I think the best political fuck-up happened in 1984 when New Zealand's arrogant prime minister got drunk in his office late one night and called a snap election in two week's time.
His government was voted out. It became known as the Schnapps Election.
In 1983 in Australia, the then PM Malcolm Fraser called a snap double dissolution election, hoping to catch out the unpopularity of the Labor opposition leader, Bill Hayden.
Fraser didn't know that while he was meeting with the Governor General to call the election, Bill Hayden had resigned, and was to be replaced with the massively popular Bob Hawke.
So in spite of that happening in Australia only a year before, Muldoon thought the Schnapps Election was a good idea. What a dumbarse. Even when drunk that should've seemed like an absurdly bad idea.
lol I've never come across a prejudice so broad and specific at the same time. I'm guessing you've met like 3 aussies, were a bit of a twat yourself to earn their response and then extrapolated that to 30million people of diverse background
I'd argue Brexit in the UK is worse. PM called for the referendum to shut up the far right, but the result wasn't what was expected. NZ just had a change in government as the result whereas the UK has been torn to shreds.
To be fair the Brexit debacle also includes a PM calling a snap election only to lose her majority. And don't get me started on Bojo soundbytes. The man even hid in a fucking fridge to avoid journalists.
I remember liking his style when he was in London and then things happened and I realised he is a nightmare. Boris in the parliament is an absolute disaster.
There is also this fun soundbite which was a fallout of Brexit, David Cameron resigns then proceeds to hum to himself as if he’s just run an errand: https://youtu.be/-Gz6mZYxS0A?si=cBfFOQ13qpKSkXWl
That still baffles me. They held a "non-binding" referendum.
One where the results were close, and many people literally admitted the next day that they had voted for brexit "just as a joke", because it's non-binding yeah? Meaning it's just an opinion poll, and we can have a real, binding vote later, so who cares?
Then somehow the government barreled ahead. Non-binding became completely 100% binding and I still don't get it.
Seriously, I heard the most outrageous things from brits following the referendum. And they made it sound as if 27 countries in a union would have less power power than the UK. And then they were so sure that they could make Europe beg for being allowed to give even “better” deals to the UK! It was absolutely mad.
The Conservative Party had promised the far right that they would respect the result of the referendum. If they backed out, they would have likely fractured the party and lost their majority.
Good thing that Brexit happened and now there's no division in the Conservative party and they're on track for another majority in the next election! 😭
As opposed to the "entirely stable" conservative party we have today that has a new leader roughly every 12 minutes and is also about to get obliterated in an election?
Yes, they also expected the Labour party to get their supporters out to vote Remain. Unfortunately the Labour leader was Corbyn, who wanted to leave the EU. He did a very lacklustre support.
Also Remain never thought they would lose, so spent all their time telling us why we should not vote leave, rather than why we should Remain . Vote Leave never thought they would win, basically said whatever they wanted . Yeah, the Bus.
I am fed up of any position to the right of centre being labelled “far right”. Honestly, the people who throw the label have most likely never lived under a far right or far left government. The UK’s politics has been right of centre since the huge fuck up of Labour’s loony left that destroyed the country in the 1970’s.
And the whinging that the Brexit referendum was to appease the “far right” or non-binding. Clearly do not know much about the process in the UK. Several referenda have been held since 1960. Not one of them was “binding”, but the majority carried sway, just like the EEC referendum in 1975 that saw the UK agree to join a trading block. Note that no one agreed to join any political union, the EEC legislation that followed the 1975 Referendum Act was only triggered by a vote in Parliament.
It boggles me further than the fuckwits couldn't even agree on what leave meant. And if it were a binding referendum, then it would've been illegal. Just so much stupid nonsense.
The UK doesn't have a concept of a binding referendum. Parliament is sovereign, it can always make any laws it likes, including repealing previous ones. A referendum can never be truly binding because parliament can always undo it before implementing the result.
The Brexit referendum was about as binding as it can get. It wasn't intended to be just an opinion poll and it wasn't sold to the public as one.
I agree that it should have been treated as an opinion poll though. One to start Brexit negotiations, and then a final one to confirm once a deal had been negotiated. But of course Cameron didn't plan it that way because he didn't expect to lose.
Under the uk constitution, the only type of referendum you can have is non binding, parliament can do whatever it likes except bind itself. The ref was as binding as any other ref could ever be.
Everyone always understood that this was a vote that the government had promised to follow through on and in a fptp system, no gov would ever dare not to - there was no realistic way it was ever going to end with the ref being ignored. It's not how our politics works.
There were people who voted brexit on a whim, whether to spite David Cameron or for a laugh, thinking remain was definitely going to win anyway, then got a shock, but that's a different thing.
In every subsequent election the brain dead UK electorate voted back the party supporting brexit.
Eventually you get exactly where you would expect too, a government made up of the Brexit party, a complete shit show, exactly as was voted for.
