WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON: An essay about British politics in June 2017
Hello internet! Here is some sweary but hopefully very understandable information about what’s happening in the UK at the moment and why it is a big grotesque mess. As a disclaimer, I should say that 1. This is hastily written and not my best work and 2. I am not an expert - but apparently Theresa May isn’t one either! So, I’m going to run down what I know, and hopefully that’ll help everyone who wants to understand the situation a bit better. If anyone who is an expert wants to correct me or add anything then please, please do.
Because this is for everyone even if you don’t know a damn thing about British politics, there are a few things that some people will be like ‘obviously everyone knows that!’ but NOT EVERYONE KNOWS THINGS so don’t be a butt. For example: The UK is a country, but it also made of other countries including Northern Ireland. Not everyone knew that, but now they’ve read it and they do! We’re all learning and that’s nice. Now let’s get down to it…
First, some history: Britain has had a very tumultuous relationship with Ireland basically forever. There’s a LOT to go over, so I’ll just kind of massively over-simplify and say that Ireland became a British colony and fought its way out until only 6 counties were undecided about being part of the UK.* Conflict known as The Troubles started in the ‘60s.
The Troubles: The counties of Northern Ireland consisted (and still consist) of a mixture of two key ideologies; those who considered themselves British (unionists), and those who considered themselves Irish (republicans).** The former, wanted Northern Ireland to stay as part of the UK, but the latter wanted Northern Ireland to rejoin the rest of Ireland as one sovereign state — they arguably settled into a kind of a ‘draw’*** in the 1920s. When the fighting began in the ’60s, the republicans were, rightly, pissed that they were being discriminated against by the unionist authorities — they wanted to be treated fairly, and asking and then demanding it clearly wasn’t working, so they resorted to force. This kicked off thirty years of fighting, involving a variety of paramilitary groups, activists, Northern Irish police, politicians, and the British army. Thousands of people died (mostly civilians), and there was bombing throughout the UK. Eventually, after a lot of work, a peace-deal was brokered: The Good Friday Agreement (GFA).
The Good Friday Agreement: In order to bring an end to both the fighting, and also the state-sponsored discrimination that started it, a contract was brought up between the republicans and the unionists. It’s pretty complex, but some key points are these:
- A forced coalition of republicans and unionists must run the country
- The majority of people want to stay in the United Kingdom but there are loooads who want to be part of Ireland: If there is ever a time when this switches, and the majority wants to unite with the Republic of Ireland, then the UK is bound to allow it.
- (A reason this is so groundbreaking is because Britain had never before recognised that both these ideas were totally legitimate)
Key to this contract is the concept of ‘impartiality’. To properly manage a country with such distinct and opposing viewpoints, you have to be emphatically impartial between the two (and the legitimacy of both viewpoints therefore implicit). This is why the forced coalition is so important.
That was in 1998, and Northern Ireland has pretty much been peaceful ever since (there is the odd bit of violence every now and then) but obviously it’s kind of part of the whole deal that the two sides will never see eye-to-eye completely. Unfortunately…
Recent UK political history: I won’t go into too much detail, but basically the Conservative party were having a bit of a power struggle and David Cameron (the Prime Minister at the time) decided to sort it out by saying he’d hold a referendum about whether the UK should be part of the EU. And in 2016, he kind of had to follow through with that. It was a decision made with no forethought whatsoever, and the discussions around it were of the same ilk. Anyway, as we all know, without any idea what would happen once the decision was made, the UK slightly voted to Leave more than to Remain (this is known as Brexit because of course it is a stupid name like that). David Cameron resigned because whoops, and we got Theresa May — we didn’t get to vote for her or anything, we just got her.
This year, she decided she wanted a more firm support to go into Brexit negotiations with Europe, so she called a snap election. Elections are typically every 5 years and our last one was only in 2015, so it was early. LITTLE DID SHE KNOW, good old Jeremy Corbyn (who I could talk about at length as well but I won’t) and his Labour crew brought their A-Game, and destroyed the Tories as much as they could without actually winning the election.
Basically, Britain has an idiotic system called ‘first-past-the-post’. The gist of it is as follows: Each political party has their own leader, and that leader becomes the prime minister if their party wins. When you go to vote, you vote for a local MP for your constituency (or local area) representing his or her party and that counts towards the national wins — or seats — of that party. For example, you might vote for a local Labour candidate and, if that Labour candidate wins, their seats are added to the Labour party seats to see whether or not the country wants them doing a good rule of the whole place. To have a strong mandate, i.e. to be large-and-in-chaaarge, a political party has to get a ‘majority government’ — this is defined as winning 326 seats. If they don’t get that, they must form a coalition with another party to pick up the seats that they’re missing — this tends to be the biggest party teaming up with one of the much smaller ones. In 2010 nobody got enough seats****, and the Tories took over from the Labour party by getting the Lib Dems into a coalition with them; then they somehow got even more control in the 2015 election by getting a majority government on their own little leggies (no Lib Dems required).
