#uk politics

There’s a lot of interest at the moment on who exactly these mysterious 10 MPs are that the Conservatives have teamed up with to get their majority. A lot of misinformation is spreading, so here’s a quick run-down of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.

• The DUP were established in 1971 by Ian Paisley, the leading figure for loyalism during the Troubles. Although he would later be instrumental in the peace process in Northern Ireland, in 1971 he was involved with paramilitary groups fighting to keep NI under British rule.
• Theyopposed the Good Friday Agreement due in party to the allowance for Sinn Fein to hold government. Other reasons included clauses for the early release of paramilitary political prisoners and lack of accountability of the Northern Ireland Executive and the North/South Ministerial Council.
• The majority of their support is in the North of Northern Ireland, with border constituencies voting in Sinn Fein MPs in the 2017 general election.
• Theirleader is Arlene Foster, who serves as the First Minister of Northern Ireland.
  
• Theyadvocate for the union of Northern Ireland with the UK. Arlene Foster said during the 2017 election campaign that she does not intend for NI to have a border poll (a referendum on reunification of Ireland) in her life-time.
  
• The DUP were at the centre of the Renewable Heating Incentives scandal. Arlene Foster, as Minister for the department in charge of the scheme, was heavily implicated. The poorly worded RHI scheme went over budget by £400m and the poor structure of the scheme made it prime fodder for fraudsters. Foster personally campaigned to keep the scheme open even after experts pointed out its flaws.
• In 1977 the DUP campaigned against the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland. They no longer follow this policy, although many DUP members still see homosexuality as a sin due to strong religious ties.
• In terms of Brexit, the DUP oppose a hard Irish borderandsupport a soft-Brexit.
• The DUP support triple-lock pensions and the Winter Fuel Allowance, in direct opposition to current Conservative policies.
• They have vetoed same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland since 2015, despite its legalisation in the rest of the UK and in the Republic.
• The DUP are strongly ‘pro-life’, and unanimously voted against a proposal by Labour to protect women from prosecution who abort their foetuses using pills bought online. Their stance on abortion also led to opposition to extra funding for international family planning programmes.

tl;dr The DUP are social (very) conservatives but will not support the Tories in every vote.

Thank you for your understanding during our brief absence. 

This week we’ll be covering the second round of Brexit negotiations, updates on the leaks from government meetings, as well as exploring more of the issues young voters care about.

So, we want to know: what is it you care most about in politics? Tell us here.

New IFS research today shows that the average debt a student has on graduating university has risen to over £50,000. For the students coming from the lowest income families, this can be as much as £57,000 with £5,800 of that purely from interest accrued since starting their courses.

Under the Conservative government, student loans have been increased from £3,000 per year to £9,000 per year. Maintenance grants for low-income students have been replaced by extra loan allowance. Student loans are set to increase in line with inflation (or by £250 per year) for the foreseeable future, starting in September, regardless of teaching quality.

The IFS sees only two winners from the current system, and it’s certainly not the students who benefit. Students earning the minimum amount of repayments - which has been frozen at £21,000 for several years - are estimated to be 30% worse off than their equivalents under the old loan system. No, the only beneficiaries are the universities (although not 90% of their employees) and the government.

So what do you think, voters? How can we, as a voting force, work together to end this stranglehold the UK government has on us? We want to hear your ideas to fix what is becoming a very, very broken system, one which stifles recent graduates and the UK economy as a whole. 

Young Voters UK is today officially committing to fighting Conservative policies on student finance.

Two big stories in UK political news today, both in the form of Queen’s Speech Amendments. Last week, we gave you a quick overview of the 24 bills Theresa May’s Tories included in their Queen’s Speech, 8 of which focused on Brexit.

Today, two big amendments were put to a vote in the House of Commons.

First was a proposal led by Labour’s Stella Creasy to allow women from Northern Ireland to get free abortions in England. Currently, abortions in Northern Ireland are banned unless in extreme circumstances of poor health, and the women who travel to England for the procedures have to pay around £900. It passed the house and will now come into law.

The amendment - which was backed by more than 50 MPs from across the major parties - means Northern Irish women will now have their abortions in England covered by the NHS. Fairly reasonable, when you consider most of these women pay the taxes that fund the service. It is estimated the amendment will cost approximately £1 million per year.

