UK Politics Thread: Kemi Badenoch elected Tory Leader

[Kaumudeen]

Dunno why people have an issue with this, we've got a proud history of funny or satirical plaques, from Malvern's "On This Day Nothing Happened" and "Jacob von Hogflume, Inventor of Time Travel, lived here in 2189" in Bath.

Because people like to moan about anything.

[Kerwa]

As discussed the time before last, all updates on the Spiking Bill will be posted as part of the October 2021 Spiking Scandal franchise of updates, as it's a direct antecedent of Girls' Night In. There have been no updates on the Parliamentary front, but as spiking is one of the BBC's pet issues, I am sure they will have an article out about it. The NUS stays losing.

spiking is another example of an issue in the UK that is a serious one but is also very much a moral panic.

it seems like the organization mentioned was started after needle spiking, and the momentum later comes from this. let us be very clear. needle spiking was a moral panic. there are zero confirmed cases of needle spiking in the UK. not one police station or hospital has been able to confirm any of the hundreds of cases. multiple professionals have also commented on the implausibility. the idea that someone would have the training and resources to acquire a drug, correctly administer in the right dose, correctly administer it to someone in a nightclub (have enough time to do it, and use a big enough needle without hurting the person, all while being unnoticed and while the target is actively moving around), and then slip away in the dark of the night, with no hospital being able to detect the injection site as an injection site or detect the drugs, and that this has happened hundreds of times across the nation, is absurd. it is almost certainly the case that very few of these cases, perhaps even every single one of these cases, did not happen. and we only treated it with a light touch in the off case that maybe it actually happened and because it's a political nightmare. you can't tell a drunk 18 year old woman coming in saying she's been spiked with a needle that she almost certainly didn't because the media will have your head.

for not spiking with needles, something that has been proven to actually happen, it is still generally the case most cases do not follow up. most people that claim to be spiked have no toxicological evidence of it happening. sometimes this is due to the drug having simply passed or them not being checked, but the fact that hundreds of women hallucinated something that did not happen as in needle spiking means that the possibility many of them were simply mistaken is also possible. as is common with many moral panics in the UK the fact that it is 1) hard to detect 2) mostly unreported means that campaigners can invent an essentially limitless amount of cases if desired. so even if there are zero confirmed needle spiking cases and most non-needle spiking cases are unconfirmed we can go "well there are a million unreported cases" to make a statistical analysis useless.

i don't really have a conclusion to this, except to complain that this seems to be yet another law that parliament has made based on a moral panic that did not exist over a media hysteria hallucinating scary stories. this spiking bill ultimately belongs in the same category as the dangerous dogs act and the video recordings act and i hate the british lawmaking cycle so so much.

e: and ofc the most popular method of spiking is simply giving someone more alcohol than they expected, which is just not as sexy which is why everyone focuses on the drugs

Candy is dandy
But liquor is quicker.

It’s really the inevitable consequence of binge drinking and having shit friends. I don’t know why anyone gives this shit a second’s thought: especially given the governments reluctance to deal with real problems; trafficking, modern slavery, schoolgirls being violently raped &c.

The again the bbc is still allowed unsupervised contact with minors, so who knows what goes through the minds of the great and good.

[Mtwara]

The spiking stuff reminds me a bit of the signs I saw in London earlier this year for the underground, which said something along the lines of don’t stare at women on the tube. I guess spiking is not going to be near the top of the list of things the average NSer is worried about, even if it seems to be statistically unlikely, but that doesn’t mean that a significant chunk of the population do want something reassuring to happen.

When I look back at uni there were so many instances where we wondered if somebody was spiked and truth is they had probably just drank too much, too quickly.

[Tinhampton]

The spiking stuff reminds me a bit of the signs I saw in London earlier this year for the underground, which said something along the lines of don’t stare at women on the tube.

I remember riding the Athens Metro about eighteen months ago and every single ad on the carriage was promotion for the EU's anti-gender-stereotyping campaign. Ironically, I don't actually think staring is explicitly banned under British law, although there have been discussions about it in recent years; maybe the British Transport Police just adopted it as protocol and nobody noticed (like Nottinghamshire Police announcing their misogyny crackdown except they didn't announce it, to use an analogy).

