General Election 2017

[peterms]

5 minutes ago, PompeyVillan said:

I'm not well versed in NI history, is there a realistic chance of stoking tension by pairing with the DUP, given the power sharing agreement?

It's more than stoking tension.

Jonatham Powell (pronounced Pole!), chief of staff to Blair and I believe some sort of functionary to Thatcher, has explained that it undermines the Good Friday Agreement because it means the British State cannot be seen to act impartially in a dispute between the communities in NI.

That is quite serious.

It has caused problems within the tory party witb Ruth Davidson explaining in detail her relationship with her female, Irish, convent-educated partner; as clear a message as you could wish for, from a rising star to a burnt-out liability.

[choffer]

Didn't take them long. 

[sharkyvilla]

5 minutes ago, peterms said:

It's more than stoking tension.

Jonatham Powell (pronounced Pole!), chief of staff to Blair and I believe some sort of functionary to Thatcher, has explained that it undermines the Good Friday Agreement because it means the British State cannot be seen to act impartially in a dispute between the communities in NI.

That is quite serious.

It has caused problems within the tory party witb Ruth Davidson explaining in detail her relationship with her female, Irish, convent-educated partner; as clear a message as you could wish for, from a rising star to a burnt-out liability.

Surely the most basic democratic principle is that the DUP had ten elected MPs and can vote however they want in parliament?  I assume naturally they would have fallen in line with the Tory government a lot before this election so not much would actually change.  It would be interesting to see their voting record.  I think a formal coalition with cabinet positions thrown in would be a different kettle of fish but they've deliberately not gone for that.  I guess it depends on whether politicians in NI can act like grown ups.

[villa4europe]

[chrisp65]

[TrentVilla]

13 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

Surely the most basic democratic principle is that the DUP had ten elected MPs and can vote however they want in parliament?  I assume naturally they would have fallen in line with the Tory government a lot before this election so not much would actually change.  It would be interesting to see their voting record.  I think a formal coalition with cabinet positions thrown in would be a different kettle of fish but they've deliberately not gone for that.  I guess it depends on whether politicians in NI can act like grown ups.

Well yes in theory they can vote how they wish but the reality is that they will be voting in line with the Tories but won't be doing so for shits and giggles, there will be a price. If that price isn't token gesture cabinet positions ala the Tory/Lib Dem's coalition then it will be in the form of some other sort of concessions. 

The impact of this on Northern Ireland could be huge especially with the issues looming with the border with the Republic post Brexit. Then you have the potential impact this has on the Good Friday Agreement.

It is an unholy mess and to be honest its hugely ironic given some of the Tory statements pre election.

 

[Davkaus]

She really is a **** robot. A shit, incompetent robot.

 

 

Edited June 9, 2017 by Davkaus

[peterms]

22 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

Surely the most basic democratic principle is that the DUP had ten elected MPs and can vote however they want in parliament?  I assume naturally they would have fallen in line with the Tory government a lot before this election so not much would actually change.  It would be interesting to see their voting record.  I think a formal coalition with cabinet positions thrown in would be a different kettle of fish but they've deliberately not gone for that.  I guess it depends on whether politicians in NI can act like grown ups.

They, the DUP, can vote as they wish.

The issue is that in order to secure their support, the tories will have to accede to several demands.  In doing so, they abdicate the role of honest broker which the British State is duty bound to play.

These considerations of course are immaterial, compared to Mrs May retaining her position for another few weeks.

 

Edited June 9, 2017 by peterms
spelling

[TrentVilla]

 

Can anyone hear that? Its the sound of Tories sharpening their knives waiting for Theresa to turn her back.

When I say Tories, obviously they aren't sharpening them themselves, they've people to do it for them. Obviously.

[a m ole]

She's a parasite.

[Davkaus]

 

I'm really fed up of tories claiming they're the progressive party that introduced gay marriage. Sure, it was a tory dominated government, but it was a Lib Dem policy, and never forget that 128 bigoted tories voted against it, with only 117 in favour.

 

[chrisp65]

Just such a catalogue of errors.

The mis timed election having said she wouldn't have an election. People will always punish you at the ballot if you call them to the ballot too often. Then the vague policies, the use of 'strong and stable' to a point where people openly laughed when she said it. 

