General British politics discussion thread

I have noted that recently the old Tory mouthpiece the Telegraph has been talking about Britain's future being inexorably linked to the EU due to forces beyond the continent. Trumps previous term did little to nothing for the Brexiter cause so there may be a slow reappraisal happening with the Tory party where all the outsiders brought in on Johnson's Brexit coattail may be let fend for themselves in the next election.

The priority at the next election is to not lose any more traditional safe seats to right wingers.

Sunak being hammered at PMQ's and did not look at all happy with Stsrmers line of questions.

I dont think Sunak would have been able to string together a sentence after that drubbing

I hate those questions they're obvious softball questions for him. Disgraceful from Hoyle that he ignored Diane Abbott's attempts to speak yet let Bridgen have a question.

Well, equally you could say that the Tories haven't been in power for the last 14 years, because part of that period was actually Tory-LD coalition government. But Tories have provided the prime minister consistently from 2010 to the present, just as they provided the Prime Minster consistently from 1935 to 1945.

I don't think it's fair to say that the Tories lost the 1945 election because Churchill was seen as pro-war and the voters didn't like that. By the time of the election, in early July, the war in Europe had been over for nearly 2 months. While the war against Japan was continuing, the outcome was not in doubt and, anyway, Labour was not advocating that the UK should withdraw from the war against Japan.

I think what the voters were driven by was not attitudes to the war, but attitudes to the coming peace. Everybody was, as you say, sick of war, but also both pleased and proud about the allied victory and the UK's role in it. What they wanted was for the price they had paid — all the deaths, the suffering, the hardship, the money — not to have been in vain; they wanted the experience of war to transform Britain in a progressive way; there was no appetite to go back to the poverty, unemployment and general decay that characterised the 1930s. Labour seemed to be offering a progressive vision of the future in a way that the Tories did not. Hence the landslide victory.

Questions are taken alternatively from the government and opposition benches, and there is a long tradition of sychophantic questions from government backbenchers: "Would my right honourable friend the Prime Minister not agree with me that, given the phenomonal success of his policies on widget regulation, he is now widely regarded as the greatest Englishman of his generation — indeed, of any generation — and that there could not be a greater contrast than between his surpassing and ineffable wisdom and the drivelling idiocy we see every day on the opposition front bench?" And the PM blushingly concedes that, yes, there may be something to be said for this point of view; widget regulation has been going well.

The question is in fact planted by the government — i.e. a backbencher is tapped on the shoulder and told to ask the question. In among all the flattery and flummery will be a reference to some topic that the government actually wants to discuss, on which they feel they can make political capital, either by pointing to their own successes or by pointing to the opposition's deficiency in some area. This enables them to ensure that question time isn't wholly dominated by an agenda chosen by the opposition.

I don't know about "continuing" the war in Europe against Stalin; there was no war to continue. Hitler died on 30 April; the remains of the German government signed an unconditional surrender on 7 May; VE-day was celebrated on 8 May; on 23 May the remants of the German goverment were all arrested, as was most of the Nazi party hierarchy not already in custody. The election wasn't until July. It may or may not be true that Churchill was in favour of the western allies turning on the Soviets but, if he was, the public certainly didn't know about it at the time, and I don't see how it could have been an election issue.

Opinion polling was in its infancy at the time, but it did exist. Labour had in fact been leading in the opinion polls since 1943, but Churchill personally was very popular — he consistently polled much more highly than his party did. His personal approval rating in May 1945 was 83%, but Labour was ahead of the Tories by 18%. The Conservatives seem to have lost the 1945 election despite having Churchill as their leader, rather than because of it.

Having said that, Churchill was popular as a war leader, but he never really had much of a domestic agenda — certainly not one that had much profile or traction with voters. I think it wasn't so much that voters feared that Churchill would start another war immediately; rather, they took it for granted that there wasn't going to be another war immediately and, in that circumstance, Churchill seemed a less attractive proposition. He had little to offer peacetime Britain; all he really did in the election campaign was to attack Labour's offering, and his attack on it struck a lot of people as overblown and hysterical.

