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Brexit is a submarine made out of cheese. Nobody sane at all thinks there is a good Brexit deal to be had. (Every proposed "good Brexit deal" uniformly assumes they can dictate terms to the EU; that has not proven to be the case).
However, May has been forced (in order to become PM) to pretend there is a good cheese-submarine, and has in fact built a ...
62
Nationalism today is mostly associated with ethnic nationalism, which the SNP as a center-left party does not wish to be associated with.
Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the SNP, has expressed displeasure with the name because of this:
Nicola Sturgeon has admitted she wishes she could change her party’s name because of the “hugely, hugely problematic” ...
51
A common answer to this is that the UK uses a "First Past the Post"(FPTP) voting system (where each individual MP is elected from a constituency election, where most votes wins), whereas the Netherlands uses a form of list based proportional representation (PR). In each of these election there is a strong spoiler effect, where multiple similar candidates are ...
27
Theresa May isn't just being targeted over Brexit, though.
May called snap elections in 2017, in a bid to strengthen her hand. Instead, she lost seats and had to form a minority government propped up by a confidence & supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party (where the Tories had outright control before). There's no question she did ...
25
Under current Conservative Party rules, she remains leader, and cannot be subject to a party confidence vote for another year.
Being a party matter, none of this affects any parliamentary vote of no confidence which might take place.
Source: BBC News.
See also: Leadership Elections in the Conservative Party, House of Commons briefing paper 01366, July ...
25
The statement is quite nebulous (hey, its coming from a politician), but Boris Johnson isn't the first government politician to float the figure:
Because we value the NHS so much, the new £20.5 billion funding settlement announced by the Prime Minister in June provides the NHS with funding growth of 3.4% a year in real terms over the next five years. This ...
24
Conservative party rules require that the Leader is an MP. The party's constitution only requires that "There shall be a Leader of the Party, drawn from the Members of Parliament" It doesn't give any remedy in case no MP is willing to stand. It would be a big problem for the party, but no laws would be broken. The existing Leadership would probably remain in ...
20
The PM has played this disastrously and is now under fire from at least three sources of opposition:
the so-called "ERG", who believe that her deal is bad because it's not Brexity enough. They claim that a better deal with no backstop or a fake backstop is possible, despite all the evidence to the contrary. However, these people probably put in their ...
18
She resigned as the conservative party leader effective June 7th. That will lead to a new prime minister in due course, since her successor in the party role would presumably want to become the new prime minister, but until then she is prime minister.
17
Splintering is death.
The FPTP system guarantees that if two broadly similar parties run candidates in the same seats, they will both be defeated. Effectively the only way that different parties can survive in this ecosystem is to be geographically separated so they don't run against each other. That's a big part of why we see different parties in the other ...
16
The government doesn't build houses itself, it just provides the market conditions for private developers to build more houses themselves. Their justification is that the housing market is 'broken', and requires government interference to become healthy again. In 2017, Sajid Javid, then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, presented a ...
15
It means exactly what the words say. There is a plan. Plans don't cost anything much to produce. All you need is a computer running MS Office, and in half an hour you are done.
Whether the plan will ever be delivered is a different question.
But of course the political point is that the opposition now have a few bad options and no good ones:
Ignore the ...
14
No-one in the Commons is unaware that any other PM would face the same Brexit challenges, to much the same outcome; but this is about a more important long-term principle than that.
To add to others' points, the issue isn't necessarily the details of May's Brexit deal so much as how she went about getting it. Legislatures guard against executives that deny ...
12
Theresa May voted against the ban on fox hunting in 2005 and on previous occasions. She has declared that she is personally in favour of fox hunting
“This is a situation on which individuals will have one view or the other, either pro or against. As it happens, personally I have always been in favour of fox hunting and we maintain our commitment, we have ...
12
The tradition of alternating parties is often mentioned, but is not really true. As Wikipedia's list of Speakers shows, it was broken most recently in 2000 when Michael Martin followed Betty Boothroyd (both Labour), and before that in 1959, 1965 and 1971, when there were 4 Conservative Speakers in a row! Even before then, this tradition is broken more than ...
11
The Prime Minister is appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the outgoing PM. Under normal circumstances, this is relatively straightforward: it's the leader of the party which, alone or in a coalition or other agreement, can command a majority in the Commons (or failing that, is likely to survive a confidence vote).
