first shot or last gasp?

by liberal japonicus

A little early, but I thought I'd put this thread up to talk about the UK elections on July 4th. I've been watching them intently, with the fascination that a Trekkie doing Duolingo Klingon might have for Enterprise registry numbers. In part, that's to avert my gaze from dealing with questions about that debate, but it also seems that there are so many different narratives that you can make your own story. Some that spring to mind:

• Just desserts for the Tories
• A night of the living dead scenario with Farage
• Labour heaven or hell (I think this is what is meant by supermajority in this context)
• Ed Davey as a LibDem ninja, picking off constituencies with tactical voting

I'm sure there are more. I've consumed so much media that any set of links I give would miss something. So I open this up and hope folks will toss up any links they like.

 

Comments

[CharlesWT]

This is an interview with Matthew Goodwin that covers the upcoming election in detail. Such as:

• Why did Rishi call the election now?
• Polling stats
• Rishi’s D-Day Blunder
• Where the Boris voters will go
• The Death of the Conservative Party
• Labour are still vulnerable
• The Tories need to work out what they stand for
• The Tories created Farage

...and a lot more.

The Definitive Conversation on the Election with Matt Goodwin (YouTube)

[liberal japonicus]

That youtube video, well...
Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians.

The host
" he [Sunak] wasn't elected by voters he was appointed he's part of a Global Financial Elite coming from you know banking Financial Services..."

fun fact, woke, either by itself or collocated with ideology, fringe, dogma or identity, appears 10 times in the transcript.

[CharlesWT]

Actually, it appears 13 times. :)

[CaseyL]

The problem is that Kisin is right about a global oligarchy.

There is one, united by a fierce desire to have all the wealth that exists and destroy any government that says otherwise. They have existing national models to study, chiefly Russia.

And they are laying waste to democracies the same way private equity firms are laying waste to the private sector (housing, human and veterinary medical care, retail, and online services.

[JanieM]

There is one, united by a fierce desire to have all the wealth that exists and destroy any government that says otherwise. They have existing national models to study, chiefly Russia.

Thank you, CaseyL. This makes outrage over the way they want tax cuts silly. "Tax cuts" are just a sort of polite conventional cover for "I want all of it and you can't have any."

I would make a snarky comment about anatomy compensation but this is a family friendly blog (most of the time) and my grandkids are in the room so I will leave it alone for now.

[CaseyL]

It's like that 15th (?) Century Pope, who basically gave the entire "New World," North and South, to Europe to colonize and convert to Christianity. Divvying up bits and saying, Spain gets this part, France gets that part, Portugal gets the big bit over there, and England can have this bit along the coast.

It's been done before, entire nations and peoples handed over for exploitation and enslavement by a favored few.

[Michael Cain]

It's like that 15th (?) Century Pope, who basically gave the entire "New World," North and South, to Europe to colonize and convert to Christianity. Divvying up bits and saying, Spain gets this part, France gets that part, Portugal gets the big bit over there, and England can have this bit along the coast.

IIRC, multiple popes divvied up much of the world between Spain and Portugal. France and England's response was to ignore the popes and take whatever they could control. (Eg, Portugal pushed very hard to be sure one of the popes gave them India; Britain paid little/no attention.) I seem to recall that the papal treaties were cited by Portugal in the 20th century in an attempt to claim part of Antarctica.

[JanieM]

@CaseyL: yes, it's been done plenty of times in human history, in various ways. But as someone who was raised Catholic (12 years of Catholic school), I have a particular hatred for the IPPL (International Pedophile Protection League, aka the RCC) and its current sway over this country.

Same group from the 15th century, still treating other human beings as trash under their feet.

We are always hearing about evangelicals as a political force in this country, but look who's on the Supreme Court -- 6 or 7 Catholics (Gorsuch is kind of ambiguous, Sotomayor is the only Catholic who isn't interested in forcing the rest of us to live by her beliefs), one Protestant justice, and one Jewish justice.

Funny, I was only 10, but I have a vivid memory of the worries in this country over how the pope was going to rule this country via JFK. As a little kid full of Catholic brainwashing, living in a Catholic bubble, I thought Catholics were just people, and I couldn't understand what the big deal was.

