For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
I think Brexit is maybe causing 20% of our challenges at the moment - it's churlish to say it's zero, we all knew it would come with border friction costs - the rest is Covid, global supply chain issues, Ukraine and domestic policy, but it gets blamed for 150% of our problems because Brits love whinging and an easy scapegoat.
If we didn't have Brexit we'd need another one, and that would probably be the EU.
Oh really?
Eh? That's all true. So it's actually you who look a tad foolish there: we do have a free trade agreement with no free movement, no budget contributions and no supremacy of EU law.
A free trade agreement doesn't mean zero border frictions - for that you need SM/CU membership.
@estwebber Four sources (up from three last night and including a Tory MP who personally raised the issue) said the PM was made aware of complaints about Pincher before the February reshuffle when he was being tipped for chief whip
I went to a school where rugby was played, and I have zero idea about the differences between union and league, and which parts of the country play which. I can't even remember which my school played.
Which is fair enough; I have no need to know. It's an irrelevance to me, even though I know it matters to hundreds of thousands. But if Dorries opines about it, she should make sure she knows what she's saying is correct. It's not just an indication that she has a loose mouth; it's a sign her department is not working well with her.
The rules have changed a bit but the differences were: RU is a sport for posh hooligans Football is a sport for wwc hooligans Cricket a sport for middle class and posh gentlemen Rugby league a sport for wwc gentlemen (the most ignored, traduced and misunderstood group on the planet)
Rugby league is a sport for wwc gentlemen - I like that hypothesis. I know a lot of league players who are thoroughly nice blokes. The fans are nice people generally too - few arseholes, like Leeds fans can sometimes be.
When Leeds were promoted I know a few jubilant fans who got on a train into Leeds that got more crowded at every stop, so it ended up full of hammered blokes making a right arse of themselves. Who then went into the middle of Leeds, during Covid, and continued being right arses. Can’t imagine a train full of Cas fans doing that.
There's a significant strain of unshowy intellectualism amongst many. RL fans are the kind who read books.
Late to the thread header but having just come back from France (flew out train back) travelling to the EU (I have only travelled to France and Greece) is unambiguously worse.
The posters at the Gare du Nord reminding people of maximum alcohol, etc volume allowed to be brought back to the UK but one minor irritating element.
Surely trying to board the train carrying more than 24 bottles of wine (plus the various other allowances) would make you rather conspicuous?
You could walk into 10 Downing Street with something like that and no one will turn a hair. Apparently
Late to the thread header but having just come back from France (flew out train back) travelling to the EU (I have only travelled to France and Greece) is unambiguously worse.
The posters at the Gare du Nord reminding people of maximum alcohol, etc volume allowed to be brought back to the UK but one minor irritating element.
I didn't notice any difference. Except my passport gets stamped, which I like.
The worst bit is always coming back into the UK, when you have to queue up to go through full passport control, and um.. that applies to British citizens who live here, and always did.
I would say it took about an hour plus extra each way. And so does every single person I have spoken to about it. Except you.
I make 2.
I’ve had one disaster (Spain) but Germany has been good while Sweden was quick 3/4 times (once took +30 mins). London has been fine on all occasions.
But improving this is entirely up to the EU. They are choosing to make individuals lives a little bit worse for no security benefit.
Having crafted his political image as that of a maverick, anti-political figure, the Brexit referendum forced Johnson to make an unwelcome choice. Did supporting Leave or Remain advance his personal interests? In the end, Johnson decided backing Leave while keeping his fingers crossed for a narrow Remain win best suited his path to power. This would give him the edge with Conservative members in any leadership contest without the inconvenience of having to take Britain out of the European Union if he became Prime Minister. As a result, Boris was, as Dominic Cummings said recently, ‘a briefly useful tool’ for Leave campaigners.
Becoming Prime Minister with an 80-seat majority was, however, the worst thing that could have happened to Boris. If he enjoyed luck in navigating the treacherous waters of Brexit, the consequences of Covid and the Ukraine war have been harder to negotiate.
‘To govern is to choose,’ Pierre Mendès-France once said. And all prime ministers are eventually defined by the choices they make. But decisions are fatal for Boris, for whom an innate emptiness has been a key characteristic. Worse, the ‘partygate’ revelations showed the public something of the real Johnson, exposing as they did the inauthentic nature of Boris. People did not like what they saw.
...he will leave little trace, except a Conservative party more than usually confused as to what it stands for. There will be no Johnsonites fighting over a legacy: it will be as if Boris’s time in power never happened.
Really noteworthy the vast number of Tory members, staffers, MPs and gov sources who have got in touch to express a lot of relief and gratitude that our Sun story has come out https://twitter.com/hoffman_noa/status/1542780852903477249
According to Politico, the prime minister was made aware of allegations about Pincher’s behaviour before appointing him deputy chief whip at the last reshuffle in February.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
I think Brexit is maybe causing 20% of our challenges at the moment - it's churlish to say it's zero, we all knew it would come with border friction costs - the rest is Covid, global supply chain issues, Ukraine and domestic policy, but it gets blamed for 150% of our problems because Brits love whinging and an easy scapegoat.
If we didn't have Brexit we'd need another one, and that would probably be the EU.
Oh really?
Eh? That's all true. So it's actually you who look a tad foolish there: we do have a free trade agreement with no free movement, no budget contributions and no supremacy of EU law.
A free trade agreement doesn't mean zero border frictions - for that you need SM/CU membership.
I refer you to the dispute mechanism processes of the Brexit deal, CJEU says hello.
I could also post the Vote Leave flyer which promised a free trade zone all over Europe which we would be part of ensuring friction free trade.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
I think Brexit is maybe causing 20% of our challenges at the moment - it's churlish to say it's zero, we all knew it would come with border friction costs - the rest is Covid, global supply chain issues, Ukraine and domestic policy, but it gets blamed for 150% of our problems because Brits love whinging and an easy scapegoat.
If we didn't have Brexit we'd need another one, and that would probably be the EU.
Oh really?
Except we have exactly what the spokesman said.
Free trade agreement? ✅ No free movement? ✅ No budget contributions? ✅ No supremacy of EU law? ✅*
Free trade still has frictions, since the Single Market goes well beyond traditional free trade agreements, but what we have now is a comprehensive free trade agreement.
* For GB. NI is currently under EU law on some issues of course, but the UK Parliament can unilaterally end that by passing Truss's excellent Bill.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
I think Brexit is maybe causing 20% of our challenges at the moment - it's churlish to say it's zero, we all knew it would come with border friction costs - the rest is Covid, global supply chain issues, Ukraine and domestic policy, but it gets blamed for 150% of our problems because Brits love whinging and an easy scapegoat.
If we didn't have Brexit we'd need another one, and that would probably be the EU.
Oh really?
Is that a prediction of the future of our esteemed Prime Minister?
@estwebber Four sources (up from three last night and including a Tory MP who personally raised the issue) said the PM was made aware of complaints about Pincher before the February reshuffle when he was being tipped for chief whip
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
I see that the US Supreme Court has decided to take up the case to test the insane legal theory that State Courts cannot rule on the actions of State Legislatures when it comes to Federal Elections.
Just to give you a taste of how fringe this theory is it holds that even if the actions of the state legislature explicitly violates the state's constitution the state courts cannot rule them illegal. That literally _any_ actions by the state legislature when it comes to Congressional and Presidential elections are legal.
This is _exactly_ the path that the John Eastmen memo was plotted out to overthrow the results of the election. Get state legislatures to throw out results. And it would be legal because of this wacky theory.
Having crafted his political image as that of a maverick, anti-political figure, the Brexit referendum forced Johnson to make an unwelcome choice. Did supporting Leave or Remain advance his personal interests? In the end, Johnson decided backing Leave while keeping his fingers crossed for a narrow Remain win best suited his path to power. This would give him the edge with Conservative members in any leadership contest without the inconvenience of having to take Britain out of the European Union if he became Prime Minister. As a result, Boris was, as Dominic Cummings said recently, ‘a briefly useful tool’ for Leave campaigners.
Becoming Prime Minister with an 80-seat majority was, however, the worst thing that could have happened to Boris. If he enjoyed luck in navigating the treacherous waters of Brexit, the consequences of Covid and the Ukraine war have been harder to negotiate.
‘To govern is to choose,’ Pierre Mendès-France once said. And all prime ministers are eventually defined by the choices they make. But decisions are fatal for Boris, for whom an innate emptiness has been a key characteristic. Worse, the ‘partygate’ revelations showed the public something of the real Johnson, exposing as they did the inauthentic nature of Boris. People did not like what they saw.
...he will leave little trace, except a Conservative party more than usually confused as to what it stands for. There will be no Johnsonites fighting over a legacy: it will be as if Boris’s time in power never happened.
Whatever else may be said about Boris Johnson, the idea his time in power never happened is bizarre
Apparently the Johnson administration is working to a script that the Carry On team turned down as being too ridiculous and too bad taste.
It would have been good to see Charles Hawtrey play Rees Mogg, Babs Windsor play Truss and Sid James play the PM. I am not sure about Williams Sunak and Breslaws Patel.
Just spent five minutes on Twitter, as I like to see what tim is saying.
Dear god reading some typical posts (tweets from Angela Rayner and Sue Perkins were on my timeline for some reason) from the left and some remainers is enough to turn any sensible person into a rabid and frothing committed Conservative voter.
That is how Tories always justify voting for the priapic clown, and his coterie of cronies.
