Sunak has announced there won’t be any flights to Rwanda before the election. The new Labour government will close the scheme down. The country will have spent several 100 million pounds to send one single person to Rwanda.
As a liberal, I deplore all these cruel, unnecessary, unworkable plans but if they have to go ahead, and make me complicit as a UK citizen, please could I get my beak a bit wet?
And it’s “Labour”, not “Labor”
Australia had an attempt at a “Let’s be like the Americans” spelling reform back before Federation, and pretty much the only part of it that stuck was that the political party named itself “Labor”.
It is “labour” in every other context, and it’s so ingrained that we tend to overcorrect when referring to the British party. Seeing “The Labour Party” just feels weird.
TIL of a way to mock the leader of the Labour Party.
And I typed Labor, because that’s the way the Australian Labor Party (https://www.alp.org.au/) spell, it, despite the fact that we use the proper British spelling (i.e. with a U) for everything else. so I assumed (without checking) that the British Labour Party would do the same.
mea culpa for foolishly expecting politicians to be even within sight of consistency
Sir Keir Starmer famously hates people using the “Sir”.
Which is why the Daily HateMail will always use the title in its headlines, just to wind him up.
I believe the nickname first originated in Private Eye Magazine (I could be wrong).
They are the ones behind Brian and Brenda, nicknames for Prince King Charlie and QE2.
ETA: I’ve just remembered - I think it was the fact that most spellcheckers on phone and email would always change the Keir to Keith, hence the nickname, then PI picking it up.
I think the Labour left were calling him Sir before the Daily Heil, because of their opposition to the honours system. If Starmer hates being called Sir he could have turned down the knighthood, like many before him did.
Quite right, maybe he should have. He was knighted long before his entry into politics.
It doesn’t quite jive these days with his “my dad was a toolmaker” spiel.
It might be ‘highly unusual’ for a head of department (equivalent) to refuse a knighthood, as he was at the time.
He was the Director of Public Prosecutions at the time, if I’m not mistaken?
(I’m often mistaken)
Head of CPS, no?
Oh, Crown Prosecution Service.
Yep.
often mistaken, me.
ETA Oh, hang on, think we’re both right:
In 2008, he became Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, holding these positions until 2013.
Keir Starmer got knighted for his impressive service as head of the CPS and so on.
Being knighted doesn’t get you anything except that most polite people will call you Sir (or Dame, the equivalent for women). It’s something given to people like academics and scientists as well as so-called “theatrical” knights like Sir Ian McKellen. The head of the Oxford University Covid vaccine team got a damehood, for instance
Sadly, the honours system has become so tarnished thanks to people like Boris Johnson handing out gongs for being a leggy blonde, etc that I can see why people might have come to disdain it.
But there are a lot of people who actually deserve their honours.
Johnson, Truss and Sunak will get knighted in due course. It’s standard for ex-PMs.
He has decided to stand as an independent in his current constituency.
I saw that. I assume he’s very likely to win as the sitting MP for so long. I also assume that he won’t be part of a group large enough to have speaking rights in Parliament?
I wouldn’t assume he will win, though it is likely. He may split the Labour vote, but even that may not be a huge problem.
Here’s what the Tactical Vote site says:
I may be bringing local thinking here to it but Labour won’t need him to vote with them, so they can ignore him. And I don’t think he will have much by way of speaking rights in parliament? Not having a group to join with he will be limited to the odd question when nobody is around. I could imagine a left wing ex Labour group developing if the election were next year. But there’s just nothing there at the moment. Sir has played it well in the sense that he’s the only alternative to the English Conservative Party.
Just have to see has his party anything to offer apart from not being as horrible, incompetent, and corrupt as that lot.
Not a high bar.
You’ve used that phrase twice now. Not sure what you mean by it. Any MP can peak if s/he can catch the Speaker’s eye and the Speaker deigns to call them to speak. Opposition party leaders get to ask questions at PMQs every week. Shadow ministers get to follow govt ministers when they are making a statement in the House and so on.
Being an independent back-bencher probably would not disadvantage him any more than any other back-bencher, AFAICS.
Sorry, just rules about when people can initiate debate and legislation. Irish rules are based ultimately on English parliament but I’m sure they’ve diverged significantly. Groups of delegates have more ability to initiate debate than individuals. Maybe PR makes that more of an issue? Individual independents can do very little in Ireland, they need a speaking group to force debate.
Unfortunately and irrelevant here, small groups find it impossible to enact legislation even when they win the vote due to a recent loophole that FFFG have discovered.
Unfortunately the Tactical Vote site does not offer alternatives when the main anti-Tory candidate is abhorrent too.
Where I live there are currently four candidates who I will not vote for under any circumstances, Tories and the incumbent Labour MP included. Anyone who tries to tell me to “vote Labour, no matter who” will probably learn a few new insults. The candidates started the adversarial relationship between us, I am simply reacting to it.
I am left with a choice between the LibDem and Green candidates, both parties are problematic in different ways, but the candidates haven’t crossed any lines yet. If things get really bad I guess I can just spoil my vote and call them all arseholes.
