Best Of

Sky reporting Ukraine agrees the peace proposal

Which one though !!!

The Washington Post say it is a 19 point plan that European leaders have proposed and that Russia is likely to reject the deal.

Starmer and the EU have played a blinder if the reports are true.

Indeed. Trouble is that somehow we need to alight on a deal that both Russia and Ukraine can swallow.

I think the focus atm isn't a deal, it's the two sides trying to steer Trump's reaction to no deal. Russia's goal is for him to blame Ukraine and withdraw US support. For Ukraine/Europe the goal is he blames Russia and maintains (or even increases) support.

Imagine what it would have been like if Ed had won in 2015 with his coalition of chaos.

Thank heaven we dodged that bullet!

Ed Miliband was rightly rejected in 2015. His government would have been a car-crash.

And it wouldn't have made the political problem of EU membership or free movement "go away" either; it would have got worse.

We’d be in a happier place if we still had all those keen young European workers rather than the Boriswave that the Tories gifted us.

All the restaurants and pubs in my locality are now filled with young Britons working there.

I'd say that was a positive thing.

I'd say our economy being 6% or so larger than it is today would have been a more positive one.

And that's why you lost.

People didn't want a nominally larger economy for no change in GDP per head with all the social and cultural change that came with it.

You liked the social and cultural change, because values, yet still think raw GDP is an effective stick to beat those who disagree with you.

You've learned nothing.

Not have you.
The polling, however, is more on my side than yours, with Brexit being almost as unpopular as Starmer.

Yes I have. And Brexit isn't being reversed.

Sorry.

As refutations go, that's feeble.

Your side of the fence were insufferable for decades, and when you finally got your way, made a complete arse of it.

Get used to being reminded of that, interminably.

Imagine what it would have been like if Ed had won in 2015 with his coalition of chaos.

Thank heaven we dodged that bullet!

Ed Miliband was rightly rejected in 2015. His government would have been a car-crash.

And it wouldn't have made the political problem of EU membership or free movement "go away" either; it would have got worse.

We’d be in a happier place if we still had all those keen young European workers rather than the Boriswave that the Tories gifted us.

All the restaurants and pubs in my locality are now filled with young Britons working there.

I'd say that was a positive thing.

I'd say our economy being 6% or so larger than it is today would have been a more positive one.

And that's why you lost.

People didn't want a nominally larger economy for no change in GDP per head with all the social and cultural change that came with it.

You liked the social and cultural change, because values, yet still think raw GDP is an effective stick to beat those who disagree with you.

You've learned nothing.

Not have you.
The polling, however, is more on my side than yours, with Brexit being almost as unpopular as Starmer.

Imagine what it would have been like if Ed had won in 2015 with his coalition of chaos.

Thank heaven we dodged that bullet!

Ed Miliband was rightly rejected in 2015. His government would have been a car-crash.

And it wouldn't have made the political problem of EU membership or free movement "go away" either; it would have got worse.

We’d be in a happier place if we still had all those keen young European workers rather than the Boriswave that the Tories gifted us.

All the restaurants and pubs in my locality are now filled with young Britons working there.

I'd say that was a positive thing.

I'd say our economy being 6% or so larger than it is today would have been a more positive one.

And that's why you lost.

People didn't want a nominally larger economy for no change in GDP per head with all the social and cultural change that came with it.

You liked the social and cultural change, because values, yet still think raw GDP is an effective stick to beat those who disagree with you.

You've learned nothing.

Much of the public didn’t like the social and cultural change that the Brexiteers delivered subsequently with the large increase in migration, which suggests that the winners learnt nothing too.

I also think this argument that people on the left actively desire higher immigration for 'cultural' reasons is generally incorrect. Speaking for myself at least and other vaguely left wing people of my acquaintance I think our attitudes are subtly different to that. The point is that we can see that immigration is a natural byproduct of an economy with a lopsided age distribution and a world where it is cheaper and easier for people to relocate, and we don't actively dislike immigration because we tend to believe that integration happens in an organic way and we are not attracted to ethnic versions of nationhood. Perhaps this is an unimportant distinction for those who oppose immigration, but I think it might be useful for them to understand our views better. To put it more succinctly, it's not that we like immigration, more that we don't mind it.

This is a good and interesting post.
A few points - and I speak only for myself here, not for everyone wary of immigration:

I'm not attracted to an ethnic version of nationhood - I know Asian Brits who are more culturally British than I am - but I am attracted to a cultural one: one where we share a common view of being British, where we speak the same language, hold the same small-l liberal, secular views, consent to be governed in the same way. In some way of course this is a fantasy - there will always be disagreement, and the freedom to disagree is healthy. But my view is that this common view has got substantially weaker over my lifetime.

I think it's interesting that you say integration happens in an organic way. My view is that it would be desirable if it did, but that it does not always appear to do so, and nor can it be forced. If it did, I think I would be largely on board with your point of view. But I don't think we can know which of us is right - at least not for another couple of generations. You're clearly an intelligent man though (and I hope I could say the same about myself) and I like it on occasions like this when we identify the differing assumptions which lead different rational people to contrasting points of view.