And since JFK wasn't in fact Sammy Alito....

Well, here we are.

[CaseyL]

Michael - Ah; thank for the correction.

Here it is:

Not a treaty as such for the New World, though the existing Treaty of Tortesillas set the precedent of European countries deciding they owned everything on Earth.

Then there was the Papal Bull:

"The Spanish royals petitioned the help of Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503) who, perhaps significantly, was Spanish.

"The pope obliged and issued a papal bull in 1493 declaring that the world should be divided by an imaginary line running between the north and south pole (as we would describe it today), cutting through an area 100 leagues (around 400 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands.

"Everything to the west of this line was Spain’s and everything to the east Portugal’s in terms of colonies now or in the future."

Today's oligarchs are re-creating the glory days of extractive colonialism.

[JanieM]

Cross-posted with Michael.

Regardless of all the history Michael cites, the popes and conquistadors et al. thought it was their "right" to give away the earth and the humans on it to whichever power centers they favored.

I leave the parallel with Alito and friends to be worked out by the reader.

GftNC wrote in the other thread: God, those six show that they are absolutely beyond shame, miles beyond.

They are the righteous, the wielders of God's will. Shame is not a relevant category. What they are miles beyond is understanding that it's not *their* world, it's *our" (meaning everyone's) world. And they have, it seems, amassed enough power to make that belief a reality.

[liberal japonicus]

random thought: Macron, in calling the snap election, seemed to have succumbed to the same misguided notion that drove Cameron to call for Brexit.

[CharlesWT]

Speaking of July 4th, even though the day after the 4t isn't a holiday citizens of the US have a constitutional right to take it.

[wonkie]

I can remember thinking that the future was developed nations as variations on China. I was twenty or so at the time or maybe thirty. Hard to say, since I'm seventy now and the past has gotten muddled. Anyway, I remember thinking that I would get old and die just about at the time that life became pointless due to oligarchs using technology to end all hope of government concerned with the public interest. Between that and the death of nature, I just figured the future was going to suck and was glad I wouldn't be around for it. Looks like I around for it, though.

[novakant]

So Starmer is making a last-minute pitch to Leave-voters or something, meh:

Britain will not rejoin EU in my lifetime, says Starmer. (...) Labour leader also says he cannot foresee circumstances where UK would re-enter single market or customs union

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/03/britain-will-not-rejoin-eu-in-my-lifetime-says-starmer

Since I'm in a safe Labour seat I'll vote Green anyway.

[novakant]

Here are the parties' ratings regarding the evironment:

https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/take-action/project-climate-vote/ranking/

[GftNC]

Excellent piece by Zadie Smith on the election:

Everybody is so, so tired. They’ve seen Conservative parties come and go, but these Conservatives are something else, as the centrist Tory Rory Stewart discovered when he tried to bring his conserving ideals to a party that barely understands the meaning of the word. These are not your 18th-century Tories. They’re not even your 20th-century Tories. These people are sheer ruination. They have bankrupted whole cities with their austerity measures, most notoriously Birmingham, slashing its budget by hundreds of millions since 2010. Low wages have plunged 900,000 British children into poverty.

This is the party that first plotted the piecemeal privatisation and hollowing out of the NHS and this is also the party that has accelerated its dismantling to such a frightening degree that it appears to have spooked itself. After all, people dying on waiting lists is very bad optics indeed and, pragmatically speaking, will probably lead to a trouncing at the general election. And just when they were so close to the finish line! When the long-awaited, unimaginably lucrative windfall of a privatised service was about to fall into the laps of all their good friends in the private healthcare companies, turning millionaires into billionaires!

