Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ancient history as it is, those "Remainers [who] spent far too long refusing to accept defeat" were democratically-elected representatives working on behalf of their constituents. We returned a hung parliament which indicated a split in the country which was reflected in parliament. Democracy in action.
Or should, say, Labour MPs "accept defeat" and vote through everything the government suggests.
You do recall that at the 2017 election, Labour stood on the platform of accepting the referendum result? And then spent the next two yeard rejecting every possible form of implementing the referendum result because they decided it was more important to play party politics to damage the government?
Absolutely. And they had a vision, because no one had bothered to set one out previously, of exactly what flavour of Brexit they wanted. Perfectly legitimate.
I want there to be a punishment for shoplifting. I think it should be a fine for first time offenders of £50, perhaps means tested. You think it should be amputation of their right hand.
We both agree that there should be a punishment for shoplifting...
Zelensky in an interview with Italian TV Rai1 has confirmed that Macron had proposed him to make concessions to Ukraine's sovereignty in order to come up with a face-saving option for Putin. "We are not ready to lose territory to save something for somebody" - added Zelensky
A comment from a Ukrainian: “First side in the Russo-Ukrainian war to surrender? France”
Is the Ukraine crisis starting to turn into a sort of Vietnam lite for some countries in the West?
It is certainly turning into Vietnam full fat for the Russian military
So we keep hearing.
In the early days of the Vietnam war the US press were full of stories about how the VC were getting spanked, the government were upbeat, the communists are taking terrible casualties and can't hang on much longer.
And look what happened there.
True but there is far more information emerging rapidly from multiple sources than 60s/70s. Even allowing for much better media management by Ukraine and supporters the overwhelming evidence is that Russia is being hammered militarily. The available facts point to big problems in maintaining effective Russian combat forces too.
I think so too, but I'm not sure. One of the virtues of media that try to present all sides of an issue is that one knows what's happening so one can make informed decisions - which matters even if one's sympathies are wholly on one side. Our media interpret "sympathy with Ukraine" (which they share with the great majority of viewers and readers) with "only report things that Ukraine and its allies say" (which may or may not be the full picture. It'd be helpful if we were getting what both sides are saying on a regular basis, so we could try to discount the propaganda and spot the nuggets of information.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
Intersting. I voted Remain (on the basis of self interest), but in the belief that, within a few years a second vote would be for Out.
That is, when the proposals for a common European health service move forward, the "Sacred NHS" types would go TILT. Because any such European wider system would be mixed provision.
I didn't believe that a second vote would have been permitted - a vote to Remain would have been seen as an endorsement of The Project, and if any future British government had tried to resist they would have been beaten back with "you had the chance to leave, now you need to show you're good Europeans".
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ancient history as it is, those "Remainers [who] spent far too long refusing to accept defeat" were democratically-elected representatives working on behalf of their constituents. We returned a hung parliament which indicated a split in the country which was reflected in parliament. Democracy in action.
Or should, say, Labour MPs "accept defeat" and vote through everything the government suggests.
You do recall that at the 2017 election, Labour stood on the platform of accepting the referendum result? And then spent the next two yeard rejecting every possible form of implementing the referendum result because they decided it was more important to play party politics to damage the government?
Absolutely. And they had a vision, because no one had bothered to set one out previously, of exactly what flavour of Brexit they wanted. Perfectly legitimate.
I want there to be a punishment for shoplifting. I think it should be a fine for first time offenders of £50, perhaps means tested. You think it should be amputation of their right hand.
We both agree that there should be a punishment for shoplifting...
It's a very good analogy. If you're in that situation as a minority and you're stupid enough to not compromise, you get stuck with the most extreme form possible.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Zelensky in an interview with Italian TV Rai1 has confirmed that Macron had proposed him to make concessions to Ukraine's sovereignty in order to come up with a face-saving option for Putin. "We are not ready to lose territory to save something for somebody" - added Zelensky
A comment from a Ukrainian: “First side in the Russo-Ukrainian war to surrender? France”
Is the Ukraine crisis starting to turn into a sort of Vietnam lite for some countries in the West?
It is certainly turning into Vietnam full fat for the Russian military
So we keep hearing.
In the early days of the Vietnam war the US press were full of stories about how the VC were getting spanked, the government were upbeat, the communists are taking terrible casualties and can't hang on much longer.
And look what happened there.
The early days of the Vietnam war didn't involve the Americans (other than their giving France a lot of money) - it was the French getting a spanking.
If they'd just let Vietnam kick out the French, they could probably have had decent relations with the new regime.
Eisenhower handed Kennedy a hospital pass, and the latter copped a bullet just as he was planning how not to get involved militarily.
Macnamara was in favour of intervention until he really sat down and thought about it.
The word limit on PB's comment section is way too low to do justice to MacNamara's mistakes. As for McGeorge Bundy...
Hunt? Too Coalition era, May era, yesterday's coming man. Would be like wingnut Davis standing again after Cameron stood down, a look backwards. He's too posh, too home counties, too Cameron frankly. He'd scare the horses amongst the new support they've garnered. He might save half a dozen threatened in the blue wall. Hunt vs Starmer and we are all asleep by elevenses. Utterly unispirational. Way too much a retrograde step. Lump on.
Never get why people push Hunt so much but then I share all those views.
He's the Tories' Andy Burnham
Easy, he'd implement "sensible" policies on Brexit and stop "being confrontational" with the EU. Which is ultimately code for they think he would set us on a path to rejoining the EU but of course he won't do either of those things.
I had a longish brunch with the team this morning (only just finished) and one of the points of discussion was the A16 stuff. Everyone very anti pulling the lever, one of the team is from NI and she, fairly, pointed out that it wouldn't be necessary if the EU implemented the trusted trader scheme and then the mood was, well why not link A16 to a timetable for implementation.
If a lowly group of analysts can figure out an acceptable strategy then it won't be beyond the wit of the government to also do it.
The acceptable strategy is obvious, but requires two things which this swivel-eyed government won't do. Firstly, reducing frictions by aligning with the EU on key things, especially food safety (virtually no downside*), and secondly build up the 'trust' bit of the relationship by not making ludicrous impotent threats and reneging on a deal which the government not only signed, but actually proposed and lauded to the skies.
* There is one real downside, which is we'd have to sign up to the EU's completely daft blanket ban on gene-editing, but that looks likely to be changed quite soon anyway.
It’s not acceptable.
The EU is demanding dynamic alignment to their rules. They have a different approach to the UK.
The UK wants equivalence with regular review.
From a purely rational, food safety based approach the UK piece is sufficient. But the EU thinks it’s a point of political leverage
OK lets set the difference in language and the politics aside, and talk practicalities. We are aligned here and now. Dynamic alignment would be the EU moves to a new standard and we follow. As we've abandoned all plans to check their standards that happens by default anyway.
So whatever we call it, what they are asking for we acquiesced to when Moggy went to Dover and said "you can knock those customs sheds down".
Nope, we didn’t. Dynamic alignment allows M. Macron to control standards that are applicable in the UK. You are charmingly naive if you believe he won’t use that power in France’s best interest.
We haven’t started checking yet. We always have the right to check.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
Zelensky in an interview with Italian TV Rai1 has confirmed that Macron had proposed him to make concessions to Ukraine's sovereignty in order to come up with a face-saving option for Putin. "We are not ready to lose territory to save something for somebody" - added Zelensky
A comment from a Ukrainian: “First side in the Russo-Ukrainian war to surrender? France”
Is the Ukraine crisis starting to turn into a sort of Vietnam lite for some countries in the West?
It is certainly turning into Vietnam full fat for the Russian military
So we keep hearing.
In the early days of the Vietnam war the US press were full of stories about how the VC were getting spanked, the government were upbeat, the communists are taking terrible casualties and can't hang on much longer.
And look what happened there.
True but there is far more information emerging rapidly from multiple sources than 60s/70s. Even allowing for much better media management by Ukraine and supporters the overwhelming evidence is that Russia is being hammered militarily. The available facts point to big problems in maintaining effective Russian combat forces too.
I think so too, but I'm not sure. One of the virtues of media that try to present all sides of an issue is that one knows what's happening so one can make informed decisions - which matters even if one's sympathies are wholly on one side. Our media interpret "sympathy with Ukraine" (which they share with the great majority of viewers and readers) with "only report things that Ukraine and its allies say" (which may or may not be the full picture. It'd be helpful if we were getting what both sides are saying on a regular basis, so we could try to discount the propaganda and spot the nuggets of information.
We’re hardly being starved of the Russian perspective on all this - the BBC for example had an article on why Russia perceives NATO expansion to be threatening and another that raised the question of whether joining NATO would increase Finland/Sweden’s security. Their reporting on Russian casualties and loss of equipment has basically been running about a week behind Twitter and heavily emphasises what isn’t independently verified.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
Yes I suppose that is true although I don't remember Rochdale being quite so vituperatively in favour of Brexiting as @billglen was in favour of remaining. Rochdale it seems voted for a sensible Brexit which the govt has since trodden all over. I get that he would be disillusioned with the execution.
I voted to leave the EU. Had we left the EU and remained in an open co-operating trading relationship with the EEU and EUCU I would be quite happy.
The problems we have now are nothing to do with leaving the EU and everything to do with the stupidity of what we have done after leaving the EU.
That there are BR-type voices still saying "we hold all the cards, just walk away, what can they do" is the reason the government continue to screw up as much as they do. I will be polite and say that it is a logical fallacy to say something patently incorrect like "we hold all the cards", then watch all the evidence pile up demonstrating how this isn't true and then keep saying "we hold all the cards". Or providing fact-free theoretical lectures about how trade works as if that somehow changes the practical realities on the ground.
