Horse 3412 - The UK's Inheritance Tax Is Stupid

 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36014533

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced a series of changes to the inheritance tax rules which she said will raise £2bn a year.

Relatively few people actually pay the tax, but many think they will - either owing to its complexity or because they aspire to be suitably wealthy to end up paying.

Inheritance tax is charged at 40% on the property, possessions and money, external of somebody who has died, above a £325,000 threshold.

- BBC News, 30th Oct 2024

Let's put this on the record, Inheritance Tax is stupid.

It must be said that The Sceptred Isle, that little jewel set into the sea, as a fortress to defend against war and infection, does have some completely bonkers mental hatstand laws. Even though there are Select Committees who look into the drafting of laws, the fact that the House of Lords is unelected and has people who are very much self-interested to maintain the status quo, and the House of Commons has literally no oversight whatsoever that might have curbed it taxation laws, those bonkers mental hatstand laws have bonkers mental hatstand consequences.

One of those consequences is that when it comes to Estates and Inheritances, the laws which are only ever designed to affect the very wealthy, affect people who have run into wealth suddenly, and including circumstances where merely inheriting something doesn't even mean that that new found wealth is realised. 

Perhaps the most egregious outworking of completely bonkers mental hatstand laws having bonkers mental hatstand consequences, is when someone dies and leaves their family the farm. By nature, a farm is a going concern which employs the real estate upon which it sits as the means of productive output. The United Kingdom with its arcane taxation law, hasn't yet quite grasped the fact that a farm, which might very well be a going concern and which might have been in the same family for several hundreds of years, might run at very thin margins, and the imposition of an Inheritance Tax which only happens because someone had the audacity to die, could be enough to shatter the farm as a business. 

His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) currently extracts an inheritance tax on the value of an estate when it is passed from one person to another through that unavoidable practice of death. The tax is 40% upon every pound in excess of the value of the estate of £325,000. This sounds reasonable in theory until you realise that in many cases the estate which is being inherited is either a house which someone is currently living or have been hoping to live in or worse, the estate is a family business like a farm or a small manufactory. Especially in the case of a farm, which might already be running close to the edge in terms of profitability, the death of someone causes the inheritance tax to be triggered on a going concern; which the farm as a business might not be able to absorb.

It doesn't take a gammaminus semi-moron to realise that the current inheritance tax system in the UK, is monumentally stupid. Even Blind Freddy can see that the imposition of a tax on the going concern of a farm, or the physical object of a house, where no real profitable action has warranted it, is nothing more than a cruel and cynical exercise in knavery. This is where my little Commonwealth of Australia, which follows in the Westminster tradition of law, is yet again better at some aspect of how the law is written and should be learnt from and copied.

The two biggest principles in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 in Australia are found in Sections 6 and 8 of the Act. Firstly, income isn't income until it is income. This sounds like such a basic ontological statement because it is. A thing isn't a thing until it's a thing. Secondly, deductions must relate to the income. If someone decides to go to school, say a hairdresser decides that they have chronic fear of hair and want to become a lumberjack, then learning that new trade is not related but if a lumberjack decides to take a chainsaw course to improve their skills, then that is related.

Those principles were actually right at the heart of the beginning of the Capital Gains Tax legislation debates in Australia in 1985, and they are quite instructive. Generally speaking, most people are not actually in the business of inheriting property from their parents and other family. Having a parent die and then leaving you the farm in a will, is not exactly something which is reproducible; at most it can happen twice. So then, the Capital Gains Tax legislation assumes from the outset that inheritance which is not a reliable source of income, is not necessarily income. We have no direct inheritance tax. 

Upon someone's death, they must complete a tax return. Their estate which is then a going entity also completes tax returns for the period in which it exists; if necessary it might pay tax upon a capital gain if it makes one but in the event when property is transferred from someone to someone else and no consideration has been made, then there isn't really any income to speak of and what we have is a Capital Gains Tax event.

We do not actually have a Capital Gains Tax in Australia. What we actually have is a Tax on Capital Gains; which is keeping in the Section 6 ontological principle that income isn't income until it is income. So what happens?

To simplify this to the point of discussion, upon the death and transfer of a thing, the value is taken up at the date it was transferred. In the case of shares, debentures, and tradable securities, then the market value at the date of transfer is a known and reliable take up rate. As for things like real property where the thing itself might not have been realised, then there is almost always some kind of valuation report before the dispersal and final divestment of the estate. This means that we also have a known and reliable take up value. There are then CGT Rollover provisions which mean that the thing being inherited by the new person, although it might have triggered a CGT Event by virtue of having changed hands (even if one of those hands was dead) still does not constitute income. Income is only income when the thing is finally realised; using the take-up value when the last CGT Event happened; and then is taxed at the usual marginal rates for person/company/trust/SMSF et cetera.

Conceivably a farm could have passed from Jack, to Jack Junior, to Bubbah Jack, to Little Bubbah Jack, and still not have been sold. A farm which remains in the family, remains in the family and if there is never a sale, there is no income upon which income tax can be laid. Income isn't income until it is income; so when that farm is finally sold, that sale would be income and the relevant CGT Event would be looked at.

Very clearly this is a far more sensible system, because it follows the basic ontological principle that income isn't income until it is income. And as the rules were invented in 1985, things which were bought back before 1985 are treated as being exempt from Capital Gains Tax but as that is almost forty years ago, the number of those things is dwindling.  

The other massive provision which the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 in Australia has but the UK tax system does not, is that one's principle place of residence, that is where someone lives, is also exempt from Capital Gains Tax. This would have two massive effects on British taxation law if it were to be implemented. Firstly, it would mean that someone selling their house quite apart from inheritance provisions, would never incur a tax on capital gain. Secondly, as small family owned farms almost always have a farm house or homestead, then as that farm is also one's principle place of residence, then it would also never incur a tax on capital gain as it is also exempt from Capital Gains Tax.

The reason why these kind of things aren't implanted as part of British taxation law is that law generally and taxation law especially is glacial when it comes to change. This is mostly because the people who are most affected by changes in taxation in a pure raw numbers monetary sense, usually also have the greatest lobbying power with Members of Parliament. Money talks; sometimes it yells. Richer people usually have schemes and plans worked out to avoid tax, and while tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance and using the legal means to do so is not. People who have eked out an advantage for themselves are highly unlikely to want to change the legislation; even if some other system also benefits them. Law is stickier than people assume that it is. 

John Bull, if you're listening, take some advice from Billy Brown from Sydney Town. You may have exiled us here for stealing sheep and handkerchiefs but in the time that we've been allowed to have a country for ourselves, not only did we improve how the Westminster System works, and how voting works, and how the franchise works before you, but we also improved Capital Tax legislation. 

Horse 3352 - Will Nigel Farage Do Anything As An MP?

Betteridge's Law Of Headlines states that any newspaper headline which exists in the form of a question, can always be answered with 'no'.

Now then...

Avalanches about - business continues below.

When Nigel Farage decided to launch Reform UK's manifesto on a rundown council estate in Merthyr Tydfil this week, he did so knowing that neither the Tories, nor Labour, nor the Lib Dems, nor the Greens, were ever going to visit places like this. Launching Reform UK's manifesto in Merthyr Tydfil is purely about what marketing people from the 1980s would have called the 'optics' of the event. This was purely about making Nigel Farage appear to be the political messiah for places like this, and painting him as the hero who will give voice to the voiceless.

Optics is all this needs to be. The truth is that as soon as he's gone, that's the end of it. Farage has no intention of ever giving people like this a voice. Even when it comes to Reform UK, the political 'party' which Farage currently wears the tie for, Farage has no intent there either. Farage exists almost purely as an actor on a political stage, spouting whatever lines are necessary to fulfil the current role he is in. As we found out well before Brexit, there is zero substance to the man. Quite literally everything and anything that he says is as hollow and as temporary as an easter egg.

Reform UK is therefore quite an apt party for this political charlatan to be spruiking lines for. It is as equally as vapid and hollow as Farage. Its political manifesto, if it can be called that, is also equally as devoid of substance as its celebrity thespian. The thing about political manifestos is that they usually contain a list of policies and promises that the party will achieve if it gets to government. Reform UK will not get into government. Reform UK has no intention of honouring any of its promises and nor does it need to.

What Reform actually offers the people of Britain, is a set of excuses to blame anyone other than white people for their predicament; which is exactly the kind of thing that a small, very racist, portion of the population likes: Decimate the civil service. End the BBC, teach real 'history' so that children can learn that black people were every bit as cruel to white people as white people were to them, teach children that slavery was justified because they were doing it to each other, tax cuts for everyone, stop the boats; that kind of thing. The pamphlet itself actually contains less information than an average pizza parlour pamphlet.

Nothing that Reform UK says either needs to be subtle, plausible, sensible, or even doable. That is not Reform UK's job. Nor is the point of Reform UK do act as a protest vote either because a protest vote would suggest that the people who vote for them want to register displeasure at something and want positive change. A vote for Reform UK is not even about that. Really the only reason that it exists, is as a conduit for people’s rage. Reform UK is theatre dressed in the clothes of politics, with no actual intent of playing anything other than a pantomime clown.

This is where Farage excels. Farage is a posh boy who is playing the act of being rough. Farage likes to play in the clothes of what he thinks that normal people look like, despite the fact that when it actually comes to normal people, he thinks that they are disgusting. He likes to dress up with pint in hand and maybe even a cigar because that is the storybook version of what rich people think poor people are. In reality, Farage is as establishment and old money as you can get.

