THE CHURCHILL-LORD HALIFAX MOMENT OF HISTORY: MAY GOVERNMENT IN ...
Last week's general election in the U.K. didn't quite go the way Prime Minister Theresa May and her Tory party had hoped, with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party picking up seats, leaving the Tories with a thin majority in Parliament, and having to retain power by climbing into bed with the Northern Irish DUP party, which, I am informed, is a "hard right" party because it's against gay marriage. But hey, bringing in boatloads of barbarians who like to execute gay people from the region of the world dominated by the Religion of Peace Love and Tolerance is ok. It's things like this that are the source of my confusions. The results intrigue me, because during last Friday's members' vidchat, some of our U.K. members were trying to make sense of the results for me, and of course, I ended up being more confused than before. My first suggestion to my British friends: write your constitution down somewhere. That way, you can keep track of how much of it you're ignoring. It works for us. As it is, it takes a barrister from the Inner Temple to figure it out, and even they have difficulty.
So back to the British elections and my confusion. One individual of my website informed me during the vidchat that many of the pro-Brexit voters turned to Labour in this general election, and away from the Tories. This makes a little sense to me (and only a little), because the whole Brexit thing was what brought down Mr. Cameron and installed Ms. May. But my impression was that the pro-Brexit voters pretty much spanned both large political parties in Great Britain, so I am even more confused as to why the Tories would have assumed that the Brexit-UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) voters would automatically in the Tory party pocket.
My attempts to get any sense from my U.K. members what the main issues (for them, or as they saw them) were, was pretty much a failure. So in lieu of having any solid idea on what just happened, and why, I went hunting through my email folder and found this article from the Globe and Mail shared by Mr. T.M., and I suppose it does just about as good a job as any in explaining things from the point of view of the British electorate:
May will work with ‘friends’ in Northern Irish DUP to achieve Brexit
There's a few weird things in this article, that make me wonder even more what's going on. One thing it points out is that Britons were mainly concerned with domestic issues, and the less-than-stellar performance of the May government in dealing with them. For example:
However, the election campaign quickly turned against Ms. May. The public didn’t focus on Brexit as much as she’d hoped and instead concentrated on domestic issues such as health care, education and taxation. Ms. May, 60, fumbled the announcement of a key social policy measure for older people, upsetting seniors and forcing her to make a hasty backtrack. She also ran into trouble over her plans to cut immigration, causing confusion with an unclear timetable. And she turned off some voters by refusing to debate Mr. Corbyn and by appearing robotic in a couple of televised town-hall-style sessions.
Terrorist attacks in Manchester and London also exposed her legacy of cutting 20,000 police officers during her six years as interior minister. Mr. Corbyn pounced on the police cuts and many rank and file officers complained about the lack of resources just as the country faced its biggest terrorist threat since the Irish Republican Army in the 1970s.
This of course reassured me, in that I was wondering if the terrorist attacks figured in the voting results at all. Some people I talked to said yes; others no. But there's a quasi-constitutional issue looming, not the least of which is because Ms. May now has a much weaker government - indeed one might argue, an unstable one - with which to negotiate with the European (dis)Union of its Brexit policy. Mr. Corbyn, the Labour leader captures this problem succinctly:
But there were already growing calls for her to resign.
“She wanted a mandate. Well, the mandate she’s got is lost Conservative seats, lost votes, lost support and lost confidence. I would have thought that is enough for her to go,” Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said.
Labour Finance Critic John McDonnell said the party was ready to try to form a minority government. “If we can form a minority government, I think we can have a stable government,” he said Friday. “We would be able to produce a Queen’s speech and budget based upon our manifesto, which I think could command majority support in Parliament, not through deals or coalitions but policy by policy.”
So why hasn't she gone? Whatever one makes of British politics (and it's always hazardous to guess), I just get the feeling that there is a lot more behind this one paragraph than the standard, traditional, "visit-of-the-winning-party-leadership-to-see-the-Queen":
“I have just been to see Her Majesty the Queen, and I will now form a government – a government that can provide certainty and lead Britain forward at this critical time for our country,” Ms. May said after her Conservatives failed to cling to a majority.
