The Politibrits

As the name implies, the Politibrits is an informal name for the Board's British members who discuss British politics and tend to write British politics-focused timelines. A few foreign members who live in the UK and are involved in British political debates have been given honourary membership. The Politibrits can generally be found in the British politics discussion thread in Chat.

Like most British things, the Politibrits have an American ripoff counterpart, known as the Politiyanks

After a full year, The Second British Politics Discussion Thread was created by Blackadder MK2.

Less than five months later, The Third British Politics Discussion Thread needed to be created. As per British political style, precedence is everything and now Blackadder MK2 is constitutionally the only member who should create such threads. Propositions to make “Blackadder” an elected post have yet to be submitted by the boards Liberal Democrats but will doubtless be part of any future Coalition negotiations.

In September 2013, The Fourth British Politics Discussion Thread was created. It was the first to feature a fancy graphic, by one Meadowman Esq.

In January 2014, The Fifth British Politics Discussion Thread was created, with a new nifty frontpage graphic by Lord Roem, Because That Has Now Become The Tradition, and that's a good enough reason for British Politics.

In May 2014, The Sixth British Politics Discussion Thread was created, just in time for the local and European elections. Lord Roem once again contributed an excellent frontpage graphic.

In late July 2014, The Seventh British Politics Discussion Thread was created, following brief concerns about whether Blackadder MK2 would be around to fulfil the duty. Discussion was immediately dominated by complementing Lord Roem for his stupendous frontpage graphic, and voicing concerns about the extreme rate of posting continuing even after the May elections and into the Summer Recess.

In late September 2014, The Eighth British Politics Discussion Thread was created with the now obligatory graphic, accompanied by terrifying “1950s overpopulation concern”-style graphs of how the posting rate was rising exponentially.

In mid-November 2014, The Ninth British Politics Discussion Thread was made, which also saw the transition to the general election year, 2015. (One would think this goes without saying, but at this rate three more threads could've been fitted in before New Year's Day).

In early January 2015, The Tenth British Politics Discussion Thread was created, amid arguments about whether the general election would take place in a continuation of these threads or have its own, or both.

In late February 2015, The Eleventh British Politics Discussion Thread was created. By this point Meadow's idea that the theme of the frontpage graphics should reflect chronological progression (dating back to the 6th thread) was firmly established, with this one reaching the 1970s. At this rate the threads may overshoot the present day before the election.

In early April 2015, The Twelfth British Politics Discussion Thread was created. A separate thread for discussing the 2015 General Election was also created in an attempt to keep the in-jokes out and not scare away the unwashed masses from discussing the Election. As per tradition, both have nifty frontpage graphics by Lord Roem.

Shortly before the close of polls on election night, a second election discussion thread was posted, again by Lord Roem. In common with the rest of the country, the frontpage graphic - focusing on the obvious need for lengthy coalition talks - was rendered moot with the reveal of the exit poll, which pointed to a Conservative majority.

Following the General Election, The Thirteenth British Politics Discussion Thread was created. After regrouping following the massive polling failure of 2015, the thread lumbered on frontispieceless for the best part of two weeks following Lord Roem's decision to have sex with a woman for quite a bit. Eventually, Roem dragged himself out of bed in time to create a well-received pastiche of the famous 'Labour Isn't Working' poster.

Keeping on the month-long term the Politibrit threads seems to have, the Fourteenth British Politics Discussion Thread was set up less than a month after the Thirteenth. Lord Roem provided a 'Protect and Survive'-style 1980s poster.

Shortly before the result of the Labour Leadership election was announced, the Fifteenth British Politics Discussion Thread was launched, this time with a nineties-inspired 'Stranger Danger' theme.

In late September the Sixteenth British Politics Discussion Thread was launched, with Roem now providing the frontispiece (a rip off of the notorious 1997 Conservative “Demon Eyes” poster featuring Mumby) on time again, during the discussion of the “David Cameron is claimed to have had oral sex with a dead pig” incident (no, really - though it is now considered to almost certainly have been made up).

A few days before Halloween, the The Seventeenth Official PMQs and British Politics Thread started up. The picture, as always, is something that can only be understood by Brits and is horrifically incomprehensible to anyone who isn't one. Suffice to say Domes are involved.

The Eighteenth Official PMQs and British Politics Thread was started in late November with a frontispiece combining elements of mad cow disease, foot and mouth, and the War on Terror.

Not long afterwards, The Nineteenth Official PMQs and British Politics Thread was started just before Christmas 2015 and featured one of the last 'journey through history' frontispieces, centred on Scottish independence (and the association therewith of the number 19 - see 'Politibrit Subculture' below).

In January 2016, The Twentieth Official PMQs and British Politics Thread began, featuring a frontispiece of an iPad viewing a news website covering what appeared to be something analogous to the 2015 general election, perhaps signalling an end to the 'journey through history' frontispieces.

In February the Twenty-First Official PMQs and British Politics Thread began, featuring Lord Roem's Politibritish version of Netflix, naturally renamed Nofix. It was during this thread that the function of “Blackadder” was ceded by the eponymous original holder to Meadow, after some discussion of Lord Roem ended with the decision to maintain some separation of powers.

At the end of February, the Twenty-Second Official PMQs and British Politics Thread began as the first to be opened by Meadow in his position as “Blackadder”. It was the first to start the new series of frontpieces by Roem based on classic video games.

This was followed in early March by the Twenty-Third Official PMQs and British Politics Thread which featured a memorable Tetris parody for a frontpiece and overlapped with Thande's “Not an English Word” leading to much mention of Lord Palmerston Harry Church. Meanwhile Uhura's Mazda moved to New Zealand without anybody managing to notice for a while.

Just under a month later the Twenty-Fouth Official PMQs and British Politics Thread was begun, covering the period leading up to the May Elections 2016, though due to Libbrit's rule and the proliferation of threads covering the EU Referendum and the individual elections the thread managed to remain it's usual civil place. Featured an interregnum in late May as the upgrade to the Third Board led to everyone decamping to the Lifeboat for the duration.

May 17th 2016: Sadiq Khan is Mayor of London, Ruth Davidson is leader of the Opposition in Scotland, Kirsty Williams is the Lib Dem part of a Lab-Lib governing coalition in Wales, and with the new board software the Twenty-Fifth Official PMQs and British Politics Thread kicks off with “Thee Red Alert” for a frontispiece and a plan to extend to 1,000 pages out of a belief that the new forum software can cope with this (later corrected). By coincidence, this would mean that the thread was almost certain to extend over the EU Referendum date…

It is at this point that the threads entered the “Everything Is On Fire AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” period.

The period began halfway through the declaration of the results for the EU Referendum thread when CalBear unexpectedly closed the previous thread about 300 pages before the assumed due date. The Twenty-Sixth Official PMQs and British Politics Thread was begun by Tovarich (currently the only person to have served as “Blackadder” in an unofficial capacity), initially as a temporary measure, but then ratified by Meadow on the basis of the aforementioned fire. The Twenty-Sixth thread had no frontpiece until Roem threw together the World's Shittiest Frontpiece about 2 pages before the thread closed. Featured both the Morning After the Brexit vote and the start of Labour's leadership troubles with the resignation of just about the entire Shadow Cabinet. As of August 2016 this is the last thread to feature an official Frontpiece.

FIVE DAYS LATER the Twenty-Seventh Official PMQs and British Politics Thread was begun, marking the point where Roem officially gave up trying to keep up with producing new Frontpieces, not least because Everything Was Still On Fire. Among other events, the thread covered the continuing failure of anyone in the Labour party to use a knife, Gove demonstrating how to properly use a knife on Boris, Farage stepping down from UKIP's leadership as the entire party went 'now what' and the start of the Conservative Leadership Election.

Just over a week later on July 7th the Twenty-Eighth Official PMQs and British Politics Thread began. The pace of posting slowed down as the Politibrits (now beginning to assimilate a number of new foreign members) slowly realised along with the rest of the country that the Labour Leadership campaign was not going to end any time soon, and British Politics began to calm down again after Theresa May won the Conservative Leadership campaign by dint of waiting for everyone else to destroy their own campaigns.

July 17th 2016, With Theresa May settling into government, the Labour leadership campaign finally beginning (and getting immediately bogged down in legal issues) and the apparent insistence that Article 50 was to be formally enacted 'any day now', Meadow launched the Twenty-Ninth Official PMQs and British Politics Thread. Despite the inrush of new foreign Politibrits such as Redolegna, the pace of posting finally dropped down to finishing in a fortnight rather than barely making a week. With the resumption of the regularly scheduled programme of banter, trains, psephological geekery and nonsense this may be considered to be the end of the “Everything Is On Fire AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” period and the start of the “Only Some Things Are On Fire Now Actually” Period.

The end of July saw a new milestone as the Thirtieth Official PMQs and British Politics Thread was kicked off on the 29th. Featuring the announcement that the Australian Election of a month previously had finally finished declaring, Thande finishing Politibrits: The Movie and lengthy discussion on the failures of Southern Trains.

The 31st thread was begun on August 17th, with a lamentation of the fact that we no longer had frontispieces. Political discussion took a while to get going again, focusing on Trump/Brexit comparisons and the continued lack of Article 50 being invoked. There was also some discussion of the Labour leadership election, as rules went back and forth due to court challenges.

The Thirty-Second Official PMQs and British Politics Thread began on 30th August, and was the first to feature the 'party run-down' by BrotherSideways.

[Feel free to fill in the blanks here]

The Seventy-Ninth PMQs and British Politics Chat was the last to be hosted on AH.com, with the announcement arriving on 20th April 2018.