Second was a Brexit-based amendment led by Labour’s Chuka Umunna. This amendment suggested the UK stay in the single market, which guarantees free movement of goods, services, money and labour within the EU. Jeremy Corbyn called on all Labour MP’s to abstain from the vote and threatened they would be sacked from any ministerial roles if they rebelled. So far we are aware of 3 Labour frontbenchers who have been sacked from their roles for not abstaining.

While parties such as Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats showed unanimous support for the amendment, it was easily defeated due to Labour abstentions. 

Then all that remained was the vote on the final Queen’s Speech, the last piece of the puzzle to make Theresa May the undisputed Prime Minster of the United Kingdom. With the support of the DUP’s 10 MPs, the Queen’s Speech passed.

tl;dr Good news for women, bad news for business, great news for Theresa May

If you want to be in with a chance of winning our political goodie bag - featuring books, posters and great music - reblog this postandfollow Young Voters UKbyJune 30th. 

We’re celebrating high youth voter turnout at GE2017. Are you with us?

It’s been the big will-they-won’t-they romance of the summer so far, but Theresa May has finallysnagged her woman. Something the DUP probably wouldn’t approve of in any other circumstances…

Yes,the Tories have reached a deal with the DUP, ending over two weeks of talks. 

Firstly, the good news: it is nota coalition. In the UK, coalitions have been very rare - the 2010 Lib-Con coalition was the first for 70 years - but usually they involve the smaller party being allowed to nominate ministers and propose their own bills. 

This is not that. 

The DUP have entered into a confidence and supply deal with the Tories. In return for £1bn extra funding for Northern Ireland, the DUP have agreed to support the Tories in votes of confidence and in budgetary matters. It is likely the 8 DUP MPs will be allowed to vote with their conscience when other policy issues are debated.

In return, the DUP are allowed a little influence over some Tory policy - the Conservatives have already agreed not to scrap Triple Lock Pensions and to find an alternative to means testing winter fuel tax. 

So is there bad news? If you’re a Labour voter, yes. If you’re LGBT, you might think so. If you don’t like seeing a woman embroiled in financial scandal being bought for £1bn, almost certainly. And we’ve yet to see how the Tories will defend their neutrality clause in the Good Friday Agreement…

In the end, it’s what the deal symbolises which is concerning. The Tories have clung to power by spending £1bn of tax payer money that, just a few months ago, wasn’t available for education, the health service or social housing. 

For more information on the DUP from out NI reporter, check out our article: Who Are the DUP? 

tl;dr Theresa May has finally pulled Arlene Foster, but it’s not a formal arrangement

Long-awaited (and for once not all that long-winded) the Queen’s Speech was finally revealed at 11:30am today. So just what did it contain?

Brexit

8 out of the 24 bills in the speech related to plans for UK policy after leaving the EU. We’ve broken down the main aspects of each bill below:

1. Repeal Bill – turns EU law into UK law so UK Parliament can make changes
2. Customs Bill – UK takes control of import and exports
3. Trade Bill – lets the UK make trade deals with other countries
4. Immigration Bill – allows UK government to end free movement of EU nationals into UK
5. Fisheries Bill – gives UK control of its waters and fishing quotas
6. Agriculture Bill – a system will be put in place to protect UK famers
7. Nuclear Safeguards Bill – creates a UK nuclear safeguards regime to replace the EU one
8. International Sanctions Bill – gives government final say on imposing non-UN sanctions to the UK and ensures sanctions can still be challenged
   

Economy

This was a stripped back speech, with very little change in economic policy. Only 5 bills related to the economy:

1. Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill – service stations will, at some point, need to install charge points for electric vehicles
   
2. Space Industry Bill – new commercial spaceflight to be licensed, including rockets
   
3. HS2 Phase 2A Bill – the high speed railway will extend to Crewe sooner than planned
   
4. Smart Meter Bill – every household will be offered smart meters by 2020
   
5. National Insurance Contributions Bill – allows for the changes announced in 2016 budget

Other

There were 11 miscellaneous policies. More notable bills include the Courts Bill, which will remove the right of partners accused of domestic violence to cross-examine their alleged victim in court. 