Well I justified voting for him in 2019 because of the alternative.
I would like not to have that problem next time round.
Vote Conservative to keep the oiks out of the opera!
Vote Conservative to keep the rabid anti-semite far left activist out of Downing Street but yes if it makes you feel better opera, posho, elite.
Who would you vote for if there was a GE tomorrow?
Late to the thread header but having just come back from France (flew out train back) travelling to the EU (I have only travelled to France and Greece) is unambiguously worse.
The posters at the Gare du Nord reminding people of maximum alcohol, etc volume allowed to be brought back to the UK but one minor irritating element.
I didn't notice any difference. Except my passport gets stamped, which I like.
The worst bit is always coming back into the UK, when you have to queue up to go through full passport control, and um.. that applies to British citizens who live here, and always did.
I would say it took about an hour plus extra each way. And so does every single person I have spoken to about it. Except you.
That's ridiculous.
I got through passport control in about 12 minutes flying into Bulgaria on 19th June. I'm flying back to the UK tomorrow and will let you know the result but why would it be an hour extra coming *home*?
That makes no sense at all.
The process at the GdN from France and queues round the block at LHR otherwise.
Maybe I'm on a minor route but I also flew to Geneva in March and that wasn't my experience then either.
I haven't taken the train to be fair. I might do so next time though because my worst experience at Geneva was waiting 90 minutes in a long snaking queue to check-in along with hundreds of other skiers. They only had 4 desks open on a Sunday.
Horrible.
I hate flying because of the hassle. I travelled quite a bit during the pandemic and was spoilt by how easy it was. Travel to Lisbon was a shock as it brought us back down to earth about how awful it is.
I think I'd be tempted by taking the ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao if I was holidaying in northern/central Spain now, or the train.
Drive carefully because if you get wiped out by an uninsured Spanish driver you'll be trying to recover costs and damages in a Spanish court due to lack of EU reciprocation on insurance. A guy on a motorbike forum I'm on got totalled by a U turning van in in Austria and now knows the German for 'bladder trauma' and 'two broken legs'.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
The joint borrowing mechanism for post-Covid recovery is a pretty big deal in terms of future integration.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
I think Brexit is maybe causing 20% of our challenges at the moment - it's churlish to say it's zero, we all knew it would come with border friction costs - the rest is Covid, global supply chain issues, Ukraine and domestic policy, but it gets blamed for 150% of our problems because Brits love whinging and an easy scapegoat.
If we didn't have Brexit we'd need another one, and that would probably be the EU.
Oh really?
Is that a prediction of the future of our esteemed Prime Minister?
And the kicker is we're still completely cucked by the ol' ECHR court
You talk leave and right but funnily enough always tend to vote remain and left.
Eh ?
I voted conservative in 2017 and 2019.
You bottled the EU referendum and now say you want to join the euro, so I don't really take the ECHR stuff seriously.
You've since said you'd vote for Jacinda Ardern in a heartbeat as well as being tempted by Starmer, so I think your Tory votes were really just anti-Corbyn ones.
Mods - this account has been hacked by HY (again!)...
Where do they find these people to become tory MPs?
Is there a special unit dedicated to tracking down people with "problems" and persuading them they should apply to be a MP?
There were dozens of exemplary Tory MPS expelled by BoZo for being rational and competent.
He replaced them with sycophants and zealots, many of whom also appear to be in his own image (unfit for office of any kind)
I know you're desperate to blame all the world's ills on "BoZo" but considering that Pincher has been an MP since 2010, I'm not sure you can blame the fact he's an MP on "BoZo".
The fact that he was deputy chief whip is entirely the fault of "Bozo". The job is appointed solely by the Prime Minister. Given that we now know Mr. Pincher has both a drinking and a lechery problem, and that the PM was clearly aware of this, it is equally clear that appointing and promoting the Tamworth MP was a severe error of judgement. The problem is that most of Johnson's decisions seem to rely on very poor judgement indeed.
I'd never heard of him before yesterday but from what I can see, he's been in the whips office since Theresa May was PM though.
You're not looking very hard then. He was appointed Deputy Chief Whip in February 2022.
Late to the thread header but having just come back from France (flew out train back) travelling to the EU (I have only travelled to France and Greece) is unambiguously worse.
The posters at the Gare du Nord reminding people of maximum alcohol, etc volume allowed to be brought back to the UK but one minor irritating element.
I didn't notice any difference. Except my passport gets stamped, which I like.
The worst bit is always coming back into the UK, when you have to queue up to go through full passport control, and um.. that applies to British citizens who live here, and always did.
I would say it took about an hour plus extra each way. And so does every single person I have spoken to about it. Except you.
That's ridiculous.
I got through passport control in about 12 minutes flying into Bulgaria on 19th June. I'm flying back to the UK tomorrow and will let you know the result but why would it be an hour extra coming *home*?
That makes no sense at all.
The process at the GdN from France and queues round the block at LHR otherwise.
Maybe I'm on a minor route but I also flew to Geneva in March and that wasn't my experience then either.
I haven't taken the train to be fair. I might do so next time though because my worst experience at Geneva was waiting 90 minutes in a long snaking queue to check-in along with hundreds of other skiers. They only had 4 desks open on a Sunday.
Horrible.
I hate flying because of the hassle. I travelled quite a bit during the pandemic and was spoilt by how easy it was. Travel to Lisbon was a shock as it brought us back down to earth about how awful it is.
In airports which have a lot of non-EU flights (Brazil and Lusophone Africa for Lisbon), the the risk will always be long passport queues for non-EU citizens. It's the same when you fly to the US. You could be lucky and be on a flight that lands before the one from Mexico or Colombia, or you could be in a queue for hours.
The simple solution is for the UK and EU to agree a deal that allows respective citizens unlimited stays, but with no right of residency, access to medical treatment or work. It really can't be beyond the wit of man to sort this out.
I see that the US Supreme Court has decided to take up the case to test the insane legal theory that State Courts cannot rule on the actions of State Legislatures when it comes to Federal Elections.
Just to give you a taste of how fringe this theory is it holds that even if the actions of the state legislature explicitly violates the state's constitution the state courts cannot rule them illegal. That literally _any_ actions by the state legislature when it comes to Congressional and Presidential elections are legal.
This is _exactly_ the path that the John Eastmen memo was plotted out to overthrow the results of the election. Get state legislatures to throw out results. And it would be legal because of this wacky theory.
It'll be down to Barrett and Kavanaugh this one. Ol' Roberts is just as bad as Alito when it comes to voting rights. Gorsuch will be able to read the constitution in such a way that this comes to pass, and Thomas just hates the world so far as I can tell.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
I assume you don't travel. Queues, pets, 90 day limit. All impact me, friends and family badly. 3 hour queue in Lisbon, cancelled trip to France as couldn't get dog documents in time, have to plan travelling with a dog weeks/months in advance, 90 day limit completely buggered two friends. One camped in motorhome on son's drive having had to return from EU, another having to go thru hoops re his villa in Portugal and travel limited.
In daily life I don't travel daily, no.
I haven't been abroad in a few years due to COVID restrictions but before then typically have one trip abroad per annum, and only a minority of those destinations have been in the EFTA anyway.
Although it is only a small part of Brexit I think this is what most people will experience as a direct impact of it. There may be invisible benefits of Brexit, but everyone who travels will witness those empty EU gates. I suspect that is why the poll came out with such a large 'worse' number. That may not be fair, but it is a fact of life. It is also clear from the chaos that travel has really kicked off again and the chaos is probably a combination of the leftovers of Covid as much as Brexit.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
I think Brexit is maybe causing 20% of our challenges at the moment - it's churlish to say it's zero, we all knew it would come with border friction costs - the rest is Covid, global supply chain issues, Ukraine and domestic policy, but it gets blamed for 150% of our problems because Brits love whinging and an easy scapegoat.
If we didn't have Brexit we'd need another one, and that would probably be the EU.
Oh really?
Except we have exactly what the spokesman said.
Free trade agreement? ✅ No free movement? ✅ No budget contributions? ✅ No supremacy of EU law? ✅*
Free trade still has frictions, since the Single Market goes well beyond traditional free trade agreements, but what we have now is a comprehensive free trade agreement.
* For GB. NI is currently under EU law on some issues of course, but the UK Parliament can unilaterally end that by passing Truss's excellent Bill.
The patient has recovered completely.*
*Well we had to amputate his leg but there are plenty of good prosthetics around.
I see that the US Supreme Court has decided to take up the case to test the insane legal theory that State Courts cannot rule on the actions of State Legislatures when it comes to Federal Elections.
Just to give you a taste of how fringe this theory is it holds that even if the actions of the state legislature explicitly violates the state's constitution the state courts cannot rule them illegal. That literally _any_ actions by the state legislature when it comes to Congressional and Presidential elections are legal.
This is _exactly_ the path that the John Eastmen memo was plotted out to overthrow the results of the election. Get state legislatures to throw out results. And it would be legal because of this wacky theory.
The US is heading for the mother of all constitutional crises.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
I think Brexit is maybe causing 20% of our challenges at the moment - it's churlish to say it's zero, we all knew it would come with border friction costs - the rest is Covid, global supply chain issues, Ukraine and domestic policy, but it gets blamed for 150% of our problems because Brits love whinging and an easy scapegoat.
If we didn't have Brexit we'd need another one, and that would probably be the EU.
Oh really?
Eh? That's all true. So it's actually you who look a tad foolish there: we do have a free trade agreement with no free movement, no budget contributions and no supremacy of EU law.