I don't know about you, but I just cannot help feel a slight tingle of deja vu here, and feel that we're looking at another Royal Palace-Churchill-Lord Halifax moment of history. There across the channel is the German colossus, astride Western Europe, making demands and extending olive branches and hoping Halifax wins the Royal lottery and forms a government (after all, he's the Palace favorite, and the Palace is, after all, occupied by a bunch of Germans, though over the last 150 years, almost all traces of the German accent have disappeared. The de-Nazification program(me) apparently has not been 100% successful, because some of them want to become viruses to wipe out whole swaths of the human population.). And then of course there's the radical Liberal-today-Tory-tomorrow Churchill. Churchill, as we know, won the Royal favo(u)r and the then-existing version of "hard Brexit" won out, though there were times that the Churchill government's grasp on power, behind the scenes, was not as secure as it was maintaining in public, as Britain was unceremoniously ejected from Greece, and a fellow by the name of Rommel began to cause more than a few headaches in Africa. Churchill was banking on America, not a German-led Europe, and again, the deja vu is too weird not to notice, for after the Brexit vote, the U.K. was thinking about "What to do with the Commonwealth," and the answer was straight out of Cecil Rhodes and Chatham House: "Let's invite America to become an associate member."
Of course Ms. May now has her work cut out for her, and frankly, it will be interesting to see if her government survives, and how long it survives. Her "war cabinet" is already grumbling, just as Mr. Churchill's began to grumble after the first - or is this the second? (or the third if you count 1814-1815) This is all getting so confusing - Fall of France (see Emmanuel Macron). And Corbyn? Should a Corbyn minority government ever form, I suspect its days, too, will be very numbered, and for many of the same reasons.
The parallels are not, of course, exact. May is no Churchill, nor is Mr. Corbyn, and neither are a very good imitation of Lord Halifax. Both are too bland and dull to be Churchill, and are too sharp and radical to be a Halifax. But the situation is, overall, bizarrely similar: a united German-led Europe, threats of invasion from barbarians with little grounding in western culture and institutions, governments of appeasement, and so on.
In any case, the results are a muddle.
Leaving the British to do what they do best in a tight place: muddle through.
See you on the flip side...
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“My first suggestion to my British friends: write your constitution down somewhere. That way, you can keep track of how much of it you’re ignoring.”
First things first Dr Farrel. It doesnt exist.
The United Kingdom does not have a Constitution. We have a Magma Carta that’s somewhere in the 800 years old range.. and a mix match of documents.
I wonder if Brexit has anything to do with writing a Constitution..
On the contrary, MOST legal scholars in Britain would say you DO have a constitution, it just is buried in precedent and not written down. A constitution does NOT need to be written.
🙂 Tell that to Washington, Franklin and Jeffersen.
I’m not a legal scholar, so I throw myself in at the deep end and lets hope I can swim 🙂
.. it’s only my opinion man. (in a The Dude voice..)
There is no constitution.
There are private and public acts of parliament, (written up by Parliament, debated then signed by HRH Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) but none of them have overall authority as to dictate future conduct.
Which is exactly what the problem is.
As you say yourself, write it down and find out how much is ignored..
I think that the Magma Carta got voted out of ‘relevance’, but at least they stuck with the “All men ..(and women of course..) get tried in a court of their peers.. which essentially castrated the court of the King.. which was a good thing.. I think the Americans based a lot of their constitution on the principles of the Magma Carta..
I am sorry you are just plain wrong.
How about.. 60/40 wrong?
http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/written-constitution
But we still dont have a written constitution.
You’re MISSING my point that just about every legal scholar I know, states is true: a constitution is NOT a written piece of paper any more than a CONTRACT has to be. THey can be written down and codified, or not. The English constitution, which has evolved over centuries, is NOT written down. But it DOES and HAS existed. A constitution, to give a rough definition, is an agreed upon or customary system of government.
Here is BLACKSTONE HIMSELF: But, happily for us of this island, the British constitution has long remained, and I trust will long continue, a standing exception to the truth of this observation. For, as with us, the executive power of the laws is lodged in a single person, they have all the advantages of strength and dispatch, that are to be found in the most absolute monarchy: and as the legislature of the kingdom is entrusted to three distinct powers, entirely independent of each other; first, the king; secondly, the lords spiritual and temporal, which is an aristocratical assembly of persons selected for their piety, their birth, their wisdom, their valour, or their property;[15] and thirdly, the house of commons, freely chosen by the people from among themselves, which makes it a kind of democracy; as this aggregate body, actuated by different springs, and attentive to different interests, composes the British parliament, and has the supreme disposal of every thing; there can no inconvenience be attempted by either of the three branches, but will be withstood by one of the other two; each branch being armed with a negative power, sufficient to repel any innovation which it shall think inexpedient or dangerous.
