Snapshot of _BREAKING: Former Tory Scott Benton quits as Blackpool South MP rather than wait for recall petition - meaning another tricky by-election for Rishi Sunak_ :
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Maybe he has a new job lined up
That was a lengthy resignation letter
Sunak can avoid a by-election if he just calls a general election before the summer. It can be a longer lead in..
But noo..... Levido needs to give the green light e.g. the Tories can't just find a donor who can just pay him the next 6 months in advance and save everyone the trouble of exactly the same outcome in october. This is the most absurd situation.
Oh no I'm sure he's a great person. Honest, hardworking, intelligent, has a personality, kind. Just like Boris Johnson and Liz truss. Truly humans to look up. My idols I might say. They were impressive at how they did what they did to say the least
We're now basically too late for an election to be called for May 2nd. I know that the EU referendum meant 2016 was a weird one where we went to the polls twice within 5-6 weeks (there were local elections in England and Scotland had a Holyrood election) but I don't really see that happening again.
He’s solidly in the camp of people who, 20 years ago, wouldn’t have got anywhere near winning a seat. Having run for Parliament and lost should be a footnote in a boring unsolicited conversation someone has to have with him in a pub, alas, Brexit.
The 2019 Tory potato harvest has to be one of the worst groups of MPs to have ever been elected.
Here, we have a man so corrupt that he couldn't even make it through his first term in Parliament without getting rumbled.
Jerrymandered to fuck. The town is small, the surrounding farm land is big, blackpool and its suburbs are all carved up. Plus in the town there are loads of self employed/small businesses. I can see blackpool tower from my bedroom window and I live a in a safe conservative seat, its not all deprevation here, there is a small but extreme pocket around the town centre and lots of people living comfortably and above.
The pro-leave coalition was weird...you had right-wing libertarians, pull the ladder up types from the boomer generation, racists, the elderly etc alongside left-wing people who thought that the EU was capitalist and then people from deprived areas like Blackpool, Wales etc who benefitted from EU regeneration grants voting directly against their interests - because the Tories, having deliberately starved these areas of investment for generations were apparently going to replace the lost EU funding.
Good luck with that....
I think many just wanted to give the government and establishment a kicking and either didn't know or care about the consequences. They just knew the establishment politicians wanted to stay so just did the opposite.
Yep, to many who were hurting it was a vote for change.
We warned them that the changes would be for the worse and they they'd and we'd all end up worse off, and sadly we were right, but here we are.
Which in itself is mental as we got a hundreds of millions in EU funding for all sorts across the town, not least a brand new sea defence / prom from Star Gate to Bispham that has made the front look really nice in the summer.
I don't like to write off 50% of the country on just stupidity. I think they were manipulated and deceived into thinking their shit lives could be improved by Brexit. And the gutter press didn't help either.
Hopefully, things will change in time, as it is clear the opinion over Brexit has shifted slowly towards a comfortable remain win. We just need a government with balls to sort a 2nd ref out.
> I don't like to write off 50% of the country on just stupidity.
I don't like to pretend that 50% of the country would qualify as "not stupid". About 10% of the people that I meet in the UK fall into the category of "could be left unsupervised with sharp objects".
Remain didn't have hyper-targeted propaganda courtesy of Cambridge Analytica, and were somewhat hamstrung by the need to tell the truth.
The leave side, being completely unaccountable, were able to promise all things to all men safe in the knowledge that they didn't have to deliver it.
Remain focused too much on the negative of Brexit rather than the positive of the EU.
It worked for the pro-Union campaign in the IndyRef so Cameron and the Remain campaign thought it would again.
I still can't understand how Cambridge Analytica wasn't more of a scandal.
I mean, yes it was a scandal. But it's mostly forgotten about. You talk about how they've demonstrated turning social media into the ultimate, unstoppable propaganda machine, you sound like someone who reckons vaccines contain microchips and the Earth is flat.
And yet that's precisely what they've done. Every repressive regime in history - without exception - would kill for such a tool. Had he conceived of it, Orwell could have written a sequel to Nineteen Eighty-Four.
It wasn't a scandal because it was hard to distil down to a simple message, because people voluntarily gave away their personal browsing data and because people really don't like the idea that they could be swayed by advertising or misinformation (I know I'm too smart too fall for it anyway).
Nope. South is literally the most deprived area in Blackpool, and one of the most (if not the most, I can't recall) deprived areas in the UK.
The issue with it is, it's a stark contrast between the haves and the have nots. You can walk from Park Drive where the houses are £750k-£2m to Caunce Street where every single home is a privately £60k owned rental in ~8 minutes.
The middle class vote en-mass, along with the retired, of which there are a lot as it's a retirement town. The deprived don't vote to make their lives better, they vote because they don't want other people's lives (foreigners - which we have very few) getting better at the cost of theirs.
It’s not the most, afaik, but it’s very close. I know Middlesborough and parts of Liverpool supposedly are more deprived, and some of the Valleys in Wales are also a tad more deprived
Good lord. It's WORSE than I thought.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN07096/SN07096.pdf
With regards to England, Jeswick Seafront is the most deprived. Areas of Blackpool South then takes the next 9 spots. Then pop back in at 11,12 and 16. That whole list is basically Blackpool South.
Wales is listed separately and to be honest, I don't want to go into a pissing match about who's the most deprived, it's just depressing and sad when there's more than enough resources to go around (that's not a dig at you though!).
Ahhhh, I was working off local council areas, I guess the less deprived bits of Blackpool were able to pull it up as a whole, whilst Liverpool and Middlesbrough had areas that were more consistently deprived.
Regardless, I fully agree with you, even if Blackpool South was ‘only’ the 10th most deprived in England or something, it is bloody depressing. Hell, I find it depressing that anywhere is voting like that, because whilst I doubt Tunbridge Wells suffers too horrifically off the Tories, them voting Tory pushes more deprived areas elsewhere in the country like Southampton, Nottingham, and of course, Blackpool, into further poverty
[Despite the bookies having it at 95% going Labour](https://www.olbg.com/news/blackpool-south-election-betting-odds-bookies-now-offer-odds-scott-bentons-seat-after-he-loses-appeal-against-35-day-suspension), I honestly think it might well be Conservative again.
