Is a snap reshuffle coming on Monday?

Mike. Brighton

There's only one reshuffle that will make a difference. The forthcoming reshuffle that replaces Brown.
As it is Brown will delude himself that he is "doing something" by irrelevantly shuffling deckchairs around on deck without noticing that the iceberg is getting mighty close

Polly's mum

It is all completely pointless anyway.
NOTHING Brown does now will make any difference. He should just go, before he does any more damage to our country.

Verity

I keep asking why HM doesn't dismiss the government headed by this mentally unstable individual, but no one ever answers. It's a genuine question. I am baffled that she has allowed this to happen.

Angie

The feeling round Westminster is that the place is virtually empty actually. I didn't even have to queue for my coffee just now. It's all up for Brown and Nulab and Cameron and co will be even worse. Poor us.

Bobby Steels

"Cameron and co will be even worse. Poor us."

Get back to the Cabinet, Labour troll. Nobody thinks Cameron will be anything other than a exceptional Prime Minister - and what's more, you know it.

Faceless Bureaucrat

Verity [3.50pm]

“I keep asking why HM doesn't dismiss the government headed by this mentally unstable individual, but no one ever answers. It's a genuine question. I am baffled that she has allowed this to happen.”

Far too much risk of Royal skeletons being ‘inexplicably’ released from their respective cupboards for HM to risk such a provocative move.

Public relations can be such a fickle thing…

Pingu

Cameron will inherit a bad economic situation coupled with the unforgivable weak and bungling decisions of the Brown administration.

Lance Diatessaron

Promote Caroline Flint. Let's show those Americans how to do bossy sex-pot properly.

cufleyburgers

But how will an incoming Cameron administration untangle us from our EU commitments?

It's going to be a real mess, but I view it as essential that GB not be sucked into the EU superstate.

The economy? obviously reforms and change will be needed but the Tories have picked up the pieces after Labour before and it is relatively obvious what is required. Actually achieving it now that so much sovereignty resides in Brussels might be harder.

Which is why a political escape route is required from that suffocating garlic stinking straitjacket.

Claire

Verity, perhaps because it would be an utterly indefensible move for HM to release this democratically elected government?!

unseen

Verity, because the Monarch doesn't have the power to dismiss a government that has supply and confidence from the Crown in Parliament?

Nicholas

Hmm, must be quiet in Westminster for all these politicised civil service wimmin to be trolling at the Coffee House.

Democratically elected government, Claire? Don't make I laugh.

mitch

They could play musical chairs around the cabinet table for all the good it will do! people only listen to gordon now so they can have a good laugh his grip on reality is on a par with comical ali from Iraq or Hitler in his bunker commanding non existent armies.

David Watkins

Cufleyburgers - Wake up. Of course we ought to cut free of the EU, and of course we never will. That would involve the political classes admitting that they have been totally wrong for the last forty years, and that the lowly masses have generally been right. And they'd rather see the UK slip irretrievably down the tubes.

When will people like you realise that, under either party, we are ruled by people who no longer give a damn for this country, if they ever did.

Verity

If HM can't dismiss Parliament - and I believe she actually can - then there is absolutely no point in continuing with a monarch.

We would be better off under the American system, anyway. And if we feel we have to cling on to a big entity, let it be our cousins in America rather than the Europeans with their tyrannical Napoleonic Code and their (as always) uber-ambitions.

The day is coming when there's going to have be a choice: go the full monty with the hated EUSSR and sign ourselves into serfdom and destroy our beloved country, or apply to become a state of the US, keeping our history and our traditions.

Puncheon

Verity - You've put your finger on a real weakness in the UK constitution. The Monarch as Head of State can only act on the advice of her Prime Minister. The Prime Minister can only be removed if he/she loses the confidence of the House of Commons. Thus, no matter how mad, incompetent or worse the PM is as long as he/she can win a vote of confidence in the HoC he/she cannot be removed by the monarch. Its a troughers charter, really.

Anglica

Sorry, Verity. I can't agree that we'd be better off under the American system: it's really not that great and we're not Americans. We are who we are, and whatever the outsiders do to us, we remain who we are. They just render us dysfunctional - and if we keep on letting them, that's our own stupid fault. Furthermore, ours is a constitutional monarchy: not an absolute one; and it is also a democracy. So I would argue that, by doing nothing, HM puts her trust in the People to make their wishes known, and to do the right thing for the country.
If everybody sits tamely at home and pretends nothing's wrong - then she's probably very wise to do the same thing!

I always agree with you about the horrors of the euSSR. But I don't see why we must polarize the choice - a talent for occupying 'middle ground' has long been one of our characteristics.

So I say: Here's to the Queen. God Bless Her. And, furthermore, I'm for England, and St. George; Scotland and St. Andrew; and Wales and St. David!!!! [Even N. Ireland and St. Patrick, if they like...]

cuffleyburgers

David Watkins

That's cuffleyburgers with two fs.

Otherwise I'm afraid you're right, and my post was more a rhetorical question and wail of lament...

However, in the long run the EU cannot but fall to pieces. History has demonstrated that repeatedly. Unfortunately the collapse of empires is generally accompanied by large amounts of bloodshed; and the more hubristic the empire the more the blood that is shed. Which bodes ill for Europe. But it is unlikely to be in my time.

cuffleyburgers

Verity - I think you too have missed the point.

We cannot escape the EU now. Repeated betrayals by our government over 40 years since Grocer Heath first stood on his hind legs and lied through his teeth, and culminating in bottler Brown's disgraceful surrender have ensured that the UK as an independent country with any ability to act on the world stage no longer exists.

Where we do act, it is effectively in derogation of powers that have already been ceded to Brussels.

Unilateral action by the British government to withdraw and seek alternatives would undoubtedly be met by economic and diplomatic violence which would set us back 20 years, and it is unlikely any politician would have the guts to do that.

The only hope might have been a sustained campaign to refuse to ratify Lisbon which we might, with more diplomatic skill and cunning than have been demonstrated by British delegates since the 60's, manage to parlay into some sort of extravagant opt out, but even that would never take the form of having the fabled EFTA-like relationship with Europe.

Nope, we have been well and truly shafted. And it will take decades and a lot of grief to get out of it.

I would recommend Booker & North "The Great Decption" to you. It's all there, documented in harrowing detail.

I wish the Sunday Times would serialise that book. It is a story that deserves a wider audience.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Verity

There is a point in continuing with a Monarch, in that she provides a vast amount of entertainment, adding considerable gaiety to our drab dull lives. That is surely the whole point of a modern monarchy?

As to the American System. Maybe the System's OK, but if the product of the System is what has been thrown into Presidential Office for the past couple of decades I'd rather take my chances with Atilla the Hun.

anne allan

Can anybody answer this question:
if we ever get a politician with the guts to kick the EUSSR into touch, what could it actually do?
Invade us? Ours is the only army in this ghastly confederation that actually fights.