In the UK’s local elections over last weekend, the only left-wing party to do well was the Green Party of England and Wales.
Why is Labour doing so terrible under Corbyn? Why did the Lib Dems do so poorly under Farron?
Greens under Lucas+Bartley are doing well where other center-left parties are doing poorly. Why?
So this is huge: in the UK, Diane Abbott MP has been selected by Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn as Shadow Home Secretary.
She’s only the fourth woman and the first black British person to hold this position in a shadow cabinet. If Corbyn were to win the next parliamentary election and bring in this shadow cabinet as his frontbench, Abbott as Home Secretary would have powers over immigration, citizenship, national security, intelligence (including MI-5), and criminal justice. It is one of the four most powerful cabinet positions in the UK, including the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Abbott would also be the fourth woman and first black British person to be Home Secretary. Former Home Secretary Theresa May is the current Prime Minister.
EDIT: So I got a *lot* of Facebook comments from pissed-off British commenters in my earlier post about #DianeAbbott. Apparently, she’s had a lot of gaffes since taking office as MP in 1987.
Folks, I wasn’t praising her. I was only *stating* that she’s *the first* black British (or, in British terms, BAME) person and *fourth* woman to serve as Shadow Home Secretary, and that this position is of critical importance to British politics.
And yes, I’m a USian. Hi!
I feel like Britain was sold a bad deal on leaving the EU. Should have been a multi-choice referendum, like Puerto Rico’s last status referendum in 2012.
Now everyone is getting the incorrect impression that this is a binding referendum because “the majority voted”, in spite of Scotland and Northern Ireland, two constituent countries, voting to Remain.
Binary choices like this are usually flawed when put to a public vote. People don’t know their full options beyond the single “Yes/No” question. But this is what the Conservative backbench and party base wanted, and now they’re getting it in spades.
Conservatives are coming apart, split by the vote. Labour is coming apart, split by the alleged unenthusiastic support of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for the Remain campaign (and some older political scores).
The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, are coming out, in the days after the vote, as the biggest momentary beneficiaries of the pro-Remain political reaction against the vote, and are even throwing their weight behind Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP on Scottish negotiations with the EU.
Britain may be in the throes of a major political realignment, one which will have to either react against or adapt around the reality of migration and free movement of labor. Nevermind the hypocrisy of the inheritors of a historic world-colonizing power like the UK feeling gutted by the “invasion” of “migrants” so much that they’d withdraw the country from their foremost, closest major trading partner.
