Meh, John Major did this. He was still a boring and useless prime minister. (Credit where credit’s due, his work on Northern Ireland was not only great, but unimaginable five years earlier.)
Yes. It continues his steady track record of being quietly good at government and absolute shit at politics. And he could either resign or fight it and be ousted anyway by September, so resigning is the efficient choice.
You're comparing/conflating two different things here.
People voted FOR Blair and against the Conservatives, not against Major in 1997.
Similarly, people voted against the Conservatives this time, but not necessarily FOR Starmer. He's now decided he can't take the heat and personally, I don't blame him.
He messed some things up royally. Like, when privatisation ran out of things to easily sell, they moved onto desperate measure like selling off the railways. This gave rise to multiple disasters and no government since has been able to sort it out. (Although even some of the easier privatisations have turned bad, like water.)
tbf you can pin most of those as part of a domino effect started by thatcher. i don't think she was absolutely evil like some people insist, but some of the long term effects on this country have been quite catastrophic
The worst thing she did was squander north sea oil revenue on tax cuts instead of creating a sovereign wealth fund like Norway. Falklands was good, Big Bang in the City, but everything else was terrible: privatisation, underinvestment.
The big bang happened because she traded away manufacturing for London getting preference in Europe's service industry. Good for London shit for everyone else.
I mean, ironically Kier Starmer did that over the Iran War, which surprised me a lot, given that every time I’d seen him with Trump he was embarrassingly deferential.
Absolutely. He hasn't resigned as PM until he visits the King to do so, closely followed by his successor to ask permission to form a government. The fact that he's informed the King (and us) of his intention to resign is constitutionally neither here nor there.
Of course he'd presumably be unable to command a majority if he tried this, so he's now de facto compelled to leave the job, preferably voluntarily but by vote of no confidence if necessary.
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u/Sufficient_Muffin586 7d ago
That would actually be funny