The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
UK passports currently need to be stamped to record when people enter and leave - no scanning system can do that.
One of Boris's legacies will be a 30 minute queue every time we enter the EU...
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The parallels between Johnsonites and Corbynites are just impossible to ignore. Not least, the desperately low calibre of those prepared to go into bat for them. For every Richard Burgon there is an Adam Holloway. For every Jacob Rees Mogg an Ian Lavery. For every Dianne Abbott a Nadine Dorries. For every Liz Truss a Rebecca Long Bailey. And so on. It's uncanny.
BREAKING
Quite A Lot Of Politicians Are Mediocre
Yes, that’s a headline for the ages. Hold the front page
But PMs and leaders of the opposition ought not to go out of their way to promote the absolute dregs of those who don't even rise to mediocre.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
So much Stupid in here it is hard to unpack. Let’s take one claim
“French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours”
Reality? -
“The war is expected to set back growth in the UK in 2022 by about 0.2 percentage points, but it will shave around a percentage point off growth in Germany, Italy and France.
Growth in the UK is expected to average 3.9 per cent in 2022, compared with 2.5 per cent in Germany and 3.4 per cent in France and Italy.”
We are not going to rejoin the EU. We won't ask for it. They won't agree to it.
None of those statements is true
Yes, they are. Your party has already moved on from your absolutism and you need to do the same. Whats more, as the EU evolves the thing a theoretical future government could enquire about being part of won't be the EU we left.
Never understood why Brexit folk never went for EFTA/EEA, would have avoided the political integration they feared, but retained economic benefits and avoid NI problems. Also would have been a classic British conservative compromise.
The romantic theological Brexiteers, inspired by folk like Farage and Cumming won the day and steered us on to this rock.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
That's interesting. Particularly as the central figure in the 6 lost years is the very same big dog that the Tories made such a hash of getting rid of yesterday. What Trump and Johnson have shown is the weakness of democracy. Marketing trumps it any day. Put enough money behind a product and you can sell it. Generally only once if it's crap but in politics that's enough. They sold Johnson as defective but effective and patronage did the rest.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
UK passports currently need to be stamped to record when people enter and leave - no scanning system can do that.
One of Boris's legacies will be a 30 minute queue every time we enter the EU...
EEA citizens can visit for up to 6 months to the UK - we’ve chosen not to stamp passports to check that - the EU has chosen to stamp passports - how do you suggest that be changed?
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
Yep, Johnson put his Cabinet together for times like this. A Wallace resignation would bring him down. But Wallace gives every impression of being a loyalist.
No, Wallace is just another non-entity. There is no-one in the cabinet unsackable or whose resignation would bring Johnson down.
It's what Wallace represents that matters. A Wallace resignation would end the argument that only Johnson would be backing Ukraine.
Considering virtually all MPs on both sides of parliament back our current Ukraine policy, that argument is dead already.
But it is one that is relentlessly made by Johnson's supporters. Apparently only he would be doing what is being done. Of course, it's absolute nonsense, but it is generally reported without pushback. Wallace going would make that untenable.
Johnson's position is already untenable - but he'll cling to it until forcibly removed. He'd just replace Wallace.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
UK passports currently need to be stamped to record when people enter and leave - no scanning system can do that.
One of Boris's legacies will be a 30 minute queue every time we enter the EU...
EEA citizens can visit for up to 6 months to the UK - we’ve chosen not to stamp passports to check that - the EU has chosen to stamp passports - how do you suggest that be changed?
I said will be a continual reminder of Bozo's legacy - where did I say it could be solved?
I was surprised at myself how triggered and angry I was this morning listening to a clip of Boris. Just the usual absolute crap about “drawing a line under things” and coming together.
Firstly it doesn’t draw a line under partygate, wallpaper, Owen Paterson etc - these issues still anger the voters and can destroy the Tories. All these things are because of Boris and the way he thinks, acts and doesn’t act. To think that the public will also think “ok, fair do’s, let’s look at the sunny future only” is nuts. It’s insulting to the electorate but fully what you expect from Boris - he frankly just does not give a shit about people only himself. He might want a line drawn under it for selfish interest but it’s not going to happen.
For him to say the party should come together when we know he’s a vindictive bastard and his “loyalists” are briefing about revenge again shows they just don’t get it.
Listening to the boorish cheering at the announcement of the result made me just envisage a group of twats treating the future of the country like the rugby club end of season awards where their captain gets player of the year award from the sponsors who also happen to be owned by his father in law.
I’m a socially Liberal and fiscally conservative Tory. I appreciate that some traditional Tory ideas of tax and spend have been blown apart by necessity from Covid and Ukraine but that wouldn’t be a problem if the man at the top had a plan, a route through this and an end goal but he doesn’t - he just throws out some buzz ideas and hopes they somehow happen - he’s too lazy and arrogant to do the hard dirty work.
I honestly admit that when Boris took over I really hoped he would be a PM who whilst being shallow and “populist” in a loose sense would surround himself by active bright people who would do all the heavy lifting and he would be chairman of the board and walk away with the big bonuses on others work but he’s the worst combination - lazy, arrogant, insecure, vindictive and so he cannot let good people do the work in case it shows up his lack of depth and poses a threat to him as world king.
Maybe that’s why I was so angry they didn’t dump him - a guy who fooled me into thinking he was socially liberal and fiscally conservative is just nothing, just a blob of nothing whose sole function is to live and procreate without improving anything.
I am absolutely certain that within a couple of months after he’s tried all the boosterism bullshit and made stupid decisions purely from an eye on politics something else will happen that shows him to be totally unsuitable as a person to be PM and we will go through this dance again and will hear the same lines “it’s not the time”, “it’s people trying to derail Brexit”, “I’m a winner” and it’s on all the Tories who didn’t eject him last night.
Draw the line under integrity and honesty. And move on without them.
The parallels between Johnsonites and Corbynites are just impossible to ignore. Not least, the desperately low calibre of those prepared to go into bat for them. For every Richard Burgon there is an Adam Holloway. For every Jacob Rees Mogg an Ian Lavery. For every Dianne Abbott a Nadine Dorries. For every Liz Truss a Rebecca Long Bailey. And so on. It's uncanny.
BREAKING
Quite A Lot Of Politicians Are Mediocre
Yes, that’s a headline for the ages. Hold the front page
Mediocre is very kind to all those named. When only the likes of Nadine Dorries, Jacob Rees Mogg, Richard Burgon and Ian Lavery will go out to bat for you in public, you have a serious credibility problem.
I don’t buy your thesis that Boris = Corbyn
Corbyn was a non-entity calamitously promoted to entity by idiot Labour MPs then party members, who thereby allowed Corbz to parasitise the party and almost turn it into a vile crypto-Marxist “movement” to suit his own horrible opinions
Boris J was a highly successful journalist (as editor of the Speccie) who was twice elected mayor of London, who then became a Cabinet Minister, won the Brexit referendum - and so, in time, he became British prime minister, with an unexpectedly huge majority. It’s quite a list of significant achievements
The ONLY parallel is that Boris is leading the Tories to a grievous, tarnishing defeat, if he stays on, just as Corbyn did to Labour.
Both are surrounded by mediocrities yes, but that’s true of every party leader in the country, most of the time. I don’t see dazzling talent around Starmer, and Starmer himself is fairly mediocre
Boris has to go, tho. I suspect he will go soon
The public contempt for the PM’s Partygate role runs deep. A poll of Wakefield voters gave Labour a 20-point lead and Johnson is so toxic a brand now he’s dubbed “the Conservatives’ Corbyn”. The public seem to have gone past the point of no return with the PM. Having once laughed at his japes and jokes, many of his 2019 voters have had enough. We’ve gone from “The Thick Of It” to “The Sick Of It”.
Tory rebels circulating this article today, written by two former chairmen of 1922, who set out in 2019 how rules could be changed to allow another confidence vote in Theresa May within a year.
“If it was good enough to move Mrs May on…” one says to me.
Chris Mason R4 - Brady went into Mrs May’s no.10 with 1922 Ctte rule changes in his pocket to allow another vote but did not need to get out envelope as Mrs May said she was standing down.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
Yep - I do. I understand that while the UK needs the EU more than they need us, EU member states would still like better access to the UK market than they get currently and that, generally, the EU is made stronger by having a smooth, trust-based relationship with the UK.
Never understood why Brexit folk never went for EFTA/EEA, would have avoided the political integration they feared, but retained economic benefits and avoid NI problems. Also would have been a classic British conservative compromise.
The romantic theological Brexiteers, inspired by folk like Farage and Cumming won the day and steered us on to this rock.
FoM is the answer. What should have happened , and still should, is this answer (EFTA/EEA) combined with a negotiated derogation from FoM. This requires both EU and UK acting as grown ups. The political cover required to make it uniquely possible is the fact that it resolves most of the island of Ireland issues.