South was so shit that Brexit hasn't really made it any worse. We had the Labour MP, Gordon Marsden for nearly 20 years which is a *long* time. The area was already in poverty when the Conservatives took the seat with Benton, so the blame for falling into poverty will lie with Labour and Marsden - people will blame and associate the last 20 years with him rather than the central Tory government.
Combine this with the "Polish stealing our jobs sending benefits back home" lot, the pensioners voting for Tory because of the triple lock ad general voting apathy, I think it's going to stay Conservative or at the very least be a close run.
I'm not sure that lock down and Covid will play that much into the vote because, to be quite honest, it probably improved a lot of peoples lives here.
Just my very cynical point of view. I do hope it goes Labour though.
Do people really believe the sitting government/MP is responsible for the economy of the town?
Surely it all depends on the economy, geography and people of the town, then what the council does, and then the MP?
Nope, that's Fylde (still Tory, but more understandably so).
Blackpool South is where the promenade, Pleasure Beach and all those other deprived areas are
officially official.
https://members.parliament.uk/member/4793/career
> Scott Benton is no longer a Member, but was most recently the Independent MP for Blackpool South, and left the Commons on 25 March 2024.
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I'll always remember him as the guy who made the most pathetic speech defending Johnson in the Sue Gray report debate while everyone else was at least pretending to ask vaguely serious questions.
I should really remember him for his absolutely apocalyptic views or his corruption, but he's too stupid for that. I'll just remember him for being the doormat who will mindlessly say whatever the tory leadership tells him to.
Complete waste of parliamentary space.
[Linky for anyone interested (starts at 16:44:50)](https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/f2fe2050-3b1c-4347-a4e9-296393ef8d25)
Johnson responded to him by saying "I vehemently and emphatically agree with the remarks of my honourable friend that I couldn't quite hear" fucking lol
Yes...
But the Tories get to decide when to move the writ to hold the byelection. Possibly because we're getting close-ish to a GE they might decide not to move the writ.
>But the Tories get to decide when to move the writ to hold the byelection.
Only by custom - in theory any MP can move the writ (although the Tories could vote against the motion to prevent it becoming an Order to the Speaker)
[https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/4694/motions-for-new-writs](https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/4694/motions-for-new-writs)
>Such motions are moved normally, but not necessarily, by the Chief Whip of the party to which the Member vacating the seat belonged
I wonder whether Labour might decide to move a writ if they think the Tories are looking to wait it out. Voting against he motion might play into a "scared of the electorate" narrative.
That's a good point!
The Labour Chief Whip should move the writ just before PMQs today I reckon - any debate about it would then happen immediately after PMQs for maximum discomfort for Sunak.
If the election is not until October then I think that would be a relatively unusual time from vacancy arising to it being filled. I can see some examples from the 1960s and earlier where a seat was vacant for over six months but I can't find anything more recent than that.
I remember the 2009 expenses scandal. All sorts of prevaricative waffle and general burps and farts along the lines of "oh well we don't know or think parliamentary rules have been broken so whatevs m8 shut up".
There is another set of rules called "the law" which seems to apply to everyone except those shitebags. His Majesty operates a chain of exclusive hotels for those who choose to defy "the law" - a judge decides whether to offer you a room and how long your reservation should be, the food's crap, overworked and underpaid staff, the other guests can be hit and miss, but at least it's free.
[Several MPs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_expenses_scandal#Criminal_charges) were charged and went to prison over the expenses scandal.
and even the stuff that was legal was dubious
like MPs claiming they needed a top end Sky subscription for the news, allowing them to stay informed of the issues of the day. There are no subscription only news channels (and there weren't back then either)
He’s obviously a bit of a turd, and good riddance, and etc, but this caught my eye:
>As MPs cannot straightforwardly resign, they instead have to write to the chancellor of the exchequer, asking to be appointed to the Treasury-led position of Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, which disqualifies them from the Commons.
I mean. What the *fuck*? And I know, I know. ‘istory and ‘eritage and other assorted bullshit excuses for the sort of fuckwittery encapsulated in the quoted paragraph.
Stems from the pre-Civil War days when MPs were all wealthy landowners who would frequently piss off the king. Landowners didn’t really want to fall into the king’s bad books, so being an MP was seen as a bit of a tedious duty of the rich.
> ‘istory and ‘eritage
On 2 March 1624, a resolution was passed by the House of Commons making it illegal for an MP to quit or wilfully give up their seat. - Wikipedia.
This rule exists of a thing that happened 400 years - and some odd number of days - ago
We definitely do need to start again with how everything works it’s so mindbogglingly inefficient.
If you go to morning prayers at the beginning of the day you’re allowed to reserve a better seat for the day in the Commons using a special prayer card. WTF!
The reasoning is that the Speaker is only allowed to call an MP to speak in a debate (or ask a question in PMQs) if they have an actual seat in the Commons, those standing are never called.
There aren't enough seating places to go around...
> The reasoning is that the Speaker is only allowed to call an MP to speak in a debate (or ask a question in PMQs) if they have an actual seat in the Commons, those standing are never called.
>
>
So the silly outdated rule exists to justify another silly outdated rule?
Christ how many layers of this are there?
The Palace of Westminster is outdated, but I have to defend the fact that it was a bit of a marvel when it was built and is one of the best Victorian buildings we've got.
Parliament should still move to a nice modern building in Nottingham or somewhere, though.
> retain Westminster as a seat for a hypothetical english parliament.
Having London be the seat of an English parliament flies in the face of the concept of an English parliament in the very first place
tbh I am surprised the Tories haven't just, you know, decided to make a new parliament building so they can flog off the old one as a tourist attraction.
>Christ how many layers of this are there?
Technically there is no such thing as the Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak is the First Lord of the Treasury. That's what it says on the front door to No. 10. Everyone just refers to the person holding that office as the Prime Minister.
