British Politics Guide
Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2018 5:18 pm
Lots has been going on.* Most of it depressing/hilarious and of little importance. But there's a few concepts here that might be worth going over for outsiders and newcomers....
The big thing recently was the Prime Minister finally completing Brexit. After a year and a half, she devised a cunning plan to get the best possible Brexit. In brief, the key points of this plan are:
1. Keep everything the same as it is, but change the names so that stupid people think we've had Brexit. So instead of being in a 'customs union' (the EU) or a 'customs partnership' (a plan considered but rejected), we're going to be in a "combined customs territory". We won't have EU regulations anymore - we'll have a "common rulebook" based upon complete "continued harmonisation" with EU regulations. Parliament will have the absolute right to diverge from EU laws, on the proviso that it promises to never, ever do so. We will no longer have "free movement of people" - we'll have a comprehensive "mobility framework". We won't be subject to the jurisdiction of the ECJ - we'll just have a 'joint institutional framework' in which certain cases are referred to the ECJ to be decided.
2. While having a combined customs territory with the EU, simultaneously have unencumbered free trade with the reast of the world. This will rely on magic: good intended for trade with the EU will follow EU rules, while goods intended for the UK can follow the new trade agreements. The UK, not the EU, will exact customs and excise, on the basis of travelling to the future to find out where the goods are consumed, and will then hand over the appropriate amount of money to the EU, who will agree not to check whether it's the right amount or not.
3. We'll have a free trade zone with the EU for manufactured goods, because we want to export those. But the financial sector will have immunity from EU rules, because that'll make it more competitive internationally, letting us become a tax haven.
So, after a year and a half, it was decided that this would be our negotiating position for the remaining six months of negotiations - a negotiating position everyone in the UK could agree to. To enforce this, the Prime Minister had another cunning plan: calling all her ministers to Chequers, her house in the country (think: Camp David, but mediaeval), and demanded that they all agree to her plan.
Why was this cunning? Well, she made clear that anyone who didn't agree needed to resign. And anyone who resigned would be a minister. And anyone who wasn't a minister would not have access to their ministerial phone, or their ministerial car.
Why? Because Chequers is in the middle of nowhere (by English standards), and this would mean that any minister who disagreed with the prime minister would be kicked out of the door and forced to walk a couple of miles to the nearest train station. The PM even went to the effort of removing information about local cabs from the building. This brilliant wheeze meant that the entire Cabinet agreed unanimously to support th new Chequers Plan to the hilt.
That was on a Friday. On the Saturday, people got back to safety and, because 21st century Tories don't have things like 'honour' or 'their word', five of them promptly resigned, including the Brexit Secretary and the Foreign Secretary.
Why did everyone resign?
There's a concept we have called CCR - collective cabinet responsibility. Basically, if your cabinet agrees to it, then you agreed to it. You can't later claim not to have agreed to it. So if you really don't agree to it, you have to resign from cabinet. This no longer really works - because modern politicians don't actually agree to, or disagree with, anything in particular, they just say what'll look good on the news that evening. But they do at least sometimes want to look like still works. So, on issues like Brexit, people eventually have to resign. Besides, if they resign, they can criticise the government - it's very hard to get rid of an MP, but the PM can get rid of a minister instantly (there's no equivalent to the US process of senate consent).
David Davies, the Brexit Secretary, resigned for the fairly sensible reason that he was in charge of Brexit, and he didn't feel he could be in charge of implementing a policy in negotiations that he personally thought was crap. Also, because it's kind of shit to be the Brexit Secretary and have all decisions on Brexit made by the PM's advisors without consulting you.
Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, resigned because he still, somehow, wants to be Prime Minister, and he hoped that resigning would a) destroy the government and b) make him look principled. Neither has happened.
A little more detail: Johnson was meant, as foreign secretary, to chair a meeting of international leaders, including prime ministers and foreign secretaries (including the FS of Germany!). People realised he'd resigned when he simply... didn't turn up. Without warning, and without sending someone else instead. All the world leaders just milled around not knowing what was going on. Downing Street realised what was going on, and announced that he had resigned before he had the chance to announce it himself. They sent the mover's vans in and removed all his stuff from the Foreign Office, but couldn't actually remove him, so there was a standoff for much of the day as he stayed inside, having furiously fought to retain some paper and a pen (ok, I'm guessing probably a laptop?) so he could write a long, long, looong, Churchillian resignation letter, which instead of sending to the PM he sent to the press. And then, days later, he tried to grab the limelight again by making another long, Churchillian resignation speech in Parliament.
