I've been following British politics a bit more than is healthy as of late. The poli-sci guy likes the alt-universe effect of a near-American country using a different system. The international econ guy likes the history-in-the-making part of Brexit. Lastly, the cast of players is a bit more likable than at home, where the market for Sweet Meteor of Death stickers grows by the day.
British politics is somewhat on hold for an August break, digesting the changeover from the technocratic Theresa May to the mildly bombastic Boris Johnson. He'd be a notch too socially liberal (pro-SSM, live-in-girlfriend) to survive a GOP primary but there's not much of a Religious Right vote in the UK, letting him with the Conservative Party runoff primary (MPs whittled it down to two choices for the party members to vote on) 2-1 over his more centrist rival. Trump considers him a brother-in-arms and the Rock considered him a cousin until the PC police educated him.
Halloween is the witching day for Brexit, after the May government kicked the can forward after failing to get her proposed deal through Parliament by the original April deadline. New PM Johnson has his Howie Mandel on, wanting to leave the EU at the end of October, deal or no deal. Johnson was one of the highest-profile Tories to support the 2016 Brexit vote, while May was pro-Remain in '16, somewhat grudgingly following the voters wishes.
The fun (if you're a Yank without any skin in the game) part is to watch the Mother of Parliaments play out in full dysfunction mode. There isn't a majority for a cold-turkey "no deal" Brexit, there wasn't a majority for the May-EU deal that left the UK in a open-ended transition period that could only be ended with the EU's agreeing to a long-term deal, and there wasn't a majority to scrap Brexit all-together. They can't agree to move it or milk it.
The Johnson government has the barest of majorities, even with the help of the Northern Irish small-c conservative DUP. They had two seats to spare when Johnson made the trip to have the queen name him PM, which got whittled down to one after a by-election in Wales replaced an ethically-challenged Tory with a resurgent screw-Brexit Liberal Democrat.
That means it would only take one renegade Tory to sink the government. That would create the prospect of an early election, for a coherent coalition of everyone but pro-Johnson Conservatives and the DUP agreeing on a replacement prime minister is hard to see, as this ConservativeHome (think Red State UK without the Trump-flavoring) article points out.
If an election did occur, it would be a three or four way free-for-all, with the British left split between the hard-left Labour party (Jeremy Corbyn plays like a Bernie Sanders with a tin ear towards Jew-bashing in the party) and the more moderate but very anti-Brexit LibDems and the right split between the Conservatives and the Tea Party-ish Brexit Party, a remix of an earlier UK Independence Party shorn of (most) of the white-nationalist types; it came in first in the May EU elections.
Johnson's fairly strong pro-Brexit stance should placate some of the Tory voters who jumped ship in May for a fairly free protest vote who will come home rather than let a Corbyn government come to pass; the polling number seem to indicate that Johnson's win has shaved the Brexit Party's vote down from ~20% to mid-teens. The Brexit Party may also draw from blue-collar Labour voters who don't like having to compete with workers coming to the UK from poorer sections of the EU (e.g. there's a big Polish contingent in the UK) and are pro-Brexit, so it isn't just renegade Tories that give Fox News fave Nigel Farage their vote.
International Econ stuff. Comparative poli-sci stuff. Yes, I am a nerd. Guilty as charged.
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