Here then is lodged the sovereignty of the British constitution; and lodged as beneficially as is possible for society. For in no other shape could we be so certain of finding the three great qualities of government so well and so happily united.
Labour enticed the young 18-24 year old voters with free tuition fees. The problem is that nothing is free, someone has to pay. Where would the money come from for this promise alone?… Higher taxes or Labour would borrow the money. Many young voters voted because of this promise alone.
Labour promised to provide all primary school children with free school meals. Again, where would the money come from? When questioned, Corbyn was unclear how he would fund the extra costs of his pledge to scrap tuition fees, which would cost the UK £9 Billion.
The last time Labour left office, Liam Byrne left a note to the new government saying “Dear chief secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck! Liam.”……that was referring to the fact that the UK budget deficit was bigger than the budget deficit in Greece .
The Iraq war based on the lies Labour leader Blair fed the public, cost the UK £29 Billion, and an audit of British military campaigns since the end of the Cold War found the 2003 Iraq invasion and occupation had helped spread terrorism.
Labours Tony Blair has given £10 million to a campaign to stop Brexit. Alistair Campbell who was Blair’s spin doctor says in The New European newspaper which is supported by Blair, and Fabian Society member ‘Chuka Umunna et al… ‘ ‘Brexit can be stopped’.
Chuka Umunna who in 2013 after using an alias on an exclusive social networking site, asked for advice on how to avoid “trash” meaning ordinary people…these are the Labour members who voters are really voting for.
A number of former New Labour ministers and advisers have secretly been working on a campaign to push for a second referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, and Richard Bransons Virgin Group has been bankrolling it. Labour’s Blair called on voters to elect anti-Brexit MPs on June 8 – no matter which party they were from.
Labour’s Blair and his ilk do not appear to understand democracy. A vote for Labour, is a vote for Blair and his ilk.
Corbyn has an “unprecedented” £30 billion black hole in his spending plans, leading economists have warned that he will bring a level of state intervention not seen since the Second World War.
I wonder how much of our recent history is understood by the young voters who have been enticed by Corbyn.? I fear for my grandchildren.
I really don’t see how a vote for Corbyn is a vote for Blair…
I’d also like to see some evidence propping up your claim that the young just voted because of the promise of free tuition. Yes that does appeal to them, but frankly I find your comment a little disrespectful.
A lot of the youth I have spoken with are angry about our foreign policy, about imperialism, about the US/Uk deep state connections to terrorism. Much of the vote for labour is anti establishment. And central to all of this is economics, of an established order vs a co-opted multi-polar global economy.
Quite simply, one campaign was flat, empty, robotic, lacking in vision and leadership, centralised, heavily controlled and artificial. The other was energised, open and exclusive, built on a grass roots social movement where people are seeking change.
Economists, somewhat like historians, are ten to the pound. Maybe the young just voted labour because it felt right, because it felt human.
This maybe crazy, but it looks like PM May deliberately tanked this election in order to derail Brexit. Why Corbyn and Labour has come across in the press as an anti-Brexit party is beyond me, but the Deep State may have thrown May (and the Tories) under the bus to set the stage for a second Brexit referendum, which will be sure not to pass.
That’s possible Ryan but there seems to be another part of the UK deep state that wants Brexit and will pursue this, “come what May”.
“So back to the British elections and my confusion.”
I ran across the best (pre-election) article I have seen on untangling that mess. Very thorough, and discusses each election outcome PLUS what it means:
thesaker dot is/uk-general-election-2017-featuring-blairite-rats-and-yellow-tories/
“…various scenarios to contemplate:
(1) Tory ‘Fraud-proof majority’ = Hard Tory Brexit + Scottish INY2
(2) Tories Biggest Party: Tory-lib ‘unity coalition’ = A50 Referendum.
(3) Labour Biggest Party: Blairite Rats leave Labour for Lib. Dems.4 and then form a ‘Tory-Lib. Unity Coalition’ = A50 Referendum.
(4) Corbyn Victory = ‘Lite & Fluffy Brexit’ + Scottish Devo-Max + full-spectrum sabotage from all establishment factions.”