Even when it came to his most prized costume, pretending to be as British as John Bull, that costume came off as soon as possible. When it came to the actual implementation of Brexit, Farage applied for and got a German passport within 30 days of the legislation being passed. As the instigator who pushed the Conservative Right to make this policy centre stage during the 2015 General Election in which David Cameron was trying to hold together a Conservative Party which was fracturing, Farage used the opportunity to get free publicity knowing full well that he would never be subject to any of the consequences. As an MEP for Europe, he was on the gravy train right in the middle of Brussels, and even then he knew that his actions were of zero consequence to him.

The truth is that I have no idea if Nigel Farage believes anything that he says. Mind you, I do not think that he needs to believe anything that he says either. His current election run for the seat of Clacton is likely based on someone running some numbers and deciding that he could pick off the Conservative candidate and win sufficient number of votes to beat the Labour candidate. Owing to the fact that the United Kingdom uses a most votes wins system to decide who gets sent to the House of Commons, the actual amount of work that any potential MP needs to do to win most of the 649 seats is minimal. Farage as celebrity clown, merely has to rely on his name to achieve enough brand recognition to get enough old racist duffers to go out on a Thursday and put their cross in a box.

I suspect that the people of Clacton will soon discover that a vote for Nigel Farage is a vote for self-disenfranchisement. He will never deign to speak for any of the issues of the people of Clacton. That of course assumes that he would turn up in the House of Commons very much at all. I suspect that as an MP who would be subject to the rules of the House, being told to sit down and be quiet after being a disruptive schoolboy, probably no more than twice, will mean that he can claim that his right to free speech is being curtailed and thus he wins more free publicity. I think that Farage will end up being like Sir Isaac Newton, whose only recorded words in the House of Commons were to request that someone close a window.

Farage is the same kind of politician as his friend Donald Trump; who is equally devoid of substance. I genuinely think that Trump had no plans beyond 20th January 2017 and that the only reason that he ran/is running for President is that he likes being at the centre of the theatre. Nigel Farage also likes being at the centre of the theatre and when tested to see if he would join the Conservative Party he consistently says 'no', which indicates to me that he is not concerned with the actual machinations of parliament.

Perhaps this is his saving grace. One of the pitfalls about voting for clowns is that eventually they will laugh us all to hell. Farage is certainly a clown who likes to caper in the sawdust ring of politics but the fact that he is content to play the fool who stands aside from the people whom he wants to claim as his pantomime villains, means that he will never be allowed near the levers of power. Perhaps one day he might be sent to the House of Lords for reasons that make less than zero sense to me but the best that that future party will be able to hope for is that they have appointed Lord Belch to a comfy bench for naptime. 

Horse 3342 - Things Can Only Get Better After 5th July (They Can Not Get Worse)

On the 4th of July 1776, the thirteen American colonies in congress decided to declare their independence from Britain. Lord North's Tory Government would have been livid if it had been informed (but it wasn't). On the 4th of July 2024, the six hundred and forty-nine constituencies (not the Speaker), will go to the polls and probably declare their independence from another Tory Government. 

Sit back and watch as the right-wing establishment media goes into almost openly fascist overdrive as it tries to paint Keir Starmer as a communist, a soviet, an anarchist, a globalist, a European, and as actually being the entire of Hamas. The first casualty of war is truth and in a propaganda war, the killing of truth is in fact the very first action. Keir Starmer might very well be all sorts of things including a giant berk and a blithering eejit and under most circumstances that might be enough to swing the tide (it was enough to tell simple lies about Jeremy Corbyn being an anti-Semite five years ago) but when you have actual rivers full of feces, merely spraying the stuff is not enough any more.

Herein lies the problem for the right-wing media, in the six weeks of this 2024 General Election campaign, not even the usual propaganda war of lies will be enough to return the tories to government when the truth is just so very very very terrible. In the now 14 years of tory governments, they have smashed the universities, severed any kind of sensible ties and relations with the EU, successfully defunded and degraded the NHS, somehow made Britain's railways and roads worse, and done so little maintenance of things like water and sewerage that in many parts of Britain the water coming out of the taps is actually worse than before the Broad Street cholera outbreak of 1851.

In short, this Tory Government which is basically led by caretaker Prime Minister Rishi Sunak before he escapes to his fortune which is even more massive than that of the Royal Family (probably to Cote d'Azure), will be ejected faster than you can say Tommy Robinson (is not helping).

As I am something of a data nerd, I ran the latest YouGov polls through my uniform swing calculator. As at time of writing (23rd May), I end up with the following results:

477 - Labour

62 - Conservative

56 - SNP

31 - All Others

24 - (Northern Ireland)

326 of 650 seats are needed in the House of Commons to form government. This particular General Election will not be a case of whether or not Labour can form government or whether they can get to 400 seats but if the tories are so far on the nose that Labour actually makes it to 500 seats. Any pieces talking of a hung parliament, like I saw in both The Telegraph and The Times, are the equivalent of rearranging dining chairs in the Steerage Dining Hall on the Titanic. Forget deck chairs on the outside decks. The ship is sinking. The ship is sinking. There's a leak in the boiler room; the poor, the lame, the blind. Who are the ones we left in charge? Killers, thieves, and lawyers.

This General Election campaign, even before it has begun, does not feel like it will be accompanied with the same kind of optimism as the 1997 Election did. Tony Blair's "Cool Britannia" was substanceless but at least it came with jelly and ice cream. In 1997 there was at least some kind of hope that the tory cake could be unbaked. A generation later, there is no hope for that. Yes, there will be dancing in the streets of Total Network Solutions that night but on 5th July 2024, there will remain the awful truth that not only will the cake have to be unbaked but it will have to be chiselled as it was baked with cement and not flour.

The weird thing is that the date for the election, was leaked before it had been announced at Number 10. Procedurally in a Westminster Parliament, the head of Government visits the executive for the Crown, which in this case is the Prime Minister visiting the King. The Crown then issues a writ for dissolution and the announcement of the election is gazetted. This time around though, everyone found out that the election is going to happen in 4th July because former Prime Minister Liz Truss released a pamphlet canvassing for support for the election on July 4th. Now the only way that she could have known about that is if the 1922 Committee had already made its decision and instructed the Prime Minister to visit the King. However, the fact that Liz Truss produced this pamphlet before the writs had been issued, very much indicates that the Conservative Party is currently in some kind of pre-election breakdown if the whips can't control their MPs. This might be the tip of the iceberg.

This then is the state of play. Over the next six weeks Rishi Sunak will bravely be the face of an election campaign which he knows is bound to lose. Whether or not he retains his own seat remains to be seen but if in the event that he does, I do not see him remaining in the new parliament any longer than about a fortnight. More than likely he'd announce his resignation as an MP and take up the ceremonial position as Sheriff for the Chiltern Hundreds before disappearing to his lovely life of luxury living off of the interest of the interest of the interest. Meanwhile Keir Starmer will spend six weeks ignoring bad faith questioning from the right-wing trashmedia and trying not to say anything spicier than milquetoast. He has already perfected the art of not having a personality, which I suspect wasn't too difficult to him. 

Provided Keir Starmer doesn't say anything barbaric and provided that some major calamitous war doesn't break out (such as a nuclear bomb going off in Tel Aviv), then Labour will not so much win the 2024 General Election as the tories have spent all of the 20s trying to lose it. 

Horse 3336 - If Sunak Was Smart, He Would Call A December Election

 After watching Sadiq Khan retain the position of Mayor of London and watching council after council fall to Labour across England, Rishi Sunak must be looking ahead to the next British General Election with a sense of fear and loathing and dread of impending doom; as well he might. For basically ever since David Cameron promised to send Britain to a referendum on Brexit, the office of Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury has been a poisoned chalice. Only with the help of the very tory trashmedia, have the tories been able to hang on to power for the last decade. It is not because they have been able to demonstrate competent leadership or any ability or desire to do the basic job of governance. If the revolving door at the top (which has seen Cameron, then May, then Johnson, then Truss, then Sunak, all come and go (or look like they will)) is demonstrative of the trouble below, then the Conservative Party and the Unionists if they still exist, are facing political oblivion. To which I say "Good. If you vote tory, you are not peoples' friend."

The question then is not if the tories will lose government but by how much. There are suggestions in the right-wing tory trashmedia that there will be a hung parliament but this appears to be a wish list in the face of their worst case scenario. This election as far as Labour is concerned, is their equivalent to the 1983 Australian General Election which "a drover's dog could win"; and then did. If the polls are correct, then Labour will canter into 326, maybe walk as far as 400, and depending on how much the tory durian has rotted by then maybe 500 seats is a possibility. As it is, we already have rats jumping from the sinking ship; which is also on fire as it is preparing to sink beneath the waves.

If you saw all of this and knew that it was coming, what would you do? I personally think that the best option would be to quietly admit defeat now, make a half-hearted election campaign, lose, and then collect the parliamentary pension which would be due because you lost the seat rather than quitting. Or else you could do some very visible and ultimately meaningless but very public gesture, like promising to put up a statue for all of the horses killed in World War I, then hope to get an ermine parachute into the House of Lords like Lord David Cameron, the Lord of Much Dribbling and Pork Scratchings did. If however, Sunak does actually want to fire one last dog bomb of fabulousness into parliament before he leaves, then the best option is to call the election for the 12th of December. Why the 12th of December? The answer may surprise you.

As the United Kingdom still hasn't properly worked out how to to democracy, despite and in spite of the fact that other countries like Australia modified the Westminster system to be a million billion godzillion times better, with compulsory voting, voting on a Saturday, paper ballots, voting for the upper house, preferential voting, proportional representation et cetera et cetera et cetera, then it still retains a full-bore thick as mince voting system which was perfectly adequate for the 1680s but not for 340 years later. Calling a General Election for the 12th of December would make excellent use of the fact that the British voting system is so incredibly rubbish, that democracy can be gained merely by setting the date.