A free trade agreement doesn't mean zero border frictions - for that you need SM/CU membership.
I refer you to the dispute mechanism processes of the Brexit deal, CJEU says hello.
I could also post the Vote Leave flyer which promised a free trade zone all over Europe which we would be part of ensuring friction free trade.
Let me dig it out.
And Johnson himself promised no new barriers to trade....
🚨 New: Tory MP tells me they personally raised concerns about Mr Pincher’s behaviour to senior figures in No10 and the Conservative Party - including Chief Whip Chris Heaton-Harris, Nigel Adams, government whips and one of the prime minister’s top advisers Ben Gascoigne.
Speaking about raising concerns, they said: “Loads [of us] did when he was in frame for Chief Whip and he never got it. There were concerns, none of us had proof we could use. Pincher should have the whip suspended and a by-election.”
No10 have said as things stand he would face no further action and keep the party whip. Though understand some in government have personally raised concerns about this line, and think he should lose it.
Where do they find these people to become tory MPs?
Is there a special unit dedicated to tracking down people with "problems" and persuading them they should apply to be a MP?
There were dozens of exemplary Tory MPS expelled by BoZo for being rational and competent.
He replaced them with sycophants and zealots, many of whom also appear to be in his own image (unfit for office of any kind)
I know you're desperate to blame all the world's ills on "BoZo" but considering that Pincher has been an MP since 2010, I'm not sure you can blame the fact he's an MP on "BoZo".
The fact that he was deputy chief whip is entirely the fault of "Bozo". The job is appointed solely by the Prime Minister. Given that we now know Mr. Pincher has both a drinking and a lechery problem, and that the PM was clearly aware of this, it is equally clear that appointing and promoting the Tamworth MP was a severe error of judgement. The problem is that most of Johnson's decisions seem to rely on very poor judgement indeed.
I'd never heard of him before yesterday but from what I can see, he's been in the whips office since Theresa May was PM though.
You're not looking very hard then. He was appointed Deputy Chief Whip in February 2020.
CHRISTOPHER Pincher, the Member of Parliament for Tamworth has been asked to rejoin the Government after stepping down from his post as Comptroller of the HM Household late last year. As part of Teresa May’s cabinet reshuffle this week, Mr Pincher was asked to take up the role of Deputy Chief Whip, Treasurer of HM Household; a relatively senior position within politics.
He takes over from The Right Honorable Esther McVey MP who was appointed Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
Mr Pincher held the position of Comptroller of HM Household, Government Whip, from June 2017 to November 2017; prior to that, Assistant Government Whip from 17 July 2016 until 15 June 2017.
Chris Pincher stood down from the whips’ office in November and referred himself to the new Conservative complaints procedure following newspaper reports that he made inappropriate advances on Olympic rower and Conservative activist Alex Story.
He was cleared of the allegations in December by a panel headed by an independent QC. The claims emerged at the height of the Westminster sexual harassment scandal.
Government Whip Whips are MPs or Lords appointed by each party to help organise their party’s contribution to parliamentary business. They are responsible for making sure the maximum number of their party members vote, and vote the way their party wants.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
I think Brexit is maybe causing 20% of our challenges at the moment - it's churlish to say it's zero, we all knew it would come with border friction costs - the rest is Covid, global supply chain issues, Ukraine and domestic policy, but it gets blamed for 150% of our problems because Brits love whinging and an easy scapegoat.
If we didn't have Brexit we'd need another one, and that would probably be the EU.
Oh really?
Except we have exactly what the spokesman said.
Free trade agreement? ✅ No free movement? ✅ No budget contributions? ✅ No supremacy of EU law? ✅*
Free trade still has frictions, since the Single Market goes well beyond traditional free trade agreements, but what we have now is a comprehensive free trade agreement.
* For GB. NI is currently under EU law on some issues of course, but the UK Parliament can unilaterally end that by passing Truss's excellent Bill.
Yes.
Free trade and the single market are different things. And free trade is not the same as unregulated trade (it does not for example require that a 3 year old in the UK can lawfully acquire a working machine gun from abroad).
The single market is an ultra free trade zone within it, but highly protectionist with regard to outsiders.
If, of course, we could have had the SM with minor derogations from FoM all this would never have happened.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
Ooh me sir me sir pick me sir please.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Having crafted his political image as that of a maverick, anti-political figure, the Brexit referendum forced Johnson to make an unwelcome choice. Did supporting Leave or Remain advance his personal interests? In the end, Johnson decided backing Leave while keeping his fingers crossed for a narrow Remain win best suited his path to power. This would give him the edge with Conservative members in any leadership contest without the inconvenience of having to take Britain out of the European Union if he became Prime Minister. As a result, Boris was, as Dominic Cummings said recently, ‘a briefly useful tool’ for Leave campaigners.
Becoming Prime Minister with an 80-seat majority was, however, the worst thing that could have happened to Boris. If he enjoyed luck in navigating the treacherous waters of Brexit, the consequences of Covid and the Ukraine war have been harder to negotiate.
‘To govern is to choose,’ Pierre Mendès-France once said. And all prime ministers are eventually defined by the choices they make. But decisions are fatal for Boris, for whom an innate emptiness has been a key characteristic. Worse, the ‘partygate’ revelations showed the public something of the real Johnson, exposing as they did the inauthentic nature of Boris. People did not like what they saw.
...he will leave little trace, except a Conservative party more than usually confused as to what it stands for. There will be no Johnsonites fighting over a legacy: it will be as if Boris’s time in power never happened.
One thing is for sure - the Conservative party will hope that we all forget about Boris Johnson's government.
Having crafted his political image as that of a maverick, anti-political figure, the Brexit referendum forced Johnson to make an unwelcome choice. Did supporting Leave or Remain advance his personal interests? In the end, Johnson decided backing Leave while keeping his fingers crossed for a narrow Remain win best suited his path to power. This would give him the edge with Conservative members in any leadership contest without the inconvenience of having to take Britain out of the European Union if he became Prime Minister. As a result, Boris was, as Dominic Cummings said recently, ‘a briefly useful tool’ for Leave campaigners.
Becoming Prime Minister with an 80-seat majority was, however, the worst thing that could have happened to Boris. If he enjoyed luck in navigating the treacherous waters of Brexit, the consequences of Covid and the Ukraine war have been harder to negotiate.
‘To govern is to choose,’ Pierre Mendès-France once said. And all prime ministers are eventually defined by the choices they make. But decisions are fatal for Boris, for whom an innate emptiness has been a key characteristic. Worse, the ‘partygate’ revelations showed the public something of the real Johnson, exposing as they did the inauthentic nature of Boris. People did not like what they saw.
...he will leave little trace, except a Conservative party more than usually confused as to what it stands for. There will be no Johnsonites fighting over a legacy: it will be as if Boris’s time in power never happened.
Yes, I think his period in power will be glossed over very quickly by the Tories. He has no ideology or hinterland in the party, or actual plan to be remembered for.
Late to the thread header but having just come back from France (flew out train back) travelling to the EU (I have only travelled to France and Greece) is unambiguously worse.
The posters at the Gare du Nord reminding people of maximum alcohol, etc volume allowed to be brought back to the UK but one minor irritating element.
I didn't notice any difference. Except my passport gets stamped, which I like.
The worst bit is always coming back into the UK, when you have to queue up to go through full passport control, and um.. that applies to British citizens who live here, and always did.
I would say it took about an hour plus extra each way. And so does every single person I have spoken to about it. Except you.
That's ridiculous.
I got through passport control in about 12 minutes flying into Bulgaria on 19th June. I'm flying back to the UK tomorrow and will let you know the result but why would it be an hour extra coming *home*?
That makes no sense at all.
The process at the GdN from France and queues round the block at LHR otherwise.
Maybe I'm on a minor route but I also flew to Geneva in March and that wasn't my experience then either.
I haven't taken the train to be fair. I might do so next time though because my worst experience at Geneva was waiting 90 minutes in a long snaking queue to check-in along with hundreds of other skiers. They only had 4 desks open on a Sunday.
Horrible.
I hate flying because of the hassle. I travelled quite a bit during the pandemic and was spoilt by how easy it was. Travel to Lisbon was a shock as it brought us back down to earth about how awful it is.
I think I'd be tempted by taking the ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao if I was holidaying in northern/central Spain now, or the train.
Drive carefully because if you get wiped out by an uninsured Spanish driver you'll be trying to recover costs and damages in a Spanish court due to lack of EU reciprocation on insurance. A guy on a motorbike forum I'm on got totalled by a U turning van in in Austria and now knows the German for 'bladder trauma' and 'two broken legs'.
Yesterday on my Boris bike I was nearly taken out by that classic of the genre, a u-turning London black cab from parked. Reminded me of and nearly made me nostalgic for my motorbiking days when I was indeed taken out by such a manoeuvre.
I see that the US Supreme Court has decided to take up the case to test the insane legal theory that State Courts cannot rule on the actions of State Legislatures when it comes to Federal Elections.
Just to give you a taste of how fringe this theory is it holds that even if the actions of the state legislature explicitly violates the state's constitution the state courts cannot rule them illegal. That literally _any_ actions by the state legislature when it comes to Congressional and Presidential elections are legal.
This is _exactly_ the path that the John Eastmen memo was plotted out to overthrow the results of the election. Get state legislatures to throw out results. And it would be legal because of this wacky theory.
The US is heading for the mother of all constitutional crises.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
Slowly ?