On a similar vein, the Draft Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill will introduce new measures to protect victims of domestic violence. 

For younger voters, the Data Protection Bill is very interesting - it will require social media accounts to delete information held about you at the age of 18.

What does this all mean?

Legally, not very much. Not until next week anyway, when the MPs in the House of Commons will have the chance to vote for or against each bill individually. With a majority not yet secured, there’s a chance not all of these proposed bills will pass. Even then, these are just a snapshot of proposed government policy over the next 2 years.

What the Queen’s Speech does tell us is that the Tories are not having a very happy time at the moment. A large chunk of their manifesto has gone missing:

• New grammar schools
  
• The ‘dementia tax’
  
• Scrapping triple lock pensions
  
• Replacing free school lunches with free breakfasts
  
• Energy price caps
  
• Voting to remove ban on fox hunting
  
• Means testing winter fuel payments
  

The suggestion is that the Tories did not think they would be able to pass these policies through the Commons - the more liberal parties were all very vocal in their opposition to these proposals during election campaigning, and even the DUP do not agree with scrapping triple lock pensions.

Through the Queen’s Speech, we’ve been given a little glimpse of the state of the Conservative Party: a monstrous papier-mâché parody of an unpopular manifesto.

They’re the focus of every political blogger today: just what is going on with the DUP.

Just last week, they were an unknown fringe party this side of the Irish Sea.

On Thursday, they looked like the most important party in Britain, that final puzzle piece that would give the Tories their majority in Parliament - if some sort of deal could be arranged.

Now? That deal looks very, very shaky.

The Queen’s Speech, after a 2 day postponement, is tomorrow. An official deal with the DUP has not yet been agreed. Without some sort of official deal in place, it will be a lot more difficult for the Tories to pass their laws through the House of Commons.

The DUP say the UK are taking them for granted. At this stage, it looks like one of the major stumbling blocks is the DUP’s demand for the removal of air passenger duty in NI (the tax you pay to fly from UK airports, payable on booking). The Tories are hesitant to consent to this in case it leads to similar calls from Scotland, Wales and England.

It looks like the public will have to wait until tomorrow to see if the DUP deal can be made in time.

Whatever’s going on, it’s certainly nothing strongnorstable.

Sources:

• The Guardian
  
• BBC News
  
• The Telegraph
  

Yes, it’s the first day of the long anticipated Brexit negotiations and the first in our series of Brexit related posts. First days are always tricky. Both parties sizing the other up, looking for an angle to put their team ahead - so how did everyone get on?

Representing the UK is David Davis, veteran MP for the Conservative party and May’s Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. His approach? Well, no one reallyknows. It looks like we’re in for a ‘hard’ Brexit, with Davis opening the discussion with talk of leaving the customs union and the single market - to the universal agreement of the EU team. When it comes to borders, movement and human rights? No word yet.

What we do know is that UK’ first aim is to build the Brexit schedule on theirterms, not the EU’s. The UK went into today’s talks hoping to get permission to discuss trade agreements with various EU countries at the same time as discussing the possible ‘divorce bill’ they might or might not owe. This is the big power play of the day - whoever gets their way gets the upper hand going forward.

And the winner is?

On the first day of negotiations, the winner was the EU by a landslide. Chief negotiator for the EU, Michael Barnier, stated that the UK, as the leaving party, were not in a position to determine the timetable. 

Compounding the strategic loss, the Conservative government has also suggested it will U-turn on its stance not to guarantee the right to remain of EU citizens currently in the UK. Theresa May herself is expected to fly out to Brussels over the next few days to unveil the reversal. 

The rights of EU citizens is something many opponents to the Tories promised in party manifestos leading into GE2017, particularly Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. Maybe we’re seeing the first signs of the impact of May’s hung parliament.

And if things didn’t look like they could get any worse for Davis and the UK, the issue of the Irish border just became a whole lot more complicated. Negotiations are now expected to take a lot longer than the UK team predicted. How this news will affect the DUP’s deal with the Conservatives is yet to be seen.