Brexit means brexit being morphed in to 'enough is enough'. Banal crap in the face of such tragedy didn't do her any favours.

No show at the job interview. What the hell was that about? I've called an election but I don't want to take part, just vote for me.

An uncosted manifesto with no meat that was then unravelling within hours. But then trying to focus on the numbers in Labour's workings out, having not bothered with their own.

Now what? A minority government propped up by a party that wants creationism taught in school. A party so nuts they are comedy gold. But with a military past that the tories have tried to say makes Corbyn evil. What the very ****!

So, having called an election early and got punished for it, she now needs to survive 5 years without needing to call yet another early election for which she will be punished further.

Her friends are a climate denying orange man in Trump and sexually repressed orange men with balaclavas in the bottom drawer.

Just Brexit to navigate and negotiate. Remembering her own words that she needed to look strong to be taken seriously.

She couldn't have played a worse hand if she'd just thrown her own shit at the public through the gates of Downing Street.

Spectacular.

 

 

 

[LondonLax]

4 hours ago, snowychap said:

 

 

[peterms]

Interesting

Quote

What connects Brexit, the DUP, dark money and a Saudi prince?

If Northern Ireland were a normal democracy, the election campaign would be dominated by a single question: how did the Democratic Unionist Party end up advancing the cause of a united Ireland through its support for Brexit? More specifically: what role did dark money play in that extraordinary decision? This story has all the makings of a John le Carré thriller but democracy on this island needs facts, not fiction.

To recap briefly: two days before the Brexit referendum last June, the Metro freesheet in London and other British cities came wrapped in a four-page glossy propaganda supplement urging readers to vote Leave. Bizarrely, it was paid for by the DUP, even though Metro does not circulate in Northern Ireland. At the time, the DUP refused to say what the ads cost or where the money came from.

We’ve since learned that the Metro wraparound cost a staggering £282,000 (€330,000) – surely the biggest single campaign expense in the history of Irish politics. For context, the DUP had spent about £90,000 (€106,000) on its entire campaign for the previous month’s assembly elections. But this was not all: the DUP eventually admitted that this spending came from a much larger donation of £425,622 (€530,000) from a mysterious organisation, the Constitutional Research Council.
Mystery

The mystery is not why someone seeking to influence the Brexit vote would want to do so through the DUP. Disgracefully, Northern Ireland is exempt from the UK’s requirements for the sources of large donations to be declared. The mystery, rather, is who were the ultimate sources of this money and why was it so important to keep their identities secret.

The Constitutional Research Council is headed by a Scottish conservative activist of apparently modest means, Richard Cook. It has no legal status, membership list or public presence and there is no reason to believe that Cook himself had half a million euro to throw around. But the DUP has been remarkably incurious about where the money ultimately came from. Peter Geoghegan (sometimes of this parish) and Adam Ramsay of the excellent openDemocracy website did some digging and what they’ve come up with is, to put it mildly, intriguing.

What they found is that Richard Cook has a history of involvement with a very senior and powerful member of the Saudi royal family, who also happens to have been a former director of the Saudi intelligence agency. In April 2013, Cook jointly founded a company called Five Star Investments with Prince Nawwaf bin Abdul Aziz al Saud. The prince, whose address is given as a royal palace in Jeddah, is listed on the company’s initial registration as the holder of 75 per cent of the shares. Cook had 5 per cent. The other 20 per cent of the shares belonged to a man called Peter Haestrup, a Danish national with an address in Wiltshire, whose own colourful history we must leave aside for reasons of space.

No casual investor

Prince Nawwaf, who died in 2015, was no casual investor. He had been Saudi minister for finance, government spokesman and diplomatic fixer before becoming head of intelligence. His son, Mohammed bin Nawwaf, has, moreover, been the Saudi ambassador to both the UK and Ireland since 2005. When Five Star was set up in 2013, Prince Nawwaf was 80, had suffered a stroke and used a wheelchair. It seems rather remarkable that he was going into business with a very minor and obscure Scottish conservative activist. But we have no idea what that business was. Five Star never filed accounts. In August 2014, the Companies Office in Edinburgh threatened to strike it off and in December it was indeed dissolved.