The United Kingdom has voluntary voting. This means that the United Kingdom makes practically no effort at all to obtain the consent of the governed when selecting who will be a Member of Parliament. The parties dictate who appears on the ballot paper and then the electorate shows up once every five years to put a cross in a box to decide whether or not they want to eat from a selection of three kinds of manure, or two kinds of animal vomit. Because the United Kingdom has voluntary voting, then it is really easy to dissuade people from showing up at the polling station, just by making use of the date.

The 12th of December, is already after the point where it has turned cold in Britain. If you wanted to launch a nuclear attack and kill as many people as possible, then doing so after the 1st of December, would mean that people would die of cold and exposure within their own homes. This is key. By deciding on the 12th of December as the date for holding an election, then only the most motivated people will come out to vote. Nobody really wants to stand out in the cold and possibly the rain and sleet and snow, just to put a cross in a box, when the idea of staying at home in the warmth with a cup of tea and Emmmerdale on t'telly seems like a good idea. Would you rather go out to vote, or watch The One Show?

Using the weather itself to suppress the vote, on the surface sounds like a dastardly thing to do. However, when you have a proven track record of cutting funding from health care services, from housing services, and actively doing nothing when people literally die in a building fire, then suppressing the vote through the use of the weather starts to look almost saintly. 

Also, as the 12th of December is a Thursday, then the people who actually do real work for a living, as opposed to the people who are more likely to be older, and richer, and more interested in voting, are less likely to venture out to polling stations. Voluntary Voting is often defended on the basis of free choice but often the people who need to have their voice heard the most, are simply less likely to exercise that voice when the barrier to entry to vote, might actually be whether or not someone is able to pay the rent that week.

Here's the really fun thing about so-called First-Past-The-Post voting. It really isn't. It merely is Most Votes Wins voting. Most Votes Wins by making sure that your enemies do not vote, still achieves the same outcome. The ballot box cares not an iota, not a jot, about how the numbers got there. Also, as parliaments are swung by the number of votes upon the floor of the House Of Commons, then it really doesn't actually matter about the seats which will never vote for you, nor the seats which will always vote for you. The only thing that matters from a games perspective, is how many seats flip one way or the other in the flippable middle. If you are the Conservative Party, then you do not want Labour voters to turn out to vote.

12th of December is also just sufficiently late enough that the electorate will not think that you are intruding on Christmas. An election on the 19th would be electoral suicide but the 12th falls just outside that lovely window of 10 days, by which time they will have forgotten about the problem. You may even get a slight boost in the tory turn-out if people think that they will get the rest of the day off to do Christmas shopping. 

I still think that Sunak is staring into the abyss and should expect to see nothing but just a tiny about of applied game theory might mean that at the end of the year there's a golden sky, and the sweet silver song of the lark. If you are Rishi Sunak, you will probably lose government and your seat and then retire to a lovely seven consulting figure job in The City; having made ample use of the friendships that you gained by torying your way through parliament for the last while. Why else would you become an MP if your are already independently very very wealthy, if not to change the rules for your tory mates and hope that they'll give you a kickback after the electorate has called time on you.

Horse 3269 - No, Miranda, Nigel Farage Will Not Be The Next Tory Prime Minister

I can not believe that we are here again. With the news that Suella Braverman has been ejected from the Sunak Ministry, and that David Cameron has been appointed as Foreign Secretary (as well as being given a free seat upstairs in the House of Lords for life, to become Baron Cameron), various right-wing news media outlets which have decided to abandon truth, have suggested that Nigel Farage could be the next tory Prime Minister. What rot.

Now I don't expect Sky News, GB News, or Sky News Australia to tell the truth, but I do expect them to wrap their lies in some shred of plausibility. Lies work better if they are a bit plausible. If you want a cat to swallow medicine, you wrap it in a blob of meat and they can't tell the difference. Here though, the various right-wing trashmedia outlets aren't even trying. Admittedly there is a non-zero chance of Nigel Farage being be the next tory Prime Minister but so many things would have to happen first, that it is very very very very very very very very very unlikely¹.

What I think is happening here, is that in an effort to generate column inches, television minutes, and most importantly ad revenues, that news media outlets simply just make stuff up with no reference to truth. Then having made up stuff, other news media outlets will parrot it without bothering to check if it is possible, plausible, or probably. The unthinking portion of the population (which appears to be massive) don't seem to care about truth, and that portion of the population who already control capital don't have to care about truth because they're doing fine thank you very much. The first reason why Nigel Farage will not be the next tory Prime Minister should be immediately obvious to all and sundry. He is not a tory. The second reason, related to the first is that parliamentary democracies do not work that way.

In a parliamentary democracy and specifically a Westminster Parliament, the Prime Minister / First Minister / Premier is selected in caucus, by the available members on the floor of the chambers which can control supply. In the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, et cetera, supply aka the Appropriation Bills are originated from the lower house of parliaments. Whoever can control the passage of Appropriation Bills, that is whoever can pull the purse strings of the nation, makes the parliament and by extension the government dance like a puppet. Westminster Parliaments are completely agnostic when it comes to where the Prime Minister comes from, and there have been instances of Prime Ministers having come from the upper houses but in general Prime Ministers come from the lower houses in Westminster Parliaments. Why this is so should also be pretty obvious.

The Prime Minister as head of executive government, is selected by that caucus of members who can control the public purse. That caucus of members is made up of a majority of members on the floor of the chamber; which does not necessarily imply that they even are all of the same political party. There have been instances where the Prime Minister has come from smaller parties within a coalition group; usually because the coalition in total has come to the conclusion that that person is the best person for the job. Here's where the argument that Nigel Farage will be the next tory Prime Minister falls down on so many counts.

Firstly, Nigel Farage is not a member of the Conservative Party. Now while it isn't impossible that the tories would select someone who wasn't their own to head their executive government, it's so unlikely that the mere suggestion of it is laughable. There are hundreds of tory MPs in the House of Commons and more hundreds of tory MPs in the House of Lords. The tories might be bereft of talent, competence, and ability but they're not bereft of ambition and selfishness. There would be many many tory MPs queueing up for the job of head of the Conservative Party well before Nigel Farage would be considered for the job.

Secondly, Nigel Farage is not a member of the Conservative Party. The thing that I can not answer at this point is whether or not having achieved Brexit (which has made Britain oh so smaller in terms of influence) he would even consider joining the party. He might very well if he thought that there was some political path to him becoming Prime Minister, however I just don't see it.

Secondly and a tenthly, would the Conservative Party endorse him as a member? I have no idea what kind of terms that he and Conservative Party leadership are on but for him to get on the ballot as a tory candidate would mean that he would need to be placed there instead of a local rank and file member. Yes, local politics is often twelve old fuddy-duddies and a dog called Kevin in a local Scout Hall but really? 

Thirdly, Nigel Farage is not a member of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. If he set his heart to become a member of the House of Commons, would he do so as a Conservative Party candidate or as an Independent candidate? Then having somehow made his way onto the ballot paper, would the constituents of that electorate then elect him to be their local member, knowing full well that he is actually unlikely to do all that good a job at representing them? As for how he would be appointed as a peer in the House of Lords, I have no idea of who would give him that post.

Third and a halfly, if we suppose that Nigel Farage does manage to win a seat in the House of Commons as an Independent member, then in what world does either a Labour Party or a Conservative Party choose him as Premier, over one of their own. One of the massive flaws of the BBC Television series "Years And Years" is that Vivian Rook becomes Prime Minister as the only member of her Four Star Party. This might very well work in a fictional television series (provided that you suspend your belief in common sense) but in the real world, that just plain barking mad².

Fourthly, the tories have done such a monumentally rubbish job they they almost certainly will not be returned to government at the next General Election. While this might mean that Rishi Sunak steps out of the way as current tory leadership crumbles and implodes even further, that would likely mean that the tories would not get another crack at government³ until 2029 or 2030. That's so far in the future that while all bets are off, it would be nigh on impossible to predict if Nigel Farage would even be in politics by then.

Is that 4.6 reasons? To be fair I have no idea what kind of mathematical nonsense and nerdery that I have created but I do know that a little bit of nothing multiplied but a lot of rubbish equals a whole lot of nothing. Yeah, nah. Nigel Farage is not going to be the next tory Prime Minister. The idea is madder than Mad Jack McMad, the winner of the 2023 Mister Madman Competitition. He could very well win Bingo at the Kebab And Calculator Hotel, in the village of Much Waffling but that's about it.

¹Three times repetition means to draw reader's attention to a certain quality or phrase in a passage. Three times three times repetition means to take that to its extreme ridiculous conclusion.

²Barking Mental Hospital is on the other side of London from Bethlem Royal Hospital which is in Bromley.

³The next United Kingdom general election is scheduled to be held no later than 28 January 2025.

Horse 3267 - Baron Cameron, Barren Talent

It seems that British politics, has reverted back to feudalism and patronage. The Conservative Party having emptied itself of anyone competent in management, has decided to try a late term reset and is mining the past for classic hits and memories. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-67401753

Suella Braverman has been sacked as home secretary, after she defied No 10 over an article accusing the Metropolitan Police of bias in the policing of protests.

Mrs Braverman was accused of stoking tension ahead of protests in London.

James Cleverly has been announced as her replacement, with former prime minister David Cameron unexpectedly replacing him as foreign secretary.

- BBC News, 13th Nov 2023

Wait what? David Cameron? As in former Prime Minister David Cameron?! Yes, that David Cameron. 