It was thought for a while that this would mean that Michael Gove would be Foreign Secretary. For those who don't remember, he's Johnson's friend, who was Johnson's campaign manager in his campaign to be tory Leader - or he was his campaign manager until the morning of the day Johnson was going to announce his candidacy, at which point he instead declared his OWN candidacy, only to lose the election, and then get sacked from cabinet. Yes, he's back, through shear lack of alternatives. But in the end the job went to Jeremy 'it's hard to remember that his surname doesn't actually begin with C because that's what everyone calls him' Hunt, who is perhaps the most generally hated man in parliament among the general populace (he's been intentionally destroying the NHS for years - the last two PMs have tried to sack him, but he's the oiliest man in government and always got reprieved because there weren't enough loyal MPs to fill the cabinet). So far no foreign leaders have punched him in the face, but it's surely only a matter of time.
Anyway, it was an anxious couple of days, as it seemed for a moment as though the Prime Minister were sure to fall. The news about Johnson leaked out while the Prime Minister was actually answering questions in Parliament - though publication of the details of her plan to the public was suddenly and 'unrelatedly' postponed after the resignations - and went from there immediately to face the 1922.
As regular readers will know, the 1922 Committee represents the tory parliamentary party - it's Theresa May's boss, in other words. When the Chairman of the '22 receives personal letters from a set proportion of tory mps - currently the threshold is 48 - he has to call a vote of no confidence in her (this is separate from the formal VONC in parliament). If she loses that, there's a leadership election. It was rumoured that the letters had been sent in and for a moment there it seemed like we wouldn't know who was going to be greeting Trump when he visited. But in the end, it was a false alarm. It's believed the letter-tally is close to 48, but the precise number is secret.
We then had a series of votes in parliament, with the government attacked by both hard and soft flanks (of its own party, naturally, since Labour are unable to do anything at all). the government lost some votes, but won others. It doesn't particularly matter - because parliament is sovereign, a vote today can be overruled by a vote tomorrow, and we'll have many more votes on brexit before it happens. To summarise: the government made some concessions, but then said it hadn't, and then in some cases said it hadn't said it hadn't, and basically it has if you want it to have done but otherwise it hasn't, and there's nothing in writing in the law that tells it it has to do any specific thing right now.
Beside, all of this is pretty pointless because the EU took one look at the chequers agreement and laughed in our faces. "No deal" (the Tory promised land wherein all non-EU countries in the world instantly know their place and return to an imperial-era trade relationship with us) approaches ever faster...
--------------------------------------
But in the fuss about the voting, two other interesting things happened.
One is that the government cheated. How? Well, to recap, MPs (if a voice vote isn't decisive) vote by division: those who want to vote 'aye' walk into one lobby (a small room at the entrance to the House - originally, as in most buildings, there was only one lobby, and the contest was between those in the chamber and those in the lobby, but when parliament was rebuilt in the 19th century they added a second lobby to support the cause of progressives (previously, anyone who didn't care enough to stand up was voted as 'nay', generally the side opposing new legislation)) and those who want to vote 'nay' walk into another. This makes voting a very physical process: historically, party leaders would physically push MPs into the right lobby, or even resort, it's said, to whipping them. These days the Whip is symbolic, but the whips will stand at the doors of the lobby and praise those who vote correctly, and harangue those headed for the wrong door. Meanwhile, non-MPs would traditionally wait in and around the lobby, enticing MPs to vote the way they wanted - in the 1770s it was discovered that at least one of these lobbyists was actually getting his vote counted by surreptitiously hanging around in the lobby as the MPs were being counted, and it became tradition to make sure the lobbies were empty and locked to outsiders before the vote occured. Meanwhile, a division bell is sounded throughout Parliament, and in a selection of popular nearby hotels, pubs and restaurants, to make sure everyone knows there's a vote going on.
But the problem with this form of physical voting is that... well, it's very physical. It's hard to fit into the lobbies, and a degree of fitness is required. Therefore, two traditions have developed.
