NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
It doesn't necessarily follow that he doesn't have a point. I seem to recall polling evidence being published post-2016 suggesting that about a third of the entire SNP vote was among the fraction of the Scottish population that voted Leave, which is not that surprising. The same sovereigntist arguments advanced in favour of breaking one Union can very easily be deployed against the other, too.
It'd be interesting to hear if anyone has any evidence to suggest that banging on about Europe might convert No/Remain voters to backing independence at a greater rate than Yes/Leave voters are scared off it: doubtless a meaningful number of people who want Scottish independence might nonetheless regard being 8% of a heavily devolved, and still loosening, UK as being the lesser of two evils, when compared to ending up as 1% of an EU with centralising instincts.
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
Who said anything about trump cards? I'm happy for whomsoever to campaign for indy on whatever basis they wish, the SNP is very much for Scotland rejoining the EU which I agree with, and independence is the only way that looks like making that happen. If the Eurosceptics want to make their pitch, they should get going.
Of course there's a steady stream of old ex SNP guys who feel that their opinions should be listened to by the SNP without them going to the inconvenience of getting voters to back them, Neil is just the latest.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
Wow, because the people being the highest authority is the exact opposite of a dictatorship.
I claim that the political and democratic instruction (even if legally it was technically only advice) from the 2015 referendum has now been implemented. Therefore if a future parliament wants to rejoin, it would be legitimate. It wouldn't even necessarily need a referendum. Everything changed the moment the politicians finally did what we told them (not advised them) to do.
I wasn't up for a 2nd vote on different grounds. With the 1st one being such a sapping, divisive exercise I found the notion of doing it again so soon to be both unpleasant and damaging. Two bads don't make a good. They make a double bad. But it wouldn't have been anti-democratic. That argument doesn't hold water. Another vote only had a chance of happening if there was a popular will for it. The GE of December 19 tested this proposition and the answer was clear. The desire to vote again on the issue wasn't there. If it had been, with a GE outcome indicating such, it would have been perfectly democratic to have another Referendum.
I’d think twice before heating anything up in that microwave, it don’t look safe.
We had a very early remote - about 1980-ish. It worked by sonar - basically sending a very high pitched noise to the telly which the telly interpreted. It had two buttons: 'channel' - which cycled through the four preset channels (anticipating Channel 4, I suppose), and 'mute'. It didn't actually work all that well, but we knew something was working because that cat ran out of the room in panic every time you pressed a button.
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
Possibly because:
Voted to remain in EU: 1,661,191 Voted to remain in UK: 2,001,926
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
Wow, because the people being the highest authority is the exact opposite of a dictatorship.
I claim that the political and democratic instruction (even if legally it was technically only advice) from the 2015 referendum has now been implemented. Therefore if a future parliament wants to rejoin, it would be legitimate. It wouldn't even necessarily need a referendum. Everything changed the moment the politicians finally did what we told them (not advised them) to do.
I wasn't up for a 2nd vote on different grounds. With the 1st one being such a sapping, divisive exercise I found the notion of doing it again so soon to be both unpleasant and damaging. Two bads don't make a good. They make a double bad. But it wouldn't have been anti-democratic. That argument doesn't hold water. Another vote only had a chance of happening if there was a popular will for it. The GE of December 19 tested this proposition and the answer was clear. The desire to vote again on the issue wasn't there. If it had been, with a GE outcome indicating such, it would have been perfectly democratic to have another Referendum.
So it would have been "perfectly democratic" for people who wanted the UK to leave the EU to win two referendums, but for people who wanted it to remain to be able to do so by winning only one, but having two opportunities?
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
It’s even worse than useless. The Government could have appointed someone who could have tried - and I realise people have different opinions on this - to see how Brexit would help the levelling up agenda eg state aid and investment etc. Instead, they give the post to someone who (at best) will be focused on how being free of the EU helps the City.
I couldn't agree more. Have you popped a pill or something?
Hmmm. I don’t follow Matt religiously; is this the first time he’s done a Brexit-sceptic take before?
The tide is turning, even in the Telegraph (incorporating Whizzer and Chips).
This cartoon is still overly optimistic, because it suggests that the benefits are there if you look closely enough.
I'd say Matt has always been every-so-slightly-and-very-politely Brexit sceptic.
I'd also say Matt is the greatest cartoonist ever. Most cartoonists are technically skilled but have all the wit and subtlety of a student rally. Matt's subtlety and willingness to see the absurd in all sides makes him both considerably funnier and considerably more likely to be engaged with by those on the other side of an argument.
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
He's just right is all. STW's positioning is blatantly clear on these matters, and ignoring the facts of who is the aggressor and doing the escalating is not virtuous and it is not even showing balance, much as they like to pretend anyone else is some warmongering hawk.
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
Possibly because:
Voted to remain in EU: 1,661,191 Voted to remain in UK: 2,001,926
Very different turnouts, though, and so total percentages.
I’d think twice before heating anything up in that microwave, it don’t look safe.
We had a very early remote - about 1980-ish. It worked by sonar - basically sending a very high pitched noise to the telly which the telly interpreted. It had two buttons: 'channel' - which cycled through the four preset channels (anticipating Channel 4, I suppose), and 'mute'. It didn't actually work all that well, but we knew something was working because that cat ran out of the room in panic every time you pressed a button.
It’s so wrong and so sad, in every way. I wish Eagles hadn’t posted it. I wouldn’t be feeling so sorry for you all right now. 😕
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
He's just right is all. STW's positioning is blatantly clear on these matters, and ignoring the facts of who is the aggressor and doing the escalating is not virtuous and it is not even showing balance, much as they like to pretend anyone else is some warmongering hawk.
As co-founder and President of The Start The War Coalition I'm glad some on the left are calling out the traitorous Stop The War mob.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
It’s even worse than useless. The Government could have appointed someone who could have tried - and I realise people have different opinions on this - to see how Brexit would help the levelling up agenda eg state aid and investment etc. Instead, they give the post to someone who (at best) will be focused on how being free of the EU helps the City.
I couldn't agree more. Have you popped a pill or something?
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
Not in terms of access to the single market, it was low paid workers in the Redwall and pensioners who won it for leave to reduce unskilled immigration and regain sovereignty, most of the City, especially the established firms, voted Remain.
Please see my earlier post of sovereignty. Please provide evidence of your certainty of your assertions.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
It’s even worse than useless. The Government could have appointed someone who could have tried - and I realise people have different opinions on this - to see how Brexit would help the levelling up agenda eg state aid and investment etc. Instead, they give the post to someone who (at best) will be focused on how being free of the EU helps the City.
That is a good post @MrEd . I assume (possibly incorrectly) you are a leaver so that is very honest of you. I'm generally not a fan of state aid as it distorts the market and Governments are pretty useless at it, but as you say if you have a levelling up agenda then presumably that is the sort of thing you are thinking of, so why give the job to someone for whom that is not their speciality. I hadn't thought of any of that.
Thank you @kjh. Yes, I’m a leaver but I certainly (despite being an ex-banker) support it so the bankers could be the main beneficiaries. I know what you mean re state aid but someone with imagination and flair could have come up with some innovative and very practical ways that Brexit could be used to help poorer areas. I do believe it’s possible but certainly not with JRM in place. He just won’t care. It’s such a stupid appointment by BJ on multiple levels.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
Wow, because the people being the highest authority is the exact opposite of a dictatorship.