Join us tomorrow for another edition of The Brex-Files

Sources:

• The Guardian
  
• BBC News
• The Telegraph

British nationalists love to pretend Scottish nationalist are ethnic nationalist, but they’ll then turn around wish for a Polish Jewish person’s home country to be invaded because he works for the SNP in Scotland.

Olaf has had a shitload of abuse for the past few days because British nationalism is inherently xenophobic.

£11 hooped.

wespers:

more political commentary that nobody asked for: don’t tell people from the uk who are upset about the election results that “it will be okay.” when trump won in 2016, people kept saying that, and… it wasn’t okay. it still isn’t okay. the policies and laws that these politicians enact have major effects on people’s lives. people diebecause of these policies. people lose healthcare, the economy is hurt and people lose their jobs and their homes, mental health is affected, not to mention the additional danger that poc, disabled people, muslims & jewish people, and lgbtq+ people (especially the trans/nb community) are put in… it is perfectly valid and understandable and, honestly, expected, for people to be scared right now. to be anxious. i hope it’ll be okay, i genuinely hope that things won’t go as poorly for the uk as they have been for the us these past couple of years. but you are allowed to be afraid, you are allowed to be angry, and if you need to talk, please don’t hesitate to reach out to someone. i love you all.

mischif:

faeriesfanficblog:

pratchettquotes:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. […] The thing was that goodboots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms

The UK based food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe recently tweeted a thread highlighting how official inflation figures didn’t account for the astronomical price rises in the cheapest products.

Off the back of that, they had the idea to do an index of their own based on their own experiences of the cheapest products that many people rely on having increases way above inflation or being removed altogether.

This isn’t just a feeling, Jack literally kept the receipts. They have over 10 years of shopping receipts kept for their food blog.

The twitter thread took off and has now had over 22 million views.

The idea of a separate UK index of everyday products people on lower incomes rley on, that reflects the actual affect of price changes on ordinary people’s finances, has completely taken off and is now being covered in all the major news outlets. It is also being supported by a whole range of organisations, camapaigners, retail industry professionals, data analysts and others.

Jack has put out a call for people in the UK to send their old shopping receipts to add to the exissting data for tracking historic price changes.

Today Jack tweeted that they had permission from the Pratchett estate for the use of the preferred name for the new project: 

It will be called the Vimes Boot Index.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/26/terry-pratchett-jack-monroe-vimes-boots-poverty-index

Terry Pratchett estate backs Jack Monroe’s idea for ‘Vimes Boots’ poverty index

cheeseanonioncrisps:

For people who don’t know what’s happening in the UK, a quickupdate:

The Prime Minister— henceforth to be referred to as That Twat— has spent the last few months insisting that he never went to any parties. (Oh no sir, no parties whatsoever sir— a bigger boy did it and ran away!) He has said this both in press releases to the general public and also in the House of Commons.

Remember that last bit, it will be important later.

That Twat put off explaining what exactly he was doing then, in that room with all the people, and the booze, and the frickin birthday cake, by saying that we just had to wait for the Sue Grey Report (remember that?). Apparently enough was drunk at these definitely-not-parties that even That Twat was unable to remember what he’d done that night.

Then, when the Sue Grey Report was just due to come out, back in January, after weeks of saying that it was none of their business— and what were we expecting them to do? Enforce the law?— the Met Police (henceforth, Those Bastards) finally got off their arses just in times to announce that Sue Grey wasn’t actually allowed to publish everything she’d found, because some of that info was now part of theirinvestigation.

Sue Grey instead released an ‘update’, which you can read in full here.

To give an idea of what a full report might have contained however (and the neutered version was still pretty damning, confirming as it did that the government were ignoring lockdown rules, and that members of staff were intimidated into silence) British comedian Joe Lycett posted a fake version to Twitter just before the real one came out.

You can read it here. I honestly recommend it more than the real one.

The fake report claimed that several gatherings had been held, at which everyone played games called “slow dance” and “pass the arsehole”. It also mentioned a groupchat called “Down It Street” and said that the last guy to suggest that anyone take a test was now being called 'Twateral Flow’ around the office.

It was very funny, and just about unbelievable, and would have faded into obscurity if That Twat and staff hadn’t apparently believed it. Admittedly we only have Lycett’s word for this, but after tweeting the initial parody report, he then tweeted a screenshot of a message from a “verified” source who worked in Downing Street, stating that the report was being treated as a serious leak.

