Government to suspend Parliament

The Lib Dems say lots of things.

In simple terms, to become PM you need to have more than the rest put together. So in theory there is no way for you to lose a vote, if all of your MPs toe the line.

That's why May had to go into an agreement with the DUP after the 2017 election stunt backfired.

It's also worth noting that in these very intriguing political times, that as long as a government can survive votes of confidence, it could theoretically have any number of MP's as we are seeing.

Currently Boris is 43 short of an overall majority (excluding the DUP confidence and supply), and Corbyn could bring down the government with a confidence motion tomorrow if he wanted. The problem for the other parties, is they fear what will happen at the ballot box (enter the Nigel Farage effect, Corbyn unsure of a majority himself etc.) so they won't call for one.

If a GE tomorrow returned a result where Labour became the largest party, but shy of an overall majority, Boris could theoretically remain in Downing Street.

This happened briefly after the 2010 election where Gordon Brown attempted to negotiate a deal with the Lib Dems, thus not resigning, until the Lib Dems announced a pact with the Tories, thus forcing Brown up to the Palace to see the Queen.

The problem that Labour has is that some of its traditional turf has been taken over by other parties. If you look at electoral maps of Tony Blair's landslide majorities in 1997, 2001 and 2005, you can see that it took large parts of Scotland and Wales to vote Labour in addition to a good swathe of Northern England and London. Fast forward to recent times and the SNP has wiped Labour out in Scotland. Labour has held on pretty well in London and Northern England but it's struggling elsewhere. Without Scotland voting Labour, I can't see how they can win by a good majority. As long as votes go towards the smaller parties I think we're doomed to hung parliaments and minority/slim majority governments. The problem that brings is that our political system is designed to work with big majorities in order to get things done. Otherwise chaos ensues like we're experiencing at the moment.

Don't know exactly when it was added (wasn't there last week) but looks like there's a Question Time tonight, from Westminister.

No Brexitcast it looks like (that was supposed to go in the This Week slot, wasn't it?)

Brexitcast starts next Thursday.

The Madonna mics aren’t doing very well blocking out the protesters. You have to wonder what really is the point of doing the Ten outside Westminster.

On a positive, I see they’ve finally worked out how to do the opening titles when on an OB without using the dodgy mistimed ones. A pan around the location replaces the pan around the newsroom, which is how they should always do it.

They shouldn’t in my opinion put the Live bug on though until after the titles have finished.

Live bugs are an anachronism from an age when it was a technological feat to achieve such a thing. Going by the amount of <cough> recent glitches with studio and gallery equipment perhaps they should leave it permanently on.

We don't have a two party system, and the conservatives are still the largest party in the chamber. Also, a party is allowed to rule with no majority, even from day 1 after an election, but it will struggle to get it's agenda voted through, and there were numerous options available to opposition parties to force them out of power.

Shotoku UK was formed by a group of ex-Radamec staff who left after Vinten mergedwith/Vitec took over Radamec. (Shotoku had been Radamec's re-seller in Japan)

As a result, in many UK facilities, Shotoku has become the defecto replacement for Radamec installations or expansions (and is compatible with legacy Radamec installations I believe). Operationally Shotoku have a control system that looks and feels identical to systems that Radamec used to market. I don't know if there was some technology transfer out of the merged company when the Radamec team left the compan. I see Shotoku market Free-d2, which looks to be the same camera tracking system that Rademec used to market (and which was developed by BBC R&D and is used by ITN, BBC Northern Ireland and others), though Shotoku could have licensed this separately from the BBC (though I don't see Radamec marketing it now)

I wasn't implying that Radamec were now called Shotoku, more that Radamec installations were largely replaced by Shotoku systems in the UK (and not Vinten). The BBC switched to Shotoku when they moved to NBH for their non-Furio remote cameras, and I believe Sky have too.

(Prior to the merger of Radamec and Vinten both companies had rival remote camera systems. Most BBC studios used Radamec, but some regional centres used Vinten)

It's a lot easier to do that when your OBs don't have any significant delay on them (unless you pre-record the shots required prior to your main presenter shot)...

When broadcasters talk about 'opposition MPs' they are adding together Labour, Liberal Democrats, SNP (Scottish Nationalists), Independents (of which there are now far more since the Tory party threw out 21 MPs for voting against the government), Green, Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationalists), the Northern Ireland parties (including the DUP, but not Sinn Fein who don't take their seats)

(SNP and Plaid are not right wing 'Nationalist' parties. They are typically centre-left social democrats who campaign for their respective countries to be independent nations, not part of the UK, but still within the EU.)

It's important to remember that the UK is not a two party system (however it may sometimes feel like it is as the two largest parties in England do feature heavily in reporting.)

You shouldn't confuse this use of the word 'opposition' with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party,which is the second largest party in the House of Commons and has the title of 'Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition' party. There is no love lost between Labour and Lib Dems on a lot of issues (particularly since the Lib Dems were in a coalition government with the Conservatives 2010-2015, during a period of post-financial crash austerity)

The Tories still have more seats than Labour, and there are no formal opposition coalitions in place that would allow for a new Prime Minister to be chosen by the House of Commons should Boris Johnson lose a vote of no confidence. (The Tories on their own didn't have a working majority post-2017, and didn't go into a coalition with other parties, but instead agreed a looser 'confidence and supply' arrangement with the Northern Irish, fiercely unionist, DUP party to get them to a narrow working majority. This working majority disappeared when Philip Lee defected to the Lib Dems, and has dropped further on matters European with the 21 Tory rebels being expelled, though on non-Brexit matters these rebels could reasonably be expected to vote with the government - but couldn't be 'whipped' to do so)

If there is a Vote of No Confidence in the Prime Minister , which the PM loses - which could happen if the Prime Minister does not have a simple majority of MPs to support them (i.e. not have 'The Confidence of the House') and all opposition MPs agree to vote against (rather than abstain) - then the House of Commons has 14 days to decide on a new Prime Minister. If that fails, a general election to re-elect all MPs will take place.

The problem the PM currently has is that due to the 2010 Fixed Term Parliament Act, it is no longer possible for the Prime Minister to call an election when they want (technically Boris Johnson could call a vote of no confidence in himself, and that has been suggested, but it is crazy...). They have to wait for the full 5 year term of their government to finish OR get 2/3 of the elected MPs (not just those who vote) to agree to vote to hold a new election (This is how Theresa May triggered the 2017 Election). The FTPA was designed to protect the Con/LibDem 2010 coalition to remove the threats that could undermine the coalition by threatening an election.

There is a suggestion that a simple bill could be past that would call for an election on a simple majaority and bypass the FTPA - but that would almost certainly require a fixed date to be enshrined in law to pass in the current climate. (The FTPA allows the PM to change the date after calling the election potentially)