Whoa, the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act is fully repealed? First I heard. (Grauniad linked to Lascelles Principles on Wikipedia, which said so.)
I more or less get what it means when they say Johnson no longer has a "functioning government", but I find it a bit funny as it sounds like it's conflating not being able to make policy and the ability to provide basic governmental functions. Probably Brits are just so used to that terminology it doesn't sound like that.
Sure, except surely "government" retains its other meanings.
OK, people know from context which is meant, fine.
I think it is more or less exactly parallel with how we use "administration," which probably sounds equally funny to them.
Sure, except surely "government" retains its other meanings.
More or less, though I think it has a different valence than in the US so certain US phrases involving "government" would sound weird in British English. And it's very common in parliamentary systems to say, for instance, that Belgium was without a government for a year, so "government" doesn't necessarily imply the full structure of the state, even thought it does encompass that meaning in certain contexts.
I mean, the US inability to pass laws or deal with rogue judiciary has made it so we also do not have a functioning government. I'm not sure these are actually all that different, except in the UK it is considered a problem by everyone.
Also another one for the 'UK as quirky middle-income nation' file
I felt bad playing the English in Civ and invading America over the 4th of July weekend.
I guess it does start to resemble not having a government in a bigger sense when it drags on for years and the caretaker administrators can't update any policies.
8 It's not really a rogue judiciary if they are doing exactly what they were selected to do, by people who were elected to select exactly the kinds of people who were going to do this exact thing.
9: I am currently playing the Americans with two undiscovered Civs. If I find the English, I will exact revenge by converting them to Protestantism.
Yup. It's pretty good. I didn't play 5 much, though.
The complication is increased by the fact that Johnson has two jobs, and the procedures for firing him from either are complicated and subject to change.
...and he's said he'll quit as leader now but wants to stay as caretaker PM until the conference in October.
(This is unlikely to happen.)
16: I just listened to his speech. He sounded not just defiant but delusional. It seemed to me that the caretaker thing might have been possible if he had made a decision to resign before all those junior ministers publicly resigned and pushed cabinet members to resign. Radio 4: "he doesn't accept any responsibility."
Agreed. He wants to stay as both party leader and PM, possibly for months? Unbelievable. My only thought is that this is maybe-the-horse-will-sing stuff; he's hoping something will turn up or he'll be able to win people round or bluff his way through.
Has he tried blaming voters who used mailed ballots in urban counties of Pennsylvania?
I find UK traditions so quaint. Imagine removing a leader -- or a leader stepping down -- just because he's a wretched dishonest hypocritical asshole. I have confidence that someday that benighted nation will catch up to the US, though.
The complication is increased by the fact that Johnson has two jobs> Three really, though two are usually elided when in government.
The complication is increased by the fact that Johnson has two jobs> Three really, though two are usually elided when in government.
21: Is one of the jobs, "Keeper of the Unruly Hair"?
Constituency MP, party leader, head of government.
He definitely gets two for MP and PM. Doubt there's a paycheck attached to party leader, just constant donations. But the three jobs all in principle have different ways of being sacked.
He hasn't actually resigned, either. Just said he'll go once the Tories select a new leader, which is not the same thing.
And, as ttaM says, at present he still has all three of them.
At least in the U.S., if you quit, even in response to a clear push, it can be hard to collect unemployment.
Severance pay goes a long way to ease people out, but if that's not an option, reassuring them that you won't contest unemployment cab help.
Repeating myself from Twitter, but I derive only very limited schadenfreude. Him flailing is amusing, but ultimately it's just a bunch of sociopaths deciding which among them to elevate. Fill one up with scandal, move on to the next.
This is why analogies are banned. Part of Trump's success was the "bed of nails" approach to scandals and crime, where one story about something horrible just got replaced by the next one and none of them had too much of an impact. ( seems to be the first use of the term here of many.) I know the Johnson government has just stumbled from one embarrassment to another, and the latest one doesn't seem all that worse than the last half-dozen, but that did it anyway. Apparently too many nails can result in a death of a thousand cuts if you're in the UK, but not the US? Or something?
Trump had many simultaneously while BoJo had them more sequentially? So Trump never had one big scandal dominating headlines, while Johnson constantly had just one big thing making him look evil/incompetent?
Is he (ostensibly) resigning all three, or just the one?
Is he contemplating a "retirement" like that guy in Mar a Lago?