You see if only you had voted Tyndall Dictator For Life and let me take us into EFTA and thence into the EEA then things would have been far better. I could have exiled Farage to St Helena, thrown Johnson in the deepest dungeon in Christendom and made May ambassador to Ulan Bator.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
Intersting. I voted Remain (on the basis of self interest), but in the belief that, within a few years a second vote would be for Out.
That is, when the proposals for a common European health service move forward, the "Sacred NHS" types would go TILT. Because any such European wider system would be mixed provision.
I didn't believe that a second vote would have been permitted - a vote to Remain would have been seen as an endorsement of The Project, and if any future British government had tried to resist they would have been beaten back with "you had the chance to leave, now you need to show you're good Europeans".
Rather like Tories in the UK behave to the Scots.
Tbf they’ve rather given up on the ‘show you’re good Brits’ guff. It’s more shut up and bend over..
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ancient history as it is, those "Remainers [who] spent far too long refusing to accept defeat" were democratically-elected representatives working on behalf of their constituents. We returned a hung parliament which indicated a split in the country which was reflected in parliament. Democracy in action.
Or should, say, Labour MPs "accept defeat" and vote through everything the government suggests.
I don't disagree with you mostly. But of course there were plenty of those ultra-Remainers who went into the 2017 election swearing blind they were committed to Brexit and who then did their very best to reverse the decision once they were back in parliament. Certainly not all by any means but a key core on the Tory side. At the same time there were others who said they would vote for a reasonable Brexit deal and then who fought tooth and nail for the hardest Brexit possible.
Very few of our elected representatives at that time can honestly claim to have been representing the best interests of those who elected them.
There were certainly those who behaved as you say. Grieve vs Francois, for example. But...but...they were elected representatives and hence both carried the weight and responsibility of their constituents wants (haven't checked to see if they were remain/leave respectively). I do believe that they both legitimately thought they were acting in the best interests of their constituents.
And we saw that the people kicked out Grieve because they disagreed with his Brexit stance so again a fully functioning democracy.
That's why as a Remainer I have no problem with Leave winning. I have fundamental doubts about the benefits of Brexit for the UK (or GB as we should call it now that we've just about got rid of NI) but so would I if a Lab govt were elected.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has come out against allowing Sweden and Finland to join Nato, putting the two Nordic countries’ hopes of joining the western military alliance in jeopardy. https://twitter.com/laurapitel/status/1525111700684525571
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
Why not?
Surely democracy is the will of the people, therefore if more people indicated they wanted a second referendum than didn't, there was nothing undemocratic about calling one, particularly if the majority then voted to change their minds having been furnished with more details about what the ramifications of Brexit would look like.
You can call the demand for a second referendum all sorts of things, but undemocratic it was not.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
Yes I suppose that is true although I don't remember Rochdale being quite so vituperatively in favour of Brexiting as @billglen was in favour of remaining. Rochdale it seems voted for a sensible Brexit which the govt has since trodden all over. I get that he would be disillusioned with the execution.
I voted to leave the EU. Had we left the EU and remained in an open co-operating trading relationship with the EEU and EUCU I would be quite happy.
The problems we have now are nothing to do with leaving the EU and everything to do with the stupidity of what we have done after leaving the EU.
That there are BR-type voices still saying "we hold all the cards, just walk away, what can they do" is the reason the government continue to screw up as much as they do. I will be polite and say that it is a logical fallacy to say something patently incorrect like "we hold all the cards", then watch all the evidence pile up demonstrating how this isn't true and then keep saying "we hold all the cards". Or providing fact-free theoretical lectures about how trade works as if that somehow changes the practical realities on the ground.
The baffling thing (OK, one of the baffling things) is that we keep getting to this point, with no follow-through. "Battle of the century" over the sequencing of the negotiations. Telling the EU they could go whistle for the divorce settlement. Give PM Boris any Irish Sea paperwork, so he could throw it in the bin. We're definitely going to trigger A16 once the big global summit is over.
And psychology 101 says that every time you make a threat (and they're basically the same threat each time) and don't follow through, you weaken your negotiating position. And whilst events before 2019 can be fairly laid at the feet of May, Davis et al, and events in 2019 can be blamed on Parliament (with only a modicum of dishonesty), Johnson has had total control of his side of the negotiation since December 2019. If he is flailing round like a fool, the most likely reason is that he is a fool.
(The reality is what it's always been. The UK always has the perogative to tear up existing agreements. Nobody else can stop us. But the idea that we can do that cost-free is for the birds, always was for the birds, and is the sort of thing most people grow out of as they emerge from adolescence.)
You could write a book on how to negotiate. Using the UK as the patsy example for how to screw up every possible step. Concept, prep, stages, keeping track, a clear agreement, implementation, post-analysis. The whole smash - we've fucked it.
The bizzaro thing, this seems really obvious to me, and I haven't negotiated a business deal in my life. OK, teaching teenagers gives you a certain insight into human evil and realpolitik, but I don't enjoy haggling and am therefore not very skilled at it.
And I can see that HMG is making a complete horlicks of things, and why they are getting it wrong.
There are two really hard parts of negotiation. The first is to truly understand your position and also that of the counterparty. What do I want, what do they want, what value do we assign to those positions, and where are the areas of overlap where agreement can be reached. Get this wrong - "we hold all the cards" etc and the values you assume are wrong.
The second is the real bugger - keeping track. Unless its a transactional negotiation there will be multiple elements at play. All have both a cost and a value - and may not be cash. You need to track the values of both what you are proposing and their opposing moves, but also understand that many will have values or costs (NOT the same) which can change during the negotiation depending which pieces are played in which order.
Get it right and you trade all your low cost / high value moves in exchange for a winning position. Both sides are happy, "win win" gets talked up, and the relationship is stronger afterwards. Get it wrong and you lose track, get lost, and get a deal that turns to ash.
Newcastle United’s new away kit next season will be the green and white colours of Saudi Arabia, the country whose public investment fund owns 80 per cent of the club.
A leaked version of Newcastle’s second-choice strip for next season, made by Castore, shows it is extremely similar to the first choice worn by the Saudi Arabia national side in 2020.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
How many times does this have to be repeated? May chose that path she chose because otherwise she would have been deposed by the Leave faction who have held sway in the Tory party since the referendum. It had absolutely zero to do with Remainers, who were in a state of shock after the referendum, were split across different political parties and were in no shape to overturn the referendum result even if they had wanted to (which most of them didn't). No compromise was possible because at no point did the Tory government seek one. They even whipped their MPs to vote down any compromise in the Commons. The Brexit fiasco is all on Leavers. At least they should have the guts to own it.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
Yes I suppose that is true although I don't remember Rochdale being quite so vituperatively in favour of Brexiting as @billglen was in favour of remaining. Rochdale it seems voted for a sensible Brexit which the govt has since trodden all over. I get that he would be disillusioned with the execution.
I voted to leave the EU. Had we left the EU and remained in an open co-operating trading relationship with the EEU and EUCU I would be quite happy.
The problems we have now are nothing to do with leaving the EU and everything to do with the stupidity of what we have done after leaving the EU.
That there are BR-type voices still saying "we hold all the cards, just walk away, what can they do" is the reason the government continue to screw up as much as they do. I will be polite and say that it is a logical fallacy to say something patently incorrect like "we hold all the cards", then watch all the evidence pile up demonstrating how this isn't true and then keep saying "we hold all the cards". Or providing fact-free theoretical lectures about how trade works as if that somehow changes the practical realities on the ground.
The baffling thing (OK, one of the baffling things) is that we keep getting to this point, with no follow-through. "Battle of the century" over the sequencing of the negotiations. Telling the EU they could go whistle for the divorce settlement. Give PM Boris any Irish Sea paperwork, so he could throw it in the bin. We're definitely going to trigger A16 once the big global summit is over.
And psychology 101 says that every time you make a threat (and they're basically the same threat each time) and don't follow through, you weaken your negotiating position. And whilst events before 2019 can be fairly laid at the feet of May, Davis et al, and events in 2019 can be blamed on Parliament (with only a modicum of dishonesty), Johnson has had total control of his side of the negotiation since December 2019. If he is flailing round like a fool, the most likely reason is that he is a fool.
(The reality is what it's always been. The UK always has the perogative to tear up existing agreements. Nobody else can stop us. But the idea that we can do that cost-free is for the birds, always was for the birds, and is the sort of thing most people grow out of as they emerge from adolescence.)
You could write a book on how to negotiate. Using the UK as the patsy example for how to screw up every possible step. Concept, prep, stages, keeping track, a clear agreement, implementation, post-analysis. The whole smash - we've fucked it.
You do not understand.
Five years ago @BartholomewRoberts told us that the UK government should abandon all border checks and let the EU police the NI border if they wanted to.
At which point the UK government, rather than entertain such a notion, actually decided to divide its own country and institute an internal customs border in the UK, something that, it was said, no British PM could or should ever do.
And lo as recently as an hour ago, @BartholomewRoberts was saying exactly the same thing - that the UK government should abandon.....
Indeed. If Theresa May had listened to me instead of Philip Hammond we could have gotten to this situation five long years ago, but slowly the governments edged towards realising what I could tell was right five years ago.