However, in theory (and, in the ...
10
She will almost certainly remain as interim leader of both the Conservative Party and the Government until the new leader is appointed, as David Cameron did in 2016.
Note that the two roles are technically separate - she is Prime Minister by appointment of the Queen, and because she can command a majority in the Commons, but Party Leader because she won an ...
10
The PoliticsHome website is maintaining a list of Conservative MPs who have "condemned" Dominic Cummings. At the time of writing, it lists more than 40 who have said Cummings's position is untenable, he should resign or the PM should sack him.
The conservativehome webite is also maintaining a list. At the time of writing, it lists 39 MPs.
The Telegraph ...
9
No. The following people have declared to stand:
Michael Gove, Matt Hancock, Jeremy Hunt, Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom, Esther McVey, Dominic Raab, Rory Stewart, Sajid Javid, Mark Harper, James Cleverly, Kit Malthouse.
Based on the voting record on the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union on the 29th of March 2019, we see none of the ...
9
They hope to convince Conservative MPs and members that they have a chance to convince some of the electorate who intend to vote for a Brexit party candidate to vote for a conservative candidate instead. Even if the latter (convince UK electorate) is infeasible what matters is whether conservative party members believe it to be possible.
Becoming PM appears ...
9
Technically yes, but the agreement has been in question since November last year, when the DUP abstained on a Finance Bill, to indicate their displeasure with (then) May's Brexit approach.
The DUP has abstained from supporting the Government in a Finance Bill vote, calling into question its confidence and supply agreement with the Conservative government.
...
8
The DUP hold extremely socially conservative views that are not shared by the majority of the British electorate
They are extremely socially conservative
They are against LGBT rights
The former leader of the Party Ian Paisley launched a political campaign in 1977 called "Save Ulster from Sodomy", to prevent the decriminalization of homosexuality in ...
8
This is the UK, so of course there is no formal rule, but based on the 2010 coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, we would expect a full formal coalition to produce a cabinet containing members of both parties, all acting under the convention of collective responsibility. That is to say, with ministers of both parties publicly ...
7
The Good Friday Agreement requires "rigorous impartiality" by the UK government, so it can arbitrate between parties in Northern Ireland. A UK government which depends on one of those parties for its existence may be breaking that rule.
Whether the UK government is breaking the agreement can only be officially settled by a court of law. In principle it ...
answered Jun 16 '17 at 10:58
Royal Canadian Bandit
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6
The short answer is that such threats suggest wider party disapproval over government policy. In principle Mrs May could ignore them, (indeed, more so that most Prime Ministers, having just won a leadership vote meaning she can't be challenged for a year) but only by accepting a danger of defeat in parliamentary votes, which might (if continued unchecked) ...
6
Yes.
The UK has a secret ballot, so it's impossible to get "hard evidence" of how everyone actually voted. The best you can do is ask a representative subset of voters, as YouGov did. High quality opinion polling is the gold standard of data for voter breakdown by age, party support, and other criteria.
This site has a breakdown of voter data between 1974 ...
answered Jun 27 '17 at 10:31
Royal Canadian Bandit
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6
Although the title of Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party has been applied to politicians in the past, the party currently has no deputy leadership position, and this is confirmed by the party's constitution, which contains no such provision, and this Guardian article from 2015, which notes the difference between the approaches of the Labour Party and ...
5
Some more examples (in addition to those listed by James); headlines are put in bold and quotes from the main article are put in italic:
The Sun reported on 31st of May 2018:
Title: Tory candidate suspended for suggesting ‘people hang bacon to protect homes from terrorism’. Source: the Sun
The Independent reported on the 4th of June 2018:
Title: Two ...
5
Like other British political parties, the Conservative and Unionist Party publish (and update) party rules, in their case branded as a Constitution. Any attempt to influence the party direction from inside the party would have to ensure it followed the rules described there, or else your insurgents would be told they weren't following the values of the ...
5
While anyone meeting the criteria to be an MP (be over 18 and a UK, Irish or Commonwealth citizen and not be otherwise disqualified) can run for election in a constituency by collecting enough signatures and paying a deposit, to run in the name of a party, you must be selected by them. In the case of the Conservatives, candidates are selected by the local ...
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