The precise membership of the Politibrits is hard to define and changes over time anyway, but here is a rough list (with strange definitions given by The Red in italicised bold):

• AgentRudda
• AlfieJ (United Socialist Party)
• area11 (Scottish Green)
• Broader Liberty
• Comisario
• Custard Cream Monster
• Daltonia
• Gregg (Liberal-Labour)
• Kvasir
• LancyIain (definitely left of centre. Either right-wing Labour or left-wing LibDem) (Literal Democrats)
• libbrit (banned 10 March 13)(unbanned May 2014). Once upon a time, specifically for a summer in uni when he was trying to impress a girl, he was a Lib dem. He did all the various lib dem things, like campaigning ineffectually for candidates who knew nothing and about whom he knew even less. Then he got sick of the girl, and joined the Labour party because he liked the look of the membership card. Libbrit was then a distinctly anti party guy with a sense of social liberalism and random sparks of conservatism. Also his arch nemesis is Alex Salmond and all things nationalist. He rejoined Labour in 2015. (ЛДПР)
• Lord Roem (“White Resident”)
• Nofix (Honourary, is the kind of guy who would join the most mainstream left party even if they aren't perfectly in line with him)
• Meadow (Democratic Labour)
• MrwBrightside (banned 14 Dec 12)
• Mumby (Kibbo Kift)
• pipisme
• The Red
• theman from the ministery (Linkspartei.PDS)
• Turquoise Blue (left-wing Plaid supporter)
• Van555 (honourary)
• The Wandering Poet
• OwenM (Alliance for Workers' Liberty) (This was made strangely apt when, a few months later, he actually accidentally ended up signing up to the real AWL's mailing list, having been unable to find a polite way to tell them he'd just been trying to expand his collection of far left propaganda)
• Rasputin
• Geordie
• Kellineil (Scottish Green)
• Redolegna (honourary, from France; Parti Socialiste)
• Tom Colton (Co-operative Party)
• Uhura's Mazda (Corbynite Labour)
• Utgard96 (honourary, from Sweden)
• Heat (Honorary, a Pole now in Aberdeen from Belgium and with a previous sojourn in the RoI under his belt, perpetually confused with Heavy; Razem and now UK Labour as well)
• Beata Beatrix (Honorary, American New Deal liberal. Formerly OrsonWelles)

• Alex Richards (Centrist, joined the Lib Dems in 2015)
• AndyC (Liberal Conservative type, joined the Lib Dems in 2015) (National Liberal)
• Cevolian (Sort of… a Social Democrat probably on the right or centre of Labour, exiled to the Lib Dems for dislike of Corbynism)
• Constantinople (honorary, from California, considers himself both left-wing and anti-Labour/pro-Coalition so a bit hard to classify)
• Dom: Neutral for many years, joined the Lib Dems in 2015 (Beveridge? I'll take the report but feel free to take something stronger!)
• FletcherofSaltoun (Labour for many years, left Labour and joined the Lib Dems 2015) (Progressive Conservative)
• iainbhx Liberal-Demokratische Partei Deutschland
• Ice-Eyes (has not posted for some years)
• Ivir Baggins (the world's only Lib Dem/UKIP swing voter since Thande stopped)
• Julius Vogel (honorary, Kiwi, often helps out with useful comparisons to NZ politics and electoral systems)
• KingCrawa (obligatory comedy vicar)
• Makemakean (honorary, from Sweden)
• shiftygiant
• Sulemain (Scots Leeberal Democrats)
• Puget Sound (Honorary, from America and would be a Labour-Lib Dem swing voter. Runner of the gentle parody Bun account and left-leaning)

• Abhakhazia (honourary, from Illinois)
• Arachnid (vamoosed)
• Basileus Giorgios (The People's Pledge)
• Blackadder mk 2 (“Edward James Robert Lambert Heath”)
• Earling (English Mistery)
• EdT
• Gonzo (Ulster Unionist)
• Don Quijote
• Tongera
• RPW@Cy (Eurosceptic Welsh Nationalist) (Plaid Cymru)
• V-J (Business For Scotland)
• vonMises53
• Youngmarshall

• ajross (Austro-Scot who horrifies us with tales of Team Proporz)
• Bolt451 (Non-Specific Green) (Formerly KingClumsy)
• British Republic (Tremendous. Now banned.)
• Citizen Samuel (Ba'athist-Juche)
• Ed Costello
• Grey Wolf
• GFW (Leaning towards Green)
• Heavy (Edward Carson Reborn) (Traditional Unionist Voice)
• Lemon flavoured (Left Libertarian / Libertarian Socialism)
• Sargon Although he doesn't post as much these days, he used to be active in politics threads in the past and still puts in the odd appearance. Known to be apolitical but actually the resident Official Monster Raving Loony Party nutter of the forum. As a creaking relic from the Old Board used to have a high profile on the boards. Despite his lack of political views he oddly wound up as President of the AH.com Government and EVIL Party leader. Obviously a bit of a dark horse and requiring careful surveillance.
• Southpaw (honourary, from Bulgaria. Don't mention umbrellas)
• stefanbl (sorta-anarchist, got banned on 22 October 2013)
• Thande (Grumpy independent who has voted for almost every party in the UK at some point and once voted Green purely to tick them off on the list)
• Ulster (guess where he's from) (Republican Sinn Fein)

The Politibrits have a number of jokes and other references generally exclusive to the PMQs thread. They are listed here, as opposed to on the site-wide list, for this reason.

Keep in mind that this is a chronological order of running jokes, so those at the top are more likely to be obsolete.

