Here's a prediction. The standards committee won't do a recall. The reason, Farage won this election despite the accusation over the £5 million. Having another byelection would get the same result so it would be a complete waste of public money.
They don't decide on a recall. They can sanction an MP, such as suspension from the House of Commons.
Instead, a recall petition - requiring 10% of an MP's constituents to sign to then recall - is automatically triggered when an MP is suspended for 10 or more days.
Her recall got nearly 15% of eligible voters which is about half as many votes as she got to win the seat in 2019. Thousands of locals came out solely to sack this MP.
Quick timeline: elected December 2019; spreading covid September 2020; guilty plea August 2022; loses seat July 2023 (10 months before the next general election)
I don't think the committee will be swayed by this stunt at all, especially since Farage has essentially admitted that he started all this to make them look silly.
And they are highly likely to open another investigation into the Posh George stuff.
You do know the other major parties didn't run a candidate right? The point was to demonstrate that this byelection was just theatrics by Farage to distract from the ethics investigation into the 5 million pounds. I think some, and maybe Farage himself, seem to think that the byelection wipes the slate clean either actually or practically because the people of Clacton have "spoken". it does neither.
The lesson people should learn from Farage and Reform (which they won't, let's be real) is that the entire Brexit movement and all the subsequent European alt-right movements are incredibly astroturfed. They're the product of wealthy people funding fascism to avoid the electorate talking about economics ie why they're increasingly poorer and why there's increasing wealth and income inequality. Reform wants to direct attention to immigrants. It's pure distraction.
It's the exact same thing in the US. It's immigration here too but it's all the other culture war bullshit issues like trans people too.
What fomented all of this in the UK is that the UK government decided to bail out the banks after 2008 at the expense of taxpayers and then that was used to justify a decade of austerity measures that crippled the economy and wiped out the working class.
It didn't have to be that way. Other countries like Iceland [1] let the banks fail and their economies massively benefitted.
> What fomented all of this in the UK is that the UK government decided to bail out the banks after 2008 at the expense of taxpayers and then that was used to justify a decade of austerity measures that crippled the economy and wiped out the working class.
And on top of that you got JK Rowling fueling insane amounts of money into anti trans hate.
With Musk, who is doing similar stunts, I get it because in his warped world view he had IVF to make sure he had male offspring for almost all his children bar the first ones, and his daughter openly defies his will by, well, being his daughter. But what in God's name is the angle Rowling comes from? Who the hell hurt her so much that she's willing to burn everything?
Reading her Wikipedia page, she's given huge amounts to all kinds of charities. Easy to get swept up in the whole pro/anti conversation, but even the one charity that specifically serves women only rape victims is doing good things. I just can't equate her with Musk.
JKR has a history of being a proud anti trans bigot, not just donating money to such causes, but establishing her own NGO that is explicitly anti trans [1].
She is every bit as vile a bigot as Musk is, just with less (but still more than enough) money. And on top of that, her alter ego/pen name is male ("Robert Galbraith"), so it's yet another dose of bigotry on top - appearing as a male for... whatever reason, idk.
By all accounts, trans women are among the most vulnerable. They don't just have to fear rabid men like cis women, they have to fear "transvestigators" and fellow women too.
I wonder how vulnerable are the ones that send rape threats and death threats to women who advocate for single-sex spaces.
JKR has probably received more of this abuse than any other woman. She's become a lightning rod for this deranged, abusive male behaviour, simply for advocating for women's sex-based rights and refusing to be intimidated to silence.
Is it possible that other anti democratic forces are working to instill the notion that the ideas of their ideological opponents are illegitimate and when voters hold those beliefs it’s only because they’re been propagandized and deceived? The idea in a democratic society a large proportion of voters cannot be trusted to make their own decisions seems extremely dangerous, and one that massively benefits centralizing authoritarian powers and oligarchs.
The US bailout paid for itself... If you consider the equivalent of 0.6% growth, not adjusted for inflation, paying for itself. In practice the US's cost of borrowing the money was substantially more than that.
you need to compare the alternative. and also take into account the growth that happened thanks to cheap mortgages.
there was a nominal price bubble (especially visible in the rent vs buy graph) but rents did not show the same spike, there was no general shortage (as seen in vacancy rates), and since interest rates fell nominal prices went up, and the central bank overcorrected.
... the obvious problem is the low productivity of suburbs. spending a lot of money on building them is good for short-term GDP growth, but long-term it's a poor investment compared to the usual recommendations.
