DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

or can he?

can I?

im p revolted by the incredible waste of money that is the olympics tbh! what glory?

Let's wait and see if they're actually profitable xposts

has an olympics ever been profitable?

hoping for Broken Even Britain at least

xxxxp

Obviously missing something, but who is that gorgeous women up the page a bit? don't tell me she's Tory

nick clegg's wife

Thought he might have meant Eric Pickles.

If this coalition holds together then it would likely be in the interest of the tories Tories to change their position and support AV. AV as a voting system can institutionalize coalition governments (at least it has in Australia). LDs and Tories can run candidates in the same electorate without disadvantaging either party, provided they exchange preferences.
Of course the coalition or the LDs will probably break apart in the meantime anyway, so...

Ever get the feeling like you just got played?

We know who secured the Olympics.

sebastian coe?

could you vote, tracer?

Nope. Not a citizen.

Funny how they still allow me to pay taxes, though.

Taxation without representation? You gonna stand for that?

bet u cd turn up at a polling station and busk it

xp

Driving from site to site @ work today, I kept getting the rage. Dismal result, + the proprietor-mouthpiece press in this country is a fucking disgrace.

Some knobend from conservativehome had this piece in the guardian with nauseating entitlement dripping from every fucking sentence. Among the bits was something about how the tories had twice as much money to spend as labour, and "was able to afford the most professional marginal seats operation ever seen in british politics". Well, that's a fair system isn't it? I mean, that's really RIGHT, a level playing field for everyone.

I wish I had been born in a smarter, better country than this one.

did the bbc really edit the sound of their OB so that the shouts of "tory scum" were removed? Is there a before/after clip of this somewhere? That's Stalin's Russia shit, fucking outrageous if so.

You could hear it in the live broadcast but come the montage - gone. And described as 'cheers' when on live.

why aren't more people outside of here making a bigger deal of this 55% thing?! It's a pretty fucking big deal - they've just ensured that if the coalition falls and the Lib Dems break away we STILL won't be able to go to the polls and decide if the government is legit. this is so fucking undemocratic.

i know! practically no one mentioning this 55% thing anywhere as far as i can see.

If sitting gov't Queen's Speech is voted down, PM will have to resign and allow another coalition to form?

does anyone know if this will remain the case under 55?

How to get the 55% through the Lords:

In the interim, lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.

From the coalition agreement.

If sitting gov't Queen's Speech is voted down, PM will have to resign and allow another coalition to form?
does anyone know if this will remain the case under 55?

― nakhchivan, Wednesday, 12 May 2010 12:45 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

We can be like belgium.

Dammitall now I want moules frites

Suspect Pickles might've eaten all the frites tho

Hmm:

http://www.globaldashboard.org/2010/05/12/libcon-agreement/

That sounds almost as crazy - I think we're going to see the actual text of what's presented. This, though, would seem to make a mockery of the 'unelected PM' rubbish - if the LibDems switch, then the next Labour leader could be made PM with no election, right?

going to need to see

oh and scary that chris grayling got shafted from home secratary (presumably for the gay b&b remarks) for teresa may who has a WORSE record for voting on lgbt rights (basically consistently against everything) - and she's also the Equality Minister.

The government could still change mid-term (a PM loses confidence of House, Queen asks someone else to see if they form a new government), but the parliament would stay in place.

Could lead to some hellish negotiations though – similar to the ones we saw this week, but without the fresh mandate that leaders enjoyed.

It also makes a full term for this Parliament much more likely than we’d all thought.

this shit -if it passes- will be all time in terms of tory nefariousness

now i wonder how easy it wd be for the lib dems to change their leader(ship)

it's easier than it is for the other parties, but it takes a ton of members

It's just completely illogical and dare I say against the constitution, which requires the PM to command the "confidence of the Commons" (aka more than 50% - exactly why we got a hung parliament and needed a coalition in the first place). The vote of no confidence is simply a vote to demonstrate that the government cannot command a majority and therefore cannot pass laws. It would be pointless for a government to remain "in power" if it could only command the votes of less than 50% of the house - you'd have a government that could pass nothing.

too logical

so it's possible for a new govt to be formed from the same parliament but it seems unlikely that (nearly) all the lib dem mp's (including the orange book cunts) could switch allegiances

It would be pointless for a government to remain "in power" if it could only command the votes of less than 50% of the house - you'd have a government that could pass nothing.

Except the government could fall, it's just that the next one would need to be formed from the existing House.

It's a remarkably dumb move for several reasons:

How can you be called conservative if you've not only failed to conserve a long-standing tradition but introduced one which actually makes Parliament and the nation less representative and less responsive?

If their is a failure of confidence in govmt, the best remedy IS to vote the bums out and give the incoming govmt their proper and timely mandate.

Yes, the incumbents use the calling of elections to their own advantage. I fail to see what's wrong with that if they actually get enough to form a govmt or increase their majority - it means the people actually like them bettter or have been swayed to better support their policies. If, otoh, they don't, they've not only disappointed the people but showed themselves to be politically naif as well.

Irony of ironies, Callaghan would never have lost the confidence vote in March 1979 and could have waited until Autumn when they would have had a much better chance of winning.

if the 55% rule was in force then of course.

'David Cameron side view'

callaghan wouldn't have lost if that one labour mp who died a few days later would have been allowed to go to the commons to vote. to think, if callaghan had cared slightly less about this guys health & safety thatcher might not have got in.

Mind you, he'd already survived one vote by bribing the Ulster Unionists through breaking up their constituencies into smaller ones to give them more seats. (Or more correctly promising to, which he then did. They didn't then all support him in the second vote.)

Full cabinet list

Tory Broken Promises

m. white dropping knowledge all over this thread

word

Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley

Dude gets his own MP?????????????

[lame gag involving the word 'represent']

Does that mean that the Con-Lib coalition will now be in power for the next five years come what may?

No. The legislation will provide for a general election to be called if 55% or more of the Commons votes in favour. The convention since 1782 has been that a significant defeat on a major issue can lead to a vote of no confidence in the government. If they lose that vote then they are obliged to resign or call a general election. This happened twice in the last century – in 1923 and 1979.

The fixed-term parliament legislation will take away the power of a prime minister to call an election in these circumstances. But it will also mean that if the government falls the sitting prime minister can try to form a new coalition government from among the opposition parties. If that fails in other fixed-term parliaments, such as in Germany, the head of state can call an election, but in Britain there is no wish to involve the Queen in such decisions.

So they have settled on a threshold of 55% of MPs to force a general election. The 55% figure is significant because the Conservatives have 47% of MPs and it ensures that the Lib Dems cannot simply walk out of the coalition and vote with the opposition to call a general election as they can only muster 53% of the vote.

That doesn't really answer the key question that we've been asking on here: if the coalition falls apart and the Lib Dems no longer support the Tories, but the opposition can only muster 53% in a vote of no confidence, and Cameron can't actually call an election, and nobody is willing to form a new coalition, are we basically left with a minority Tory government that cannot pass ANYTHING because no majority of MPs will vote for it, dragging on for months or years until the five-year term is finally up? Because that's really fucking stupid.