A Short History of British Prime Ministers and My Little Ponies · 11:34am Jul 4th, 2024
Where was I before I popped out to lunch three months ago? Pondering about imponability… That is still going on. But, right now, I am distracted by British political history as we now have a general election, which looks likely to be of historic significance.
Apologies to everyone in France and the US who is suffering from anxiety about coming elections. I know how you feel. But right now, it is rather nice that in my country, the worst that is likely to happen is that we get a boring centre-left government.
How did we get here? Let’s go back forty years. Pony animation began in 1984, the year of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, when Ronald Reagan was in the White House. Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to be British Prime Minister had just won a landslide election victory following her military victory against the Argentine junta, and was starting her next battle against the National Union of Mineworkers. The dispute would be long and bitter. That was the world into which Rescue at Midnight Castle was released, which showed how colourful little ponies with bows in their tails could defeat the forces of evil by blasting them with rainbows.
The Iron Lady would not be so easily defeated. No British leader has since managed to match her ability to win consecutive elections (1979, 1983, 1987) while being loathed by so many people. But she could not last forever. Her popularity fell due to the poll tax policy and she eventually quit in 1990 after 11 years in office. She was followed by John Major, who won the 1992 election by a small margin. His period in office coincided with the broadcast of G2 My Little Pony Tales, where instead of unicorns, pegasi, and evil villains, we had a group of pony friends who went to school, baked cookies and held parties. It had little lasting impact.
Now we reach 1997 and the arrival of Tony Blair and the New Labour. Fearful of upsetting the centre-right voters who had helped him to power, Blair took a cautious approach, avoiding any policy that might be seen as too left-wing. It worked. Labour won a landslide victory, and won again in 2001 and 2005. Meanwhile Ponyville dialled the cuteness factor up to maximum, and didn’t worry about anything else. Everything was sugary sweet with nothing scary allowed.
This period saw the arrival of some new characters, including Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Gordon Brown. Brown had been a rather successful Chancellor of the Exchequer under Blair. In 2007 he took over from Blair as Prime Minister. Unfortunately, he turned out to be not so good at winning elections. Being caught calling an elderly voter a bigot does rather hurt your chances.
By this point the Labour government, and the G3 pony toyline and animations were looking tired. No one expected the chain of events that would happen next. In May 2010 Labour rule came to an end. With no party winning a majority in the general election, the new government was a coalition with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, headed by David Cameron. The same year, ponies took over the world, as Friendship Is Magic was released, and we were all enchanted by the stories of Twilight Sparkle defeating Nightmare Moon and beginning her friendship lessons in Ponyville.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat friendship did not work out so well. LibDem supporters were furious that their party was propping up the Tories. In the 2015 election, their share of the vote collapsed, ironically letting Cameron win a full majority. Never a man to think things through, he found himself pushed to follow a pledge to hold a referendum on leaving the European Union. He went ahead assuming voters would reject such a silly idea. When 52% of them voted for it, he had no plan to deal with the consequences and ran away to his garden shed.
The second woman to be British Prime Minister, Theresa May entered 10 Downing Street in July 2016. She had already established her Evil Villain credentials as Home Secretary when she had implemented the “Hostile Environment” policy that led people being wrongly deported after living in the UK for most of their lives.
By this point, Twilight Sparkle had defeated Discord, Chrysalis and Sombra, become a princess, and reformed Sunset Shimmer and Starlight Glimmer. While May was having a harder time trying to fudge the logical contradictions needed to get a Brexit deal given her small majority in the House of Commons. The different factions in her party all wanted different things. She called an election in 2017 hoping to get a bigger majority, which at the time seemed a sensible move. However, after a disastrous campaign, the election actually reduced May’s majority. Now reliant on the support of the Democratic Unionist Party, she had no chance of fudging the Northern Ireland border issue.
Exit the Evil Villain. Enter the Clown. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was witty and entertaining. He was also a corrupt liar who didn’t take the job seriously. Against him, in the 2019 election, Labour won the lowest number of seats since 1935. The Conservatives had a comfortable majority, allowing Boris to fudge Northern Ireland and push through Brexit.