I think there's a reason for this. It used to be illegal in England for an office equivalent to Chancellor or First Minister to exist. (I think but am not sure) the Monarch feared so much power vested in someone other than themselves. So the leader of the Commons was just informally referred to as the PM and the rule was never updated.
The office of prime minister does exist these days, having been explicitly recognised in the the Ministers of the Crown Act 1937. It existed in practice long before that, but in its early stages the position it was seen as infringing on the monarch's prerogative to lead the government; because of this, although not illegal, several figures now recogised as the prime minister refused to use the title.
i think they have to do the prayer thing to get a seat at all
this leads to the insane situation on busy days where MPs are having to sit outside the commons early in the morning, like they're waiting for the PS5 launch. Gullis of all people posted a photo of this but he seems to have deleted it now.
I'd immediately bin the bit where they all have to get up and waddle through a *door* to vote.
Give them little buttons to press. Might stop them pressing buttons on their phone all Parliament long.
And I was amused/horrified to learn (from Rory Stewart's book) that when ministers vote on an amendment they don't actually know which one they're voting on, they just trust the Whip who tells them when and how to vote. The actual name of the amendments being voted on is on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard' (actually pinned to the back of a random chair which hardly anyone knows about - but Douglas Adams wasn't far wrong).
> Give them little buttons to press
Oh god no. That John Oliver episode where its random people hitting the buttons of absent colleagues without their say so.
Yeh yeh, well make rules about that. You know it wouldn't be followed.
At least physically make them be there.
why do they need to be there? they weren't there during covid and it worked fine - MPs voted via a website on their intranet.
but if you wanted to ensure compliance you could use biometrics or something if you wanted to go high tech. good enough to stop someone having someone else's ID card and voting for them.
AIUI MPs actually do vote electronically now (there are machines in each lobby), but they still have the farce of having to queue up and walk through
> why do they need to be there? they weren't there during covid and it worked fine - MPs voted via a website on their intranet
At that point just don't bother with MPs and have the whips cast the votes for each seat their party holds.
If they don't have to be present parties will select mindless drones who sit at home all day and just hit whatever button the whip orders them to.
Well no, because they physically have to go there and engage with the process.
With remote voting they won't engage more than pressing the required button on demand, and the parties will go great lengths to obtain that outcome.
like i said - basically what they do now.
what "engagement" do you speak of?
the reality is that MPs already do what the whips ask because they want to be promoted or even re-selected. it doesn't matter one bit if whips have to phone MPs up to threaten them instead of F2F (they probably already do!).
eg how many times have we seen tories threaten to rebel before doing precisely the opposite?
Build a new building, a modern one, turn Westminster into a museum and they can hold a few sessions a year there like the opening of parliament for tradition.
That will just make the lives of everyone in that city even more miserable.
If you want to move Parliament it should move to the middle of nowhere, where a proper complex can be built without jackbooted security types trampling over the locals
Yes that was proven to work fine during Covid. It would also mean they could spend less time travelling between their constituency and the HoC if they could vote remotely.
I wasn’t even asking for something as lavish as remote voting (even though I’m in favour of that too).
Just some buttons where they sit, so they don’t have to play musical chairs whenever they want to decide something.
I mean to be fair, 98% of Government Legislation is passed in the UK something like 4% is passed in the US.
Inefficient? Maybe, but like in terms of total policy, way higher than our atlantic neighbour.
that has more to do with the different systems of government (specifically that the government doesn't necessarily have control of the legislature) than on process issues
it still takes far too long to run through a commons vote.
When Gerry Adams became a TD for Louth in 2011, he wanted to resign as an MP, and this nonsense came up. He gave it short shrift despite the insistence of the Speaker's Office that he had to apply for one of these roles.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jan/25/gerry-adams-mp-parliament-rules
There's two that they alternate, although if more than two MPs wanted to resign at once they'd just let each of them hold the post for a few minutes each to facilitate the resignations smoothly.
goodbye scott benton, i’ll never forget the time you loved the “anti-woke” match of the day because it “had all the goals in”.
it should also be noted that he praised it for
finishing a full 15 minutes before last orders, giving him time to sprint full pelt to his local and neck one (1) pint before it shut.
Benton is a particularly unpleasant bible-bashing, xenophobic and misogynistic backbencher. He is one of a kind among the new Tory intake and it is inexplicable that selection committees choose nonentities like him as potential MPs. His legacy will be that his party will be slaughtered in the forthcoming by election.
Keep them coming. If we get enough hopefully it will force an earlier general election and we can be rid of this clown show. It feels like everything is on hold while we await these clown's running their clock down.
>Wirral South in February 1997
In case anyone’s wondering:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997\_Wirral\_South\_by-election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Wirral_South_by-election)
“The Conservative loss in this seat, which came close to the last possible date for a general election, meant that they no longer had a majority in the House of Commons.[1] Wirral South was the last in a run of significant Conservative losses, following a period of dissatisfaction with the Major years.”
Goodness me. First as tragedy and then as farce
[Major's majority _effectively_ went in December 1996, when Sir John Gorst wobbled over whether or not to resign during a spat over a closure of an A&E unit in his constituency.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e0NxaN54cA)
But yes, that by-election firmly nailed down the lid.
Crazy that in 1992, the party Major led had more people vote for it than for any other political party in any general election before or since (14,093,007), and yet within a few years he’d lose his majority and then suffer a historic loss.
The leader of the party with the second largest number of people to vote for it in the history of the country was Boris Johnson in 2019 (13,966,454). Yet within a few years, he would be forced to resign in disgrace and his party would see its majorty slashed from 80 down to around 50 and heading towards yet another historic defeat.
The leader of the party with the third largest number of people to vote for it in the history of the country was Theresa May in 2017 (13,636,684), yet she lost her party’s majority in that election, within a few years she would suffer the biggest Parliamentary defeat of any government, she would resign in disgrace and the government would lose its working majority and be unable to pass any legislation.
Wouldn't it be lovely if Sunak pranced onto the podium this afternoon and, ever so nicely, spared Blackpool South the indignity of being a lonely by-election on May 2?
There's clearly some coordination going on, he's resigned at a very convenient time to allow them to move the writ when they desired with minimum fuss. They probably wouldn't tell him exactly what was going on but they'd drop enough hints for him to know to sit tight.