We're getting there. Ridiculously slowly, but its progress.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has come out against allowing Sweden and Finland to join Nato, putting the two Nordic countries’ hopes of joining the western military alliance in jeopardy. https://twitter.com/laurapitel/status/1525111700684525571
Awkward.... https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1525108601563410438 Turkey President @RTErdogan has said that his country, a member of NATO, cannot support Sweden's & Finland's plans to join the Alliance, accusing Northern European countries of becoming "a haven for terrorist organizations," and calling Greece's accession a "mistake" — @Reuters.
This is why Zoom meetings aren't a good thing IMO. Someone allegedly gets sacked for rolling their eyes during one. A person wouldn't get fired for doing something like this during a face-to-face meeting.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
Erm the workings of a sovereign recently elected parliament is not and cannot be "anti-democratic". Its like this oven-ready deal which was the core component of the Tories winning their majority which the same government wants to dismantle.
I could say that it is "anti-democratic" that they should act directly against the mandate they were given. But as parliament is sovereign that simply isn't the case - if there is a majority vote they can do literally anything. There may be repercussions, but they have that absolute right to vote for what they want whether it directly contradicts the previous parliament or their own manifesto.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Democratic politics, especially in a big-tent FPTP system, involves compromising with the electorate from time to time.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
Why not?
Surely democracy is the will of the people, therefore if more people indicated they wanted a second referendum than didn't, there was nothing undemocratic about calling one, particularly if the majority then voted to change their minds having been furnished with more details about what the ramifications of Brexit would look like.
You can call the demand for a second referendum all sorts of things, but undemocratic it was not.
Because - I'll but it in bold for the hard of thinking - democracy requires that the politicians implement what the people vote for.
"You got it wrong, vote again" in France, Denmark, and Ireland twice is exactly how anti EU-sentiment got stirred up in the UK in the first place.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
Intersting. I voted Remain (on the basis of self interest), but in the belief that, within a few years a second vote would be for Out.
That is, when the proposals for a common European health service move forward, the "Sacred NHS" types would go TILT. Because any such European wider system would be mixed provision.
I didn't believe that a second vote would have been permitted - a vote to Remain would have been seen as an endorsement of The Project, and if any future British government had tried to resist they would have been beaten back with "you had the chance to leave, now you need to show you're good Europeans".
Rather like Tories in the UK behave to the Scots.
Tbf they’ve rather given up on the ‘show you’re good Brits’ guff. It’s more shut up and bend over..
They did admittedly try to see if we bothered to get the UJs out when the future Duke of Rothesay* and his consort turned up the other day.
*Only because I can't remember what his Sunday name is.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ancient history as it is, those "Remainers [who] spent far too long refusing to accept defeat" were democratically-elected representatives working on behalf of their constituents. We returned a hung parliament which indicated a split in the country which was reflected in parliament. Democracy in action.
Or should, say, Labour MPs "accept defeat" and vote through everything the government suggests.
You do recall that at the 2017 election, Labour stood on the platform of accepting the referendum result? And then spent the next two yeard rejecting every possible form of implementing the referendum result because they decided it was more important to play party politics to damage the government?
Absolutely. And they had a vision, because no one had bothered to set one out previously, of exactly what flavour of Brexit they wanted. Perfectly legitimate.
I want there to be a punishment for shoplifting. I think it should be a fine for first time offenders of £50, perhaps means tested. You think it should be amputation of their right hand.
We both agree that there should be a punishment for shoplifting...
It's a very good analogy. If you're in that situation as a minority and you're stupid enough to not compromise, you get stuck with the most extreme form possible.
And even worse if you make the other side believe that not only no compromise is possible but that you want to overturn their win then you will end up with lines being drawn.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Democratic politics, especially in a big-tent FPTP system, involves compromising with the electorate from time to time.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
It is a distinction without a difference. If you oppose the government then by definition you think the people who put them there got it wrong.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
Why not?
Surely democracy is the will of the people, therefore if more people indicated they wanted a second referendum than didn't, there was nothing undemocratic about calling one, particularly if the majority then voted to change their minds having been furnished with more details about what the ramifications of Brexit would look like.
You can call the demand for a second referendum all sorts of things, but undemocratic it was not.
Because - I'll but it in bold for the hard of thinking - democracy requires that the politicians implement what the people vote for.
"You got it wrong, vote again" in France, Denmark, and Ireland twice is exactly how anti EU-sentiment got stirred up in the UK in the first place.
Not if they change their minds and are given the opportunity to vote as such, like in the examples you have given.
Like I said, a second referendum might be a lot of things but it is certainly not anti- democratic. The people have spoken...again!
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Democratic politics, especially in a big-tent FPTP system, involves compromising with the electorate from time to time.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
It is a distinction without a difference. If you oppose the government then by definition you think the people who put them there got it wrong.
No, you think that the people who put you there got it right - and in any case, most of the time the government does get its way.
But when there's a higher power of a referendum result in place, you need something extraordinary for ignoring it to be even close to democratic.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
Indeed and had those wanting to reverse the referendum won the 2017 or 2019 elections then that would be one thing, but they didn't.
Instead in a bait-and-switch bit of dishonesty people went into 2017 claiming they'd respect the referendum result, then moved heaven and earth to reverse it.
Unsurprisingly, people don't like dishonesty. You can see that with Boris, but you have a blind spot for Keir, Grieve etc did.
I actually respect the Lib Dems who had reversing the referendum as their pre-election pledge, unlike Keir, Grieve etc
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
Their hands weren’t tied by the previous parliament. They were tied by the fact that the question had been referred to the source of their authority and ruled upon.
Parliament is a representative of the people. As such it can legislate for the people unless the people have instructed them to follow a specific path.
They had no authority to overturn Brexit or to refer it for a second vote. They did have the ability to define it in a way that suited their interests (economic alignment). But they fucked around so long that the electorate lost patience and voted for someone who promised, to coin a phrase, to “get brexit done”
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
Why not?
Surely democracy is the will of the people, therefore if more people indicated they wanted a second referendum than didn't, there was nothing undemocratic about calling one, particularly if the majority then voted to change their minds having been furnished with more details about what the ramifications of Brexit would look like.
You can call the demand for a second referendum all sorts of things, but undemocratic it was not.
Because - I'll but it in bold for the hard of thinking - democracy requires that the politicians implement what the people vote for.
"You got it wrong, vote again" in France, Denmark, and Ireland twice is exactly how anti EU-sentiment got stirred up in the UK in the first place.
Not if they change their minds and are given the opportunity to vote as such, like in the examples you have given.
Like I said, a second referendum might be a lot of things but it is certainly not anti- democratic. The people have spoken...again!
Hard of thinking I may be, but check the mirror.
"You got it wrong, vote again" is as anti-democratic as it's possible to be. Bullying people with the threat of an infinite serious of referendums until you wear them down - and you only have to be lucky once - doesn't even show that the people genuinely have changed their mind.
If Slab are so worried about Glasgow (and indeed most other places) why won't they join with other parties to sort it out?
Any hint Mr Redmond might do a reverse Aberdeen and join fellow social democrats rather than Unionists?
Labour ruled Glasgow for the best part of a century. They’ve never shown the slightest intention to “sort it out” (apart from a brief period of competence in the 60s-70s).
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has come out against allowing Sweden and Finland to join Nato, putting the two Nordic countries’ hopes of joining the western military alliance in jeopardy. https://twitter.com/laurapitel/status/1525111700684525571
Awkward.... https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1525108601563410438 Turkey President @RTErdogan has said that his country, a member of NATO, cannot support Sweden's & Finland's plans to join the Alliance, accusing Northern European countries of becoming "a haven for terrorist organizations," and calling Greece's accession a "mistake" — @Reuters.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
The people don't vote directly for laws...
...they vote for a manifesto which indicates what laws the candidate Parties plan to pass.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
Indeed and had those wanting to reverse the referendum won the 2017 or 2019 elections then that would be one thing, but they didn't.
Instead in a bait-and-switch bit of dishonesty people went into 2017 claiming they'd respect the referendum result, then moved heaven and earth to reverse it.
Unsurprisingly, people don't like dishonesty. You can see that with Boris, but you have a blind spot for Keir, Grieve etc did.
I actually respect the Lib Dems who had reversing the referendum as their pre-election pledge, unlike Keir, Grieve etc
Quick question - and it’s a genuine one - if we accept the rule that no Parliament may bind its future Parliament, how does that explain how we view the actions of the 1707 Scottish Parliament, which voted in the Act of Union? Or is it assumed that since it was merged / abolished, the principle no longer applies (or, alternatively, it’s Scotland so the same principle doesn’t apply?)
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has come out against allowing Sweden and Finland to join Nato, putting the two Nordic countries’ hopes of joining the western military alliance in jeopardy. https://twitter.com/laurapitel/status/1525111700684525571
Awkward.... https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1525108601563410438 Turkey President @RTErdogan has said that his country, a member of NATO, cannot support Sweden's & Finland's plans to join the Alliance, accusing Northern European countries of becoming "a haven for terrorist organizations," and calling Greece's accession a "mistake" — @Reuters.
has putin put him up to this?
More likely that we have pissed him off with steadfast criticism.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ancient history as it is, those "Remainers [who] spent far too long refusing to accept defeat" were democratically-elected representatives working on behalf of their constituents. We returned a hung parliament which indicated a split in the country which was reflected in parliament. Democracy in action.
Or should, say, Labour MPs "accept defeat" and vote through everything the government suggests.
