That’s been in the works for ages. The previous attempt at a maritime patrol aircraft (Nimrod MRA.4) was a disaster which wasted billions of pounds without producing a working aircraft, for various reasons including the fact that the aircraft they were upgrading were all subtly different due to having been effectively hand-built.
As Britain is an island country with a lot of sea to patrol, the lack of MPAs was a joke. There are very few countries making one which is even close in capability (range, speed, carrying capacity) to the previous Nimrod generation- if you’re not building your own or buying American, the only other options are Russian or Japanese…
Pretty much any hypothetical that begins with “what would happen if the Queen did X,” where X is an exercise of some power she technically retains but which no monarch has used since the 17th century, ends with the destruction of the monarchy. (And the thing she was trying to prevent happening anyway.)
[I live two countries to the east, but this is probably not completely bogus]
the important UK wide parties are:
Tories - conservatives
Labour - social democrats
LibDems - free market
A huge bloc in the house of commons are the Scottish Nationalists, a mostly social liberal regional party, plus a few splinter parties with a handful of seats.
Currently the Tories are the ruling party, infighting lead to the Brexit ballot. Labour is since Blair mostly market friendly, but the party leader is currently Jeremy Corbyn, probably the best equivalent of Sanders: Rather left, not really loved by the party bigwigs* but supported by most normal party members.
In a way all parties are more left than the US counterparts, like general acceptance of single-payer healthcare. Godless European commies altogether.
* this is an understatement, he lost a vote of confidence
Major was forced into it against his will. He had no part in initiating it and deserves no credit for what happened around him.
He got no credit for his work because the other party had no reason to give him any and his own party fucking hated him. Funnily enough the same applied to the Irish prime minister at that time too.
And the parties that took the original steps got screwed over by the electorate.
So, you know, credit…
That said he was the last proper grown up leading the Tories. Complete bastard mind. But then that is rather the point of being a Tory.
If the Tories did move “left” to take over the role of “new labour” and labour were to the left of that keeping them honest that would be a win for English politics.
Won’t happen though. Tories always try to sound like they care when the throne is crumbling big society is their equivalent of compassionate conservatism. And it meant exactly as much when they got in power: fuck all.
I think lots of people made the comparison to the just recently relieve labor leader Jeremy Corbin (wait, is it Corbyn)… But his brother lives in the UK and is a politician, too.
Yep. There’s a meeting of the Labour National Executive Committee right now about keeping him off the ballot, and they’ve voted to make that meeting closed door.
They’re going to force a leadership election, and make sure he isn’t on the ballot. His lawyers will challenge that, I guess.
Due to the surge in membership under Corbyn (admittedly, perhaps some joining to vote for him, some against?), the party is apparently now “the largest social-democratic party in the Western world with 600,000 members.”.
So let’s knife him, that’ll do well.
I really can’t see Angela Eagle winning. I guess that she’s going to end up being the stalking horse candidate who ran to get rid of him, given that she doesn’t seem to have any policies she’s actually running for.
Then, when the MPs make sure that nobody from the left is on the ballot, someone like Owen Smith, Dan Jarvis, Tristram Hunt or Chuka Umunna will win, because none of the party members from the left will both to vote for anyone (not sure that they’ll all run, but some might). Or Yvette Cooper might run again.
They would anyway. Their problem is they have diagnosed their problem as being Corbyn, when they have a much bigger problem: themselves.
Corbyn has to go as he didn’t deliver the vote in the referendum, they should all go too as they spent more effort on him than on that vote.
The Labour party, among it’s senior members, seems to represent a kind of in group identification at odds with their adverseries in debates in posh schools and colleges rather than an identification with labour oriented policies. Basically they are just like the other side of the aisle except without conviction.
As such they can all continue to jump off the cliff as far as I’m concerned.
So Leadsom was forced to resign because she said that being a mother gave her a stake in the future? That ranks pretty low on the totem pole of bad things to say. I’m a little confused. Was it just that anyone who thinks there is anything good about being a mother (and, by extension, being a woman) is unqualified to lead the Tories or what?
Well, I just read the article and there might be more surrounding context, but to be honest, I think someone saying, “I believe we’d be better off if the country were run by parents because being a parent teaches you to think about the future,” or something similar, I would hardly think that would be career ending, normally. The tepidness of the quotations that she quit over amazed me.