One is nodding through. This is a rule saying that a Whip can vote for one of their MPs if that MP is both alive, and present in Parliament - that is, they don't actually have to make it to the division lobby if they're not fit enough. [This has sometimes caused dispute: an unconscious Labour MP voted in the 1980s while strapped to a hospital trolley; the Tory Whip suspected he was actually dead, but the Labour Whip demonstrated that there was a heartbeat by turning on the heart monitor...]. Nodding through is in the news because last month a Labour MP had to vote in the division lobby, pushed in a wheelchair, in a hospital gown, under the influence of a morphine drip, because the Tories refused to allow her to be nodded through.
The other is pairing, which exists so that people don't need to be nodded through. The principle here is that if one Whip is missing a member for an important reason, the opposing Whip will instruct one of their own members not to vote. The principle is particularly important in the UK as a parliamentary democracy, because otherwise the busy schedules of ministers, who are also MPs, would make it very hard for the government to win votes - or else all government business would have to be conducted within running distance of the division lobby, which would make international diplomacy difficult. And pairing is in the news because in one of the brexit votes a Lib Dem, Jo Swinson, who is heavily pregnant, was paired with a Tory, so that she didn't have to come to vote... and the Tory voted anyway.
[Swinson was actually already past her due date, but forced to vote in person in the same vote where Labour had their MP in her wheelchair. In the SAME vote, another Labour MP voted while eight months pregnant - and had to be taken away in a wheelchair. Some have suggested that the collapse of pairing and of nodding through is systematically unfair - given that Tories are usually not women, so don't have to worry about issues like pregnancy. But then on the other hand Tories tend to be very old, so maybe it balances out...]
It seems a minor thing, but pairing is essential to the business of parliament. Most famously, pairing collapsed in the Callaghan government in the 1970s - originally so that the government could win a narrow vote (as here) (resulting in an opposition MP picking up the Mace and attempting to attack the government benches). But it caused chaos, as it meant the balance of power depended on who had the fewest ill or absent MPs. In one case, the UK emissary to China reached China, walked down the aeroplane steps... and then walked back up them again and flew back to the UK because she was needed for an urgent vote. In the end, pairing directly destroyed Callaghan's government: in the final no-confidence vote, the Tories refused to pair. That left Labour anxiously debating whether to call in the vote of Sir Alfred Broughton - Broughton was terminally ill, recovering from his latest heart attack, his ill health having been wrecked to breaking point by repeatedly having been brought from his hospital bed to save the government. But on this occasion, the Prime Minister intervened, reasoning that it seemed wrong to summon broughton when his doctors were warning he would likely die in the ambulance en route. Thus, the government fell. Broughton died five days later.
[In fact, it was one of the most honourable governmental collapses, as it could have been saved in another way. The Tory Whip had personally promised to restore pairing - but for this vote, his party rebelled against him, desperate to take down Callaghan, and he couldn't find any MPs willing to abstain. Nor would his leader, Thatcher, support him. In order to vindicate his personal honour, he offered the Labour Whip to abstain himself. The Labour Whip, however, realised that if the Tory Whip, against the will of his party leader, his party, and by that point the people of the country, kept a Labour government in power by abstaining, no matter how honourably, his career would instantly be over. The Labour Whip didn't believe his enemy deserved to have his career ended for the sake of honour, particularly when he knew Callaghan was doomed sooner or later anyway, so personally asked the Tory Whip not to pair up with Broughton. As a result, the government fell due a Prime Minister's mercy, and a gentleman's agreement. Two things rarely seen in modern politics]
Anyway, as in 1976, and again in 1996, this time the government has promised that the "mistake" was a one-off and won't be repeated. Perhaps it won't be. But with a minority government living from day to day, the temptation must surely be great. History suggests the short-term rewards aren't worth it...
If you want to see pairing in action, by the way, there's quite a good play about pairing in the Callaghan government called This House. it's not 100% accurate, but it's more true than not. (it's a dramatisation, rather than a fiction).
Oh, and the other thing: Lib Dem leader Vince Cable missed a vote because.... he was in secret talks. He has since clarified that these were NOT secret talks to form a new Progressive Centre party to unite the anti-Brexit vote. But it is important to co-ordinate efforts, apparently. A recent poll suggests such a party would immediately have the votes of 30% of the public. Of course, more than 30% of the public said they'd vote Lib Dem in 2010, so fuck the public.