We're in a row with a supplier that wants to charge us quarter of a million of german VAT.
Fuck the culture war aspects, it's seriously expensive for UK business. Now if St Bart can find me any business that has substantially benefitted I'm all ears.
Tax lawyers perhaps.
I always brought up the issue of carnets for temporary exports as that was always an issue for me. Obvious people being hit by this are F1 and bands. I spoke to someone in the exhibition business the other day. He said it was a nightmare. Made business practically impossible.
Any foreign exhibition became ~20% more expensive this year within the EU I think for GB companies.
Having experienced the situation with and without the controls carrying only a car load of exhibition material I look at the articulated lorries of the Rolling Stones and McLaren F1 team and wonder how they ever get through. They must have hoards of people working on it and the paperwork must be huge. I suspect there is a whole lot of shrugging of shoulders by customers officials also. I mean how do you compare a pristine car going out to a pranged one coming back. Just thinking about the tyre recording brings me out in a sweat. I assume they put the punctured shredded tyre in labelled boxes. I just can't imagine how it is done.
Late to the thread header but having just come back from France (flew out train back) travelling to the EU (I have only travelled to France and Greece) is unambiguously worse.
The posters at the Gare du Nord reminding people of maximum alcohol, etc volume allowed to be brought back to the UK but one minor irritating element.
I didn't notice any difference. Except my passport gets stamped, which I like.
The worst bit is always coming back into the UK, when you have to queue up to go through full passport control, and um.. that applies to British citizens who live here, and always did.
I would say it took about an hour plus extra each way. And so does every single person I have spoken to about it. Except you.
That's ridiculous.
I got through passport control in about 12 minutes flying into Bulgaria on 19th June. I'm flying back to the UK tomorrow and will let you know the result but why would it be an hour extra coming *home*?
That makes no sense at all.
The process at the GdN from France and queues round the block at LHR otherwise.
Maybe I'm on a minor route but I also flew to Geneva in March and that wasn't my experience then either.
I haven't taken the train to be fair. I might do so next time though because my worst experience at Geneva was waiting 90 minutes in a long snaking queue to check-in along with hundreds of other skiers. They only had 4 desks open on a Sunday.
Horrible.
I hate flying because of the hassle. I travelled quite a bit during the pandemic and was spoilt by how easy it was. Travel to Lisbon was a shock as it brought us back down to earth about how awful it is.
In airports which have a lot of non-EU flights (Brazil and Lusophone Africa for Lisbon), the the risk will always be long passport queues for non-EU citizens. It's the same when you fly to the US. You could be lucky and be on a flight that lands before the one from Mexico or Colombia, or you could be in a queue for hours.
The simple solution is for the UK and EU to agree a deal that allows respective citizens unlimited stays, but with no right of residency, access to medical treatment or work. It really can't be beyond the wit of man to sort this out.
The UK has offered this.
If we are holding all the cards how come the EU has not then agreed?
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
Ooh me sir me sir pick me sir please.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Your welcome.
Thanks. Very polite and elegant but you make my point precisely. pooled sovereignty is not the same as sovereignty.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
Ooh me sir me sir pick me sir please.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Your welcome.
That didn't answer the question.
Without using Brexit as the answer, since you're anti-Brexit, how does the UK democratically cease to follow those rules?
If the answer is "well you need to leave the club to do so", then leaving the club was the correct decision. You can't have it both ways and say "you don't need to leave the club, because you were entitled to leave the club as an alternative to that".
I see that the US Supreme Court has decided to take up the case to test the insane legal theory that State Courts cannot rule on the actions of State Legislatures when it comes to Federal Elections.
Just to give you a taste of how fringe this theory is it holds that even if the actions of the state legislature explicitly violates the state's constitution the state courts cannot rule them illegal. That literally _any_ actions by the state legislature when it comes to Congressional and Presidential elections are legal.
This is _exactly_ the path that the John Eastmen memo was plotted out to overthrow the results of the election. Get state legislatures to throw out results. And it would be legal because of this wacky theory.
It'll be down to Barrett and Kavanaugh this one. Ol' Roberts is just as bad as Alito when it comes to voting rights. Gorsuch will be able to read the constitution in such a way that this comes to pass, and Thomas just hates the world so far as I can tell.
I know it's tangentially related, and mainly applies to Dobbs, but I've really soured on the concept of bills of rights, maybe even the concept of constitutional democracy entirely. Still, I shouldn't judge the concept by its worst example.
The Grundgesetz in Germany seems to work tolerably, though I'm not sure how it really works in the framework of the German judiciary. A cursory glance at Wikipedia seems to suggest that their constitutional court is split from their highest Civil and Criminal Court, which is interesting.
Having crafted his political image as that of a maverick, anti-political figure, the Brexit referendum forced Johnson to make an unwelcome choice. Did supporting Leave or Remain advance his personal interests? In the end, Johnson decided backing Leave while keeping his fingers crossed for a narrow Remain win best suited his path to power. This would give him the edge with Conservative members in any leadership contest without the inconvenience of having to take Britain out of the European Union if he became Prime Minister. As a result, Boris was, as Dominic Cummings said recently, ‘a briefly useful tool’ for Leave campaigners.
Becoming Prime Minister with an 80-seat majority was, however, the worst thing that could have happened to Boris. If he enjoyed luck in navigating the treacherous waters of Brexit, the consequences of Covid and the Ukraine war have been harder to negotiate.
‘To govern is to choose,’ Pierre Mendès-France once said. And all prime ministers are eventually defined by the choices they make. But decisions are fatal for Boris, for whom an innate emptiness has been a key characteristic. Worse, the ‘partygate’ revelations showed the public something of the real Johnson, exposing as they did the inauthentic nature of Boris. People did not like what they saw.
...he will leave little trace, except a Conservative party more than usually confused as to what it stands for. There will be no Johnsonites fighting over a legacy: it will be as if Boris’s time in power never happened.
Yes, I think his period in power will be glossed over very quickly by the Tories. He has no ideology or hinterland in the party, or actual plan to be remembered for.
Yes, being serious, he'll always be remembered for being largely responsible for Brexit, both the voting and the doing - but as that slowly turns sour he'll be remembered for landing us with problems that needed subsequently to be unpicked, rather than for any real or lasting achievement.
His time during covid will always be remembered for the partying and associated hypocrisy.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
Ooh me sir me sir pick me sir please.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Your welcome.
Thanks. Very polite and elegant but you make my point precisely. pooled sovereignty is not the same as sovereignty.
"Pooled sovereignty" is not a thing and if it was, then it would of course be sovereignty and the clue is in the name. We as a sovereign nation decided to join a club with some rules which we as a sovereign nation were happy to follow until we as a sovereign nation were no longer happy to follow.
Or as the sage of Brexit put it; "we were always sovereign".
Unless you mean the North Korea model, which is an entirely legitimate desire. I don't believe North Korea is a member of any international groups such as the EU, NATO, etc, where sovereignty is "pooled".
I see that the US Supreme Court has decided to take up the case to test the insane legal theory that State Courts cannot rule on the actions of State Legislatures when it comes to Federal Elections.
Just to give you a taste of how fringe this theory is it holds that even if the actions of the state legislature explicitly violates the state's constitution the state courts cannot rule them illegal. That literally _any_ actions by the state legislature when it comes to Congressional and Presidential elections are legal.
This is _exactly_ the path that the John Eastmen memo was plotted out to overthrow the results of the election. Get state legislatures to throw out results. And it would be legal because of this wacky theory.
The US is heading for the mother of all constitutional crises.
GOP control the WAG legislatures
Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia.
269 - 269 if those are crooked into the GOP column.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
Ooh me sir me sir pick me sir please.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Your welcome.
Thanks. Very polite and elegant but you make my point precisely. pooled sovereignty is not the same as sovereignty.
But all sovereignty is pooled, to some extent, nowadays, in that the things you can actually do in the real world is a subset of the things you could in theory do, but for many of them never would.
Late to the thread header but having just come back from France (flew out train back) travelling to the EU (I have only travelled to France and Greece) is unambiguously worse.
The posters at the Gare du Nord reminding people of maximum alcohol, etc volume allowed to be brought back to the UK but one minor irritating element.
I didn't notice any difference. Except my passport gets stamped, which I like.
The worst bit is always coming back into the UK, when you have to queue up to go through full passport control, and um.. that applies to British citizens who live here, and always did.
I would say it took about an hour plus extra each way. And so does every single person I have spoken to about it. Except you.
That's ridiculous.
I got through passport control in about 12 minutes flying into Bulgaria on 19th June. I'm flying back to the UK tomorrow and will let you know the result but why would it be an hour extra coming *home*?
That makes no sense at all.
3 hrs getting through Lisbon passport control. We estimated a queue of 1000 (see my posts while in the queue). We seemed to have coincided with a lot of Americans arriving. Trip back to Gatwick was ok.
No queues in Lisbon EU gates. All gates were open and once you got to the front of the queue people were also funneled to the EU and priority gates which were empty.
Sorry to hear that - sounds awful.
It sounds like they need to staff more desks to meet demand and haven't adjusted yet.
I haven't had this issue flying into Canada or the USA, for example.
I've had five and a half hours at Miami, and a couple of two hour plus immigration queues at LAX.
Of course I'm Global Entry now, so life is simple...
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
Ooh me sir me sir pick me sir please.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Your welcome.
That didn't answer the question.
Without using Brexit as the answer, since you're anti-Brexit, how does the UK democratically cease to follow those rules?