• If Any Of Those x Come Near My Kids I Swear I'll Do Time One of many jokes lifted wholesale from Private Eye's 'From the Message Boards' section, along with 'Time to end the disastrous democratic experiment' and 'Great stuff guys!'. Used to represent the murky pits of public opinion found on sites like DigitalSpy or Yahoo News. In true politibrit style, it has been used in increasingly extrapolated situations, often those of which 'the man on the Clapham omnibus' would have no opinion at all. A notable highlight of these was Lord Roem's discussion of the constitutional provisions for rebuilding the Lower Chamber, declaring 'any of those hemicycles come near my House of Commons and I swear I'll do time'.
• Libbrit's Rule Only given a name in February 2013 but accepted in general terms long before that, this is a rule deriving from Libbrit's general refusal to post in the PMQs thread, calling it 'insular'. Instead, whenever an issue is of international importance or relevance, he posts a separate thread for it in Chat. This survived Libbrit being banned for a significant period, much like the numerous Parliamentary terms which refer to long-dead men.
• V-J Is A Flirt Every once in a while, V-J and Meadow's flirtations used to take over a whole page of the thread, prompting mock-distaste from other posters or, on some occasions, massively improper orgies of declarations of feelings and innuendo. More recently, V-J has expanded his horizons to members including (but not limited to) Julius Vogel and The Red.
• Permanent Era Of Good Feelings Unlike many of the US 'core threads', there's very little flaming in politibrit discussions. Tempers run high occasionally, but a surprising amount of common ground is always found between posters. Blackadder was the first to notice that this was getting a bit out of hand, pointing out to Meadow that the two of them ostensibly didn't have much in common but nevertheless seemed never to really disagree about anything. Over the summer of 2013, this started to wane, with some members noting with alarm that bitchiness and snide comments about parties, politicians and (worst of all) fellow politibrits had started to become more common. Thande blames this on fixed-term parliaments, while, of course, everyone else is welcome to blame Thande. As of January 2015, the era has stabilised, but at a significantly lower threshold of pleasantness to how it was when the first thread started, with a significant (even if fleeting) break in the Era happening in that month. Look to Cauldron of Hate for more details. As of early 2016, the era is generally regarded to have ended in the run-up to the 2015 general election and not returned since, though the thread remains largely pleasant and cordial compared to most Internet political discussion forums.
• Roem Clones A theory that every Students' Union in the country is populated by a large number of young men who look exactly like Lord Roem. Often comes up whenever a picture of a student or young people's event is posted.
• Chloe Smith, Sex Goddess A name given to this phenomenon by Basileus Giorgios. Generally-accepted-to-be-not-that-good Tory MP Chloe Smith was once very much venerated for her good looks by the more schoolboyish elements of the thread. This veneration was itself quite schoolboyish, as attempts to behave in any kind of laddish manner, particularly in a manner demeaning to anyone, are frowned upon by the politibrits generally. Meadow postulated that the adoration stemmed from her resemblance to Emma Watson, or alternately a deeply Freudian problem relating to how she looked like, er, Meadow. Those days she bears little resemblance to Meadow and the joke fell out of use a long time ago.
• Watch Out, AndyC Has Got A Spreadsheet AndyC has a tendency to splurge statistics all over the thread when economic debates occur. This stems from his general genius, memory and speed-reading ability. For a time there was some tension relating to this, with some posters not bothering to argue with him because they couldn't be arsed to do the same level of research or refute his sources, and this came to a head in late 2012 when Andy asked if people had a genuinely problem with it. The consensus was that no, there was no problem with it, but that he shouldn't really expect stats-slinging debate from everyone in the thread. Kvasir, by contrast, has been known to get down and dirty with some stats of his own.
• We Don't Talk About Scottish Independence A running joke that came about more by its absence than its presence. Partly because there is a dedicated Scottish Independence thread, but even when something of national relevance happens in Holyrood it generally doesn't come up. The Red has noted that this meme may have a lot to do with the Permanent Era Of Good Feelings above.
• The Liberals Always Win More common in TL's made by Politibrits rather than the actual discussions, the tendnecy for all British political TL's to end up with or involve the Liberal Party/Alliance/Liberal Democrats retaining or regaining their role as one half of the two party system, or at least playing a kingmaker position in the House of Commons. Despite often diverging from rather unlikely PoD's, these timeline's are usually played straight afterwards with the Liberals often having to combat and suffer the challenges brought forward by their newfound success and make up some of the most enjoyable timelines on the site. Often jokingly theorised to come out of a need for escapism from the board's liberals due to the currently bleak electoral prospects of the Liberal Democrats.
• Our Prime Ministers Are Hipster Another common aspect of many Politibrit TLs, many British-centred works now tend to have a certain relish for using certain political creatures showing up behind the Despatch Box, often decades after the PoD should have removed them from any position of authority at all. Fan favourites include Matthew “I Have A Lovely Shiny Newspaper Column” Parris, Iain “Thatcher” Macleod, Dick “I Died Too Soon, Even Though I Was Nearly 70” Crossman and Denis “The Unelectable” Healey. In future TLs, Hilary “Not A” Benn, Chloe “Basileus” Smith and Norman “PoliticalBetting.com Have Heard Of Me” Lamb also end up as party leaders far more often than would be expected. When in 2015 Norman Lamb actually did become a candidate for the Lib Dem leadership, a new joke has arisen based on claiming in vindication that all the hipster choices are actually going to become PM or at least party leader at some point.
• Roem Will Probably Love It If presented with an otherwise-universally disliked government policy, Lord Roem will usually take it upon himself to defend it to the hilt. In the past, these have included Police and Crime Commissioners, Hereditary Peer-only elections to the House of Lords and privatisation of the Motorways.
• Custard Cream Monster Gives People Silly Nicknames Self-explanatory. Has entered legend and nobody would have it any other way.
• UKIP Aren't The Fourth Party Lalalala I Can't Hear You Another of CCM's loveable foibles, whenever the UK Independence Party comes up he is known to reject any idea of them having democratic legitimacy, often to the frustration of the more right-wing Tories or occasional UKIP supporters.
• Nigel Farage Drinks Real Ale This is very distressing to a number of the CAMRA lefties among the politibrits.
• Boris Johnson Is A Classic Legend, Mate A genuine position held by many less politically-engaged voters in Britain, it is mercilessly satirised by the Politibrits. Probably because none of them particularly like him, even the Tories - Earling is an example of someone who thinks the idea of BoJo as the Right's saviour is nonsense.
• Alfie's Threads Never Go As Planned Several attempts by AlfieJ to seek advice on personal, political or general issues have without exception devolved into slanging matches, roleplay and general chaos. Turquoise Blue is notable for having been kicked as the result of one and inexplicably becoming the focus of another. Alfie has lamented how he can never seem to start a thread without this happening.
• The SDP Are Meme-Worthy A strange phenomenon noticed by Thande. Whenever the SDP come up for any length of time, the board seems to turn them into Pokemon, Batman villains or Pirates of the Caribbean characters. The latter example is particularly noteworthy, as Thande's assertion that Jack Sparrow's rowing boat represents the Continuity SDP has been supported by Meadow in a “mind=blown” fashion after he re-watched the films with that in mind.
• Yes To Dolphin Safe Tuna A common trope is to mock the hugely unsuccessful 'YES! To FairerVotes' campaign of 2011, which tried to encourage Britons to support AV in the referendum in May of that year. The campaign was run from a very 'progressive' standpoint and appeared to promise many vague 'good things' that AV did not, in fact, have anything to do with, such as 'an end to lazy MPs'. Whenever the campaign is mentioned, it takes on a silly name based on this phenomenon, with Yes To Dolphin Safe Tuna being the most prevalent choice.
• What Does Turquoise Blue Believe In This Week A longstanding meme based on TB's tendency to flip-flop between various degrees of the left wing spectrum. In September 2013, it was suggested by various members that the invocation of this trope was becoming a little bullish and unkind. In response, use of it has declined, though this is in part due to TB settling back into the Labour Party and expressing her support for One Nation Labour, which (to her credit) she decided to do after reading the entire 'One Nation Labour: Debating The Future' PDF on LabourList.
• You Would Say That, Wouldn't You Paraphrasing a famous quotation from the Profumo trial, this statement is invoked whenever one of the board's more tribal members appears to have red, blue or yellow blinkers on and is unable to see the faults in their party's position - or the opposite. Often invoked by self-aware tribalists as 'I would say this, wouldn't I' - arguably more often than in straight form.
• Mr. Fred de Railment This distinguished backbench MP of Huguenot descent will often grace our political threads, especially those started by AlfieJ.
• The name's Ashdown - Paddy Ashdown Owing to the former Lib Dem leader's SAS/SBS past and his more recent work knocking heads together in the Balkans, it is customary for him to show up in members' political timelines as a suave agent of the government with a license to kill.
• Time-travelling seductions AlfieJ apparently wants to time-travel back to the 1970s to steal young Hillary Clinton from Bill, and the possibility has been raised that someone on one of the American political threads will take transatlantic revenge by time-travelling themself to seduce young Harriet Harman. More horrifyingly, it has recently been suggested that the Politibrits may - at some point in the future - gone back in time, with TheDarkMessiah seducing one of Mumby's ancestors, to create a Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather Paradox.
• DJ AndyC According to an advertisement for an Oxford club

seen by Broader Liberty, Andy apparently moonlights as a DJ, doubtless creating slammin' mixes about Duverger's Law.

