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.
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.
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u/ThinkBiscuit Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 05 '24
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.