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

lil bit in the times:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/law/2010/05/plans-for-fixedterm-parliaments-not-credible-and-dangerous-says-law-expert.html

"momentous moment" - good start d-mil.

the guardian and independent must be deep in shock atm

Yeah - Kirsty Wark asked Jeremy Hunt, Tory shitebag ESQ, about it and his response was "Fixed terms have been discussed many times" and she said no, it's not about fixed terms it's about the change from 51 to 55, that's a significant change and feels like you and the Lib Dems have just hustled this up to help yourselves. His response was "It's a small change, and necessary for a strong, stable government". Then she moved on. I think there is such a huge number of bullet points that interviewers and columnists have to get through - having been told by their editors to address them - that nothing is really getting a hard look at this point.

Also Crick did an interview a constitutional expert on Newsnight and he was saying this was basically up to no good.

I think there is still an assumption that the 55% will not stop a breakdown, should it happen - hence the lack of queries on it and/or anger. xps

people seem to be more concerned about equality minister theresa may not being all that into equality, which i guess is...easier to fit into 140 characters, or something. actually massively shocked this hasn't been picked up on to a greater extent.

struggle to find a Tory MP who was that into equality tho

Tracer, there is of course the issue of the newscaster varying her question and getting six stonewalling/similar answers.

kirsty wark informs our cabinet is now 65% oxbridge, 61% privately schooled

I think that if the coalition collapsed then a sufficient number of Tories would have to end up voting against the government in a no confidence vote. The alternative would be keeping a crippled govt on life support for what could be years. The Tories just could not do that, they would be rightly blamed by the electorate for an unprecedented period of stasis and absolutely massacred at the next election.

kirsty wark informs our cabinet is now 65% oxbridge, 61% privately schooled

― ogmor, Wednesday, 12 May 2010 22:16 (43 seconds ago) Bookmark

tbf this is still a lower percentage than pretty much any British national newspaper

kirsty wark informs our cabinet is now 65% oxbridge, 61% privately schooled

― ogmor, Wednesday, May 12, 2010 11:16 PM (57 seconds ago) Bookmark

surprised it's as few as that tbqh!

http://noto55.com/

tory twitters arguing it's just for dissolution, and that Holyrood model (if no govt forms 28 days after a no confidence vote dissolution is automatic) will be adopted, but haven't seen that anywhere yet.

I just want to say that Cameron's voice is already making the hair on the back of my neck stand up with poisonous hatred.

lib dems already caving on banking reform, great job so far guys: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/12/osborne-cable-bank-reforms

struggle to find a Tory MP who was that into equality tho

well indeed!

tbf this is still a lower percentage than pretty much any British national newspaper

there is no balance reinstated by noting this similar shitpile, just a sensation of yr skin cooling as you think about the UK

kirsty wark informs our cabinet is now 65% oxbridge, 61% privately schooled

― ogmor, Wednesday, May 12, 2010 11:16 PM (57 seconds ago) Bookmark

surprised it's as few as that tbqh!

― Greatest contributor: (history mayne), Wednesday, 12 May 2010 23:18 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

paul waugh of the standard is speculating that letwin and george young (leader of the house) are not given a seat at the cabinet, even though their jobs would normally deserve one, because cameron doesn't want this figure to look any worse (they're both etonians as well).

lib dems already caving on banking reform, great job so far guys: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/12/osborne-cable-bank-reforms

lol they couldn't even get to midnight on the first day of the coalition

struggle to find a Tory MP who was that into equality tho

Nick Herbert was an openly gay member of the Tory Shadow Cabinet, but I think he got dropped?

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/02/17/gay-tory-nick-herbert-says-party-has-made-rapid-conversion-on-gay-equality/

Support from the LGBT community for the Conservatives dropped from 39 percent in 2009 to 6% at the time of the election.