• Herefordshire, Pivot of Destiny - Shithole: Whenever any kind of local politics issue is discussed, Herefordshire Council seems to come up as a particularly flagrant example of whatever's being discussed. As well as this, whenever a Politibrit moans about a local injustice, AlfieJ and Freizeit trump any issue with tales of Herefordshire Council's almost Orwellian history of corruption and un-democratic activities (ie: candidates running unopposed due to all opposition being silenced through legal proceedings). This has since metamorphosed into Herefordshire being the Kevin Bacon of political discussions and somehow always randomly appearing in any current affairs story.
• That Picture The first rule of the Politibrits: You do not talk about the UK Doll Lovers Meet 2010.
• The Unexplained Almanac of Croydonology While Meadow lives in Croydon and writes a politics column for one of its local papers, there are a surprising number of Politibrits with links to the borough, to the extent that Croydon matters often get discussed in detail. The manner in which this is done - in passing, and as if they are something everyone knows about - has confused Thande and others on more than one occasion.
• You Keep Using The Word 'Liberal'. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means If you want to tie the Politibrits in knots for an evening, casually ask what 'liberal' means in the present day. No-one actually knows, though some have stronger opinions on it than others. Particularly the Liberals, oddly enough.
• Meadow Meadowssen Meadow is half Danish, but nobody ever remembers this and then gets newly astonished every time he casually mentions it. It's a bit like the Silence from Doctor Who, as soon as you look away from Meadow's Danishness, you forget it exists.
• The Tory Man Can 'Cause He Mixes It With Love And Makes The World Taste Good: After AlfieJ and TDM separately noted that they both knew popular Tory councillors who run sweetshops, Thande decided that the Conservatives' primary election tactic is to bribe people with sweets. This led to a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory setup involving the current Tory frontbench.
• The Doctor is Roem's archnemesis: Based off the fact that a worrying number of members care more about what happens to Doctor Who in a given timeline than any of the world-shattering geopolitical events in it, combined with the fact that Roem doesn't care for the programme (which is comically exaggerated into him having a Michael Grade-level hatred for it), Roem will turn out to be the Doctor's latest archnemesis. Nowadays this mainly manifests in the form of someone starting to make a Doctor Who analogy in their post and then interrupting themself with “Put down the knife, Roem!”
• The BNP Granny Occasionally comes up as an example of flawed poll techniques. Takes its name from a poll which showed the BNP polling unusually well in Wales. It turned out the polling company had only spoken to one elderly person in all of Wales, and as such had multiplied her voting choice - which happened to be for the BNP - many times over. AndyC is particularly fond of reminding people of this error, being a true follower of 'never trust a poll'.
• Ed Dzhugashviliband In response to the increasing media meme that vaguely soggy centre-left social democrat Ed Miliband is in fact a dangerous Marxist, The Red started pasting hardline Maoist, Leninist and Stalinist slogans onto pictures of the Labour leader looking a bit silly. This has occurred on a number of occasions, with Meadow and Alfie joining in. A brief attempt to do this with his actually hard left successor Jeremy Corbyn and more meaningless platitude slogans appears to have petered out.
• The Wild Asterisk of Thirsk and Malton: In 2010, the UKIP candidate for the seat of Thirsk and Malton sadly died just before the election, meaning it was pushed back a month. This means that every map of the 2010 election has to include an asterisk and footnote explaining why there's a blank space, and as so many members have written TLs about that election, the infamous asterisk shows up a lot. Thande even butterflied away the candidate's death in his TLIAD purely so he could avoid adding the apostrophe for once. It was briefly feared there would be a repeat in 2015, but the tragedy was mitigated (especially in OwenM's eyes - see below) by them being an independent, therefore not causing aggravation to the Politibrits due to the lack of a need for their party to choose a replacement.
• The Congdonesque Cognitive Dissonance: First noted by Meadow but echoed by several other members, this is when you have read a timeline involving a politician's alternate career so thoroughly that you start to forget that they didn't actually hold that position in OTL. The original example being Tim Congdon's tenure as UKIP leader in AndyC's “The Fourth Lectern”. A new dissonance was noted when Geordie referenced a Private Eye joke that, rather than being OTL, came from Thande's “Curse of Maggie”.
• Enoch Powell Drinks Gin In Pints: A strange running gag that started after The Red misinterpreted a reference in Agent Lavender to Enoch Powell drinking “a pint of Greenalls”, being unaware that Greenalls used to make beer as well as gin.
• Meadow Keeps Getting Ed Miliband Mixed Up With Himself: Exactly what it says on the tin.
• No-one Understands What Social Credit Is: Periodically the early to mid twentieth century economic ideology of Social Credit will be brought up in an attempt to figure out just what on earth it is. Makemakean launched a book club that appeared to be making progress before (not-so)mysteriously dying.
• Everybody Was Haiku Fighting: From time to time the thread breaks into bouts of mass haiku poems. This is usually started by V-J, but many others feel compelled to join in. Since the first recorded instance was after the 2013 local elections, it seems probable there will be more haiku following each subsequent election.
• AndyC Is A Time Traveller Sent Back To Warn Us Of The UKIP Threat: Andy's timeline The Fourth Lectern and its successors turned out to pretty much exactly predict the areas where UKIP would break through in the OTL 2014 local elections, as well as some of the crazy multi-party FPTP vote dynamics. As suggested by area11, this is clearly the only possible explanation. Since the events of the election, it has been suggested he did, in fact, change the course of history - but arguably not for the better…..
• theman from the ministry is a bastard: After his fictional character Freddie Seale was described in AlfieJ's “A Long Time in Politics” as “that bastard Seale” theman from the ministry has been constantly referred to as “that bastard” ever since.
• Robot Wars: Almost all the Politibrits seem to be diehard fans of this cult BBC2 series, and indeed seem to have stronger opinions about the merits of the different robots than about their own political views at times.
• Acting Like It's Still 1968: A phrase used to describe politicians and commentators who think Britain is still a strictly two-party system and if the Tories are going down in the polls, Labour must be going up and vice versa. Areas of the country where it really does still come down to such a binary choice and other parties are almost completely absent are sometimes named this way, e.g. “It's still 1968 in Hendon” (amusingly, it has since been discovered that Hendon itself was one of the main places where it was not the case in 1968, having had a strong Liberal Party then which has gone through the reverse process from usual).
• Everyone still loves Tony Blair: Despite his career being completely tarnished following the Iraq war and his position now as one of the most hated Prime Ministers of all time amongst his own party, most of the politibrits who grew up during his premiership still secretly love him. As a result it's hard to go more than a few pages in a politibrit thread without a huge picture of Tony Blair suddenly appearing for no real reason. More recently, this has developed into references to Ingsoc's undying love for the great man vs. Gregg's undying hatred of him.
• Carry On Teaching: At the slightest mention of school almost all the politibrits will go into great detail of the never ending orgy that was their secondary education.
• British Republic's Never Ending Argument In 2014, then new member British Republic sought to argue with politibrits for days over the issue of Scottish Independence and his spin on Devo-Max. The argument itself has been well noted for constant derailing into odd (“David Ike and Communism are on equal crazy levels!”) territory and a notable face-off between AndyC and British Republic. Because of its tendency to spring back up at irregular intervals to this day, mostly due to to BR's tenacity to win, many have started to wonder whether the argument will ever reach a satisfactory conclusion - thus making it a neat microcosm of the Scottish independence debate itself.
• This is clearly terrible news for Ed Miliband: Not just restricted to AH.com, but appeared on other UK politics discussion sites as well - a phrase mocking the tendency for some journalists and media outlets to non sequiturishly conclude that any political development worsened Miliband's prospects for becoming PM, no matter how unrelated or contradictory.
• David Lloyd George Set Up An Independent Liberal Party In The 1930s Which Consisted Basically Of Members Of His Own Family: For some reason, this factoid is constantly circulating below the surface of the thread and can reappear without warning like a virus–on one occasion posted by two separate posters at the same time. It has become customary to echo the last part by angrily bellowing “OF HIS OWN FAMILY!” while slamming a table dramatically.
• A similar recirculating factoid is Britain's Zoroastrian MPs, how the first three ethnic minority MPs in the UK were elected in the 19th century within weeks of each other (and no more were elected for decades), were members of three different parties, and were all Zoroastrian. The two factoids are commonly mixed together in parodies.
• Timgel Farronage: While waiting in a pub for a London meetup, a number of the Politibrits witnessed the appearance of a Tim Farron-Nigel Farage hybrid, dressed like Rupert Bear and alloyed together with eccentric campness; the rest of the Politibrits appear convinced that this was a mass hallucination. Later, Stateless discovered a Nigel Farage-Ian Hislop hybrid (Nian Farlop) at a conference in Finland; clearly there is some dark conspiracy making all these Farage hybrids.
• For The Second Time: Along with 'not for the first time', this phrase has been (perhaps) overused in TLs by The Red and Lord Roem & Meadow respectively. It now crops up in the thread a few times a week.
• Seagull: After Meadow posted a painting of Valentina Tereshkova in space with a load of seagulls, captioned 'Seagull', The Red in particular developed an obsession with the image. The word is a popular choice for non-sequitur posts.
• GoldenEye: Meadow's love for this Bond film (at one point communicating solely in quotes from it) has metastasised elsewhere and since then we have had Roem doing an Alan Partridge-style plot summary video and The Red replying to almost everything with madlib variations on “For England, James?”
• Kippers Don't Last Long: The board has had a few members who openly support UKIP over the years, but all bar one have been banned in fairly short order. The one who survived actually left UKIP over the party's stance on gay marriage and ensuing purge of its youth wing. As has been noted by Geordie and others, UKIP membership or support is not a bannable offence: it just so happens that the Kippers that have posted on AH.com have also been willing to race-bait, smear LGBT people or whitewash the British Empire, to name a few examples.
• The Cauldron of Hate: A discussion over whether the Green Party really warranted a place in any leadership debates turned ugly in January 2015. Some members insisted the party's policies - long notorious as 'pie in the sky' crowdpleasing to most in the thread - in fact meant that any supporters of the GPEW must be 'stupid'. Deathscompanion1 was eventually kicked for this behaviour, but a more lasting impact was Turquoise Blue's use of the melodramatic phrase 'cauldron of hate' to describe what had gone on. The phrase quickly became a jocular byword for any slightly contentious discussion, particularly if it concerned the Greens.
• UPLBs: Unbeatably Popular Local Blokes, a term used in the maps thread to describe councillors who always survive with a huge personal-vote majority regardless of what happens on a party political level in the area.
