Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Yeah same.

I think that is part of the challenge for Labour. It's like a annual review that sort of concludes that you need to be consistently better at everything you do and the boss thinks your personality's shit. If it was just tilt left or tilt right, or whatever that would be a lot more easy for Labour to fix.

Incidentally on the personality - there is a streak in Starmer' personality that I find contemptible in a leader. I've mentioned it before but the way he blames other people in his team publicly. But I saw a line in the Guardian today from a "friend of the PM" that "Keir would not have been able to live with himself if he had been forced out of office early without showing the country who he really is and what he's about." Which I just find insufferably self-indulgent

[Razgovory]

By the by, just as a couple of examples of the overlap of political networks and how diasporas can stay involved in poliics with globalisation. Just yesterday Bangladesh issued an Interpol red notice for the arrest of the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq who has been convicted (in absentia) of corruption - rather unfortunately she was Keir Starmer's anti-corruption minister - related to her aunt, Sheikh Hasina who was the authoritarian/illiberal democrat Awami League PM of Bangladesh who was overthrown a year or two ago.

Another I think more interesting example is Mohammed Sarwar who is the father of the Scottish Labour Party leader, Anas Sarwar. Mohammed Sarwar was I think the leader of Glasgow council for a while - certainly a big player in Glasgow politics. He then became a Labour MP for a Glasgow seat until 2010 when he stepped down. Gordon Brown nominated him for a peerage but this was blocked following advice from HMRC. He then has an entire second career in Pakistani politics - he's twice Governor of Punjab (once under Nawaz Sharif's party, once for Imran Khan's) and a Senator in Pakistan.

And I think diasporas have always maybe retained an interest in the politics back home - just look at Irish-Americans. But with remittances and the internet and easier, cheaper air travel - there is just less distance. So Sarwar's career is exceptional but I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes more common.

There's less of this with Indian politics because I don't think India allows for dual citizenship. But there's growing BJP/Tory overlap. It's probably also relevant that for national elections (so MPs) the UK allows anyone who is a lawful resident and a citizen of a Commonwealth country to vote.

I have a question:  Why do the Indians vote right and the Muslims vote left in Britain?

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'm not entirely sure why but I watched a 30 minute video on YouTube where Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Starkey discuss monarchy in the 21st century. My presumption is their views are not mainstream even on the right, but the short of it is they both believe the monarch should be "constitutionally active", essentially acting as a constitutional referee. They both said that the country had essentially been "attempting" to use the Speaker of the House of Commons for this role, but that the "extreme partisanship" of John Bercow whilst in that role exposed that it isn't a suitable role for the Speaker.

However, they both also seemed fairly anti-Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles, saying that QEII oversaw a huge constitutional decay of the monarchy. They were very down on the private secretaries of the monarch, saying that this was a role which had previously been given to a person of high competence who well understood the monarch's valid constitutional role, but had degraded to going to low competence individuals by the mid-20th century. They specifically called out Tommy Lascelles as representing a decline in quality in that office with injurious effects on the monarchy.

Rees-Mogg said that QEII had wasted a good bit of her monarchy on useless obsession with the Commonwealth, which he blamed for allowing "insidious ideas" like "reparations" to seep into British life.

Starkey stated that in his view, where the monarch should exercise real constitutional power, they should also no longer be active in speaking about "issues", and that King Charles should be told to "shut up" on topics like climate change.

They both also linked the declining constitutional role of the monarch with Parliament ceding its effective control of certain British institutions to apolitical systems--they cited things like Parliament had historically controlled who became a Bishop in the Church of England, and both said that practice should have been maintained to prevent the "absurdities" now found in the CoE (my understanding is neither men are Anglican so I'm not 100% sure why they care.) They also cited that Parliament used to, and should again, control leadership appointments at leading universities.

Like I said, my impression was these views are probably not very common even among the British right.

[Sheilbh]

I have a question:  Why do the Indians vote right and the Muslims vote left in Britain?

I don't think that's necessarily right yet.

