Scrutable

Maybe, but I still don't see where those 25% who are fiercely anti-abortion are going to come from.

Stranger Mouse wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:37 pm

Maybe, but I still don't see where those 25% who are fiercely anti-abortion are going to come from.

Old people

dyqik wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:38 pm

Stranger Mouse wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:37 pm

Maybe, but I still don't see where those 25% who are fiercely anti-abortion are going to come from.

Old people

There are also plenty of evangelicals in the UK, and US evangelical influence within more mainstream Christianity.

Woodchopper wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 6:55 am

Little waster wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 10:50 pm

Woodchopper wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:33 pm

To be equivalent to the US it would need to be more like 30-40 per cent who were highly motivated and prioritized that issue over all others.

Perhaps in the US but in the UK for such a single-issue electoral block to make a difference they would only have to reliably deliver around 10% of the electorate.

Johnson's stonking 80 seat majority resulted from the support of only 26% of the registered electorate.

If someone like Stephen Green (in his fondest dreams) could cast himself as the British Falwell and weld UK evangelicals, Catholics etc. into a single coherent, motivated political movement then they could present someone unscrupulous like Johnson with half of a winning electoral coalition.

All some future "Britain Trump" would then need to do is bolt on a couple of other fellow travelling caucuses (say the libertarians and the English, read white, nationalists) to assemble a coalition simultaneously capable of winning handsome majorities under FPTP (with/without gerrymandering and voter suppression) while being completely unrepresentative of the majority of UK voters and light-years from any recognisable sensible middle-ground.

That is essentially what has happened to the Republicans since Reagan.

Now the good news in the UK is that such an unholy alliance looks way-off but then again who in 2016 saw the recent incarnation of the PFKATheConservatives?

A bad election loss for Johnson would necessitate whichever Tory comes next to reinvent the Conservatives once again; we have been told repeatedly that is their great strength. Perhaps it will be some reheated form of Cameroonism or turbo-Thatcherism or Red Toryism or whatever but if they have been doing their homework any number of them will look across the pond to see what lessons they can learn from the Republicans, with the likes of Crosby and Murdoch perfectly willing to hold their coats for them.

I remember having just this conversation with one of Osborne's pointy-heads at Policy Exchange in about 2012. That they haven't managed/attempted to enact this plan just yet doesn't mean they couldn't dust it off again if the next election leaves a hollowed-out Tory party in existential crisis desperately searching for a "Hail Mary", in this case literally.

Even if a social revolution by 10% of the population is plausible, which I don't think it is, where's that 10% going to come from?

As far as I can tell, only about 5% of the UK population regularly attended church services in 2015 (which is the best proxy for commitment to religious beliefs) and given the long term trend the proportion is likely to be lower now. Catholics only make up a quarter of those regular attenders, and pentecostalists about 10% (source). Even among Catholics, circa 60% agree that "the law should allow an abortion if a woman decides on her own she does not wish to have a child”.

To get to your 10%, there would need to be a huge increase in religious observance and a sea change in opinion among Catholics. This would need to happen after a long term decline in religious observance in Britain.

Little waster wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 10:50 pm Now the good news in the UK is that such an unholy alliance looks way-off but then again who in 2016 saw the recent incarnation of the PFKATheConservatives?

tom p wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:58 pm...and like most old yorkies (it seems), is a devout racist.

Stranger Mouse wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 7:48 pm Peter Boooooooone

https://twitter.com/avasantina/status/1 ... 901omrwC_g

Rich Scopie wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:18 am

tom p wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:58 pm...and like most old yorkies (it seems), is a devout racist.

Oi. No need for that kind of casual racism.

temptar wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 11:12 am Abortion is still on the books as illegal in the UK. Roll back the legislation that allows for life of mother and two doctors signing off and you are screwed. Offences Against the Person, 1861, I think.

Point of info, that provision was repealed in Ireland when the relevant constitutional amendment was written into law.

So first thing you need to do is get that repealed on your side too.

temptar wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:57 pm Frustratingly Twitter is down in Ireland atm so while I would like to see those two last links, I can’t

temptar wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:57 pm Frustratingly Twitter is down in Ireland atm so while I would like to see those two last links, I can’t

Fishnut wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 6:01 am It could be entirely coincidental, but Stella Creasy's office has been vandalised after she said she would table an amendment to make access to abortion a fundamental right in the UK.

Christian Action, Research, and Education (CARE) has provided free researchers to 20 MPs as part of its Leadership Programme, which offers 11-month placements in Westminster – and all-access Commons passes – to recent university graduates.

Of those, 13 continued to take the interns despite revelations about the charity’s position on LGBTQ+ rights in 2012. It emerged that CARE had sponsored a conference about homosexuality that promoted gay ‘conversion therapy’ and included sessions on “mentoring the sexually broken”.

The group has said its internship scheme puts participants in “real positions of responsibility”, and boasts that former interns have gone on to become cabinet ministers and senior civil servants. Tory MP Stephen Crabb, an alumni of the scheme, credits it with giving him “a grounding of the Commons, politically”.

Allo V Psycho wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 2:01 pm Some women do not realise they are pregnant at all until as late as 20 weeks, or even till birth, and this cannot be ascribed simply to pregnancy denial.

Woodchopper wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:08 pm

Little waster wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 8:49 am The status quo in the UK is something like 5% are very strongly anti-abortion, 5% are very strongly pro-choice and the other 90% ... haven't really thought about it all that much.

I disagree. That might apply to men, but I expect that most women have thought about it.

raven wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:55 pm

Woodchopper wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:08 pm

Little waster wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 8:49 am The status quo in the UK is something like 5% are very strongly anti-abortion, 5% are very strongly pro-choice and the other 90% ... haven't really thought about it all that much.

I disagree. That might apply to men, but I expect that most women have thought about it.

That was my exact reaction, only more sweary.

If you asked a 100 women, particularly 100 women in their twenties when both the risk and hazards of pregnancy are probably highest I think you'd find most of them have thought about it. Maybe not in terms of legislation, but in terms of what they'd do if the worst happened.

(Oh, and my elderly relatives in Yorkshire must be the exception. They're lovely. Where I am now in the rural south though....)

Little waster wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 9:18 pm Apologies.

Just to make it clear I never wanted to suggest that abortion is a minor issue or that many women haven't seriously considered what they would do/have done under the circumstances.

I was just suggesting that abortion hasn't been the all-dominating political topic in the UK that it is in the US; the thing people would allow to determine their vote irrespective of the other policies the candidates may have.

In the UK (mainland at least) politically it has been a dead topic for two generations, and this is a good thing, that most people were happy with the broadly pro-choice status quo and nobody was seriously talking about changing that, a moderate majority facing off against a highly-motivated but tiny fringe. Now in the aftermath of Roe v Wade being overturned the concern is this might change and for the first time since our parents/grandparents were young the pro-choice movement are going to have to start properly mobilising themselves as the anti-choice ghouls aren't going to hang about.

The 1967 Abortion Act transformed women’s healthcare by legalising terminations in England, Wales and Scotland up to 28 weeks, with the legal limit since reduced to 24 weeks. But abortions are only lawful in circumstances where two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would be risky for the physical or mental health of the woman.