[Imperializt Russia]

Sue Gray resigns as Downing Street Chief of Staff.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdenx2p32jxo

That didn't seem to take much of a push.

...
In order to take another senior advisory role within the government.

More shitty headlining - yes, she is technically "resigning", but we have come to associate "resigned from government role" as "resigned from and left the government", which is not what has happened at all. She has moved to a slightly different role.

As discussed the time before last, all updates on the Spiking Bill will be posted as part of the October 2021 Spiking Scandal franchise of updates, as it's a direct antecedent of Girls' Night In. There have been no updates on the Parliamentary front, but as spiking is one of the BBC's pet issues, I am sure they will have an article out about it. The NUS stays losing.

On the non-legislative front, two then-university students in Brighton have criticised the local NHS for totally mishandling their historic experiences of spiking. Imogen Turnbow was spiked in 2021, told by A&E that they couldn't help her, urged to call 111, and didn't get called back until the next day, at which point the nurse on the line told her something along the lines of "it was your fault for getting spiked." It's not clear what she did next, but telling the BBC is always a good place to start.

Saraya Haddad was spiked in 2019, was denied a drugs test by A&E (remember that spiking always involves drugs, despite one Sussex Police copper's insistence that almost any reasonably edible substance can be used for spiking), and was even discouraged from reporting the event to the police (spiking was always illegal but, as discussed earlier, both major parties wanted a Spiking Bill at the last election). She went on to do a Fringe show about her experiences... and then told the BBC.

Stamp Out Spiking, a support charity, said that 98% of spiking instances go unreported. Extrapolating from the relevant data, this means we should expect to see around 210,000 people (including men, whose experiences of spiking are NEVER discussed) spiked per annum, in a population of 67.6 million - more like 54 million if you exclude the children. Stamp Out Spiking was, and still is, a heavily influential one-woman operation that did much of its casework and campaigning around the time of the Girls' Nights In (although they did manage to convince LADbible to work on an anti-spiking billboard campaign earlier this year), so it's not clear to what extent awareness of spiking has been raised or whether this has affected the reported numbers. They wanted a specific offence of spiking but I didn't hear anything from them on this front after 2022.

Helpfully, the BBC also tells us that the RCEM recommends that A&Es should use the appropriate protocols to handle spiking victims and encourage them to report the incident to the police, given its criminal nature. Shall we have a look at whether or not Turnbow and Haddad could have availed of this guidance at the time of their incidents?

(Image)

I read this article yesterday and it was disappointing to read. Rather than highlighting - correctly - that A&E nurses are not forensic nurses and should not be expected to collect forensic samples and have many, many other duties under great pressures in an A&E department, the NHS response was one of "not our job", rather than "this is too great a stretch of a heavily stretched department". The police, facing similar pressures and active workshyness, unlike the NHS, also believes it is "not their job".

More buck-passing. Without substantial reversal of austerity in the NHS and staffing level restoration, this cannot be fixed meaningfully.

As discussed the time before last, all updates on the Spiking Bill will be posted as part of the October 2021 Spiking Scandal franchise of updates, as it's a direct antecedent of Girls' Night In. There have been no updates on the Parliamentary front, but as spiking is one of the BBC's pet issues, I am sure they will have an article out about it. The NUS stays losing.

spiking is another example of an issue in the UK that is a serious one but is also very much a moral panic.

it seems like the organization mentioned was started after needle spiking, and the momentum later comes from this. let us be very clear. needle spiking was a moral panic. there are zero confirmed cases of needle spiking in the UK. not one police station or hospital has been able to confirm any of the hundreds of cases. multiple professionals have also commented on the implausibility. the idea that someone would have the training and resources to acquire a drug, correctly administer in the right dose, correctly administer it to someone in a nightclub (have enough time to do it, and use a big enough needle without hurting the person, all while being unnoticed and while the target is actively moving around), and then slip away in the dark of the night, with no hospital being able to detect the injection site as an injection site or detect the drugs, and that this has happened hundreds of times across the nation, is absurd. it is almost certainly the case that very few of these cases, perhaps even every single one of these cases, did not happen. and we only treated it with a light touch in the off case that maybe it actually happened and because it's a political nightmare. you can't tell a drunk 18 year old woman coming in saying she's been spiked with a needle that she almost certainly didn't because the media will have your head.