It may be entirely co-incidental that the man who channelled £425,622 to the DUP had such extremely high level Saudi connections. We simply don’t know. We also don’t know whether the current Saudi ambassador had any knowledge of his father’s connection to Richard Cook. But here’s the thing: the DUP claims not to know either. And that is at best reckless and at worst illegal.

Arlene Foster told the BBC in late February that she did not even know how much the mystery donor had given the party. Then the party, under pressure, revealed the amount, but insisted that ascribing the donation to Cook’s Constitutional Research Council was enough and people should stop asking questions. Then, in early March, Jeffrey Donaldson told openDemocracy that the DUP did not need to know the true source of the money.

But this is simply untrue. The UK electoral commission is clear: “a donation of more than £500 cannot be accepted… if the donation is from a source that cannot be identified”. The legal onus is on the DUP to establish that the real donor was entitled to put money into a UK political campaign. If it can’t do that, it has to repay the £425,622. Since it has not done so, we have to assume it knows the true source is not, for example, a foreign government – which would be illegal.

The DUP has harmed Northern Ireland and endangered the union it exists to protect. How much did the lure of dark money influence that crazy decision? Any self-respecting voter would want to know.

 

 

[JB]

This coalition is obviously shit but it could be worse. At least we're not gay foxes. 

[Awol]

I can't really believe May is still in post. She took the electorate for mugs and rightly got punished for it, but there is something unhinged in pretending nothing of significance has happened in the last 24hrs. 

What's more she did this to herself. Hubris, arrogance, laziness and a spectacular lack of moral & political judgement make her a car crash in waiting for the UK's future relations with the EU.

Get tae .... as Ruth Davidson might say.

[LondonLax]

Stepping back from the fun of the election to look at the bigger picture and I must say the UK has really gotten itself into a proper mess. 

Signing Article 50 to start the 2 year countdown timer for Brexit then getting itself into political chaos with no clear leadership is a pretty spectacular failure of governance.

Sorting out this mess will eat up a significant chunk of the 2 year timeline. I had always suspected the UK would end up exiting the EU without a deal under May but who knows how it will go down now.   

[Chindie]

There is literally no reason for her to be in Downing Street still. I've heard from Tories today she has to stay to give stability to beginning the Brexit talks - why? This situation cannot last and she's going to go before talks are done. Get out now. 

Her inability to let go of power will know no bounds. Potentially reignite the smoulders of Northern Ireland? Sure, keeps her in power. Threaten the Good Friday Agreement? Sure, keeps her in power. In bed with despicable words removed? Sure, keeps her in power...

I hope she gets some really embarrassing disease, and they make a bloody fool of her when she's frog marched out of No. 10.

[villakram]

7 hours ago, meregreen said:

Time will tell. But I have a feeling that, if nothing else, the poison bubble that is the power of the Tory press , has been burst. No Politician in my lifetime has ever endured a smear campaign to match that which was unleashed on Corbyn, not Miliband or Kinnock, not anyone. It didn't work. This I believe could potentially transform Politics in this country. Yes the Labour Party and in particular it's MPs need to now get behind Corbyn and build on this. But with Murdochs and Dacres malign influence on the wane, it could be the start of a great shift in the political agenda in this country.

Donald J. Trump.

Even Fox were gunning for him most of the way. The only main stream newspaper to endorse him in the entire US was that of Sheldon Adelson in Vegas. The internet/mobile communication channels have fundamentally changed things.

[villakram]

35 minutes ago, Chindie said:

There is literally no reason for her to be in Downing Street still. I've heard from Tories today she has to stay to give stability to beginning the Brexit talks - why? This situation cannot last and she's going to go before talks are done. Get out now. 

Her inability to let go of power will know no bounds. Potentially reignite the smoulders of Northern Ireland? Sure, keeps her in power. Threaten the Good Friday Agreement? Sure, keeps her in power. In bed with despicable words removed? Sure, keeps her in power...

I hope she gets some really embarrassing disease, and they make a bloody fool of her when she's frog marched out of No. 10.

I think part of the problem here is that there is no obvious replacement and those that could probably want things to settle down a little. Gove and Johnson are afraid to move, as first mover gets knifed in the back by the other, while Rudd is damaged goods now too. Who else is there? I'd be thinking it might be better to let May be chewed up by the press/the party base/the opposition/the EU and take the sting out of things prior to making my move.