Immediately after this was announced, the commentariat on Twitter, and formal news outlets like the BBC collectively went apoplectically into confusion:

How could Cameron take up a ministerial post if he is neither an MP nor in the Lords, or is this not a requirement but a tradition?

- (name withheld) via Twitter, 13th Nov 

The specific answer to that question was not yet known but was answered upon the opening of that famous black door at No.10 Downing Street.

https://news.sky.com/story/david-cameron-appointed-foreign-secretary-in-shock-cabinet-reshuffle-move-13007124

The ex-party leader is no longer an elected politician as he stood down as an MP in 2016, having called the Brexit referendum and his campaign to remain in the EU losing the vote.

But the government has confirmed he will now enter the House of Lords as a life peer, giving him the opportunity to serve as a minister once more.

- Sky News, 13th Nov 2023

The short answer is that owing to the Peel Convention of 1936 (which was named after William Peel, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and the  youngest son of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel), that Ministers of the Crown of His Majesty's Government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, should be a Member of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. By appointing David Cameron to the House of Lords, the requirements of the Peel Convention have been met and everyone is satisfied. 

Or not.

It's like, wow; whatever.

Here's the thing about parliamentary conventions. Parliamentary conventions are in fact materially different to constitutions. The United Kingdom talks about an unwritten constitution, which is actually a series of untied laws which are not held together in a collection. A constitution is really just a set of replaceable rules, with instructions about how that body corporate will operate; including replaceable rules about how you replace those replaceable rules. However, parliamentary conventions are not even replaceable rules. They are in reality nothing more than vapours and suggestions about how things should operate. As they are not laws, they aren't actually legally binding. As they are not laws, they actually only last exactly as long until the point that they don't any more. 

The appointment of David Cameron as Foreign Secretary inadvertently lets us peek behind the curtain of the law and see what actually stands behind it. What we actually see is that even in the twenty-first century, the United Kingdom still has the raw naked power of the Crown behind the veil of law. The Crown as of now, as in days of yore, still has powers that sometimes dares to use.

As I live in the remnants of empire; and under not one but two sets of law made by Westminster Parliaments, I live in a place bound by law and convention duplicated. This also means that if we examine the written constitutions of the place where I live, we get a formal look at those vapours as though they were stopped from swirling, because in the case of both Australia and New South Wales they have been frozen. Section 64 of the Australian Constitution lends some insight as to what that frozen vapour looks like.

https://aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution/chapter2#chapter-02_64

Ministers of State

The Governor-General may appoint officers to administer such departments of State of the Commonwealth as the Governor-General in Council may establish.

Such officers shall hold office during the pleasure of the Governor-General. They shall be members of the Federal Executive Council, and shall be the Queen's Ministers of State for the Commonwealth.

Ministers to sit in Parliament

After the first general election no Minister of State shall hold office for a longer period than three months unless he is or becomes a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.

- Section 64, Constitution of Australia (1900)

Here's some fun and scary things of note. The Governor-General who is the King's Representative, holds massive amounts of mostly sleeping reserve power. Frequently throughout the Constitution, the Governor-General is granted power with no direction or advice coming from the Constitution about how to wield that power or what it is for. The appointment of Ministers of the Crown, to administer such departments of State of the Commonwealth, is one of those powers.

Note that Section 64 offers no direction at all about who the Governor-General can appoint as a Minister of the Crown. The only impedance is that the person must become "a senator or a member of the House of Representatives" within a period of three months. Without any binding whatsoever, this means that the Governor-General could appoint anyone they wish. Think about that, Section 64 allows the Governor-General to appoint literally anyone in the world as a Minister of the Crown (including the role of Prime Minister which isn't even mentioned in the Constitution) for 89 days. When we get to 90 days, we start to test the boundaries of what is meant by "three months".

The Constitution of Australia does not exist in isolation. It is the end point of more than a decade of argument, counter-argument, at least one fist fight, perhaps lots of swearing; by a lot of fuddy-duddy old men, sitting in the basements of town halls in Sydney and Melbourne, hammering it out. Yes there were some legal scholars amongst the men in the various Constitutional Conventions but the most important thing to remember is that they weren't inventing some new form of government but rather, trying to establish descriptions for what already existed and come to some set of formal agreements. The six several colonies of Australia already had their own Westminster Parliaments and the new Commonwealth Parliament was yet just another copy of the form, coined from the die cut in the Palace at Westminster.

Section 64 formally states what always was and apparently what always will be. That is, that The King can appoint anyone he jolly well feels like as a Minister, at any time, for any reason.

Ministers of the Crown are still officers who administer such departments of State as the King is pleased to establish. Ministers of the Crown are agents of the Crown and curiously, so is the King. The person of the Crown did not magically disappear upon the death of the Queen, nor has it done so upon the deaths of previous Kings and Queens, nor will it do so upon the deaths of future Kings and Queens. Parliament and every Ministry of the Crown and every Department of State of the Crown, are the property of the Crown; and the King who is the executive agent at the centre, still formally has untold and unknown power to make and unmake officers to administer that property.

In my not very well paid opinion, the question of whether or not David Cameron could take up a ministerial post if he is neither a Member of the House of Commons not a Member of the House of Lords, was never an issue. The answer was always "yes". The power to make and unmake Ministers of the Crown always resided with the King; who always had that power. Whether or not David Cameron actually was a Ministers of the Crown without having a seat in parliament will be a question of fact, that will be answered upon the minute by minute signing of writs.

Having said all of that, there should absolutely be outrage. The outrage should exist as a result, not of the King having plenary powers to make and unmake Ministers but that David Cameron can become a life peer of the House of Lords with no election whatsoever. Thankfully the reform process in Australia meant that our upper houses are elected. Ultimately every single Senator or Member of a Legislative Council can be removed by election. The fact David Cameron can not be removed by the people, says that the United Kingdom is still not a democracy in this respect. If you can not remove the people who govern you, you do not live in a democracy.

Horse 3242 - A Seven Bin Army Couldn't Hold Me Back

For almost my entire lifetime, the residents of Number 10 Downing St have either been incredibly knavish, downright incompetent, or dazzling new combinations of both.

Thatcher was horribleness incarnate who demonstrated how good socialism was by running out of other people's stuff to sell. Major took over a government in disarray and never arrayed it. Blair was swept in on a wave of Cool Britannia, lied about documents and helped lead the world to an illegal war. Gordon Brown texture like sun, blathered and dithered until the clock ran out. Cameron (sorry about the pig) tried to blame poor people for the country's woes, enacted austerity to punish them and then when that didn't work, Brexited the country to a new stupid future. Teresa May was given a puzzle with no answer and couldn't solve it. Boris Johnson tried to break every moral and social faux pas in the middle of a pandemic. Liz Truss couldn't outlast a lettuce. Rishi Sunak hasn't really left "The City".

Rishi Sunak is at least a return to the tory Prime Ministers of old, in that he wants to run the country for the benefit of The City and The Square Mile, but has embarked upon an expansionary policy of also including Canary Wharf. His Premiership has been incredibly myopic; bordering on sociopathy. Sunak is very obviously a Prime Minister presiding over a ship of state which has run aground and while it might not sink, is definitely taking on water and might fall over dead in the water. Nevertheless, the taxation policy, the immigration policy, the asylum seeker policy, the policy towards Europe, the health policy, education policy, et cetera have all been thus far about feathering the nests of The City and Square Mile and the new nests at Canary Wharf. Perhaps he wants to join the canaries in the gilded cage once he is done with this obviously temporary and self-serving position, which is probably beneath him in terms of pay-grade.

I note that Britain's star has been falling at roughly the same rate as Australia's. On 15th of February 1966, the Pound Sterling and the Australian Pound were pegged at parity. A day later on Decimal Day for Australia, the Australian Dollar was $1 = 10/- or in decimal terms $1 = 50p. The exchange rate between the £.stg and the AUD yesterday was $1 = 50.000p; meaning that in 57 years, relative to each other we've gone nowhere. Backwards relative to a lot of the world but relative to each other, nowhere.

This is the part of the blog post where I'd make some satirical bon mot about Rishi Sunak's premiership (because this is the fourth paragraph and we are 400 words in; which means that in a four act comic piece, we have reached the first beat point), but not even the wittiest of witticisms do this next thing justice. In comparison, I am but a half-wit crowing about the witlessness of someone with zero-wit.

Sorting your rubbish into seven different bins.

Sorting your rubbish into seven different bins?!

Do what? Come again? Do what? I want to scream at the top of my lungs "What's going on?!", Rishi.

Does Rishi fear bins? Does he think that the witch from the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Bins is going to jump him in his sleep? Perhaps he is making some kind of moral stand but has made a spelling mistake and has confused the Seven Deadly Sins with Seven Deadly Bins.

You've got a housing crisis going on where you need people to work in London but the number of affordable homes to rent within the confines of the M25 is practically nothing, you've got a health crisis caused firstly by austerity and then having to deal with a pandemic and now being starved of funding, you've got a labour crisis caused by both a deliberate aversion to funding training and education and brexiteering brexit to the height of new brexitatiousness; and now you're worried about bins?

The only logical explanation that I can come up with is that the Prime Minister is insulated and divorced from reality and is playing to the audience who used to read the Grauniad, the Times, the Daily Mail, and The Sun, or the most sinister possibility of all, Sunak fears the space aliens.

As First Lord of the Treasury, Premier of the Cabinet, and first ear of the King in Government, Rishi Sunak is likely briefed about the threats to the nation from without and within. We know that these threats exist because the space aliens have already sent an ambassador in none other than Count Binface.

