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[feelotraveller]

Okay a few numbers to back up what people have been saying... because it provides a stark picture of the failure of democracy to deliver (representation even, not to mention participation).

Labour have the biggest majority since 1906 on the back of the smallest vote ever for a majority government.  412 seats - up by about 210, with 33.8 percent of the vote an increase of 1.7 percent over last election.  The situation was quite similar with the Lib Dems - they went from 8 to 71 seats while only increasing their percent of the vote by 0.6 percent to 12.2 percent.

Keep that in mind when Starmer, or anyone else, starts talking about a "clear mandate".  Bugger off, you got one in three votes, that ain't no mandate.  Sure they have a massive parliamentary majority (I'd say 'supermajority' but that may well have some technical meaning) but they got that with basically the same proportion of people voting for them as when they held 202 seats (something less than a third of the overall number) after the last election.  Yeah so you have as much of a 'mandate' now as you did then, that is, basically none.  Don't kid yourselves, a minority of people support your government.  The fact that you are forming government at all is a travesty that reflects only how broken the system is.

Rage against the bullshit they sell us as democracy aside I am glad that Starmer is dismantling the Rwanda asylum plan.

[hector13]

This has been a problem for years, and I expect it to continue for years to come.

In other news, PM Starmer elected to leave a meeting with FM Swinney by the back door to avoid a noisy pro-Gaza protest outside Bute House in Edinburgh.

An auspicious start, the head of government avoiding the citizenry.

[Starver]

This has been a problem for years, and I expect it to continue for years to come.

In other news, PM Starmer elected to leave a meeting with FM Swinney by the back door to avoid a noisy pro-Gaza protest outside Bute House in Edinburgh.

An auspicious start, the head of government avoiding the citizenry.

To be fair, there's little productive that could have come of not avoiding them.

And he's not shy about being committed towards his support for a solution, for which the major stumbling block in that direction definitely is his current Israeli counterpart, notwithstanding what any protesters (ours, his) are saying.

[MorleyDev]

Keir Starmer seems to be a politician who practices realpolitik but isn't a cunt about it, and instead seems to be of the mindset that it's better to have principles and ideals but work based on pragmatic need rather than ideology within them. Someone who follows the idea that "To believe in an ideal, is to be willing to betray it", which is why everyone asks 'what do they stand for?' because what they believe in ideally and what they're going to do pragmatically won't be in alignment.

Now as someone who thinks politics should be about principled people pitching competing ideologies to the public, this is obviously not a good thing. But for the system we have and the state the country is in, it may be the best option we have...

[McTraveller]

Can someone from the UK explain Count Binface?

Is this a typical thing in UK politics, to have "novelty" candidates?

[Frumple]

Keir Starmer seems to be a politician who practices realpolitik but isn't a cunt about it

So, uh, do we get to say otherwise when (as it appears very, very likely) labour goes through with banning the use of puberty blockers? Because at that point, you pretty accurately get to label anyone who had a hand in that one as not just a cunt, but a murderous one

[Grim Portent]

Can someone from the UK explain Count Binface?

Is this a typical thing in UK politics, to have "novelty" candidates?

They've been around for a long time, as a satire on the general state of politics and our politicians. A lot of them posit a mixture of silly and serious electoral promises, usually including electoral reform away from First Past The Post to something more representative, and then stuff like free ponies. It's a way of mocking the status quo while also showing support for various possible changes. Performance art and political activism in one. The British equivalent of Vermin Supreme.

In practice there aren't many of them, but Count Binface has been around for a few decades now.

[Starver]

There's famously an entire 'Political' Party (and others, not quite so famously) that is distilled novelty. I've never had the pleasure of voting for one, myselfz,but I'd be sore tempted if ever one stood on my ballot.

A number of 'frivolous' candidates may stand against 'each other', in another established party leader's seat, in addition to the more serious (if normally unhopeful) independents and minor-cause candidates. As it was in Count Binface's targetted seat. But sometimes hard to tell where the line between satire and single-cause is, sometimes, and how seriously some rather specific unique or semi-unique candidates for a seat might think they could (and sometimes be able to!) unseat, or at least make wobbly, the established big-name representatives.

But seriously... They make a lot more sense!

[hector13]

I’m pretty sure Lord Buckethead stood against Count Binface, got more votes than him, and then proceeded to flip the double birds to the count behind the returning officers back while on television.

[Starver]

I’m pretty sure Lord Buckethead stood against Count Binface, got more votes than him, and then proceeded to flip the double birds to the count behind the returning officers back while on television.

That was in the run-up to the result in the 2019 Election for Boris's seat.

(Which makes it somewhat an 'actor paradox', given the actual crossing histories of the Lord Buckethead and Count Binface characters...

Different (serious and silly) coopponents to Count Binface this year in  Rishi's seat.


It's serious business, yo!

[Starver]

Disaster wants to not be called a disaster...

(And indicates how she pulled levers without even fully understanding what they'd do. But I think we already knew that.)

[Il Palazzo]

I like how Rory Stewart talks about Liz Truss in his podcast whenever she comes up, as if permanently bamboozled by how weird and unserious a person she is.

On that note, more than even having a taste of marmite, learning that the Tories went with Boris over Stewart when they had a choice convinced me that the UK is a fundamentally silly place.

[Starver]

Hmm, well, it's almost economics, I suppose. Not all the various political-economic stuff we could be talking about, but just a side note that might entertain fellow locals.

Hermes that became EVRi (as a bad-PR-dodging rebrand), is apparently now to become (or be bought out by) "Apollo Funds".

So that's once the god of: boundaries, roads, travellers, merchants, thieves(!), athletes, shepherds, commerce, speed, cunning(!!), language/oratory/wit(...) and messages...
To become the god of: oracles, healing, archery, music/arts, light, knowledge, herds/flocks and protection of the young.

(And the former famously has a rod, which often gets totally confused with the rod that the latter's son (Asclepius) holds.)

Classic!

[hector13]

The far-right are an interesting bunch; on the one hand Lee Anderson of Reform suggests the police officer who stamped on the head of a restrained suspect deserves a medal, and on the other Nigel Farage of Reform suggests the police are lying about why they don’t consider the knife attack which killed three children to be terror related and/or the extent to which the attacker was on their radar.

I think they should pick a lane, personally.

They also rioted in various places after that attack, with the media suggesting it’s to do with fake news on social media about it. The newest one is Sunderland, in which they set fire to a police office and attacked officers.

[Starver]

I suspect "useful idiots" is a relevent phrase. Certainly, somewhere along the line, there seems to be far more organised 'reaction' against phantom issues than you'd expect to arise spontaneously. I mean, one case of lynch-mob-mentality (e.g. the original reaction in Southport) could just have been "righteous anger" after getting wires crossed, but this wide-spread 'spot rioting' doesn't seem to have the right kind of seeds to grow independently or have arisen from a truly country-wide disaffection with... well, whatever... as that which has occured in response to the likes Mark Duggan.

An "uncanny valley", as it were. Just too artificial a collection of occurances. Of course, they're prompting the current government to promise all sorts of 'police-state' measures, in response (might even have been the actual aim, by any orchestrators, however they are; unbeknownst to the guys on the ground, of course).