*N.B. I'm now paralyzed, because both "lots has" and and "lots have" now seem ungrammatical to me...
The big thing recently was the Prime Minister finally completing Brexit. After a year and a half, she devised a cunning plan to get the best possible Brexit. In brief, the key points of this plan are:
1. Keep everything the same as it is, but change the names so that stupid people think we've had Brexit. So instead of being in a 'customs union' (the EU) or a 'customs partnership' (a plan considered but rejected), we're going to be in a "combined customs territory". We won't have EU regulations anymore - we'll have a "common rulebook" based upon complete "continued harmonisation" with EU regulations. Parliament will have the absolute right to diverge from EU laws, on the proviso that it promises to never, ever do so. We will no longer have "free movement of people" - we'll have a comprehensive "mobility framework". We won't be subject to the jurisdiction of the ECJ - we'll just have a 'joint institutional framework' in which certain cases are referred to the ECJ to be decided.
2. While having a combined customs territory with the EU, simultaneously have unencumbered free trade with the reast of the world. This will rely on magic: good intended for trade with the EU will follow EU rules, while goods intended for the UK can follow the new trade agreements. The UK, not the EU, will exact customs and excise, on the basis of travelling to the future to find out where the goods are consumed, and will then hand over the appropriate amount of money to the EU, who will agree not to check whether it's the right amount or not.
3. We'll have a free trade zone with the EU for manufactured goods, because we want to export those. But the financial sector will have immunity from EU rules, because that'll make it more competitive internationally, letting us become a tax haven.
So, after a year and a half, it was decided that this would be our negotiating position for the remaining six months of negotiations - a negotiating position everyone in the UK could agree to. To enforce this, the Prime Minister had another cunning plan: calling all her ministers to Chequers, her house in the country (think: Camp David, but mediaeval), and demanded that they all agree to her plan.
Why was this cunning? Well, she made clear that anyone who didn't agree needed to resign. And anyone who resigned would be a minister. And anyone who wasn't a minister would not have access to their ministerial phone, or their ministerial car.
Why? Because Chequers is in the middle of nowhere (by English standards), and this would mean that any minister who disagreed with the prime minister would be kicked out of the door and forced to walk a couple of miles to the nearest train station. The PM even went to the effort of removing information about local cabs from the building. This brilliant wheeze meant that the entire Cabinet agreed unanimously to support th new Chequers Plan to the hilt.
That was on a Friday. On the Saturday, people got back to safety and, because 21st century Tories don't have things like 'honour' or 'their word', five of them promptly resigned, including the Brexit Secretary and the Foreign Secretary.
Why did everyone resign?
There's a concept we have called CCR - collective cabinet responsibility. Basically, if your cabinet agrees to it, then you agreed to it. You can't later claim not to have agreed to it. So if you really don't agree to it, you have to resign from cabinet. This no longer really works - because modern politicians don't actually agree to, or disagree with, anything in particular, they just say what'll look good on the news that evening. But they do at least sometimes want to look like still works. So, on issues like Brexit, people eventually have to resign. Besides, if they resign, they can criticise the government - it's very hard to get rid of an MP, but the PM can get rid of a minister instantly (there's no equivalent to the US process of senate consent).
David Davies, the Brexit Secretary, resigned for the fairly sensible reason that he was in charge of Brexit, and he didn't feel he could be in charge of implementing a policy in negotiations that he personally thought was crap. Also, because it's kind of shit to be the Brexit Secretary and have all decisions on Brexit made by the PM's advisors without consulting you.
Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, resigned because he still, somehow, wants to be Prime Minister, and he hoped that resigning would a) destroy the government and b) make him look principled. Neither has happened.
A little more detail: Johnson was meant, as foreign secretary, to chair a meeting of international leaders, including prime ministers and foreign secretaries (including the FS of Germany!). People realised he'd resigned when he simply... didn't turn up. Without warning, and without sending someone else instead. All the world leaders just milled around not knowing what was going on. Downing Street realised what was going on, and announced that he had resigned before he had the chance to announce it himself. They sent the mover's vans in and removed all his stuff from the Foreign Office, but couldn't actually remove him, so there was a standoff for much of the day as he stayed inside, having furiously fought to retain some paper and a pen (ok, I'm guessing probably a laptop?) so he could write a long, long, looong, Churchillian resignation letter, which instead of sending to the PM he sent to the press. And then, days later, he tried to grab the limelight again by making another long, Churchillian resignation speech in Parliament.