While lots of people wanted to leave the EU there would never have been a majority without the promise of FoM.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
Don't be silly. Norway and Switzerland both work fine.
If Boris Johnson were conducting negotiations with the EU the same way that Switzerland does, you wouldn't say that it "works fine" but would instead be hysterically wailing about how the fascist lying Big Dog was bringing shame upon us by acting unilaterally and forcing the benevolent EU to sanction us.
But as a leave voter who envisioned an Norway / Switzerland solution who is still advocating that, no, I wouldn't do as you suggest.
Why not read what I post, instead of imagining what you wanted me to post.
So you would be completely relaxed about Johnson, for example, threatening sanctions against the EU if they don't grant equivalence?
In principle that is the end game for the EFTA court if Norway and the EU got into a spat, so yes thats fine.
Here are the problems with your straw man. Boris won't negotiate. Is clueless about what he wants because he doesn't know what he has (his oven-ready deal) The EU see no need to negotiate with a liar who is not long for this world We *already have* full alignment on standards so there is nothing there to negotiate The kind of "if you then I" negotiation the Swiss are stuck in is way beyond Boris. There are so many detail areas where we could have asked for access - touring musicians as an example - where the EU expected us to do so and we simply didn't bother because we didn't understand what we were doing.
So yes. Any agreement between two parties has penalties for default. I negotiate contracts for a living and have invoked said penalties on major supermarkets so I have no problem with sanctioning the counter party. Its just that we won't be doing that because we're shit.
For months now the government have flitted between "Trigger Article 16" and "scrap the protocol". Have they done either - despite repeated claims they are doing so within days? No - because they haven't a fucking clue what they are doing, what they want, what they have signed up to.
And you support *that*.
"We're shit", "we didn't understand what we were doing".
I oppose that attitude more than I support the government. You are so resolute in your belief that we "haven't a fucking clue" that you can't conceive of the possibility that the arguments might be balanced or that 'we' might have made an informed choice to forego something because of strings were attached to it.
You reduce everything to a caricature of wise grown-ups on the EU side and crypro-fascist incompetents on the British side, and nothing could ever convince you that agreeing with everything the EU says might not be in our interests. Despite having voted for Brexit, you actively don't want us to be in control of anything because you think we're so useless and malign that it could only end in farce or tragedy.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
In the end the Free Market and individual countries might solve this issue. If it becomes a persistent pain for UK travellers at EU passport checks - with 3 hour waits - then the British will drift elsewhere. Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, the USA, etc
Any country that makes it easier for Brits will get a lot of business, So eventually an EU country will twig this and provide dedicated lanes for British tourists to get their passports stamped quickly. Probably poorer countries like Portugal, Malta and Greece will do it, to poach custom off France and Spain
The cost of hiring 200 passport stampers will be peanuts compared to the profit from another 1m UK visitors
The problem with Johnson's approach of lying about the NI protocol, then trying to dump it is that the government loses all credibility to negotiate.
Lying to Parliament over partygate is an internal matter to Britain, but lying in international negotiations does permanent and lasting damage to our credibility as a trustworthy nation.
All beautifully laid out by Jesse Norman. Why Labour can't get him to write their manifesto for them I can't imagine. Probably because he's too rich to be bought which is quite rare in the Tory Party these days.
Tory rebels circulating this article today, written by two former chairmen of 1922, who set out in 2019 how rules could be changed to allow another confidence vote in Theresa May within a year.
“If it was good enough to move Mrs May on…” one says to me.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
Yep - I do. I understand that while the UK needs the EU more than they need us, EU member states would still like better access to the UK market than they get currently and that, generally, the EU is made stronger by having a smooth, trust-based relationship with the UK.
You do this stuff for a living, and you’re not prone to lying fantasies, so I am happy to take it on trust. I sincerely hope you are right
If Starmer can fix some of this shit it would be great. I have long thought it would be a Remainer that might make Brexit work, as so many Brexiteers are ideologically wedded to a Platonic ideal of Brexit, and the more pragmatic Leavers - eg Hannan - have generally left the scene
And we agree that none of this can happen until Boris goes. He REALLY needs to go.
A rare moment of concord on PB
But you are wrong about remoaner ultras. They exist in numbers. @Scott_xP is far from alone in his dogmatism
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
In the end the Free Market and individual countries might solve this issue. If it becomes a persistent pain for UK travellers at EU passport checks - with 3 hour waits - then the British will drift elsewhere. Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, the USA, etc
Any country that makes it easier for Brits will get a lot of business, So eventually an EU country will twig this and provide dedicated lanes for British tourists to get their passports stamped quickly. Probably poorer countries like Portugal, Malta and Greece will do it, to poach custom off France and Spain
The cost of hiring 200 passport stampers will be peanuts compared to the profit from another 1m UK visitors
Lol. The travel equivalent of 'they need our cars'.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
Don't be silly. Norway and Switzerland both work fine.
If Boris Johnson were conducting negotiations with the EU the same way that Switzerland does, you wouldn't say that it "works fine" but would instead be hysterically wailing about how the fascist lying Big Dog was bringing shame upon us by acting unilaterally and forcing the benevolent EU to sanction us.
But as a leave voter who envisioned an Norway / Switzerland solution who is still advocating that, no, I wouldn't do as you suggest.
Why not read what I post, instead of imagining what you wanted me to post.
So you would be completely relaxed about Johnson, for example, threatening sanctions against the EU if they don't grant equivalence?
In principle that is the end game for the EFTA court if Norway and the EU got into a spat, so yes thats fine.
Here are the problems with your straw man. Boris won't negotiate. Is clueless about what he wants because he doesn't know what he has (his oven-ready deal) The EU see no need to negotiate with a liar who is not long for this world We *already have* full alignment on standards so there is nothing there to negotiate The kind of "if you then I" negotiation the Swiss are stuck in is way beyond Boris. There are so many detail areas where we could have asked for access - touring musicians as an example - where the EU expected us to do so and we simply didn't bother because we didn't understand what we were doing.
So yes. Any agreement between two parties has penalties for default. I negotiate contracts for a living and have invoked said penalties on major supermarkets so I have no problem with sanctioning the counter party. Its just that we won't be doing that because we're shit.
For months now the government have flitted between "Trigger Article 16" and "scrap the protocol". Have they done either - despite repeated claims they are doing so within days? No - because they haven't a fucking clue what they are doing, what they want, what they have signed up to.
And you support *that*.
"We're shit", "we didn't understand what we were doing". ...
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
Don't be silly. Norway and Switzerland both work fine.
If Boris Johnson were conducting negotiations with the EU the same way that Switzerland does, you wouldn't say that it "works fine" but would instead be hysterically wailing about how the fascist lying Big Dog was bringing shame upon us by acting unilaterally and forcing the benevolent EU to sanction us.
But as a leave voter who envisioned an Norway / Switzerland solution who is still advocating that, no, I wouldn't do as you suggest.
Why not read what I post, instead of imagining what you wanted me to post.
So you would be completely relaxed about Johnson, for example, threatening sanctions against the EU if they don't grant equivalence?
In principle that is the end game for the EFTA court if Norway and the EU got into a spat, so yes thats fine.
Here are the problems with your straw man. Boris won't negotiate. Is clueless about what he wants because he doesn't know what he has (his oven-ready deal) The EU see no need to negotiate with a liar who is not long for this world We *already have* full alignment on standards so there is nothing there to negotiate The kind of "if you then I" negotiation the Swiss are stuck in is way beyond Boris. There are so many detail areas where we could have asked for access - touring musicians as an example - where the EU expected us to do so and we simply didn't bother because we didn't understand what we were doing.
So yes. Any agreement between two parties has penalties for default. I negotiate contracts for a living and have invoked said penalties on major supermarkets so I have no problem with sanctioning the counter party. Its just that we won't be doing that because we're shit.
For months now the government have flitted between "Trigger Article 16" and "scrap the protocol". Have they done either - despite repeated claims they are doing so within days? No - because they haven't a fucking clue what they are doing, what they want, what they have signed up to.
And you support *that*.
"We're shit", "we didn't understand what we were doing".
I oppose that attitude more than I support the government. You are so resolute in your belief that we "haven't a fucking clue" that you can't conceive of the possibility that the arguments might be balanced or that 'we' might have made an informed choice to forego something because of strings were attached to it.
You reduce everything to a caricature of wise grown-ups on the EU side and crypro-fascist incompetents on the British side, and nothing could ever convince you that agreeing with everything the EU says might not be in our interests. Despite having voted for Brexit, you actively don't want us to be in control of anything because you think we're so useless and malign that it could only end in farce or tragedy.