In this election, again, no party got enough seats — so the Tories had to try and get a coalition going. But there was a problem! All the other parties they could turn to, had said they would absolutely not form a coalition with them. WHAT TO DO? Well, remember we were talking about Northern Ireland earlier…
I KEEP THINKING I’M NEAR THE END AND THEN MORE INFORMATION IS HAPPENING: Northern Ireland has for a while been run by a coalition between the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin. The former is unionist (obviously); the latter is republican. This had been going pretty well, till something called the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). This was a system to help businesses move towards renewable energy sources, thereby reducing UK carbon emissions. Essentially, businesses were given subsidies to change their heating methods over from non-renewable sources. But it was done in a shambolic way — people were basically being paid to just have their heat on aaaall the time, and there was no cap on subsidies so they could just heat their way to an unethical, but apparently perfectly legal, fortune. It was a corruption bonanza! SCANDAL HAPPENED when it was revealed that this whole thing was going to cost Northern Ireland huuuundreds of millions of pounds and also ffs look what a hash job everyone has done. Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP was asked to stand down while an enquiry happened but she refused and, in protest, the leader of Sinn Féin (Martin McGuinness) resigned from his post (and then subsequently resigned from the party and then died). Sinn Féin refused to put someone else forward to lead their half of the coalition, so Arlene Foster couldn’t lead either! Northern Ireland, therefore, had to have an election even though they had JUST HAD ONE in 2016. So they had another in March and the unionists headed into shaky ground — they lost a whole lot of seats, so only had one more than Sinn Féin*****. Sinn Féin continued to demand that Arlene Foster step down, and Arlene Foster continued to refuse, meaning they still couldn’t form a government. They were given a deadline to form one, or they would be put under Direct Rule (this means Westminster taking over running Northern Ireland), which is NOT IDEAL considering. The deadline passed, so they extended the deadline… And then Theresa May called a national election! WHAT A CLEVER CLOGS. This fucking idiot called an election in the most unstable time in Northern Ireland since the fucking ’90s. Northern Ireland now has to go back to the polls once again! (Also Brexit is happening!!! Ireland is part of Europe!!! The Northern Irish border with Ireland is a sensitive thing!!! Nobody talked about this during Brexit and they’re all fucking idiots!!!) So they push back the deadline some more and then the election happens and GUESS FUCKING WHAT…
CLUSTERFUCK: Theresa May, a monumental shitshower of idiocy, doesn’t have enough seats to run the country, and nobody wants to team up with her horrible party, and now she’s fucked! But WAIT, what about the party that is embroiled in a corruption scandal and is currently unable to run its own country? That’s a good idea. Let’s get them involved. Theresa May and the DUP****** decide to join up.
Now. Remember a little thing from nearer the beginning of this stupidly long post: The Good Friday Agreement? The culmination of years of peace-process discussions after and through decades of war and terror? The thing the relies on an impartial government? How impartial is the Tories getting in bed with the DUP — the unionists? Not very impartial, if you don’t mind me saying. So now not only is Northern Ireland in a mess over the Cash for Ash scandal, and unable to run itself, but ALSO Theresa May is shitting all over the only real thing that’s kept the peace for nearly 20 years. And we still don’t know what’s happening with the Ireland/NI border! And we still have a deadline for a NI government to be sorted out! And the official plan for if that doesn’t happen is Direct Rule! And you can’t possibly run Direct Rule with one of the coalition parties that is refusing to run the fucking country! And Direct Rule is kind of kryptonite for GFA anyway! IT’S A FUCKING LUDICROUS, ILLEGAL, DANGEROUS MESS.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
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*That’s not exactly what happened. Ireland was colonised, fought for home rule (which is like being in charge of their area, while still being a British colony), and was partitioned in the 1920s because lots of people in these few Northern counties wanted to be ruled by the British government. The Irish Free State was created soon after, and Northern Ireland had the option to be part of that as well, but their government decided nah.
**This divide invariably fell along Protestant vs Catholic lines which lots of wilfully ill-informed British people will tell you is all the fighting was about. Actually there is a very long history related to this divide, which involved purposeful subjugation of Catholics in Ireland, to the point that the Irish Potato Famine could be considered attempted genocide of Irish Catholics by the British (protestants).
***Northern Ireland has since had the right to leave the UK if that’s what its people want, but that hasn’t happened and… Well, read on.
****This is known as a ‘hung parliament’. Hung parliaments do not happen a lot. there was one in 2010, as detailed above, and I think the one last before that was way back in the ‘70s.
*****Notably, in this general election, the unionists gained back a lot of their seats — presumably from unionists worried about how much power the republicans were getting.
******I should mention that the DUP are really, really right-wing. Like way more than the Tories. They are scary and have been scary this whole time! Lots of British people are unhappy about the idea their parliament could be run by people who think LGBTQ rights are bad, and people who have abortions should go to prison, and that the earth is only 6,000 years old. The rest of the UK doesn’t really pay any attention to Northern Ireland and that’s a lot of the reason why we’re in this fucking mess.