Count Binface, is thus far a multiple unsuccessful candidate for  Uxbridge and South Ruislip and has valiantly tried to stand for the position of Mayor of London but has thus far failed. Last time around, in a field of 18 candidates he came eighth and for the second time in three years, he beat both UKIP and Piers Corbyn in a democratic election. If that’s not a sign of hope, then I do not know what is. 

His policies have included such things as free parking between Vine Street and The Strand (for electric vehicles only), that no shop is to be allowed to sell a croissant for more than £1, that Crossrail should be finished along with Grumpyrail and Happyrail, and most importantly that the hand dryer in the gents’ toilet at the Crown & Treaty, Uxbridge, to be moved to a more sensible position. 

Would a Binface Government be so bad? I mean it couldn't very well do any worse than the abject horrorshow and damage that the tories have done over the last 13 years and what British politics has done generally in my lifetime.

I really have no sensible explanation for this at all other than that Rishi Sunak must have finally enraged the space aliens. Patience can only last so long. The good and fair people of Uxbridge and South Ruislip and London have been asked time and time again to make their vote Count but not enough people have. The invasion is coming and bins are now living collection-free in Rishi’s head. Rishi Sunak is a scared scared little man.

People in the media misinterpreted the chants of crowds at festivals. When the crowds at Glastonbury sang "Whoa, Jeremy Corbyn. Whoa, Jeremy Corbyn." This was not in praise of Jeremy Corbyn but a plea to "Whoa", slow down. Trouble was ahead. The space aliens were already embedded into British Society. "We're gonna find them all. A Seven Nation Army couldn't hold be back." There is was, hidden in plain sight. The warnings were evident.

Count Binface's pleas and protestations to a prevaricating public, were the pleas of an ambassador being sent to warn about the impending crisis. The people may have considered him to be a joke candidate but when British politics for so long has been beyond a joke, and democracy itself is making a mockery out of the very people who live in Britain, then an alien invasion is the best punchline because if it isn't, then cor lummy; junk my jenkins, what the janky jinkies is going on?!

Horse 3136 - Boris Johnson Proves Jeremy Corbyn Right

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64397745

Boris Johnson has said Vladimir Putin threatened him with a missile strike in an "extraordinary" phone call in the run-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The then-prime minister said Mr Putin told him it "would only take a minute".

Mr Johnson said the comment was made after he warned the war would be an "utter catastrophe".

...

No reference to the exchange appeared in accounts released to the media of the call by Downing Street. But with all officially arranged phone calls, there are always detailed minutes taken by a Number 10 official and retained for the archive.

- BBC News, 30th Jan 2023

I do not expect the leaders of governments to openly tell the truth about every little detail that they might have. This is not because I think that there is some kind of deep level conspiracy (the world is far too complicated and the leaders are far too dog ignorant and incompetent for that to happen) but rather that actually telling the general public the truth, might actually have consequences which involve the deaths of many millions of people.

The war in Ukraine is such an example. Quite simply, Vladimir Putin in an unchecked steroid fueled career, has been allowed to do whatever the heck he likes and because as an ex-KGB operative he still likely has the support of people to cause covert violence to his direct enemies, doing  whatever the heck he likes has involved exacting power for power's sake. The war in Ukraine is nothing more than a projection of power for power's sake; to retain power for power's sake. One of the particularly useful sources of information as to how Putin and by extension Russia sees Ukraine is the ex-Soviet Union newspaper Pravda. They have painted the past as an aberration and that Ukraine in their eyes was always part of Russia. Russia is merely trying to retake what was always theirs to begin with. In fact even the name Ukraine steams from the word for "borderlands".

Number Ten Downing Street, the offices therein, the Office of Cabinet, and the then installed First Lord Of The Treasury and Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, spoke with Vladimir Putin on the telephone last February and it is only now that Boris Johnson has said that Vladimir Putin threatened to kill him in a missile strike, on that telephone call.

This is the official minute put out by Number Ten at that time:

Of course we have no way of knowing what was actually said, although it is highly likely that at the Russian end, the phone call was being monitored. It is the height of naievity to think that any telephone call to any Russian agency, and probbably any Russian business, is not s being monitored. In that respect, the same rules should have applied to that telephone call as would apply to any standing microphone in any room in the world: that is that every microphone is a live microphone and that someone somewhere is listening. 

Dear Russia,

If you are listening or reading this blog post, how's it gaan bro'?

Love, Rollo.

PS: Please don't annihalate me in a nuclear war. kthxbye

This blog post is not going to say anything about the actions of Boris Johnson in regards to this. Westminster Politics has an interesting method of dealing with its own. Rather, this blog post about the actions of the "British" press and I use scare quotation marks here because they may as well not be.

The tory press, like the rest of tory politics around the world, is a wen on society that needs to be lanced. The tory press in my country is just as bad and the only real difference is the accent (which they will then use as something exotic overseas) but the messaging is often identical. The tory press has no conscience and will try to destroy anyone who is their enemy; including in the face of very real and dangerous threats.

It should be noted that the tory press (and I use the word 'tory' as the ablative invective pejorative) was busy painting the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite, despite not actually having any evidence of that. As long as the press repeats something often enough, the people will make it their truth. 

At the time, Jeremy Corbyn frequently made statements from the lawns outside the halls at Westminster, calling for peace and diplomacy; which the press then twisted into shivs to try and paint him as a Putin sympathiser. One the surface Johnson was calling for peace but apparently secretly worried and Putin was always calling for peace, while at the same time arranging his toy soldiers. Somehow, Corbyn became the acceptable target from the tory press as well as so-called centrists, who all decided to hold his feet to the fire.

Jeremy Corbyn was a Member of Parliament when Able Archer 83 was going on; when the world got perilously close to accidental nuclear war. Corbyn was a member of the Stop The War Coalition which condemned the actions of his own Prime Minister Tony Blair in going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, on the basis that that war was unjust and as we subsequently found out (almost immediately) was built on lies. Watching this play out yet again; where Vladimir Putin is in charge, who in this case actually does have weapons of mass destruction, is all scarily familiar. We do not know where Putin's limits lie but there is a non-zero chance that he would use nuclear weapons because he is allowed to do whatever the heck he likes.

Corbyn was one of 11 MPs who signed a statement last February which condemned the actions of Putin and while the Labour Party basically tries to hack off its own head with a breadknife and condemn itself to Opposition for another 20 years, Mr Johnson's comments this week have more or less confirmed that Corbyn in calling for diplomacy was right. Not poking the bear was probably the best option; especially in the current light that what we now know is that he was actually wanting not to inadvertently cause nuclear Armageddon.

Remember the inscriptions on Vespasian's public toilets in Ancient Rome "Pecunia Non Olet", which means "Money Does Not Stink". Yet again we are reminded who the tory press work for. They work for whomever has money; which includes Russian oligarchs. They have no problem in dumping sewage on British politics, just as Putin would have no problem in dropping nuclear weapons on Boris Johnson. Corbyn was asking for calm and asking that the Russian bear not be poked and yet he was the enemy.

Horse 3088 - King Charles Should Appoint The Prime Minister

The news came overnight Sydney time that Liz Truss has resigned as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after just 44 days in the job. This has come after a period of time where Boris Johnson was forced to resign after a series of indiscretions, a cabinet that has seen more people enter and exit than a Wimpy's, the Pound Sterling tanking faster than the HMS Colander and a Conservative Party in complete disarray. Lis Truss' only major achievement apart from a mini-budget when sent financial markets into panic, was that she just happened to be the resident of Number Ten Downing Street when Queen Elizabeth The Second died. This kind of parliamentary insanity kind of makes you wish for "Chaos with Ed Milliband" that David Cameron said would happen. If we would have had chaos under Ed Milliband, then what is this exactly?

I live in Australia and ten thousand miles away from Blighty. Looking at Britain's Festival Of The Thirsty Knife looks very similar to our own periodic premiership pugilism. We are quite happy to yell "Spill!" in the morning and find that in the afternoon that we have a new Prime Minister. Yet being an Australian makes me more acutely aware of the vissitudes of parliamentary democracies; namely that we the public do not elect Prime Ministers. Prime Ministers are installed in the same way that you might get an electrician to install a new water heater; which also means that when they go bang and fail, they can be removed quite easily. Indeed, Australia has had four Prime Ministers who have all served for shorter periods than Liz Truss with Arthur "Floody" Fadden reigning for 40 days and 40 nights, John McEwen for 22 days, Sir Earle Page for 19 days, and Frankie Forde who was Prime Minister for only 7 days. There may have been one other; which I will touch one later.

The office of the Prime Minister is not explicitly mentioned in the Australian Constitution. Furthermore, it is not immediately obvious as to whether or not there even needs to be one. It could be for instance that if someone were to imagine another system for organising executive cabinet, with a duumvirate or triumvirate or a cabinet of actual equals, that the functions of the cabinet could happen quite easily. It could be for instance that there is no explicit head of the executive cabinet, save for someone who has been appointed immediately for the purposes of chairing the meeting. Remember how I said that there may have been a Prime Minister for a short period than Forde? Billy Hughes may have been Prime Minister for the morning of 28th August 1941, for the purposes of chairing the meeting to decide who would replace Menzies. I do not know if he was or was not but he may have been if there was a writ of commission which was given to him by the Governor-General, for the express purpose of having the United Australia Party and Country Party to decide in caucus who would be the Prime Minister.