"This person in my healthcare facility is clogging up bedspace and staffing time with their *obvious* drunkenness so I will not treat any professed or potential health condition seriously" is also a definite, definite reaction - can't substantiate "needle spiking" if no-one bothers to check for it.

I was never examined for concussion or head trauma when I had a serious fall while drunk and incapable; we must all have a story of a friend who broke a bone while drunk and because they were drunk, it was not properly assessed at A&E.

[The BlAAtschApen]

I was gone for some time, but phew, we nearly avoided a huge diplomatic conflict between the UK and the Netherlands. Apparently BoJo had discussed plans to invade a warehouse in Leiden for covid vaccines.

That would've been a wild time. Especially if dutch civilians (including police) die during the raid. The falling out would result in a big crisis within NATO.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

I was gone for some time, but phew, we nearly avoided a huge diplomatic conflict between the UK and the Netherlands. Apparently BoJo had discussed plans to invade a warehouse in Leiden for covid vaccines.

That would've been a wild time. Especially if dutch civilians (including police) die during the raid. The falling out would result in a big crisis within NATO.

That this was ever on the table as a possibility is genuinely terrifying.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Boris is chatting shit to prop up a strong man image, no way this was actually considered.



Hopefully.

[Imperializt Russia]

Boris is chatting shit to prop up a strong man image, no way this was actually considered.



Hopefully.

My money is that it was genuinely considered but immediately ruled out as dumb, but for legal reasons and not ethical ones.

[Ariddia]

I've been watching David Lammy field questions in the Commons about the Chagos Islands just now. The Tories and the DUP are getting angry (or pretending to be angry) about Britain renouncing sovereignty over an overseas territory. It seems the Tory and DUP position is simply a "But it's ours!" whine, with no consideration for the Chagossians' rights or for the injustice that has been done to them for so long.

Lammy remained calm throughout. That man has the patience of a saint.

More pertinent was the Lib Dems' point that the Chagossians themselves haven't been consulted. Lammy's response is that Chagossians have a wide variety of incompatible views and no-one able to speak for all of them.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Reform UK's party political broadcast made with AI

[Outer Bratorke]

Reform UK's party political broadcast made with AI

That was embarrassing. Isn't that labour union guy dead?

[Mtwara]

I don’t know how original it is but Free Gear Kier is genius.

[Forsher]

The spiking stuff reminds me a bit of the signs I saw in London earlier this year for the underground, which said something along the lines of don’t stare at women on the tube.

Was it this?

[Imperializt Russia]

I've been watching David Lammy field questions in the Commons about the Chagos Islands just now. The Tories and the DUP are getting angry (or pretending to be angry) about Britain renouncing sovereignty over an overseas territory. It seems the Tory and DUP position is simply a "But it's ours!" whine, with no consideration for the Chagossians' rights or for the injustice that has been done to them for so long.

Lammy remained calm throughout. That man has the patience of a saint.

More pertinent was the Lib Dems' point that the Chagossians themselves haven't been consulted. Lammy's response is that Chagossians have a wide variety of incompatible views and no-one able to speak for all of them.

And again, classic politics bullshit, but the Tories were already in the negotiations to do this, fully in agreement to see it to completion.

They just got voted out. No-one cared until the government changed, which shows how little basis a Tory has to complain about Starmer's New-New Labour Party.

[Tinhampton]

The Telegraph says:

Joe Biden pushed the UK into giving up the Chagos Islands over concerns the US would lose control of an important air base, The Telegraph understands.

Days after the general election in July, senior officials from the White House’s National Security Council and State Department told the incoming Labour government that refusing to sign away the islands would jeopardise the “special relationship” with Washington.

Sir Keir Starmer was criticised last week for his decision to give up the archipelago of more than 1,000 tiny islands, a UK overseas territory since 1965 known officially as the British Indian Ocean Territory. It was suggested the deal could give China access to the Diego Garcia air base, which is on the largest island in the chain. Under the deal, Mauritius will take control of the islands, but Britain and the US will rent the base for 99 years.