I don't disagree with you mostly. But of course there were plenty of those ultra-Remainers who went into the 2017 election swearing blind they were committed to Brexit and who then did their very best to reverse the decision once they were back in parliament. Certainly not all by any means but a key core on the Tory side. At the same time there were others who said they would vote for a reasonable Brexit deal and then who fought tooth and nail for the hardest Brexit possible.
Very few of our elected representatives at that time can honestly claim to have been representing the best interests of those who elected them.
There were certainly those who behaved as you say. Grieve vs Francois, for example. But...but...they were elected representatives and hence both carried the weight and responsibility of their constituents wants (haven't checked to see if they were remain/leave respectively). I do believe that they both legitimately thought they were acting in the best interests of their constituents.
And we saw that the people kicked out Grieve because they disagreed with his Brexit stance so again a fully functioning democracy.
That's why as a Remainer I have no problem with Leave winning. I have fundamental doubts about the benefits of Brexit for the UK (or GB as we should call it now that we've just about got rid of NI) but so would I if a Lab govt were elected.
For the record I was very careful in my previous reply to you exactly because I do believe that Francois no more represented the views of his constituents than Grieve did. Both were elected on platforms that they then chose to renege upon. It is the combination of the irreconciled Remainers and the Ultra Brexiteers that brought us to this point.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
The people don't vote directly for laws...
...they vote for a manifesto which indicates what laws the candidate Parties plan to pass.
Incorrect as a matter of law, I'm afraid, as determined in the 2008 Wheeler case.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has come out against allowing Sweden and Finland to join Nato, putting the two Nordic countries’ hopes of joining the western military alliance in jeopardy. https://twitter.com/laurapitel/status/1525111700684525571
Awkward.... https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1525108601563410438 Turkey President @RTErdogan has said that his country, a member of NATO, cannot support Sweden's & Finland's plans to join the Alliance, accusing Northern European countries of becoming "a haven for terrorist organizations," and calling Greece's accession a "mistake" — @Reuters.
More than awkward. Presumably due to historic Nordic sympathy for Kurds.
Just wonder whether Erdogan is looking for some assurances on Kurdistan or if he's seriously going to cause a crisis in NATO. Would, I guess, be Turkey versus the other 29 members.
The leader of the Social Democrats, Mona Sahlin, is highly critical of the threat by Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan to expel over 100,000 Armenians living in Turkey.
The leader of the Social Democrats, Mona Sahlin, is highly critical of the threat by Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan to expel over 100,000 Armenians living in Turkey.
Sweden has been pro-Kurdish for many decades, sympathetic to statehood, with many Kurdish exiles living here. That seriously pisses off Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has come out against allowing Sweden and Finland to join Nato, putting the two Nordic countries’ hopes of joining the western military alliance in jeopardy. https://twitter.com/laurapitel/status/1525111700684525571
Awkward.... https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1525108601563410438 Turkey President @RTErdogan has said that his country, a member of NATO, cannot support Sweden's & Finland's plans to join the Alliance, accusing Northern European countries of becoming "a haven for terrorist organizations," and calling Greece's accession a "mistake" — @Reuters.
Sweden has been pro-Kurdish for many decades, sympathetic to statehood, with many Kurdish exiles living here. That seriously pisses off Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
Yep. I believe there is/was a significant Kurdish diaspora in Sweden.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Democratic politics, especially in a big-tent FPTP system, involves compromising with the electorate from time to time.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
It is a distinction without a difference. If you oppose the government then by definition you think the people who put them there got it wrong.
No, you think that the people who put you there got it right - and in any case, most of the time the government does get its way.
But when there's a higher power of a referendum result in place, you need something extraordinary for ignoring it to be even close to democratic.
Why is it a higher power? It is the same electorate that the following year was demonstrably split.
This is what anti-second voters miss. It is the same people doing the voting. Hence perfectly democratically legitimate if hugely administratively difficult. The referendum was decided by the same people who vote in general elections.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
Indeed and had those wanting to reverse the referendum won the 2017 or 2019 elections then that would be one thing, but they didn't.
Instead in a bait-and-switch bit of dishonesty people went into 2017 claiming they'd respect the referendum result, then moved heaven and earth to reverse it.
Unsurprisingly, people don't like dishonesty. You can see that with Boris, but you have a blind spot for Keir, Grieve etc did.
I actually respect the Lib Dems who had reversing the referendum as their pre-election pledge, unlike Keir, Grieve etc
Quick question - and it’s a genuine one - if we accept the rule that no Parliament may bind its future Parliament, how does that explain how we view the actions of the 1707 Scottish Parliament, which voted in the Act of Union? Or is it assumed that since it was merged / abolished, the principle no longer applies (or, alternatively, it’s Scotland so the same principle doesn’t apply?)
The 1707 parliament has been reconvened as the Holyrood Parliament in 1997, as was explicitly and formally noted at the opening of the latter. (BTW, that was in a heavily Unionist dominated house, so it's not just a SNP thing.)
Also, exactly the same could be said of the Irish Parliament's own Act of Union in 1799/1800/1801 (I forget the precise date). Yet Westminster was happy to accept that as moot in the 1920s.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
Indeed and had those wanting to reverse the referendum won the 2017 or 2019 elections then that would be one thing, but they didn't.
Instead in a bait-and-switch bit of dishonesty people went into 2017 claiming they'd respect the referendum result, then moved heaven and earth to reverse it.
Unsurprisingly, people don't like dishonesty. You can see that with Boris, but you have a blind spot for Keir, Grieve etc did.
I actually respect the Lib Dems who had reversing the referendum as their pre-election pledge, unlike Keir, Grieve etc
Quick question - and it’s a genuine one - if we accept the rule that no Parliament may bind its future Parliament, how does that explain how we view the actions of the 1707 Scottish Parliament, which voted in the Act of Union? Or is it assumed that since it was merged / abolished, the principle no longer applies (or, alternatively, it’s Scotland so the same principle doesn’t apply?)
It wasn’t just an act of one parliament. The parliament of England passed the Union with Scotland Act in 1706.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
Why not?
Surely democracy is the will of the people, therefore if more people indicated they wanted a second referendum than didn't, there was nothing undemocratic about calling one, particularly if the majority then voted to change their minds having been furnished with more details about what the ramifications of Brexit would look like.
You can call the demand for a second referendum all sorts of things, but undemocratic it was not.
Because - I'll but it in bold for the hard of thinking - democracy requires that the politicians implement what the people vote for.
"You got it wrong, vote again" in France, Denmark, and Ireland twice is exactly how anti EU-sentiment got stirred up in the UK in the first place.
Not if they change their minds and are given the opportunity to vote as such, like in the examples you have given.
Like I said, a second referendum might be a lot of things but it is certainly not anti- democratic. The people have spoken...again!
Hard of thinking I may be, but check the mirror.
"You got it wrong, vote again" is as anti-democratic as it's possible to be. Bullying people with the threat of an infinite serious of referendums until you wear them down - and you only have to be lucky once - doesn't even show that the people genuinely have changed their mind.
"We got it wrong, we want to vote again" was how I saw it.
That was then, this is now. Democracy has prevailed and even if we want to change our minds it is far, far too late. Even if the majority have buyers remorse, tough, the EU don't want us back, and we certainly couldn't commit to returning on inferior terms with an equal billing to Malta.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has come out against allowing Sweden and Finland to join Nato, putting the two Nordic countries’ hopes of joining the western military alliance in jeopardy. https://twitter.com/laurapitel/status/1525111700684525571
Awkward.... https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1525108601563410438 Turkey President @RTErdogan has said that his country, a member of NATO, cannot support Sweden's & Finland's plans to join the Alliance, accusing Northern European countries of becoming "a haven for terrorist organizations," and calling Greece's accession a "mistake" — @Reuters.
More than awkward. Presumably due to historic Nordic sympathy for Kurds.
Just wonder whether Erdogan is looking for some assurances on Kurdistan or if he's seriously going to cause a crisis in NATO. Would, I guess, be Turkey versus the other 29 members.
Note the language "Cannot support". Not "No". Erdogan is angling for something.....
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Democratic politics, especially in a big-tent FPTP system, involves compromising with the electorate from time to time.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
It is a distinction without a difference. If you oppose the government then by definition you think the people who put them there got it wrong.
No, you think that the people who put you there got it right - and in any case, most of the time the government does get its way.
But when there's a higher power of a referendum result in place, you need something extraordinary for ignoring it to be even close to democratic.
Why is it a higher power? It is the same electorate that the following year was demonstrably split.
This is what anti-second voters miss. It is the same people doing the voting. Hence perfectly democratically legitimate if hugely administratively difficult. The referendum was decided by the same people who vote in general elections.
Because it's a direct instruction on a single issue, which is clearly a higher power on that single issue than electing a representative on a broad range of issues.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
Indeed and had those wanting to reverse the referendum won the 2017 or 2019 elections then that would be one thing, but they didn't.
Instead in a bait-and-switch bit of dishonesty people went into 2017 claiming they'd respect the referendum result, then moved heaven and earth to reverse it.
Unsurprisingly, people don't like dishonesty. You can see that with Boris, but you have a blind spot for Keir, Grieve etc did.
I actually respect the Lib Dems who had reversing the referendum as their pre-election pledge, unlike Keir, Grieve etc
Quick question - and it’s a genuine one - if we accept the rule that no Parliament may bind its future Parliament, how does that explain how we view the actions of the 1707 Scottish Parliament, which voted in the Act of Union? Or is it assumed that since it was merged / abolished, the principle no longer applies (or, alternatively, it’s Scotland so the same principle doesn’t apply?)
