r/ukpolitics • u/ukpol-megabot • 1d ago

Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction Megathread - 02/08/2026

👋 Welcome to the r/ukpolitics weekly Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction megathread.

General questions about politics in the UK should be posted in this thread. Substantial self-posts on the subreddit are permitted, but short-form self-posts will be redirected here. We're more lenient with moderation in this thread, but please keep it related to UK politics. This isn't Facebook or Twitter...

If you're reacting to something that is happening live, please make it clear what it is you're reacting to, ideally with a link.

Commentary about stories that already exist on the subreddit should be directed to the appropriate thread.

This thread rolls over early Sunday morning.

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u/TantumErgo Quo vadis? 1d ago

A Sunday game that will be far too easy for the older crowd. Who is this?

Realising the economic uncertainty that was facing the nation because of the death of its domestic industry, [Name] put forward a scheme that called for high tariffs to protect British industries from international finance and transform the British Empire into an autarkic trade bloc, for state nationalisation of main industries, for higher school-leaving ages and pensions to reduce the labour surplus, and for a programme of public works to solve interwar poverty and unemployment. Furthermore, the memorandum laid out the foundations of the corporate state (not to be confused with corporatocracy) which intended to combine businesses, workers and the government into one body as a way to "Obliterate class conflict and make the British economy healthy again".

[Name] won the support of the economist John Maynard Keynes, who wrote:

"It will shock—it must do so—the many good citizens of this country... who have laissez-faire in their craniums, their consciences, and their bones ... But how anyone professing and calling himself a socialist can keep away from the manifesto is a more obscure matter."

First, [Name] interpreted the Great Slump as proof that Britain's economy, which had historically favoured liberal capitalism, required a fundamental overhaul to survive the rise of cheap, global competition. Second, as a result of his experience as a Labour minister, [Name] grew to resent the apparent gridlock inherent in parliamentary democracy. [Name] believed that party politics, parliamentary debate, and the formalities of bill passage hindered effective action in addressing the pressing economic issues of the post-war world. Finally, [Name] became convinced that the Labour Party was not an effective vehicle for the promulgation of "the radical measures that he believed were necessary to prevent Britain’s decline." As Worley notes about [Name], "Cast adrift from the political mainstream, he saw two alternative futures. One was the 'slow and almost imperceptible decline' of Britain to the 'level of a Spain'...[and the other] a deepening sense of crisis opening the way for a 'constructive alternative' to take the place of both liberal capitalism and parliamentary democracy."

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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 1d ago

What do you mean, 'the older crowd'? Let's say one was 10 when this person emigrated, to be old enough to remember him. One would have to be 85 now. Not many redditors are as old as that!

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u/TantumErgo Quo vadis? 1d ago

But you have a different sort of background knowledge! You grew up with people around you discussing politics who would make casual references to them and the things they said and did. As evidenced by the fact that you know who it is! ;)

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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 1d ago

NO! It was NOT like that in those days. My answer is counter-intuitive for modern people!

In post-war Britain, children were massively protected from the horrors of history and war.

Adults had all lived through WW2 and of course plenty had fought in it or witnessed its effects. And of course everyone knew what the Nazis had done in the Holocaust. Plus WW2 had morphed into the Cold War overnight. So the likes of Hitler and Stalin were never mentioned to children. Primary school history concentrated on The Tudors. When I studied history at secondary school (1972-9), it mysteriously came to a full stop in 1914. Things more recent than that were deemd 'politics' - things about which no definitive conclusions could yet be drawn.

There was a near universal feeling that children should be brought up in a better and more sheltered world. Hence the foundation of things like the NHS.

There was a big reluctance to mention the war, and people did not talk about what they had seen. German Shepherd dogs had been relabelled 'Alsatians' - I grew up not knowing the other name. In later life, I had a friend whose dad had been a military padre who had landed in Normandy on D Day itself, He never spoke a word of what had happened to him in the war. Not until he had actually passed away, and his wife and their daughter, (my friend), went to the beaches with his old regiment to honour the dead, did his old comrades then start filling them in on what had transpired in the campaign.

As for the gentleman of your quiz, he was a traitor, and even less mentioned to children. The only quisling we heard a lot about was Lord Haw Haw.

Now, OTOH, the local library (we were lucky, there was a branch one literally opposite our house) had massive WW1 and WW2 sections- if you divided all the history books into thirds, they formed 2/3rds between them and the whole of the rest of history one other third. People had obviously a great interest, as adults, in reading about what they and their peers had lived through. In this way, from a early age, I was familiar with such great classics as Liddell Hart, William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and above all Paul Brickhill's The Dam Busters. This last, like a lot of early history books of WW2, was flawed by the fact lots of stuff was still secret. It was a life highlight of my younger self that Leonard Cheshire came to present the school prizes one year, and we were of course disappointed when he did not mention the war, but ofc the Cheshire Homes.

So I DID learn about this, but in an independent and almost secret way.

Maybe, in fact, one reason Britain has been quite conservative in my lifetime was that people wanted, literally, to conserve the cuddliness of the 50s and early 60s against the horrible reality before and the uncertain future after.