If the answer is "well you need to leave the club to do so", then leaving the club was the correct decision. You can't have it both ways and say "you don't need to leave the club, because you were entitled to leave the club as an alternative to that".
If you didn't want to follow the rules, and in/by 2016 the UK didn't want to follow the rules, then of course Brexit was the solution.
But don't wail and moan about our lack of sovereignty because up until June 2016 we as a sovereign nation were perfectly happy to follow those rules.
Mr. Topping, the rules changed substantially in the decades after we joined.
As an aside, I think the Government's take on Northern Ireland is bloody silly. But then, the vainglorious satyriasic requires a distraction from his woes, so the national interest is hurled on the bonfire of his ego.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
Ooh me sir me sir pick me sir please.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Your welcome.
Also no single voter can achieve anything on their own - it requires other people to vote alongside you. If a voter in Fife wants to change the car parking rules in their town, they can vote in a council that will change them, alongside other voters in Fife. If they want to change the exam system they can vote in a Scottish government to change it alongside other Scottish voters. If they want to change British foreign policy they can vote in a different government at Westminster alongside other British voters. And if we were in the EU and wanted to change EU rules they could vote for MEPs alongside other EU voters, and the UK government could join together with other democratically elected governments in the EU to change the rules. The idea that democratic decision making can only operate at one level is an odd one. Especially as Westminster politics leaves plenty of voters feeling like their wishes are always getting overruled by a distant majority.
I am going to a meeting in Hamburg this autumn, booked with Easyjet out of Manchester. Got notified last week that the flight is now cancelled, so rebooked with Ryanair out of Stanstead. Yesterday that too was cancelled, so rebooking again...
The prospect of actually getting to a passport queue is looking a distant dream...
Was there on Monday - out with BA and back with Eurowinga both of which worked fine (but to LHR)
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Wtf was the point then?
I am waiting on essential personal medical supplies which have now been delayed for the first time ever. They are made in Germany. Four weeks late and counting.
To be fair the UK distributor I use, who have been excellent all the time I have used them, are being rather reticent about the reason so we will have to see how it pans out and what they label as the reason. They have been studiously neutral about Brexit in all their comms over the past 6 or 7 years, which is fair enough.
Fortunately with all the uncertainty after the Brexit vote, I decided to build up and keep a couple of months' extra stock, so I am ok for a few weeks yet.
I guess that could be deemed an indirect benefit of Brexit?
Worrying though.
The point for me was for England (with or without the rest of the UK) to be an independent, sovereign country where our laws are determined at our elections. If we do badly, its possibly in part because we elect bad governments, but we have the option to kick them out. We don't have the option to reverse bad EU laws because the EU isn't a functional demos, and the EU Parliament elections are a bad joke.
I've always used a hockey stick analogy for the benefits and costs of Brexit, I fully expect the most serious costs to be up-front, but the benefits will be virtually invisible up-front. Disruptions or changes normally are costly up-front.
The benefit from being different and outside the EU will accumulate over decades, potentially centuries to come.
I expect England/UK to be like Europe's version of Canada, while the EU will be Europe's version of the USA. Some people think the only thing that matters is size, so America/EU must be best, but I would rather a more local English/British/Canadian style control over laws and ability to evolve differently than trying to force 50/28 at times very different states to all be under the same laws, under the same roof.
Late to the thread header but having just come back from France (flew out train back) travelling to the EU (I have only travelled to France and Greece) is unambiguously worse.
The posters at the Gare du Nord reminding people of maximum alcohol, etc volume allowed to be brought back to the UK but one minor irritating element.
I didn't notice any difference. Except my passport gets stamped, which I like.
The worst bit is always coming back into the UK, when you have to queue up to go through full passport control, and um.. that applies to British citizens who live here, and always did.
I would say it took about an hour plus extra each way. And so does every single person I have spoken to about it. Except you.
That's ridiculous.
I got through passport control in about 12 minutes flying into Bulgaria on 19th June. I'm flying back to the UK tomorrow and will let you know the result but why would it be an hour extra coming *home*?
That makes no sense at all.
The process at the GdN from France and queues round the block at LHR otherwise.
Maybe I'm on a minor route but I also flew to Geneva in March and that wasn't my experience then either.
I haven't taken the train to be fair. I might do so next time though because my worst experience at Geneva was waiting 90 minutes in a long snaking queue to check-in along with hundreds of other skiers. They only had 4 desks open on a Sunday.
Horrible.
I hate flying because of the hassle. I travelled quite a bit during the pandemic and was spoilt by how easy it was. Travel to Lisbon was a shock as it brought us back down to earth about how awful it is.
In airports which have a lot of non-EU flights (Brazil and Lusophone Africa for Lisbon), the the risk will always be long passport queues for non-EU citizens. It's the same when you fly to the US. You could be lucky and be on a flight that lands before the one from Mexico or Colombia, or you could be in a queue for hours.
The simple solution is for the UK and EU to agree a deal that allows respective citizens unlimited stays, but with no right of residency, access to medical treatment or work. It really can't be beyond the wit of man to sort this out.
The UK has offered this.
If we are holding all the cards how come the EU has not then agreed?
Our "requests" are mostly for domestic consumption, to give the Tories something to say to constituents encountering the various new obstacles to their lives, and to blame the EU for problems of our own making.
The pet passport scheme is a classic example. Whereas Norway and Switzerland have signed up to the EU scheme and accepted that as an EU scheme, the EU will set the rules, the UK wants the EU to recognise our British rules as somehow equivalent so that we can be inside the scheme without being bound by it (not that there is anything in the rules that is, or could be, significantly binding). Of course the EU says no. So MPs write back to their unhappy constituents trying to pretend that we applied to join but the nasty EU said no - when the truth is that they are making requests that they fully know in advance are not going to be acceptable.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
Ooh me sir me sir pick me sir please.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Your welcome.
Thanks. Very polite and elegant but you make my point precisely. pooled sovereignty is not the same as sovereignty.
"Pooled sovereignty" is not a thing and if it was, then it would of course be sovereignty and the clue is in the name. We as a sovereign nation decided to join a club with some rules which we as a sovereign nation were happy to follow until we as a sovereign nation were no longer happy to follow.
Or as the sage of Brexit put it; "we were always sovereign".
Unless you mean the North Korea model, which is an entirely legitimate desire. I don't believe North Korea is a member of any international groups such as the EU, NATO, etc, where sovereignty is "pooled".
Good luck:
"It is important to remember that at present the European Union is not a federation (like the United States of America), nor is it just an international organisation like the United Nations (UN) where governments merely cooperate together. The EU’s member states remain separate independent states that have ‘pooled sovereignty’ in certain policy areas. This is to say that they have decided to work collectively on particular matters."
I see that the US Supreme Court has decided to take up the case to test the insane legal theory that State Courts cannot rule on the actions of State Legislatures when it comes to Federal Elections.
Just to give you a taste of how fringe this theory is it holds that even if the actions of the state legislature explicitly violates the state's constitution the state courts cannot rule them illegal. That literally _any_ actions by the state legislature when it comes to Congressional and Presidential elections are legal.
This is _exactly_ the path that the John Eastmen memo was plotted out to overthrow the results of the election. Get state legislatures to throw out results. And it would be legal because of this wacky theory.
It'll be down to Barrett and Kavanaugh this one. Ol' Roberts is just as bad as Alito when it comes to voting rights. Gorsuch will be able to read the constitution in such a way that this comes to pass, and Thomas just hates the world so far as I can tell.
This is the kind of case where Roberts would love to write a narrow but profound ruling allowing to stealth repeal some law he doesn't like. But with the weight of hard core nutters to his right that power might be taken from him.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
Slowly ?
We're in a row with a supplier that wants to charge us quarter of a million of german VAT.
Fuck the culture war aspects, it's seriously expensive for UK business. Now if St Bart can find me any business that has substantially benefitted I'm all ears.
Tax lawyers perhaps.
I always brought up the issue of carnets for temporary exports as that was always an issue for me. Obvious people being hit by this are F1 and bands. I spoke to someone in the exhibition business the other day. He said it was a nightmare. Made business practically impossible.
Any foreign exhibition became ~20% more expensive this year within the EU I think for GB companies.
Having experienced the situation with and without the controls carrying only a car load of exhibition material I look at the articulated lorries of the Rolling Stones and McLaren F1 team and wonder how they ever get through. They must have hoards of people working on it and the paperwork must be huge. I suspect there is a whole lot of shrugging of shoulders by customers officials also. I mean how do you compare a pristine car going out to a pranged one coming back. Just thinking about the tyre recording brings me out in a sweat. I assume they put the punctured shredded tyre in labelled boxes. I just can't imagine how it is done.
The concert promotors and F1 teams also deal with non-EU traffic, and have people to sort the paperwork. It was again something the UK asked for movement on, but the EU chose to be dogmatic about. An arrangement similar to that for trusted traders, could have been set up. The UK was more worried about EU lorries doing internal UK jobs, and the EU linked this to temporary exports.
I see that the US Supreme Court has decided to take up the case to test the insane legal theory that State Courts cannot rule on the actions of State Legislatures when it comes to Federal Elections.
Just to give you a taste of how fringe this theory is it holds that even if the actions of the state legislature explicitly violates the state's constitution the state courts cannot rule them illegal. That literally _any_ actions by the state legislature when it comes to Congressional and Presidential elections are legal.
This is _exactly_ the path that the John Eastmen memo was plotted out to overthrow the results of the election. Get state legislatures to throw out results. And it would be legal because of this wacky theory.