Herein lies an interesting point of order. Ultimately in Australia, political parties do not actually decide who the Prime Minister is. Convention would usually dictate that the Prime Minister is the leader of the party with the most members on the floor of the House of Representatives because that is where the supply and control of appropriation of monies of the Crown is decided. However, as we saw with the premiership of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the Governor-General can make and unmake Ministers at a whim and the only limitation is that the person appointed as a Minister of the Crown then obtains a seat in Parliament within 90 days.

His Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has no written constitution. This means that there is even less direction at law on the King than there is on the  Governor-General of Australia. Previous Kings and Queens have appointed Members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords to the office in the building with the famous black door on Downing Street. Given that there is no written constitution in the United Kingdom and that the Conservative Party is in more confusion than a herd of Meowths after Psyduck has used Confuse on them (it's super effective), then I can think of an easy solution which presents itself and which doesn't involve herding cats who want to chase money.

The King should appoint the Prime Minister.

King Charles III is the current officer of the person that is the Crown. The Crown is distinct from the monarch, as the Crown is corporation sole, with one indissoluble share, which exists in perpetuity, under someone like Cromwell comes along again and decides that the head and corpus of the monarch should part company. As King Charles III is the current officer of the person that is the Crown, he is in fact the sole officer of the functions and powers of the Crown. It is also fact that the Crown owns parliament. Legally speaking it is His Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, His Majesty's Cabinet, and His Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Just like in Australia, political parties do not actually decide who the Prime Minister is. It is the King who makes and unmakes Ministers; including the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

King Charles III should just bypass the entire of the Conservative Party and do the job of appointing a Prime Minister; which they are incapable of doing. This would look different to the King–Byng affair and the 1975 Australian Constitutional Crisis because instead of the Crown interfering in parliament, parliament is already so much of a rabble that it needs some stability given to it. 

The Conservative Party is obviously and demonstrably so bereft of any real leadership, commonsense, and stability at the moment, that if I were King, I'd install Nicholas True, Baron True, who is the current Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, as the Prime Minister. If the Commons can't get its act together, then the Cabinet should be chaired by someone who is above the rough and tumble and stuff and nonsense of all that. A Prime Minister appointed by the King would in all likelihood give the job more seriousness and gravity than what has been shown recently. 

Horse 3065 - No, There Doesn't Need To Be A General Election

Note: This post is by means of clarification for a forum.

With the resignation of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury of the United Kingdom, members of the Conservative and Unionist Party have elected Liz Truss as leader of the party and then by default as the person suggested to the monarch, to be selected as the next Prime Minister. 

As Liz Truss has not been the leader of the party during a general election, there are sections of both the Twitterati and the Commentariat who have vociferously made their opinions know that she should not have a mandate to govern and that a general election should be held as quickly as possible. When I said "no" I was immediately accused of either being a tory apologist or not understanding how the system works; when that answer doesn't even remotely resemble truth.

Yes, I am Australian. Yes, I do not live in the United Kingdom. Be that as it may, I live in New South Wales which has a Westminster style parliament and in the Commonwealth of Australia which also has a Westminster style parliament. The difference between our Westminster style parliaments and the Westminster style parliament as Westminster is that the Upper Houses (the Legislative Council and the Senate) actually do have the power to block supply; where as the House of Lords does not because of the provisions of the Parliament Act 1911. Very clearly if I live in two jurisdictions with Westminster style parliaments, then I have at least some inkling of their mechanics; so let's set those objections to rest.

In general (and I use even that term advisedly), government is formed from the majority of members on the floor of the lower house because that is usually where Appropriation Bills upon the treasury, Money Bills which have to do with both spending and taxation, and legislation generally originates. The very short punchline is that whoever controls the purse of the nation, controls government.

Notice how I haven't said the word "party" in that explanation. The whole idea that there might be formal parties as opposed to mere factions of MPs who might come together and fly apart all the time, is a relatively recent invention. We can generally credit the invention of formal political parties with the great winds of reform in the early 19th century. Political parties start to become useful only after the franchise was expanded to include people who were not male landowners.

The Prime Minister/Premier in all Westminster style parliaments is selected by the Monarch/Governor-General/Governor because they are either the formal leader of the majority of members or the leader of a useful and likely to be stable majority of members who can control the public purse. In a party system, that almost is always the leader of the largest political party; which itself could very well be in coalition with other parties and members. 

Even then, the leader of that party might not actually be in the lower house but in the upper house. There have been Premiers and Prime Ministers in the past who have come from upper houses, including the House of Lords. 

The situation as it stands is that the Conservative and Unionist Party have a majority of members on the floor of the House of Commons. As the House of Lords has no power to knock back Appropriation Bills, then then Conservatives are the party who is invited to form government. As Liz Truss has now been elected as the leader of the Conservatives, it is her name which has been put forward as the suggestion to the Queen as to whom should be the Prime Minister. As the Queen has now accepted that suggestion and formally invited Liz Truss to be the Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury of the United Kingdom, she has taken up the offer.

I absolutely and always reject the notion that any kind of mandate to do anything either does or does not exist. I also reject the notion that there should be a general election just because the leadership of a political party changes. 

At precisely no point at all, did the Conservative majority ever look like it was going to fall apart. Even during the darkest days of the Johnsonian shenaninganry, when motions of no confidence were levelled, was it ever the case that the Conservatives would concede or relinquish the power of the public purse. Liz Truss was always a Member of Parliament and a sitting member of the stable majority of members who can control the public purse she has just as much right to be the Prime Minister as any of them. 

What does change is the hotness of the tempers of the public, who quite rightly are fed up to the back teeth with being fed indigestible right-wing formula and want to spit it out. That is the overlay of politics at work; which the impartial Westminster style parliament doesn't even need to care about. The Parliament at Westminster has been in its current state since 1660. It cares not for the hotness of the tempers of the public or for the nobility or knavery of the members who walk within its walls. To be perfectly honest, it doesn't care who the Prime Minister is or even if there needs to be one. The only thing that matters is who controls the public purse and that person is Liz Truss at the moment; and for that reason, she has the job of trying to lead the business of the parliament.

I hope she does well as indeed I hope that all who lead governments do well. The public needs them to.

Horse 3036 - The Howling Morons Have Stopped Howling

All the way back in Horse 2188, I said that:

https://rollo75.blogspot.com/2016/11/horse-2188-trump-wins-in-2016.html

In the UK, Britain voted to leave the EU and David Cameron resigned because he couldn't hold the party together. The current Prime Minister Teresa May always looks perpetually stunned and I would not be at all surprised if she too is knifed by a blithering idiot like Boris Johnson. It just might be possible that by the next British General Election, that Donald Trump and Boris Johnson could be leading the governments of the anglosphere. Of course Australia would have to follow suit at some point and probably appoint Spud Dutton or worse, Christopher Pyne or Treasurer Scott Morrison, to form a grinning triumvirate of Howling Morons across the anglosphere.

The only thing that I can say is that the Howling Morons are howling louder than ever before and it is beyond my ability to comprehend why. What is this? I don't even.

- Horse 2188, 9th Nov 2016

Now I am not going to claim for a second to have the gift of prophecy but it seemed pretty obvious to me back then that parts of the Anglosphere were being pushed massively to the right; at the expense of common sense and decency. This was being aided and abetted by church groups who were being openly used as vote vending machines and sections of the secular right who couldn't honestly give two hoots about the welfare of anyone but themselves. In short, you do not need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows and back then, the winds were guff powered. 

I can report that following the revolt of more than 50 Tory Ministers and Aides, it looks like that Boris Johnson will finally be convinced that he should enjoy the Stewardship Of The Chiltern Hundreds, and that the Festival Of The Howling Moron might finally be coming to a close.

As usual, there is no story told in a vacuum; so we have to look back into the fog of history to see how we got here.

Way back in the day, after Maggie Thatcher had sold out the soul of the Conservative Party to the lowest bidder and John Major (Britain's last actually good Prime Minister) successfully lost the unwinnable election, Tony Blair was swept to power in a wave of Cool Britannia and abandoning everything that Labour stood for. Maggie Thatcher celebrated her successful destruction of the fabric of British life, by being kicked upstairs to the House of Lords, going off in an alcoholic haze, getting Alzheimer's and ultimately never answering for what she did.

Tony Blair after spending three glorious years by not doing anything but most importantly not being Maggie Thatcher, then decided to pony up to George W Bush. Together they

went to war in Iraq on the basis of lies, and in time Blair was replaced by Gordon Brown (texture like sun), and would also never answer for what he did.

The Tory Replacement Bus Service made a deal with UKIP after having to endure five years of sharing (no) power with the Liberal Democrats and after a period of austerity, David Cameron made a promise to the racists of Britain to go for a full English Brexit. That promise foisted Cameron by his own petard, exploded Teresa May, and after nobody at all wanted the job, comedy blatherer and pantomime Mayor of London Boris Johnson took up the job, and has spent his time comedy blathering and pantomiming it up in Number 10 Downing Street. Has he been a good Prime Minister? Oh no he hasn't!

Basically ever since Maggie Thatcher sold out the governance of the United Kingdom to "The City", Westminster and Number 10 have been on a default project of dancing the Charleston while Great Britain aka HMS Colander, slowly sinks beneath the waves. 

Cruelty, Boredom, Cool, Apathy, Austerity, Awkward, Comedy - this is the worst production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, ever. 

Johnson never really stood a chance of being even a part way decent Prime Minister because as the head of the executive of the Tories, decency just hasn't been a policy option open to him. It certainly hasn't helped that this plague came along; which has only heightened the visible signs that the Tories do not think that the rules apply to them. Even the phrase that he was "Ambushed by cake" when giving an explanation as to why there were parties going on inside Number 10 Downing Street while the rest of the country was in lockdown, is emblematic of a party whose consistent policy line has been to ensure that more rewards of society go to the already rich and powerful. Even in the middle of an inflationary period which is being driven by an shock in oil prices, the solution being put forward is not the destruction of money through taxation which would have stabilised the value of the Pound Sterling but ever more tax cuts.