Bottom line: Labour was very much the exciting, forward-looking, progressive, it's-all-going-to-be-different-now option, which was what people wanted. While Churchill's service to the nation and his leadership qualities (such as they were) were appreciated, they couldn't outweigh this. It would be fair to say that the Tories didn't lose this election; Labour won it.

Churchill wasn't really for continuing the war in Europe and Britain was in no shape for it in 1945. She crippled herself pursuing the war against Germany and America wasn't going to drop her debts. He may have spouted a famous quote about an iron curtain and all that, but he was well aware that any kind of military offensive against Russia would have been a lengthy, pointless, endeavour. And he wasn't the only one who would have been aware of Stalin's ambitions for eastern Europe either. The possibility of that was well understood by Russia's allies while the war was still in progress, but never a matter for open discussion because Russia was most crucial to the war against Germany.

He did, however, have paper plans (Operation Unthinkable) drawn up for a possible future altercation with Russia, if one should arise (but such plans are drawn up all the time against nearly every country, even friendly ones). But beyond that, any actual shooting war was a pure fantasy. Besides, the British just had no appetite for any more war after nearly 6 years of fighting and was already demobbing, while Russia was future proofing her military, as Stalin was well aware of the growing animosity between east and west.

As a matter of fact, however, both Churchill and Stalin got along pretty well, even if it was after a somewhat cold start. Churchill's uneasy attitude to Stalin changed around October 1943 after he had a very productive meeting with Stalin and shared some drinks afterward. Apparently any unfriendliness between the two had disappeared with a couple of bottles of brandy. He may not have been as well disposed toward "uncle Joe" as Roosevelt was, but there was definitely a shared admiration and connection between the two. Actually, one could say that Churchill and Stalin's relationship was more on the level than Churchill and Roosevelt's. Roosevelt despised the British Empire and was all in favour of destroying it and viewed Winston as a full on proponent of Imperial rule.

As to your last point, you're correct in that British voters did indeed firmly reject Churchill and the Tories in favour of Atlee's Labour Party. But this was largely because the Tories hadn't and would never have had the policies that Atlee was in favour of. Favourable policies which the British people were desirous of such as the NHS, public housing and securing public industries. Churchill may have found himself in the position of PM during the war, something that was unimaginable before 1940, but his and his party's way of governing was no longer considered attractive by the majority of the country and hadn't been since the 30's, so they lost in a landslide to Labour. It was the war that made Churchill, but he would never have been able to dine out on that forever. Had the war never happened in 1939, Churchill would have continued in his political wilderness and eventually faded into obscurity, and Labour probably would have been voted into power during the 40's anyway.

UK would have been the 50th State, Hawaii joined in 1959.

Alaska also joined 1959..

Honestly, I think the electorate in 1945 — on both sides — had a much more nuanced view of Churchill than is common today. The unqualified hagiography of the dimmer right-wingers is very much a modern phenomenon. Voters in 1945 were aware of, and grateful for, the role he played in 1940, but they were equally aware of his extremely chequered, erratic. maverick career in the three decades before that, which included many conspicuous errors and failures. Many of them had lived through it, after all.

He was the right man in the right place in 1940, but he had so often been the wrong man in the wrong place before, and everyone knew it.

Well, the two concepts are doing different things. Given that, it may not be very meaningful to ask whether one is "better" than the other. The concept of extremism relates to negating/destroying fundamental rights and freedoms; undermining or overturning parliamentary democracy; etc. There's nothing in there about hatred or discrimination, treating people differently according to gender, religion, ethnicity, etc. An old-fashioned Stalinist revolutionary could easily be an extremist, in this definition, even though his ideology might be entirely non-discriminatory and his commitment to a universal paradise might be entirely sincere.

Whereas hatred-type offences usually aren't directed against the state or against political institutions at all; they are directed against individuals or groups within society.

Obviously, there can be an overlap; somebody might seek to overthrow the liberal state in pursuit of an ideology of hatred and discrimination — Nazis, for example. But basically these concepts are aimed at tackling different problems.

NewsBiscuit are ahead of you..

Of course it a parody site but some of their previous jokes later turned out to be not far off reality..

A man of the people for sure.