Making Millionaires Billionaires. That’s really the slogan these guys should be running on. In a very real sense, it’s their only legacy. First, they succeeded in normalising the idea of a multimillionaire prime minister. Then they tried to make the argument that calling any attention to those multimillions amounted only to “the politics of envy”. Though perhaps they’re right. Certainly, anyone who has to deal with exploding energy bills, crumbling schools, food insecurity, poisoned water, hospital waiting lists and rapacious landlords is pretty envious at this point of the class of people for whom these problems will always remain mere newspaper headlines: a permanent oligarchical class, presently represented at the highest level of government, who live in an entirely different world.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/03/zadie-smith-on-hope-trepidation-and-rebirth-after-14-years-of-the-tories

[novakant]

The Sun is backing Labour for the first time since 1997:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/28935096/its-time-for-a-change/

Also, polling legend and political scientist John Curtice explained that voters don't care about taxes, they want more money invested in the NHS.

https://x.com/TaxJusticeUK/status/1808061410536051140

Moreover, Starmer needs to realise that his voters are much more pro-EU than he thinks.

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/what-do-labour-voters-want-a-labour-government-to-do-about-brexit/

[Girl from the North Country]

Hip hip hooray! Exit polls predict a huge majority, more than twice what BoJo got when the Tories called it a huge majority.

Now. Time to get to work: the NHS, the water companies, the energy companies, housing. Etc etc.

[Donald]

Starmer is a cynical hypocrite when it comes to Palestinians.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/keir-starmer-labour-antisemitism-criticism-israel-kinnock

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/05/keir-starmer-gaza-muslim-voters-labour

It is good that the Tories will be voted out. But Starmer seems like an empty husk, morally speaking.

[Girl from the North Country]

Results for Farage's party Reform are looking horrifyingly good according to the exit polls. I was very worried about this possibility, and the likely subsequent Trumpification of our politics (already in progress, but if Labour doesn't make dramatic changes soon it could go very badly for us).

[Girl from the North Country]

Starmer seems like an empty husk, morally speaking.

I don't think this is true, and I desperately hope I'm right.

[nous]

Holy crap! Liz Truss lost her seat to Labour, but Reform UK ate the lion's share of the votes she lost.

[novakant]

Starmer is a cynical hypocrite when it comes to Palestinians.

Having witnessed the whole "antisemitism in the Labour party" campaign, I would like to think that Starmer just didn't want to open this particular can of worms. His strategy of playing it safe has paid off (also on green issues and Brexit). Now that he's PM we'll see what happens.

He has gotten warning signs in that Labour lost three safe seats over Gaza:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/05/labour-loses-three-seats-to-pro-palestinian-candidates

Also, the vote share in his constituency (Holborn and St Pancras) went down quite a bit, challenged by a leftie.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/constituencies/E14001290

[novakant]

We should acknowledge what a historic win this is. Only three Labour PMs have been elected with a majority previously (Atlee, Wilson, Blair) and the swing from the 2019 election is astonishing:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results

Also, the Green party quadrupled its seats from 1 to 4! whoop whopp!

[novakant]

Say what you want about the UK, there still is a sense of decorum in politics:

Sunak

Whilst he has been my political opponent, Keir Starmer, will shortly become our prime minister. In this job, his successes will be all our successes, and I wish him and his family well. Whatever our disagreements in this campaign, He is a decent, public spirited man who I respect.

He and his family deserve the very best of our understanding as they make the huge transition to their new lives behind this door. And as he grapples with this most demanding of jobs in an increasingly unstable world.

[Pete]

I'm not going to pretend to understand UK politics, but did Labour win due to a shift or a split from Tory to Reform?

[Pete]

I should rephrase that. Did Labour win due to a shift to Labour? Or did a sizable number of Tories move to Reform? Apologies, I'm not even sure I made that clearer.

Or do I have it all sideways?

[novakant]

It's complex. In overall votes Labour didn't gain all that much (1.7 %):

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BRITAIN-ELECTION/RESULTS/lbvgllknbpq/

But then overall vote share doesn't matter all that much, since it's a "first past the post"system that's all about seats and Labour gained a whooping 30% of seats.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/5/uk-general-election-2024-why-do-some-popular-parties-win-so-few-seats

Lib Dems flipped 66 Con seats, while Reform might have ruined around 15 seats for the Cons and given Labour the edge.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2024/jul/05/eleven-charts-that-show-how-labour-won-by-a-landslide

[novakant]

sorry, Lib Dems flipped 60 seats

[Pete]

Thank you.