This current chain of events which led to the massive walkout, started on 29th June when the Conservative deputy chief whip Chris Pincher, went to a private members' club in London and was accused of groping two men. He claimed that  "drank far too much and embarrassed himself" and Johnson was not aware of any specific allegations about Mr Pincher before appointing him as deputy chief whip in February. The problem was that Johnson completely knew about the allegations and appointed Mr Pincher anyway.

This led to a review of Johnson's voted to pause a 30-day suspension for then-Conservative MP Owen Paterson who had broken lobbying rules, to try to benefit companies who paid him under the table.

All of this is in addition to the report by Sue Gray who described a heap of parties going on inside Number 10, while Metropolitan Police issued 126 fines to 83 people for breaking lockdown rules in Downing Street and Whitehall.

If we had entered a sensible timeline, then Boris Johnson would have been a perennially beloved comedy blatherer on BBC Radio 4 panel shows like Clement Freud or Gyles Brandreth. Mind you, the most sensible choice of American President would have been Paul Ryan but that didn't happen either. Instead, the world got accidentally switched to Stupid Mode and the Anglosphere performed an experiment in executive government by Top Bantz. Guess what? It doesn't work.

The problem for the Tory Party is that it now has the same job that it was facing only a few years ago. It has to fill a job which nobody wants to do, with candidates who are definitely committed to not doing the job well; except that on this occasion it has to fill the job from a pool of candidates whom nobody has heard of.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the next British Prime Minister might very well be the current Minister For The 1920s, Jacob Rees-Mogg. 

Here we are. The Festival Of The Howling Moron might be coming to a close. Australia has elected a remarkably competent Prime Minister to office. America has elected a calm President to office. We do not yet know who Great Britain will install.

What we do know is that we the audience of BBC Radio 4 panel shows have been denied Boris Johnson as the comedy blatherer that he should have been and that's terrible.

Horse 3025 - I Have Confidence In Confidence Alone

As I type this, the 1922 Committee for the Conservative Party in the UK has confirmed that it has received 54 letters, which is necessary to hold a vote of confidence in the Prime Minister. If a vote of confidence fails and the majority of members do not express confidence in the Prime Minister, then Boris Johnson will be given formal orders that he should expect to leave Number 10 Downing Street and that his tenure is over.

In looking at why this particular moment in history exists, it is worth taking the long view to see how we got here.

The Blair Labour Government which was swept to power in 1997, oversaw the UK's involvement in two illegal wars which turned out to be both based upon lies. The British people decided that that was acceptable and so in 2000 and 2005, they were returned. Tony Blair left the job of Prime Minister and returned to the Chiltern Hundreds, in relatively quiet circumstances and left his Chancellor Of The Exchequer Gordon Brown in charge.

Brown's Government reasonably led the UK through the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 but Brown had about as much personal charm as a sack of potatoes and so the British people decided to vote for the Opposition as led by a man who was far more exciting. In David Cameron they found a charismatic leader. However, in the 2010 Election the tories who did not secure a majority of members upon the floor of the House of Commons, made a deal with the Liberal Democrats for matters on confidence and supply. Very soon the people found that they did not find anything different than a tory Prime Minister.

The period from 2010 until 2015 is marked as a period of unhappy austerity and with no ability to do much about it. The period of unhappy austerity was bookended by promises from far-right parties who promised to hold a  referendum to leave the EU.

One of Cameron's promises, as a result of an outsized piece of influence on the part of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), was top hold that referendum (on Brexit) and on the back of this, the tories won a majority of seats and thus government in their own right.

Brexit has been one giant chain of hateration and holleration since it passed and has brought down the tenures of David Cameron and Teresa May. However the terrible horrible very bad no good hateration and holleration wrought by Brexit was enough to bring down Boris Johnson. The thing that will ultimately turf him from Number 10, is not the incredible incompetence that he has shown in running executive government but rather, the indiscretion in holding parties and gatherings during the middle of a pandemic; while the rest of the citizens of the UK were huddled at home and following the rules in lockdown. This was brought to light in Sue Gray's report detailing lockdown rule-breaking in Downing Street. 

Something went wrong with reality after the change of the millennium. In the Anglosphere, the UK, the US and Australia all shifted to the right and we've had a period of rather stupid politics. Tory parties across the Anglosphere, generally have not engaged in any kind of nation building programs but have decided that the best way to keep and retain power is to wash their right-leaning supporters in cash. 

In the US this finally came to an end when enough people spoke up. In Australia this finally came to an end when rich people realised that they already have everything and so can not be wooed further. In the UK, there is seemingly no bottom to the tory barrel in terms of economic saturation but what has been found is the violation of decency.

Boris Johnson should not have been Prime Minister. If reality had been operating properly, he would have gone from being Mayor of London, to tory backbencher, then to being on Radio 4 panel shows such as "Just A Minute", the "News Quiz", and maybe "The Unbelievable Truth". What has happened instead is that he although being unsuited to being Prime Minister beforehand, rose to a job which nobody really wanted, and tried to be the comedy backbencher from the front bench. Unfortunately, this is beyond a joke and the punchline doesn't land properly.

If Boris Johnson does lose the vote of confidence, to be held by Conservative MPs from 18:00 to 20:00 BST, then he will be forced to stand down as Prime Minister. That vote will require a majority of Conservative MPs, 180 by my count, if he is to leave at all.

On a side note, this means that the period of the Triumvirate of Howling Morons has come to a close.

https://rollo75.blogspot.com/2016/11/horse-2188-trump-wins-in-2016.html

It just might be possible that by the next British General Election, that Donald Trump and Boris Johnson could be leading the governments of the anglosphere. Of course Australia would have to follow suit at some point and probably appoint Spud Dutton or worse, Christopher Pyne or Treasurer Scott Morrison, to form a grinning triumvirate of Howling Morons across the anglosphere.

- Horse 2188, 9th Nov 2016

Horse 2906 - Going Metric Every Inch Of The Way

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-58597693

"The government says its review of EU rules on imperial measures for traders is only a "small part" of plans to reshape laws after Brexit.

The overhaul could permit retailers to once again sell goods only using Britain's traditional weighing system.

...

Boris Johnson pledged to change the rules ahead of the 2019 election, telling the Daily Mail: "We will bring back that ancient liberty. I see no reason why people should be prosecuted."

"There will be an era of generosity and tolerance towards traditional measurements," the prime minister pledged."

- BBC News, 17th Sep 2021

I think that something went hideously awry with reality when Boris Johnson decided to step back into the House of Commons and mount a leadership challenge for Number 10. In the proper non-silly version of reality, Boris Johnson after being the wacky Mayor of London, in the same way that other pantomime Mayors such as Dick Whittington or Red Ken Livingstone were, should have gone on to be a perennial panelist on BBC Radio 4 Panel Shows. In this way, he would have and should have followed Clement Freud and Gyles Brandreth.

Instead, Boris Johnson's Conservative Government, which only happened after David Cameron's idiotic cave in to the racists at UKIP and Teresa May's bound to fail premiership, has taken governance by BBC Radio 4 Panel Shows to the very heart of government itself.

I like Boris Johnson. It's just that he should have remained as comedy relief and the fact that he took himself way too seriously, has short changed us of what could have and should have been many years of quality comedy on the Beeb.

This policy of allowing retailers to trade in imperial units is nothing more than the enactment of law in Johnson's gelotopocracy¹; in lieu of actual sensible policy.

Horse has previously stated that:

http://rollo75.blogspot.com/2019/07/horse-2575-doonside-station-needs-lift.html

"The Metric system is not in use in Hell. They still use the Imperial system, for the sole purpose of making the underworld as difficult as possible."

- Footnote 1, Horse 2575, 23rd Jul 2019

Admittedly this publication makes such remarks and asides for comic effect but bringing this into public policy is crazy making...

...but not as bad as you might think.

The understated truth which is relevant here is that people only tend to care about what immediately impacts them. This is the reason why in high school, loads of students suffer through maths classes and then almost never have to deal with serious maths again for rest of their lives. Even personally as someone who works in an accounting office, the most difficult pieces of maths that I need are not much more than arithmetic.

Given that, allowing traders to start trading with imperial units again, isn't suddenly going to cause a mass breakout of confusion everywhere for the simple reason that most people don't find maths useful in the first place and traders aren't likely to be engaging in anything more complex than basic arithmetic either.

If goods are already sold in kilograms, then traders aren't likely to change over. Maybe there will be artisan bread and cheese makers who sell things by the pound but that's it. The weight of a size 5 football is a pound as well. Of course people will still refer to their weight in pounds or perhaps stone, but that's mostly an edge case and not useful for anything else.

The only occasion that you're going to care about ounces, is in reference to the weight of a cricket ball; which weighs 5½ Oz.

The only place that you're likely to find a pint after the law change, is in the pub or perhaps in a local dairy.

Inches, feet, yards and miles kind of held on a bit. Tyre rim sizes are still defined by inches but have millimetre width sizes. Feet and inches are only useful in determining how tall people sized objects are.

A football pitch has a 6 yard box, an 18 yard box, and other measurements in yards. A cricket pitch is 22 yards long and that was never metricized because that's hallowed turf. 

Miles still exist on British Motorways because it was deemed too hard to change over all of the signs in the country. 

The only place that anyone cares about furlongs is when that pony that you've just dropped a score on, is slow.