I claim that the political and democratic instruction (even if legally it was technically only advice) from the 2015 referendum has now been implemented. Therefore if a future parliament wants to rejoin, it would be legitimate. It wouldn't even necessarily need a referendum. Everything changed the moment the politicians finally did what we told them (not advised them) to do.
I wasn't up for a 2nd vote on different grounds. With the 1st one being such a sapping, divisive exercise I found the notion of doing it again so soon to be both unpleasant and damaging. Two bads don't make a good. They make a double bad. But it wouldn't have been anti-democratic. That argument doesn't hold water. Another vote only had a chance of happening if there was a popular will for it. The GE of December 19 tested this proposition and the answer was clear. The desire to vote again on the issue wasn't there. If it had been, with a GE outcome indicating such, it would have been perfectly democratic to have another Referendum.
So it would have been "perfectly democratic" for people who wanted the UK to leave the EU to win two referendums, but for people who wanted it to remain to be able to do so by winning only one, but having two opportunities?
Yes. You may not be au fait with current events, but surely it is clear even to you that the architects of brexit are a pair of psychopathic liars, deploying exactly the same tactics they secured brexit with against each other to see whether the chief liar can be dislodged from Downing street? If we had had another referendum they might not have succeeded twice.
What is your beef anyway? I can just about understand being stupid enough to want brexit in 2016, but thinking it was a good idea in 2022...
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
Possibly because:
Voted to remain in EU: 1,661,191 Voted to remain in UK: 2,001,926
Very different turnouts, though, and so total percentages.
Perhaps because of very different saliences?
People care a lot more about one than the other.
If EU membership was so important to the SNP, why did they spend less campaigning to Remain than they did on a single by-election?
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
Wow, because the people being the highest authority is the exact opposite of a dictatorship.
I claim that the political and democratic instruction (even if legally it was technically only advice) from the 2015 referendum has now been implemented. Therefore if a future parliament wants to rejoin, it would be legitimate. It wouldn't even necessarily need a referendum. Everything changed the moment the politicians finally did what we told them (not advised them) to do.
I wasn't up for a 2nd vote on different grounds. With the 1st one being such a sapping, divisive exercise I found the notion of doing it again so soon to be both unpleasant and damaging. Two bads don't make a good. They make a double bad. But it wouldn't have been anti-democratic. That argument doesn't hold water. Another vote only had a chance of happening if there was a popular will for it. The GE of December 19 tested this proposition and the answer was clear. The desire to vote again on the issue wasn't there. If it had been, with a GE outcome indicating such, it would have been perfectly democratic to have another Referendum.
So it would have been "perfectly democratic" for people who wanted the UK to leave the EU to win two referendums, but for people who wanted it to remain to be able to do so by winning only one, but having two opportunities?
Yes.
OK, I'll leave it there then, since there's obviously no convincing you that basic fairness has to underpin democracy.
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
He's just right is all. STW's positioning is blatantly clear on these matters, and ignoring the facts of who is the aggressor and doing the escalating is not virtuous and it is not even showing balance, much as they like to pretend anyone else is some warmongering hawk.
I believe that Starmer has also suggested that he wants to see Conservative cuts to the strength of the army reversed. Actually outflanking the Tories from the right on defence. It's a good move.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
You don't have to be a Russian sympathiser to recognise that Truss is way out of her depth. The Tories had other, more serious-minded candidates for Foreign Secretary. They didn't make them.
You don't need to be a Labour sympathiser to realised the Tories also had more serious-minded candidates for PM.
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
Possibly because:
Voted to remain in EU: 1,661,191 Voted to remain in UK: 2,001,926
The EU thing is, over time, losing its benefits to the Yes side. The longer UK is out of EU the greater the hurdle for Scotland to leave UK and rejoin the EU. They really needed IndyRef2 immediately after Brexit while the shock was still palpable.
Keir's having a good week. He really seems to have discovered the confidence he needed to capitalise on the chaos in government.
Boris hoped the Ukraine crisis would give him and his government a way of looking statesmanlike and shut up the critics. Instead it's showing the opposition front bench at their best and will surely make some look up and wonder what if.
EDIT: I wonder if he's also been going on a personal journey. The Keir Starmer of today looks and sounds very different from the Keir Starmer of a couple of years ago. Ideologically more than presentationally.
The SNP pension policy attracting derision from Ireland:
Newton Emerson: No, the UK will not pay a united Ireland’s pensions
‘Republicans ask us to wade through blood, but will not ask us to open our wallets.’
If the DUP was not taking up everyone’s time with its Brexit drama, unionists in Northern Ireland could be enjoying the implosion of the SNP – the second-biggest threat to the union after themselves.
The implosion is intellectual, not electoral. Nicola Sturgeon’s party remains dominant in Scottish politics but that only highlights it has run out of ideas to advance independence, its central goal. Matters have come to a head with a bizarre reversal of pensions policy.
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
Wow, because the people being the highest authority is the exact opposite of a dictatorship.
I claim that the political and democratic instruction (even if legally it was technically only advice) from the 2015 referendum has now been implemented. Therefore if a future parliament wants to rejoin, it would be legitimate. It wouldn't even necessarily need a referendum. Everything changed the moment the politicians finally did what we told them (not advised them) to do.
I wasn't up for a 2nd vote on different grounds. With the 1st one being such a sapping, divisive exercise I found the notion of doing it again so soon to be both unpleasant and damaging. Two bads don't make a good. They make a double bad. But it wouldn't have been anti-democratic. That argument doesn't hold water. Another vote only had a chance of happening if there was a popular will for it. The GE of December 19 tested this proposition and the answer was clear. The desire to vote again on the issue wasn't there. If it had been, with a GE outcome indicating such, it would have been perfectly democratic to have another Referendum.
So it would have been "perfectly democratic" for people who wanted the UK to leave the EU to win two referendums, but for people who wanted it to remain to be able to do so by winning only one, but having two opportunities?
I find that a rather trite formulation of the issue. Also it doesn't follow. This is fundamentally about elections. If a party wins one with 'hold an in/out referendum on EU membership' as a firm commitment they should hold that referendum. Like Cameron did. By the same token if Labour had won GE19 on a ticket of holding another one, another one should have been held. And so on and so forth. There's no big democratic problem with this.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
It’s even worse than useless. The Government could have appointed someone who could have tried - and I realise people have different opinions on this - to see how Brexit would help the levelling up agenda eg state aid and investment etc. Instead, they give the post to someone who (at best) will be focused on how being free of the EU helps the City.
I couldn't agree more. Have you popped a pill or something?
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
Possibly because:
Voted to remain in EU: 1,661,191 Voted to remain in UK: 2,001,926
The EU thing is, over time, losing its benefits to the Yes side. The longer UK is out of EU the greater the hurdle for Scotland to leave UK and rejoin the EU. They really needed IndyRef2 immediately after Brexit while the shock was still palpable.
I think most Scots also recognise the hypocrisy of it as an argument. Pretty much every argument against leaving the EU applies to Scottish Independence and some.
Keir's having a good week. He really seems to have discovered the confidence he needed to capitalise on the chaos in government.
Boris hoped the Ukraine crisis would give him and his government a way of looking statesmanlike and shut up the critics. Instead it's showing the opposition front bench at their best and will surely make some look up and wonder what if.
EDIT: I wonder if he's also been going on a personal journey. The Keir Starmer of today looks and sounds very different from the Keir Starmer of a couple of years ago. Ideologically more than presentationally.