[nous]

If I'm reading the results correctly, it looks basically like everyone got sick of the conservatives and voted tactically to make sure that they lost. It may look like a Labour triumph from the number of seats that changed, but it was more a Conservative bloodbath in terms of vote share.

[Donald]

“ Having witnessed the whole "antisemitism in the Labour party" campaign, I would like to think that Starmer just didn't want to open this particular can of worms.”

An odd way to put it. The centrists in the Labour Party benefited very much from that issue, Starmer in particular. The can of worms in question is the idea that Israel has a horrible human rights record. Starmer was furious with Kinnock for raising the issue of settlements and Starmer himself initially supported a crime against humanity in wanting to cut off power and water. That tells you something about what he is—like many politicians, a bit of a sociopath.

But I am happy that the Tories were utterly humiliated. I gather that most of the other parties, left and right, picked up votes.

[Girl from the North Country]

The can of worms in question is the idea that Israel has a horrible human rights record

Donald, I think the can of worms in question is huge Jewish dismay and disgust with perceived antisemitism in Corbyn's bunch. I personally know Jews who are active in the Palestinian cause, who were so horrified by Corbyn's (apparent) antisemitism, and the way some Jewish MPs were treated by the party, that they committed to not voting for Labour (their natural home in almost all ways). I myself never thought that Corbyn was personally antisemitic, but there is no doubt that he often carelessly gave that impression, and his party machine certainly behaved appallingly to some Jewish MPs when they complained.

It was one of Starmer's key needs in decontaminating the Labour party and returning it to power to remove any appearance of antisemitism. And in his ruthless decontamination exercise on that and other subjects he did and said various things which one might wish he had not had to do. I believe his values and intentions are good, but he realised, above all, that he could achieve nothing for this country without getting elected, so everything was bent to that end. I'm with novakant on this: let's see what happens when he is in power (although I am overjoyed to see the Tories expelled, and so many of their big beasts unseated.).

[Lurker]

CaseyL,

The Treaty of Tordesillas was, in fact, a sign of papal weakness. The Portuguese and Spanish governments ignored the previously papal bull on the demarcation line, and settled for a new one. By Canon law, the papal bull should have been final and binding, but here, it was just a starting point for the negotiation of secular powers. The treaty was later ratified only by the Pope, but that didn't change anything.

Second, France, a Catholic power, completely ignored the treaty, and England, even under the Catholic queen Mary, did the same. This was a far cry from the imperial papacy of the High Middle Ages. Essentially, the Pope was reduced to the role of a neutral power offering its good services.

[GftNC]

Further to novakant's favourable opinion of Sunak's reference to Starmer in his resignation speech, this is what Jeremy Hunt said or posted. He just held his seat, but he had to move out of Downing Street today since he is (obviously) no longer the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Despite everything, our politics, even perhaps most of the Tory ministers, still shows almost no signs of Trumpification. (With the exception of course of Farage, who became an MP at the 8th time of trying, and brought 3 other Reform MPs with him).

https://x.com/exitthelemming/status/1809111892092207517/photo/1

[GftNC]

And the obligatory Marina Hyde:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/05/rishi-sunak-tories-truss-rees-mogg-shapps-liam-fox

[novakant]

FWIW Donald, Labour lost 4 seats over this and this was new foreign sec David Lammy today when asked about this:

Lammy said the Labour party “recognises the agony of communities who have seen the scenes coming out of Israel and Gaza”.

“All of us want to see an immediate ceasefire, and I will do all I can diplomatically to support Joe Biden in bringing about that ceasefire,” he added.

“We also want the hostages out and we want unfettered aid to get into Gaza and in the end we must work towards that two-state solution and have a clear path to progress.”

[novakant]

And this was Lammy in April:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/07/david-lammy-israel-gaza-serious-concerns

The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said he has “serious concerns about a breach in international humanitarian law” over Israel’s actions in Gaza as “far too many people have died”.

[Hartmut]

Any words from them about the newest official annexation of West Bank land by Israel (about 12 km² iirc)?

[novakant]

Come on, they haven't even moved in yet...