The 1707 parliament has been reconvened as the Holyrood Parliament in 1997, as was explicitly and formally noted at the opening of the latter. (BTW, that was in a heavily Unionist dominated house, so it's not just a SNP thing.)
Also, exactly the same could be said of the Irish Parliament's own Act of Union in 1799/1800/1801 (I forget the precise date). Yet Westminster was happy to accept that as moot in the 1920s.
I presume, because in both cases the Westminster parliament was in agreement with the actions taken. So it was changing it's own (Parliaments) previous decision.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
Indeed and had those wanting to reverse the referendum won the 2017 or 2019 elections then that would be one thing, but they didn't.
Instead in a bait-and-switch bit of dishonesty people went into 2017 claiming they'd respect the referendum result, then moved heaven and earth to reverse it.
Unsurprisingly, people don't like dishonesty. You can see that with Boris, but you have a blind spot for Keir, Grieve etc did.
I actually respect the Lib Dems who had reversing the referendum as their pre-election pledge, unlike Keir, Grieve etc
Quick question - and it’s a genuine one - if we accept the rule that no Parliament may bind its future Parliament, how does that explain how we view the actions of the 1707 Scottish Parliament, which voted in the Act of Union? Or is it assumed that since it was merged / abolished, the principle no longer applies (or, alternatively, it’s Scotland so the same principle doesn’t apply?)
The 1707 parliament has been reconvened as the Holyrood Parliament in 1997, as was explicitly and formally noted at the opening of the latter. (BTW, that was in a heavily Unionist dominated house, so it's not just a SNP thing.)
Also, exactly the same could be said of the Irish Parliament's own Act of Union in 1799/1800/1801 (I forget the precise date). Yet Westminster was happy to accept that as moot in the 1920s.
I presume, because in both cases the Westminster parliament was in agreement with the actions taken. So it was changing it's own (Parliaments) previous decision.
Not its previous decision - it didn't exist as such before it made those decisions. Only as the separate GB or English Pmts (as appropriate). Only common factor was the physical location, etc.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
Why not?
Surely democracy is the will of the people, therefore if more people indicated they wanted a second referendum than didn't, there was nothing undemocratic about calling one, particularly if the majority then voted to change their minds having been furnished with more details about what the ramifications of Brexit would look like.
You can call the demand for a second referendum all sorts of things, but undemocratic it was not.
Because - I'll but it in bold for the hard of thinking - democracy requires that the politicians implement what the people vote for.
"You got it wrong, vote again" in France, Denmark, and Ireland twice is exactly how anti EU-sentiment got stirred up in the UK in the first place.
Not if they change their minds and are given the opportunity to vote as such, like in the examples you have given.
Like I said, a second referendum might be a lot of things but it is certainly not anti- democratic. The people have spoken...again!
Hard of thinking I may be, but check the mirror.
"You got it wrong, vote again" is as anti-democratic as it's possible to be. Bullying people with the threat of an infinite serious of referendums until you wear them down - and you only have to be lucky once - doesn't even show that the people genuinely have changed their mind.
"We got it wrong, we want to vote again" was how I saw it.
That was then, this is now. Democracy has prevailed and even if we want to change our minds it is far, far too late. Even if the majority have buyers remorse, tough, the EU don't want us back, and we certainly couldn't commit to returning on inferior terms with an equal billing to Malta.
Not at all. Now that the referendum result has been implemented, it's perfectly legitimate for us to change our minds and go back in.
Your only problem with that, as you seem to imply that you realise, is that there's never been any great desire amongst the British people for full membership.
Michelle O'Neill tells the British government if they want to see a future trade deal with the American administration they 'need to honour the Good Friday Agreement and they need to stop messing with it'.
The leader of the Social Democrats, Mona Sahlin, is highly critical of the threat by Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan to expel over 100,000 Armenians living in Turkey.
How do you think this will play in Sweden @StuartDickson ?
I seem to remember you were highly sceptical about Sweden wishing to join NATO. Times have changed, of course...
Not sure about the “highly”, but I am a sceptic by nature 😉
My main concern is the unseemly rush, much worse in Finland than in Sweden. Just that alone was always going to be problematic for certain NATO members: most folk don’t like being pushed into sudden drastic changes.
I will certainly admit that I misjudged Swedish public opinion, but in my defence the opinion polling of the last few decades has never indicated enthusiasm for joining NATO. Quite the opposite.
How will it play in Sweden: a hell of a lot of people are going to be mighty relieved! But the majority (probably the majority?) are going to be very worried now. Andersson and the Borgerliga parties seem to have made an historic error of judgment that very seriously threatens Sweden and Finland’s security. Boris Johnson is just a here today/gone tomorrow politician, and our PMs must be rueing the day they entertained the Clown.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
"Should the United Kingdom join the EU or stay out of the EU?"
The leader of the Social Democrats, Mona Sahlin, is highly critical of the threat by Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan to expel over 100,000 Armenians living in Turkey.
How do you think this will play in Sweden @StuartDickson ?
I seem to remember you were highly sceptical about Sweden wishing to join NATO. Times have changed, of course...
Not sure about the “highly”, but I am a sceptic by nature 😉
My main concern is the unseemly rush, much worse in Finland than in Sweden. Just that alone was always going to be problematic for certain NATO members: most folk don’t like being pushed into sudden drastic changes.
I will certainly admit that I misjudged Swedish public opinion, but in my defence the opinion polling of the last few decades has never indicated enthusiasm for joining NATO. Quite the opposite.
How will it play in Sweden: a hell of a lot of people are going to be mighty relieved! But the majority (probably the majority?) are going to be very worried now. Andersson and the Borgerliga parties seem to have made an historic error of judgment that very seriously threatens Sweden and Finland’s security. Boris Johnson is just a here today/gone tomorrow politician, and our PMs must be rueing the day they entertained the Clown.
Hmm. "Unseemly rush". But surely if you're gonna do it, do it now when Putin is up to his oxters and can't, practically, do much about it. No? Why wait?
Sweden has been pro-Kurdish for many decades, sympathetic to statehood, with many Kurdish exiles living here. That seriously pisses off Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
Yep. I believe there is/was a significant Kurdish diaspora in Sweden.
I bump into Kurds all the time. For example my barber is a lovely young Kurdish chap: very entrepreneurial.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
The people don't vote directly for laws...
...they vote for a manifesto which indicates what laws the candidate Parties plan to pass.
Incorrect as a matter of law, I'm afraid, as determined in the 2008 Wheeler case.
I thought Stuart Wheeler failed because he was unpersuasive that changes to the Treaty of Lisbon did not constitute a big enough change to the European Constitution to require a vote, as had been promised in the Labour Party Manifesto.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Democratic politics, especially in a big-tent FPTP system, involves compromising with the electorate from time to time.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
It is a distinction without a difference. If you oppose the government then by definition you think the people who put them there got it wrong.
No, you think that the people who put you there got it right - and in any case, most of the time the government does get its way.
But when there's a higher power of a referendum result in place, you need something extraordinary for ignoring it to be even close to democratic.
Why is it a higher power? It is the same electorate that the following year was demonstrably split.
This is what anti-second voters miss. It is the same people doing the voting. Hence perfectly democratically legitimate if hugely administratively difficult. The referendum was decided by the same people who vote in general elections.
Because it's a direct instruction on a single issue, which is clearly a higher power on that single issue than electing a representative on a broad range of issues.
Says you. It is the same electorate, making decisions.
Sweden has been pro-Kurdish for many decades, sympathetic to statehood, with many Kurdish exiles living here. That seriously pisses off Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
Yep. I believe there is/was a significant Kurdish diaspora in Sweden.
Michelle O'Neill tells the British government if they want to see a future trade deal with the American administration they 'need to honour the Good Friday Agreement and they need to stop messing with it'.
If Ukraine doesn't sell the harvest that is now in stocks, because Russia has blocked ports, "we will have no place to store the new harvest that is coming. The entire agricultural cycle will be interrupted & the global food crisis will become systemic"—Ukrainian MFA after the G7 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1525138642234134531
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
Why not?
Surely democracy is the will of the people, therefore if more people indicated they wanted a second referendum than didn't, there was nothing undemocratic about calling one, particularly if the majority then voted to change their minds having been furnished with more details about what the ramifications of Brexit would look like.
You can call the demand for a second referendum all sorts of things, but undemocratic it was not.
Because - I'll but it in bold for the hard of thinking - democracy requires that the politicians implement what the people vote for.
"You got it wrong, vote again" in France, Denmark, and Ireland twice is exactly how anti EU-sentiment got stirred up in the UK in the first place.
Not if they change their minds and are given the opportunity to vote as such, like in the examples you have given.
Like I said, a second referendum might be a lot of things but it is certainly not anti- democratic. The people have spoken...again!
Hard of thinking I may be, but check the mirror.
"You got it wrong, vote again" is as anti-democratic as it's possible to be. Bullying people with the threat of an infinite serious of referendums until you wear them down - and you only have to be lucky once - doesn't even show that the people genuinely have changed their mind.
"We got it wrong, we want to vote again" was how I saw it.
That was then, this is now. Democracy has prevailed and even if we want to change our minds it is far, far too late. Even if the majority have buyers remorse, tough, the EU don't want us back, and we certainly couldn't commit to returning on inferior terms with an equal billing to Malta.
Not at all. Now that the referendum result has been implemented, it's perfectly legitimate for us to change our minds and go back in.
Your only problem with that, as you seem to imply that you realise, is that there's never been any great desire amongst the British people for full membership.
I haven't implied that at all.