In an “international crisis” it’s very difficult for the Opposition to gain any traction. Labour have consistently been doing well. What should have been a “win” for the government is at best a draw.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
Not in terms of access to the single market, it was low paid workers in the Redwall and pensioners who won it for leave to reduce unskilled immigration and regain sovereignty, most of the City, especially the established firms, voted Remain.
Please see my earlier post of sovereignty. Please provide evidence of your certainty of your assertions.
UK Sovereignty is kept in ancient ceremonial trunk (once used by King Alfred for bed linens) that sits directly below the speakers chair in a chamber beneath the House of Commons. When bits of it were brought back from Brussels in a helicopter after Brexit was confirmed, it was added to the rest of the sovereignty held in the trunk. Sure, when bits of it was held in Brussels it gave us frictionless trade with EU, same passports freedom of movement and other stuff, many of us feel better, we feel much more free of diktat now we know sovereignty is whole again in the box under the commons. Nearly whole, we obviously still got bits of it still held by NATO, and other unions and bodies. And bits of it was “shaved off” for trade deals, using a ceremonial knife thing, one of the biggest shavers in UK political history is actually current Foreign Secretary Liz Truss - before she moved on to bigger things like fronting the Stop The War coalition to achieve world peace.
It’s about time remainers stopped worrying about the vote and love the freedoms.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
Wow, because the people being the highest authority is the exact opposite of a dictatorship.
I claim that the political and democratic instruction (even if legally it was technically only advice) from the 2015 referendum has now been implemented. Therefore if a future parliament wants to rejoin, it would be legitimate. It wouldn't even necessarily need a referendum. Everything changed the moment the politicians finally did what we told them (not advised them) to do.
I wasn't up for a 2nd vote on different grounds. With the 1st one being such a sapping, divisive exercise I found the notion of doing it again so soon to be both unpleasant and damaging. Two bads don't make a good. They make a double bad. But it wouldn't have been anti-democratic. That argument doesn't hold water. Another vote only had a chance of happening if there was a popular will for it. The GE of December 19 tested this proposition and the answer was clear. The desire to vote again on the issue wasn't there. If it had been, with a GE outcome indicating such, it would have been perfectly democratic to have another Referendum.
So it would have been "perfectly democratic" for people who wanted the UK to leave the EU to win two referendums, but for people who wanted it to remain to be able to do so by winning only one, but having two opportunities?
Yes.
OK, I'll leave it there then, since there's obviously no convincing you that basic fairness has to underpin democracy.
You are only equipped to understand life in terms of football matches, and it doesn't really work that way. Basic fairness includes the right not to be deceived for the personal gain of another, and the right to change one's mind.
you are still defending this shit in 2022. The expression useful idiot is overused, but really...
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
Wow, because the people being the highest authority is the exact opposite of a dictatorship.
I claim that the political and democratic instruction (even if legally it was technically only advice) from the 2015 referendum has now been implemented. Therefore if a future parliament wants to rejoin, it would be legitimate. It wouldn't even necessarily need a referendum. Everything changed the moment the politicians finally did what we told them (not advised them) to do.
I wasn't up for a 2nd vote on different grounds. With the 1st one being such a sapping, divisive exercise I found the notion of doing it again so soon to be both unpleasant and damaging. Two bads don't make a good. They make a double bad. But it wouldn't have been anti-democratic. That argument doesn't hold water. Another vote only had a chance of happening if there was a popular will for it. The GE of December 19 tested this proposition and the answer was clear. The desire to vote again on the issue wasn't there. If it had been, with a GE outcome indicating such, it would have been perfectly democratic to have another Referendum.
So it would have been "perfectly democratic" for people who wanted the UK to leave the EU to win two referendums, but for people who wanted it to remain to be able to do so by winning only one, but having two opportunities?
I find that a rather trite formulation of the issue. Also it doesn't follow. This is fundamentally about elections. If a party wins one with 'hold an in/out referendum on EU membership' as a firm commitment they should hold that referendum. Like Cameron did. By the same token if Labour had won GE19 on a ticket of holding another one, another one should have been held. And so on and so forth. There's no big democratic problem with this.
"I find that a rather trite formulation of the issue." translates as "I don't have an answer to it", doesn't it?
I disagree that it's fundamentally about elections. It's fundamentally about the politicians not asking the people questions if they aren't prepared to implement the "wrong" answer.
I never was a big Brexit fan, and the Brexit we have is clearly not optimal. But it's still better than the politicians rejecting the referendum result would have been.
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
Possibly because:
Voted to remain in EU: 1,661,191 Voted to remain in UK: 2,001,926
The EU thing is, over time, losing its benefits to the Yes side. The longer UK is out of EU the greater the hurdle for Scotland to leave UK and rejoin the EU. They really needed IndyRef2 immediately after Brexit while the shock was still palpable.
Yet the polling doesn't seem markedly different yet.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
You don't have to be a Russian sympathiser to recognise that Truss is way out of her depth. The Tories had other, more serious-minded candidates for Foreign Secretary. They didn't make them.
I've just wiki-ed her. Why do you say she is not "serious minded"? The biog reads like just about every politician in the HoC.
Truss is more concerned with image than substance. I agree that her CV looks pretty typical, but it doesn't provide evidence of her suitability for the Foreign Office. I suspect her knowledge of history and foreign affairs is light. I'm even handed - I thought Starmer made an error in appointing Lisa Nandy as Shadow FS; she is more suited to her current post, shadowing Gove.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
Not in terms of access to the single market, it was low paid workers in the Redwall and pensioners who won it for leave to reduce unskilled immigration and regain sovereignty, most of the City, especially the established firms, voted Remain.
Please see my earlier post of sovereignty. Please provide evidence of your certainty of your assertions.
UK Sovereignty is kept in ancient ceremonial trunk (once used by King Alfred for bed linens) that sits directly below the speakers chair in a chamber beneath the House of Commons. When bits of it were brought back from Brussels in a helicopter after Brexit was confirmed, it was added to the rest of the sovereignty held in the trunk. Sure, when bits of it was held in Brussels it gave us frictionless trade with EU, same passports freedom of movement and other stuff, many of us feel better, we feel much more free of diktat now we know sovereignty is whole again in the box under the commons. Nearly whole, we obviously still got bits of it still held by NATO, and other unions and bodies. And bits of it was “shaved off” for trade deals, using a ceremonial knife thing, one of the biggest shavers in UK political history is actually current Foreign Secretary Liz Truss - before she moved on to bigger things like fronting the Stop The War coalition to achieve world peace.
It’s about time remainers stopped worrying about the vote and love the freedoms.
Of course I'm pissed off! MY kind of Brexit was 'Full on nuclear strike against France'! And have we done that!? Have we heck! I've been betrayed! Betrayed I tell you.....
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
Possibly because:
Voted to remain in EU: 1,661,191 Voted to remain in UK: 2,001,926
The EU thing is, over time, losing its benefits to the Yes side. The longer UK is out of EU the greater the hurdle for Scotland to leave UK and rejoin the EU. They really needed IndyRef2 immediately after Brexit while the shock was still palpable.
Yet the polling doesn't seem markedly different yet.
Perhaps the folk that have predicted 47 of the last 0 SNP demises are about to come good?
Keir's having a good week. He really seems to have discovered the confidence he needed to capitalise on the chaos in government.
Boris hoped the Ukraine crisis would give him and his government a way of looking statesmanlike and shut up the critics. Instead it's showing the opposition front bench at their best and will surely make some look up and wonder what if.
