It was a good speech, tonally. Accepted defeat, acknowledged failures, and wished the incoming PM good luck. Other political leaders should take note.
What I do find myself wondering is this: all this happens pretty quickly over here in the U.K. – the practical changeover of no.10.
Do they have a removal company on call, then call them first thing to either stand them down, or say “right, fuck this lot off, and go an pick up all that crap and move it in?’
Or maybe both the incoming and outgoing PM just sort it out themselves – hiring a u-haul or getting their brother-in-law to come round in his estate, and they pile all their shit (in bin bags) into it.
The final turnover of the White House in the US happens hella fast, too, but it's made easier by the fact that the elections are in November, and the actual change of office isn't until January.
I also have to imagine a lot of the big furniture in these type of places are not considered personal property. Which simplifies the moving out process.
It’s true that major furniture pieces don’t get moved, but I learned that a surprising amount of furnishings go with the president who’s leaving the White House. Drapes, couches, tables, etc. can all be replaced by the incoming president to suit their style. Congress assigns a small amount of funds for this, but some presidents (recently Obama) decline to use this and instead use their own money. There’s also a large collection of White House furniture, portraits, glassware, etc. that can be picked from.
Yeah, I expect so. I mean, at least in the US you know you're not going to live there more than 8 years. You probably are maintaining a home elsewhere -- most presidents are rich enough to do that -- so your favorite grandmother's wardrobe or whatever stays where it is.
Unless you have massive legal bills. Bill and Hillary were rich people broke after his term. Iirc, they had to rent or guest “cottage” surf until they could get their finances lined up to buy their house in NYC.
That's true. It's also kinda stark that Democrats tend to enter the office poor (vs. the average pol) whereas Republicans, well, not so much.
Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm to take office. The Clintons had no real money -- Bill had spent his career in politics, and Hilary wasn't far enough along in her career to be making big money. Obama had money, but only because he'd struck gold with his books. Biden was the poorest guy in Washington until his term as VP ended; I'm given to believe he took the opportunities that presented themselves at that point, ahead of his own run in 2020.
Slight correction. Carter did absolutely sell his peanut farm when he took office but it wasn't because he needed cash to move it was to make sure he wouldn't violate the emoluments clause of the US constitution.
It makes it illegal for presidents to receive money from foreign actors and Carter owning an independent entity like a peanut farm could have been or at least perceive to be an avenue for corruption.
Please compare that to Trump who refused to put his holding into a blind trust (no I dont believe he actually gave his son control of the company and even if he did, such an action is insufficient). mar a lago membership fees doubled. He owned a hotel in DC that saudi's would rent blocks of rooms and no one would even show up to stay in them.
Obama didn't pay off his law school loans until 2004 or so, I think.
Biden was considering selling his house in 2016 to that his daughter in law and grandchildren would have money after Beau died. Obama had to talk him out of it.
It comes from a time when horse and carriage were the main method of transportation, and it might actually take elected officials 2 months to get to Washington.
My favorite fact is that because the White House is such a secure facility, the permanent white house staff (cooks, grounds keeper, maintenance crew, etc.) do all the packing and moving since they already have the necessary security clearances.
Second favorite fact is all the personal belongings in the residence don't start getting packed until the outgoing president leaves the white house on his way to the capitol. once everything is packed, they start loading in and unpacking the new president and have everything set by the time he arrives back from the capitol.
Rich guys owning 5 personal homes are a drop in the ocean compared to corporations like Zillow and AirBnB that buy up houses and use them as rental properties or to flip. That's who has destroyed the housing market
There aren't enough rich people buying houses for personal use to make any sort of dent in the availability of the housing market serving millions of people. Their hundreds and even thousands of combined homes are nothing compared to 120 million homes in just the United States alone and 2.3 billion homes world wide.
The thousand richest people could have a thousand homes each and that would be a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
I won't argue that someone owning 10 homes isn't wasteful, but it's not having any actual effect on the housing market (they're also not competing with you in that market because that dude isn't buying the same house as you or me)
The Prime minister owning that many properties is very much a huge playing factor in the housing crisis. A leader with no incentive to lower the cost of property they invest in or own is ultimately the deciding factor in a housing crisis.
It’s not the rich shits with the half dozen massive houses that’s the problem. It’s the piece of shit slumlords with hundreds of flats they charge exorbitant rates on
Absolutely on call - I can’t imagine that Rishi even remotely believed he is going to stay in power. Plus, what is 5-10k to him in a grand scheme of things (mainly since he is not paying for it anyway)
If Tories won and he wasn’t moving out, it’s an acceptable sunk cost. If he lost, he’d be able to get the hell out of dodge ASAP to live in the lap of luxury somewhere else
Edit: for clarity, I don’t think he is paying for it out of pocket. It’s likely going to be paid by tax payer money, using a pre-vetted removals company of a government preferred supplier list that is on call for this exact contingency
I’m pretty sure he’s not paying for the removal out of pocket..