My point was we were a Premiership club, any return probably puts us in the National League (North).
Tulip Siddiq MP says Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has told Boris Johnson "very clearly" that his words had a "big impact" on her and that she "lived in the shadow" of them for more than four years
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
Indeed and had those wanting to reverse the referendum won the 2017 or 2019 elections then that would be one thing, but they didn't.
Instead in a bait-and-switch bit of dishonesty people went into 2017 claiming they'd respect the referendum result, then moved heaven and earth to reverse it.
Unsurprisingly, people don't like dishonesty. You can see that with Boris, but you have a blind spot for Keir, Grieve etc did.
I actually respect the Lib Dems who had reversing the referendum as their pre-election pledge, unlike Keir, Grieve etc
Quick question - and it’s a genuine one - if we accept the rule that no Parliament may bind its future Parliament, how does that explain how we view the actions of the 1707 Scottish Parliament, which voted in the Act of Union? Or is it assumed that since it was merged / abolished, the principle no longer applies (or, alternatively, it’s Scotland so the same principle doesn’t apply?)
The 1707 parliament has been reconvened as the Holyrood Parliament in 1997, as was explicitly and formally noted at the opening of the latter. (BTW, that was in a heavily Unionist dominated house, so it's not just a SNP thing.)
Also, exactly the same could be said of the Irish Parliament's own Act of Union in 1799/1800/1801 (I forget the precise date). Yet Westminster was happy to accept that as moot in the 1920s.
In reality it isn't. Holyrood is just a domestic subsidiary parliament Westminster could scrap tomorrow if it wished, even if politically it is unlikely to do so just continue to refuse an indyref2.
The supreme power in Scotland as well as England remains Westminster and Westminster remains the real heir of the Scottish Parliament of 1707 that dissolved itself into Westminster
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Democratic politics, especially in a big-tent FPTP system, involves compromising with the electorate from time to time.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
It is a distinction without a difference. If you oppose the government then by definition you think the people who put them there got it wrong.
No, you think that the people who put you there got it right - and in any case, most of the time the government does get its way.
But when there's a higher power of a referendum result in place, you need something extraordinary for ignoring it to be even close to democratic.
Why is it a higher power? It is the same electorate that the following year was demonstrably split.
This is what anti-second voters miss. It is the same people doing the voting. Hence perfectly democratically legitimate if hugely administratively difficult. The referendum was decided by the same people who vote in general elections.
Because it's a direct instruction on a single issue, which is clearly a higher power on that single issue than electing a representative on a broad range of issues.
Says you. It is the same electorate, making decisions.
Well, you can deny the blindingly obvious if you want, but if you're going to do that I'll leave it there.
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
Why not?
Surely democracy is the will of the people, therefore if more people indicated they wanted a second referendum than didn't, there was nothing undemocratic about calling one, particularly if the majority then voted to change their minds having been furnished with more details about what the ramifications of Brexit would look like.
You can call the demand for a second referendum all sorts of things, but undemocratic it was not.
Because - I'll but it in bold for the hard of thinking - democracy requires that the politicians implement what the people vote for.
"You got it wrong, vote again" in France, Denmark, and Ireland twice is exactly how anti EU-sentiment got stirred up in the UK in the first place.
Not if they change their minds and are given the opportunity to vote as such, like in the examples you have given.
Like I said, a second referendum might be a lot of things but it is certainly not anti- democratic. The people have spoken...again!
Hard of thinking I may be, but check the mirror.
"You got it wrong, vote again" is as anti-democratic as it's possible to be. Bullying people with the threat of an infinite serious of referendums until you wear them down - and you only have to be lucky once - doesn't even show that the people genuinely have changed their mind.
"We got it wrong, we want to vote again" was how I saw it.
That was then, this is now. Democracy has prevailed and even if we want to change our minds it is far, far too late. Even if the majority have buyers remorse, tough, the EU don't want us back, and we certainly couldn't commit to returning on inferior terms with an equal billing to Malta.
Not at all. Now that the referendum result has been implemented, it's perfectly legitimate for us to change our minds and go back in.
Your only problem with that, as you seem to imply that you realise, is that there's never been any great desire amongst the British people for full membership.
I haven't implied that at all.
My point was we were a Premiership club, any return probably puts us in the National League (North).
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Democratic politics, especially in a big-tent FPTP system, involves compromising with the electorate from time to time.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
It is a distinction without a difference. If you oppose the government then by definition you think the people who put them there got it wrong.
Yes, but you don't query the result of the election, and the right of the government to govern. If a referendum is not qualitatively different from an election, why have referendums?
From a thread which makes a nonsense of government claims that it didn't know what it was getting into with the NI deal.
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1525066051632889856 .. this leaked Treasury presentation in 2019 went on to say checks and declarations from the Protocol would be “highly disruptive to the NI economy” that SMEs are “likely to struggle to bear cost” and acknowledged that it would increase the price of high street goods…
If Ukraine doesn't sell the harvest that is now in stocks, because Russia has blocked ports, "we will have no place to store the new harvest that is coming. The entire agricultural cycle will be interrupted & the global food crisis will become systemic"—Ukrainian MFA after the G7 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1525138642234134531
I appreciate the quantity is enormous, but why can’t it be got out by rail to the north or west?
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Democratic politics, especially in a big-tent FPTP system, involves compromising with the electorate from time to time.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
It is a distinction without a difference. If you oppose the government then by definition you think the people who put them there got it wrong.
No, you think that the people who put you there got it right - and in any case, most of the time the government does get its way.
But when there's a higher power of a referendum result in place, you need something extraordinary for ignoring it to be even close to democratic.
Why is it a higher power? It is the same electorate that the following year was demonstrably split.
This is what anti-second voters miss. It is the same people doing the voting. Hence perfectly democratically legitimate if hugely administratively difficult. The referendum was decided by the same people who vote in general elections.
Because it's a direct instruction on a single issue, which is clearly a higher power on that single issue than electing a representative on a broad range of issues.
Says you. It is the same electorate, making decisions.
Well, you can deny the blindingly obvious if you want, but if you're going to do that I'll leave it there.
Doesn't make for much of a discussion, though, does it but I will accept your Apexit.
If Ukraine doesn't sell the harvest that is now in stocks, because Russia has blocked ports, "we will have no place to store the new harvest that is coming. The entire agricultural cycle will be interrupted & the global food crisis will become systemic"—Ukrainian MFA after the G7 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1525138642234134531
I appreciate the quantity is enormous, but why can’t it be got out by rail to the north or west?
Tulip Siddiq MP says Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has told Boris Johnson "very clearly" that his words had a "big impact" on her and that she "lived in the shadow" of them for more than four years
If Ukraine doesn't sell the harvest that is now in stocks, because Russia has blocked ports, "we will have no place to store the new harvest that is coming. The entire agricultural cycle will be interrupted & the global food crisis will become systemic"—Ukrainian MFA after the G7 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1525138642234134531
I appreciate the quantity is enormous, but why can’t it be got out by rail to the north or west?
Do we have any rail logistics experts who can answer that ? Does the necessary rolling stock - and the means of getting millions of tonnes of wheat onto it - exist ?
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
Indeed and had those wanting to reverse the referendum won the 2017 or 2019 elections then that would be one thing, but they didn't.
Instead in a bait-and-switch bit of dishonesty people went into 2017 claiming they'd respect the referendum result, then moved heaven and earth to reverse it.
Unsurprisingly, people don't like dishonesty. You can see that with Boris, but you have a blind spot for Keir, Grieve etc did.
I actually respect the Lib Dems who had reversing the referendum as their pre-election pledge, unlike Keir, Grieve etc
Quick question - and it’s a genuine one - if we accept the rule that no Parliament may bind its future Parliament, how does that explain how we view the actions of the 1707 Scottish Parliament, which voted in the Act of Union? Or is it assumed that since it was merged / abolished, the principle no longer applies (or, alternatively, it’s Scotland so the same principle doesn’t apply?)
The 1707 parliament has been reconvened as the Holyrood Parliament in 1997, as was explicitly and formally noted at the opening of the latter. (BTW, that was in a heavily Unionist dominated house, so it's not just a SNP thing.)
Also, exactly the same could be said of the Irish Parliament's own Act of Union in 1799/1800/1801 (I forget the precise date). Yet Westminster was happy to accept that as moot in the 1920s.
In reality it isn't. Holyrood is just a domestic subsidiary parliament Westminster could scrap tomorrow if it wished, even if politically it is unlikely to do so just continue to refuse an indyref2.
The supreme power in Scotland as well as England remains Westminster and Westminster remains the real heir of the Scottish Parliament of 1707 that dissolved itself into Westminster
That is the strict letter of the law from your mentality - but in terms of democratic legitimacy I am quite right. Above all, perceived legitimacy. This was a cross-party consensus (remarkably enough).
Remember that this was a period when any hint at all of perceived pandering to the SNP, often fictitious as it was, was rigorously stamped out. This was a very large factor in the decision to reject the use of the former Royal High School high up on the Mound and go for a modernist building which was not seen to dominate anything at all: yes, it's bizarre, but that was what was happening. There's at least one other story of that thinking which I am not at liberty to relate but might tell one day ...
From a thread which makes a nonsense of government claims that it didn't know what it was getting into with the NI deal.
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1525066051632889856 .. this leaked Treasury presentation in 2019 went on to say checks and declarations from the Protocol would be “highly disruptive to the NI economy” that SMEs are “likely to struggle to bear cost” and acknowledged that it would increase the price of high street goods…
Lied to get the deal needed for the GE. A very simple and sordid piece of business.