I for one am more than ready to listen to Labour. Johnson's manifest uselessness, and the pathetic inability of his party to get rid of him, is obviously relevant, but I'm also thoroughly fed up of the Government's constant featherbedding of wealthy asset holders at the expense of the rest of the population. It goes beyond prioritising the interest of the core vote: it's so obvious that it doesn't care about anyone else. Its entire strategy for trying to keep the lower income fraction of its voter coalition onboard is to repeat the same stale lines about Brexit over and over and over again, and hope that they don't notice that they keep getting poorer.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm now looking for Labour to propose a realistic platform for dealing with an era of higher public spending (which is unavoidable: the British population gets older and more clapped out with every passing year) without resorting to the Conservative formula of bleeding as much of the cost as possible from ordinary people's wages.
I might even be moved to go out and vote at the next election, despite the fact that the local Tory is so well entrenched that he survived the 1997 landslide with room to spare, and is therefore effectively immovable. I think it's just a matter now of trying to judge whether the reds or the yellows have the least remote chance of causing an upset.
That’s because it’s still confusing at this stage. Nothing has really changed - unless we now grasp our freedom and divulge from the European social model, then nothing has really changed. Just like the truth someone pointed out earlier today, we were not in the ERM, we had the freedom not to shadow it, but we chose to and it gave us black Wednesday.
Brexit isn’t remotely over until freedoms are fundamentally used. Otherwise, just like back in early 90s, we are merely shadowing the EU and not exploiting freedoms.
That’s because it’s still confusing at this stage. Nothing has really changed - unless we now grasp our freedom and divulge from the European social model, then nothing has really changed. Just like the truth someone pointed out earlier today, we were not in the ERM, we had the freedom not to shadow it, but we chose to and it gave us black Wednesday.
Brexit isn’t remotely over until freedoms are fundamentally used. Otherwise, just like back in early 90s, we are merely shadowing the EU and not exploiting freedoms.
What particular freedom that we didn't have under the EU would you like to see used?
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
You don't have to be a Russian sympathiser to recognise that Truss is way out of her depth. The Tories had other, more serious-minded candidates for Foreign Secretary. They didn't make them.
I've just wiki-ed her. Why do you say she is not "serious minded"? The biog reads like just about every politician in the HoC.
Truss is more concerned with image than substance.
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
Possibly because:
Voted to remain in EU: 1,661,191 Voted to remain in UK: 2,001,926
The EU thing is, over time, losing its benefits to the Yes side. The longer UK is out of EU the greater the hurdle for Scotland to leave UK and rejoin the EU. They really needed IndyRef2 immediately after Brexit while the shock was still palpable.
Yet the polling doesn't seem markedly different yet.
Perhaps the folk that have predicted 47 of the last 0 SNP demises are about to come good?
That’s because it’s still confusing at this stage. Nothing has really changed - unless we now grasp our freedom and divulge from the European social model, then nothing has really changed. Just like the truth someone pointed out earlier today, we were not in the ERM, we had the freedom not to shadow it, but we chose to and it gave us black Wednesday.
Brexit isn’t remotely over until freedoms are fundamentally used. Otherwise, just like back in early 90s, we are merely shadowing the EU and not exploiting freedoms.
And softly in the darkness, in a dozen chemical plants around the world, the fuel rods gently dissolve in the spirits of nitre.
Old, dark gods, freed from each other, to be borne at last, in fearful symmetry.
That’s because it’s still confusing at this stage. Nothing has really changed - unless we now grasp our freedom and divulge from the European social model, then nothing has really changed. Just like the truth someone pointed out earlier today, we were not in the ERM, we had the freedom not to shadow it, but we chose to and it gave us black Wednesday.
Brexit isn’t remotely over until freedoms are fundamentally used. Otherwise, just like back in early 90s, we are merely shadowing the EU and not exploiting freedoms.
And softly in the darkness, in a dozen chemical plants around the world, the fuel rods gently dissolve in the spirits of nitre.
Old, dark gods, freed from each other, to be borne at last, in fearful symmetry.
Hate to be picky but borne means carried, born means born.
And spirits of nitre? Confusing the 1 big 1 with the 1 littel 1?
Mandelson: "New Labour certainly had its arguments in govt. But they were arguments of real substance & they were conducted between real adults & they were resolved by adults
"You don't really have that sense now about a govt that seems to be just ricocheting around with a🛒 PM"
I think it’s a dogs dinner probably designed by committee at considerable expense.
We need “Red White and Blue” - tick We need the old BR logo - tick We need to incorporate the Union flag - tick
Good logos are like ladies jewellery - once you’ve finished, take one piece off.
will ScotRail be using the new logo?
Great British Rail will operate the infrastructure including major stations such as Glasgow Central and Edinburgh Waverley, the trains in Scotland will be operated by the “nationalised” (sic)* ScotRail Trains.
* The Scottish Government will transfer operation from Abiello (owned by the Dutch government) to a consortium of private contractors….
That’s because it’s still confusing at this stage. Nothing has really changed - unless we now grasp our freedom and divulge from the European social model, then nothing has really changed. Just like the truth someone pointed out earlier today, we were not in the ERM, we had the freedom not to shadow it, but we chose to and it gave us black Wednesday.
Brexit isn’t remotely over until freedoms are fundamentally used. Otherwise, just like back in early 90s, we are merely shadowing the EU and not exploiting freedoms.
What particular freedom that we didn't have under the EU would you like to see used?
Wild and dangerous ones would be good. Scrap speed limits on motorways like the Germans. Actually no not that one. Having headphones you can turn up as loud as you like would be a good start in exploiting our Freedoms.
The serious bit is Ben, I know you as serious poster so will do a bit of serious, my point here is Brexit isn’t over, not done dusted and in the past - except in very glib and worthless answers we get when pointing this out - because it was all about why, and achieving why. Are you joining me on that same page?
This is the real question right now: based on what was said and promised in the 2016 campaign, do the winners, the brexiteers, have any legitimacy in moving the UK away from the European Social Model, without winning a second referendum for the legitimacy to do that? 🤔
That’s because it’s still confusing at this stage. Nothing has really changed - unless we now grasp our freedom and divulge from the European social model, then nothing has really changed. Just like the truth someone pointed out earlier today, we were not in the ERM, we had the freedom not to shadow it, but we chose to and it gave us black Wednesday.
Brexit isn’t remotely over until freedoms are fundamentally used. Otherwise, just like back in early 90s, we are merely shadowing the EU and not exploiting freedoms.
What particular freedom that we didn't have under the EU would you like to see used?
Wild and dangerous ones would be good. Scrap speed limits on motorways like the Germans. Actually no not that one. Having headphones you can turn up as loud as you like would be a good start in exploiting our Freedoms.
The serious bit is Ben, I know you as serious poster so will do a bit of serious, my point here is Brexit isn’t over, not done dusted and in the past - except in very glib and worthless answers we get when pointing this out - because it was all about why, and achieving why. Are you joining me on that same page?
This is the real question right now: based on what was said and promised in the 2016 campaign, do the winners, the brexiteers, have any legitimacy in moving the UK away from the European Social Model, without winning a second referendum for the legitimacy to do that? 🤔
The past is not dead, it's not even past
Brexit was 6 years ago for "Why are you still talking about it" purposes, 1 year for the FLSOJ Got It Done purposes, and in reality not done at all with the NI situation, and other stuff.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
I doubt that's the motive. When I heard about Truss and in the same clip that that Johnson was traveling to Eastern Europe to sort out 'the most serious global crisis for decades' I couldn't take it seriously....
