General British politics discussion thread

it seems to be the Lib Dems modus operandi to offer a coalition to however gets the most seats, in the event of no overall majority. Ed Davey offered it to Sir Kier before the last election and Nick Clegg stated that was their intention in 2010, hence initially talking to the Tories and then talking to Labour when those talks looked like they would break down. They went into government with Labour in the first Scottish parliament on the same basis.

You think sentencing reports are evidence of a two-tier justice system?

Tell us a bit more about sentencing reports, Jack — what their function is, how they work, what they address, who prepares them, that kind of thing.

Also, you say that the new sentencing guidelines were "announced by Labour today". My understanding is that they were announced by the Sentencing Council, an independent panel of judges. Can you link to the announcement from Labour about this, please? 'Cause, if you don't, we might think you just made it up. And, far from refuting the idea that claims about a two-tier justice system are a far-right conspiracy theory, any perception that you are just making shît up will tend to reinforce that idea. And you wouldn't want that.

Well no they weren't announced by Labour, they have been suggested as new guidelines from the INDEPENDENT Sentencing Council which FYI they also made the same recommendations to the tories while they were in power and you never heard a peep about it….. they just sent it off for public consultation to try and pretend it wasn't happening.

Add to that Labours Justice Secretary has already written to the sentencing council to ask them to reverse this guidance and how the suggestions are not in line with the views of the Labour government.

So literally nothing in your post of clueless righteous indignation had any fact to it whatsoever.

Are reform maneuvering to remove Rupert Lowe from the party?

This comes one day after Lowe said about Farage

"Reform UK remains a "protest party led by the Messiah" under his leadership."

Now being reported that Lowe has had the whip removed.

The implosion of reform is happening pretty rapidly

And they waited 3 months to report these "threats" against Yusuf to the police.

Mere days after he criticised Farage.

People are getting really confused about the shutting down of NHS England. I'm already sick of the amount of people who have told me the NHS is being disbanded.

NHS England is the management division for the region and has only existed since 2013.

Hopefully the jobs cuts don't happen. Even if it means duplication for a while before people retire or move on its better than forced redundancy.

The whole NHS England era saw a worrying amount of creeping privatisation which was probably the Tory plan and will hopefully change under government control (not holding my breath though)

Blair wasn't really as into privatisation as he is made out to be. Water, energy and transport was all done before his time it's just that he was in charge when the final steps or public implementation happened. Now he wasn't against it either in fairness.

Privatisation has proven to be a failure though and even the "Blairites" are now pro re-nationalisation.

So whatever about the leaders the times have changed and the idea that private companies do things better than government is dead. We will probably see more re-nationalisation rather than privatisation under Starmer.

I certainly wasn't using Blairite as an insult but rather the standard use as the more centrist, free market wing of the party.

Not sure Blair can fully take credit for the good days though. Pretty much every western democracy was going through the same thing.

people use terms like privatization and selling off to corporate America as purely scaremongering terms without understanding what they mean. GPs are mainly private companies who carry out services on behalf of the NHS. There are dozens of privately owned eye clinics that have helped reduce the waiting times for cataract operations, but they do this on behalf of the NHS and are, most importantly, free to use for patients.
I’m not sure I understand the NHS England thing though. Healthcare is a devolved function, so is bringing it fully under the DHSC going to make any difference? Yes, there are 9000 jobs affected, but I would have thought that most of them will simply transfer to whatever organisation is replacing it. That said, I’m all for reducing the bloated mess that is the NHS management.

Welfare cuts coming in for the UK. Expect more of this as money has to be found.

In fairness the welfare bill has spiralled out of control, even though the unemployment rate has remained more or less the same.

Is it true that 1 in 10 adult working person is on disability? WTF?

The media are churning out the clickbait articles about military conscription every few weeks or so here in the UK. I wouldn’t put it past this looney tune government thinking that they could pull it off some how! Absolute car crash stuff so far.

https://www.gbnews.com/politics/uk/britons-conscripted-war-russia-mp-claims

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2028207/uk-military-conscription-world-war-3/amp

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/daily-star-readers-allergy-dying-34881857

https://www.gbnews.com/news/conscription-europe-starmer-defence-ukraine

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/news-opinion/government-urged-think-unthinkable-consider-10032258.amp

They even give ex army chiefs 30 minute segments on Sky News from time to time.

Click bait nonsense no doubt but they sure do rile up thousands in the comments!

No wonder I missed it.

None of the above actually report news