If Ukraine doesn't sell the harvest that is now in stocks, because Russia has blocked ports, "we will have no place to store the new harvest that is coming. The entire agricultural cycle will be interrupted & the global food crisis will become systemic"—Ukrainian MFA after the G7 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1525138642234134531
I appreciate the quantity is enormous, but why can’t it be got out by rail to the north or west?
Do we have any rail logistics experts who can answer that ? Does the necessary rolling stock - and the means of getting millions of tonnes of wheat onto it - exist ?
Break of gauge.* You need special wagons with transposable bogies. Apparently not enough.
Surrey have set a world first-class record today. 671-9 Dec v Kent. The highest total ever without a century. 7 50's and a top score of 96, one of three in the 90's. Previous best 609 by Namibia v Uganda.
If Ukraine doesn't sell the harvest that is now in stocks, because Russia has blocked ports, "we will have no place to store the new harvest that is coming. The entire agricultural cycle will be interrupted & the global food crisis will become systemic"—Ukrainian MFA after the G7 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1525138642234134531
I appreciate the quantity is enormous, but why can’t it be got out by rail to the north or west?
Do we have any rail logistics experts who can answer that ? Does the necessary rolling stock - and the means of getting millions of tonnes of wheat onto it - exist ?
Break of gauge.* You need special wagons with transposable bogies. Apparently not enough.
and maybe one or two other pieces under ukraine grain if you search
*'Russian' trains of Tsarist times had wider tracks, and so on and so on to today, so won't run on more westerly tracks. The wheels fall off ...
I would also guess that getting it back out of port storage onto rail wagons, rather than onto the planned ships, has an element of getting water to run back uphill about it.
Surrey have set a world first-class record today. 671-9 Dec v Kent. The highest total ever without a century. 7 50's and a top score of 96, one of three in the 90's. Previous best 609 by Namibia v Uganda.
Looks like a decent set of bat-first performances, Lancashire, Somerset and Northants all got 550+ - and out of the four, Surrey were the only ones to win the toss and bat!
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Ah, right...Brexit is a dog's breakfast because "Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat".
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
Oh, FFS. This dumb analogy for the eleventy billionth time.
Which dumb analogy? I am a bottomless well of dumb analogies.
The idea that electing MPs and by extension a government for a limited time, and changing the MPs and government at the next election is the same thing as overturning a referendum result without it ever being implemented.
We overturn laws without them being implemented. No parliament is bound by its predecessor - a very simple definition of sovereignty.
The people don't vote directly for laws...
...they vote for a manifesto which indicates what laws the candidate Parties plan to pass.
Incorrect as a matter of law, I'm afraid, as determined in the 2008 Wheeler case.
I thought Stuart Wheeler failed because he was unpersuasive that changes to the Treaty of Lisbon did not constitute a big enough change to the European Constitution to require a vote, as had been promised in the Labour Party Manifesto.
Not quite. The judges in the case ruled that the Lisbon Treaty and the proposed European Constitution were different documents and so the pledge made over the European Constitution did not apply to the Lisbon Treaty.
They did however also go on to rule on whether or not they would have accepted the challenge if they had decided the two documents were the same.
In their ruling they cited a previous suit from 1999 involving a school girl called Heather Begbie. She had been on an assisted places scheme which had been scrapped by the Labour Government. The Government had promised that although they were ending the scheme, any children who were already on it would be able to continue until their planned end. They then reneged on this promise.
The judges in that case made a distinction between a specific promise made to a specific individual - which could have been reasonably challenged if broken - and a general political promise made as part of a manifesto. They were explicit in ruling that judges should not and could not rule on such cases and that Ministers were not legally bound by either pre-election promises or political statements made when in power.
Bringing the Israeli/Palestinian issue into a discussion about Brexit/2nd votes/democratic mandate of MPs/voting in @Richard_Tyndall as King for Life/cycling in London vs replacement bus services.
What are you, running for leadership of the Labour Party?
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
If you aren't going to make the case for rejoining as a full member, including the euro and Schengen, then opinion polling is as irrelevant now as it was wrong then.
I am not in favour of rejoining, though when, as seems likely, the young vote to do so, and assuming I am still alive I shall laugh and laugh at all you swivel-eyed nostalgia freaks who thought you could take England back to the 1950s.
Lol. I voted Leave because the half-in/half-out status quo was unsustainable, and eventually we either had to be fully in, or out. And nobody on the Remain side was making the case for being fully in.
This is perfectly sensible. A twin track / two speed Europe had been talked about for some time and has just been floated - again - by Macron. We were going to be on the outer ring as we're not in Schengen or the Euro so better to go under our own steam on our own terms than be flung out there by centrifugal forces.
But - and its a very big but - what we have done since is fucking stupid.
Oh, sure. But since far too many Remainers spent far too long refusing to accept defeat, we got stuck with what was acceptable to Leavers only because the most fucking stupid thing of all would have been for the public to have voted to Leave but the politicians to have overturned that vote.
Theresa May shut down the option to have any functional trading ties in her Lancaster House speech of January 2017. What does that have to do with remainers?
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
If remainers hadn't already been fighting for months to overturn the result the Lancaster House speech wouldn't have been possible as a different consensus position would have already started to emerge. Not least because there shouldn't even have been a vacancy for May to fill.
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
You haven't answered my question - should the Labour Party in 2019 have just agreed to everything the Conservatives suggested because they lost the election and hence shouldn't have refused to accept defeat?
Democratic politics, especially in a big-tent FPTP system, involves compromising with the electorate from time to time.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
It is a distinction without a difference. If you oppose the government then by definition you think the people who put them there got it wrong.
No, you think that the people who put you there got it right - and in any case, most of the time the government does get its way.
But when there's a higher power of a referendum result in place, you need something extraordinary for ignoring it to be even close to democratic.
Why is it a higher power? It is the same electorate that the following year was demonstrably split.
This is what anti-second voters miss. It is the same people doing the voting. Hence perfectly democratically legitimate if hugely administratively difficult. The referendum was decided by the same people who vote in general elections.
Because it's a direct instruction on a single issue, which is clearly a higher power on that single issue than electing a representative on a broad range of issues.
Says you. It is the same electorate, making decisions.
Well, you can deny the blindingly obvious if you want, but if you're going to do that I'll leave it there.
You quite often say that when you lose an argument, but I think you should add "I'll stop feeding the troll."
Oh dear. Life is just a little more complicated than you think it is. The real world is about compromise and subtlety, particularly in negotiation. It is not just about "force" and bombast.
You sound exactly like those French diplomats and German intellectuals who sneer at Ukraine's lack of subtlety and poor understanding of the greater issues at stake.
And you sound like a complete twat that has completely changed his position from one massive extreme to the other. Your EU-philia used to make even me who is a Brexit-sceptic cringe, and now you are a fully fledged headbanging swivel-eyed Brexiteer. That is not a subtle change, it is a full on credibility shred. When everyone else is gradually realising that Brexit is pointless, you fully embrace it. When does the wind change again?
While I am as wide-eyed amazed as anyone (everyone) else at @williamglenn's transformation I would hesitate to go down the "complete twat" route. Such a dramatic conversion, assuming it's not trolling, which it very possibly is, indicates something going on more than we may know.
And I include myself in that entreaty.
The xenophobic comments he now makes put him firmly in the "complete twat" camp from my perspective. I have to wonder whether his account has been hacked by someone else.
That's ridiculous, yes he's had an about-turn, but so has Rochdale and nobody questions that, but he's never said anything xenophobic.
People can change their mind and the notion of the "zeal of the convert" exists for a reason.
The zeal of the convert is rarely a compliment. People do change their mind, but rarely from one extreme to the other. It is quite frankly ludicrous and lacks credibility.
Just because there a re a lot of prominent vocal bad losers from the Remain side doesn't mean that some of them didn't accept that they lost.
We are not all bad losers, there is a huge amount of amusement to be had from losing a referendum to a coalition of fruitcakes and xenophobes for someone with my ironic sense of humour. The reality is that many Leavers, such as yourself are really really bad winners, and that is hilarious. One has to assume that it is dawning on even you that it was pointless.
The way the EU and its supporters have carried on for the last six years rather justifies the vote, as it happens.
To you perhaps. You are now in a minority according to opinion polling. You keep trying to convince yourself though, it provides amusement for the rest of us.
"Should the United Kingdom join the EU or stay out of the EU?"
I’m surprised join is that high given many Remainers who I talk to don’t think this is the right time to contemplate joining again. I was an ardent Remainer and wouldn’t vote to rejoin unless there was a strong majority in polling for that . The better question for now is the in hindsight one.
I think it’s for future generations to decide on this matter and the EU wouldn’t want the UK back unless it was clear that there wouldn’t be more drama down the line . In which case it would need a very clear majority wanting that .
This is why Zoom meetings aren't a good thing IMO. Someone allegedly gets sacked for rolling their eyes during one. A person wouldn't get fired for doing something like this during a face-to-face meeting.
Comments
I want there to be a punishment for shoplifting. I think it should be a fine for first time offenders of £50, perhaps means tested. You think it should be amputation of their right hand.
We both agree that there should be a punishment for shoplifting...
Any overturning of the vote would have been at the behest of the voters having changed their minds by the time of a second referendum. Democracy in action.