Britain is absolutely not going back to Pounds, Shillings and Pence², because although people and computers can perform numismatic gymnastics, they're not going to.

Cars are still likely to have their power stated in brake horsepower and mileage in miles per gallon but in reality, already nobody understands ft/lbs or Nm except for boffins and nerds (who are likely to bore or entertain you).

The actual real world effects of this legislation is likely to be three-quarters of an imperial diddly squat, as opposed to the metric equivalent of a kilobupkis. This is legislation in lieu of actual governance. This is smoke and mirrors amidst the gutting of the NHS in the middle of a pandemic. 

Around and around and around the windd blows, blowing this way, then that, but never finding any stable direction. All the rivers flow into the sea, but the sea never fills up. When the seagulls follow the trawler it is because they think that sardines will be thrown into the sea.

¹rule by a clown

²for a short time only, the guv'ner is offering light ale from the pump at only 1/2 per pint.

Horse 2903 - Awkward AUKUS Orcas

 I have had some time to pause and think more carefully about the AUKUS Treaty and the longer I think about it, the more that I am convinced that it changes literally nothing.

In terms of the parties who have signed up to it, the United States and Australia have already been bound by the remnants of the ANZUS Treaty which dates back to 1951, the UK and the US have been boasting about the "special relationship" since the beginning of Tony Blair's premiership, and Australia has been sent on military errands by Mother Britain since before there was the Commonwealth of Australia. Binding the three merely restates what already existed.

This doesn't really change the military arrangements between them either. Australia has always been seen as an airstrip and resupply station by the United States, and Britain and the United States have shared various bits of military hardware since the Second World War. 

Presumably the treaty was signed with the intention to be a signal to China that its meddling in the South China Sea wasn't going to be tolerated. There's quite a lot of conflicting weirdness going on here because part of the AUKUS deal involves Australia buying $90bn worth of nuclear submarines which don't yet exist, to defend against an enemy which also doesn't officially exist but is absolutely China except we're not naming it. At the same time, China is Australia's biggest trading partner and the Chinese Government leases Port Darwin to ship goods and resources through. 

China has had a policy for a very long time of the 'minimum credible defence'. This is similar to India's Credible Minimum Deterrence strategy upon which India's nuclear capabilities are arranged. It assumes no first use and states in principle that there will be a second strike.

China is more likely to just buy what it wants and build the necessary infrastructure to get it, than to run down the road of stupid aggression which the United States has engaged in since WW2.

The actual opinion of China about AUKUS is different depending on where you are getting your news from. If you have been watching Sky News Australia then you will assume that President Xi Jingping is utterly livid. If you have been watching the BBC or the ABC then you will assume that they are cautious. If you read the Chinese state media outlet Xinhua, then AUKUS appears to be of practically zero importance. Xinhua has report that AUKUS exists but that's really as far as they go. America is still America; Australia is still the flea on the big dog's back; and Britain is far away.

As for the French response which seems very typically French. On the 17th of September, France recalled its ambassadors from Australia and the United States (but not the UK) and the French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian calling the deal a "stab in the back".

He appeared to be more concerned with the cancellation by Australia of a French–Australian submarine deal; which happened almost unilaterally by Australia. Australia for its part has replaced submarines which do not yet exist with other submarines which do not yet exist.

To be perfectly honest France's reaction can be fairly easily explained in terms of its own security issues, as France is actually the fourth closest country to Australia; as weird as that sounds. New Caledonia is legally a sui generis collectivity of overseas France in the southwest Pacific Ocean; which means that New Caledonia is part of France in the same way that Tasmania is part of Australia. It's just that the distance between it and the mainland is a lot bigger.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/us-france-australia-betrayal.html

"American officials insist it was not their place to talk to the French about their business deal with Australia. But now, in light of the blowup, some officials say they regret they did not insist that the Australians level with the French about their intentions earlier."

- New York Times, 17th Aug 2021

From this standpoint, both the Australian and United States Governments look like untrustworthy actors; facing off against an equally untrustworthy actor in the French Government. 

If the French Government caught wind of the fact that Australia was going to scupper one of the biggest military contracts in their history, then they almost certainly would have tried to sabotage the plan. By operating downwind, Australia and America didn't even let a sniff of what was going on float in on the breeze; so France had no opportunity to take the wind out of the sails of either Australia or America. This is ironic given that submarines operate below the water line.

France would have probably been liked to be included in this pact as it is worried about its own citizens in this region.

The only other player which might have been interested is New Zealand and they weren't even consulted about the pact; due to their existing suspension from ANZUS and their existing continued stance on not wanting nuclear warships in its waters. New Zealand's defence policy mainly involves being a decent global citizen and not stirring up trouble with anyone. It also doesn't really have lots of unused resources like Australia.

The most comical take on AUKUS came from Russia's Pravda which decried the security pact as:

"AUKUS: Australia decides to die for USA's war with China"

It also talks about 'floating Chernobyls' which is ironic given that Russia already has nuclear submarines, and the nuclear powered submarine Kursk exploded in August 2000, in the Barents Sea; killing all 118 souls on board.

I do not think that AUKUS actually materially changes anything in any practical terms. Why do it then?

President Joe Biden faces criticism at home over the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has had a cabinet reshuffle. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has a government which has just lost its Attorney General. All three face criticism over their nations' handing of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

This is an announceable; which cheap and easy PR. I don't know what else it does, of any discernable difference to the arrangements which were already in place.

Horse 2863 - Why The 2021 Batley And Spen By-Election Gave The Wrong Result And Why We Will Never Know What The Right Result Was

 The 2021 Batley and Spen by-election which was held on the 1st of July, following the resignation of the previous Member of Parliament Tracy Brabin, who was elected Mayor of West Yorkshire (and became intelligible to sit as an MP, once again highlights the utter stupidity of the First Past The Post system. 

There is in fact no post which the candidates must get past; which you would naturally assume as the name implies, that there would be some minimum standard. That simply isn't the case. 

To wit, the results of the election are thus:

13,296 (35.2%) - Kim Leadbeater LAB 

12,973 (34.3%) - Ryan Stephenson CON

8,264 (21.9%) - George Galloway WOR

3,245 (8.6%) - Everyone Else OTH

The fact that George Galloway is mounting a legal challenge to the result when under the current system he has zero chance of winning, indicates that given the opportunity, he would have voted for the Conservative candidate as a second choice. Herein lies the idiocy of the First Past The Post system. It isn't actually the first past the post who wins but merely the one with the most votes who wins. 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"

- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration Of Independence, 4th July 1776

I think that it is also self-evident that the United States which was created in the wake of this Declaration, which did not extend the franchise to men without property, all women, and lots of people on the basis of race, was not instituted upon deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed. Quite the opposite. It was conceived in liberty for a select few.

Nevertheless, the principle that governments should derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, is a good one; especially considering that the two biggest things which determine what a government is are the ability to write, administer, and enforce laws, and the monopoly on violence therein. 

That might sound incredibly harsh but bear in mind that both Bodin and Hobbes arrived at this conclusion and Max Weber in his 1919 work "Politics As A Vocation" which was written in the aftermath of the First World War and kind of foreboding foreshadowing of the rise of the Soviets, the Fascists, and the Nazis, who would all exact violence in hideous ways.

His conception of the concept of the state itself is any entity which holds the exclusive right to use or authorise physical force against the residents within the geographical borders of a territory. That monopoly of force must always occur via a process of legitimation.

What does this have to do with the mechanics of elections? Elections for members of parliaments, who are the representatives of the people; who then take part in the process of writing and if in government the exercise of the administration and enforcement of laws, can only arrive at legitimacy through deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. My question is: how do you arrive at that consent if more than half the population did not vote for you?

The thing is though in Australia, we have compulsory preferential voting; which means to say that not only is every MP in Australia chosen by at least 50%+1 of the vote but because everyone is compulsorily asked what they think, then that consent is achieved, although perhaps begrudgingly.

People might make the case that there is a right not to vote but I would argue that all citizens who live within a country and choose to continue in the civic life of that country, owe their opinions of consent to that country. If they want to express that none of the candidates are good enough, then that should also be an option. However, if someone does not want to take part within the civic life of the country, then should be forced to leave. 

In the case of Kim Leadbeater, 64.8% of the population did not vote for her. In the case of Ryan Stephenson 65.7% of the population did not vote for him. In the case of George Galloway 78.1% of the population did not vote for him. I would argue that none of these candidates actually have the consent of the governed.

If there had been preferential voting, then the people would have been asked to whom they would ultimately consent to as their Member of Parliament until someone did achieve at least 50%+1 of the vote. I think that it is fair to assume that 50%+1 is the bare minimum threshold of where consent actually lies, instead of the current system where the people have not been asked at all. Who you like best and who you will consent to are in fact different questions and the Most Votes Wins system fails to address this.

When the AV referendum was held in 2011, the argument made against the Alternative Vote (which is just another name for preferential voting) was mostly that implementing AV would be expensive, due to the necessity of installing electronic voting machines. Clearly that is idiotic dumbwittery on a massive scale because Australia uses paper ballots to conduct elections; which means that the actual paper looks identical to that used in the United Kingdom.

On the existing ballot papers, the instruction "Number the boxes from 1 to 16 in the order of your choice" is so simple that a ten year old child could follow it. I can only assume that the No to AV campaign thought that the average intelligence of the Great British public was less than that of ten year olds.

If they took this view, then that says to me that the people who are actually in charge of the United Kingdom, don't care about the consent of the governed and they certainly aren't interested in asking for that consent. Instead we get an MP whom almost two thirds of the electorate might despise. However, this is true for every election for the House of Commons.