My basis for "we didn't understand what we were doing" comes directly from former chief Brexit negotiator David Frost and from the Prime Minister. I'm not resolute - THEY are. Its what THEY say that is relevant, not what you or I think.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
UK passports currently need to be stamped to record when people enter and leave - no scanning system can do that.
One of Boris's legacies will be a 30 minute queue every time we enter the EU...
EEA citizens can visit for up to 6 months to the UK - we’ve chosen not to stamp passports to check that - the EU has chosen to stamp passports - how do you suggest that be changed?
Rejoin the EU would seem to be the simplest way to resolve many of these issues.
The hardcore gammon leavers are no less angry and confused now that the UK has left so nothing will change for them if it goes back.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
In the end the Free Market and individual countries might solve this issue. If it becomes a persistent pain for UK travellers at EU passport checks - with 3 hour waits - then the British will drift elsewhere. Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, the USA, etc
Any country that makes it easier for Brits will get a lot of business, So eventually an EU country will twig this and provide dedicated lanes for British tourists to get their passports stamped quickly. Probably poorer countries like Portugal, Malta and Greece will do it, to poach custom off France and Spain
The cost of hiring 200 passport stampers will be peanuts compared to the profit from another 1m UK visitors
A solution which is open to every country with reputations for fucking over tourists with lengthy waits at immigration. Including the UK!
Tory rebels circulating this article today, written by two former chairmen of 1922, who set out in 2019 how rules could be changed to allow another confidence vote in Theresa May within a year.
“If it was good enough to move Mrs May on…” one says to me.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
Yep - I do. I understand that while the UK needs the EU more than they need us, EU member states would still like better access to the UK market than they get currently and that, generally, the EU is made stronger by having a smooth, trust-based relationship with the UK.
You do this stuff for a living, and you’re not prone to lying fantasies, so I am happy to take it on trust. I sincerely hope you are right
If Starmer can fix some of this shit it would be great. I have long thought it would be a Remainer that might make Brexit work, as so many Brexiteers are ideologically wedded to a Platonic ideal of Brexit, and the more pragmatic Leavers - eg Hannan - have generally left the scene
And we agree that none of this can happen until Boris goes. He REALLY needs to go.
A rare moment of concord on PB
But you are wrong about remoaner ultras. They exist in numbers. @Scott_xP is far from alone in his dogmatism
I do not come across them except on here and on Twitter. I agree with them that leaving the EU was a mistake, but we have to move on from that. If they can't do it, they are going to be permanently disappointed. It is no way to lead a life.
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
Why the absolutism? I agree that its not just a Brexit issue - that's my point. Brexit is uniquely to the UK a contributing factor. So that after the loss of staff during Covid and the sudden bounce back in passengers, airports and airlines cannot cope.
The reason why this chaos is the exception outside the UK - Dublin and Schiphol are struggling but not being widely reported beyond that - and is endemic here is Brexit. They have a vast labour pool to choose from, we do not.
So we're back to making our new border strategy work. If it did, then Brexit or no Brexit we would not have a problem. The whole point about a managed immigration policy is that we can bring in workers when they are needed. Except that as with trucking we don't actually do so until very late in the day.
Tory rebels circulating this article today, written by two former chairmen of 1922, who set out in 2019 how rules could be changed to allow another confidence vote in Theresa May within a year.
“If it was good enough to move Mrs May on…” one says to me.
It was that threat combined with the inability to govern - she could not limp on. Boris does not have a problem passing legislation by and large, so the threat does not worry him.
Sounds like there might be some ‘fun’ in Munich tonight - England were given 3,500 tickets, but the Germans are 10,000 short of selling out their own stadium, and thousands of ticketless away fans are said to have travelled hoping to get in.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Brown was better than this. You always had the sense, like May, there was a sense of duty at work. They were trying to do the right thing and solve difficult problems.
Under Boris’ chaos he is just in it for himself, trying to generate face saving headlines sometimes at the cost of billions. That’s a whole new ball game.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Roger is fundamentally clueless about economics.
"Brexit is costing us 4% of GDP every year". What even does this mean?? That without Brexit we'd be growing at 8% this year, much faster than China? Or that our GDP is shrinking 4% a year, so we are experiencing a devastating recession every year, which we clearly are not?
There should be a PB Threshold of Stupidity which, if you cross, you are suspended from PB for a week. I suggest Roger gets a 38 week ban
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
Why the absolutism? I agree that its not just a Brexit issue - that's my point. Brexit is uniquely to the UK a contributing factor. So that after the loss of staff during Covid and the sudden bounce back in passengers, airports and airlines cannot cope.
The reason why this chaos is the exception outside the UK - Dublin and Schiphol are struggling but not being widely reported beyond that - and is endemic here is Brexit. They have a vast labour pool to choose from, we do not.
So we're back to making our new border strategy work. If it did, then Brexit or no Brexit we would not have a problem. The whole point about a managed immigration policy is that we can bring in workers when they are needed. Except that as with trucking we don't actually do so until very late in the day.
It's simply not true that wider problems are not being reported:
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
what's the point? the new vote would get pretty much same result surely?
Tricky one. Some of those voting for Johnson might have done so because they thought he couldn't be ousted and therefore better to vote for him to increase the size of the victory. But it was quite close in the end, so if there was another vote, he might lose. Of course, if he didn't lose, the Tories really would be stuffed.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Roger is fundamentally clueless about economics.
"Brexit is costing us 4% of GDP every year". What even does this mean?? That without Brexit we'd be growing at 8% this year, much faster than China? Or that our GDP is shrinking 4% a year, so we are experiencing a devastating recession every year, which we clearly are not?
There should be a PB Threshold of Stupidity which, if you cross, you are suspended from PB for a week. I suggest Roger gets a 38 week ban
But we'd never get to enjoy any of your posts under that regime?
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
Yep - I do. I understand that while the UK needs the EU more than they need us, EU member states would still like better access to the UK market than they get currently and that, generally, the EU is made stronger by having a smooth, trust-based relationship with the UK.
You do this stuff for a living, and you’re not prone to lying fantasies, so I am happy to take it on trust. I sincerely hope you are right
If Starmer can fix some of this shit it would be great. I have long thought it would be a Remainer that might make Brexit work, as so many Brexiteers are ideologically wedded to a Platonic ideal of Brexit, and the more pragmatic Leavers - eg Hannan - have generally left the scene
And we agree that none of this can happen until Boris goes. He REALLY needs to go.
A rare moment of concord on PB
But you are wrong about remoaner ultras. They exist in numbers. @Scott_xP is far from alone in his dogmatism
I do not come across them except on here and on Twitter. I agree with them that leaving the EU was a mistake, but we have to move on from that. If they can't do it, they are going to be permanently disappointed. It is no way to lead a life.
The ultras on both sides are few in number, but vocal.
One friend-of-a-friend spends her time creating elaborate schemes, in her head, by which we can return to the EU in a single bound. Sadly, she donates quite a lot of money to the fox-killer.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
I don't think RP mentioned airports - he is thinking more about care workers and shop / bar work where the anti-social hours combined with poor pay but people off.
However the security checks (full references for the last x years) means that you can't just import people to do the work. So the only people employable are people already here who won't accept minimum wage for 4am start shift work when they can earn the same at Tesco starting at 9am.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
Why the absolutism? I agree that its not just a Brexit issue - that's my point. Brexit is uniquely to the UK a contributing factor. So that after the loss of staff during Covid and the sudden bounce back in passengers, airports and airlines cannot cope.
The reason why this chaos is the exception outside the UK - Dublin and Schiphol are struggling but not being widely reported beyond that - and is endemic here is Brexit. They have a vast labour pool to choose from, we do not.
So we're back to making our new border strategy work. If it did, then Brexit or no Brexit we would not have a problem. The whole point about a managed immigration policy is that we can bring in workers when they are needed. Except that as with trucking we don't actually do so until very late in the day.
It's simply not true that wider problems are not being reported:
Pockets of it. Have they been almost impossible to use like Manchester and now Gatwick and Birmingham for weeks or months?
Our airports simply cannot recruit staff. A combination of the staff not being available to hire, and/or the people they can hire can't get security screened. Neither of those things are good for the government.
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
what's the point? the new vote would get pretty much same result surely?
Matters are a little clearer now after the first vote. I'm no James Carville but it does seem to me that's it's not wise to go into GE with a PM that 141 of the governing party's MPs have decided is fucking shit. So now they have to get rid one way or another.
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
I don't think RP mentioned airports - he is thinking more about care workers and shop / bar work where the anti-social hours combined with poor pay but people off.
Airports are part of it, but not exclusively. We lost 600k+ people from the workforce during Covid. Which means acute labour shortages in some sectors and some places. The whole purpose in the managed migration policy was to allow migration when we needed workers. So why aren't we doing so?
