← Back to context

Comment by dofm

13 days ago

And this time he got enough votes that if they were to be signatures in any recall petition if triggered by the standards investigation, Farage will lose his seat and have to fight it again if he wants it.

19 comments

dofm

Reply
davidhbolton  13 days ago

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.

  • choult  13 days ago

    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.

  • asib  13 days ago

    Farage won an election in which no other major party participated.

    The standards committee doesn't make decisions based on what they think is best. They make decisions based on the rules.

  • dofm  13 days ago

    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.

  • jmyeet  13 days ago

    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.

    [1]: https://www.worldfinance.com/special-reports/failing-banks-w...

    • mschuster91  13 days ago

      > 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?

      5 replies →

    • Amezarak  13 days ago

      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.