Historically Labour have been the party of minorities. That goes back to its founding - one of the first socialist societies to affiliate with Labour was Poale Zion from Jews in the East End. My family's from Liverpool - the Irish Catholic vote was Labour, the Protestant English or Scottish vote was Tory (same in Glasgow). Those associations and the strength of those identities reduced over time - but as recently as the 1970s Liverpool was the most Tory city in the country. Labour was the party of the Race Relations Act, of civil rights and anti-racism and also, crucially, in the early post-war it was the party that had historic links to freedom movements and was associated with decolonisation and the Commonwealth. People like Nehru were very close to people in the Labour Party. There were a number of Labour Party politicians who were personally very close to a whole generation of national liberation leaders because they'd been in the same societies and the like in British universities, or at the bar, or in London. I think you still see a very faint echo of this in Northern Ireland were Labour's sister party is the SDLP which supports Irish unification - Labour doesn't operate in Northern Ireland and repeated Labour party conferences have backed Irish unification.

So I think there's a history there for minority communities voting Labour. However we don't have much data on it because the voting patterns of different communities has been tracked a lot less in opinion polls etc in the UK than the US until relatively recently. There is far better data starting with the 2015 election and a real effort to get into it.

However my understanding is that the UK is not like the US in that race does not seem to be a significant indicator of voting behaviour. What I mean by that is that the strongest indicators of how someone will vote in the UK are basically age, education and whether own or rent their home (broadly speaking Labour win with younger, more educated, renters). If you adjust for those things then race doesn't seem to be a factor in voting behaviour (and minority communities are significantly younger than the White British population, more likely to go to university and far more likely to be renting). Obviously the existence of inequalities in some of those areas indicates other ways in which race impacts people's lives.

To an extent this takes us back to the Poale Zion and Irish voters because the same is true there but happened earlier. However British Indians don't vote right - but about 70% of British Indians are homeowners, which is about the same as White Britons and their vote breaks down in a similar way (especially as British Indians are younger and more likely to be graduates). So part of this is just about the relative economic "success" of various communities in the UK - there are signs communities are going on a similar journey as British Indians. They're (broadly) more likely to go to university than the national average, get middle class jobs and buy a house in the suburbs. And the voting patterns basically resemble that. I think there's a big question of how or if that plays out as we're moving from two party politics to multi-party politics - there's some early polling that actually has a not insignificant British Indian vote for Reform so again it may just match national patterns but I'm not sure.

Having said all that the Tories have made a big pitch for British Indian and African voters in recent years - in part just by recruiting people to become MPs and identifying talent that can go into the cabinet. That top-down decision to create a sort of talent pipeline to make the party "look" different than it did in 2010 when I don't think there were any non-white MPs is a big part of how they've gone from a British Indian leader who is a practicing Hindu to a Black woman who has said she's effectively a first generation immigrant who grew up in Lagos. From 2015 on there's a lot more focus on India, so in 2015 David Cameron addressed a big joint rally in Britain with Modi - he predicted (correctly) that the first British Indian PM would be a Conservative within ten years. Zac Goldsmith's campaign to become London Mayor against Sadiq Khan was sectarian. They had a lot of Islamophobic campaigning specifically in British Indian Hindu areas. I also think this is where the Labour links with a previous generation of anti-colonial leaders can be a hindrance - because they've also tended to be quite pro-Pakistan on Kashmir, quite pro-Sikh on issues around the Golden Temple etc and have been painted as "anti-India" as India becomes less INC and more nationalist/BJP.

With British Muslims it varies - there is clear evidence there was a swing against Labour in areas with a big Muslim community in 2024 and it was overwhelmingly over Gaza. But even there there have been some very early reports that British Bangladeshi voters are starting to swing Tory - in part because there's a generation that's gone to university, got a middle class job and is now buying houses in the suburbs in Essex. And geography plays a part on this - so part of the reasons British Bangladeshis are graduating at a significantly higher rate than the national average and earning more etc is because that diaspora is overwhelmingly in London. British Pakistanis are nowhere near as concentrated and often live in declining mill towns and other post-industrial areas - I think that is the one area where my guess is that if you adjust for everything many of those seats (like Bradford) should probably be going Reform. For obvious reasons they're not but the same dissatisfaction and frustration apply in those towns and, as with the "Red Wall", Labour are the historically dominant, establishment party that has perhaps taken them for granted.