Don't forget both Mrs May and Johnson decided after two years (of a mandatory 5) they wanted another opinion from the voters on the performance of their Conservative Governments, and on each occasion minds were changed. So because we got the right result on EU membership for Brexiteers in 2016 that should be that, and buyer's remorse was forever off the table. If that is true, are you implying the British electorate having elected Boris Johnson on the back of a landslide in 2019 should be lumbered with him for life, sod buyer's remorse, sod a change of mind?
FWIW Brexit is done, and there is no going back. That isn't to say we couldn't have locked the stable door before the Brexit horse bolted when Article 50 remained incomplete.
We haven’t started checking yet. We always have the right to check.
As for votes, we had a referendum. Then we had an election. That 2017 parliament was elected to do what it wished, you surely aren't stupid enough to insist that parliament wasn't sovereign and that its hands were tied by a previous parliament?
As for the 2017-19 parliament, I do not dispute that it had the right to do what it did. But having the right to do something and being right to do it are two different things - as was proven when all their anti-democratic manoeuverings proved counter-productive.
And we saw that the people kicked out Grieve because they disagreed with his Brexit stance so again a fully functioning democracy.
That's why as a Remainer I have no problem with Leave winning. I have fundamental doubts about the benefits of Brexit for the UK (or GB as we should call it now that we've just about got rid of NI) but so would I if a Lab govt were elected.
https://twitter.com/laurapitel/status/1525111700684525571
Surely democracy is the will of the people, therefore if more people indicated they wanted a second referendum than didn't, there was nothing undemocratic about calling one, particularly if the majority then voted to change their minds having been furnished with more details about what the ramifications of Brexit would look like.
You can call the demand for a second referendum all sorts of things, but undemocratic it was not.
The second is the real bugger - keeping track. Unless its a transactional negotiation there will be multiple elements at play. All have both a cost and a value - and may not be cash. You need to track the values of both what you are proposing and their opposing moves, but also understand that many will have values or costs (NOT the same) which can change during the negotiation depending which pieces are played in which order.
Get it right and you trade all your low cost / high value moves in exchange for a winning position. Both sides are happy, "win win" gets talked up, and the relationship is stronger afterwards. Get it wrong and you lose track, get lost, and get a deal that turns to ash.
The Brexit fiasco is all on Leavers. At least they should have the guts to own it.
We're getting there. Ridiculously slowly, but its progress.
https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1525108601563410438
Turkey President @RTErdogan has said that his country, a member of NATO, cannot support Sweden's & Finland's plans to join the Alliance, accusing Northern European countries of becoming "a haven for terrorist organizations," and calling Greece's accession a "mistake" —
@Reuters.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10813021/Sacked-TAC-worker-claims-unfairly-dismissed.html
I could say that it is "anti-democratic" that they should act directly against the mandate they were given. But as parliament is sovereign that simply isn't the case - if there is a majority vote they can do literally anything. There may be repercussions, but they have that absolute right to vote for what they want whether it directly contradicts the previous parliament or their own manifesto.
There's a difference between opposing the government and saying that the people got it wrong.
"You got it wrong, vote again" in France, Denmark, and Ireland twice is exactly how anti EU-sentiment got stirred up in the UK in the first place.
*Only because I can't remember what his Sunday name is.
Like I said, a second referendum might be a lot of things but it is certainly not anti- democratic. The people have spoken...again!
Hard of thinking I may be, but check the mirror.
But when there's a higher power of a referendum result in place, you need something extraordinary for ignoring it to be even close to democratic.
Instead in a bait-and-switch bit of dishonesty people went into 2017 claiming they'd respect the referendum result, then moved heaven and earth to reverse it.
Unsurprisingly, people don't like dishonesty. You can see that with Boris, but you have a blind spot for Keir, Grieve etc did.
I actually respect the Lib Dems who had reversing the referendum as their pre-election pledge, unlike Keir, Grieve etc
Parliament is a representative of the people. As such it can legislate for the people unless the people have instructed them to follow a specific path.
They had no authority to overturn Brexit or to refer it for a second vote. They did have the ability to define it in a way that suited their interests (economic alignment). But they fucked around so long that the electorate lost patience and voted for someone who promised, to coin a phrase, to “get brexit done”
Just wonder whether Erdogan is looking for some assurances on Kurdistan or if he's seriously going to cause a crisis in NATO. Would, I guess, be Turkey versus the other 29 members.
The leader of the Social Democrats, Mona Sahlin, is highly critical of the threat by Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan to expel over 100,000 Armenians living in Turkey.
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/3567084
I seem to remember you were highly sceptical about Sweden wishing to join NATO. Times have changed, of course...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/13/erdogan-turkey-not-feeling-positive-about-sweden-and-finland-joining-nato
My guess (FWIW) is that he'll be persuaded with some pressure & quid pro quos.
This is what anti-second voters miss. It is the same people doing the voting. Hence perfectly democratically legitimate if hugely administratively difficult. The referendum was decided by the same people who vote in general elections.
Also, exactly the same could be said of the Irish Parliament's own Act of Union in 1799/1800/1801 (I forget the precise date). Yet Westminster was happy to accept that as moot in the 1920s.
That was then, this is now. Democracy has prevailed and even if we want to change our minds it is far, far too late. Even if the majority have buyers remorse, tough, the EU don't want us back, and we certainly couldn't commit to returning on inferior terms with an equal billing to Malta.
Edit: but yes, who else was going to argue?
Your only problem with that, as you seem to imply that you realise, is that there's never been any great desire amongst the British people for full membership.
Michelle O'Neill tells the British government if they want to see a future trade deal with the American administration they 'need to honour the Good Friday Agreement and they need to stop messing with it'.
Latest: https://trib.al/pWk4ySX https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1525139709340549120/video/1
My main concern is the unseemly rush, much worse in Finland than in Sweden. Just that alone was always going to be problematic for certain NATO members: most folk don’t like being pushed into sudden drastic changes.
I will certainly admit that I misjudged Swedish public opinion, but in my defence the opinion polling of the last few decades has never indicated enthusiasm for joining NATO. Quite the opposite.
How will it play in Sweden: a hell of a lot of people are going to be mighty relieved! But the majority (probably the majority?) are going to be very worried now. Andersson and the Borgerliga parties seem to have made an historic error of judgment that very seriously threatens Sweden and Finland’s security. Boris Johnson is just a here today/gone tomorrow politician, and our PMs must be rueing the day they entertained the Clown.
Join 49%
Stay Out 51%
Redfield & Wilton May 3
85% of 2016 Leavers would still vote Leave, 15% Remain.
76% of Remainers would still vote Remain, 24% Leave.
64% of those who didn't vote would vote Remain
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1524128405087793152?s=20&t=7KXs5bNrx-gfP5UK6geCVg
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1521520052847185926?s=20&t=7KXs5bNrx-gfP5UK6geCVg
Or maybe take some time out to chill.
The entire agricultural cycle will be interrupted & the global food crisis will become systemic"—Ukrainian MFA after the G7
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1525138642234134531
My point was we were a Premiership club, any return probably puts us in the National League (North).
"I have to say the prime minister looked quite shocked"
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1525110244082319361
The supreme power in Scotland as well as England remains Westminster and Westminster remains the real heir of the Scottish Parliament of 1707 that dissolved itself into Westminster
If a referendum is not qualitatively different from an election, why have referendums?
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1525066051632889856
.. this leaked Treasury presentation in 2019 went on to say checks and declarations from the Protocol would be “highly disruptive to the NI economy” that SMEs are “likely to struggle to bear cost” and acknowledged that it would increase the price of high street goods…
https://twitter.com/mbk_center/status/1525132426590265345
Does the necessary rolling stock - and the means of getting millions of tonnes of wheat onto it - exist ?
Remember that this was a period when any hint at all of perceived pandering to the SNP, often fictitious as it was, was rigorously stamped out. This was a very large factor in the decision to reject the use of the former Royal High School high up on the Mound and go for a modernist building which was not seen to dominate anything at all: yes, it's bizarre, but that was what was happening. There's at least one other story of that thinking which I am not at liberty to relate but might tell one day ...
Also capacity AIUI.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/12/russian-blockade-grain-exports-ukraine-ports-g7
and maybe one or two other pieces under ukraine grain if you search
*'Russian' trains of Tsarist times had wider tracks, and so on and so on to today, so won't run on more westerly tracks. The wheels fall off ...
https://twitter.com/rushdibbc/status/1525114366403743744?s=21&t=vdMC84E1q6pvFvFc-FbZEQ
671-9 Dec v Kent.
The highest total ever without a century. 7 50's and a top score of 96, one of three in the 90's.
Previous best 609 by Namibia v Uganda.
They did however also go on to rule on whether or not they would have accepted the challenge if they had decided the two documents were the same.
In their ruling they cited a previous suit from 1999 involving a school girl called Heather Begbie. She had been on an assisted places scheme which had been scrapped by the Labour Government. The Government had promised that although they were ending the scheme, any children who were already on it would be able to continue until their planned end. They then reneged on this promise.
The judges in that case made a distinction between a specific promise made to a specific individual - which could have been reasonably challenged if broken - and a general political promise made as part of a manifesto. They were explicit in ruling that judges should not and could not rule on such cases and that Ministers were not legally bound by either pre-election promises or political statements made when in power.
This case was then cited in the Wheeler decision.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/aug/21/johncarvel1
What are you, running for leadership of the Labour Party?
HTH
I think it’s for future generations to decide on this matter and the EU wouldn’t want the UK back unless it was clear that there wouldn’t be more drama down the line . In which case it would need a very clear majority wanting that .
I’m the king of rolling my eyes, on most occasions I see my own optical nerve.