It'll be down to Barrett and Kavanaugh this one. Ol' Roberts is just as bad as Alito when it comes to voting rights. Gorsuch will be able to read the constitution in such a way that this comes to pass, and Thomas just hates the world so far as I can tell.
I know it's tangentially related, and mainly applies to Dobbs, but I've really soured on the concept of bills of rights, maybe even the concept of constitutional democracy entirely. Still, I shouldn't judge the concept by its worst example.
The Grundgesetz in Germany seems to work tolerably, though I'm not sure how it really works in the framework of the German judiciary. A cursory glance at Wikipedia seems to suggest that their constitutional court is split from their highest Civil and Criminal Court, which is interesting.
The seed for such an overmighty court (As SCOTUS currently is) was planted with the Marbury decision a few hundred years ago. We should be thankful that SCOTUK demured to parliament when it was presented with Miller II, it could have gone for a real power grab but thankfully didn't. A written constitution essentially turns your highest, ultimate powers to judges if they grant themselves the power of judicial review as it is their interpretation of the constitution which ultimately has weight over even parliament, POTUS or either house of congress. It's the reason you should never ever stick a 2/3rds bar on anything either.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
Ooh me sir me sir pick me sir please.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Your welcome.
That didn't answer the question.
Without using Brexit as the answer, since you're anti-Brexit, how does the UK democratically cease to follow those rules?
If the answer is "well you need to leave the club to do so", then leaving the club was the correct decision. You can't have it both ways and say "you don't need to leave the club, because you were entitled to leave the club as an alternative to that".
If you didn't want to follow the rules, and in/by 2016 the UK didn't want to follow the rules, then of course Brexit was the solution.
But don't wail and moan about our lack of sovereignty because up until June 2016 we as a sovereign nation were perfectly happy to follow those rules.
Good, I'm glad we're agreed. Of course Brexit was the solution. 👍
Until June 2016 we weren't "perfectly happy" to follow those rules, which is why Europe has been a schism in British politics for as long as I've been politically aware, why repeated Parliament's reneged on their promises at the prior election to hold a referendum, and why when we finally had one in 2016 we voted to leave. But I'm glad that you've agreed that Brexit was the solution. Had we been happy to follow the rules and never be able to change them unilaterally then we could have remained, but we weren't, so that's that.
And the kicker is we're still completely cucked by the ol' ECHR court
You talk leave and right but funnily enough always tend to vote remain and left.
Eh ?
I voted conservative in 2017 and 2019. My vote to remain in the EU was precisely because of the inconvienience and cost it might produce, not along any sort of culture war lines. Supremacy of the ECHR over UK courts (yes yes I know I know for those in the back) was one of those things we'd just have to suck up.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
Ooh me sir me sir pick me sir please.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Your welcome.
The infantile nature of the response reveals that there is, of course, no sensible answer to @algakirk’s question that does not admit his point
The EU is horribly and painfully undemocratic, it was designed that way. You can accept that this corrosion of our democracy is worth it in return for the benefits - single market, free movement, etc - but you cannot deny it, as many Remainers once tried to do
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Wtf was the point then?
I am waiting on essential personal medical supplies which have now been delayed for the first time ever. They are made in Germany. Four weeks late and counting.
To be fair the UK distributor I use, who have been excellent all the time I have used them, are being rather reticent about the reason so we will have to see how it pans out and what they label as the reason. They have been studiously neutral about Brexit in all their comms over the past 6 or 7 years, which is fair enough.
Fortunately with all the uncertainty after the Brexit vote, I decided to build up and keep a couple of months' extra stock, so I am ok for a few weeks yet.
I guess that could be deemed an indirect benefit of Brexit?
Worrying though.
The point for me was for England (with or without the rest of the UK) to be an independent, sovereign country where our laws are determined at our elections. If we do badly, its possibly in part because we elect bad governments, but we have the option to kick them out. We don't have the option to reverse bad EU laws because the EU isn't a functional demos, and the EU Parliament elections are a bad joke.
I've always used a hockey stick analogy for the benefits and costs of Brexit, I fully expect the most serious costs to be up-front, but the benefits will be virtually invisible up-front. Disruptions or changes normally are costly up-front.
The benefit from being different and outside the EU will accumulate over decades, potentially centuries to come.
I expect England/UK to be like Europe's version of Canada, while the EU will be Europe's version of the USA. Some people think the only thing that matters is size, so America/EU must be best, but I would rather a more local English/British/Canadian style control over laws and ability to evolve differently than trying to force 50/28 at times very different states to all be under the same laws, under the same roof.
Comforting thoughts, I am sure, for Ben to ponder as he lies there missing his medicine.
If I were Keir Starmer the one thing I wouldn't want is a by-election in Tamworth.
Aren't there 50 odd cases of alleged sexual abuse by MPs ongoing? Not all will be established as proven, but not sure this one should be singled out for a by-election.
The thing that this, like many other matters, emphasises is that politics is not treated like a modern profession.
Late to the thread header but having just come back from France (flew out train back) travelling to the EU (I have only travelled to France and Greece) is unambiguously worse.
The posters at the Gare du Nord reminding people of maximum alcohol, etc volume allowed to be brought back to the UK but one minor irritating element.
Surely trying to board the train carrying more than 24 bottles of wine (plus the various other allowances) would make you rather conspicuous?
You could walk into 10 Downing Street with something like that and no one will turn a hair. Apparently
The 24 bottle limit thing was deliberately inflicted by UK Customs. Because they believed that small companies were using the effectively unlimited personal allowance to evade tax.
And the kicker is we're still completely cucked by the ol' ECHR court
You talk leave and right but funnily enough always tend to vote remain and left.
Eh ?
I voted conservative in 2017 and 2019. My vote to remain in the EU was precisely because of the inconvienience and cost it might produce, not along any sort of culture war lines. Supremacy of the ECHR over UK courts (yes yes I know I know for those in the back) was one of those things we'd just have to suck up.
You are muddling up the ECJ and the ECHR
I'm really not, unless you somehow can be in the EU and outside the ECHR.
This echoes a point made here yesterday, that the BBC reports the big names rather than the results, although it is slightly spoiled by the reporter, Jim White, needing to apologise for the Telegraph being much the same.
He adds:- On Monday night, after a magnificent first-round encounter on Centre Court had stretched well beyond its scheduled slot on BBC television, Clare Balding signed off by saying: “And I’m off to bed dreaming that I had a heart as big as Serena Williams.” Which was quite a statement given that the veteran former champion had just lost.
Balding is a brilliant broadcaster. And you suspect she will have woken up the next morning thinking it might have been better to at least acknowledge the fact there was a winner - the young Frenchwoman Harmony Tan, making her debut at Wimbledon by beating an all-time great.
Clare Balding has always had the same flaw — she correctly identifies before the event what is the big story (in this case, Serena Williams' comeback) but rarely changes her stance in the light of results.
Yep - this has annoyed me mightily this week. The BBC have belatedly discovered Cam Norrie at least -
I suspect that whoever wrote this has only just found out themselves...
Norrie is probably Britain's least celebrated or well-known world-class sports person.
Hard to disagree. When Murray was ascending to the top the BBC were all over him. Norrie - less so.
Although I'll through out Jamie Murray (doubles grand slam champion no less than 7 times) as someone else who goes under the radar in the tennis world.
My reading is that tennis stars get coverage and become "discovered" if or when they have an unexpected deep run into Wimbledon, especially when they're young (teens), as that can indicate "breakthrough new big thing," and especially when we've not got someone else as a "big name"
Murray made a run to the third round in 2005 as an 18-year-old in his first season as a professional. Tim Henman was right at the end of his career and they were casting about for "the next big thing."
Since he started to become less successful (largely due to injury), the media did try Kyle Edmund, but he didn't really spark.
Raducanu made a run to the fourth round in Wimbledon as an 18-year-old in her first attempt and then won the French Open.
Norrie is 26 and really only started making the 3rd round of Grand Slams in the past year - and no further. If he gets to the fourth round, he'll likely get Kyle Edmund level of coverage; if he gets to the quarters, he'll probably be catapulted into wider coverage.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
I think Brexit is maybe causing 20% of our challenges at the moment - it's churlish to say it's zero, we all knew it would come with border friction costs - the rest is Covid, global supply chain issues, Ukraine and domestic policy, but it gets blamed for 150% of our problems because Brits love whinging and an easy scapegoat.
If we didn't have Brexit we'd need another one, and that would probably be the EU.
Oh really?
The link someone posted this morning to the prescient David Herson article from 2014 has some spectacularly complacent comments long those lines in the comments section...
Having crafted his political image as that of a maverick, anti-political figure, the Brexit referendum forced Johnson to make an unwelcome choice. Did supporting Leave or Remain advance his personal interests? In the end, Johnson decided backing Leave while keeping his fingers crossed for a narrow Remain win best suited his path to power. This would give him the edge with Conservative members in any leadership contest without the inconvenience of having to take Britain out of the European Union if he became Prime Minister. As a result, Boris was, as Dominic Cummings said recently, ‘a briefly useful tool’ for Leave campaigners.
Becoming Prime Minister with an 80-seat majority was, however, the worst thing that could have happened to Boris. If he enjoyed luck in navigating the treacherous waters of Brexit, the consequences of Covid and the Ukraine war have been harder to negotiate.