[Tamas]

I'm not entirely sure why but I watched a 30 minute video on YouTube where Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Starkey discuss monarchy in the 21st century. My presumption is their views are not mainstream even on the right, but the short of it is they both believe the monarch should be "constitutionally active", essentially acting as a constitutional referee. They both said that the country had essentially been "attempting" to use the Speaker of the House of Commons for this role, but that the "extreme partisanship" of John Bercow whilst in that role exposed that it isn't a suitable role for the Speaker.

However, they both also seemed fairly anti-Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles, saying that QEII oversaw a huge constitutional decay of the monarchy. They were very down on the private secretaries of the monarch, saying that this was a role which had previously been given to a person of high competence who well understood the monarch's valid constitutional role, but had degraded to going to low competence individuals by the mid-20th century. They specifically called out Tommy Lascelles as representing a decline in quality in that office with injurious effects on the monarchy.

Rees-Mogg said that QEII had wasted a good bit of her monarchy on useless obsession with the Commonwealth, which he blamed for allowing "insidious ideas" like "reparations" to seep into British life.

Starkey stated that in his view, where the monarch should exercise real constitutional power, they should also no longer be active in speaking about "issues", and that King Charles should be told to "shut up" on topics like climate change.

They both also linked the declining constitutional role of the monarch with Parliament ceding its effective control of certain British institutions to apolitical systems--they cited things like Parliament had historically controlled who became a Bishop in the Church of England, and both said that practice should have been maintained to prevent the "absurdities" now found in the CoE (my understanding is neither men are Anglican so I'm not 100% sure why they care.) They also cited that Parliament used to, and should again, control leadership appointments at leading universities.

Like I said, my impression was these views are probably not very common even among the British right.

I have no idea who that Starkey character is but Rees-Mogg is a completely detached idiot who has peaked out of the 18th-century bubble he built from his family's inherited wealth, and thanks to the rapid degradation of politics found himself in the forefront for a brief period of time.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Starkey is apparently a far right gay man who has been a radio and TV history presenter in Britain, but has been involved in controversies for saying numerous misogynistic, racist, and other things over the years.

[Tamas]

Starkey is apparently a far right gay man who has been a radio and TV history presenter in Britain, but has been involved in controversies for saying numerous misogynistic, racist, and other things over the years.

Ah, I had no idea Martinus moved here.

[The Minsky Moment]

If any Starkey is going to be involved in UK politics, it should be Richard.

[Valmy]

If any Starkey is going to be involved in UK politics, it should be Richard.

George tried to get him and Paul to run for Parliament once. They wisely decided against it.

Peace, love, and legalize pot.

[Sheilbh]

Starkey is apparently a far right gay man who has been a radio and TV history presenter in Britain, but has been involved in controversies for saying numerous misogynistic, racist, and other things over the years.

Ah, I had no idea Martinus moved here.

Basically, yes.

I think he was the first early example of the grift I can think of in the UK. From my understanding he was a genuinely very good Tudor historian - we'd consider his approach that was very focused on the court and how presentation and power interact etc quite conservative and old-school now but I think when he started it was a pretty revisionist approach. He did some TV too.

And then he started getting to do some punditry (always a dangerous opening) and he was just very abrasive. I think he would probably frame it as bracing and not suffering fools but there's a story because the tabloids branded him "Britain's Rudest Man" and a friend was worried it would impact his TV career and apparently his response was something like "darling, every time they say it I add another hundred grand to my fee!" But obviously there's diminishing returns so he had to keep on being more and more abrasive and offensive and rude so he was ratcheting up constantly until he ends up being really racist and misogynist and snobbish and sneering and just an all round dick. Beware if you gaze into the discourse, because the discourse will gaze into you.

On the monarchy stuff I can only assume they are accelerationist republican deep cover agents who have been activated I think it's fair to say those are very fringe views.

