Ellie Abraham
Oct 19, 2022
BBC
With the Conservative government seemingly in a never-ending hellish cycle of crises, the online encyclopedia now has two separate entries for “UK government crisis” to differentiate the two in 2022.
Earlier this year it was the turn of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson to put the UK through the first of 2022’s government crises when he dragged out his resignation until the government had almost completely collapsed.
In the space of 24 hours, from 5 to 6 July, 36 MPs resigned from their post in a show of discontent at Johnson’s leadership.
His successor Liz Truss hasn’t fared much better as she and the former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng contributed to the collapse of the value of the pound against the dollar and caused economic chaos with their mini-budget tax cuts.
Helpfully, a Wikipedia volunteer editor named P.Wilkinson made sure users avoid confusion between the two scandals by adding a note to the top of the page titled '2022 United Kingdom government crisis'.
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The clarification read: “This article is about the mass resignation of ministers from the Johnson government in July 2022.
“For the Truss government crisis resulting from the September 2022 mini-budget, see September 2022 United Kingdom mini-budget.”
\u201c\u20182022 UK Government crisis\u2019 now needs disambiguating on Wikipedia.\u201d— Andrew Steele (@Andrew Steele) 1666018387
In response to the hilariously depressing development, one person simply repeated the Conservative’s slogan of, “Strong and stable”.
\u201cStrong and stable.\u201d— Iain Mulady \ud83e\udda9 (@Iain Mulady \ud83e\udda9) 1666092413
One hopeful Twitter user said: “Looks like '2022 Conservative Party leadership election (UK)' might be on the way to joining it.”
\u201cLooks like '2022 Conservative Party leadership election (UK)' might be on the way to joining it.\u201d— Euan Yours (@Euan Yours) 1666172169
They say a week is a long time in politics, never mind a whole chaotic year.
It is a simple and fundamental principle that the government derives its democratic legitimacy from the people. The future of the country must not be decided by plotting and U-turns at Westminster; it must be decided by the people in a general election. And for this reason The Independent is calling for an election to be held. Have your say and sign our election petition by clicking here.
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