After that, however, things quietened down a bit, primarily because That Twat turned out to have been gifted the most amazing belated Christmas present in the form of Russia invading Ukraine.

I mean given how fucking desperate he is to seen like Churchill (and how determined to ignore all signs to the contrary, despite one of his own MPs using the same “in the name of God, go” speech that was used to make fucking Neville Chamberlain step down— That Twat, author of several books about Churchill, claimed not to recognise it) you can tell he’s really wanking off to this. Ask any Tory politician and they’ll try and tell you that the UK is somehow a more important player in this war than Ukraine.

Just as Covid had been the perfect excuse for the Brexit fuckup, so Ukraine was the perfect excuse for the Covid fuckup. “We can’t talk about the many crimes I have obviously committed, while thousands of my own people died at my hand, because don’t you know there’s a war on?!”

And— despite a decent attempt in which he genuinely tried to compare the experiences of Ukrainians defending their country from a fucking invasion to those of Brexit voters living in a country where some people disagree with them— on the whole the situation is too big and too distant for That Twat to fuck it up on his own. His advisors must have breathed a sigh of relief.

Bob Hale from Horrible Histories voice: But not for long!

Literally last week, Those Bastards finally got back to us on Boris’s Rule Breaking Birthday Bonanza (and the various other parties that he absolutely attended) by stating that they had to fine him! And several of his ministers!

Not a huge punishment on its own, given that he’s a Rich Upper Class Twat specifically, but a big deal because it makes him the first UK Prime Minister in history to be sanctioned for a crime while still in office. And that’s in over 300 years of people holding the post. And, most importantly, it proves that he lied to the House of Commons when he said he didn’t know about any of the parties were happening.

Lying directly to the House of Commons, is a huge no, no in British politics. It’s called Misleading Parliament and in theory it’s supposed to carry the harshest penalties.

Unfortunately the British government was and still is largely run by the Eton set, and founded around their ideals, so at the moment we’re all basically limited to asking That Twat to pretty please fall on his sword for the sake of Honour, and then standing by awkwardly as he absolutely does not do that.

(Therehas actually been a petition to make Misleading Parliament against the law, instead of just against the MPs’ code of conduct. The petition gained over 100,000 votes, which meant that Parliament were supposed to consider it for debate, but the government responded with “fuck no, lol ” and it’s been over a year, so that’s that then.)

Since he refuses to resign, which is the usual way of dealing with this situation, the other way to get him out is his having Parliament declare a vote of No Confidence in him— but the only circumstances under which such a vote could be held is if 15% of all sitting Tory MPs write in to say that they think there should be one.

And since they all know that the results of such a vote would be one of them having to pick up the poisoned chalice that is the Prime Ministership as That Twat has left it, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon. (It admittedly looked like it was about to happen back when the Partygate news first broke, but then Putin remembered that he hadn’t gotten Boris anything for his birthday, and decided to make up for it by providing the ultimate distraction.)

The other, highly unlikely option, is that the Queen sacks him. Technically she has the power to do this. No monarch has used it since 1838— when it didn’t really stick— and in theory she’s only supposed to use it if he decides to go full Hitler and take over the world (which is also why she’s the one with ultimate control over the armed forces). However, given that one of the crimes he’s accused of— the one he basically admitted to— was having a piss-up on the night of her husband’s funeral, and that given her age it’s unlikely she’ll be Queen for that much longer anyway, she might decide to give it a go.

At 3:30 today, That Twat faces his MPs for the first (and last, pretty please say last) time since the fine and has to explain himself. Currently his line of defence seems to be that he didn’t know he was breaking any laws, because nobody told him what they were. In fairness, they probably didn’t, but then they probably expected him to already know given that he was the one making them.

His argument relies on either the rules being so Byzantine and confusing in nature that nobody could be expected to understand them— which seems a bit rough on the British public, especially all those who were fined extravagantly for breaking them— or that That Twat himself is unfortunately as thick as two short planks, and everyone should forgive him for his misdeeds and definitely not question whether someone who’s incapable of understanding his own law should really be Prime Minister.

So, overall, it’s a shitshow.