Britain left the European Union. An era came to an end. In October 2019 we had the finale of Season 9 of Friendship is Magic. Twilight Sparkle took over from Celestia as guardian of Equestria. The book was closed.
Then we had two seasons of Pony Life, watching Pinkie Pie inflate into a balloon, burst and fall to the floor in pieces. The COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. Boris Johnson held a lot of parties. A New Generation arrived in Equestria. Sunny Starscout united all ponies and brought friendship and magic back to Equestria. Boris’s parties were found by the police to have breached lockdown restrictions. The public grew weary of a clown who felt rules didn’t apply to him. By September 2022, his MPs had decided he was too much of a liability and the party needed a new leader.
Liz Truss’s fifty-day stint as prime minister, famously out-lasted by a lettuce, was the shortest on record. Her period in office coincided with the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and the release of Chapter 2 of Make Your Mark. While Truss announced her infamous mini-budget and sent the financial markets into a panic, we watched Izzy and Misty chase Sparky around Maretime Bay. By the time Winter Wishday was out, so was Truss.
While Truss had trouble with budgets, the next Prime Minister – Rishi Sunak – understood money. He has made millions of it as an investment banker before becoming leader of the Conservative Party. However, he did nothing to tackle growing income inequality and the cost-of-living crisis. Instead he focussed on a complicated policy to reduce illegal immigration by flying asylum seekers to Rwanda. This suffered various setbacks as it was repeatedly found to be illegal, and also set to cost nearly two million pounds per person.
Meanwhile the Marestream took flight, Misty got her cutie mark, Sunny made friends with the dragons, and defeated Opaline Arcana. Then they took a holiday in Starlight Ridge and met the auroricorns.
By June 2024 it was clear the Conservative party was in trouble. They were polling way behind Labour and had run out of ideas, excuses, and leaders. While Sunak could have waited a few more months, it seems he had had enough and called the general election.
And here we are. Electoral Calculus is predicting the Tories will win 61 seats. While it seems unlikely to be that low, we are still looking at an epic defeat. In 1997 they won 165. In 1906 they won 156. In 1832 they won 175. This could be their lowest ever (they go back to the 17th century).
And what next? Make Your Make has come to an end and Tell Your Tale isn’t giving any engaging storylines. But the Westminster drama continues. Kier Starmer is almost certain to be our next prime minister, but his story is still to come.
Happy Independence Day to all of you in the US. Enjoy your independence from the British Parliament.
I am... not a fan of Starmer, to put it lightly, and from where I'm sitting it seems like all he's promising is the continuation of the same conservative policies the Brits are poised to vote against. So I don't have high hopes. We'll see. Still, that was a very enjoyable writeup.
5790043
I have all kinds of reservations myself, and I voted Labour earlier with a very distinct lack of enthusiasm. But what sealed the deal for me was this: the need to show the current government that there are consequences for how they've run the country. That makes it worth it (to me) even if the new boss is otherwise the same as the old boss. I definitely voted "Not Tory" before anything else, and had my constituency had a stronger challenge from the Liberal Democrats I'd have willingly voted for them instead.
But yes, a very entertaining read! The post does have one of my bugbears (not that kind!) in that Tales isn't G2 but G1.5, but everything else was so enjoyable to read that I'll forgive that!
As a Canadian with many UK friends, this was a very fun read. n_n Wishing you guys luck!
Nicely done.
given what you guys have had to go through in recent memory, it's nice to see that someone can settle for a 'boring center-left' government at worst :C
So, the moral of this story is Don't Date Robots! Got it.
(Or Torries. But that seems to be kind of the same thing, so you're probably covered for both either way.)
(But I'm in the US. What do I know?)
5790043
They're not voting against Tory policies, they're merely voting against Tory personnel.
5790053
For those who don't know, "center-left" by the standards of the rest of the world is further left than America's ostensible left-wing party.
At least they only went with the photo ID this time.
they couldve gerrymandered the electorate even further by saying you had to register ID with a driving licence, credit card, and a QR code on an iPhone only as their software couldnt be made to run on anything less than an iPhone 12 etc.