.......And neither will their hosts. Johnson and by association Truss are figures of fun. Even John Major thought it worth mentioning Their reputations for competence and honesty are TRASHED and their hosts will be as informed as everyone here
I'm sure the the vast majority of the country would prefer they just walked away and left it to the adult in the room if they can find one.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
Not in terms of access to the single market, it was low paid workers in the Redwall and pensioners who won it for leave to reduce unskilled immigration and regain sovereignty, most of the City, especially the established firms, voted Remain.
Please see my earlier post of sovereignty. Please provide evidence of your certainty of your assertions.
UK Sovereignty is kept in ancient ceremonial trunk (once used by King Alfred for bed linens) that sits directly below the speakers chair in a chamber beneath the House of Commons. When bits of it were brought back from Brussels in a helicopter after Brexit was confirmed, it was added to the rest of the sovereignty held in the trunk. Sure, when bits of it was held in Brussels it gave us frictionless trade with EU, same passports freedom of movement and other stuff, many of us feel better, we feel much more free of diktat now we know sovereignty is whole again in the box under the commons. Nearly whole, we obviously still got bits of it still held by NATO, and other unions and bodies. And bits of it was “shaved off” for trade deals, using a ceremonial knife thing, one of the biggest shavers in UK political history is actually current Foreign Secretary Liz Truss - before she moved on to bigger things like fronting the Stop The War coalition to achieve world peace.
It’s about time remainers stopped worrying about the vote and love the freedoms.
Heart of the matter, I think. There are no *tangible* benefits of Brexit, it's all in the mind. Which is not to say not real. People say this & that about why they voted R or L but it boiled down to the presence or absence of a specific feeling. A deeply personal one. Yes, we were a sovereign nation inside the EU, this is a fact, but millions of people as they went about their daily lives nevertheless felt oppressed by 'Brussels', they felt 'we' were being bossed around by 'them' (foreigners), and these people voted to leave. Those of us who didn't have that feeling voted to remain.
- Shall we go to Italy or Tunisia on holiday? - Let's go to Tunisia. - Are you sure? - Yes, you did say it was my decision. - Are you sure you're sure? The hotels don't have good reviews. - Yes, let's go; it will be fine.
They arrive:
- They don't have a Corby trouser press in the room, just like the review said... - We haven't come on holiday to press your trousers. It's fine. - They served orange juice *out of a carton*! I told you it was a bad idea to come here but you wouldn't listen! - Will you stop complaining for once and relax?! - Why are you so angry? You've got what you want.
I see that today is going to be the day that Major's adultery is going to be used as an excuse for not listening to or thinking about any of the points he makes.
Since none us is perfect - or, if you prefer, without sin - we can never criticise anyone else at all, let alone Boris. Which is very convenient for him.
A bit of a bummer in a democracy, mind you. Oh well.
His adultery has nothing to do with it. Major’s attempt to annul democracy by cancelling the Brexit referendum and rerunning it, because he “didn’t like the result” very much DOES. He’s repulsive. They all are. All the 2nd voters. And they shall not be allowed to forget it, until they die, and then we shall remind their children, and their grandchildren
It was @Aslan and @Taz who specifically referenced his adultery. Not Brexit. You did that.
Still, let's ignore opinions because of who gives them eh. Always a good idea that. Just as you yourself pointed out over that BNP chap and grooming gangs. Or did you say the opposite? It's hard to keep up sometimes.
I have no issue at all with what he said about the current state of affairs and would agree with the vast majority of it. What I was contending was him being held up as some sort of moral guardian, a paragon of virtue, when he was an adulterer who had been rumbled but the wrong person was named as correspondant and his govt was brought down by sleaze. Although none of the sleaze was his it happened under his watch.
If someone is saying we should listen to him because he’s a saint then that needs calling out.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
They would have been carrying eth suitcases in for sure , up to their necks in it.
Ha Ha 😄 you saying do we know it was empty suitcases going back out?
The coppers would have hoovered up the contents left
“Just popping down the offy.” 🙂
There went the Downing Street silver. Incriminating papers destined for motorway concrete.
Are government still allowed to select what paintings they want from the national archives, to decorate their offices?
I hadn't realised how precise the cosplay was. Is there some kind of instruction manual?
It is, I don’t know if we can say creepy as it would question someone’s mental health, but it is silly, because if you are trying to build a certain image like that you have to do it far more subtly? Almost to the point you deny what you are doing, though honoured by the comparison. Which Truss can’t do now, deny what she has been doing, because it has just not been subtle enough.
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
He's just right is all. STW's positioning is blatantly clear on these matters, and ignoring the facts of who is the aggressor and doing the escalating is not virtuous and it is not even showing balance, much as they like to pretend anyone else is some warmongering hawk.
I believe that Starmer has also suggested that he wants to see Conservative cuts to the strength of the army reversed. Actually outflanking the Tories from the right on defence. It's a good move.
Some of us were advocating that Jeremy Corbyn should attack the Conservatives on defence.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
David Cameron, addressing the British people, in late 2015
'Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum... You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.'
'So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.'
Now, i know this makes a lot of people on this site deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
They need to deal with it, own it, confess, say sorry, and we all move on
And it has been.
Now about those Brexit promises which were made?
Because I'm guessing - a wild guess here - that those unfulfilled promises, the broken promises and the admission that they don't know what to do now is making some people feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
Not remotely. I agree with the noble ex-PBer @SeanT who wrote in the Spectator in October 2016 that Brexit would be like having a baby. Painful, bloody, unpleasant… and explicitly dismissed the airy Leaver promises:
“Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?”
How right he was. We desperately need him back. A much missed voice of calm sanity and moral probity
And now I must go and eat lagoon crabs. Later
Spot on, Leon. Sean T was not only witty and cultured, he was also highly entertaining.
I think we still miss him. He is fondly remembered, and still mentioned in dispatches.
I heard that SeanT went to Sri Lanka and got crabs, but I can't verify this.
Coming late to 20 years of PB is like first following a old soap. But I have worked a lot of it out now. Leon used to post as SeanT? So a reference to SeanT is a reference to Leon? Pronounced Shawn Tea? But that’s a stupid name, using Leon works much better.
I also like how people who haven’t posted for ages pop back in, just like soaps when they bring old legendary characters back. The evening with JackW was very good as could feel everyone overjoyed to have him in the room - but I didn’t understand at all what Jack was saying, it was like an episode of Clangers with the soup dragon in it.
You may have also worked out that there were a lot of other aliases between SeanT and Leon
No. I hadn’t realised that. And I thought I was making progress 😟
Not to mess with your head but there may even have been aliases after Leon. For sure there definitely WILL be aliases after Leon.
I don’t want to be too cheeky, but I guess they all stand out a mile though.
Some of them even have prolonged conversations with other ones of his. Some of them even show an implausible level of interest in him and his posting oeuvre, the way you are now. All of them have exactly the same posting style, bar the most superficial differences like (inconsistent) use of smilies. All part of PB's rich tapestry.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
Not in terms of access to the single market, it was low paid workers in the Redwall and pensioners who won it for leave to reduce unskilled immigration and regain sovereignty, most of the City, especially the established firms, voted Remain.
Please see my earlier post of sovereignty. Please provide evidence of your certainty of your assertions.
