Stephen's view on 7 prime ministers

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🧠 Vocabulary challenge​
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Which of these is the meaning of the word 'frivolous'?

(A) extremely angry or full of rage

(B) extremely good, impressive, or attractive

(C) very thorough, careful, or strict

(D) lacking any serious purpose, value, or importance

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(answer at bottom of email)

3 big stories…

1. Nepal avalanche

In Nepal an avalanche of ice, water, mud and rock caused hundreds of deaths and left over a thousand more people missing. The collapse of a glacier caused a surge of water and other material down a river, sweeping over and through villages, near the border with China, where there are also deaths and missing people reported. More information in today's episode.​

2. US - Canada trade war

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended trade talks with the US, saying that the US "asked too much, and offered too little". Instead, Canada has imposed tariffs on a wide range of US imports, with Carney saying that tariffs will match US tariffs "dollar for dollar".

3. $18 billion settlement

During a case in which it was sued by 29 US states, Meta has agreed to an $18 billion settlement without acknowledging guilt. The states accused Meta of knowingly causing harm to children and designing Instagram and Facebook to be addictive. $18 billion is just over 1% of the estimated value of Meta - one of the biggest companies in the world.

… and one you might have missed.

Various famous people passed away this week. Dolly Parton, US country music legend, was 80. Tim Curry, US actor known for many leading roles such as in the Rocky Horror Show, was also 80. Ratko Mladic, Bosnian-Serb military leader and convicted war criminal, died in prison in the Netherlands, aged 84. Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, known for large sculptures, massive installations, and polka dots, was 97.

🔍 Find the synonym​
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Somewhere in the "3 big stories... and one you might have missed" sections above, find a synonym for the word "consciously".

Statistic of the week

Only four countries meet the United Nations target of 0.7% of national income being spent on overseas development aid. Norway and Luxembourg are top, spending over 1% of national income on overseas development aid, followed by Sweden and Denmark. Three years ago, Germany also met the target, but Germany has slipped to spending 0.6% since then.

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Quote of the week:

— Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, speaking in Ukraine.

🌍 World news question​
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Which Latin American country registered its first same-sex civil marriage recently, after a court allowed two women to have a civil marriage rather than a civil union?

Stephen’s view

I'm planning on releasing an Ask Me Anything episode tomorrow or Sunday, depending on whether I have time to record it! One of the questions I was asked was about how the UK has had 7 prime ministers over the last ten years, and whether this is because of a "lack of ideas". The following answer is the first thing that came into my head...

I partially agree with the rapid change of prime ministers being caused by a lack of ideas, but I think there have been other major factors as well. I’ll go through the 7 prime ministers in order and say why I think each of them didn’t last long.

Firstly, (1) David Cameron resigned because of Brexit – because he campaigned against it. Secondly, (2) Theresa May had an impossible task – to try to navigate how to implement the Brexit decision while having a parliament in which most MPs were against Brexit. She tried to make compromises, but she couldn’t even get her own Conservative MPs to agree, so after three years, she was replaced with someone who supported Brexit – (3) Boris Johnson. Johnson was divisive but relatively popular with the public. However, he was eventually brought down by a series of scandals within his government.

Then, Conservative Party members chose Liz Truss. To me, this shows how ineffective internal elections are – as Liz Truss was already unpopular among the public when she became prime minister. But, among members of the Conservative Party, she was popular enough to beat Rishi Sunak in the Conservative leadership election. I think that the downfall of Liz Truss is quite unique in that it shows how she should never have been able to become prime minister – her economic decisions scared the financial markets and damaged the economy so quickly that she had to resign after just 44 days in office.

(5) Sunak then took Truss’s place as leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister. However, by this time, the public was already tired of the Conservatives. I think if he had been leader at a different time, then Sunak may have been popular, as he was while he was Boris Johnson’s Chancellor (finance minister), however, after 14 years of the Conservatives, much of which was dominated by Brexit chaos, it was almost inevitable that he lost the next election.

(6) Keir Starmer won a large majority in parliament in 2024 and was the first Labour prime minister since 2010. With Starmer, the problem did seem to be a lack of ideas, but also that even the ideas that he did have he wasn’t good at communicating. Still, how unpopular he was did surprise me.

Now, we’ve got (7) Andy Burnham, who, so far, seems to be popular. He even has a net-positive approval rating, which means that more people say they do approve of him than say they disapprove of him. That’s very rare in British politics.

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Burnham definitely seems to be better at communicating, and has come in with some popular ideas, like putting a maximum price of a bus fare at £2.

So, even though we’ve had 7 prime ministers since 2016, I think the reason that they haven’t lasted long has generally been for different reasons – Brexit for Cameron and May, scandals for Johnson, incompetence for Truss, bad luck for Sunak and bad communication for Starmer.

Here’s some optimism – I’m pretty confident that Burnham will be prime minister at the next general election in 2029, and I even think it’s quite likely that he will win it.

Have a great weekend.
Stephen

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ANSWERS​
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(don't look until you've answered all three questions!)

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🧠 VOCABULARY CHALLENGE : (D) frivolous means "lacking any serious purpose, value, or importance".

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🔍 Find the synonym : A synonym for "consciously" is "knowingly" (in the Meta paragraph)

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🌍 World news question : Bolivia. This case is expected to encourage other couples to seek the same right in court.

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