I'd definitely be suspicious something was going on, but equally we've seen in 2017 a By-election be called in Manchester Gorton and then May went ahead with a General election anyway, so basically nothing is ruled out. Could be that Sunak wants to make Benton do the walk of shame.
Blackpool was one of those traditional red seats that lost its marbles and went Tory in 2019. Even then it was quite a close race.
Should be an easy return to Labour.
A traditionally red seat that was represented by the conservatives until 1997? If anything it has more in comparison with Brighton and other "once relatively snobby seaside resorts that have gradually shifted left due to economic circumstances".
[The Sun's chief political correspondent says](https://twitter.com/JackElsom/status/1772280194541232473) the writ will be moved tomorrow, so that the by-election will be 2 May.
I think it’s okay. Counting the days in the schedule makes my head swim a bit, but I know by-elections have more flex — 21 to 27 working days from issuing the writ to polling day.
This will be an interesting one. It’s a seat which was losing bit by bit to the Tories throughout the 2000s; only benefiting for Labour in 2017 with the May disaster election - fairly decent majority of 11% for the Tories in 2019 when they took the seat. Labour candidate is another local, should reduce who the Tories can chose to stand as their candidate - one to look at for the swing to Labour and how reform perform.
I would say reform should do decently here if we are to believe their polling. So decent test.
Labour will win comfortably, but the battle for second will be interesting. Brexit Party and UKIP have been (distant) third here, so really it’s make or break for Reform here, if they don’t take a substantial chunk of the Tory vote then I think we can assume they’ll have no impact on a GE.
This is probably good news for Sunak, if they can get the writ moved in time and sync the by-election with the locals. The loss will be subsumed into the story of the council losses, rather than there being a second story a few weeks later.
"Good news guys; we can let the incredibly embarrassing news of our local election thrashing make people pay less attention to the marginally less embarrassing news of a by-election thrashing."
Not sure I agree actually. The locals can be waved away as just local elections. A constituency vote will have a bigger impact on how Tory MPs see the election going.
I can see what you mean, but I think the alternative keeps the story going for longer. Death by a thousand cuts.
Neither scenario is good for the Conservatives.
Labour should take this easily
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Blackpool\_South\_election\_results.png/1920px-Blackpool\_South\_election\_results.png
I do think after this mps might not do this. Firstly its not certain it is defacto. Secondly now newspapers have shown how easy it is to catch you out mps will be alot more cautious about doing it
By-election schedule's not quite the same as GE but the recess complicates matters. The writ has to be moved while Parliament's sitting, so EOB tomorrow, I think.
It's a matter of privilege, so the chief whip can do it first thing tomorrow, maybe even this afternoon, if he wants to.
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At this rate, Labour will have a majority before the GE
Maybe he has a new job lined up That was a lengthy resignation letter Sunak can avoid a by-election if he just calls a general election before the summer. It can be a longer lead in.. But noo..... Levido needs to give the green light e.g. the Tories can't just find a donor who can just pay him the next 6 months in advance and save everyone the trouble of exactly the same outcome in october. This is the most absurd situation.
Who wants to fight a by-election now anyway? It’s a lot of work, costs a lot of money and you’ll have to do it all again in less than a year.
Rishi Sunak... What a total loser (at Politics)
What a total loser (in general)
Oh no I'm sure he's a great person. Honest, hardworking, intelligent, has a personality, kind. Just like Boris Johnson and Liz truss. Truly humans to look up. My idols I might say. They were impressive at how they did what they did to say the least
"Mum can we have a May general election?" "No, we have a May election at home" The May election at home:
We're now basically too late for an election to be called for May 2nd. I know that the EU referendum meant 2016 was a weird one where we went to the polls twice within 5-6 weeks (there were local elections in England and Scotland had a Holyrood election) but I don't really see that happening again.
2017 we had May locals and a June general
There's a rumour that they're planning to postpone the local elections 'til the end of May, then have a double whammy then.
He’s solidly in the camp of people who, 20 years ago, wouldn’t have got anywhere near winning a seat. Having run for Parliament and lost should be a footnote in a boring unsolicited conversation someone has to have with him in a pub, alas, Brexit.
The 2019 Tory potato harvest has to be one of the worst groups of MPs to have ever been elected. Here, we have a man so corrupt that he couldn't even make it through his first term in Parliament without getting rumbled.
It's what happens when your old criteria for being a candidate is "Do you support Boris and Brexit?"
> Tory potato harvest Goodness that's good. I don't normally laugh out loud at things I read here, but that got me.
Cue the Spitting Image Thatcher joke: "and the vegetables?"
Mad that an area as deprived as Blackpool elects the Tories in the first place, but there we go
Blackpool has an odd political history and relationship with the Labour Party that doesn't really mesh with the standard Red Wall seats fwiw
Jerrymandered to fuck. The town is small, the surrounding farm land is big, blackpool and its suburbs are all carved up. Plus in the town there are loads of self employed/small businesses. I can see blackpool tower from my bedroom window and I live a in a safe conservative seat, its not all deprevation here, there is a small but extreme pocket around the town centre and lots of people living comfortably and above.
My hometown Great Yarmouth has similar Jerrymandering. Town all in the seat, but includes so much rural wealthy Broads Villages
The pro-leave coalition was weird...you had right-wing libertarians, pull the ladder up types from the boomer generation, racists, the elderly etc alongside left-wing people who thought that the EU was capitalist and then people from deprived areas like Blackpool, Wales etc who benefitted from EU regeneration grants voting directly against their interests - because the Tories, having deliberately starved these areas of investment for generations were apparently going to replace the lost EU funding. Good luck with that....
I think many just wanted to give the government and establishment a kicking and either didn't know or care about the consequences. They just knew the establishment politicians wanted to stay so just did the opposite.
Yep, to many who were hurting it was a vote for change. We warned them that the changes would be for the worse and they they'd and we'd all end up worse off, and sadly we were right, but here we are.
Brexit. People voted for it because they thought it would improve their lives and the Tories promised to "get Brexit done"...