UK Sovereignty is kept in ancient ceremonial trunk (once used by King Alfred for bed linens) that sits directly below the speakers chair in a chamber beneath the House of Commons. When bits of it were brought back from Brussels in a helicopter after Brexit was confirmed, it was added to the rest of the sovereignty held in the trunk. Sure, when bits of it was held in Brussels it gave us frictionless trade with EU, same passports freedom of movement and other stuff, many of us feel better, we feel much more free of diktat now we know sovereignty is whole again in the box under the commons. Nearly whole, we obviously still got bits of it still held by NATO, and other unions and bodies. And bits of it was “shaved off” for trade deals, using a ceremonial knife thing, one of the biggest shavers in UK political history is actually current Foreign Secretary Liz Truss - before she moved on to bigger things like fronting the Stop The War coalition to achieve world peace.
It’s about time remainers stopped worrying about the vote and love the freedoms.
Heart of the matter, I think. There are no *tangible* benefits of Brexit, it's all in the mind. Which is not to say not real. People say this & that about why they voted R or L but it boiled down to the presence or absence of a specific feeling. A deeply personal one. Yes, we were a sovereign nation inside the EU, this is a fact, but millions of people as they went about their daily lives nevertheless felt oppressed by 'Brussels', they felt 'we' were being bossed around by 'them' (foreigners), and these people voted to leave. Those of us who didn't have that feeling voted to remain.
As my mother robustly put it at the time, it's all very well voting not to be bossed around by awful little men in Brussels but you're just swapping them for equally awful little men in Whitehall.
The counter to that was yebbut we can get our own politicians out, which you have to laugh about given the FLSOJ's continued tenure in no 10.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
You don't have to be a Russian sympathiser to recognise that Truss is way out of her depth. The Tories had other, more serious-minded candidates for Foreign Secretary. They didn't make them.
I've just wiki-ed her. Why do you say she is not "serious minded"? The biog reads like just about every politician in the HoC.
Truss is more concerned with image than substance.
Why do you say that?
Are you suspecting sexism in those who don't rate Truss?
That’s because it’s still confusing at this stage. Nothing has really changed - unless we now grasp our freedom and divulge from the European social model, then nothing has really changed. Just like the truth someone pointed out earlier today, we were not in the ERM, we had the freedom not to shadow it, but we chose to and it gave us black Wednesday.
Brexit isn’t remotely over until freedoms are fundamentally used. Otherwise, just like back in early 90s, we are merely shadowing the EU and not exploiting freedoms.
And softly in the darkness, in a dozen chemical plants around the world, the fuel rods gently dissolve in the spirits of nitre.
Old, dark gods, freed from each other, to be borne at last, in fearful symmetry.
Even before hitting ‘see previous posts’ above I knew it was my post you were replying to.
Is the oldest part of the next Coronation, the thing that holds the anointing ointment, or the recipe for the ointment? Or perhaps Prince Charles himself 🤭
Keir Starmer has launched an outspoken attack on the Stop the War coalition, in which Jeremy Corbyn is a leading figure, effectively accusing the campaign group of siding with Russia against Nato.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
He's just right is all. STW's positioning is blatantly clear on these matters, and ignoring the facts of who is the aggressor and doing the escalating is not virtuous and it is not even showing balance, much as they like to pretend anyone else is some warmongering hawk.
I believe that Starmer has also suggested that he wants to see Conservative cuts to the strength of the army reversed. Actually outflanking the Tories from the right on defence. It's a good move.
Some of us were advocating that Jeremy Corbyn should attack the Conservatives on defence.
Would've been hopelessly unconvincing, quite obvious his heart wasn't in it.
- Shall we go to Italy or Tunisia on holiday? - Let's go to Tunisia. - Are you sure? - Yes, you did say it was my decision. - Are you sure you're sure? The hotels don't have good reviews. - Yes, let's go; it will be fine.
They arrive:
- They don't have a Corby trouser press in the room, just like the review said... - We haven't come on holiday to press your trousers. It's fine. - They served orange juice *out of a carton*! I told you it was a bad idea to come here but you wouldn't listen! - Will you stop complaining for once and relax?! - Why are you so angry? You've got what you want.
My goodness, you're like that character in Harry Enfield getting angry over imagined sins you've just conjured up in your head.
Remainers constantly reaffirming to each other how awfully terrible Brexiters are is just laughable. Criticize latest developments sure, but the constant personal animosity is just sad. It's like a lonely singleton in her 50s banging on about the husband that left her a decade ago.
That’s because it’s still confusing at this stage. Nothing has really changed - unless we now grasp our freedom and divulge from the European social model, then nothing has really changed. Just like the truth someone pointed out earlier today, we were not in the ERM, we had the freedom not to shadow it, but we chose to and it gave us black Wednesday.
Brexit isn’t remotely over until freedoms are fundamentally used. Otherwise, just like back in early 90s, we are merely shadowing the EU and not exploiting freedoms.
And softly in the darkness, in a dozen chemical plants around the world, the fuel rods gently dissolve in the spirits of nitre.
Old, dark gods, freed from each other, to be borne at last, in fearful symmetry.
Hate to be picky but borne means carried, born means born.
And spirits of nitre? Confusing the 1 big 1 with the 1 littel 1?
So the crabs at Ministry of Crab are great and all that, and cost roughly a month’s salary for many Sri Lankans, but no one mentioned the incredible PRAWNS, the size of Novaya Zemlya, or the mangrove oysters that are served after being deep chilled for 6 hours then drenched with a mix of hot chili sauce, lime juice, and aged soy, in a shot glass
Keir's having a good week. He really seems to have discovered the confidence he needed to capitalise on the chaos in government.
Boris hoped the Ukraine crisis would give him and his government a way of looking statesmanlike and shut up the critics. Instead it's showing the opposition front bench at their best and will surely make some look up and wonder what if.
I for one am more than ready to listen to Labour. Johnson's manifest uselessness, and the pathetic inability of his party to get rid of him, is obviously relevant, but I'm also thoroughly fed up of the Government's constant featherbedding of wealthy asset holders at the expense of the rest of the population. It goes beyond prioritising the interest of the core vote: it's so obvious that it doesn't care about anyone else. Its entire strategy for trying to keep the lower income fraction of its voter coalition onboard is to repeat the same stale lines about Brexit over and over and over again, and hope that they don't notice that they keep getting poorer.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm now looking for Labour to propose a realistic platform for dealing with an era of higher public spending (which is unavoidable: the British population gets older and more clapped out with every passing year) without resorting to the Conservative formula of bleeding as much of the cost as possible from ordinary people's wages.
I might even be moved to go out and vote at the next election, despite the fact that the local Tory is so well entrenched that he survived the 1997 landslide with room to spare, and is therefore effectively immovable. I think it's just a matter now of trying to judge whether the reds or the yellows have the least remote chance of causing an upset.
Someone else has popped a pill. If this carries on I'll be sniffing around the odds for a Labour landslide.
I see that today is going to be the day that Major's adultery is going to be used as an excuse for not listening to or thinking about any of the points he makes.
Since none us is perfect - or, if you prefer, without sin - we can never criticise anyone else at all, let alone Boris. Which is very convenient for him.
A bit of a bummer in a democracy, mind you. Oh well.
When has anyone said that we shouldn't listen to his points? Someone on here explicitly held him up as a paragon of virtue. Which clearly he isn't, given he cheated on his wife, something decent people don't do.
And I criticize Boris all the time, and have called for him to be removed multiple times, so you seem to be living in some fantasy world.
That’s because it’s still confusing at this stage. Nothing has really changed - unless we now grasp our freedom and divulge from the European social model, then nothing has really changed. Just like the truth someone pointed out earlier today, we were not in the ERM, we had the freedom not to shadow it, but we chose to and it gave us black Wednesday.
