A book about foreign relations under the Stuarts, and their immensely complex shifting foreign alliances to help with domestic pressures and the desire to control the three kingdoms. I've read a lot on the period, but this was a different lens and helped explain more about the complications brought about by the need to support/have the support of the protestant Palatinate Stuarts. In the real world, everyone appears to be waiting for Boris Johnson to go, either resigning or by facing a vote of no confidence, following the reporting of his lockdown parties. I'm a terrible pundit, but I think he'll survive this one, if only though his utter shamelessness and lack of an alternative acceptable to Conservative MPs. I think he'd win any no-confidence vote. I still think he'll go before the next election though. In the meantime the Conservative MP for Bury South has defected to Labour, and caused the usual controversy. Until yesterday the Labour Party was united round the fact that he was an awful anti-working class Tory, now the official line is that he has seen the light and is welcomed to a centrist, moderate party. However there are plenty of us that don't feel comfortable being in the same party as people who stood on the 2019 Tory manifesto, it goes against so much of my own beliefs. The reality is that he's just a blatant opportunist, and it is a propaganda coup for Keir Starmer. He must have cut a deal with the party to guarantee his selection as candidate at the next election (or been promised a peerage) as I can't imagine the local CLP will readily accept him.
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