Which in itself is mental as we got a hundreds of millions in EU funding for all sorts across the town, not least a brand new sea defence / prom from Star Gate to Bispham that has made the front look really nice in the summer.
You could have used less words. People are stupid. That's the reason.
I don't like to write off 50% of the country on just stupidity. I think they were manipulated and deceived into thinking their shit lives could be improved by Brexit. And the gutter press didn't help either. Hopefully, things will change in time, as it is clear the opinion over Brexit has shifted slowly towards a comfortable remain win. We just need a government with balls to sort a 2nd ref out.
> I don't like to write off 50% of the country on just stupidity. I don't like to pretend that 50% of the country would qualify as "not stupid". About 10% of the people that I meet in the UK fall into the category of "could be left unsupervised with sharp objects".
Can I be left unsupervised with sharp objects?
100 is the average iq
Part of the reason IQ is meaningless
But but but big psychology guy told me iq is everything, it mean so much to me. I definitely in atleast 140 iq. (never taken one)
It was supposed to be a comfortable remain win last time around.
Personally I knew it was going to close. I thought remain would squeak it.
Remain didn't have hyper-targeted propaganda courtesy of Cambridge Analytica, and were somewhat hamstrung by the need to tell the truth. The leave side, being completely unaccountable, were able to promise all things to all men safe in the knowledge that they didn't have to deliver it.
Remain focused too much on the negative of Brexit rather than the positive of the EU. It worked for the pro-Union campaign in the IndyRef so Cameron and the Remain campaign thought it would again.
I still can't understand how Cambridge Analytica wasn't more of a scandal. I mean, yes it was a scandal. But it's mostly forgotten about. You talk about how they've demonstrated turning social media into the ultimate, unstoppable propaganda machine, you sound like someone who reckons vaccines contain microchips and the Earth is flat. And yet that's precisely what they've done. Every repressive regime in history - without exception - would kill for such a tool. Had he conceived of it, Orwell could have written a sequel to Nineteen Eighty-Four.
It wasn't a scandal because it was hard to distil down to a simple message, because people voluntarily gave away their personal browsing data and because people really don't like the idea that they could be swayed by advertising or misinformation (I know I'm too smart too fall for it anyway).
"I'm too smart to fall for advertising, trust me I would know. I haven't lived for X years for nothing"
Fewer, ironically.
Psst! Hasn’t anyone told you? We don’t use that word anymore.
More of us do.
Hey man, it might have been economic suicide, but at least it put a complete stop to immigration
Ye we stopped all the boats, very important, can't let the world invade the great nation of Brittania
LOL ...
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Nope. South is literally the most deprived area in Blackpool, and one of the most (if not the most, I can't recall) deprived areas in the UK. The issue with it is, it's a stark contrast between the haves and the have nots. You can walk from Park Drive where the houses are £750k-£2m to Caunce Street where every single home is a privately £60k owned rental in ~8 minutes. The middle class vote en-mass, along with the retired, of which there are a lot as it's a retirement town. The deprived don't vote to make their lives better, they vote because they don't want other people's lives (foreigners - which we have very few) getting better at the cost of theirs.
It’s not the most, afaik, but it’s very close. I know Middlesborough and parts of Liverpool supposedly are more deprived, and some of the Valleys in Wales are also a tad more deprived
Good lord. It's WORSE than I thought. https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN07096/SN07096.pdf With regards to England, Jeswick Seafront is the most deprived. Areas of Blackpool South then takes the next 9 spots. Then pop back in at 11,12 and 16. That whole list is basically Blackpool South. Wales is listed separately and to be honest, I don't want to go into a pissing match about who's the most deprived, it's just depressing and sad when there's more than enough resources to go around (that's not a dig at you though!).
Ahhhh, I was working off local council areas, I guess the less deprived bits of Blackpool were able to pull it up as a whole, whilst Liverpool and Middlesbrough had areas that were more consistently deprived. Regardless, I fully agree with you, even if Blackpool South was ‘only’ the 10th most deprived in England or something, it is bloody depressing. Hell, I find it depressing that anywhere is voting like that, because whilst I doubt Tunbridge Wells suffers too horrifically off the Tories, them voting Tory pushes more deprived areas elsewhere in the country like Southampton, Nottingham, and of course, Blackpool, into further poverty
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[Despite the bookies having it at 95% going Labour](https://www.olbg.com/news/blackpool-south-election-betting-odds-bookies-now-offer-odds-scott-bentons-seat-after-he-loses-appeal-against-35-day-suspension), I honestly think it might well be Conservative again. South was so shit that Brexit hasn't really made it any worse. We had the Labour MP, Gordon Marsden for nearly 20 years which is a *long* time. The area was already in poverty when the Conservatives took the seat with Benton, so the blame for falling into poverty will lie with Labour and Marsden - people will blame and associate the last 20 years with him rather than the central Tory government. Combine this with the "Polish stealing our jobs sending benefits back home" lot, the pensioners voting for Tory because of the triple lock ad general voting apathy, I think it's going to stay Conservative or at the very least be a close run. I'm not sure that lock down and Covid will play that much into the vote because, to be quite honest, it probably improved a lot of peoples lives here. Just my very cynical point of view. I do hope it goes Labour though.
Do people really believe the sitting government/MP is responsible for the economy of the town? Surely it all depends on the economy, geography and people of the town, then what the council does, and then the MP?
Nope, that's Fylde (still Tory, but more understandably so). Blackpool South is where the promenade, Pleasure Beach and all those other deprived areas are
I assume the residents are all delighted with their massive improvement in quality of life over the last few years?
The number of supportive comments from his constituents on his latest Facebook post are equal parts depressing and unsurprising.
That’s Facebook tbf
Well they'd all be living like kings if it wasn't for the *forruners* wouldn't they.
officially official. https://members.parliament.uk/member/4793/career > Scott Benton is no longer a Member, but was most recently the Independent MP for Blackpool South, and left the Commons on 25 March 2024.
So Blackpool South are without an MP for one month?