‘To govern is to choose,’ Pierre Mendès-France once said. And all prime ministers are eventually defined by the choices they make. But decisions are fatal for Boris, for whom an innate emptiness has been a key characteristic. Worse, the ‘partygate’ revelations showed the public something of the real Johnson, exposing as they did the inauthentic nature of Boris. People did not like what they saw.
...he will leave little trace, except a Conservative party more than usually confused as to what it stands for. There will be no Johnsonites fighting over a legacy: it will be as if Boris’s time in power never happened.
"Briefly useful tool." Well, 1 out of three ain't bad.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Wtf was the point then?
I am waiting on essential personal medical supplies which have now been delayed for the first time ever. They are made in Germany. Four weeks late and counting.
To be fair the UK distributor I use, who have been excellent all the time I have used them, are being rather reticent about the reason so we will have to see how it pans out and what they label as the reason. They have been studiously neutral about Brexit in all their comms over the past 6 or 7 years, which is fair enough.
Fortunately with all the uncertainty after the Brexit vote, I decided to build up and keep a couple of months' extra stock, so I am ok for a few weeks yet.
I guess that could be deemed an indirect benefit of Brexit?
Worrying though.
The point for me was for England (with or without the rest of the UK) to be an independent, sovereign country where our laws are determined at our elections. If we do badly, its possibly in part because we elect bad governments, but we have the option to kick them out. We don't have the option to reverse bad EU laws because the EU isn't a functional demos, and the EU Parliament elections are a bad joke.
I've always used a hockey stick analogy for the benefits and costs of Brexit, I fully expect the most serious costs to be up-front, but the benefits will be virtually invisible up-front. Disruptions or changes normally are costly up-front.
The benefit from being different and outside the EU will accumulate over decades, potentially centuries to come.
I expect England/UK to be like Europe's version of Canada, while the EU will be Europe's version of the USA. Some people think the only thing that matters is size, so America/EU must be best, but I would rather a more local English/British/Canadian style control over laws and ability to evolve differently than trying to force 50/28 at times very different states to all be under the same laws, under the same roof.
UK Parliament elections are a bad joke. Half of them aren't elected and half of them are elected from parties I don't like.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
No those are all facts.
You are rattled which is why you responded with such a weak "oh no he didn't" line by line 'rebuttal'.
You're being made to think on your simple prejudices, which you don't like.
We all aspire to your levels of objectivity, lack of prejudice and self-awareness Casino.
I assure you that my response was more a function of having to join a call rather than being rattled by your incisive wit.
I think we should assume that profound enlightening debate could follow and save time, cut to the chase wish each other a happy Friday.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
I assume you don't travel. Queues, pets, 90 day limit. All impact me, friends and family badly. 3 hour queue in Lisbon, cancelled trip to France as couldn't get dog documents in time, have to plan travelling with a dog weeks/months in advance, 90 day limit completely buggered two friends. One camped in motorhome on son's drive having had to return from EU, another having to go thru hoops re his villa in Portugal and travel limited.
In daily life I don't travel daily, no.
I haven't been abroad in a few years due to COVID restrictions but before then typically have one trip abroad per annum, and only a minority of those destinations have been in the EFTA anyway.
Although it is only a small part of Brexit I think this is what most people will experience as a direct impact of it. There may be invisible benefits of Brexit, but everyone who travels will witness those empty EU gates. I suspect that is why the poll came out with such a large 'worse' number. That may not be fair, but it is a fact of life. It is also clear from the chaos that travel has really kicked off again and the chaos is probably a combination of the leftovers of Covid as much as Brexit.
Many people are seeing benefits of brexit. The fact you and many on this board aren't is I suspect because most on this board were those that gained from being in the eu.
Being in the eu there were winners and losers Brexiting there are winners and losers
Some of the winners from being in the eu are now losers.
In my case I cite pay. Using my pay in 1997 as a baseline below is everytime I changed job and my %pay increase vs my 1997 pay. Many of my friends are seeing similar patterns.
What I would be earning if my pay had kept up with inflation since 1997 +97%
Can I prove its down to brexit....well no but the fact I am only seeing payrises when moving job since brexit happened while maybe coincidental is indicative and with others I know seeing a similar pattern something is happening
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
Agriculture is a mess. Immigration is not settled. The Poles and other Eastern European countries would argue they’ve shown robust support for Ukraine within the EU. UK Vaccine policy could have happened inside the EU There has been no further political union.
But I’m glad you feel better.
Agriculture is not a mess. Public concern about immigration has fallen drastically. We were able to put in place sanctions much earlier and adopt a robust line that influenced the EU in conjunction with Poland within. No it couldn't, this is pure "in theory" stuff whereas in political practice we'd absolutely have signed up to the same EU scheme Yes, us leaving has given them reason to pause (not in all areas, I hasten to add) and it would have continued had we stayed.
You need to get over your simplistic Brexit obsession and ridiculous partisanship.
Is that the best you have? Good grief, it's worse than I thought.
Remainers have never been able to answer the simplest questions despite maintaining frequently that we retained sovereignty while we were in the EU.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
The argument was whether the UK gained more by creating a single common market with an agreed set of rules than by simply sitting outside.
Rules negotiated and agreed between sovereign governments are binding. If you are genuinely arguing for democratic oversight over international trade agreements, where is your outrage about Truss's rapidly passed application to the CPTPP - surely the fact that there was NO debate about what we have agreed to should upset you equally, no?
Should we withdraw because it will prevent us from banning GM food imports - or introducing tighter phytosanitary standards than other CPTPP members?
I don't think we will have any right to renegotiate if Johnson is replaced by Starmer. How is that different?
I really don't think you want to be fighting on that ground.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Wtf was the point then?
I am waiting on essential personal medical supplies which have now been delayed for the first time ever. They are made in Germany. Four weeks late and counting.
To be fair the UK distributor I use, who have been excellent all the time I have used them, are being rather reticent about the reason so we will have to see how it pans out and what they label as the reason. They have been studiously neutral about Brexit in all their comms over the past 6 or 7 years, which is fair enough.
Fortunately with all the uncertainty after the Brexit vote, I decided to build up and keep a couple of months' extra stock, so I am ok for a few weeks yet.
I guess that could be deemed an indirect benefit of Brexit?
Worrying though.
The point for me was for England (with or without the rest of the UK) to be an independent, sovereign country where our laws are determined at our elections. If we do badly, its possibly in part because we elect bad governments, but we have the option to kick them out. We don't have the option to reverse bad EU laws because the EU isn't a functional demos, and the EU Parliament elections are a bad joke.
I've always used a hockey stick analogy for the benefits and costs of Brexit, I fully expect the most serious costs to be up-front, but the benefits will be virtually invisible up-front. Disruptions or changes normally are costly up-front.
The benefit from being different and outside the EU will accumulate over decades, potentially centuries to come.
I expect England/UK to be like Europe's version of Canada, while the EU will be Europe's version of the USA. Some people think the only thing that matters is size, so America/EU must be best, but I would rather a more local English/British/Canadian style control over laws and ability to evolve differently than trying to force 50/28 at times very different states to all be under the same laws, under the same roof.
Canadian levels of devolution would be nice. Then we wouldn't have to obey laws we hadn't voted for.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
I assume you don't travel. Queues, pets, 90 day limit. All impact me, friends and family badly. 3 hour queue in Lisbon, cancelled trip to France as couldn't get dog documents in time, have to plan travelling with a dog weeks/months in advance, 90 day limit completely buggered two friends. One camped in motorhome on son's drive having had to return from EU, another having to go thru hoops re his villa in Portugal and travel limited.
In daily life I don't travel daily, no.
I haven't been abroad in a few years due to COVID restrictions but before then typically have one trip abroad per annum, and only a minority of those destinations have been in the EFTA anyway.
Although it is only a small part of Brexit I think this is what most people will experience as a direct impact of it. There may be invisible benefits of Brexit, but everyone who travels will witness those empty EU gates. I suspect that is why the poll came out with such a large 'worse' number. That may not be fair, but it is a fact of life. It is also clear from the chaos that travel has really kicked off again and the chaos is probably a combination of the leftovers of Covid as much as Brexit.
Many people are seeing benefits of brexit. The fact you and many on this board aren't is I suspect because most on this board were those that gained from being in the eu.
Being in the eu there were winners and losers Brexiting there are winners and losers
Some of the winners from being in the eu are now losers.
In my case I cite pay. Using my pay in 1997 as a baseline below is everytime I changed job and my %pay increase vs my 1997 pay. Many of my friends are seeing similar patterns.
What I would be earning if my pay had kept up with inflation since 1997 +97%
Can I prove its down to brexit....well no but the fact I am only seeing payrises when moving job since brexit happened while maybe coincidental is indicative and with others I know seeing a similar pattern something is happening
Don't you work in IT?
If so, I find it frankly unbelievable that your pay in 2014 was 8.25% below what it was in 1997.
I see that the US Supreme Court has decided to take up the case to test the insane legal theory that State Courts cannot rule on the actions of State Legislatures when it comes to Federal Elections.
Just to give you a taste of how fringe this theory is it holds that even if the actions of the state legislature explicitly violates the state's constitution the state courts cannot rule them illegal. That literally _any_ actions by the state legislature when it comes to Congressional and Presidential elections are legal.
This is _exactly_ the path that the John Eastmen memo was plotted out to overthrow the results of the election. Get state legislatures to throw out results. And it would be legal because of this wacky theory.
