Best Of

Get rid of Natural England, get rid of the retained EU law. Say goodbye and please don't stay in touch to their Stalinist stranglehold on British life.

Getting rid of retained EU law is a good example of why parties who promise the moon on a stick, often fail.

T. May when faced with the problem of how to separate EU and UK law decided there wasn't the bandwidth within government to separate the two (very different) legal systems so rolled EU law over into UK law. The idea was to unpick it over a period of time when it could be done at leisure. It hasn't.

In looking at the present government, they promised 'mission-led' government. The five missions, each with associated end goals, are:

1. Kick-start economic growth
   
2. Make Britain a clean energy superpower
   
3. Take back our streets
   
4. Break down barriers to opportunity
   
5. Build an NHS fit for the future.
   

Already these missions are in serious trouble as life comes at you fast. So the missions are looking questionable.

The same would apply to any future government as besides their manifesto commitments, they also are bound by the promises of previous governments as enshrined in the legislation passed. So part of time, if not most, will be trying to undo the spaghetti that is UK law with all the interrelatedness with treaties and international relations. Those with little self-control can't wait for the changes and complain when change is not instantaneous viz Brexit.

It will take many parliaments to make meaningful changes in UK law including the drag that inherited EU law on our institutions. All we can do is sit and wait for the changes we want to appear, hopefully in your lifetime. If it seems like Groundhog day, it probably is.

Rubbish. A parliament cannot bind its successor.

This comment misses the point. Parliament is sovereign and can legislate freely. However any government as it starts a ministry has a country to run. The gigantic legal infrastructure under which it is run - from law relating to murder to planning applications for Heathrow Airport - is already in place as they begin, and has been in continuous and uninterrupted organic development from parliament and courts since the reign of Henry II (r 1154-1189). Government is absolutely bound by it, unless and until it legislates to change it. Lots of changes are always urgent, as there is so much of it to sort. Political opportunism requires still further worthless bits of law making. Parliamentary time is finite, and MPs are mostly quite dim about the law. Vast amounts of legislation exists mostly to give lawyers opportunities to challenge, quite properly, any government decision. It will be fascinating to see what happens when a Reform government discovers that all this is quite hard, unless of course you abolish the separation of powers, the rule of law, and govern by dictat, as is happening across the pond.

Get rid of Natural England, get rid of the retained EU law. Say goodbye and please don't stay in touch to their Stalinist stranglehold on British life.

Getting rid of retained EU law is a good example of why parties who promise the moon on a stick, often fail.

T. May when faced with the problem of how to separate EU and UK law decided there wasn't the bandwidth within government to separate the two (very different) legal systems so rolled EU law over into UK law. The idea was to unpick it over a period of time when it could be done at leisure. It hasn't.

In looking at the present government, they promised 'mission-led' government. The five missions, each with associated end goals, are:

1. Kick-start economic growth
   
2. Make Britain a clean energy superpower
   
3. Take back our streets
   
4. Break down barriers to opportunity
   
5. Build an NHS fit for the future.
   

Already these missions are in serious trouble as life comes at you fast. So the missions are looking questionable.

The same would apply to any future government as besides their manifesto commitments, they also are bound by the promises of previous governments as enshrined in the legislation passed. So part of time, if not most, will be trying to undo the spaghetti that is UK law with all the interrelatedness with treaties and international relations. Those with little self-control can't wait for the changes and complain when change is not instantaneous viz Brexit.

It will take many parliaments to make meaningful changes in UK law including the drag that inherited EU law on our institutions. All we can do is sit and wait for the changes we want to appear, hopefully in your lifetime. If it seems like Groundhog day, it probably is.

Actually, I think there are things that could be done relatively easily, in particular around criminal justice (i.e. reclaim the streets) and planning reform. (The latter of which would go a long way to kick starting economic growth.)

Inadequately radical planning reform is a real missed opportunity from this Labour government.

My fear is that once again, no matter how ridiculous and delusional Farage's proposals are, people are going to be genuinely astonished to learn that you can apply for ILR having been here for 5 years. A lot of people who would have been quite relaxed about foreigners coming here to do unpleasant and low paid jobs for a time will not have appreciated the rights that are given as a matter of course to those who do them.

The response of the government rather gives the game away on this, stating that they are in the process (honest) of extending the period to 10 years. Whether Farage's solutions have any credibility he has succeeded once again in demonstrating that the established parties are universally seeking to pull the wool over the eyes of the British public and many will be a lot more annoyed about that than any alleged imperfections in his solution.

It always comes down to a sense of control - it really does feel like we have essentially open borders and provide housing, NHS, benefits to all who come, no questions asked. Boriswave + boats.

I dislike the notion that you have to earn a certain amount to live and work here though - low paid agricultural workers allow British people to sit in an office earning money; carers looks after our parents. Those people should have access to the NHS and other public services on a temporary basis. If they commit to the UK and demonstrate they can live within our laws, then ILR should be offered under reasonably strict criteria, not automatically.

I disagree entirely with the idea of deporting those who already have ILR. That seems like a grotesque betrayal of many good people who have built their lives here.

I can never fathom why anyone who has committed themselves to one political party, even if only for career reasons, would change straight over to another party. In that situation, I would be spending at least 6 months as an independent.

I think we underestimate the extent to which politicians are people and their relationships matter to them. A defection may be as much about a relationship someone has developed with a politician in another party that they find is surprisingly like-minded, then it is about ideology or career ambitions.

I suppose it's always worth considering that politicians only support part of their party's platform, just like the rest of us. I usually vote Tory in general elections but it's unlikely I support 50% of their manifesto, just I agree with less of the other parties'. If I support 40% of the LibDems' manifesto then I am close to switching (and in fact I normally vote Lib Dem in local elections)

You'd expect a MP to support a bit more of their party's platform, but platforms change and other parties may become better at representing their views

My apolitical Russian mother's family left Russia in 1927 not because they passionately disagreed with the Revolution but because it was increasingly mandatory to support the current government line *which frequently changed*. They moved to Danzig/Gdansk, and found it was in some ways worse, with the future Gauleiter living next door and flying the Nazi flag (they put up a Soviet flag as a way of avoiding guilt by association). My grandfather, very talented in languages, started a second legal career in Berlin. They sheltered Jewish families in Gdansk and muddled on until 1937, when the trend was clear, and then used banking connections to move to Britain, except my grandfather, who started a third civil legal career in Argentina. The idea was that the family would join him once he was established, but WW2 intervened and stopped all civilian traffic; by the time it resumed the amicable separation was permanent. Fed up with Continental fanaticism, my mother loved the apolitical British and enthusiastically adopted British nationality, speakig English without an accent very quickly. She refused to teach me Russian, on the basis that bilingual kids didn't have a solld allegiance, and we were British, full stop. She voted Tory throughout her adult life on the basis that they were blessedly free of dogma - she revised her opinion on the arrival of Thatcher, and joined Chelsea Labour Party so as to support me, though she'd turn up to branch meetings wearing her fur coat and looking distinctly out of place. She bonded with the one genuinely working-class member, who recognised her genuine friendliness, but regarded the various earnest middle-class leftists with suspicion.

Strange background! I've never disowned it, any more than I've disowned my teenage communist sympathies that reacted against my apolitical parents. We are all creatures of our environment.