So start with the low hanging fruit- like where the compassionate decision also makes good economic sense (Heckman curve).
I’m fortunate to have a good salary so have no vested interest. Just disappointed that this wouldn’t be reversed on day 1 to demonstrate the ‘change’ that was being promised.
Yes they killed the Rwanda scheme but that was an easy decision
I expect the two child limit will be gone soon, but I don’t think Reeves and Starmer feel they can make any expensive decisions yet.
I suspect they want to get a figure of how it will cost first.
At least theres some cash from not funding Rwanda but they must restart processing asylum applications
https://x.com/mrbensellers/status/1816172464851804270?s=46&t=Tk6buFVfyHeITdfFRWCVMg
This is a good thread. What’s the actual point in individual MPs if they’re all bullied into doing whatever the dictator (and his backers) decree?
I don’t agree that it was performative or ‘gesture politics’. I’m glad that some MPs still have a conscience and the integrity to follow that despite the personal consequences. Something that could never be said for Starmer.
The important aspect is that this was not a normal bill (which has been lost in the noise).
There are different types of votes in parliament, and this was part of the Kings speech. To vote against this as an MP is a vote of non-confidence in the government. It is not simply that you disagree with the 2 child cap, you are in effect voting that there should be a general election.
It is unusual to vote against bills in the kings speech. Its of high symbolic importance. The rebels knew what they were doing. They were told it is a confidence vote.
It is a hardline response, however it was equally performative politics. The rebels, voted on an amendment by the SNP, which they know is in the pipeline. During a kings speech bill.
Yep that was my thinking too. The Labour MPs were on a 3 line whip precisely because it was the king’s speech debate. As much as @WeeJoe wants to believe it was about conscience, this was a demonstration from the rebels of what’s to come from them. They knew the stakes (3 line whip).
The 7 of them could have done what 40 other Labour MPs did and abstained from the vote to show they supported the removal of the child cap, but they played their political stunt instead and here we are.
Mel Stride becomes the fourth MP to enter the race to be next Tory leader.
Stride, Jenrick, Cleverly and Tugendhat. What a dazzling selection.
Tom Tugendhat has had to say he’ll withdraw from the ECHR to keep the gammon’s happy.
The Tories have this obsession with the ECHR. It’s probably because that notorious pinko Winston Churchill was behind it.
Still, it’s an amusing game to think of all the human rights that Tories take for granted that we can systematically abuse once it’s gone.
I genuinely think if it was called The Convention on Human Rights, rather than The European Convention on Human Rights they wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Damn, you’re on form today.
Really sensible.
Can I just point out that as the term gammon is a derogative term based on the colour of somebody’s skin, it is by definition racist? Thanks. And feel free to argue. Derogatory check. Skin colour check. Racist check.
And about time too.
Should be applied to people who have so lost their mental faculties that they vote Conservative or Reform.
Gammon is a term I think invented by Dickens to describe those well fed, privileged people who are perpetually red in the face through indignation about one thing or another, while entirely ignorant about how comfortable their lives actually are.
It’s nothing to do with melanin, racial background or long periods of oppression and marginalisation. Only racists, who don’t understand what actual racism is, think it’s racist.
Y’know. Just in case it comes up at some point.
I think it was in Nicholas Nickleby, specifically a politician is described as having a “gammon tendency” when he becomes red faced during periods of patriotic ranting. The point being that it is an acquired attribute, not a property of his race.
This won’t go away too easily
Notes that the term gammon is never aimed at anybody who isn’t white. Tricky to be pink otherwise.
Racist.
Odd that those who’ve done all the training courses on the subject haven’t noticed.