The Telegraph understands that American officials pushed the UK toward the deal, fearing that if it was not signed, Mauritius would successfully apply for a binding ruling at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take control of the islands, effectively shuttering the air base.

The base is considered strategically important because it puts some bomber aircraft within range of the Middle East. Diego Garcia was previously used by the US to conduct bombing runs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US officials told the Foreign Office that a quick deal should be signed before the American and Mauritian elections next month, agreeing to give up UK territory in exchange for the base. The officials argued that handing over the islands would safeguard Britain’s special relationship with the US, and that a binding court ruling would make it more difficult to fly aircraft to the base, conduct repairs, and cooperate with UN agencies...

...The Telegraph understands that the full terms of the deal, which has not been made public, contain protections against Chinese influence in the islands without the agreement of Britain and the US...

[Imperializt Russia]

The Telegraph says:

Joe Biden pushed the UK into giving up the Chagos Islands over concerns the US would lose control of an important air base, The Telegraph understands.

Days after the general election in July, senior officials from the White House’s National Security Council and State Department told the incoming Labour government that refusing to sign away the islands would jeopardise the “special relationship” with Washington.

Sir Keir Starmer was criticised last week for his decision to give up the archipelago of more than 1,000 tiny islands, a UK overseas territory since 1965 known officially as the British Indian Ocean Territory. It was suggested the deal could give China access to the Diego Garcia air base, which is on the largest island in the chain. Under the deal, Mauritius will take control of the islands, but Britain and the US will rent the base for 99 years.

The Telegraph understands that American officials pushed the UK toward the deal, fearing that if it was not signed, Mauritius would successfully apply for a binding ruling at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take control of the islands, effectively shuttering the air base.

The base is considered strategically important because it puts some bomber aircraft within range of the Middle East. Diego Garcia was previously used by the US to conduct bombing runs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US officials told the Foreign Office that a quick deal should be signed before the American and Mauritian elections next month, agreeing to give up UK territory in exchange for the base. The officials argued that handing over the islands would safeguard Britain’s special relationship with the US, and that a binding court ruling would make it more difficult to fly aircraft to the base, conduct repairs, and cooperate with UN agencies...

...The Telegraph understands that the full terms of the deal, which has not been made public, contain protections against Chinese influence in the islands without the agreement of Britain and the US...

I would not trust the Telegraph's reporting of the issue. "The Telegraph *understands*". Yah, sure.

Again, they're seeking to turn the prior administration's policy into a new thing to hammer the new administration with. They are ideologically intense about it. The same comments would have been put to the Sunak administration, which is probably the only reason it was being moved on at all. The comments would then have been reiterated at the change of the administration.

[Tinhampton]

Much of the ammunition when it comes to delayed post (as opposed to woefully crap IT services) has been aimed at the Royal Mail; since the start of 2023 alone, it's taken varying levels of damage from the likes of Janet Ellis, Jasmine Moulton, Oswald Marsh, Alphie Meleyal, John and Lydia Davies, and arguably even Daniel Kretinsky himself.

In the case of Tizi Hudson, however, I think everyone can agree that the Post Office is at fault. Back in January 1976, the young Londoner wrote a letter to an unknown agency asking if she could work as one of their motorcycle stunt riders. Despite her fears of misogyny, it turns out that the real enemy was Staines Post Office, who - in scenes that could have almost come out of the Tropico video game franchise - managed to immediately lose the letter, watch as she did any number of other incredible jobs around the world and move between a million different homes, arbitrarily remember at some point in 2024 that she was living in a small village called Gedney Hill right on the south-eastern tip of Lincolnshire, and post it back to her there and then.

Perhaps it is a shame they did not get their shit in order a couple of years earlier; otherwise we could have had a real challenger to Jackie Smith as Alton Towers' Chief Thrillseeker. Hudson has absolutely no regrets about anything she's done since the incident, though, except maybe admitting in her accidentally-unsuccessful application form that she genuinely didn't mind a few broken bones on the job.

The daredevil's feats have even made the pages of Sabah, the most popular newspaper in Turkey and one of the most popular in Europe. For what is normally a sensationalist tabloid, however, you'd expect they'd have chosen a more ludicrous headline than "İş başvurusuna yanıt 48 yıl sonra geldi" (trans. "The response to the job application came after 48 years"). You can always trust the Beeb to give you a good story.