• Future EdT: On occasions where members of the thread have been affected by surprising event, the occasion is often cited as representing Point of Divergence for a future incarnation of EdT to write a timeline about, often resulting in a conclusion involving a Social Credit revolution in North America, or a Neo-Fascist China nuking the moon. (A reference to how Ed writes TLs which result in a radically different world diverging from a single act of happenstance in the life of one not particularly prominent person).
• The Hivemind: While Hiveminds are nothing new on the forum, the Politibrit one is particularly pernicious, usually manifesting itself by two or three people simultaneously posting one of the running jokes above.
• Nate Silver Is Predicting The 2015 UK Election: Similar to Lloyd George's family, after this was unwittingly posted by several people, it has become a gag to mention it at the end of a post as though it is a new news story. Since the election, it has become common for 'Nate Silver' to be a jocular shorthand for 'this has already been brought up'.
• The Spirit of Cripps Lives On: Mumby is often treated like he's mad about rationing, a system in which the consumption of food was controlled. This does have its root in the truth, as he is mad about it, but not to the extent often portrayed by this running joke. (Also applies more generally to a sense of enthusiasm for postwar austerity)
• The SNP Will Win 19 Seats: Meadow made this as a serious prediction early on and, as the polls spiralled out of control, stuck grimly to it as an article of faith. The SNP got 56 seats in the end, and the joke has stopped being repeated - though Meadow did post a celebration in the election night thread during the 20-minute period in which the SNP had only won 19 seats. A related gag arising from this is that if the SNP ever are reduced down to 19 seats (a few have now been expelled due to various scandals, to the point that “Expelled SNP MPs” is now in fact the second largest party in Scotland at Westminster, holding as many seats as all smaller ones combined), Meadow will 'become a BEING OF PURE LIGHT' for unclear reasons.
• The man from the ministery is our future dictator: Arises from him appearing significantly in the background of many Labour photo-ops in a 'everyone else will one day be doctored out of the photo' fashion.
• The Lib Dems Got Eight Seats, The Tories Got A Majority, And Ed Balls Lost his Seat Some variant of this phrase is common as a summary of the 2015 general election, which proved to have highly unexpected results. While the SNP surge in Scotland surprised no-one but Meadow, the near-total collapse of the Lib Dems, the defeat of Ed Balls, and the first majority Conservative government since 1992 shocked nearly all Politibrits. Since September 2015, this has largely been displaced by catatonically repeating “Jeremy Corbyn is Leader of the Labour Party” at the end of a post. Leaving the EU is now perhaps displacing this in turn.
• Remember When…? The changing landscape of the 2015 election, and its eventual result, meant that lots of previously-held likelihoods were later looked back on and ruthlessly mocked. Examples include UKIP winning lots of seats, Labour being far ahead in the polls, and the Coalition being deliberately broken up early as an electoral tactic by the Liberal Democrats. This later mutated into “I just remembered when (X) did (Y)” and then changed further to “I just remembered (X)”, where X is a person or thing which was talked about much at the time, but has since completely faded from view.
• THE TORIES, THE TORIES, THE TORIES, THE TORIES! A phrase used to mock what many (even Labour supporters on the forum) consider to be an overly simplistic and not credible approach to campaigning used by a certain segment of Labour canvassers and activists in attempting to win over voters. The basic idea is that if you can just convince the voters that the Tories are truly nasty, and stress this enough, then no further argument is needed to convince people that a vote for Labour is a good idea–even in areas where the Tories stand no chance in hell of winning.
• Vignettes: A number of PolitiBrits -starting with EdT- started writing Vignettes (short stories with only one post). This soon became very fashionable and many more people joined in.
• Taylor Swift: An appreciation for the American songstress' aesthetic qualities by much of the Politibrit population means that a common retort for “(Unlikely thing) could happen” is “and I could get a date with Taylor Swift” or similar.
• The grotesque chaos of a Labour X–a LABOUR X–doing Y: A reference to a speech held by Neil Kinnock at the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth, 1985, in which he criticized Liverpool City Council–controlled by the Labour Party's Militant wing–for having created a “grotesque chaos” in which they ended up “hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers”, not precisely something that you would expect a party calling itself “Labour” to do. In general made in reference to a situation in which the Labour Party adopts a policy or takes a stand that seems to go against the party's professed foundational values. Can be appropriated for other political parties and institutions as well.
• Sulemain Moments: Cited when a politibrit finds something a revelation that is considered to be common knowledge by the others. Named as an affectionate jab at the titular member who does often find himself in this situation. Probably the archetypal example is “Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls are MARRIED?!” along with its parody by Meadow, “Ed Miliband and David Miliband are BROTHERS?!”
• Completely And Utterly Wrong: Following a reaction against the abrasive tone of some pro-European arguments on another thread (in particular using this phrase to reply to almost any post), the politibrits' membership seemed to briefly all go Eurosceptic overnight, with even TB expressing reservations at a policy proposal by the European Parliament. The phrase is often quoted humorously when an EU-related stoy is in the news.
• Turquoise MacDonald: TB's unorthodox views (out of the Labour Party's mainstream, like defending the EU on the Greek issue) and her previous reputation of flakiness has made some people compare her to Ramsay MacDonald, a Scottish politician who became Labour's first Prime Minister and then according to Labour, sold them out in exchange for power.
• It's Corbyning: In mid-July, a surge in support for the left-wing candidate, Jeremy Corbyn, in the Labour leadership election prompted a similar surge in emotions amongst the Labour-supporting Politibrits. Rumours of a Politibrit-SDP break-away faction following the firebrand member actually winning are - as of yet - unconfirmed, and the prospect of a *rival* party has been repeatedly vehemently denied by all those who might be expected to join by those who think politics is a Wikipedia page.
• Milk Gate: Following a series of Milk based protests across the land, including cows being marched down the Milk Aisles, the Polibrits immediately marched off to become learned in all things Dairy-mainly to understand what Mumby was going on about. Over the course of 5 entire pages of Bovine-Emission based chat, it was discovered that Sulemain was a drinker of Alpro-a most hideous soya concoction baring no resemblance to real milk. Fury on the part of the righteous soldiers of the blessed white stuff saw Sulemain exiled into the outer darkness of soya based infamy.
• Alfie Is, Like, 7: Being one of our younger members, AlfieJ was subject to many jokes along these lines–which, much to his annoyance, did not cease either following the passage of time or the joining of members younger than he is (many of whom, indeed, join in with the jibes). In one of the more infamous moments of this inside-joke, the thread generally broke down into a degeneracy never seen before or since, so much so it cannot be repeated here.
• Era of Shit Feelings: After the Corboom became a thing (see above) a certain degree of very un-Politbrit polarisation and friction began to manifest themselves in political discussions, with dark allusions to underlying motivations, Alfie getting drunk almost every night, and fleeting reports of Meadow and Lord Roem screaming at each other, packing to stay at their sister's in Ashton-Under-Lyne, and loudly slamming doors. The whole situation as of the ballot papers being sent out was reportedly described as 'tense' by Orla Guerin, and many members were muttering to the Gods in the hope that the outcome sees a restoration of domestic tranquillity. A Watchful Peace (more or less) endured until the challenge - since even many of his original supporters amongst the Politibrits have become disillusioned, it has arguably now been replaced by a different *kind* of shit feelings amongst the Labour Politibrits.
• Mass Observation: An organisation founded in the 1930s with the goal of anonymously eavesdropping on the public in everyday life to obtain a measure of popular views of current events. After EdT used it in a creepy way in one of his vignettes, Thande became enthusiastic for reviving it and both he and others sometimes report on their Mass Observation of people on the train discussing current politics.
• He's Just A Man Now: A phrase popularised by Lord Roem used to describe anyone who was going to be something big in politics but then had their career ended, such as by losing their seat. Has been noted to be somewhat more Problematic with regards to Women; the gender-neutral “X was once the future”, with no additional clause afterwards, has gained popularity in recent times.
• [POSTS GIANT PICTURE OF X]: A meta reference to Meadow's fondness for wordlessly replying to posts with a large photo of a politician that contradicts the original post's assertion. Both the practice and the parodic reference have spread to other posters, as with The Red's liking for doing the same but with posting a Youtube link instead. In 2016 this was escalated to 'posts the world's biggest picture of X'.
• The Labour Party, AKA Owen's Family Album: What seems like OwenM's entire family have been significant figures in the Labour Party at some time or other for decades, to the extent that at least one of them always figuratively appears Forrest Gump style in the background of any account of important events in the party's history. TDM has referred to him as conceived “at Labour Party conference” or “on Tony Blair's campaign trail” (neither of which are entirely true) as a reference to both this and his tribalism. Thande meanwhile has occasionally joked about a Walter Plinge/Tolliver Groat style description of Owen's upbringing. This reached ridiculous levels when Owen revealed that one of his ancestors had attended the hanging of the Manchester Martyrs in 1867 and was in trouble with the police for having the same surname.
• Politibrit Masterchef: A long time ago, when the thread was slightly less constantly off-topic than it is now, occasional tangents included letting everyone else know what you were having for dinner. This led to Meadow replying to many long periods of off-topic chat with something like 'Fish and chips', even though nobody was discussing their dinner. It was code for 'we're all really off-topic right now'. This eventually morphed into Politibrit Masterchef, a tradition started by iainbhx, in which a member will pause in the middle of a discussion to randomly announce what they are eating for dinner, sometimes derailing the discussion as the others join in by posting what they are eating, and sometimes leading to two surreally parallel conversation threads at once.
• Farron Is The Master: Makemakean once noticed that Lib Dem leader Tim Farron looks like the Master from Doctor Who as played by John Simm. This has led to jokes about Farron winning a general election a leading an invasion of humans from the future, jointly led by Future EdT.
• Nationalising Air: Particularly left wing members of either the forum or the wider political community are often accused of wanting to nationalise everything, including air. A few of them may actually want to do so. OwenM suggested once that this would probably actually happen at some point if we ever developed colonies on space habitats or planets without breathable atmospheres. Mumby has now written a TLIAW starting with Earth entering such a state and needing artificial air production just as an excuse to end up with nationalised air.