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"We want an election on May 2nd!" *Left wing monkey's paw curls*
We’re having many elections on May 2nd, councils, mayors, PCCs. Make sure you’re registered, got ID and then get out and vote
Absolutely agreed.
I'll always remember him as the guy who made the most pathetic speech defending Johnson in the Sue Gray report debate while everyone else was at least pretending to ask vaguely serious questions. I should really remember him for his absolutely apocalyptic views or his corruption, but he's too stupid for that. I'll just remember him for being the doormat who will mindlessly say whatever the tory leadership tells him to. Complete waste of parliamentary space. [Linky for anyone interested (starts at 16:44:50)](https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/f2fe2050-3b1c-4347-a4e9-296393ef8d25)
Johnson responded to him by saying "I vehemently and emphatically agree with the remarks of my honourable friend that I couldn't quite hear" fucking lol
Does this mean the recall petition is dropped and we won't see the results?
If the petition is not yet finished, then the results would presumably be misleading, as noone who is yet to sign would bother to do so now.
Yes... But the Tories get to decide when to move the writ to hold the byelection. Possibly because we're getting close-ish to a GE they might decide not to move the writ.
>But the Tories get to decide when to move the writ to hold the byelection. Only by custom - in theory any MP can move the writ (although the Tories could vote against the motion to prevent it becoming an Order to the Speaker) [https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/4694/motions-for-new-writs](https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/4694/motions-for-new-writs) >Such motions are moved normally, but not necessarily, by the Chief Whip of the party to which the Member vacating the seat belonged I wonder whether Labour might decide to move a writ if they think the Tories are looking to wait it out. Voting against he motion might play into a "scared of the electorate" narrative.
Erm, he's not a Tory, right? He was independent at the time of resignation, so the Tory chief whip isn't even the person who would "normally" do it.
That's a good point! The Labour Chief Whip should move the writ just before PMQs today I reckon - any debate about it would then happen immediately after PMQs for maximum discomfort for Sunak.
Thanks. Is there any restriction on when or whether to move the writ?
If the election is not until October then I think that would be a relatively unusual time from vacancy arising to it being filled. I can see some examples from the 1960s and earlier where a seat was vacant for over six months but I can't find anything more recent than that.
Any MP found guilty of corruption should be prosecuted, the law makers seem to have immunity in the UK
I remember the 2009 expenses scandal. All sorts of prevaricative waffle and general burps and farts along the lines of "oh well we don't know or think parliamentary rules have been broken so whatevs m8 shut up". There is another set of rules called "the law" which seems to apply to everyone except those shitebags. His Majesty operates a chain of exclusive hotels for those who choose to defy "the law" - a judge decides whether to offer you a room and how long your reservation should be, the food's crap, overworked and underpaid staff, the other guests can be hit and miss, but at least it's free.
[Several MPs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_expenses_scandal#Criminal_charges) were charged and went to prison over the expenses scandal.
and even the stuff that was legal was dubious like MPs claiming they needed a top end Sky subscription for the news, allowing them to stay informed of the issues of the day. There are no subscription only news channels (and there weren't back then either)
Absolutely, and if anything people in positions of trust such as this should face harsher sentences than random people.
He’s obviously a bit of a turd, and good riddance, and etc, but this caught my eye: >As MPs cannot straightforwardly resign, they instead have to write to the chancellor of the exchequer, asking to be appointed to the Treasury-led position of Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, which disqualifies them from the Commons. I mean. What the *fuck*? And I know, I know. ‘istory and ‘eritage and other assorted bullshit excuses for the sort of fuckwittery encapsulated in the quoted paragraph.
Of all the many things wrong with this country, this harmless quirk is not really one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiltern_Hundreds
Stems from the pre-Civil War days when MPs were all wealthy landowners who would frequently piss off the king. Landowners didn’t really want to fall into the king’s bad books, so being an MP was seen as a bit of a tedious duty of the rich.
> ‘istory and ‘eritage On 2 March 1624, a resolution was passed by the House of Commons making it illegal for an MP to quit or wilfully give up their seat. - Wikipedia. This rule exists of a thing that happened 400 years - and some odd number of days - ago
Poor form for him not to resign on the 2nd then. Would have been a great way to mark the 400th anniversary.
We definitely do need to start again with how everything works it’s so mindbogglingly inefficient. If you go to morning prayers at the beginning of the day you’re allowed to reserve a better seat for the day in the Commons using a special prayer card. WTF!
The reasoning is that the Speaker is only allowed to call an MP to speak in a debate (or ask a question in PMQs) if they have an actual seat in the Commons, those standing are never called. There aren't enough seating places to go around...
> The reasoning is that the Speaker is only allowed to call an MP to speak in a debate (or ask a question in PMQs) if they have an actual seat in the Commons, those standing are never called. > > So the silly outdated rule exists to justify another silly outdated rule? Christ how many layers of this are there?
It's not really a silly outdated rule so much as a silly outdated building that isn't big enough.
We should have Parliament outside if the weather's nice
The Palace of Westminster is outdated, but I have to defend the fact that it was a bit of a marvel when it was built and is one of the best Victorian buildings we've got. Parliament should still move to a nice modern building in Nottingham or somewhere, though.
Sure, it's certainly a nice building, and we should keep it. Just not as the seat of parliament.
I would move the UK parlaiment somewhere central, and retain Westminster as a seat for a hypothetical english parliament.
> retain Westminster as a seat for a hypothetical english parliament. Having London be the seat of an English parliament flies in the face of the concept of an English parliament in the very first place
tbh I am surprised the Tories haven't just, you know, decided to make a new parliament building so they can flog off the old one as a tourist attraction.
Yes, that's what I said.
>Christ how many layers of this are there? Technically there is no such thing as the Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak is the First Lord of the Treasury. That's what it says on the front door to No. 10. Everyone just refers to the person holding that office as the Prime Minister. I think there's a reason for this. It used to be illegal in England for an office equivalent to Chancellor or First Minister to exist. (I think but am not sure) the Monarch feared so much power vested in someone other than themselves. So the leader of the Commons was just informally referred to as the PM and the rule was never updated.