I’ve discovered the main problem apart from Boris for the Tories - they’ve just been interviewing two chairs of conservative constituency associations - they were absolutely thick as mince.
I’m sure both ladies have put in the hard yards making jam and cakes and doing the flowers at the village hall hustings to get to these positions but if they are representative then we are doomed.
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
Yep - I do. I understand that while the UK needs the EU more than they need us, EU member states would still like better access to the UK market than they get currently and that, generally, the EU is made stronger by having a smooth, trust-based relationship with the UK.
You do this stuff for a living, and you’re not prone to lying fantasies, so I am happy to take it on trust. I sincerely hope you are right
If Starmer can fix some of this shit it would be great. I have long thought it would be a Remainer that might make Brexit work, as so many Brexiteers are ideologically wedded to a Platonic ideal of Brexit, and the more pragmatic Leavers - eg Hannan - have generally left the scene
And we agree that none of this can happen until Boris goes. He REALLY needs to go.
A rare moment of concord on PB
But you are wrong about remoaner ultras. They exist in numbers. @Scott_xP is far from alone in his dogmatism
I do not come across them except on here and on Twitter. I agree with them that leaving the EU was a mistake, but we have to move on from that. If they can't do it, they are going to be permanently disappointed. It is no way to lead a life.
You don't read the Guardian, then. The Labour Party's very own newspaper
From Polly Toynbee to Nick Cohen to Martin Kettle to dozens of others, they are all Rejoiners, they are merely staying reasonably quiet for now, so as not to scare the horses.
That will change as Starmer gets nearer to power. I expect the first Guardian editorial or lead columnist to suggest rejoining the SM within the year
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
In the end the Free Market and individual countries might solve this issue. If it becomes a persistent pain for UK travellers at EU passport checks - with 3 hour waits - then the British will drift elsewhere. Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, the USA, etc
Any country that makes it easier for Brits will get a lot of business, So eventually an EU country will twig this and provide dedicated lanes for British tourists to get their passports stamped quickly. Probably poorer countries like Portugal, Malta and Greece will do it, to poach custom off France and Spain
The cost of hiring 200 passport stampers will be peanuts compared to the profit from another 1m UK visitors
Honestly I love the simple solution you come up with without any concept of reality. Portugal already offer the electronic recording to get through without stamping the passport, but we Brits then queue up anyway to get the stamp afterwards because we are scared stiff of falling foul of the 90 day limit unintentionally. And this applies to all over Europe. So a trip to Portugal may then stop you going to Germany 3 months later through no fault of your own and getting band from entering the EU.
So a trip to Paris for a long weekend could prevent you going to Portugal 3 months later if stuff goes pearshaped. This has already happened.
Its theatre, but necessary theatre. The rebels must be pressured. They will not support such a vote and thus will also be indelibly tied to Boris.
It may be just a bit of theatre to you, but it is theatre that will be noticed - not least in Tiverton & Honiton, where decent traditional Conservative voters are rejecting the Johnson model of what the Conservative Party is. Come, think of it! Even our Mr MarqueeMark has said he will not go there and work for them.
A vote of confidence in the House of Commons is a very real challenge - not so much to Johnson himself, but to the Conservative MPs who voted yesterday to end Johnson's leadership. This vote of confidence forces them to come out into the open. Do they have the courage to support their constituents' views and put an end to the Johnson regime? Or do they cravenly surrender to pressure and blackmail from the Johnson Junta?
The Liberal Democrats are doing very well just now, and this move will only strengthen their position. I hope they get full support from the Labour MPs.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
I don't think RP mentioned airports - he is thinking more about care workers and shop / bar work where the anti-social hours combined with poor pay but people off.
There is a mythology that all the workers in industry x are furriners. It is part of the credo of Ultra Brexiters, quite often.
In 2020/21, around 84% of the adult social care workforce identified as British, 7% (113,000 jobs) identified as of an EU nationality and 9% (137,000 jobs) of a non-EU nationality. Therefore, on average, the adult social care sector showed a slightly greater reliance on non-EU workers than EU workers.
The adult social care sector (16% non-British) was more diverse than the population of England in terms of nationality (8% with no British identity).
The proportion of the adult social care workforce with a British nationality has remained consistent over the past seven years (from 2012/13 to 2020/21), varying by less than one percentage point.
However, the composition of the non-British workforce has changed. Over the same period, the proportion of the workforce holding an EU (non-British) nationality had increased by two percentage points and the percentage of those of non-EU nationality decreased by three percentage points.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
Why the absolutism? I agree that its not just a Brexit issue - that's my point. Brexit is uniquely to the UK a contributing factor. So that after the loss of staff during Covid and the sudden bounce back in passengers, airports and airlines cannot cope.
The reason why this chaos is the exception outside the UK - Dublin and Schiphol are struggling but not being widely reported beyond that - and is endemic here is Brexit. They have a vast labour pool to choose from, we do not.
So we're back to making our new border strategy work. If it did, then Brexit or no Brexit we would not have a problem. The whole point about a managed immigration policy is that we can bring in workers when they are needed. Except that as with trucking we don't actually do so until very late in the day.
It's simply not true that wider problems are not being reported:
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
what's the point? the new vote would get pretty much same result surely?
The point is that the next vote isn't on 6th June 2023 but can be at anytime the 1922 committee know the game is up.
They're not so much rules as guidance, as someone here is wont to say.
And given Johnson's lifelong attitude to rules, it is right and proper that the failure of a rule to protect him should form part of his downfall.
The morning after Wakefield and Tiverton?
What is our analysis of the balance of pro/anti Johnson on the 1922 committee? Yes, they can change the rules, but how likely are the current members to want to? I believe they are all backbenchers? - which should increase the chance. But the history of "we don't like the result, let's vote again" decisions is not encouraging, and associated by many Brexiteers with allegedly sneaky EU behaviour.
I’ve discovered the main problem apart from Boris for the Tories - they’ve just been interviewing two chairs of conservative constituency associations - they were absolutely thick as mince.
I’m sure both ladies have put in the hard yards making jam and cakes and doing the flowers at the village hall hustings to get to these positions but if they are representative then we are doomed.
That's political activists for you.
Why do you think that student political activists do so well in politics? Well, they are the smart ones.
On holidays we came back from a week in the Lake District last night. It was a pleasant holiday although it rained far too much. My wife looked at the chaos at the airports and decided that it just wasn't worth it this year. She was right (as usual). I suppose that saved the UK about £3k off the balance of trade. I suspect that many more will do the same. It was also noticeable in the hotel and restaurants we visited that far more local people were now working in these establishments than we would have seen in previous years.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
Don't be silly. Norway and Switzerland both work fine.
If Boris Johnson were conducting negotiations with the EU the same way that Switzerland does, you wouldn't say that it "works fine" but would instead be hysterically wailing about how the fascist lying Big Dog was bringing shame upon us by acting unilaterally and forcing the benevolent EU to sanction us.
But as a leave voter who envisioned an Norway / Switzerland solution who is still advocating that, no, I wouldn't do as you suggest.
Why not read what I post, instead of imagining what you wanted me to post.
So you would be completely relaxed about Johnson, for example, threatening sanctions against the EU if they don't grant equivalence?
In principle that is the end game for the EFTA court if Norway and the EU got into a spat, so yes thats fine.
Here are the problems with your straw man. Boris won't negotiate. Is clueless about what he wants because he doesn't know what he has (his oven-ready deal) The EU see no need to negotiate with a liar who is not long for this world We *already have* full alignment on standards so there is nothing there to negotiate The kind of "if you then I" negotiation the Swiss are stuck in is way beyond Boris. There are so many detail areas where we could have asked for access - touring musicians as an example - where the EU expected us to do so and we simply didn't bother because we didn't understand what we were doing.
So yes. Any agreement between two parties has penalties for default. I negotiate contracts for a living and have invoked said penalties on major supermarkets so I have no problem with sanctioning the counter party. Its just that we won't be doing that because we're shit.
For months now the government have flitted between "Trigger Article 16" and "scrap the protocol". Have they done either - despite repeated claims they are doing so within days? No - because they haven't a fucking clue what they are doing, what they want, what they have signed up to.
And you support *that*.
"We're shit", "we didn't understand what we were doing".
I oppose that attitude more than I support the government. You are so resolute in your belief that we "haven't a fucking clue" that you can't conceive of the possibility that the arguments might be balanced or that 'we' might have made an informed choice to forego something because of strings were attached to it.
You reduce everything to a caricature of wise grown-ups on the EU side and crypro-fascist incompetents on the British side, and nothing could ever convince you that agreeing with everything the EU says might not be in our interests. Despite having voted for Brexit, you actively don't want us to be in control of anything because you think we're so useless and malign that it could only end in farce or tragedy.