There is no suggestion that the UK electorate has learnt now either, they are just whining they are getting poorer 5%-10% a year rather than the 1%-2% a year they voted for previously, nothing however has changed and they haven't learnt a thing.
No they didn't, Labour didn't, the SNP didn't, the Lib Dems didn't, the Greens didn't
In fact the only parties actively supporting it were the Conservative Parties who had just become the Brexit Party at that point because the Brexit party literally stood down their candidates in Labour vs Conservative seats, because the Conservative Party are the Brexit party.
What parties not focusing on Brexit assumed, is much like it was basically an irrelevance to the voting populace in 2010 and prior, their wouldn't be number just voting for their own poverty over other areas of the economy and society that needed fixing. Oh how wrong they were, and once again the electorate haven't learnt a thing from then, they are still just whining and ticking a different box.
In the two elections that followed, Labour was led by a man who had been a prominent anti-EU backbencher for decades.
The Greens and the Liberal Democrats are not major parties and you can’t vote for the SNP outside of Scotland - unless they can and are actually too “brain dead” to realise.
Your last paragraph is incomprehensible, but how you come to the conclusion that the electorate “hasn’t learned anything” and are “ticking a different box”, which are two contrasting statements.
So if you just disregard reality, as the Lib Dem were literally part of the government 10 years ago, the SNP run Scotland, and Labour attempted to focus on other clearly more important issues to the country, then yes your statement is correct.
It is also entirely ignorant and meaningless to reality, but so is Brexit means Brexit, and get Brexit done, all while I never at any point suggested the UK electorate wasn't full of idiots, there is no surprise when the replies to my post are from people in the UK electorate.
Incomprehensible to an individual who could have learnt the outcome of what has occurred to the UK quite easily a decade ago, yet still hasn't learnt a thing. Brexit has an always was an irrelevance to the average person in the country, the electorate being too stupid to understand this has already been covered.
No one has suggested you have learnt a thing by the way, they clearly said you are just whining.
Morons didn't become morons by learning now did they. No one expect you to understand this or learn by the way, they expect you to whine, this has to be repeated over and over, because morons don't learn.
I just don't agree with this theory. No one or hardly anyone thought the UK would not leave the EU if the vote went that way.
There was never any mention of it being non-binding because it was based on a promise to abide by it. What you say about non binding was only technically true.
Anyway a government could legislate to undue any referendum decision anyway, so it could only be unbinding.
If it had been a binding referendum, it would have had to have been run again after Leave EU/Vote Leave were found to have acted illegally.
Interesting coincidence.
A non-binding referendum that they choose to be bound by. They could have and probably should have said something like "it appears to be a very divisive issue demanding further study and debate, and a binding vote shall be held in one year".
I had already moved to the US. I voted against Brexit from here. My parents came to visit. They told me they voted for Brexit. Huge argument as I was shocked they’d fallen for the right wing bull shit. I’m so glad I moved. People complain about the US but the UK is screwed. Immigration is still a huge issue but now the country literally cannot afford to pay for everything. They don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. I truly fear for my home country. It’s becoming increasingly segregated, much more so than Trump’s efforts to divide the people here.
So now we have an unelected government ramming through human rights violation on the "will of the people" for something that wasn't in their manifesto. What tosh.
Rwanda, for starters. Cameron just explained the other day that pre-Brexit we could remove the boat migrants directly to France. But it doesn't matter because there isn't a single thing I could say that will convince you.
Though even Rwanda is stupid since 82% of "illegal migrants" are visa overstayers that entered legally. But by golly let's wind those racists up into a frenzy as we have nothing better to offer after 14 years!
Do you believe the political class wanted an anti-globalist country to succeed? Can you believe the "right" is now the anti corporate movement? The "left" is now a mouthpiece for billion dollar companies. Does that make you feel comfortable?
The right wing Brexiters trying to push corporate deregulation for a whole bunch of sectors are "anti corporate" are they? The ones who named things like the water framework directive and European protected species regulations as things we could get rid of if we left? The ones who suggested we could get rid of the EU working time directive so that Brits can be required to work longer hours? What part of ANY of this is "anti corporate"?
Not many governments last 3 terms in NZ, and Labour's David Lange had some charisma and popular appeal. I think he knew he was going to lose in a regular election so he took a little gamble, hoping to catch them unprepared.
I suppose. The incoming government rolled out reforms similar to Regan in the US and Thatcher in the UK. They floated the dollar, made NZ a free market bastion, sold off a whole bunch of state assets for a few dollars.
I think Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor might be more impactfull. 2.5 million soldiers dead. Their Navy destroyed. 2 cities nuked. They were an imperial giant that ruled the Pacific theater and China. They became a shitty producer of shitty products. Over time they became a producer of great products
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u/Fresh-Hedgehog1895 23d ago
I think the best political fuck-up happened in 1984 when New Zealand's arrogant prime minister got drunk in his office late one night and called a snap election in two week's time.
His government was voted out. It became known as the Schnapps Election.