[Souseiseki]

"This person in my healthcare facility is clogging up bedspace and staffing time with their *obvious* drunkenness so I will not treat any professed or potential health condition seriously" is also a definite, definite reaction - can't substantiate "needle spiking" if no-one bothers to check for it.

this implies that no one took it seriously when instead it became a national phenomenon and we're getting a new law off the back of it. there were hundreds of reported cases, many of these cases were checked at hospitals and police stations. none were verified. once you throw together "this extremely difficult to do for multiple reasons thing has never been verified have actually happened even once after hundreds of investigations" it becomes hard to avoid the conclusion of "it probably didn't happen", and the only reason we don't is because it's usually scared young girls and we'd look like right dicks if we said "this probably didn't happen and chances are you read about it in the daily mail and worked yourself up into a panic". but on the semi-anonomyous NSG that's not a problem.

[Philjia]

Tom Tugendhat has been knocked out of the Conservative leadership election.

Results:
Cleverly - 39 (+18)
Jenrick - 31 (-2)
Badenoch - 30 (+2)
Tugendhat - 20 (-1)

Cleverly's place in the members' vote as the candidate of the moderates is now likely assured, whether Jenrick or Badenoch will be the right's candidate will be decided tomorrow, giving the members an exciting choice between a blithering idiot and some sort of whinging crypto-fascist tosser. My money is on the whinging crypto-fascist tosser.

[Hirota]

Tom Tugendhat has been knocked out of the Conservative leadership election.

Results:
Cleverly - 39 (+18)
Jenrick - 31 (-2)
Badenoch - 30 (+2)
Tugendhat - 20 (-1)

Cleverly's place in the members' vote as the candidate of the moderates is now likely assured, whether Jenrick or Badenoch will be the right's candidate will be decided tomorrow, giving the members an exciting choice between a blithering idiot and some sort of whinging crypto-fascist tosser. My money is on the whinging crypto-fascist tosser.

Jenrick and Badenoch need to decide between themselves which has the better chance of beating Cleverly when it goes to the whole party. Previously Badenoch won all the head-to-head polling amongst the party membership, but I don't know if thats changed since the conference, and I don't recall how Jenrick vs Cleverly was polling amongst the party membership.

I've seen analysts suggest those 20 who voted Tugendhat are more likely to switch to Cleverly and Badenoch than Jenrick, which suggests it's a Cleverly v Badenoch final two.

It's a shame about Tugendhat, I've always quite liked him as a possible Tory leader, but he'll make a decent shadow Foreign Secretary.

[Kaumudeen]

Tom Tugendhat has been knocked out of the Conservative leadership election.

Results:
Cleverly - 39 (+18)
Jenrick - 31 (-2)
Badenoch - 30 (+2)
Tugendhat - 20 (-1)

Cleverly's place in the members' vote as the candidate of the moderates is now likely assured, whether Jenrick or Badenoch will be the right's candidate will be decided tomorrow, giving the members an exciting choice between a blithering idiot and some sort of whinging crypto-fascist tosser. My money is on the whinging crypto-fascist tosser.

Still never understand how Jenrick is polling so high.

[The Huskar Social Union]

And then there were three.

[Philjia]

And then there were three.

Final MPs ballot is today, really could go either way. I'd expect it to go to Cleverly/Badenoch if raw personal preference was the only driver but some Cleverly supporters could try tactically voting for Jenrick who is worse and less popular in order to give Cleverly slightly more chance in the members' vote. He's still likely to lose the members' vote either way, but it would be closer with Jenrick.

[Philjia]

And then there were three.

Final MPs ballot is today, really could go either way. I'd expect it to go to Cleverly/Badenoch if raw personal preference was the only driver but some Cleverly supporters could try tactically voting for Jenrick who is worse and less popular in order to give Cleverly slightly more chance in the members' vote. He's still likely to lose the members' vote either way, but it would be closer with Jenrick.

Unexpectedly, Cleverly has been eliminated in the final round of the MPs ballot. Members will vote on Badenoch or Jenrick in an online ballot from tomorrow to the end of the month.

Results:
Badenoch - 42
Jenrick - 41
Cleverly - 37