Brexit isn’t remotely over until freedoms are fundamentally used. Otherwise, just like back in early 90s, we are merely shadowing the EU and not exploiting freedoms.
And softly in the darkness, in a dozen chemical plants around the world, the fuel rods gently dissolve in the spirits of nitre.
Old, dark gods, freed from each other, to be borne at last, in fearful symmetry.
Even before hitting ‘see previous posts’ above I knew it was my post you were replying to.
Is the oldest part of the next Coronation, the thing that holds the anointing ointment, or the recipe for the ointment? Or perhaps Prince Charles himself 🤭
It depends on which version of the story you believe. In one version that is just another mockup - a model in a case. In another that is the only public picture of the real thing in existence. You'd have to ask Vanunu....
- Shall we go to Italy or Tunisia on holiday? - Let's go to Tunisia. - Are you sure? - Yes, you did say it was my decision. - Are you sure you're sure? The hotels don't have good reviews. - Yes, let's go; it will be fine.
They arrive:
- They don't have a Corby trouser press in the room, just like the review said... - We haven't come on holiday to press your trousers. It's fine. - They served orange juice *out of a carton*! I told you it was a bad idea to come here but you wouldn't listen! - Will you stop complaining for once and relax?! - Why are you so angry? You've got what you want.
My goodness, you're like that character in Harry Enfield getting angry over imagined sins you've just conjured up in your head.
Remainers constantly reaffirming to each other how awfully terrible Brexiters are is just laughable. Criticize latest developments sure, but the constant personal animosity is just sad. It's like a lonely singleton in her 50s banging on about the husband that left her a decade ago.
Your post is pretty funny, seeing as @williamglenn has most famously switched from being completely obsessed remainiac to more Brexity than Farage in a Damascene conversion. That said, maybe he has changed back again??!! St Paul has reverted to killing Christians again perhaps?
So the crabs at Ministry of Crab are great and all that, and cost roughly a month’s salary for many Sri Lankans, but no one mentioned the incredible PRAWNS, the size of Novaya Zemlya, or the mangrove oysters that are served after being deep chilled for 6 hours then drenched with a mix of hot chili sauce, lime juice, and aged soy, in a shot glass
Very nice but I'd prefer my shellfish to taste of shellfish and not be lost in a sea of lime, soy and chilli. I've never quite understood foodies' fascination with food that does not taste of anything, like risotto, or on the other hand, food whose own flavour is ruthlessly masked.
Keir's having a good week. He really seems to have discovered the confidence he needed to capitalise on the chaos in government.
Boris hoped the Ukraine crisis would give him and his government a way of looking statesmanlike and shut up the critics. Instead it's showing the opposition front bench at their best and will surely make some look up and wonder what if.
I for one am more than ready to listen to Labour. Johnson's manifest uselessness, and the pathetic inability of his party to get rid of him, is obviously relevant, but I'm also thoroughly fed up of the Government's constant featherbedding of wealthy asset holders at the expense of the rest of the population. It goes beyond prioritising the interest of the core vote: it's so obvious that it doesn't care about anyone else. Its entire strategy for trying to keep the lower income fraction of its voter coalition onboard is to repeat the same stale lines about Brexit over and over and over again, and hope that they don't notice that they keep getting poorer.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm now looking for Labour to propose a realistic platform for dealing with an era of higher public spending (which is unavoidable: the British population gets older and more clapped out with every passing year) without resorting to the Conservative formula of bleeding as much of the cost as possible from ordinary people's wages.
I might even be moved to go out and vote at the next election, despite the fact that the local Tory is so well entrenched that he survived the 1997 landslide with room to spare, and is therefore effectively immovable. I think it's just a matter now of trying to judge whether the reds or the yellows have the least remote chance of causing an upset.
Someone else has popped a pill. If this carries on I'll be sniffing around the odds for a Labour landslide.
They ain't there yet, and I'm keeping a close eye out for any relapse into far left nonsense. I'm interested in whether they can sell me bread and butter social democracy, not bleating about Palestinians, the wretched TERF wars and cancelling anyone who inadvertently deploys the wrong pronouns.
Reform of the tax base is crucial to this. In essence, I can cope with being soaked, just so long as a fair soaking is applied across the board. Rich people with big asset portfolios and elderly homeowners inhabiting expensive properties should not be spared all the pain whilst the rest of us keep on being squeezed harder and harder.
Very nice but I'd prefer my shellfish to taste of shellfish and not be lost in a sea of lime, soy and chilli. I've never quite understood foodies' fascination with food that does not taste of anything, like risotto, or on the other hand, food whose own flavour is ruthlessly masked.
Agree on the soy and chilli point, but it sounds as though you've never had a proper risotto.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
Wow, because the people being the highest authority is the exact opposite of a dictatorship.
I claim that the political and democratic instruction (even if legally it was technically only advice) from the 2015 referendum has now been implemented. Therefore if a future parliament wants to rejoin, it would be legitimate. It wouldn't even necessarily need a referendum. Everything changed the moment the politicians finally did what we told them (not advised them) to do.
I wasn't up for a 2nd vote on different grounds. With the 1st one being such a sapping, divisive exercise I found the notion of doing it again so soon to be both unpleasant and damaging. Two bads don't make a good. They make a double bad. But it wouldn't have been anti-democratic. That argument doesn't hold water. Another vote only had a chance of happening if there was a popular will for it. The GE of December 19 tested this proposition and the answer was clear. The desire to vote again on the issue wasn't there. If it had been, with a GE outcome indicating such, it would have been perfectly democratic to have another Referendum.
So it would have been "perfectly democratic" for people who wanted the UK to leave the EU to win two referendums, but for people who wanted it to remain to be able to do so by winning only one, but having two opportunities?
I find that a rather trite formulation of the issue. Also it doesn't follow. This is fundamentally about elections. If a party wins one with 'hold an in/out referendum on EU membership' as a firm commitment they should hold that referendum. Like Cameron did. By the same token if Labour had won GE19 on a ticket of holding another one, another one should have been held. And so on and so forth. There's no big democratic problem with this.
"I find that a rather trite formulation of the issue." translates as "I don't have an answer to it", doesn't it?
I disagree that it's fundamentally about elections. It's fundamentally about the politicians not asking the people questions if they aren't prepared to implement the "wrong" answer.
I never was a big Brexit fan, and the Brexit we have is clearly not optimal. But it's still better than the politicians rejecting the referendum result would have been.
It means exactly what it says - you were looking at the issue like a game of top trumps. And I did answer the point. That was my actual post! General elections aren't the entirety of our democracy but they are at the heart of it. A 2nd referendum was not a good idea - agree on that - but it wouldn't have been undemocratic if Labour had won a GE on that promise and then fulfilled it.
Comments
Of course there's a steady stream of old ex SNP guys who feel that their opinions should be listened to by the SNP without them going to the inconvenience of getting voters to back them, Neil is just the latest.
Voted to remain in EU: 1,661,191
Voted to remain in UK: 2,001,926
I'd also say Matt is the greatest cartoonist ever. Most cartoonists are technically skilled but have all the wit and subtlety of a student rally. Matt's subtlety and willingness to see the absurd in all sides makes him both considerably funnier and considerably more likely to be engaged with by those on the other side of an argument.
In an opinion article for the Guardian, penned on the way to Brussels where he reaffirmed Labour’s staunch support for Nato, Starmer says Stop the War are “not benign voices for peace”.
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever,” he said.