• Prophet Points: Starting with AndyC's accidental prediction of UKIP's rise (see above), Prophet Points are awarded to politibrits who make dead-on predictions, often also by accident or jokingly. They can be redeemed for Mozambican chicken products at your local branch of NandyC's.
• Young McMumby Had A Cyber-Farm: Mumby, the most rural man in Labour (except possibly Dave Trigger), often complains about townie misconceptions that he still milks cows by hand, and occasionally gives veiled hints about the terrifying cyberpunk realities of modern farming. The phrase “rape racks” comes up on occasion.
• [killed in ironic manner]: Politibrits have got into the habit of saying things that are either controversial or outdated, and then mid-sentence being killed or injured by the very individual or phenomenon that disproves their assertion. For example 'I don't believe Labour can win elections by aping the Conserv- [blown up by Tony Blair]'. Other variants include attacks by Politibrits who hold strong views, for example 'It's time for Britain to move on from its agricultural pas- [pulled apart by Mumby and some cows]'.
• I've Always Said This: Started out as part of Lord Roem's “the Scottish independence referendum will be 55-45 No” thing, but has since taken on a life of its own, mostly due to Meadow using it for his“the SNP will get 19 seats” thing (see above) - when a surprising political event happens, a member will (sometimes jokingly) insist that they had long predicted it.
• The Curse of Fletch: A very long-standing one–given Fletcher of Saltoun's track record, the idea sprung up that any individual or political cause he either supports or predicts will win (depending on who you ask) is doomed to failure. If we go with the first rather than the second interpretation, the streak was broken with the No victory in the Scottish independence referendum.
• That Geoffrey Corbett's Got A Beard, Hasn't He?: Thande's phrase for how some voters can remain low-information even in the face of media saturation and won't form a coherent opinion (in this case of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader) until an election of some kind looms. Often madlibb'd into quotes about other political figures, e.g. “That Toby Blah's the one with the teeth, isn't he?”
• The Resistable Rise of Dominic Ellis: Unlike Genosse Seale's more backroom rise, Dom's general normieness and good looks have propelled him through the ranks of the Lib Dems since he joined in May 2015. After he (briefly) put himself forward to be a London Assembly candidate, jokes began that he would be the next Liberal Democrat leader to enter government. He constantly plays this down.
• Everyone Had An Overly Dramatic Birth: As uncovered in November 2015, apparently nine-tenths of the Politibrits were born in a manner that would be considered more appropriate for a prophesised king or Dark Lord, with complications, medical issues and bloodsoaked moons crossed by wandering stars aplenty.
• Things-Punk: Periodically the thread will discuss whether it is possible to derive an 'X-punk' scenario (as with steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk, cyberpunk, solarpunk etc.) from other eras. The most popular of these is 'Blairpunk', based on highlighting the tropes associated with the Blair government (especially the early Blair government). Attempts to do this with the present era are sometimes called “Netflixpunk”.
• Not Going To See Hilary Benn: The Politibrit version of 'discussing Uganda', as in, a shorthand for rumpy-pumpy. Born out of Comisario spending some time with a young woman and declaring that she had been intending to go and see a speech by Hilary Benn in the morning. She didn't make it. The Member of Parliament for Leeds Central is not, at time of writing, aware of his totem-like sexual status among Politibrits.
• Placename First and The Attention Seeking Prats Party: Terms used to describe frivolous single-issue parties standing in (usually) local elections. Placename First entities are often quite successful (regardless of their actual policies) while Attention Seeking Prats rarely win seats. “Save [INSERT NAME HERE] Local Hospital” also sometimes features.
• The Marvellous Misadventures of Lord Palmerston: Lord Palmerston, a 19th-century Whig/Liberal Prime Minister, is known on the Politibrit threads as a somewhat eccentric and unpredictable fellow with unbelievable amounts of luck, both in OTL and in the ATL scenarios thought of, including ones with him being Prime Minister in more modern times. It has become tradition amongst many to toast him at meetups - this has not caused an international incident as yet.
• The Spreadsheet of Doom: After Uhura's Mazda unwisely decided to make a spreadsheet with everyone's views on the EU referendum and allowed everyone to edit it, the spreadsheet dissolved into a world of utter chaos and the posting rate on the 21st Thread skyrocketed to American levels.
• Lee and Herring Rhyming Programme Titles for Politicians: After Roem nearly killed Thande at his 30th birthday party with laughter with his renditions of Lee and Herring's tenuous rhyming TV programme titles, this began a craze for doing similar titles for programmes featuring politicians. For example, “Enoch Powell's Greenock Trowels: The controversial anti-immigration Tory MP rebuilds links with Scotland by visiting every garden centre on the Clyde”.
• JACK DROMEY PUNCHED FREIZEIT IN THE FACE: Freizeit attended a local EU referendum debate in which Jack Dromey argued for Remain, and the two got into a verbal confrontation - subsequently, other members of the group “upgraded” this confrontation to Dromey physically assaulting Freizeit.
• OwenM Hates Independents: Possibly due to an incident involving the 2012 North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner election, Owen is not a fan of independents standing for election, which is often exaggerated into him having a pathological hatred of them.
• Bonfire of the Independents: Unrelated to the above, a term used to describe how, when an election to a body is for the first time held on the same day as a general election or other higher-turnout contest, independents (and minor parties) who previously had seats for years will be turfed out due to new voters voting purely on party lines. This happened in a number of rural councils in May 2015 for example.
• Andy Thirdham: Most of the forum Labour members' collective contempt for Andy Burnham manifested itself with this nickname during the 2015 Labour leadership contest, and it has persisted even though Burnham actually came second (and later won the Greater Manchester mayoral nomination).
• Liz Kendall On A Tank: Rather than backfiring a la Mike Dukakis, the photo opportunity in question appeared to instead fuel some very weird impulses on the part of some of the thread regulars.
• THE BUS: After the Leave campaign in the EU referendum had a bus with a “let's save £350 million and give it to the NHS” claim on the side, which was denied after the referendum was won, Heavy (and others) pushed the meme of THE BUS with dishonest promises on the side. This appears to have overtaken his previous favourite meme, “The BRUSSELS BULLIES won't give us THE DEAL WE DESERVE!”
• Angela Eagle Isn't Doing Anything: After the Parliamentary Labour Party attempted to launch a very ineffective coup against Jeremy Corbyn in the aftermath of Brexit, countless rumours were repeated that Angela Eagle was (1) resigning and then (2) standing against Corbyn, which always turned out to be either fabricated or premature.
• Here Come Stupid Boy, Oh Shit Waddup: Scottish member Stupid Boy suddenly appeared in the thread one day and started posting conversantly with the culture, with nobody noticing for a while - compared to either The Talented Mr Ripley by some or Faramir by Geordie. A similar incident occurred with a member called AndyF, which also led to concern over what happened to AndyD and AndyE.
• Heat Replaces Southpaw: After Bulgarian guest Southpaw largely stopped posting he was replaced for the next season of The Politibrits by the suspiciously similar Polish-Belgian guest Heat, whose username means he is often mistaken for Heavy.
• Is AgentRudda's Rabbit a HUMAN WOMAN?: Stemming from Roem suspiciously asking Rudda based on his description of “Bun”'s activities whether she was in fact a human woman (briefly leading to her being identified with Amber Rudd based on the name similarity). The phrase “HUMAN WOMAN” has escaped from this specific example and now pops up all over the place.
• Update White Town!: Uhura's Mazda did a popular TL about a by-election in Derby which he did not update for a while. After insistent posts telling him to, he finished it. However, by this point it had become enough of a tradition that U's M is often met with memetic cries to update White Town even now, much to his annoyance.
• Heat and Heavy are the same person: Due to their similar usernames and the fact that they are both currently studying law, Heat's posts are often attributed to Heavy and vice versa and people continue to confuse facts about them even when not deliberately doing the joke. Received two sequels: one in which Uhura's Mazda got confused with Ares96's new username (*see below*) and with Sulemain and Southpaw.
• Member brands: It's often discussed who in the thread has the strongest 'brand', i.e. a distinctive style of posting which can be imitated by others - for example, Mumbyposting (all in lower case sentence fragments with frequent 'aaaaaaaaaa's) or Vogelposting (full of cryptic allo-appellations).
• Meadowfacts: Meadow is known for coming out with 'strange but false' items which sound like plausible unusual facts but are in fact fictitious.
• It's Hat Time Again: On September 13th 2016, after Alfie made the typo 'it's hat time again', the thread descended into a hurricane of hat puns and general kek-ness, aided by the fact that the day had been spent discussing the boundary changes.
• Tremendous: In a fad originally started by Meadow, 'Tremendous' is now used exclusively on the thread as a euphemism to mean 'this is morally awful and (if it was something posted on AH.com) the person who posted it is going on the ignore list'. AgentRudda coined the related practice of responding to such a post with “Oh.”
• There Is No Problem With Islamophobia in the Labour Party: Has become a way of referring to anti-Semitism, after a report into anti-Semitism in Labour Students was suppressed, replaced with one also covering *Islamophobia and other forms of racism*, and generally considered a whitewash (especially after Jeremy Corbyn broke one of his easiest original leadership election pledges to keep by making the author a peer). Other groups may be substituted for Labour.
• No. Brakes: Artaxerxes' catchphrase to describe the escalation of more and more intense events in 2016. Often turned into a madlib with any word that rhymes with 'brakes'.
• (X) is Fat: A phrase used to signify that a thread has become an echo-chamber of hate dogpiling on (X). Originally coined by The Red to describe how Alex Salmond was being attacked in a Scottish independence thread (where it semi-made sense as Salmond is on the portly side and so this was one possible ad hominem attack) but nowadays often applied to countries, parties, ideologies, and abstract concepts too.
• Lib Dem Compromise Time: A reference to the Lib Dems' former policy of 'equidistance' in always taking the middle ground between what the Tories and Labour said. Often parodically applied to situations where this doesn't make sense, e.g. compromise between 'let's kill all of group X' and 'let's not' by arguing 'let's kill HALF of group X'. The related term 'moderate hero', taken from the Dave Leip US Election Atlas site, is also occasionally used.
• To Find Out: A parody of Michael Portillo's catchphrase from his train programmes: “But why DID (thing happen)? To find out, I've come to (place) to meet local historian (name).” Popularised by the Politibrits Movie.
• The Phantom Liker Has Struck Again: OwenM has a habit of searching the forum for keywords and then liking posts made by politibrit posters that can be as much as a decade old (the man himself would like to point out he does in fact do this to everyone, it's just he knows to look for Politibrits more and they're more likely to bring it up). Occasionally other members emulate him, notably von Mises.
• Makemakean Is Obsessed With Sean Connery In Yellowface In “You Only Live Twice”: Only appears occasionally but the conversation can segue into it at a moment's notice.