To be fair I don't get the impression RP thinks we are inherently crap or that it has to be this way. He specifically thinks that Johnson and the way he has handled Brexit has been crap and I think that is a pretty difficult thing to deny.
I have a lot of sympathy for RP's position particularly as I agree on his final destination which is EFTA/EEA membership.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
Why the absolutism? I agree that its not just a Brexit issue - that's my point. Brexit is uniquely to the UK a contributing factor. So that after the loss of staff during Covid and the sudden bounce back in passengers, airports and airlines cannot cope.
The reason why this chaos is the exception outside the UK - Dublin and Schiphol are struggling but not being widely reported beyond that - and is endemic here is Brexit. They have a vast labour pool to choose from, we do not.
So we're back to making our new border strategy work. If it did, then Brexit or no Brexit we would not have a problem. The whole point about a managed immigration policy is that we can bring in workers when they are needed. Except that as with trucking we don't actually do so until very late in the day.
It's simply not true that wider problems are not being reported:
Pockets of it. Have they been almost impossible to use like Manchester and now Gatwick and Birmingham for weeks or months?
Our airports simply cannot recruit staff. A combination of the staff not being available to hire, and/or the people they can hire can't get security screened. Neither of those things are good for the government.
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
lol
No. Try reading the post. An evaluator points out the problems. They don't just make them up. You clearly have no concept of project management. It is a proper role to identify real problems without having to identify solutions. It is not a proper role to say something doesn't work without evidence.
I can't believe you can't see that.
So if my wife spotted that a drug might kill, she didn't have to have a solution. However she didn't randomly say a drug might kill, she provided evidence.
I’ve discovered the main problem apart from Boris for the Tories - they’ve just been interviewing two chairs of conservative constituency associations - they were absolutely thick as mince.
I’m sure both ladies have put in the hard yards making jam and cakes and doing the flowers at the village hall hustings to get to these positions but if they are representative then we are doomed.
I heard that. Yes, it was poor.
In political parties, it may surprise you to know that there isn't cutthroat competition for jobs such as this, where the reward to work ratio is so low.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Brown was better than this. You always had the sense, like May, there was a sense of duty at work. They were trying to do the right thing and solve difficult problems.
Under Boris’ chaos he is just in it for himself, trying to generate face saving headlines sometimes at the cost of billions. That’s a whole new ball game.
Too many posters are trying to make rational arguments for moving forward (particularly with the EU) in the nation's best interests. Johnson's rationale is what is in Johnson's best interests. The next six months worth of policy was promised in the 1922 Committee room yesterday. For starters uncosted tax cuts and lots of culture war red meat. This is Government by Daily Mail headline. I read Jean Seaton's book Power without Responsibility at University. It is more apt today than it was nearly forty years ago.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
Why the absolutism? I agree that its not just a Brexit issue - that's my point. Brexit is uniquely to the UK a contributing factor. So that after the loss of staff during Covid and the sudden bounce back in passengers, airports and airlines cannot cope.
The reason why this chaos is the exception outside the UK - Dublin and Schiphol are struggling but not being widely reported beyond that - and is endemic here is Brexit. They have a vast labour pool to choose from, we do not.
So we're back to making our new border strategy work. If it did, then Brexit or no Brexit we would not have a problem. The whole point about a managed immigration policy is that we can bring in workers when they are needed. Except that as with trucking we don't actually do so until very late in the day.
It's simply not true that wider problems are not being reported:
It’s a worldwide problem. The industry laid off too many staff during the pandemic, and now can’t get them back as the market returns to normal. One airline I know, is discovering that A380 captains don’t grow on trees, especially when offering them 25% less money than they were making in 2019.
I’ve discovered the main problem apart from Boris for the Tories - they’ve just been interviewing two chairs of conservative constituency associations - they were absolutely thick as mince.
I’m sure both ladies have put in the hard yards making jam and cakes and doing the flowers at the village hall hustings to get to these positions but if they are representative then we are doomed.
Actually it is ladies like them who will do a lot of work in the local community, often being involved in the rotary club, the church, the Mother's Union etc as well as being grandmothers. They are the ones who organise the party fundraisers, deliver the leaflets rain or shine, do the canvassing and telling and put up posters and are the backbone of the party and always have been. Without them we wouldn't get all the councillors and MPs elected in the first place we do
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
Don't be silly. Norway and Switzerland both work fine.
If Boris Johnson were conducting negotiations with the EU the same way that Switzerland does, you wouldn't say that it "works fine" but would instead be hysterically wailing about how the fascist lying Big Dog was bringing shame upon us by acting unilaterally and forcing the benevolent EU to sanction us.
But as a leave voter who envisioned an Norway / Switzerland solution who is still advocating that, no, I wouldn't do as you suggest.
Why not read what I post, instead of imagining what you wanted me to post.
So you would be completely relaxed about Johnson, for example, threatening sanctions against the EU if they don't grant equivalence?
In principle that is the end game for the EFTA court if Norway and the EU got into a spat, so yes thats fine.
Here are the problems with your straw man. Boris won't negotiate. Is clueless about what he wants because he doesn't know what he has (his oven-ready deal) The EU see no need to negotiate with a liar who is not long for this world We *already have* full alignment on standards so there is nothing there to negotiate The kind of "if you then I" negotiation the Swiss are stuck in is way beyond Boris. There are so many detail areas where we could have asked for access - touring musicians as an example - where the EU expected us to do so and we simply didn't bother because we didn't understand what we were doing.
So yes. Any agreement between two parties has penalties for default. I negotiate contracts for a living and have invoked said penalties on major supermarkets so I have no problem with sanctioning the counter party. Its just that we won't be doing that because we're shit.
For months now the government have flitted between "Trigger Article 16" and "scrap the protocol". Have they done either - despite repeated claims they are doing so within days? No - because they haven't a fucking clue what they are doing, what they want, what they have signed up to.
And you support *that*.
"We're shit", "we didn't understand what we were doing".
I oppose that attitude more than I support the government. You are so resolute in your belief that we "haven't a fucking clue" that you can't conceive of the possibility that the arguments might be balanced or that 'we' might have made an informed choice to forego something because of strings were attached to it.
You reduce everything to a caricature of wise grown-ups on the EU side and crypro-fascist incompetents on the British side, and nothing could ever convince you that agreeing with everything the EU says might not be in our interests. Despite having voted for Brexit, you actively don't want us to be in control of anything because you think we're so useless and malign that it could only end in farce or tragedy.
To be fair I don't get the impression RP thinks we are inherently crap or that it has to be this way. He specifically thinks that Johnson and the way he has handled Brexit has been crap and I think that is a pretty difficult thing to deny.
I have a lot of sympathy for RP's position particularly as I agree on his final destination which is EFTA/EEA membership.
Its difficult to deny when the biggest critic of the trade agreement and protocol are the men who negotiated it. Having not understood it. Or the positions of the counter party. Or that the binding legal treaty would be implemented.
Article 16 just creates more problems. The only way to improve the NIP once the treaty is signed is in agreement with the EU. ie the government needs to make the case that those mitigations are in the EU interest. It would also be good to engage with the EU on its requests.
Just as we have to accept Brexit and deal with the damage, so we have to do the same with the Protocol.
This may be difficult to imagine, but suppose for the sake of argument that Boris Johnson and David Frost were incompetent in their negotiation of the protocol. If it turns out the protocol conflicts with the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, should the protocol take precedence?
The Good Friday Agreement is silent on the East/West border because there was no need to do anything as both the UK and Ireland in the EU and the focus could be entirely on North/South. The Unionists are correct to say they wouldn't have agreed the GFA if today's situation applied. So Brexit undermines the assumptions behind the GFA, if not the Agreement itself.
The Irish saw the dangers much earlier than the British or the NI Unionists, hence the Protocol that addresses those dangers from an Irish interest. I wouldn't say either the Irish or the British are particularly sincere in supporting the GFA.
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
Jesus wept, “it’s all down to Brexit Part 7,412”
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
I don't think RP mentioned airports - he is thinking more about care workers and shop / bar work where the anti-social hours combined with poor pay but people off.
Airports are part of it, but not exclusively. We lost 600k+ people from the workforce during Covid. Which means acute labour shortages in some sectors and some places. The whole purpose in the managed migration policy was to allow migration when we needed workers. So why aren't we doing so?
Most of whom were Brits who approaching the end of their careers stopped working. The ONLY year we saw a net outflow of EU citizens was 2020 which the ONS reckon was around 90,000 - of course rest of world immigration had remained strongly positive over that same period. The issue with the travel industry is low wages and poor treatment if staff - BA are desperately trying to rehire cabin crew they laid off on “new terms” - to which the crew are telling them to Foxtrot Oscar. Given the acute labour shortages being experienced in the travel industry across Europe, where do they expect these “temporary workers” to come from?