Big up Chris Grayling.

prime minister cameron will never underestimate the pubescent double-barrelled lesbian vote again

think I've seen that video

are you thinking of portillo's progress?

toby young, loathsome human being, tries and fails to make cameron seem likeable:

At a recent college gaudy I sat next to a contemporary of Dave’s who told me about the the moment he was told he might be rusticated after letting off a fire extinguisher in the offices of Cherwell, the university newspaper. He was sitting in Old Quad, feeling a bit down in the dumps, when Dave wandered up and asked him what the matter was. After he told him, Dave insisted on driving this forlorn 21-year-old to his family home in Berkshire where they spent the afternoon lounging by his swimming pool and eating chocolate cake.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100039418/david-cameron-the-brasenose-years/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook#*x119x97x115

assume that's how he won over clegg too.

Dave insisted on driving this forlorn 21-year-old to his family home in Berkshire where they spent the afternoon lounging by his swimming pool and eating chocolate cake bumping enormous lines of coke.

haha, if cameron took this approach individually to solve the Deep Social Problems facing broken britain it wld be the dawn of an infinitely superior generation of tory clown

I'm pretty sure universal access to etonian's to lift yr spirits at their houses of inherited furniture is the most common definition of equality of opportunity

We need to hit up a certain music critic for contemporaneous Brasenose stories.

But can Broken Britain provide enough chocolate cake in these economically challenged times? (xp)

Let them eat chocolate cake, by the pool.

oh god dealin with tory apologists for this on twitter is infuriating. it's only day 1, ffs.

Awesome I've just remembered we've got fruit cake in the bread bin

wow looks like David Macaroon was right, I feel better already

^^^ i'm all right jack

George Young...my best friend (who is not a Tory) interned for him in '92. I will go ask for some kind of character study.

We don't have a swimming pool so I filled a bucket to lounge by.

It doesn't really add anything tbh

'vince cable to appease bankers' fears on bonuses' : /

Sterling work in less than 12 hours, eh?

thank fuck for that, last thing this country needs is some worried bankers

maybe he shd send them bonus cake

worried bankers = the world's most powerful concern trolls

Console yourself with some class was schadenfreude here: Post photos of worried/agonized stock exchange traders here

no 'was' but class 'war', obv.

Adonis makes it sound like the 55% idea was one of the LDs' negotiation points:

I was shocked by the Lib Dem proposal, in our negotiating session with them, that the alternative vote should be introduced before a referendum, as "a big down-payment we need to go in with you" (in the words of one Lib Dem negotiator). The commitment in their coalition agreement with the Tories to gerrymander the fundamental basis of parliamentary legitimacy – proposing that votes of confidence will henceforth require the support of 55% of MPs – is presumably another such unprincipled "down-payment".

I supported the last cabinet's decision to open discussions with the Lib Dems, at the point at which senior Lib Dems told us (misleadingly, as is now clear) they did not wish to sustain a Tory government. However, what then happened was an attempt by the Lib Dem leadership to conduct a dutch auction, inviting Labour to outbid the Tories on a shopping list of demands. Although I believe it might have been possible to form a principled Lab-Lib coalition supported on "confidence and supply" by minor parties, it was not on the basis of such an auction.

The Lib Dems are attempting to blame their Tory coalition on our failure to negotiate "seriously". More comically, "negative body language" is said to have been at fault. We were perfectly serious, but we were not prepared to engage in constitutional gerrymandering.

No idea whether the LDs thought of it first, or the Tories brought it to them as a bargaining chip.

The wholly reasonable argument in favour is that this was actually designed to give parliament the power to dissolve itself, instead of just the PM having it. Moving the bar to 55% was probably just icing.

sry that's total nonsense -- is meaningless power with fixed terms.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/12/fixed-five-year-parliamentary-term?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

and the public being given the right to have a particular issue debated in the Commons.

Can't wait to hear Miliband vs Clegg on which download we should all gang up and buy to stop X Factor being the Christmas number one.