Must Reading…
It’s a madhouse all throughout the Western European governments and their colonial settler states around the World. A strange fruit of leaders are at the helm of state of which ironically Trump looks the more competent of bunch whom the gods would destroy the first make (stupid)mad.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/
Apart from the poor SNP result, another aspect that has not pleased the globalists-at-any-cost is the advance of Labour under Corbyn, thus disarming the Blairite camp and hopefully leaving the warmongering former prime minister time to go do his “mongering” elsewhere (preferably offworld).
At least “the downfall” could become very entertaining if Boris Johnson replaces Theresa May.
“leaving the Tories with a thin majority in Parliament,”
No, the Tories don’t have a majority in the Parliament, to form a government, they’ll have to have a partner–likely the Ulster Unionists from the UK part of Ireland. The founder of that party, Paisley, called the Pope the anti-christ, to the Pope’s face. A good partner to have. Sarcasm.
Pro-Brexit voters supporting labor is easy t o understand for two reasons; the system isn’t working for them, therefore they vote for the opposition, Labor, and separately Labor lead by an actual leftist is much more appealing to average workers.
My apologies… I meant to write “thin majority with DUP participation”, which I only alluded to in the earlier article. Thus: Tories+DUP=thin majority.
After this latest Western political debacle and amid massive societal upheaval and rudderless, ineffective and self-destructive policies that only further aggravate tensions and more deeply entrench already insurmountable problems, I can only return to your recent comments that you suspect that the Arab world is being set up for a fall and again underscore that one had better shift perspective and focus on the West, which is already in free-fall and only gathering momentum to hit terminal velocity with no brakes in sight.
I don’t consider the prospect of Boris Johnson as PM a brake. I don’t consider Emmanuel Macron a brake. I don’t consider Komradin Merkel, ensconced like toenail fungus, a brake. I could go on but I think by now the point is made.
These “leaders” are anything but; they’re followers and figure heads and talking heads. Power has accreted to the corrupt and the whole of Western society has been infaltiled the better to exploit it and lives cosseted in a tawdry matrix of threadbare lies; its youth has been brainwashed and bamboozled by Frankfurt School time bombs planted by the now defunct USSR into a frenzied defense of the superfluous which bodes even greater ill for the future.
Muddle through? I don’t think so. This is just the beginning of a new, more virulent stage of decadence and decline.
infaltiled=infantilized
The Brits were all in a tizzy over this election and the terrorist attacks, especially the massacre of the little girls, then the futball (soccer) match started and they forgot all about it. Some Brits even went down to the local kebab shop and got some snacks made with ground bits of missing native British girls.
I think a distracting war with Argentina or even Spain would keep British citizens minds off the muslim invasion and the tightening police state.
I got to put in a plug for this astute millennial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wHVTLwCwz8
His political commentary is right up there with Dr. F. It gives one hope that we have not lost an entire generation to various oligarchical engineered mind cancers.
Yeah, I like the guy too. I just had to wait until I was no longer distracted by his bare chest under that black leather jacket (this is a look that always works better if one’s chest does not look like the Steve Carell wax job in “The 40 Year Old Virgin”).
Somebody get the guy a conservative shirt to match his conservative views 🙂
Phil the Thirll,
Shirts are overrated. All clothes in fact are just a yahweistic protocol. I didn’t wear my first shirt until I went to meet my wive’s parents. This youtube is just demonstrating he doesn’t give a d*** about customs. He also doesn’t give a d*** about stepping on the third rail of post WWII culture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qajn-uFt5PY
Great polemic on the holocaust.
VB, you are absolutely correct, and thank you for reminding me. I have been considering a kilt for some time, because I can just imagine how form and function are exquisitely joined in such a minimalist garment, yet at the same time, I am aware of the fact that clothing gets its first mention in that convoluted garden-of-edin tale, and there is a nagging thought that bubbles up from my unconscious every now and then…why do I even wear this stuff anyway?
A crazy-quilt kilt, now…yep. Get a bunch of my old Pendletons and cut those things up into a new…
Fashion
Turn to the left!
Fashion
Turn to the right!
Oooh, fashion….we are the bourgeois and we’re coming to town,
Beep Beep!