[novakant]

The new justice sec, Shabana Mahmood, warned earlier this year of a "loss of trust" from British Muslims over Labour's position on the Gaza war and urged the party to "rebuild relations with Muslim voters".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68244592

I think Starmer and the party are quite aware if the issues. Do I wish they were more radical? Yes. But that's just not going to happen. Also, it's a bit like Iraq: the real power is in Washington, while the UK provides a bit of ambient music.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"the UK provides a bit of ambient music"

No worries. I'm sure they'll Handel it.

[liberal japonicus]

I have to wonder if a factor in Sunak calling an early election was hoping that the splits in Labour because of Gaza could be taken advantage of, and the assumption was that later in the year, the issue (along with most of the Palestinians) would be taken off the table.

I think Starmer was (perhaps overly) cautious, but given the way the British mass media has been in relation to Labour, waiting to pounce on any mistake, he was quite possibly correct. Though Labour PR was 'Change', Labour stuck to a lot of pledges to _not_ change things (such as no taxes on 'working people') While this might be seen as cynical, seeing every interviewer try and get more details out of Labour spokespeople, basically with every other interview question as 'come on, you are going to raise taxes, aren't you?'

In fact, the increasingly desperate steps Tories took to try and smear Starmer (like this
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13590261/Conservatives-label-Keir-Starmer-time-Prime-Minister-revealed-not-diary-24-7.html ) suggests that Starmer was right in trying to avoid giving any handholds whatsoever.

But this is how it works. By enforcing a suffocating sense of caution on the left, the right gets away with murder.

[Pro Bono]

Labour's share of the vote in UK General elections:

2024: 33.8%, 411 seats, Starmer PM
2019: 32.1%, 202 seats, Johnson PW
2017: 40.0%, 232 seats, May PM
2015: 30.4%, 232 seats, Cameron PM
2010: 29.0%, 258 seats, Cameron PM
2005: 35.2%, 355 seats, Blair PM
2001: 40.7%, 412 seats, Blair PM
1997: 43.2%, 418 seats, Blair PM
1992: 34.4%, 271 seats, Major PM
1987: 30.8%, 229 seats, Thatcher PM
1983: 27.6%, 209 seats, Thatcher PM
(number of seats increased to 650 from here on)
1979: 36.9%, 269 seats, Thatcher PM
1974: 39.2%, 319 seats, Wilson PM
1974: 37.2%, 301 seats, Wilson PM
(number of seats increased to 635)
1970: 43.1%, 288 seats, Heath PM
1966: 48.0%, 364 seats, Wilson PM
1964: 44.1%, 317 seats, Wilson PM
1959: 43.8%, 258 seats, Macmillan PM
1955: 46.4%, 277 seats, Eden PM
(number of seats increased to 630)
1951: 48.8%, 295 seats, Churchill PM
1950: 46.1%, 315 seats, Attlee PM
(number of seats reduced to 625)
1945: 49.7%, 393 seats, Attlee PM
(The number of seats in the Commons was 640 after the 1945 general election)

[Pro Bono]

What we saw in this election was a realignment on the right, with disaffected former Conservative voters willing to support the Reform Party, for which the best one-word description is 'Trumpist', even knowing that it would lead to a Labour win. They see the Conservatives as hardly different to Labour.

I think there will be a realignment on the right in the next few years. Most likely the Conservatives will move towards Reform, resulting in an alliance, or even a merger. The next general election could be horrible.

[Girl from the North Country]

By enforcing a suffocating sense of caution on the left, the right gets away with murder.

Keir's "Ming vase" strategy was for the election. I'm hoping (and have some, also cautious, confidence of my own) that they have laid plans to be able to do things, in the first 100 days, which are significant even without having to have huge amounts of money spent on them. In his rather impressive first press conference, he said that they had been working and strategising about this for the last six months. And all the surprised comments about how his first cabinet is no different from his shadow cabinet amount to this: he is putting people into positions which they have been familiarising themselves with for six months.

Most likely the Conservatives will move towards Reform, resulting in an alliance, or even a merger. The next general election could be horrible.

I very much fear this is true. But I also think a certain (hopefully large) percentage of Reform voters will be prepared to switch if they see the country changing for the better in ways which matter to them: immigration, housing, education (the last two of which broken systems they attribute to increased immigration putting intolerable stress on public services).