Had a very good laugh at this, thank you. The photo juxtapositions are brilliant; just scrolling back up through them is giving me a chuckle.
"Not as bad as it might be," is a result not to be lightly dismissed in this Golden Age of Inept Malversation.
As a Yank, tied to the tracks and attempting to enjoy the nearby wildflowers rather than fixating on the approaching train, here's hoping for a surprisingly pleasant G6 for us all.
Ahh, British politics. Well, at least there's a chance things will get better under Starmer. Plus, Labour is pissing off Rowldemort and that is funny
5790065
correct!
But what of the time period of Yes, Minister?
5790122
One might imagine Th*tcher's favorite program was contemporary with her Premiership.
5790043
5790044
I know plenty of people who don't like Starmer. While there is a lot he has said that I don't like, I would still much rather have him as PM than Sunak. I remember when Tony Blair was in power we had a lot of similar 'Labour are just as bad as the Tories' comments. And at the time it sometimes felt true - when they introduced tuition fees - or invaded Iraq. But when you look back over the last 40 years, Labour have been much better. They didn't do any big policies to redistribute wealth, but as the economy grew, the extra money went into public services, and over ten years, it made a big difference. And there was peace in Northern Ireland, the Human Rights Act, the minimum wage, Scottish and Welsh devolution, the Sure Start programme...
5790122
Talk to undergraduate students about politics... Anything that happened before they came of age is irrelevant prehistory.
5790175
When it's come up in forums etc, I have often said (sometimes not to universal popularity!) that I think the 1997-2001 Blair first term was the best single government of my lifetime. Minimum wage, Human Rights Act, Sure Start, and (often forgotten after Iraq) two good international interventions in Sierra Leone and Kosovo. I must admit I am not as enthused about Starmer now as I was about Blair in 1997, though perhaps that's partly because 1997 was the first general election I could vote in, and I had that youthful enthusiasm!
I know you were doing the pony characters in chronological order, but I really regret you couldn't pair Rishi Sunak with Filthy Rich.
Usually the worst we can expect from British politics is a good sex scandal
With your BrExit, Slovenians now have an higher standard of living than UKers. Across the pond, American heads towards Fascism, this time with no assist necessary from the Electoral College (If you do not know what the Electoral College is, consider yourself lucky).
5790081
The purpose of Photo-ID is pure voter-suppression, in-person voter-fraud is almost nonexistent). It excludes the poor, who cannot afford it. When dealing with those pushing for voter-iD, agree with them because they know perfectly well that voter-fraud is just an excuse for voter-suppression:
Republican:
You:
Republican:
You:
Republican:
You:
Republican:
The Republican never returns with reasons for not giving everyone free Photo-ID.
If we would have free Photo-ID, it could replace SS-Cards, Passports, Licenses, Library-Cards, et cetera. ¡1 A-8-sized Photo-ID for ruling them all!
5791434
It actually turned up, and heres the strange thing. Its got multiple layers of security against easy photocopying on it like my old paper provisional driving license, just with a Phot, except it looks like a standard A4 photocopy at first. its not even encapsulated being so large it needs folding, and encapsulation fails badly on the corners when folded.
So many things including a couple Im wondering if the average person these days would notice even when looking at them, but what gets me is the QR codes.
If you add small random contaminants to your base material, just by pouring them in the machine and letting the largest quantum computer we know of processing the results, then do a multispectral biometric of that base sheet, PGP it agaisnt the printed information and production company, the print the QR code on the sheet, you got something that can be machine checked very quickly indeed and is about as secure as te guy wanting to check it is? After all, if someone likes tto acept Monopoly money, how can you be certain your cash is as secure etc?
Well, at least the photo isnt a seperate material object that can be carefully lifted off or sliced out like certain older methods?
If only there was a way of making a better match from the birth certificate onward, that somehow the antiracial non discriminatory crew would accept. Aftre all, Your ID is supposed to state what and who you are at any valid period. If you can have it altered easily, So can anyone else.