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
In the end the Free Market and individual countries might solve this issue. If it becomes a persistent pain for UK travellers at EU passport checks - with 3 hour waits - then the British will drift elsewhere. Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, the USA, etc
Any country that makes it easier for Brits will get a lot of business, So eventually an EU country will twig this and provide dedicated lanes for British tourists to get their passports stamped quickly. Probably poorer countries like Portugal, Malta and Greece will do it, to poach custom off France and Spain
The cost of hiring 200 passport stampers will be peanuts compared to the profit from another 1m UK visitors
Honestly I love the simple solution you come up with without any concept of reality. Portugal already offer the electronic recording to get through without stamping the passport, but we Brits then queue up anyway to get the stamp afterwards because we are scared stiff of falling foul of the 90 day limit unintentionally. And this applies to all over Europe. So a trip to Portugal may then stop you going to Germany 3 months later through no fault of your own and getting band from entering the EU.
So a trip to Paris for a long weekend could prevent you going to Portugal 3 months later if stuff goes pearshaped. This has already happened.
Well if this is because pathetic Brits can do maths then that is their problem
Besides, all it needs is an app. Type in your EU travel dates, It will tell you how long you have left within the 90 days. Would take 2 minutes to design. No need for stamps. Problem solved
And, over the long term, countries like Greece, Malta, Cyprus and Portugal - and parts of Spain - are intensely dependant on British tourists. It is in their interest to sort this out, before Brits get used to going elsewhere. They will seize the opportunity
"Javier Gandara, President of the Airlines Association in Spain, called the airport queues at Spanish holiday destinations “undesirable” and said he feared they would leave visitors with a “bad image” of the country unless the situation improved."
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
lol
No. They had a point on the first bit (as per the post you replied to), and have been proven utterly deluded on the second (which had nothing to do with the post you replied to).
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
what's the point? the new vote would get pretty much same result surely?
Matters are a little clearer now after the first vote. I'm no James Carville but it does seem to me that's it's not wise to go into GE with a PM that 141 of the governing party's MPs have decided is fucking shit. So now they have to get rid one way or another.
Even the soul suckers on ConHome have a majority against the PM.
Quite amazing to me there are so many Tory MPs too thick to realise the obvious. Namely, that excluding the weirdos, everyone wants to move on from the Brexit wars and no one wants to be reminded about covid for the rest of their lives.
It’s not fully his fault but Boris is the living embodiment of Brexit and Covid. Every time you see his face, your brain instinctively goes back to those two things. Ugh.
They are not the only politicians too thick to realise this of course. Ed Davey and Kier Starmer suffer from the same brain malfunction, with their campaign literature and public statements still variously dominated by “we opposed Brexit” and partygate.
Sod off the whole miserable lot of you. We all need to move on.
Thats already happened. The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Unfortunately for all of us, the only solutions anyone has come up with are either a further Brexit atop the Brexit, or to dilute the Brexit we have. Perhaps they are the only solutions that exist.
And as I just posted in response to Scott, those are the only solutions in town - a classic Euro fudge. The Good News is that the big part of that is already in place. We have ceded control of standards to the EU. We have unilaterally demolished customs checks on our side.
When you are both absolutely aligned and will remain so by default, it makes an agreement recognising this reality much easier than if both sides were sabre rattling beforehand. This government have given up their positions on customs and divergence. The only thing that matters is free movement and a fudge can be found there as well in exchange for "spiteful" EU nations like Spain abandoning the 3rd country restrictions on British economic migrants which we demanded.
I just heard Tobias Elwood saying that Brexit was costing us 4% of GDP a year and this was unsustainable. If this is now accepted then isn't it time one of the parties started facing the reality that either rejoining or joining one of the allied organisations is not just an option anymore its compulsory. It was said yesterday that the French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours. Is anyone adding 2+2 and making 4 yet?.
I don't think pointing at individual growth points is really valid. You'd need to look at manufacturing vs services, and also look at exports Vs trade within the EU-27.
There is a much larger discussion to be had about the UK's future economic direction.
But we have now wasted more than 6 years with all this Brexit nonsense when there were more pressing things to focus on.
History will not judge this period kindly
People continue to insist that Brexit is costing ever more absurd levels of GDP. It is plainly nonsense on several levels. Firstly, there are always far more significant effects on our economic performance. In the last couple of years we have had Covid, Ukraine, Russian sanctions and international disruption on trade from China. Identifying any underlying effect from something as trivial as Brexit in the face of all that noise is just impossible. Secondly, the noise is repeated in many other countries as well. So, any minor reduction in trade with the UK is dwarfed by the effect of economic sanctions with Russia for most EU countries. Demand in these countries has been significantly impacted, reducing the market for exports. Thirdly, as others have already pointed out, the UK is performing at least as well as the EU's major economies in highly distorted times. If the Brexit effects were anything like 4% GPD what they are saying is that we would be outgrowing these countries by absurd numbers.
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
Brown was better than this. You always had the sense, like May, there was a sense of duty at work. They were trying to do the right thing and solve difficult problems.
Under Boris’ chaos he is just in it for himself, trying to generate face saving headlines sometimes at the cost of billions. That’s a whole new ball game.
Brown may have had a sense of duty, in fact I will concede the point, but his uncertainty once he was in the big chair led to paralysis and a refusal to accept the consequences of the end of his delusions built on ever more fantastical "profits" from the financial sector. His refusal to have a spending review so that he could go on about Tory cuts was a gross dereliction of duty by any measure, as well as dishonest. But it is the same day to day crisis management that is echoed in this government today.
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
what's the point? the new vote would get pretty much same result surely?
Matters are a little clearer now after the first vote. I'm no James Carville but it does seem to me that's it's not wise to go into GE with a PM that 141 of the governing party's MPs have decided is fucking shit. So now they have to get rid one way or another.
On holidays we came back from a week in the Lake District last night. It was a pleasant holiday although it rained far too much. My wife looked at the chaos at the airports and decided that it just wasn't worth it this year. She was right (as usual). I suppose that saved the UK about £3k off the balance of trade. I suspect that many more will do the same. It was also noticeable in the hotel and restaurants we visited that far more local people were now working in these establishments than we would have seen in previous years.
Tory rebels circulating this article today, written by two former chairmen of 1922, who set out in 2019 how rules could be changed to allow another confidence vote in Theresa May within a year.
“If it was good enough to move Mrs May on…” one says to me.
I’ve discovered the main problem apart from Boris for the Tories - they’ve just been interviewing two chairs of conservative constituency associations - they were absolutely thick as mince.
I’m sure both ladies have put in the hard yards making jam and cakes and doing the flowers at the village hall hustings to get to these positions but if they are representative then we are doomed.
Actually it is ladies like them who will do a lot of work in the local community, often being involved in the rotary club, the church, the Mother's Union etc as well as being grandmothers. They are the ones who organise the party fundraisers, deliver the leaflets rain or shine, do the canvassing and telling and put up posters and are the backbone of the party and always have been. Without them we wouldn't get all the councillors and MPs elected in the first place we do
It's just not such a good idea to put them up for interview on national radio, eh?
Last week, one MP told me this about the 1922 Ctte rules: “That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
what's the point? the new vote would get pretty much same result surely?
The point is that the next vote isn't on 6th June 2023 but can be at anytime the 1922 committee know the game is up.
They're not so much rules as guidance, as someone here is wont to say.
And given Johnson's lifelong attitude to rules, it is right and proper that the failure of a rule to protect him should form part of his downfall.
The morning after Wakefield and Tiverton?
What is our analysis of the balance of pro/anti Johnson on the 1922 committee? Yes, they can change the rules, but how likely are the current members to want to? I believe they are all backbenchers? - which should increase the chance. But the history of "we don't like the result, let's vote again" decisions is not encouraging, and associated by many Brexiteers with allegedly sneaky EU behaviour.
I don’t see how they could change the 12-month rule during the 12-month period, purely for immediate reasons. The point of the rule, is to give the leader a grace period and to shut up the constant speculation about a challenge.
Personally, I think he resigns after the 2023 local elections, and is voted out a year from now if that doesn’t happen.
Never understood why Brexit folk never went for EFTA/EEA, would have avoided the political integration they feared, but retained economic benefits and avoid NI problems. Also would have been a classic British conservative compromise.
The romantic theological Brexiteers, inspired by folk like Farage and Cumming won the day and steered us on to this rock.
FoM is the answer. What should have happened , and still should, is this answer (EFTA/EEA) combined with a negotiated derogation from FoM. This requires both EU and UK acting as grown ups. The political cover required to make it uniquely possible is the fact that it resolves most of the island of Ireland issues.
While lots of people wanted to leave the EU there would never have been a majority without the promise of FoM.
