when we didn’t, he promptly quit so he wouldn’t be held accountable for the fall out. Theresa May took over and tried to produce a Brexit deal, but couldn’t, because it was literally impossible to get the deal that Brexiteers had promised, so no one liked her offerings. She was voted out via vote of no confidence. Boris Johnson took over and legit tried to force through a No Deal Brexit, which would have destroyed the country but made him a billionaire, and he even tried to shut down Parliament to stop people from blocking him. Fortunately, that was considered illegal, so he had to back down and get a deal.

And he did! It’s way worse than Tessie May’s, but it was, by then, the best option available. Now Brexiteers think he’s a hero who can do no wrong.

And then the pandemic happened, in which he mis-managed it so badly Britain has the second worst death/infection rate in the world, and then... Partygate. And we’re caught up!

Others:

The Liberal Democrats. The yellow ones. The third choice. In theory socially left-wing, financially right-wing, but in practice they’ve been a bunch of tedious power-grabbing turds. Under the leadership of Nick Clegg they entered into a coalition with the Tories and David Cameron a few years back and basically sold out every principle they had, and therefore kind of... provided a buffer against the worst Tory excesses while also enabling other worst Tory excesses, to be honest. No one trusts them anymore, but they are suddenly stealing Tory seats in by-elections throughout the land, because hardcore Tory voters would never go Labour but they MIGHT vote yellow.

Greens. About the only true left wing party available in England specifically, because an English nationalist party (right-wing) is a very different thing to a Celtic nationalist party (left-wing). They have a single MP, I believe, but in areas with a strong following they do have good sway. Primarily environmental, very socialist.

UKIP. Nazis. Only cared about Brexit. Then Brexit happened and it turned out they didn’t actually have a plan for it. They have since lost all their voters, pretty much, it’s very funny. Their leader has never actually managed to get elected to MP.

SNP. The Scottish National Party, and I believe the ruling party in Scotland. They seem tidy enough. Generally left-wing, though not so much about the military, weirdly. Led by Nicola Sturgeon overall (who seems pretty cool, although with the usual politician caveats and also the addendum that I know little about Scottish politics in detail), but their leader in Westminster is Ian Blackford, who has been yelling at Boris Johnson about parties a lot.

Plaid Cymru. The Welsh nationalists! Easily the most left-wing party in Wales - only the Greens really give them any trouble there, and Plaid are actually a little further left. Very socially progressive. They have a fair bit of influence in the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) but are not actually the ruling party. Used to be led by Leanne Woods, who is fab, and was the only person before the last election to tell Nigel Farage on TV that he should be ashamed of himself during a leaders’ debate. Now led by Adam Price, the Westminster leader is Liz Saville Roberts.

DUP. Democratic Unionist Party. A Northern Irish party which, as the name suggests, is pro-Britain and pro-union, very socially conservative. I will not go further into detail here because we really aren’t far from the Troubles (I’m old enough to have grown up with car bombings being a not-uncommon news item) and it’s very, very complicated and I am not Northern Irish, so I’ll leave it there. Currently led by Jeffrey Donaldson. 

Sinn Féin. Irish Republican and democratic socialist party, in both Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the opposite number of the DUP; and again, I will leave it there, as I am very much the wrong person to go into those details. In fact they only had one seat fewer than the DUP in the 2017 election, so it’s hotly contested. Generally left leaning I believe, but with some big exceptions like the topic of abortion. Led by Mary Lou McDonald.

There are also a shit ton of others, like, but those are probably the main ones to be honest. But, like America, it’s really a two-horse race in Westminster.

(I should also add that the Celtic nations are all partially devolved to a greater or lesser extent, which adds quite a bit of complexity.)

[viitavirginia]

hello i’ve had a long day of travelling and as such am now stuck awake and that means it’s Political Analysis Time bc i need something to focus on and the lib dem leadership elections happened to conveniently take place today

no i do not expect anyone to actually read this i just feel like talking about politics and voting records for a little bit because i can already ~feel~ the praise around jo swinson and the lib dems for electing a female leader starting and would like to make one thing exceptionally clear for myself if nobody else: the post-coalition links between the lib dems and the tories are still very much present, and swinson herself is far closer to the ‘social left, economic right’ political persona than i think her campaign would lead people to believe. would like to mention that i have a massive respect for the awareness she brought to the challenges of being a politician and a new mother, she’s an incredibly eloquent speaker and i do believe she could really take the newly-built momentum behind the lib dems and run with it. i’ve just also had a bit of a squinty side-eye at her track record, and i don’t believe that the good things she’s done should be used to cancel out the bad - we have a huge accountability problem in politics at the moment, and there’s a significant number of issues from the coalition era that i would like to see brought to light.