History suggests it always pays to expect the worst, but I am cautiously optimistic. I do now strongly believe that Starmer is a decent guy, with many admirable qualities and values. As a friend said to me last night at a celebration dinner, this is the first time we have ever been led by a former human rights lawyer.

[liberal japonicus]

Keir's "Ming vase" strategy was for the election.

That's true, and I don't blame him for it, but I don't think it is something that can be switched on and off, but seems like a British version of Murc's law.

[GftNC]

On the subject of Starmer's moral character, this is cheering:

Starmer demonstrated a willingness to bring in outside expertise for his ministerial ranks, in an apparent return to Gordon Brown’s attempt to build a “government of all the talents”.

He has appointed former chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance as science minister, rehabilitation campaigner and businessman James Timpson as prisons minister and Richard Hermer, an expert on international law, as his attorney general.

Hermer’s appointment, welcomed by senior legal figures, comes as Starmer is likely to need regular advice on the Gaza conflict. Hermer was among a group of Jewish lawyers, including former president of the UK supreme court Lord Neuberger, to write a letter warning that international law must guide Israel’s response to Hamas’s 7 October attack.

The letter stated that Hamas’s actions “were not simply a moral outrage but an egregious violation of all norms of international law”.

It said that Israel had a clear right in international law to respond in self-defence and a duty to defend its citizens, but added: “To be clear, collective punishment is prohibited by the laws of war. Equally, international law requires combatants to ensure minimum destruction to civilian life and infrastructure.”

Adam Wagner, a human rights lawyer who co-signed the letter with Hermer, described him as “an international law expert [who] has lived and breathed human rights law since the Human Rights Act arrived”.

Sir Jonathan Jones, the former Treasury solicitor and permanent secretary of the government legal department, described it as an ­“excellent appointment”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/06/starmer-non-political-ministers-government-of-all-talents-patrick-vallance-james-timpson

[nous]

France and the UK are both serving as a bit of an antidote to political despair for me.

It appears that sometimes the center (well, center left) can still hold, and muster a bit of its own passionate intensity when it counts.

[liberal japonicus]

France and the UK are both serving as a bit of an antidote to political despair for me.

One thing that has bugged me a bit of late is a lot of the UK punditry I consume (which is through youtube) has this thread of how Europe is going to hell in a handbasket but here on Mother England are counteragent to that right wing tilt. I don't know, it may be true, but I feel like a lot of things in the UK provided the catalyst for this spasm of rightist nationalism. Am I being too harsh?

[wj]

Mother England as a counteragent to the right wing tilt is a bit rich. England got there first. (See Brexit.) As a result, they've gotten an up close view of what reactionary xenophobes bring. No surprise if they are recoiling now.

[Pro Bono]

As I tried to illustrate, the UK election result does not represent a major swing away from the right. Conservative and Reform votes combined comfortably exceeded Labour's.

The large Labour majority is a consequence of a realignment on the right. It's entirely possible for the outcome in a few years to be more unpleasant than anything we got from the Conservatives in the last parliament.

[nous]

I don't expect that the deep problems on the UK right are going away, or even getting better. I'm just glad that when the threat of a far right swing loom, the center-left and left have been coordinating their efforts enough to freeze out the fascists.

May we have that much grace in our coming moment.

[CharlesWT]

Sunak entered office promising technocratic policies to improve the economy, immigration, and the national health service. He had some success with the fiscal problems including halving inflation. But he ended up more like a strict high school principal than a reformer proposing policies such as criminalizing nitrous oxide, a smoking ban, considering banning smartphone sales to children under 16, and a return of national service.

For many voters, it was a vote against the incumbents, not a vote for Labor.

[wj]

I have impression, from across the pond and an entire continent besides, that any UK government that makes visible improvements to the National Health Service will be looking at big rewards. Is that anywhere close to accurate?

[novakant]

That's correct, wj.

Though I dislike Nigel Lawson (but his daughter makes great chocolate cakes), he was spot on when he said:

"The NHS is the closest thing the English people have to a religion".

