Originally Posted by trowel

What game is Mandy playing? Does he want Brown to go down flames at the next GE? Mandy is young enough to wait a few years in opposition as leader of the Labour party, only to walk into No 10 as PM when the voting public have had enough of the Tories. Trying not to let that depressing thought affect me.

I dont think even the great unwashed would elect that slimy little sh1t.

he makes cyclops look semi-palatable.

Originally Posted by Magdovus

If enough Labour MPs decide to turn Independent (especially if they can't/won't stand for re-election), enough to remove the Labour majority, what happens then?

The way things are going, Labour wont have a majority after the next general election. In fact, they might not even be the official opposition.

The last Labour government were forced out when they lost a confidence motion raised by Maggie in 1979. However, Labour's majority then was wafer thin and they only lost by one vote.

Does anybody know what happens when the government lose a confidence motion? Is it just convention that the PM asks the Queen to dissolve Parliament? Can Gordon ignore a vote of no confidence or does the Queen take matters into her own hands?

All this talk of Mandy becoming PM is rubbish - he cannot be Prime Minister because he cannot sit in the House of Commons. As a member of the House of Lords, he could not be held to account 'by his peers' for his actions.

The only way he could become PM would be to renounce his peerage (and could you see the arrogant tw@ doing that?), stand as an MP then getting enough support amongst Liarbour MPs (many of whom hate him) to shoehorn him into No. 10.

In any case, my understanding is he is only 'on loan' from the EU and is still receiving an EU Commissioners salary. No, a more likely scenario is becoming Teflon Tone's right hand man when he becomes EU President.

The very thought of Blair running the EU should be more than enough of a spur to get us out ASAP.

Good article...

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion...y-1696187.html

the one here being that no one will be loving Gordon's torment more than Cherie Blair – the half woman-half supermarket trolley mythological hybrid whose fill-your-boots avarice did so much to create the culture of greed that has all but destroyed him.

Brown would find it almost impossible to stay on as PM if he were deposed as party leader.

First, I can't imagine anyone agreeing to serve in his cabinet if he tried to stay on. If he can't form a cabinet, he has to go.


Let's say he ignores this and tries some attempt at personal rule. One of two things happen.

The simple one is that Her Majesty dismisses him and asks the new Labour leader to take over as PM.

The second, possibly more controversial, is that she dissolves parliament, which is in effect a dismissal of the PM according to some constitutionalists

The third is that parliamentary leaders ask HMQ to wait before going nuclear and hit Brown with a no confidence motion, which he loses.

If he doesn't resign then, the senior parliamentarians would sit back and watch as HMQ dismisses him, with even ardent republicans cheering quietly from the sidelines.

I would imagine that the three main parties would strike a deal while this farago was going on in which the new Labour leader belatedly became PM, announcing that the general election would occur within 60/90 days.

But even if the MPs come over all spineless, if the PM can no longer command the support of the majority of the House and refuses to go, HMQ will kick him out.

Thinking about after the election, what should be top of Dave's To-Do list?

Here's my starter for 10:-

1. Stop the Bank of England printing money
2. Slash 'n' burn the welfare budget and introduce workfare
3. Disband most qangos - especially the National Fecking Potato Council
4. Secure the UK's borders
5. Stop issuing work permits to foreigners
6. Abolish the Human Rights Act in its current form
7. Stop Scottish MPs voting on purely English matters
8. Redraw constituency boundaries so each MP represents the same no of people
9. Alter constitution to force a general election on change of PM
10. Introduce recall elections for individual MPs

Originally Posted by Ancient_Mariner

Thinking about after the election, what should be top of Dave's To-Do list?

Here's my starter for 10:-

1. Stop the Bank of England printing money
2. Slash 'n' burn the welfare budget and introduce workfare
3. Disband most qangos - especially the National Fecking Potato Council
4. Secure the UK's borders
5. Stop issuing work permits to foreigners
6. Abolish the Human Rights Act in its current form
7. Stop Scottish MPs voting on purely English matters
8. Redraw constituency boundaries so each MP represents the same no of people
9. Alter constitution to force a general election on change of PM
10. Introduce recall elections for individual MPs

Too feckin sensible, no way will you ever be a politician

Originally Posted by still21inmymind

Originally Posted by jarrod248

Brown would only go if dragged kicking and screaming, the deluded fool will end up on the same ward as Susan Boyle.

I agree, his grip on reality is much weaker than his grip on his unelected office.

Apparently Susan has rang him up a few times to see how he's bearing up.

Originally Posted by mnairb

All this talk of Mandy becoming PM is rubbish - he cannot be Prime Minister because he cannot sit in the House of Commons. As a member of the House of Lords, he could not be held to account 'by his peers' for his actions.

The only way he could become PM would be to renounce his peerage (and could you see the arrogant tw@ doing that?), stand as an MP then getting enough support amongst Liarbour MPs (many of whom hate him) to shoehorn him into No. 10.

He can't renounce. Amusingly, only hereidtaries can do that, and the need to do so has been overtaken by House of Lords reform. To avoid disenfranchising the herediatries, the law was changed to allow them to run for parliament. But it didn't give any mechanism for life peers to do the same. Even more amusingly, I believe that Mandelson was in the cabinet (between resignations) which rejected the suggestion that the right for life peers to renounce needed to be brought onto the statute books.

It occurs to me that part of the solution to the current troughing crisis would be to get some of the hereditaries into the Commons as MPs. First, the hereditaries tend to have no political ambition and have a history of refusing to listen to the whips; second most of them actually did something worthwhile before coming into parliament and have vast knowledge and experience and third, most (granted not all) of them were sufficiently well-heeled for them not to fiddle their expense accounts.

We could end up with, say, the Earl Attlee as Min AF, and the 5th Baron Brougham and Vaux running the Department of Transport...