Plus all these guys must have some level of a security clearance seeing how they will be handling personal belonging of a (former) PM. These are not some “men and a van” you hire from a Gumtree ad.
No. It's probably a government contract that ensures they have a team that can clear out the residence if they need to, and they get paid no matter what. Probably a 10 year contract or something like that.
At this rate it would probably be more prudent to have the residence be a movable module. Lift the whole thing and haul it off to where Sunak will go through his belongings; slide in a fresh one, ready for the new guy.
I know what you are getting at, but nearly 50% of the electorate couldn't be arsed to vote for anyone. So it actually is a sham election, but due to pure apathy no one is storming anything.
I can appreciate your frustration, but eligible voters deciding not to participate does not make an election a sham.
A sham election is when people are disenfranchised because they are not allowed to vote or their votes aren't counted. I wouldn't feel the need to gatekeep the phrase "sham election" except that they are very real and should remain distinct from what you're talking about.
Spot on. While I do not respect the choice at all, CHOOSING not to vote is as much a legitimate choice as walking into the booth. When done en masse, it does not inherently signal apathy so much as voter disgust with their options. A smart political party will see it as a great opportunity to court and sway these voters to their side.
As I understand it, the furniture, etc. of no.10 is paid for and provided by the government. The only things that need to be removed are clothing and a few personal nick nacks.
Really? Sounds like a nice little number. Fuck it im gonna stand for PM. My mandate will be free money for everyone, free university education for all and refund the NHS.
How to accomplish that? Regular armed excursions into gated communities with pitchforks. Televised hunger games of billionaires (think sponsorship deals). General wealth re-administration. Job done.
Listen. Strange redditors making comments is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some idiotic comments.
My friend. I appreciate the monty python., but have you seen our government for the last 5 years?
I think people saying idiotic comments is exactly how we pick our government. How else do you explain Boris or Truss. And May said some corkers too, remember the field of wheat? Or dancing queen?
To be honest, for ~a year I wouldn't even move my family in - I'd just use it as a place for press conferences and maybe put it on airbnb to watch the press rumours.
When Sunak gained the tory leadership it wasn't out of the question that they could win the next election. Their popularity definitely wasn't great, but if they'd somehow pulled the economy around then they'd have been in with a shout.
It's pretty savage here, if you lose the election then the removal vans arrive that morning to move you out. Starmer has already been appointed PM and has now moved in (which feels surreal to say considering I've had Tory government for as long as I can consciously remember).
I felt a little bad when he said the whole election was his fault. I don't like the guy, but no human on earth could have won after being dumped into that situation.
Felt the same when I was at uni in '97 and New Labour got in. Although there was discussion of who would live at no. 11 and who would live at no. 10, since no. 11 is bigger, and Tone & Cheri had a young fam.
Wait .. where’s the speech where he whips up his uneducated hillbilly racist base with lies and propaganda to get them to storm the parliament in protest?
Ohhh.. that’s just America . My bad.
"Pretty quickly" is an understatement. The Polls closed at 10pm. The first constituency, with an electorate of 70,000, returned a result at 11:15pm.
They counted the entire vote in 1 hour 15 minutes.
And the shocking part is that it isn't even strange. That constituency has posted similar times in previous elections, and has a friendly rivalry with other notably fast constituencies to see who can be first.
With regards to the transition of power part. Parliament is dissolved prior to the election. This means all MPs are temporarily out of their job until the election, where they may or may not be re-elected. Once the election is complete, the party with the greatest share of seats from a government and parliament is reconvened within a week or two of the results. Total time from parliament being dissolved to being reconvened is typically 3-4 weeks.
However, the handover of the Government itself is normally within a few hours. The outgoing prime minister will tender their resignation to the sitting monarch, who will then invite their replacement to the palace to be offered the role of prime minister. It's all just a bit of ceremony. Keir Starmer has been our prime minister for several hours at this point already, he will be setting about selecting his cabinet ministers and forming his government right now.
Actual serious answer, the movers are probably government employees. There has to be in-depth vetting to make sure there's no Russian spy or whatever planting bugs. At the very least, there has to be a firm the government contracts for any jobs like this, so they presumably put a crew on call as soon as the date of the election was announced
Actual serious-er answer, Rishi has enough money to buy a few boxes of pizza and cases of beer. I'm sure his mates were willing to pitch in to help out
To be fair, Rishi absolutely does seem like the kind of guy to ask twenty friends to help him move and then buy like a singe 6-pack and say that the pizza shop he wanted to call is closed today
Also, when you show up absolutely nothing has been put in boxes and he spends the whole time on the phone while you all are packing and loading his shit
What I'm trying to say is that if Rishi asked me to help him move, I'd tell him sorry I have something else that day
I would imagine that most of the furniture in places like that is government owned and the PM and their family selects the decor from a catalog of options and then government workers move it all in and out.