I totally agree on the criticism of John Bercow. He tore up precedents at the drop of a hat, he overruled the clerks repeatedly, he created new rules in order to do what he wanted - and outside of his job in the Commons he's famously a bully. Multiple members of staff were signed off with PTSD from working with him - he would rant, rave, throw things at people. If he was on the Leave rather than Remain side he would have launched a million Rest is Politics emergency podcasts - because he wasn't, his utter disregard for convention and his constitutional role were kind of ignored. I think Lindsey Hoyle has broadly tried to restore the Speaker to its traditional role.

With the monarch - what they're saying is insane. The monarchy's ability to survive depends on the fact that parliament can abolish it tomorrow and that it stays out of politics doing inoffensive things like opening community centres. So the constitutional conservatives I know were very worried about the Queen's death because after however many years on the throne none of us really had any idea about her politics (beyond the fact that she had a difficult relationship with Thatcher and that Wilson was her favourite PM ). Charles, as Prince of Wales, has very public opinions - he's spoken about them but also there was FOIA request which released loads of his letters to ministers. They were worried that he wouldn't be able to rein himself in and would cause it all to come tumbling down. As it is I think he's been very good and is not the same as he was as Prince of Wales. But his politics are basically Tory-Green swing voter - very interested in the environment, conservation, organic farming, homeopathy, spirituality, traditional artisanal arts and craft and producers etc (and with it, I'd argue, a profoundly reactionary view of society and social order). But he has broadly shut up about it and is just doing the ceremonial role.

Having said that there is some really weird very online right stuff (including lots from Americans) about Charles and Islam. He has always had an interest in Islamic (and also Eastern Orthodox) spirituality, he's funded Islamic centres in the UK, he loves traditional Islamic architecture. But literally anything the palace put out on social media that includes Charles, for example, saying "hello" to a Muslim unleashes the most unhinged Islamophobic nonsense.

But also when we say the "palace" what we mean is the private secretaries - I think often people think about the chinless wonders who hang around the monarchs, but they're basically just emotional support aristocrats to keep them company while they shoot charismatic fauna. The people who run the palace in its interactions with the rest of the British state are the private secretaries and other secretaries - and it is not a demotion to be moved into that role. They may think they're low quality - and that may well be the case - but the background of private secretaries to the monarch and the heir is very consistent. They are all either ex-soldiers, ex-diplomats or from the security services. If you want to see the British "deep state" or "national security state" look no further than the "palace" where those civil servantcs can basically do an end-run around democratic politics if it would cause problems for or "politicise" the monarch.

Interesting on the Commonwealth - which sort of ties to what I was saying about Labour in post-war being more aligned to the Commonwealth and hostile to Europe. I think this is going to swing back. I think the Commonwealth is now coded a bit right-wing and Brexity. Until the 90s it really wasn't. It was associated with immigration (overwhelmingly from Commonwealth countries), with a lot of socialist post-colonial states and with things like the anti-apartheid movement (there were clashes with the Thatcher government over this).

But a huge example was Enoch Powell who attacked the Queen as being too interested in the Commonwealth and insufficiently interested in being a "British" or national Queen. After a Christmas broadcast that featured pictures of a state trip to India he complained that it suggested "she has the affairs and interests in other continents as much, or more, at heart than those of her own people [...] even here, in the UK, she is more concerned for susceptibilities and prejudices of a vociferous minority of newcomers than for the great mass of her subjects." I think their comments on the Commonwealth and the far-right complaints about Charles and his language of the UK being a "community of communities" is exactly in line with that. And I think that actually as immigration from the Commonwealth has increased again (though falling now possibly to net migration of zero) and as the Commonwealth is pushing for reparations I think it will swing to being more left-coded again.

So they may be fringe but on a couple of those points I think they're also reflecting a wider, weirder trend.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, that's about my read on it--was just curious due to my lower level of familiarity with British politics.

And Rees-Mogg and Starkey weren't in lockstep agreement, they both were in agreement with weird revanchist monarchist ideas, but Rees-Mogg seemed to concede that the monarchs in question "had no choice" in the things Starkey was ranting about.

For example Starkey specifically mentioned the Parliament Act 1911, which famously neutered the power of the Lords to veto legislation. Starkey mentions that George V ceded his appropriate constitutional authority by allowing this legislation to become law. Rees-Mogg noted that George V had no real choice.