• Lord Roem's CLAB: After becoming a member of the East India Club, there are frequent references to Roem becoming even more of a Victorian colonialist stereotype than before.
• Jeremy Corbyn's words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS: A reference to a meme from the Civilisation game series, in which due to a programming glitch the pacifist Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi is extremely aggressive and often uses the above phrase. Due to Corbyn's own pacifism and opposition to nuclear weapons he has been photoshopped into a suitable screenshot.
• Only Roem and Meadow like “The Office”: Much to their annoyance, the dynamic duo's appreciation for the undoubted charms of the early-2000s Ricky Gervais sitcom vehicle are not replicated by the rest of the community.
• Byron Burgers (R-AL): During a minor scandal involving the mostly southern-based burger chain Byron Burgers, V-J and Nofix commented that it sounds like the name of a US Southern politician. This led to the creation of Senator F. Byron “Corny” Burgers III, currently running for his 28th consecutive US Senate term in Alabama (unopposed).
• 35% of Left-handed Venezuelan Cellists: A madlib phrase (e.g. 'ambidextrous Peruvian violists') used to mock overly demographics-focused American political commentators who insist that a candidate can't win an election unless they win X percent of some incredibly specific demographic group - as though regional trends and variable turnout differential don't exist.
• You Are X and I Claim My Y: A madlib phrase derived from the old 1920s newspaper competition “You are Lobby Lud and I claim my £5”, later re-popularised by Spike Milligan. On the forum it is used whenever someone posts a statement typical of a given current or historical personage, with the Y related to the background of the person with whom the poster has been identified; variants include “Sit down, X”, or ironically ascribing a post to a historical/current figure.
• Mick's Interactive Yorkshire: When Uhura's Mazda accidentally joined the Yorkshire First party (despite having different views and moving to the other side of the world) he was introduced to the mysterious delights of the graphic in question, which is often referenced when Yorkshire comes up.
• Cut to Jeremy Corbyn doing…: Mostly a Thande gag, this comes up when someone suggests something Jeremy Corbyn could be doing to attack the Tories/inspire new supporters/capitalise on a current news story (etc.) and it instead cuts to him doing a stereotypical 'old man' activity on his own, such as feeding the ducks by the side of a pond.
• IDS defected to TUSC: Possibly started by U's M, this came about when Iain Duncan Smith dramatically resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary shortly before the EU referendum and accused George Osborne of unfairly targeting poor people - a comically exaggerated comment on how the media suddenly whiplashed from treating IDS as the root of all evil for his Universal Credit policy to now being a hero of the people.
• Meadow Refuses To Accept Ingsoc Was A Nintendo Kid: When Ingsoc casually let slip he was a Nintendo loyalist growing up, because his edgy and confrontational forum brand was so at odds with traditional console warrior stereotypes of that side, Meadow simply rejects that reality and substitutes his own: when Ingsoc posts about Nintendo games or consoles, Meadow quotes his posts and edits them to be about Sony equivalents instead.
• The Ragged Trousered Sule: After taking on a number of jobs which fall into the 'stereotypical 2010s no-workers rights' mould, it has become understood that Sulemain is actually the protagonist of a very unsubtle socialist polemic in which his naive faith in the capitalist system will gradually be crushed.
• Best of luck to X, he'll make a fantastic Y!: Started by U's M and others in relation to the Richmond by-election of 2016, due to a discussion over whether Labour members should show party loyalty by supporting their own no-hope candidate Christian Wolmar or openly back the Lib Dem candidate Sarah Olney. “Best of luck to Christian Wolmar, he'll make a fantastic MP” was used to reflect the former on-message tendency and has since been madlibb'd to many different contexts.
• Basil Brush and the Troubles: Started when Heavy posted that Basil Brooke had been PM of Northern Ireland and Geordie misread it as the eponymous cheeky fox puppet, adding that it certainly explained 'Boom, boom!' Ingsoc proceeded to edit him into photos of Gerry Adams and now any mention of Basil Brush is considered to be an allusion to the Troubles or Northern Ireland in general.
• Jeremy Corbyn's Sugar-free Jam: Stems from when Corbyn gave the excuse of not being available for interview because he was 'too busy making jam'. Not long afterwards, in an interview he said he didn't have a sweet tooth, leading AH.com to the conclusion that he must only make sugar-free jam. (The association of Corbyn with jam has gone slightly mainstream as a meme).
• Owen is Eustace Scrubb out of the Chronicles of Narnia: A comparison coined by Thande, initially directly in relation to Owen's Progressive Upbringing slightly resembling that of Eustace's, but it has wandered away from that to being a vaguer way of suggesting he is a compulsive contrarian to 'everyone does' experiences such as having repeatedly forgotten and re-learned to ride a bike. This one got weird when Utgard96 discovered that C.S. Lewis had dedicated The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the book which introduces Eustace's character, to…Geoffrey Corbett.
• David. I love you David. David.: U's M's nephew ended a card to him in this way and it has become a popular madlib format for signing off posts or expressing good tidings to a fellow member.
• Unnecessarily Confusing Name Changes: Ares96 changed his username, initially to “Utgarda-Max” which literally everyone read as “Uhura's Mazda” and left to a brief mad period of a week or so in which everyone was seeing double and seeing the same member talking to themself. Ares eventually compromised on “Utgard96” instead, but not after a series of jokes in which, for example, Meadow announced he was changing his name to “Lad Room”.
• Scandinavia Wars: Utgard96 being Swedish and Meadow being half-Danish, the two have frequently done their utmost to carry on those countries' tradition of opposing whatever the other one does. Whenever either one does something even vaguely associated with their respective country, expect the other one to snipe back and the conversation to descend into trying to determine which country did less to oppose the Nazis during the Second World War (Utgard usually losing this fight).
• The Prolapse of Kent (also called The Anus of Dover): Stems from a crazy proposed devolution map British Republic made which had London take in a vast area of England (including Portsmouth) with 'rest of England' as three separate surrounding chunks, including randomly Thanet and Dover as not being part of mega-London. The map is often wordlessly posted in response to a devolution discussion.
• HAVE YOU NOT READ ANY OTHER BOOKS?: Lord Roem's irate response when public figures start making incongruously childish-sounding political analogies based on Harry Potter.
• The Fur and Feather Town By-election: U's M discovered an old 1930s comic strip (with a noticeable Tory bias) about a by-election in a town of anthropomorphic animals described in unnecessarily memetic detail, with the eventual victor, Curly Wee, being noted for his house-building programme and opposition to income tax.
• http://www.insertpartynamehere.org.uk/join: Started by Meadow half-seriously posting the 'join Labour' link in response to people complaining that the left in the country is in bad shape while doing nothing themselves to help fix it, or expressing what he regarded as Labour views from within another party. This has since been madlibb'd into many other party websites (most of which are dead links due to the page not being called 'join') and used more humorously.
• All of Roem's ideas get misattributed to Meadow: No, not just in their collaborations, just in general, everyone seems to misremember Roem's jokes as originating from Meadow. Danish mind tricks are suspected.
• Which princess would HMS Hood marry?: A mashup joke originating from stereotyping the Pre-1900 Discussion Forum as being inhabited by people obsessed with dynastic marriages while the Post-1900 Discussion Forum is full of battleship anoraks.
• Fantastic X and Y: Another madlib meme, this time originating from Sulemain's caddish evaluation of a member of service staff at a meetup, in which attempts are made to find words concerning the topic being discussed which rhyme with “fits” and “Mars”.
• Dad Jokes: Usually kicked off by AndyC, whenever anyone makes a bad joke (often involving a pun), stereotypically described as a 'dad joke', it is common to make an oblique and sidelong reference to the fact such as asking the jokester 'is it a boy or a girl?' or 'have you got a school picked out yet?'
• Fast Forward to World War III: Following the events of 2016, any development in geopolitics is often accompanied by comments such as 'Two years from now when we're sharing a trench south of Riga…' The war in question is usually presented as a non-nuclear confrontation stemming from a Russian invasion of the Baltic states. This particular joke was deemed to be considerably less funny after an ex-member was confirmed to be participating in an active militia.
• Owen's Brother Does Not Exist: Arising from an argument on That Website between most of Owen's family (see above) and an unimportant person with a PhD in Irish radical feminism called Eoin who made this accusation, it is now common to reference the sinister conspiracy behind Owen's alleged sibling.
• BRUTE FORCE: Sulemain's preferred method for tackling problems.
• Iain's Kitchen: Iain made a well-placed bet on Emmanuel Macron to be the next French President when he was an obscure no-hoper candidate and the resulting win paid for a new kitchen; hence it has become customary (even by Redolegna) to refer to Macron as “Iain's Kitchen”.
• The Writer of OTL: Due to the unexpected turns of OTL since about 2015, it has become a frequent joke to act as though it is a TL being written on another AH.com somewhere and odd editorial decisions are responsible for these events. For example, when Sweden almost had an early election (all but without precedent) and then backed out, clearly Swedish readers had criticised the plotline and the author had dropped the idea.
• Well, yes: Meadow's much-copied phrase used to signify 'nobody disagrees with what you are saying in your rant, but we've heard it before and it will only start an argument'.
• Theresa May is the Tory Gordon Brown: Started out as a comparison by Meadow which achieved more support when May's incompetence meant she threw away a more than twenty-point lead in the 2017 general election to finish with fewer seats than she started.
• Ulster Can Into Relevance: When the Conservatives finished short of a majority in 2017 and needed the support of the Democratic Unionist Party, normies in Great Britain began frantically trying to find out who they are. This led to jokes on the forum by our own Ulster contingent, particularly involving wood pellets and dismissing all criticism as 'misogyny' based on recent events involving the DUP leader. This has also morphed into the DUP's demand for transport infrastructure spending snowballing into Belfast getting its own spaceport.
• And on my left, Barry Gardiner and Tim Rushcliffe: When Brent North Labour MP Barry Gardiner unexpectedly rose to prominence during the 2017 election campaign, Thande joked that Veej's mum (who has a history of mixing up names) would think he was a contestant on I'm Sorry I Hadn't A Clue (in reference to Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden). As such, references to that show's games sometimes accompany any mention of Gardiner.
• Ken Livingstone Has Hitler Tourette's: An exaggerated joke based on Livingstone's infamous 'Hitler was a Zionist' moment and its fallout, it is now considered customary that any appearance of Livingstone is accompanied by him blurting out Hitler's name (often just on its own).
• Antlers: A metaphor invoked to describe arguments between members with the subtext of challenging for herd alpha status, almost invariably between Meadow and U's M.
• Super Excellent Mumby Adventure: A reference to the aftermath of the 2015 Birmingham meetup, where Mumby, in his efforts to get back to Lincoln having missed the last train, ended up spending the night under a hedge in, um, Bradford (a pilgrimage was made to the Mumby bush at the 2016 Bradford meetup). Mumby and getting lost, especially on trains, are now inextricably memetically associated.