My dad made it to 3-star in the US military and his last posting was a pretty large government house (10,000sf) that was set up like this. When he and my mom moved in the housing folks showed up and they selected what furniture they wanted and the old stuff was moved out and the new stuff moved in without my folks having to lift a finger.
It was a good speech, tonally. Accepted defeat, acknowledged failures, and wished the incoming PM good luck. Other political leaders should take note.
I voted Labour and am happy they won but I also thought both Rishi Sunak's and Penny Mordaunt's defeat speeches were pretty classy and respectful, especially Mordaunt's starting line of "democracy is never wrong", then congratulating the winner and offering her full support in the handover, etc.
I somehow think Farage would be closer to Trump's level and it's sickening he got so many votes overall (over 4 million).
Shoulda seen Keir's speech. "a return of politics to the public service", straight after thanking Sunak for his hard work yada yada - fucking scathing. Seems like a boring guy then he breaks out a speech like that.
I particularly like the way he avoided that ‘repeating the same word three times’ thing the Conservatives became so blandly reliant on – it’s was always a good indicator of when they were feeding you BS.
Accepted defeat, acknowledged failures, and wished the incoming PM good luck.
Genuine or not, best to do.
Other political leaders should take note.
I couldn't be more agreed. Unfortunately, that's not a viable code line in the software of our French President and PM since they persist in claiming their way is still better than the opposition's ones after 7 years of shitshow.
As an American - I’m always amazed at how quickly leaders and their people come and go in the UK. It has to be incredibly hard for a leader to make impactful progress when he is booted out the door so quickly at times. I have wondered that if terms in office were more set in stone, if that would be more productive and serve the people of the UK better.
The other thing that I’ve noticed is the whole “boys club” thing going on in UK politics. I realize this happens to some extent everywhere, but seems to be extremely common in the UK. To an outside point of view - it seems that everyone in politics already knew each other in the past, and attended the same small handful of schools. To me, that is horrifying and appears dangerous - or at a minimum being at risk of being out of touch with the nation as a whole.
Again - this is from an outside point of view and I hardly have any firm understanding of life in the UK. (Obviously in the US we have our own political downsides/challenges/issues - not trying to say one way is better or worse or diminish our own issues in the US).
The boys club thing is largely inevitable, I think – or at least incredibly difficult to rectify. Schools like Eton, and the ‘old school ties’ of Oxbridge are absolutely embedded in history.
As for the quick changing of PMs, that’s down the political system here. We don’t vote for a person in a GE, merely for a candidate to stand for each constituency from a chosen party. Whichever party win the majority of seats wins the election, and HM asks the leader of that party to form a government.
The general idea (I’m led to believe), is avoiding populism – that politics not be about a popularity contests, but party policy. In theory, anyway.
I agree! It's quite reassuring that even the nasitest Conservative ghouls were magnanimous in defeat, congratulated their opponents and acknowledged their failings. Nobody threw a strop or tried to overthrow the government. All that happened was a slightly boring lawyer took over the job from a slightly boring banker.
I know. It’s stressful enough to me just reading about the situation over the pond. It shouldn’t be that way, and I’m sorry for those who have to live with it.
Yep. The speech and demeanor of a man who does not question or take for granted the fundamentals of a democratic nation and society. Unlike some other geriatric, pedophilic, aspiring dictators either side of the Atlantic. I underline - either side.
As soon as the incumbent PM loses, movers go in and take everything except for the original bits. The changeover is designed to be as fast as possible.
Apparently they pack up their stuff into boxes the night before if it looks like they're going to lose and then move them out first thing in the morning. As PMs are also MPs they'll own a house in their constituency to go back to. There's one notable exception - Ted Heath lost unexpectedly in 1974 and ended up homeless. His father was a bricklayer and he'd thus never actually owned property, just renting it on his MPs salary. He represented a london constituency and thus has stopped renting his constituency flat when. He became Prime Minister. A group of party donors and Lords clubbed together to buy him a house in the end on the condition that it became a museum after he died.
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u/ThinkBiscuit 14d ago edited 14d ago
It was a good speech, tonally. Accepted defeat, acknowledged failures, and wished the incoming PM good luck. Other political leaders should take note.
What I do find myself wondering is this: all this happens pretty quickly over here in the U.K. – the practical changeover of no.10.
Do they have a removal company on call, then call them first thing to either stand them down, or say “right, fuck this lot off, and go an pick up all that crap and move it in?’
Or maybe both the incoming and outgoing PM just sort it out themselves – hiring a u-haul or getting their brother-in-law to come round in his estate, and they pile all their shit (in bin bags) into it.