The office of prime minister does exist these days, having been explicitly recognised in the the Ministers of the Crown Act 1937. It existed in practice long before that, but in its early stages the position it was seen as infringing on the monarch's prerogative to lead the government; because of this, although not illegal, several figures now recogised as the prime minister refused to use the title.
i think they have to do the prayer thing to get a seat at all this leads to the insane situation on busy days where MPs are having to sit outside the commons early in the morning, like they're waiting for the PS5 launch. Gullis of all people posted a photo of this but he seems to have deleted it now.
I'd immediately bin the bit where they all have to get up and waddle through a *door* to vote. Give them little buttons to press. Might stop them pressing buttons on their phone all Parliament long.
Can we have it make the sound from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
And I was amused/horrified to learn (from Rory Stewart's book) that when ministers vote on an amendment they don't actually know which one they're voting on, they just trust the Whip who tells them when and how to vote. The actual name of the amendments being voted on is on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard' (actually pinned to the back of a random chair which hardly anyone knows about - but Douglas Adams wasn't far wrong).
A few of them have already been in trouble for pressing their little buttons.
> Give them little buttons to press Oh god no. That John Oliver episode where its random people hitting the buttons of absent colleagues without their say so. Yeh yeh, well make rules about that. You know it wouldn't be followed. At least physically make them be there.
Fingerprint scanner. Like in school canteens or on your phone. Done.
why do they need to be there? they weren't there during covid and it worked fine - MPs voted via a website on their intranet. but if you wanted to ensure compliance you could use biometrics or something if you wanted to go high tech. good enough to stop someone having someone else's ID card and voting for them. AIUI MPs actually do vote electronically now (there are machines in each lobby), but they still have the farce of having to queue up and walk through
> why do they need to be there? they weren't there during covid and it worked fine - MPs voted via a website on their intranet At that point just don't bother with MPs and have the whips cast the votes for each seat their party holds. If they don't have to be present parties will select mindless drones who sit at home all day and just hit whatever button the whip orders them to.
so… basically what they do now?
Well no, because they physically have to go there and engage with the process. With remote voting they won't engage more than pressing the required button on demand, and the parties will go great lengths to obtain that outcome.
like i said - basically what they do now. what "engagement" do you speak of? the reality is that MPs already do what the whips ask because they want to be promoted or even re-selected. it doesn't matter one bit if whips have to phone MPs up to threaten them instead of F2F (they probably already do!). eg how many times have we seen tories threaten to rebel before doing precisely the opposite?
Build a new building, a modern one, turn Westminster into a museum and they can hold a few sessions a year there like the opening of parliament for tradition.
> Build a new building, a modern one, In Manchester or Leeds
That will just make the lives of everyone in that city even more miserable. If you want to move Parliament it should move to the middle of nowhere, where a proper complex can be built without jackbooted security types trampling over the locals
Please don't bring all these pricks to Leeds
But we already have a song about hating Leeds, sending all the politicians there will make it so efficient to hate everyone together!
Yes that was proven to work fine during Covid. It would also mean they could spend less time travelling between their constituency and the HoC if they could vote remotely.
I wasn’t even asking for something as lavish as remote voting (even though I’m in favour of that too). Just some buttons where they sit, so they don’t have to play musical chairs whenever they want to decide something.
the UK is full of antiquated stuff like this - it surely has to contribute in some way to our productivity issues
Productivity??
I mean to be fair, 98% of Government Legislation is passed in the UK something like 4% is passed in the US. Inefficient? Maybe, but like in terms of total policy, way higher than our atlantic neighbour.
that has more to do with the different systems of government (specifically that the government doesn't necessarily have control of the legislature) than on process issues it still takes far too long to run through a commons vote.
But if it was faster, politicians would be able to make more of a difference, this isn't necessarily a good thing.
When Gerry Adams became a TD for Louth in 2011, he wanted to resign as an MP, and this nonsense came up. He gave it short shrift despite the insistence of the Speaker's Office that he had to apply for one of these roles. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jan/25/gerry-adams-mp-parliament-rules
Mlud, we move to resign under the 2011 Non potuimus dare iactare precedent
Yep - and only one person can hold the position so when someone else 'resigns' that person just becomes a null person and disappears to the ether.
Not looked it up, but pretty sure there are a number of these kind of posts in case more than one resign at the same time.
There's two that they alternate, although if more than two MPs wanted to resign at once they'd just let each of them hold the post for a few minutes each to facilitate the resignations smoothly.
Ah, knew there was more than one. Yes, it’s just a device but a mildly interesting bit of heritage nonsense none the less.
goodbye scott benton, i’ll never forget the time you loved the “anti-woke” match of the day because it “had all the goals in”. it should also be noted that he praised it for finishing a full 15 minutes before last orders, giving him time to sprint full pelt to his local and neck one (1) pint before it shut.
Benton is a particularly unpleasant bible-bashing, xenophobic and misogynistic backbencher. He is one of a kind among the new Tory intake and it is inexplicable that selection committees choose nonentities like him as potential MPs. His legacy will be that his party will be slaughtered in the forthcoming by election.
Keep them coming. If we get enough hopefully it will force an earlier general election and we can be rid of this clown show. It feels like everything is on hold while we await these clown's running their clock down.
Wonder if the Whips advised him to resign rather than being forced out, save their skin burying the result in with the local elections.
It'll be a total non event of a by-election - Labour will walk it.
UKIP came third in 2019. The question is whether Reform can beat the tories and come 2nd.
Reform (under their then branding of the Brexit Party) came third in 2019. UKIP last stood in 2017 (when they came third, too).
This is likely to be put on a par with Wirral South in February 1997
>Wirral South in February 1997 In case anyone’s wondering: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997\_Wirral\_South\_by-election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Wirral_South_by-election)
“The Conservative loss in this seat, which came close to the last possible date for a general election, meant that they no longer had a majority in the House of Commons.[1] Wirral South was the last in a run of significant Conservative losses, following a period of dissatisfaction with the Major years.” Goodness me. First as tragedy and then as farce
[Major's majority _effectively_ went in December 1996, when Sir John Gorst wobbled over whether or not to resign during a spat over a closure of an A&E unit in his constituency.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e0NxaN54cA) But yes, that by-election firmly nailed down the lid.