On economics: I take your point about the demographic drivers for it, but I worry that importing more people is at best a sticking plaster; at worst counter-productive (depending on the economic value of those people we import and their dependents). If our economic model can only work with an ever growing population, we need a new economic model.

Most successful economies benefit greatly from immigration, and cultural mixing tends to be good for innovation.

The real discussion ought (IMO) to be over the practical limits in terms of numbers.

600k in a single year clearly produced serious strains, and was well beyond what the majority of the electorate would tolerate.
But there's no real consensus around what an 'acceptable' level might be - even if you were to exclude the views of the purely xenophobic.

Most successful economies benefit greatly from skilled migration.

We ought to be able to attract the best and brightest to boost our skills, complementing our skills from education.

If you look around the world the most successful economies, per capita, are those that encourage skilled migration. For the same reason as we have universal education, because having a skilled population boosts us all.

For some reason the UK has become hooked on unproductive, low skilled, migration. To fill unproductive, minimum wage jobs or cash in hand jobs. That just devalues our education, it doesn't supplement and boost it.

Imagine what it would have been like if Ed had won in 2015 with his coalition of chaos.

Thank heaven we dodged that bullet!

Ed Miliband was rightly rejected in 2015. His government would have been a car-crash.

And it wouldn't have made the political problem of EU membership or free movement "go away" either; it would have got worse.

We’d be in a happier place if we still had all those keen young European workers rather than the Boriswave that the Tories gifted us.

All the restaurants and pubs in my locality are now filled with young Britons working there.

I'd say that was a positive thing.

I'd say our economy being 6% or so larger than it is today would have been a more positive one.

And that's why you lost.

People didn't want a nominally larger economy for no change in GDP per head with all the social and cultural change that came with it.

You liked the social and cultural change, because values, yet still think raw GDP is an effective stick to beat those who disagree with you.

You've learned nothing.

Much of the public didn’t like the social and cultural change that the Brexiteers delivered subsequently with the large increase in migration, which suggests that the winners learnt nothing too.

I also think this argument that people on the left actively desire higher immigration for 'cultural' reasons is generally incorrect. Speaking for myself at least and other vaguely left wing people of my acquaintance I think our attitudes are subtly different to that. The point is that we can see that immigration is a natural byproduct of an economy with a lopsided age distribution and a world where it is cheaper and easier for people to relocate, and we don't actively dislike immigration because we tend to believe that integration happens in an organic way and we are not attracted to ethnic versions of nationhood. Perhaps this is an unimportant distinction for those who oppose immigration, but I think it might be useful for them to understand our views better. To put it more succinctly, it's not that we like immigration, more that we don't mind it.

This is a good and interesting post.
A few points - and I speak only for myself here, not for everyone wary of immigration:

I'm not attracted to an ethnic version of nationhood - I know Asian Brits who are more culturally British than I am - but I am attracted to a cultural one: one where we share a common view of being British, where we speak the same language, hold the same small-l liberal, secular views, consent to be governed in the same way. In some way of course this is a fantasy - there will always be disagreement, and the freedom to disagree is healthy. But my view is that this common view has got substantially weaker over my lifetime.

I think it's interesting that you say integration happens in an organic way. My view is that it would be desirable if it did, but that it does not always appear to do so, and nor can it be forced. If it did, I think I would be largely on board with your point of view. But I don't think we can know which of us is right - at least not for another couple of generations. You're clearly an intelligent man though (and I hope I could say the same about myself) and I like it on occasions like this when we identify the differing assumptions which lead different rational people to contrasting points of view.

On economics: I take your point about the demographic drivers for it, but I worry that importing more people is at best a sticking plaster; at worst counter-productive (depending on the economic value of those people we import and their dependents). If our economic model can only work with an ever growing population, we need a new economic model.

Imagine what it would have been like if Ed had won in 2015 with his coalition of chaos.

Thank heaven we dodged that bullet!

Ed Miliband was rightly rejected in 2015. His government would have been a car-crash.

And it wouldn't have made the political problem of EU membership or free movement "go away" either; it would have got worse.

We’d be in a happier place if we still had all those keen young European workers rather than the Boriswave that the Tories gifted us.

All the restaurants and pubs in my locality are now filled with young Britons working there.

I'd say that was a positive thing.

I'd say our economy being 6% or so larger than it is today would have been a more positive one.

And that's why you lost.

People didn't want a nominally larger economy for no change in GDP per head with all the social and cultural change that came with it.

You liked the social and cultural change, because values, yet still think raw GDP is an effective stick to beat those who disagree with you.

You've learned nothing.

Only some of the higher GDP is down to having more workers, GDP per head would also be higher because economic integration boosts productivity. And it's not Iike Brexit reduced immigration, either!

It massively reduced EU immigration.

A political decision was then taken to ramp up global immigration, which I didn't agree with.

The choice remains ours.

Good luck running an economy without immigration, an ageing population and the Conservative party ideology of never increasing taxes.