From a strict constitutional perspective, the mechanism by which the Commons was able to ram it through was by threatening to simply create a huge number of Liberal peers, which would allow them to then simply win the vote in the Lords. Obviously from a technical constitutional perspective the creation of new Peers requires some ministerial assent of the monarch, but I question any reading of history in 1911 that understood the monarch's role in that process as anything but purely ministerial--the monarch had no accepted discretion in creation of peers at that time (other than of course being able to make members of the royal family peers as a gift of the sovereign.) Likewise to giving assent to the legislation itself.

I think where Starkey's analysis defies common sense--the monarch by the time of George V had steadily had even the limited powers reserved to them diminished to almost nothingness, but it wasn't a process done with their consent. Each reigning monarch that oversaw that diminishment well understood--it wasn't their decision to make. Had they fought against it in any meaningful way, it would have resulted in an unquestioned win for Parliament and likely in a form that would have ended the monarchy entirely.

[Sheilbh]

For example Starkey specifically mentioned the Parliament Act 1911, which famously neutered the power of the Lords to veto legislation. Starkey mentions that George V ceded his appropriate constitutional authority by allowing this legislation to become law. Rees-Mogg noted that George V had no real choice.

From a strict constitutional perspective, the mechanism by which the Commons was able to ram it through was by threatening to simply create a huge number of Liberal peers, which would allow them to then simply win the vote in the Lords. Obviously from a technical constitutional perspective the creation of new Peers requires some ministerial assent of the monarch, but I question any reading of history in 1911 that understood the monarch's role in that process as anything but purely ministerial--the monarch had no accepted discretion in creation of peers at that time (other than of course being able to make members of the royal family peers as a gift of the sovereign.) Likewise to giving assent to the legislation itself.

Yes - this is a pub quiz question. The last monarch to veto legislation passed by Parliament was Queen Anne. But in that case it was very complicated but she basically vetoed it because the government asked her to (I think it was a militia bill and by the time it passed Parliament the crisis had already ended). I think the last monarch to veto legislation that was passed by Parliament and backed by the government was either William of Orange or Charles or James II.

The idea that power still meaningfully existed in the 1910s is absurd. I mean I think it's interesting given the changing scholarship on the American Revolution because I think it's probably even doubtful that George III could have acted against parliament - they were already constrained constitutional monarchs. The beef was with Parliament.

I think where Starkey's analysis defies common sense--the monarch by the time of George V had steadily had even the limited powers reserved to them diminished to almost nothingness, but it wasn't a process done with their consent. Each reigning monarch that oversaw that diminishment well understood--it wasn't their decision to make. Had they fought against it in any meaningful way, it would have resulted in an unquestioned win for Parliament and likely in a form that would have ended the monarchy entirely.

Yeah I agree. It continues because it is supine and weak. If the monarchy presented a serious threat to parliamentary democracy it would be ended.

Edit: And I think this does all play into both of their public personas. Starkey as slightly flamboyant provocateur with (genuine) academic skills - sort of like imagining a far-left/revolutionary Simon Schama. And Rees-Mogg (like his father) has always played the man out of time (and his son is currently doing the same) - wearing a three piece suit and tie as a teenager etc.

[Sheilbh]

Re how bad things are for Labour and Starmer. Just one poll, three years to the next election etc etc. But this is not great:


And the local elections are likely to produce many more Reform and Green councillors who will be an activist base around the country

Edit: An absolutely massive majority if they want to use it

[PJL]

Labour's massive majority is overstated, though. Unlike in 1997, which was deeper, there are far fewer safe seats than during that time. So more MPs are nervous about their majorities. This means it's more like a government of 350 MPs with a working but not massive majority.

[Sheilbh]

Fair point (also true of the Tories in 2019). Which probably requires a leader with decent soft skills who is able to do the party management stuff well

I think especially with Labour, party management is governing. You can't just put it to one side. I'd also note that I think he has started to change because his leadership's under threat but there were stories from new MPs that Starmer didn't recogise and had never spoken to them as late as last year. Literally just viewed them as lobby fodder.