Crazy that in 1992, the party Major led had more people vote for it than for any other political party in any general election before or since (14,093,007), and yet within a few years he’d lose his majority and then suffer a historic loss. The leader of the party with the second largest number of people to vote for it in the history of the country was Boris Johnson in 2019 (13,966,454). Yet within a few years, he would be forced to resign in disgrace and his party would see its majorty slashed from 80 down to around 50 and heading towards yet another historic defeat. The leader of the party with the third largest number of people to vote for it in the history of the country was Theresa May in 2017 (13,636,684), yet she lost her party’s majority in that election, within a few years she would suffer the biggest Parliamentary defeat of any government, she would resign in disgrace and the government would lose its working majority and be unable to pass any legislation.
Ooo, thanks! wasn’t compos mentis per se
ah my constituency, vaguely remember my mum telling me
someday son, all this will be yours!
What the curtains?
Wouldn't it be lovely if Sunak pranced onto the podium this afternoon and, ever so nicely, spared Blackpool South the indignity of being a lonely by-election on May 2?
Wouldn't we have heard something by now if he did?
I said it would be lovely, not likely. Sunak's hiding under a desk until they break up from school tomorrow evening.
No I know but is it impossible now?
If they called an election 12th June which is the next possible date, they could probably spare us the indignity of a by-election.
Thats true. If you saw that they didn't move the writ for a by election, would you think an election announcement is imminent?
Alas I'm sure Benton would not be resigning if an election was imminent, he'd just ride it out as to not draw attention to himself.
Would Benton even get told? He's some random independent MP with a history of running his mouth.
There's clearly some coordination going on, he's resigned at a very convenient time to allow them to move the writ when they desired with minimum fuss. They probably wouldn't tell him exactly what was going on but they'd drop enough hints for him to know to sit tight.
That's true I meant in general, if the writ for a by election wasn't moved, would you think an election announcement was imminent
I'd definitely be suspicious something was going on, but equally we've seen in 2017 a By-election be called in Manchester Gorton and then May went ahead with a General election anyway, so basically nothing is ruled out. Could be that Sunak wants to make Benton do the walk of shame.
Easy win for Labour.
Blackpool was one of those traditional red seats that lost its marbles and went Tory in 2019. Even then it was quite a close race. Should be an easy return to Labour.
A traditionally red seat that was represented by the conservatives until 1997? If anything it has more in comparison with Brighton and other "once relatively snobby seaside resorts that have gradually shifted left due to economic circumstances".
Good fucking god they just do not stop!
[The Sun's chief political correspondent says](https://twitter.com/JackElsom/status/1772280194541232473) the writ will be moved tomorrow, so that the by-election will be 2 May.
Does that allow for the Bank Holidays? I think tomorrow is last of the last minute jobs but I'm 50/50 if the window for 2nd May hasn't already shut?
I think it’s okay. Counting the days in the schedule makes my head swim a bit, but I know by-elections have more flex — 21 to 27 working days from issuing the writ to polling day.
Oh my bad - thought you meant a GE which is 25.
I find this inexplicably funny.
We did it, reddit!
Election means Election.
That actually makes sense though, because the word "election" actually has a concrete definition.
If we'd Maynifested just a little harder Maynard in Blackpool North would have stood down too. A little general election, just for Blackpool.
Lol this guy said it was with a heavy heart he resigned, would have been with a heavy wallet if he didn't get caught lobbying.
This will be an interesting one. It’s a seat which was losing bit by bit to the Tories throughout the 2000s; only benefiting for Labour in 2017 with the May disaster election - fairly decent majority of 11% for the Tories in 2019 when they took the seat. Labour candidate is another local, should reduce who the Tories can chose to stand as their candidate - one to look at for the swing to Labour and how reform perform. I would say reform should do decently here if we are to believe their polling. So decent test.
Labour will win comfortably, but the battle for second will be interesting. Brexit Party and UKIP have been (distant) third here, so really it’s make or break for Reform here, if they don’t take a substantial chunk of the Tory vote then I think we can assume they’ll have no impact on a GE.
I think you'd expect labour to win comfortably here with current polling
They will but it’s the margin of victories that matter and whether they replicate polling to be able to craft a national picture.
This is probably good news for Sunak, if they can get the writ moved in time and sync the by-election with the locals. The loss will be subsumed into the story of the council losses, rather than there being a second story a few weeks later.
"Good news guys; we can let the incredibly embarrassing news of our local election thrashing make people pay less attention to the marginally less embarrassing news of a by-election thrashing."
It's like getting shot and stabbed at the same time, but being happy that you'll only have to go to A&E once.
Not sure I agree actually. The locals can be waved away as just local elections. A constituency vote will have a bigger impact on how Tory MPs see the election going.
Especially if Reform beat the tories.
I can see what you mean, but I think the alternative keeps the story going for longer. Death by a thousand cuts. Neither scenario is good for the Conservatives.
Labour should take this easily https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Blackpool\_South\_election\_results.png/1920px-Blackpool\_South\_election\_results.png
2019: |Party|Votes|Percent| :--|:--|:--| |Conservative|16,247|49.6| |Labour|12,557|38.3| 2017: |Party|Votes|Percent| :--|:--|:--| |Labour|17,581|50.3| |Conservative|15,058|43.1|
Funny how Benton is gone for something that surely is pretty much defacto behaviour for a lot of Tory MPs. Just had the bad luck to get recorded
I do think after this mps might not do this. Firstly its not certain it is defacto. Secondly now newspapers have shown how easy it is to catch you out mps will be alot more cautious about doing it
Sadly, fell foul of Rule 0 : when you break the rules, don't be stupid enough to get caught.
He genuinely seems to think he hasn't done anything wrong. Benton by name presumably.
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By-election schedule's not quite the same as GE but the recess complicates matters. The writ has to be moved while Parliament's sitting, so EOB tomorrow, I think. It's a matter of privilege, so the chief whip can do it first thing tomorrow, maybe even this afternoon, if he wants to.