[CharlesWT]

A problem for NHS is that the population is getting older. People our age will cost the NHS about ten times as much as someone in their teens or twenties.

There's an argument that the UK is becoming more conservative. The reason Labor won is that a lot of conservative voters stayed home or voted for Reform UK. Unless Labor makes some real progress on the problems the voters care about Reform UK and the Tories could pick up a lot of votes in the next election.

[liberal japonicus]

As I tried to illustrate, the UK election result does not represent a major swing away from the right. Conservative and Reform votes combined comfortably exceeded Labour's.

The large Labour majority is a consequence of a realignment on the right. It's entirely possible for the outcome in a few years to be more unpleasant than anything we got from the Conservatives in the last parliament.

An LGM post noted that Trump had a -65% approval among Tory voters and a +15% among Reform. So, god willing, they are going to have a lot more problems merging those two groups.

This really underlines how, for the US, Ronald Reagan, in uniting the two factions of Republicans, is a Primum movens to all the shit we are suffering now.

[GftNC]

More very cheering news on Keir's appointments and statements:

Starmer says recognition of Palestine is an 'undeniable right' in call with territory's president Abbas

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/starmer-palestine-gaza-recognition-israel-abbas-netanyahu/

Also:

Keir Starmer tells Benjamin Netanyahu of ‘clear and urgent’ need for Gaza ceasefire
New UK prime minister stresses importance of ensuring conditions for two-state solution

https://www.ft.com/content/765d20f4-690b-489d-bbcc-aacf20bdb07e

Also:

Jess Phillips has been appointed to the Labour government as a minister, focusing on tackling violence against women and girls and domestic violence.

The Labour MP has been a vocal campaigner on the subject, and has become known for reading out a list of all the women killed by men in the UK every year on International Women's Day in parliament.

Ms Phillips had the role of shadow domestic violence and safeguarding minister from 2020 to 2023 under Sir Keir Starmer but resigned over the party's stance on the Middle East conflict in November.

She was one of 56 Labour MPs - including eight frontbenchers - to vote in favour of an SNP motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East.

This defied the Labour whip, and so Ms Phillips had to step aside.

https://news.sky.com/story/jess-phillips-made-minister-following-frontbench-resignation-over-middle-east-13175726

Good God, appointing people who care about and know anything about their portfolio seems like a shocking innovation...

[Donald]

It’s good that he calls for a ceasefire, but the test will be if he is willing to cut off weapons. Taking a stance in favor of good things while making it clear that we will continue to support Israel in every way that matters has been an American specialty.

Behavior of the IDF—

https://www.972mag.com/israeli-soldiers-gaza-firing-regulations/

Charles— would the number of old people in the UK change if they completely privatize the system? Maybe by letting them die off more quickly?

[nous]

Donald - that's what they call a "market correction." Gotta balance supply and demand somehow.

[Girl from the North Country]

Donald, I was particularly interested in your reaction to all my Keir links etc (not just immediately above, but also @10.22 above). As I probably said or implied before, I think he had very tiny needles to thread (e.g. about antisemitism) to get elected and thus be able to do anything , but his actions so far seem to me to indicate hopeful signs. Let's hope that's right.

[Girl from the North Country]

Oh, by the way I gather that the Tories were fighting to block the ICCJ charges (not sure exactly how), and Labour has made it clear that they will reverse that.

[Donald]

Gftnc—

I am more hopeful about Starmer than before, because before he was really awful on this topic.

I have read other criticisms of him on domestic issues from the left, but I don’t feel like I know much about the British context on that so I have no strong opinion.

I hope these early signs really mean something.

[GftNC]

Honest to God, I am ricocheting between despair for America, and hope for us. Two articles in today's Guardian, the first about the likely content of the King's speech on Tuesday (the sovereign's speech lays out the legislative plan for the next parliament):

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/11/uk-ministers-preparing-kings-speech-containing-at-least-30-bills

And this one is about Hermer, the new Attorney General:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/11/never-distracted-by-politics-richard-hermers-surprise-appointment-as-attorney-general

I don't know if I can cope with this much hope/optimism. However, it is being strongly tempered by events stateside....