Now when it comes to the holo-thingie, I stand with Ahmadinejad, whom Styxenhammer stands with, as well. The “shower door” at Auschwitz has no locking doorknob, and it has a pane of glass in it, too. One would think they would have fixed that detail (as well as a few others) before allowing tourists into the place!
Was listening to him last night. Like Abba, best not to look at the outfit in order to enjoy the full genius.
My my! At Waterloo Napoleon did surren-dah!
Oh yeah! An’ I have met my dess-tin-y in quite a sim’lah way!
The hiss-tory book on the shelf
Is always re-peatin’ it-seeeeeellllllff…
WATERLOO! I was defeated, ya won the wah!
(grinding saxophone lick)
WATERLOO! Promise to love ya forevah moh!
(thumping piano chord)
yes, Cate, I agree. Genius.
Just to be clear: the kebab cannibalism is a true story:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1552482/Missing-girls-body-put-into-kebab.html
The most vile thing I ever read.
Really sad and its only the tip of the iceberg, and if Sessions would give up his obsession with marijuana, I think we might see some change,s but the investigation will have to be well protected since everybody in dc is connected in some way. Tough days ahead. db
as I was scrolling down, I was thinking.. he’s not joking there. thnks for the link. Holy crap..I come from Preston..
The main thing to understand about the British people is that the Welsh and Irish have *always* been more politically engaged than the English; the Scots to but they are a separate country in the Union. The ordinary, run-of-the-mill Englishmen only engages when something affects them personally.
There have only been two nationwide referendums in the UK; both connected to the EEC. My first vote in life was in the 1975 EEC referendum and my choice was No; this was also the choice of the poorest areas of the country. The next referendum my choice was No; the same choice made, yet again, by the poorest areas of the country. One only has to look at a comparison map, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Communities_membership_referendum,_1975 , to read history’s lesson.
The UK lived with Irish terrorism for decades and life carried on as normal. I continued to do my weekly shop in Aldershot, patiently waited for the Wellington Centre to re-open after every ‘scare,’ until a government would actually address the issue.
People, in general, don’t vote on the knee-jerk issues; they vote on things they care about. The National Health Service is one of those things and it is, currently, being made *very* conspicuous by it’s absence in the various speculations. May also alienated many senior citizens, who have always voted Tory; her miscalculations are endless. Our ‘socialism,’ today, is not a re-run of the past; it is a realistic approach to the future. We don’t ‘resent’ paying tax to help each other but we do ‘resent’ going through austerity that only impacts on us alone.
Sorry for the long comment, but it’s a complex subject. For the purpose of disclosure, I am a Welsh, socialist/libertarian (with some right of centre opinions), a senior citizen, female and a Capricorn. ☺️
“the Northern Irish DUP party, which, I am informed, is a “hard right” party because it’s against gay marriage. But hey, bringing in boatloads of barbarians who like to execute gay people from the region of the world dominated by the Religion of Peace Love and Tolerance is OK”
Hardly surprising that the same contradictory policies are being promoted with equal hysteria by one party here in Australia — almost as if we’re dealing with a global force that cares nothing for gays, marriage, refugees or religious tolerance; they just want universal incoherence.
MEDIUM OCTANE SPECULATION. Most of the media are putting out the story that May’s incompetence lost her party’s seats. Could be, none of these front men/women are exactly Churchills much less Einsteins. However, as PM and wannabe Chief of Police, May MUST have had access to the real situation in the various localities. Under the British first-past-the-post voting system, it often doesn’t take many votes, gained fairly or with rigging, to change the national results. Time will tell if she was under pressure by parties unknown to call an apparently unnecessary early election and conduct such a poor election campaign.
One interesting aspect is the heavy loss of seats in Parliament by the so-called Scottish Nationalists who wanted to hand Scotland over to Brussels and Berlin. Apparently – assuming that there was no widespread vote-rigging – many voters got fed up with the SNP.
If we go back to pre-snap election discussions on Brexit, the SNP with its many MPs was widely touted as being the main obstacle to Brexit, especially son the communications level.
My speculation is this: all of the above, together with Corbyn’s quiet support of Brexit, seems to indicate that for those British oligarchs having Brexit as part of a long-term strategy, the actual party in power does not matter very much, as long as the goals are achieved. As a matter of fact, in less than 2 years the pro-EU consensus once so strong in Tory and Labour circles seems to have greatly declined, leaving the euro-oligarchs’ torch in the hands of a diminished SNP and other minorities.