It was thought for a while that this would mean that Michael Gove would be Foreign Secretary. For those who don't remember, he's Johnson's friend, who was Johnson's campaign manager in his campaign to be tory Leader - or he was his campaign manager until the morning of the day Johnson was going to announce his candidacy, at which point he instead declared his OWN candidacy, only to lose the election, and then get sacked from cabinet. Yes, he's back, through shear lack of alternatives. But in the end the job went to Jeremy 'it's hard to remember that his surname doesn't actually begin with C because that's what everyone calls him' Hunt, who is perhaps the most generally hated man in parliament among the general populace (he's been intentionally destroying the NHS for years - the last two PMs have tried to sack him, but he's the oiliest man in government and always got reprieved because there weren't enough loyal MPs to fill the cabinet). So far no foreign leaders have punched him in the face, but it's surely only a matter of time.
Anyway, it was an anxious couple of days, as it seemed for a moment as though the Prime Minister were sure to fall. The news about Johnson leaked out while the Prime Minister was actually answering questions in Parliament - though publication of the details of her plan to the public was suddenly and 'unrelatedly' postponed after the resignations - and went from there immediately to face the 1922.
As regular readers will know, the 1922 Committee represents the tory parliamentary party - it's Theresa May's boss, in other words. When the Chairman of the '22 receives personal letters from a set proportion of tory mps - currently the threshold is 48 - he has to call a vote of no confidence in her (this is separate from the formal VONC in parliament). If she loses that, there's a leadership election. It was rumoured that the letters had been sent in and for a moment there it seemed like we wouldn't know who was going to be greeting Trump when he visited. But in the end, it was a false alarm. It's believed the letter-tally is close to 48, but the precise number is secret.
We then had a series of votes in parliament, with the government attacked by both hard and soft flanks (of its own party, naturally, since Labour are unable to do anything at all). the government lost some votes, but won others. It doesn't particularly matter - because parliament is sovereign, a vote today can be overruled by a vote tomorrow, and we'll have many more votes on brexit before it happens. To summarise: the government made some concessions, but then said it hadn't, and then in some cases said it hadn't said it hadn't, and basically it has if you want it to have done but otherwise it hasn't, and there's nothing in writing in the law that tells it it has to do any specific thing right now.
Beside, all of this is pretty pointless because the EU took one look at the chequers agreement and laughed in our faces. "No deal" (the Tory promised land wherein all non-EU countries in the world instantly know their place and return to an imperial-era trade relationship with us) approaches ever faster...
--------------------------------------
But in the fuss about the voting, two other interesting things happened.
One is that the government cheated. How? Well, to recap, MPs (if a voice vote isn't decisive) vote by division: those who want to vote 'aye' walk into one lobby (a small room at the entrance to the House - originally, as in most buildings, there was only one lobby, and the contest was between those in the chamber and those in the lobby, but when parliament was rebuilt in the 19th century they added a second lobby to support the cause of progressives (previously, anyone who didn't care enough to stand up was voted as 'nay', generally the side opposing new legislation)) and those who want to vote 'nay' walk into another. This makes voting a very physical process: historically, party leaders would physically push MPs into the right lobby, or even resort, it's said, to whipping them. These days the Whip is symbolic, but the whips will stand at the doors of the lobby and praise those who vote correctly, and harangue those headed for the wrong door. Meanwhile, non-MPs would traditionally wait in and around the lobby, enticing MPs to vote the way they wanted - in the 1770s it was discovered that at least one of these lobbyists was actually getting his vote counted by surreptitiously hanging around in the lobby as the MPs were being counted, and it became tradition to make sure the lobbies were empty and locked to outsiders before the vote occured. Meanwhile, a division bell is sounded throughout Parliament, and in a selection of popular nearby hotels, pubs and restaurants, to make sure everyone knows there's a vote going on.
But the problem with this form of physical voting is that... well, it's very physical. It's hard to fit into the lobbies, and a degree of fitness is required. Therefore, two traditions have developed.