we’re gonna start with going back through her voting records - worth noting extended maternity leave led to a lot of abstinences, so i’m not gonna look at those as harshly bc i feel like if there’s ever an excuse then creating another human is a pretty valid one. usually abstentions can tell you a lot, but unless i come back up here and decide to start looking at exact dates, we’re gonna breeze over them. she also lost her seat in 2015 and re-gained in 2017, so there’s a bit of a gap there.

in terms of equality there’s little to criticise, consistent votes for lgbtq+ rights, transparency in parliament, a more proportional electoral system, pro-asylum. we’re starting to look shaky around educational matters - something that also can link in to her financial views and, as an extension, accessibility - with consistent votes on introducing academy schools, implementing and raising tuition fees, and cutting funding for 16-19 year olds in training schemes or further education, such as foundation years. all of these policies are very typical coalition ideas and there’s nothing particularly remarkable there, but i do think it’s interesting that the leader of the ‘liberal’ party has a history of making further education financially inaccessible. many students rely on foundation years to continue into university courses, but securing funding for them is difficult, particularly if living away from home or pursuing a non-traditional career. also briefly touching in on her pro-proportional viewpoint - she’s a very tactical player (not a criticism, you need to be), and so it’s unclear whether that’s because she personally believes in a more proportional system, or if it’s just because her party would typically benefit. i’d like to give her the benefit of the doubt there, as there’s nothing to indicate she isn’t pro-democray (consistent votes for devolution, against hereditary titles, and even as recently as during her campaign she’s proven herself to be very open minded to cross-party collaboration).

moving on into social economics first, and there’s a lot to talk about here. consistent votes not only against a raise in welfare benefits, including capping any rises aiming to keep benefits in line with prices, but for a reduction in spending on them - not a good look. on the surface, a consistent vote against public spending to reduce youth unemployment is also a dodgy angle, but it is worth mentioning that this is very likely to be to do with the public spending angle, as typically liberals would view this as a government spending issue. as expected she’s fairly pro-taxation, voting for higher taxes on banks, but interestingly voting against increasing the tax rate for those on incomes of more than 150k p/a. almost all of these have been voted on since her reelection in 2017, and therefore it’s fair to say they reflect her current views.

one i’d like to talk about is the ‘shares for rights’, which she consistently voted for. the employee shareholder scheme essentially allows employees to trade certain workplace rights, usually letting the employer to not extend unfair dismissal and issues around statutory redundancy, for a share in the company. while this reflects the emphasis on personal freedom, the core of the lib dem values, to say it’s a morally gray area is in my opinion a bit of an understatement. while employees can and do make this choice freely and willingly, the idea of using hard-won rights as a kind of currency doesn’t sit too well, particularly with the nature of corporations and large businesses. it also opens up the door for coercion and financial pressure to skew the ability for an objective decision. i don’t think these votes should be taken as a total ‘fuck the poor’, as the viewpoint will be one of individual freedom, but i’d be interested to hear her thoughts on the ethical standpoint of employee shareholders. just to keep corporate economics as a consistent, it’s also worth noting that she consistently voted for a reduction in corporation tax, with the most recent vote being 2015.

on the whole, i don’t think swinson is a terrible politician or a terrible leader choice, there’s a lot of particularly social good here, and i’m very interested with what she can do with the party and completely open to hearing more about her current views. deliberately avoided talking brexit here (for the record, she’s always been pro-eu integration) as we’re at a stage where i feel it really has to be a unitary issue rather than a personal one, and she’s very much in line with the anti-brexit lib dem stance, so there’s not a lot to go into. i do however think that, particularly economically, she’s very reminiscent of the coalition, and that isn’t something that can go by unaccounted for. we’re far too polarised as a country, and having seen the lib dems take a giant leap away from the centre-right of the political spectrum, i’m keen to see where having someone who still reflects a lot of those economic views will go. we all know just how crucial the next year or so is going to be both in party and in individual politics, and i’d argue the lib dems are at a key tipping point in their future - this is either going to be their big comeback, or it’s going to wipe them out entirely, but that’s a whole other rant. which, if i’m still awake in an hour or two, chances are i’ll end up doing anyway.

tl, dr: swinson isn’t a nightmare leader by any stretch of the imagination, she’s just a bit too economically right for my idea of a liberal leader and i believe there’s definitely areas where her views are reflecting the outdated ideas of the coalition that people ought to be aware about. as you were.