91
votes
Why are UK MPs targeting the prime minister and not the deal?
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 ...
- 2,366
63
votes
Accepted
Why does the Scottish National Party object to being called nationalist?
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 ...
- 36k
59
votes
Accepted
What drives the appeal and nostalgia of Margaret Thatcher within UK Conservative Party?
Success! Margaret Thatcher was exceptionally successful, winning 3 General Elections with large majorities, and perhaps more importantly, never losing a general election. Partisans love a winner.
...
- 115k
53
votes
Accepted
If the conservative party is so divided on the (right now) most important topic, why are they not splitting courses?
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 ...
- 21.1k
48
votes
What drives the appeal and nostalgia of Margaret Thatcher within UK Conservative Party?
While success at the ballot box is definitely a factor, my personal experience from speaking to Conservative party members, as well as a couple of MPs, is that Thatcher's legacy is remembered with ...
- 1,914
44
votes
Accepted
Could Boris Johnson have run for re-election in the July 2022 Conservative party leadership election?
No, he could not have run for re-election; Rule 2 of Schedule 2 - Rules for the Election of the Leader of the Conservative Party Constitution (as amended January 2021) states that:
A Leader resigning ...
CDJB♦
- 105k
27
votes
Why are UK MPs targeting the prime minister and not the deal?
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 ...
- 45.6k
25
votes
Accepted
In the UK Conservative party, what happens when a vote of no confidence in the leader fails?
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 ...
- 11.8k
24
votes
Accepted
What if nobody wants the job as leader of the UK Conservative Party?
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 ...
- 115k
20
votes
Why are UK MPs targeting the prime minister and not the deal?
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 ...
- 22k
18
votes
If the conservative party is so divided on the (right now) most important topic, why are they not splitting courses?
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 ...
- 22k
18
votes
Who will lead the country until there is a new Tory leader?
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 ...
- 106k
17
votes
Could Boris Johnson have run for re-election in the July 2022 Conservative party leadership election?
This used to be possible. From here:
With the Conservative government remaining divided on Europe and much
more, John Major, in an attempt to silence his critics and opponents,
announced his ...
- 271
16
votes
Accepted
Conservative Party UK - House building paradox
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', ...
CDJB♦
- 105k
16
votes
Accepted
By what process did it come about that 100 nominations are now required for the Conservative leadership election in October '22
The house of commons library confirms this as essentially unanswerable. As posted in a comment it is not clear that the rules have been changed. At each leadership election the head of the 1922 ...
- 23.9k
15
votes
What did Boris Johnson mean when he said "extra 34 billion going into the NHS"
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 ...
- 2,224
15
votes
What does the Conservative Party expelling an MP mean?
MP's who have had the whip removed (the technical term for the expulsion of an MP from the parliamentary party) retain their seats and their ability to vote. They then sit as independents or, less ...
- 5,786
14
votes
Why are UK MPs targeting the prime minister and not the deal?
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' ...
- 2,147
14
votes
Accepted
Over what period must the no-confidence letters in the leader of the UK Conservative party be received?
There is no validity period as such - and indeed, in this current case, some MPs did write letters of no confidence very soon into the current Prime Minister's tenure. Sir Roger Gale, for instance, ...
CDJB♦
- 105k
13
votes
Accepted
Why did the Conservatives yield the Speaker chair?
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 ...
- 11.8k
12
votes
Accepted
What public statements has Theresa May made regarding fox hunting?
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 ...
- 115k
12
votes
By what process did it come about that 100 nominations are now required for the Conservative leadership election in October '22
Further to @Jontia's answer, the whole process flows from this clause in Schedule 2 to the Conservative Party Constitution:
Upon the initiation of an election for the Leader, it shall be the duty of ...
- 964
11
votes
What if nobody wants the job as leader of the UK Conservative Party?
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 ...
- 11.8k
10
votes
Accepted
Who will lead the country until there is a new Tory leader?
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 ...
- 522
10
votes
Accepted
Which Tory MPs have called for Dominic Cummings' resignation?
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, ...
- 5,106
10
votes
Accepted
Are there provisions for a tie in the Conservative leadership election?
There didn’t use to be; the House of Commons Research Briefing, Leadership elections: Conservative Party notes that in the first ballot of the 2001 leadership election, David Davis and Michael Ancram ...
CDJB♦
- 105k
9
votes
Accepted
Have any of the "hard Brexit" Tories who voted against May's Withdrawal Agreement in late March stepped forward to be PM?
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 ...
JJJ♦
- 38.9k
9
votes
What do Tory leadership candidates hope to gain by saying they will renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement?
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 ...
- 9,051
9
votes
Accepted
Haven't the DUP violated their confidence-and-supply arrangement?
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 ...
- 145k
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