He's resigning one (party leader), but it ineluctably implies resigning the other (prime minister) and probably the third (MP), because the defining condition of being prime minister is having a majority of the Commons.
In theory it would be possible to resign as party leader and stay prime minister if you could find majority support from some other coalition, but this is thoroughly ruled out, as well over half his party is trying every possible means to get rid of him and all the other parties despise him. Similarly, nothing stops him running for re-election in Uxbridge but you'd be surprised if the Conservatives would pick him as candidate now. Even if his local party branch would support him I would think any post-Johnson party leader would veto him to get rid of the bad smell.
He certainly loves the drama enough to run as an independent or for some fringe party but by reputation he doesn't like parliament much and was very rarely in the chamber when he was a backbench MP.
How many clueless assholes are in Uxbridge? I can't place it.
I mainly know Uxbridge as the place you wake up when you fall asleep on the night bus.
I understand why the cabinet might feel otherwise, but I think the locals would be better with Keeler.
Thief is one of my favorite movies. Action, incredible photography, and a concise and sophisticated theory of labor relations. Actually pouring one out seems appropriate, what would really be best is doing that after having broken in somewhere, unlikely as that might be.
My longstanding ideal outcome for the guilty powerful is cohabitation with people who are like them but better at it than they are, so Jeff Fort or Chapo Guzman. Maybe Russian exile would be a suitable proxy, or better still tenuous existence in a gray zone like Transniestria.
Is anyone actually saying he should give up his seat in parliament? I mean, maybe he should, but I assumed he would try to keep it.
46: My understanding is that there will be elections soon, and that Boris is unlikely to be on the ballot at all -- and so he will be losing his third job as well. Poor fellow!
"No I've never saved any money. I don't think that's what it's for"
https://twitter.com/Passionweiss/status/1545099930783559680?s=20&t=Lppf-vbyWgcspggFQrwZSw
Someone noted that Johnson was born in the US, so he could run...
Does Boris have a cult-like following in the UK like Trump has in the US?
The police officer who murdered Tamir Rice got a job job as a police officer in rural Pennsylvania. So, if he was willing to wait a few years, leave a blank spot on his resume, and relocate, Johnson could probably find an executive job in a small town here.
40: Outer north-western suburb of London, but a substantial town in its own right before the suburbs got built around it. Johnson's majority from 2019 is 7,210, which is reasonable but not the kind of five-figure total you need for a real safe seat, especially given that he's probably burned quite a bit of that. Was stereotypically conservative suburbia but trending demographically to be more like the rest of London, with the twist that there's significant third party potential from pissed-off centrist Tories flipping to the Lib Dems. A defensible proposition....if you haven't just fucked up this badly.
51: he probably thinks he is popular but his polling numbers are horrific. like Trump he had a celebrity following but unlike him I don't see any sign of that being consolidated - rather they had a transactional, cynical deal. they'd put up with him because he did celeb for them.
Like Trump, Johnson was a celeb before getting into politics, but a different kind of celeb. He was a columnist for various papers and a presenter on a comedy news quiz - he's closer to someone like Jon Stewart or John Oliver than to Trump.
re: 51
Short answer: No.
He's very much a creature of the media. There were a lot of people early on who thought he was "a laugh", and the right wing press were happy to get behind him if it was going to advance their agenda: Brexit, racism, making rich bastards richer, rolling back civil rights, etc. But he doesn't have some cult of Boris loyalists outside of a few sycophants in his own party. N.B. it's pretty obvious that Boris himself doesn't even believe in some of those things. He's all for enriching the rich and especially himself, and he's definitely a racist, but on everything else, he's for sale.
47. There don't have to be elections until 2024, but they can happen sooner if the House of Commons votes for it. If the new leader of the Conservative Party, whoever that may be, thinks they could win an early election, they will make that happen, otherwise they will hang on as long as possible in the hope that they can win back the traditional Tory voters who have made Johnson a toxic brand. If Johnson plays silly buggers over resigning as PM after the party conference in September, they might well go an early election anyway on the calculation that a period of Labour government would give the Tories time to reconstruct their image among the electorate in general.
54-56: Thanks for all these answers! Trump is also a media creation and was also "a laugh" -- but somewhere along the way he became a folk hero, and it seems there are still a significant minority of Americans that are true believers.
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I was right! Just now heard a contractor boast of being "42 CFR-compliant."
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