A thread to discuss the glitz and glamour of British politics of the here and now for all us "limeys", "poms", "rosbiffs" "tommys" "jocks" "sheep lovers" "southern pansies" "northern monkies" etc.etc.

lol UK

Few key issues knocking about atm:
1) Lords reform is being bunged up by some top quality politarding by the Tory back benches and Miliband
2) Rail is about to explode with £9.2bn investment. I am so for this.
3) Coalition government collapsing within a year? 2? 3? Thinking of taking bets on this if anyone else is.
4) Gay marriage= UK population vs Daily Mail, Express, and those mad men Tory back benchers

Even your avatar admiths were so awesome. We all watched our new princess suck off our future king.

You guys nearly kicked out a President for it.

Sexual freedom LDO

I'd love to see a Tory & UKIP coalition. That'd make labor so mad.

Nigel Farage would make a great Deputy PM.

Naaaah will never happen.
UKIP won't really ever get any MP's, and if they do they will get them from the Tories.
Realistically the Tories won't be able to get a majority until Scotland buggers off.

What'll piss Labour off more is if LibDems, Green, and all the independence parties ever get enough to tell them to back down.
Coulda happened if Cleggers backed away from the Tories, or if Vince Cable pulls of the most incredible power grab in British 3rd party politics

How've you heard of him??!?!?!

I always see him as this big irrelevancy. Every time i've seen him in any sort of policy discussion debate he has no idea what is going on.

He's like a more media savvy, less thuggish Nick Griffin.

Green's do better than UKIP

ron paul 2012

I follow PMQ every week on Youtube cause BBC's page blows and is only for Brits (WTF?) I also follow Daniel Hannan on the EU.

Bets on next leaders of each party?

I'm thinking Tory=Boris Johnson; Osborne has demonstrated he isn't trusted on the economy, Gove is a stooge with no public viability. Fox, the only one with any realistic chance kept his mr.Mistress on as an aide. Oops.

Labour= Andy Burnham I hope. But more likely Alan Johnson or some new school guy we haven't heard of. I think David is going to settle for being a Lord/Chancellor etc., before running for leadership again.

LibDems= Vince Cable obvs. Captain Grandfather to the rescue of an actual leftist party

No way Tories pick Boris Johnson. I wish. But not gonna happen. I don't have any idea who the big players in labor are. Ed Millaband is a tool but they seem to like him and he's half competent so he might stay a while.

Daniel Hannah is really odd as a guy. He has alot more of a public profile in the US than in the UK. He's actually unelectable as an MP; no constituency that he can actually win will acutally chose him as those safe seats are reserved for party big wigs.

He's never been on PMQ's though. MEP instead of MP innit.
Well done on following PMQ's though. I don't and I don't really know anyone else who does.

Ed is kicking ass atm. Really got momentum into demonstrating how bad the Tories are. I think he's a weak leader, as does everyone else, but come voting time he may actually win. The other players are mostly waning stars unfortunately other than Burnham. Watch this space.

It's kinda weird. Every week, there are multiple references that I'm not getting. Trying to follow in the beginning was impossible.

Who are the ones that sit next to Milliband and who's the tall guy that sits to Clegg's right?

Next to Miliband normally Ed Balls (shadow chancellor) and Harriet Harman frequently because she's deputy leader or Yvette Cooper Ed Balls wife and Shadow Home Secretary.

Tall guy next to Clegg- probably Osborne?

Gove has more of a chance than you realise. He's really popular within the party. Which is strange, as he's clearly a madman.

If you look at their last few leadership elections, there's a strong trend of electing very right-wing candidates (Hague, Duncan-Smith, Howard), and they only elected Cameron because they were sick of getting hammered by New Labour. But the backbenchers seem pretty unhappy with this direction, and I'd expect a Davis/Gove/Fox figure to be elected next time.

I think it's pretty likely David Milliband wins next time for Labour. He's very popular among their MPs, I gather. It's a hard one to predict though. As you say, a 'new school' candidate could emerge at any time, or Burnham/Balls/Cooper/whoever could make a strong run at it. I think Ed will survive past the next election (as they'll probably win, or come very close to winning, imo).