One is nodding through. This is a rule saying that a Whip can vote for one of their MPs if that MP is both alive, and present in Parliament - that is, they don't actually have to make it to the division lobby if they're not fit enough. [This has sometimes caused dispute: an unconscious Labour MP voted in the 1980s while strapped to a hospital trolley; the Tory Whip suspected he was actually dead, but the Labour Whip demonstrated that there was a heartbeat by turning on the heart monitor...]. Nodding through is in the news because last month a Labour MP had to vote in the division lobby, pushed in a wheelchair, in a hospital gown, under the influence of a morphine drip, because the Tories refused to allow her to be nodded through.
The other is pairing, which exists so that people don't need to be nodded through. The principle here is that if one Whip is missing a member for an important reason, the opposing Whip will instruct one of their own members not to vote. The principle is particularly important in the UK as a parliamentary democracy, because otherwise the busy schedules of ministers, who are also MPs, would make it very hard for the government to win votes - or else all government business would have to be conducted within running distance of the division lobby, which would make international diplomacy difficult. And pairing is in the news because in one of the brexit votes a Lib Dem, Jo Swinson, who is heavily pregnant, was paired with a Tory, so that she didn't have to come to vote... and the Tory voted anyway.
[Swinson was actually already past her due date, but forced to vote in person in the same vote where Labour had their MP in her wheelchair. In the SAME vote, another Labour MP voted while eight months pregnant - and had to be taken away in a wheelchair. Some have suggested that the collapse of pairing and of nodding through is systematically unfair - given that Tories are usually not women, so don't have to worry about issues like pregnancy. But then on the other hand Tories tend to be very old, so maybe it balances out...]
It seems a minor thing, but pairing is essential to the business of parliament. Most famously, pairing collapsed in the Callaghan government in the 1970s - originally so that the government could win a narrow vote (as here) (resulting in an opposition MP picking up the Mace and attempting to attack the government benches). But it caused chaos, as it meant the balance of power depended on who had the fewest ill or absent MPs. In one case, the UK emissary to China reached China, walked down the aeroplane steps... and then walked back up them again and flew back to the UK because she was needed for an urgent vote. In the end, pairing directly destroyed Callaghan's government: in the final no-confidence vote, the Tories refused to pair. That left Labour anxiously debating whether to call in the vote of Sir Alfred Broughton - Broughton was terminally ill, recovering from his latest heart attack, his ill health having been wrecked to breaking point by repeatedly having been brought from his hospital bed to save the government. But on this occasion, the Prime Minister intervened, reasoning that it seemed wrong to summon broughton when his doctors were warning he would likely die in the ambulance en route. Thus, the government fell. Broughton died five days later.
[In fact, it was one of the most honourable governmental collapses, as it could have been saved in another way. The Tory Whip had personally promised to restore pairing - but for this vote, his party rebelled against him, desperate to take down Callaghan, and he couldn't find any MPs willing to abstain. Nor would his leader, Thatcher, support him. In order to vindicate his personal honour, he offered the Labour Whip to abstain himself. The Labour Whip, however, realised that if the Tory Whip, against the will of his party leader, his party, and by that point the people of the country, kept a Labour government in power by abstaining, no matter how honourably, his career would instantly be over. The Labour Whip didn't believe his enemy deserved to have his career ended for the sake of honour, particularly when he knew Callaghan was doomed sooner or later anyway, so personally asked the Tory Whip not to pair up with Broughton. As a result, the government fell due a Prime Minister's mercy, and a gentleman's agreement. Two things rarely seen in modern politics]
Anyway, as in 1976, and again in 1996, this time the government has promised that the "mistake" was a one-off and won't be repeated. Perhaps it won't be. But with a minority government living from day to day, the temptation must surely be great. History suggests the short-term rewards aren't worth it...
If you want to see pairing in action, by the way, there's quite a good play about pairing in the Callaghan government called This House. it's not 100% accurate, but it's more true than not. (it's a dramatisation, rather than a fiction).
Oh, and the other thing: Lib Dem leader Vince Cable missed a vote because.... he was in secret talks. He has since clarified that these were NOT secret talks to form a new Progressive Centre party to unite the anti-Brexit vote. But it is important to co-ordinate efforts, apparently. A recent poll suggests such a party would immediately have the votes of 30% of the public. Of course, more than 30% of the public said they'd vote Lib Dem in 2010, so fuck the public.
*N.B. I'm now paralyzed, because both "lots has" and and "lots have" now seem ungrammatical to me...