No, we could solve the Northern Ireland protocol issue instantly by agreeing to be in the single market for goods and services (just as Northern Ireland is). Nothing to do with freedom of movement for people. The ONLY downside is that it means accepting EU standards. But they are currently EXACTLY the same as our standards, and we have only the vaguest ideas on what we might like to change (some gene editing, maybe, some unspecified resitrictions that we might drop). We could probably negotiate a side-agreement that if we make goods that don't meet EU standards, they must have a label "not for exports to the EU", so if we really want to create a gene-edited strain of pig or something we could still do it.
I genuinely don't see the problem, except frankly unrealistic petty nationalism ("We won't accept foreign standards for what they import from us!").
I hope that the mess we are in will sink in to normals as they go on holiday this summer. Chaos at the airports with no labour pool to recruit from and a government incapable of doing security screenings. Lengthy border queues into and out from sunshine countries. Likely followed by lengthy inbound queues at our own border due to lack of staff and egates not working properly then hours to wait for bags.
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
The airports fiasco demonstrates that the "managed border" that so many leavers wanted was a closed border. In theory we can allow migrant labour in to fill gaps. Its just that we only do so when absolutely forced and long after the pain of the shortage has become acute.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
In the end the Free Market and individual countries might solve this issue. If it becomes a persistent pain for UK travellers at EU passport checks - with 3 hour waits - then the British will drift elsewhere. Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, the USA, etc
Any country that makes it easier for Brits will get a lot of business, So eventually an EU country will twig this and provide dedicated lanes for British tourists to get their passports stamped quickly. Probably poorer countries like Portugal, Malta and Greece will do it, to poach custom off France and Spain
The cost of hiring 200 passport stampers will be peanuts compared to the profit from another 1m UK visitors
Honestly I love the simple solution you come up with without any concept of reality. Portugal already offer the electronic recording to get through without stamping the passport, but we Brits then queue up anyway to get the stamp afterwards because we are scared stiff of falling foul of the 90 day limit unintentionally. And this applies to all over Europe. So a trip to Portugal may then stop you going to Germany 3 months later through no fault of your own and getting band from entering the EU.
So a trip to Paris for a long weekend could prevent you going to Portugal 3 months later if stuff goes pearshaped. This has already happened.
Well if this is because pathetic Brits can do maths then that is their problem
Besides, all it needs is an app. Type in your EU travel dates, It will tell you how long you have left within the 90 days. Would take 2 minutes to design. No need for stamps. Problem solved
And, over the long term, countries like Greece, Malta, Cyprus and Portugal - and parts of Spain - are intensely dependant on British tourists. It is in their interest to sort this out, before Brits get used to going elsewhere. They will seize the opportunity
"Javier Gandara, President of the Airlines Association in Spain, called the airport queues at Spanish holiday destinations “undesirable” and said he feared they would leave visitors with a “bad image” of the country unless the situation improved."
I’ve discovered the main problem apart from Boris for the Tories - they’ve just been interviewing two chairs of conservative constituency associations - they were absolutely thick as mince.
I’m sure both ladies have put in the hard yards making jam and cakes and doing the flowers at the village hall hustings to get to these positions but if they are representative then we are doomed.
Actually it is ladies like them who will do a lot of work in the local community, often being involved in the rotary club, the church, the Mother's Union etc as well as being grandmothers. They are the ones who organise the party fundraisers, deliver the leaflets rain or shine, do the canvassing and telling and put up posters and are the backbone of the party and always have been. Without them we wouldn't get all the councillors and MPs elected in the first place we do
It's just not such a good idea to put them up for interview on national radio, eh?
Why not? They represent the voluntary party and the membership who get the final say on any new leader
The only mention we get of Brexit now is the need to make it work. Hard to ignore the thing when it is directly impacting people via its role in the CoL crisis. So its about solutions, not trying to replay the war.
Brexit can never work. That is why the misery continues
People like are the reason Brexit will continue to vex us. You cannot and will not accept Brexit. You are emotionally incapable of accepting it, that’s like expecting a 16th century Catholic to accept the Reformation. You would rejoin tomorrow, and rejoin is your aim
There are a lot of people like you in politics, especially (but not exclusively) on the Left. As and when Labour gain power they will make their move. Starmer will come under pressure to yield to their desires, in some form (Single Market access to start with). Brexit will therefore vex us for many years to come
If Starmer does make it to Downing Street, the current government's absolutely abysmal handling of Brexit means that there are likely to be a number of quick wins he can secure that will probably make a lot of the day to day stuff vexing people, such as long passport queues and long customs delays, go away.
How can Starmer secure wins on passport queues? We still let EU citizens use e-gates when they arrive in the UK - something the EU does not allow “Third Country” citizens do - so we don’t have any “concessions” to offer them - unless we withdraw EU citizens access.
Look at how countries secure wins inside the EU. They do not do it by trading on a like for like basis. They do it by trading what they can offer in return for what they want.
What do you suggest Starmer trade to improve EU tourism business?
Who knows? But the idea that the UK has nothing to offer seems a little far-fetched to me.
So you think Starmer can get easy wins….. but you actually have no clue what they are and how he will get them. Er, OK
There is a saying about not criticizing unless you have a better idea and guess what that is bollocks. Any decent team has what is known as an evaluator type person. They look for problems not solutions. It is a different skill. My wife who was in drug safety did just that role. Others with different skills would loo for the solutions.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
So, the Leavers were right to say "the EU is shit and we will do better if we Leave", without going into detail?
lol
No. Try reading the post. An evaluator points out the problems. They don't just make them up. You clearly have no concept of project management. It is a proper role to identify real problems without having to identify solutions. It is not a proper role to say something doesn't work without evidence.
I can't believe you can't see that.
So if my wife spotted that a drug might kill, she didn't have to have a solution. However she didn't randomly say a drug might kill, she provided evidence.
Really it is depressing you can't see this.
But your error is to deny that there were real problems with the EU. There were and even its supporters recognised that. Indeed the whole point of Cameron's renegotiation was to try and address some of those problems. And given no solutions could be found that could satisfy British concerns, we left.
Comments
None of this was needed. But our government either actively chose it (3rd country), didn't consider it (the reduced labour pool), or is utterly incompetent (security screenings, Border Force).
So much Stupid in here it is hard to unpack. Let’s take one claim
“French and German growth figures are dwarfing ours”
Reality? -
“The war is expected to set back growth in the UK in 2022 by about 0.2 percentage points, but it will shave around a percentage point off growth in Germany, Italy and France.
Growth in the UK is expected to average 3.9 per cent in 2022, compared with 2.5 per cent in Germany and 3.4 per cent in France and Italy.”
The Times (April 2, 2022)
Funny kind of ‘dwarfing’
https://twitter.com/theobertram/status/1534069536894246912
The romantic theological Brexiteers, inspired by folk like Farage and Cumming won the day and steered us on to this rock.
https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/notes-on-a-genre/
You’ve probably noticed that nearly all presentations of AI art include the text prompt.
Covid has changed the recruitment market significantly. The plucky patriotic Brits who didn't want to do these jobs before and even less willing to do them now. Our choice is migrant labour or non-function. Perhaps this summer will make some people understand this.
He'd just replace Wallace.
Yours is the post of the day so far.
“If it was good enough to move Mrs May on…” one says to me.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/04/13/tory-mps-wish-change-1922-committee-no-confidence-vote-rules/
While lots of people wanted to leave the EU there would never have been a majority without the promise of FoM.
I oppose that attitude more than I support the government. You are so resolute in your belief that we "haven't a fucking clue" that you can't conceive of the possibility that the arguments might be balanced or that 'we' might have made an informed choice to forego something because of strings were attached to it.
You reduce everything to a caricature of wise grown-ups on the EU side and crypro-fascist incompetents on the British side, and nothing could ever convince you that agreeing with everything the EU says might not be in our interests. Despite having voted for Brexit, you actively don't want us to be in control of anything because you think we're so useless and malign that it could only end in farce or tragedy.
Any country that makes it easier for Brits will get a lot of business, So eventually an EU country will twig this and provide dedicated lanes for British tourists to get their passports stamped quickly. Probably poorer countries like Portugal, Malta and Greece will do it, to poach custom off France and Spain
The cost of hiring 200 passport stampers will be peanuts compared to the profit from another 1m UK visitors
“If it was good enough to move Mrs May on…” one says to me.
https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1534071924522876931
The reason why we are seeing the chaos in the airports is that the travel industry slashed back its workforce in the wake of Covid (and despite Government support schemes) and then exacerbated the issue by using the crisis to permanently shift the dial in their favour with employees by using Covid as an excuse to push through contracts that favoured the airlines. Guess what? Many airline employees then decided working in an airline didn’t make much sense.