He said Putin’s regime would see Stop the War protesters in the UK as “virtue signallers” who were “providing a smokescreen so it can go on beating up and jailing those brave individuals that dare to stand up to its despotism on the streets of Russia”.
He accused the group of a “kneejerk reflex: Britain, Canada, the United States, France – wrong; their enemies – right”.
Corbyn is the vice-president of the Stop the War coalition, alongside Andrew Murray, who was chief of staff to the former Unite leader Len McCluskey. Murray is a former communist who only joined Labour when Corbyn became leader.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/keir-starmer-says-stop-the-war-coalition-gives-help-to-authoritarians-like-putin
I like Keir.
Awks.
A bit like preventing break-ins by leaving your front door wide open when you go out.
What is your beef anyway? I can just about understand being stupid enough to want brexit in 2016, but thinking it was a good idea in 2022...
People care a lot more about one than the other.
If EU membership was so important to the SNP, why did they spend less campaigning to Remain than they did on a single by-election?
OK, I'll leave it there then, since there's obviously no convincing you that basic fairness has to underpin democracy.
Boris hoped the Ukraine crisis would give him and his government a way of looking statesmanlike and shut up the critics. Instead it's showing the opposition front bench at their best and will surely make some look up and wonder what if.
EDIT: I wonder if he's also been going on a personal journey. The Keir Starmer of today looks and sounds very different from the Keir Starmer of a couple of years ago. Ideologically more than presentationally.
I like it.
Newton Emerson: No, the UK will not pay a united Ireland’s pensions
‘Republicans ask us to wade through blood, but will not ask us to open our wallets.’
If the DUP was not taking up everyone’s time with its Brexit drama, unionists in Northern Ireland could be enjoying the implosion of the SNP – the second-biggest threat to the union after themselves.
The implosion is intellectual, not electoral. Nicola Sturgeon’s party remains dominant in Scottish politics but that only highlights it has run out of ideas to advance independence, its central goal. Matters have come to a head with a bizarre reversal of pensions policy.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/newton-emerson-no-the-uk-will-not-pay-a-united-ireland-s-pensions-1.4797908
A lady gave a speech, proposing that the UK leave NATO & EEC - and join the Warsaw Pact and COMECON
Nothing changes with these people.
They won the vote.
They won the election.
They negotiated the treaty.
We're out.
They won everything.
And they are mad as hell about it
It’s about time remainers stopped worrying about the vote and love the freedoms.
you are still defending this shit in 2022. The expression useful idiot is overused, but really...
I disagree that it's fundamentally about elections. It's fundamentally about the politicians not asking the people questions if they aren't prepared to implement the "wrong" answer.
I never was a big Brexit fan, and the Brexit we have is clearly not optimal. But it's still better than the politicians rejecting the referendum result would have been.
I think it’s a dogs dinner probably designed by committee at considerable expense.
We need “Red White and Blue” - tick
We need the old BR logo - tick
We need to incorporate the Union flag - tick
Good logos are like ladies jewellery - once you’ve finished, take one piece off.
MY kind of Brexit was 'Full on nuclear strike against France'!
And have we done that!?
Have we heck!
I've been betrayed! Betrayed I tell you.....
As far as I'm concerned, I'm now looking for Labour to propose a realistic platform for dealing with an era of higher public spending (which is unavoidable: the British population gets older and more clapped out with every passing year) without resorting to the Conservative formula of bleeding as much of the cost as possible from ordinary people's wages.
I might even be moved to go out and vote at the next election, despite the fact that the local Tory is so well entrenched that he survived the 1997 landslide with room to spare, and is therefore effectively immovable. I think it's just a matter now of trying to judge whether the reds or the yellows have the least remote chance of causing an upset.
Brexit isn’t remotely over until freedoms are fundamentally used. Otherwise, just like back in early 90s, we are merely shadowing the EU and not exploiting freedoms.
Old, dark gods, freed from each other, to be borne at last, in fearful symmetry.
And spirits of nitre? Confusing the 1 big 1 with the 1 littel 1?
I think that’s a bit of a stretch. Blair v Brown. The incredible sulk. The idea new labour was just serious adults agreeing stuff is just nonsense.
I doubt it was anywhere near as dysfunctional as this lot who manage to plumb new depths on a weekly basis.
* The Scottish Government will transfer operation from Abiello (owned by the Dutch government) to a consortium of private contractors….
Actually no not that one. Having headphones you can turn up as loud as you like would be a good start in exploiting our Freedoms.
The serious bit is Ben, I know you as serious poster so will do a bit of serious, my point here is Brexit isn’t over, not done dusted and in the past - except in very glib and worthless answers we get when pointing this out - because it was all about why, and achieving why. Are you joining me on that same page?
This is the real question right now: based on what was said and promised in the 2016 campaign, do the winners, the brexiteers, have any legitimacy in moving the UK away from the European Social Model, without winning a second referendum for the legitimacy to do that? 🤔
Brexit was 6 years ago for "Why are you still talking about it" purposes, 1 year for the FLSOJ Got It Done purposes, and in reality not done at all with the NI situation, and other stuff.
.......And neither will their hosts. Johnson and by association Truss are figures of fun. Even John Major thought it worth mentioning Their reputations for competence and honesty are TRASHED and their hosts will be as informed as everyone here
I'm sure the the vast majority of the country would prefer they just walked away and left it to the adult in the room if they can find one.
- Shall we go to Italy or Tunisia on holiday?
- Let's go to Tunisia.
- Are you sure?
- Yes, you did say it was my decision.
- Are you sure you're sure? The hotels don't have good reviews.
- Yes, let's go; it will be fine.
They arrive:
- They don't have a Corby trouser press in the room, just like the review said...
- We haven't come on holiday to press your trousers. It's fine.
- They served orange juice *out of a carton*! I told you it was a bad idea to come here but you wouldn't listen!
- Will you stop complaining for once and relax?!
- Why are you so angry? You've got what you want.
I have no issue at all with what he said about the current state of affairs and would agree with the vast majority of it. What I was contending was him being held up as some sort of moral guardian, a paragon of virtue, when he was an adulterer who had been rumbled but the wrong person was named as correspondant and his govt was brought down by sleaze. Although none of the sleaze was his it happened under his watch.
If someone is saying we should listen to him because he’s a saint then that needs calling out.
The counter to that was yebbut we can get our own politicians out, which you have to laugh about given the FLSOJ's continued tenure in no 10.
Is the oldest part of the next Coronation, the thing that holds the anointing ointment, or the recipe for the ointment? Or perhaps Prince Charles himself 🤭
https://twitter.com/leftwingsociety/status/1491816060122714112?s=21
Remainers constantly reaffirming to each other how awfully terrible Brexiters are is just laughable. Criticize latest developments sure, but the constant personal animosity is just sad. It's like a lonely singleton in her 50s banging on about the husband that left her a decade ago.
spirits of nitre = nitric acid, in the old style
And I criticize Boris all the time, and have called for him to be removed multiple times, so you seem to be living in some fantasy world.
Reform of the tax base is crucial to this. In essence, I can cope with being soaked, just so long as a fair soaking is applied across the board. Rich people with big asset portfolios and elderly homeowners inhabiting expensive properties should not be spared all the pain whilst the rest of us keep on being squeezed harder and harder.
https://www.indy100.com/viral/margaret-thatcher-nicola-sturgeon-photos-similarities-referendum-scottish-photo-7662596
I got my fingers burnt at the GE 2019 guess the date game so I won't be playing again.
I guess my top combo might be Truss in the Matrix Carrie-Ann Moss style.