Lib Dems will probably have a fight between Huhne (he seems really personally ambitious/ruthless), Laws (as a right-wing candidate) and Cable/Hughes (for the left). Much probably depends on who manages to hold on to their seat following the inevitable wipe-out.

Thread fail by not mentioning Olympics security debacle is true fail indeed.

Completely ignoring all other factors the Coalition is simple doing a bad job of administration, also the last Budget was lol bad from a political POV.

I was wondering how long it would take before I hated this government more than the last one, this moment was reached in the last few days.

That said I am horrified by the idea of Ed Balls as PM. One guy who I could really see pulling a Stalin.

I like him when he's sticking it to Osborne in the Commons. The idea of him in charge of stuff is a bit sinister though, it's true. I wouldn't worry too much though, it's hard to imagine a Prime Minister Balls.

Really weird conversation where one discusses that Boris might be the next Tory leader and another hopes he is. Boris is a joke within and without of the Tory party and has only ever really won power due to being a default alternative mixed with never actually winning any true power (decisions on buying more bendy buses aside).

The coalition will last to the next General. Well, one way or another it will haha but until the next scheduled one in 2015. Its possible they will call it a year early if there are positive reasons but frankly the economy needs to grow and UE needs to fall for Conservatives to stand a chance in the inevitable next coalition. I hope they keep power but, meh, time will tell.

If the Lib Dems are smart (they arent) they will stop their infighting bull**** and get on with business falling in line with Clegg while calling the people who voted for them idiots if they are pissed that the Tory majority coalition did some things like tuition fees that they said they wouldnt support if they won the election. Cos they didnt win the election, they came third. They also never expected to win any power which is why they had to break so many election promises that were impossible to keep like not increasing tuition fees.

They need to come together under the realisation they have achieved a lot more things in power than they ever would have out of power, in fact 75% of their manifesto is part of the coalition agreement and they have achieved many landmark reforms and changes in the coalition:
http://www.markpack.org.uk/libdem-infographic/

Plus at the end of the day if it is a LibLab coalition in 2015 they need to get used to not getting everything their own way.

Err, lets see what else was covered. Farage is a huge massive douchebag, Hannan isnt much better, Labour is locked into Ed Milliband fever (lol) until the next election and maybe longer if he does well. I also think Cameron isnt going anywhere unless he does so badly that the Conservatives find themselves in opposition (likely to a LibLab coalition) and with it 3 years away its basically impossible to guess their next leader (you can list a few options for Labour and Liberals easily though). Clegg on the other hand has a long way to walk on a short pier to keep the leadership position going into the next General.

Ed Balls as Labour leader would seriously make me consider some second amendment options. He is one of a small number of politicians I seriously seriously hate. He is a vile stain of evil in the shape of a human being and is quite possibly the devil himself in a not so convincing disguise.

This. I think he could have a shot a couple of elections down the line, but everything has to go right for him, and he has a tendency to self-sabotage.

I don't buy this argument. If you listen to some of the Tories complaining in the media you'd think that they won the last election. They didn't. They were some way short of a majority, and only gained 36% of the vote. The Lib Dems might only control 1/6th of the MPs in the coalition, but they did gain 23% of the vote. They really shouldn't feel obliged to 'fall in line' after the Tories played a key role in sabotaging electoral reform and Lords reform, two important parts of the coalition agreement for Lib Dems. I don't think the public would blame them if they replied tit-for-tat by voting against the boundary changes.

But they have achieved several of their campaign wishes but they had to sacrifice one high profile one that would have been unworkable under any coalition arrangement because tuition fees had to go up regardless of what anyone says.

The Lib Dems were actually the ultimate winners in the last election as they got a tiny fraction of votes but got to enact multiple policies in government. They just happen to not be the sexy high profile ones and they suck for not getting this across better.

No freerolling our licence fee mofo.

I belong to the Blah! party even if I am a Yank.