Then they got caught out by the bounce back in travel. As did airlines around the world. The problems we are seeing now mirror what happened in the US at the end of last year but on a smaller scale (relatively as well as absolutely). So, it’s not just a Brexit issue.
In a classic situation, what should happen is that the airlines improve their wages / contracts to help alleviate the situation. That is happening in the US as the airlines realise people are willing to absorb the extra costs. But the airlines here - working on the low cost model - don’t want to do that. They want their cake and to eat it - to have the extra traffic but not pay the extra costs. Which is why they are clamouring for the security check rules to be eased - and if / when there is a breach of airport security, they will be the first to hide and let the Government take the blame.
Your blaming of the situation on Brexit implicitly suggests that you see the problem as a supply of cheap labour that the airlines can throw into the situation ie it undercuts workers wages so nice, middle class people like yourself can go on holiday without too much disruption.
If Starmer can fix some of this shit it would be great. I have long thought it would be a Remainer that might make Brexit work, as so many Brexiteers are ideologically wedded to a Platonic ideal of Brexit, and the more pragmatic Leavers - eg Hannan - have generally left the scene
And we agree that none of this can happen until Boris goes. He REALLY needs to go.
A rare moment of concord on PB
But you are wrong about remoaner ultras. They exist in numbers. @Scott_xP is far from alone in his dogmatism
The hardcore gammon leavers are no less angry and confused now that the UK has left so nothing will change for them if it goes back.
It is entirely rational to point out what you are doing is not working and a different approach would be better.
“That the rules can be changed ‘in an afternoon’ is correct. The once-in-12 months is a false comfort. May was asked to name a date or the rules would be changed. She blinked. Boris might not."
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1534075386400751616
But there is something in the distraction point. We are not addressing our underlying problems in productivity, investment, training and infrastructure. The potential wins in these areas again exceed any Brexit effect by an order of magnitude or more but they are rarely discussed. One of my many disappointments with this government is that levelling up, which could have started to address these problems, especially the last of them, has proved more of a soundbite than a policy.
This government has no clear purpose. It has no clear agenda. It has no focus on what can be done at the margins as we are buffeted by inflation, sanctions, Chinese disruption and many other factors. It is all about surviving the week. Not since the latter days of Gordon Brown have we had such chaos.
The reason why this chaos is the exception outside the UK - Dublin and Schiphol are struggling but not being widely reported beyond that - and is endemic here is Brexit. They have a vast labour pool to choose from, we do not.
So we're back to making our new border strategy work. If it did, then Brexit or no Brexit we would not have a problem. The whole point about a managed immigration policy is that we can bring in workers when they are needed. Except that as with trucking we don't actually do so until very late in the day.
https://twitter.com/holland_tom/status/1533898784761053190
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2022/06/06/german-police-ready-action-ahead-englands-nations-league-fixture/
But no cabinet minister would move against him, so he survived and Lab is still in opposition today
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1534077004026454016
Under Boris’ chaos he is just in it for himself, trying to generate face saving headlines sometimes at the cost of billions. That’s a whole new ball game.
"Brexit is costing us 4% of GDP every year". What even does this mean?? That without Brexit we'd be growing at 8% this year, much faster than China? Or that our GDP is shrinking 4% a year, so we are experiencing a devastating recession every year, which we clearly are not?
There should be a PB Threshold of Stupidity which, if you cross, you are suspended from PB for a week. I suggest Roger gets a 38 week ban
Canada: "Absolute chaos at Pearson these days": https://twitter.com/MikeLoughlin77/status/1533970024825749504
Germany: "Total chaos at Munich airport after flights were cancelled (again). In the past two weeks I've had flights cancelled from MUC (twice) and AMS (once).": https://twitter.com/elisabethbraw/status/1532788109674422273
Sweden: "Security Queue Chaos Continues At Stockholm Arlanda Airport": https://simpleflying.com/security-queue-chaos-stockholm-arlanda/
lol
One friend-of-a-friend spends her time creating elaborate schemes, in her head, by which we can return to the EU in a single bound. Sadly, she donates quite a lot of money to the fox-killer.
However the security checks (full references for the last x years) means that you can't just import people to do the work. So the only people employable are people already here who won't accept minimum wage for 4am start shift work when they can earn the same at Tesco starting at 9am.
Our airports simply cannot recruit staff. A combination of the staff not being available to hire, and/or the people they can hire can't get security screened. Neither of those things are good for the government.
I’m sure both ladies have put in the hard yards making jam and cakes and doing the flowers at the village hall hustings to get to these positions but if they are representative then we are doomed.
And given Johnson's lifelong attitude to rules, it is right and proper that the failure of a rule to protect him should form part of his downfall.
The morning after Wakefield and Tiverton?
From Polly Toynbee to Nick Cohen to Martin Kettle to dozens of others, they are all Rejoiners, they are merely staying reasonably quiet for now, so as not to scare the horses.
That will change as Starmer gets nearer to power. I expect the first Guardian editorial or lead columnist to suggest rejoining the SM within the year
So a trip to Paris for a long weekend could prevent you going to Portugal 3 months later if stuff goes pearshaped. This has already happened.
A vote of confidence in the House of Commons is a very real challenge - not so much to Johnson himself, but to the Conservative MPs who voted yesterday to end Johnson's leadership. This vote of confidence forces them to come out into the open. Do they have the courage to support their constituents' views and put an end to the Johnson regime? Or do they cravenly surrender to pressure and blackmail from the Johnson Junta?
The Liberal Democrats are doing very well just now, and this move will only strengthen their position. I hope they get full support from the Labour MPs.
From https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/adult-social-care-workforce-data/Workforce-intelligence/publications/Topics/Workforce-nationality.aspx
In 2020/21, around 84% of the adult social care workforce identified as British, 7% (113,000 jobs) identified as of an EU nationality and 9% (137,000 jobs) of a non-EU nationality. Therefore, on average, the adult social care sector showed a slightly greater reliance on non-EU workers than EU workers.
The adult social care sector (16% non-British) was more diverse than the population of England in terms of nationality (8% with no British identity).
The proportion of the adult social care workforce with a British nationality has remained consistent over the past seven years (from 2012/13 to 2020/21), varying by less than one percentage point.
However, the composition of the non-British workforce has changed. Over the same period, the proportion of the workforce holding an EU (non-British) nationality had increased by two percentage points and the percentage of those of non-EU nationality decreased by three percentage points.
https://uk.flightaware.com/live/cancelled/today
Why do you think that student political activists do so well in politics? Well, they are the smart ones.
Think about that. Then cry.
But, as others have pointed out, the chaos at the airports is a result of poor management by airlines who sought to cut their costs in line with their income and have been caught out by the sudden increase in demand after the withdrawal of Covid restrictions. A quick google shows we are not alone: https://www.thelocal.de/20220314/german-airport-passengers-face-disruption-due-to-security-staff-strikes/
I have a lot of sympathy for RP's position particularly as I agree on his final destination which is EFTA/EEA membership.
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/europe-airport-chaos-tips-to-manage-long-queues-and-delays
https://www.thelocal.fr/20220531/we-will-be-understaffed-this-summer-warn-french-airport-unions/
I can't believe you can't see that.
So if my wife spotted that a drug might kill, she didn't have to have a solution. However she didn't randomly say a drug might kill, she provided evidence.
Really it is depressing you can't see this.
In political parties, it may surprise you to know that there isn't cutthroat competition for jobs such as this, where the reward to work ratio is so low.
The Irish saw the dangers much earlier than the British or the NI Unionists, hence the Protocol that addresses those dangers from an Irish interest. I wouldn't say either the Irish or the British are particularly sincere in supporting the GFA.
Besides, all it needs is an app. Type in your EU travel dates, It will tell you how long you have left within the 90 days. Would take 2 minutes to design. No need for stamps. Problem solved
And, over the long term, countries like Greece, Malta, Cyprus and Portugal - and parts of Spain - are intensely dependant on British tourists. It is in their interest to sort this out, before Brits get used to going elsewhere. They will seize the opportunity
"Javier Gandara, President of the Airlines Association in Spain, called the airport queues at Spanish holiday destinations “undesirable” and said he feared they would leave visitors with a “bad image” of the country unless the situation improved."
https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-news/if-looks-could-kill-spain-27120029
They had a point on the first bit (as per the post you replied to), and have been proven utterly deluded on the second (which had nothing to do with the post you replied to).
lol
Try one of the less well known resorts in Turkey (the lira is collapsing), or somewhere like Georgia
And unless you have kids in tow (did you?) travelling at half term is cray cray
Personally, I think he resigns after the 2023 local elections, and is voted out a year from now if that doesn’t happen.
I genuinely don't see the problem, except frankly unrealistic petty nationalism ("We won't accept foreign standards for what they import from us!").
People have run into problems when they don't have the stamps to prove it.