• The Sea Lion Press Money Laundering Electioneering Scheme: The user British Republic once suggested that Sea Lion Press set up an elaborate scheme to funnel money into American superPACs in order to influence policymakers and elections. Due to its highly illegal nature, Meadow and Lord Roem (as founders of SLP) were far from amused, and had to firmly demand that BR cease and desist in his advocacy of the scheme. It has since become a recurring joke that Sea Lion Press is in fact a shell company whose sole purpose for existing is to illegally influence the outcome of various elections.
• The Wacky Land of the Maple Leaf: Though actual Canadians posting on the thread is rare, the fact that several politibrits have Canadian connections (e.g. Thande, Lord Roem and Daltonia) means that the zaniness of Canadian politics is often brought up. Commonly cited points are 1) the massive swings arising from a lack of safe seats and tribalism, 2) the bizarre naming system for constituencies (or 'ridings') which often involve four names of nineteenth century British Prime Ministers joined by three hyphens, and 3) Social Credit (see above).
• The Libertarians: For a while the thread has enjoyed mocking the UK's miniscule Libertarian movement via the same couple of photos of four young awkward looking men at a protest, including the memetic U's M clone Felix Bungay. However this was slightly undermined when another photo of a Libertarian meetup emerged and it turned out that unlike the average politibrit meetup they have Actual Human Women.
• There are only sixty-three people in New Zealand: Arises in connection with U's M (and to a lesser extent Julius Vogel) seeming to be on first-name terms with all top politicians and other public figures in the Land of the Long White Cloud. To be fair, this is much better than the thread's consensus view of New Zealand's larger neighbour…
  • These attitudes may or may not be compounded by the fact that the extent of Politibrit interaction with That Western Island is confined to online conversations, as proven by one mass wave of people admitting they'd never been there (except for iainbhx, who's visited more than a dozen times.)
• Remove Cheeseburger: When American politics intrudes into the thread (which is often) its perpetrators are often told to 'remove cheeseburger' as a euphemism. This has since been extended to using other foods as euphemisms for other countries' politics intruding, such as 'croissant' (France), 'schnitzel' (Austria), 'poutine' (Canada), 'sushi' (Japan), and 'chicken rice' (Singapore). Conversely on occasions when British politics is seen as intruding into other threads, it is sometimes called 'roast beef'.
• The New York Times is written by, and for, aliens: As first observed by Lord Roem, the NYT reads “exactly like it is written for and by very sophisticated aliens or androids that have almost, but not quite, perfectly replicated how human beings don't talk” - particularly when trying to talk about British politics. Thande has suggested it is a useful source of material for budding sci-fi writers who want to try their hand at xenofiction.
• The Uhura's Mumby Scenario: Mumby and U's M (as well as some other members) have a tendency to like writing scenarios involving various things from the 1930s in the present day, which is often exaggerated in parodies. These include Social Credit, eugenics, political militias and similar. One example of this was the madlib “There must be an easier way to [X], thought [obscure 1930s British fascist] as he waited outside the Ministry of [dodgy 1930s political/pseudoscientific concept] for his meeting with [someone unexpected]”.
• Passive-Aggressive Footnotes: After receiving comments from elsewhere on the board that the Politibrit Thread (or Chat) was far too opaque due to the number of in-jokes and references used in it (as this very page evinces), Tom Colton started putting in footnotes over-explaining every single reference used in his posts, which (to his horror) started a trend when relative newcomers and even confused regulars noted their utility.
• Damian Green is a fictional character created by Thande: In Thande's “There'll Always Be An England” story (which was first written in 2006 set in 2008, and eventually rewritten as set in 2017) he invented a fictional future Tory PM called “Damian Green”, intended to be a stand-in for David Cameron, being unaware there was an actual Tory MP called Damian Green. Since that time he has risen to Theresa May's second-in-command and there is speculation that he could succeed her as Prime Minister. This has led to jokes that he is a fictional character who has escaped into real politics, like the bloke in the Thursday Next books. (In the end he resigned in disgrace at the end of 2017, strangely due to a scandal from…2008).
• Saucer of milk?: Iainbhx's phrase, first used on the thread in 2014, to gently hint to a fellow member that they are being unworthily catty. Occasionally crosses over in a confusing way with the fact that Utgard96 drinks improbable volumes of milk.
• Mumby's Hovercraft is Full of Eels: Mumby's brand has branched out into working for a firm of translators, which inevitably leads him to hilarious sitcom-style escapades involving obscure languages such as the infamous, mysterious “Wolof Job”.
• Graf Iain von Brümm: Iainbhx's interest in and expertise on Germany often comes up, to the point that he is sometimes better informed about German politics than the board's German speakers. Culminated in an election night politibrit outing to Berlin in 2017.
• X level: X: A phrase used to describe someone living up perfectly to their member brand. Also sometimes applied to other things, such as “America level: America”. Occasionally the second X is replaced with a suitable adjective, like “America level: substantial”.
• Uhura's Mazda and BrotherSideways, Obscure Minor Party Enthusiasts: Despite being fully paid up members of the Labour and Green Parties respectively, U's M and BSW share a love of cataloguing and often quietly supporting the tiniest and most obscure parties from both history and the present day. This is reflected in BSW's second-post party summaries, which start out with major parties but go down to ones so obscure that they haven't heard of themselves.
• Likes as Currency: A recurring gag stemming from the fact that some members dole out likes more or less freely than others. OwenLikes are related to hyperinflated currencies like the Weimar deutschmark, followed by (e.g. in ascending order) ThandeLikes, MeadowLikes / RoemLikes and IainLikes /AndyLikes, the latter two being referred to as the Gold Standard. EarlingLikes are compared to a cryptocurrency - theoretically very valuable, but backed by nothing (as Earling never uses the like function).
• A beautiful and attractive progressive: A phrase stemming from the 2016 American election, where an Ameriteen was distraught at the skeletons in Tulsi Gabbard's closet by saying “But I thought she was a beautiful and attractive progressive!” Heavy was delighted with this meme and began pushing it everywhere, and later on it became associated with people like Emmanuel Macron who have a popular media image of being on the left while actually being centrist at most.
• This is why we voted Leave: A phrase used jocularly in response to a member making a post implying un-selfconscious enjoyment of overly bourgeois or cosmopolitan activities. Typically only applied when out of character and not to those who have it as part of their brand.
• Lord Roem is a supporting character in a sitcom: Theorised by Thande due to the fact that Roem's RL friends tend to have sitcom-style wacky adventures, further arguing that everyone else on the thread only exists to provide background detail to Roem's eccentricities when he periodically appears in the show as a recurring character.
• Michael Foot's Acid Bath: Derived from a terrible right-wing-penned AH novel that Skinny87 read in which, among other things, Michael Foot dissolves people, specifically a rent boy, in an acid bath.
• Eddie Hitler's CV: Then-UKIP leader Paul Nuttall, nicknamed after the character from “Bottom” whom he resembled, was caught out having invented things for his CV, so every time he is mentioned the thread comes up with more and more inflated accomplishments to add to it.
• The Lake District Oubliette: After Alizarine somehow managed to live through the 2011 London Riots without being aware they happened, and his excuse was that he was in the Lake District that week, it has become customary to invoke being in the Lake District as an explanation for being unaware of a major national or global event.
• Semantics: A reference to Heavy upsetting a bunch of overly serious Star Wars fanboys, determined to justify their dislike of “The Last Jedi”, by making calm logical arguments against their claims, which they just kept dismissing as “Semantics”, now invoked in Star Wars discussions amongst other incidents in which semantics may actually play a part.
• I have a short prepared statement I would like to read: This phrase, and variations on it, is used by a poster to signify they have made a mistake, accidentally said something unguarded, or similar–suggesting a politician about to resign.
• David Miliband (150/1): A Roem-started meme in which any list of possible choices for anything (e.g. candidates for a vacant political office), accompanied by betting odds, always ends with “David Miliband (150/1)”, in reference to how some lists of potential successors to Corbyn always have him nonsensically tacked onto the end even though this is currently legally impossible.
• The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, starring Henry Bolton: Due to the superficial similarity between the names of Henry Bolton, UKIP leader hopeful, and Henry Baker, a unsuspecting accessory to the theft of a precious gemstone in the titular Sherlock Holmes story, Tom Colton made it a point to reference said adventure whenever the former turned up in the news, which reached fever pitch during the emergence of his numerous scandals. Attempts to reference the wider corpus have been rebuffed.
• oh no: A meme taken from the recurring punchline of Webcomic Name and applied in a similar variety of situations.
• Abraham Lincoln's Defining Characteristic Is His Cheese Obsession: Stems from Thande once demonstrating the power of online resources to find out that Lincoln ate cheese every day as part of a packed lunch, which is comically exaggerated into cheese being brought up every time Lincoln is.
• Who Is Gordon Brown?: A reference to a section of a BBC News article involving Brown commenting on current politics, which informed the reader whom the Prime Minister who had served about six years earlier was. Used plain or as a madlib to suggest journalism that treats its readers like ignorant children.
• THE THOUGHTWAVE BLOGSHEETS: Thande's term for the hypothetical future evolution of the internet, when alluding to what our descendants will think of us in the future etc. Almost always given in ALL CAPS.

stefanbl, in his infinite wisdom, has decided to play a game of the classic DOS game X-COM while naming all his soldiers after the Politibrits. Hilarity has Ensued.

Nofix, during the 18th thread, played Pokemon Fire Red Omega (a hack of the GBA remake) and named most of his critters after various Polibrits. It involved nearly twenty of them by the end. It ended just before the 18th thread closed. Notable because most of the older Polibrits were confused about every non-Pikachu monster.

A Long Time in Politics - An ongoing story by AlfieJ in which all members of the politibrits somehow seize power in a future (politically terrifying) Britain. The story takes place during fierce back-room deals, sabotage and negotiation as the unpopular Labour Government, led by the Prime Minister Tom Black (Meadow) tries to recover it's now lost majority. (WARNING: Includes horrible puns, inside jokes, character assassinations, member cameos and foul language)

Into The Frying Pan - a Politbrit version of the popular British satire, The Thick Of It by Lord Roem starring the Politibrits in various positions during the dying days of Jack Tindale's leadership of the Labour Party. Potentially one of a series. (WARNING: Includes even more horrible puns, more niche inside jokes, excessive character assassinations, infamous member cameos and really, really, really foul language)

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