It'll be down to Barrett and Kavanaugh this one. Ol' Roberts is just as bad as Alito when it comes to voting rights. Gorsuch will be able to read the constitution in such a way that this comes to pass, and Thomas just hates the world so far as I can tell.
I know it's tangentially related, and mainly applies to Dobbs, but I've really soured on the concept of bills of rights, maybe even the concept of constitutional democracy entirely. Still, I shouldn't judge the concept by its worst example.
The Grundgesetz in Germany seems to work tolerably, though I'm not sure how it really works in the framework of the German judiciary. A cursory glance at Wikipedia seems to suggest that their constitutional court is split from their highest Civil and Criminal Court, which is interesting.
The seed for such an overmighty court (As SCOTUS currently is) was planted with the Marbury decision a few hundred years ago. We should be thankful that SCOTUK demured to parliament when it was presented with Miller II, it could have gone for a real power grab but thankfully didn't. A written constitution essentially turns your highest, ultimate powers to judges if they grant themselves the power of judicial review as it is their interpretation of the constitution which ultimately has weight over even parliament. It's the reason you should never ever stick a 2/3rds bar on anything either.
Yes - the UK supreme court stays in its lane, very carefully. The legislature legislates, the judiciary judges. At most the SC adds a comment to a judgement saying that Parliament needed to pull it's collective socks up and fix an issue.
There was an attempt to make the SCOTUK go full political during the Coalition government - a case was presented that any changes in any government benefit had to meet an extreme test of equality to all recipients. The effect would have been to make any change in pensions and benefits impossible, without sign off from the court. The SC specifically and carefully rejected the whole thing.
"constitutions are made for men, not men for constitutions" - JA Froude is still right.
Trying to impose "virtue" on the populace from a great height always falls down on Who Guards The Guardians? At best, a constitution is a speed bump.
I would favour the Swiss idea that everything is, ultimately, controlled by referenda.
Having already proven that she knows fuck all about the Culture and Media parts of her brief, it was only fair that Nadine Dorries should do the same for Sport. #NadineDorries
Nadine Dorries does seem ignorant and uniquely incurious about her brief, which has led to previous errors on the funding and ownership of Channels 4 and 5, as well as downstreamed movies and tennis pitches.
I like Nadine. She’s fun and basically a nice person. So rare in politics.
Not really Cabinet material though…
A nice person? She smeared Starmer with a vile smear and didn't have the decency to apologise.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Everyone in Westminster knows Pincher is going to end up having the whip withdrawn today. Except for the Prime Minister and the Chief Whip. Again, who is actually running the Tory party.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
Brexit is pretty special in that it hasn’t yet realised any benefit promised or otherwise. The rewriting of history to say that Brexit was never intended to yield benefits doesn’t really wash.
That simply isn't true.
We have a more sustainable agricultural and marine conservation policy now, public concern about immigration has a major issue has been killed off, we had a much better Covid vaccine programme, we've been able to adopt a more agile and flexible foreign policy on Ukraine with a firmer line, we've avoided any further drives to political union from Juncker or Von Der Leyen, or directives from Brussels that might target the City.
Personally, I take it as a huge relief that I don't have to worry about what nonsense comes out of the mouths of the EU Commission, or the integrationist political agenda for the European Council every 6 months, because it doesn't affect me anymore.
The fact we could vote, trigger article 50 and leave the EU, proved without doubt we were sovereign all along and therefore didn't need to leave the EU to secure our sovereignty.
The idea that Britain was somehow less democratic in the EU, is the same argument to say that Cornwall and every other county is somehow less democratic if it remains in the UK.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Wtf was the point then?
I am waiting on essential personal medical supplies which have now been delayed for the first time ever. They are made in Germany. Four weeks late and counting.
To be fair the UK distributor I use, who have been excellent all the time I have used them, are being rather reticent about the reason so we will have to see how it pans out and what they label as the reason. They have been studiously neutral about Brexit in all their comms over the past 6 or 7 years, which is fair enough.
Fortunately with all the uncertainty after the Brexit vote, I decided to build up and keep a couple of months' extra stock, so I am ok for a few weeks yet.
I guess that could be deemed an indirect benefit of Brexit?
Worrying though.
The point for me was for England (with or without the rest of the UK) to be an independent, sovereign country where our laws are determined at our elections. If we do badly, its possibly in part because we elect bad governments, but we have the option to kick them out. We don't have the option to reverse bad EU laws because the EU isn't a functional demos, and the EU Parliament elections are a bad joke.
I've always used a hockey stick analogy for the benefits and costs of Brexit, I fully expect the most serious costs to be up-front, but the benefits will be virtually invisible up-front. Disruptions or changes normally are costly up-front.
The benefit from being different and outside the EU will accumulate over decades, potentially centuries to come.
I expect England/UK to be like Europe's version of Canada, while the EU will be Europe's version of the USA. Some people think the only thing that matters is size, so America/EU must be best, but I would rather a more local English/British/Canadian style control over laws and ability to evolve differently than trying to force 50/28 at times very different states to all be under the same laws, under the same roof.
UK Parliament elections are a bad joke. Half of them aren't elected and half of them are elected from parties I don't like.
Everyone in the Commons is elected, and every single Commons MP (even those I can't stand) are the most desired candidate to represent their local constituency.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h Everyone in Westminster knows Pincher is going to end up having the whip withdrawn today. Except for the Prime Minister and the Chief Whip. Again, who is actually running the Tory party.
'tis always the way with the clown; he's the last to see the inevitability of the u-turns he is forced to make.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Brexit is an incremental burn of rising costs and bureaucracy. The costs of which slowly add up
Slowly ?
We're in a row with a supplier that wants to charge us quarter of a million of german VAT.
Fuck the culture war aspects, it's seriously expensive for UK business. Now if St Bart can find me any business that has substantially benefitted I'm all ears.
Tax lawyers perhaps.
I always brought up the issue of carnets for temporary exports as that was always an issue for me. Obvious people being hit by this are F1 and bands. I spoke to someone in the exhibition business the other day. He said it was a nightmare. Made business practically impossible.
Any foreign exhibition became ~20% more expensive this year within the EU I think for GB companies.
Having experienced the situation with and without the controls carrying only a car load of exhibition material I look at the articulated lorries of the Rolling Stones and McLaren F1 team and wonder how they ever get through. They must have hoards of people working on it and the paperwork must be huge. I suspect there is a whole lot of shrugging of shoulders by customers officials also. I mean how do you compare a pristine car going out to a pranged one coming back. Just thinking about the tyre recording brings me out in a sweat. I assume they put the punctured shredded tyre in labelled boxes. I just can't imagine how it is done.
The concert promotors and F1 teams also deal with non-EU traffic, and have people to sort the paperwork. It was again something the UK asked for movement on, but the EU chose to be dogmatic about. An arrangement similar to that for trusted traders, could have been set up. The UK was more worried about EU lorries doing internal UK jobs, and the EU linked this to temporary exports.
a) Just cos it is difficult in half the world, that does not make it acceptable to make it difficult in the whole world by making the EU as difficult to 'temporary export to' as the rest of the world. My one experience of trying to get paid by Microsoft(US) as a UK Company in the UK made me vow never to try that again as a one man company. So these restrictions inhibit trade particularly for small organisations.
b) How is it we always blame the EU for being dogmatic. It was our decision to exclude ourselves. We have to accept the consequences.
c) Yes I know they have the inhouse expertise to do this stuff as otherwise it would never happen and I'm guessing there is a lot more flexibility because frankly it is impossible otherwise. I mean on every trip there must be stuff that doesn't come back (not sure what happens about that), but the point is it would stop me doing it (if I hadn't retired) and the person I referred to earlier whom I was chatting with a couple of weeks ago said it has destroyed his exhibition business as far as the EU is concerned because of the temporary export issue.
For me the honest answer I'd have to give is that Brexit has neither made "daily life" better or worse, its pretty indifferent to be honest.
But that wasn't the point of Brexit.
Wtf was the point then?
I am waiting on essential personal medical supplies which have now been delayed for the first time ever. They are made in Germany. Four weeks late and counting.
To be fair the UK distributor I use, who have been excellent all the time I have used them, are being rather reticent about the reason so we will have to see how it pans out and what they label as the reason. They have been studiously neutral about Brexit in all their comms over the past 6 or 7 years, which is fair enough.
Fortunately with all the uncertainty after the Brexit vote, I decided to build up and keep a couple of months' extra stock, so I am ok for a few weeks yet.
I guess that could be deemed an indirect benefit of Brexit?
Worrying though.
I've always used a hockey stick analogy for the benefits and costs of Brexit, I fully expect the most serious costs to be up-front, but the benefits will be virtually invisible up-front. Disruptions or changes normally are costly up-front.
I don't know what you do for a living but for some time some time ago I used to disburse funds to start-ups. The part in their business plan ppt presentation that had us all rolling in the aisles was when they got to the bit about their "hockey stick" view of their market.
Morning all! With respect to the Brexit making people's lives better / worse and what does it matter now - it matters.
Quite simply comments like "nobody voted to make their daily lives better" are utterly ignorant of what so many red wall voters expected.
So it is a serious problem for the government that things have got worse and not better for many of these voters. Yes Covid and Ukraine etc etc but we are talking voters barely engaged with politics. They don't know or care about such details.
Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't. It's that simple. That we can't rejoin any time soon doesn't matter, people won't forget about it and move on. What they will do is hold their new Tory MPs to account...
"Brexit has failed because the NHS has got worse and prices have gone up and wages haven't." You've missed the biggest reasons for the NHS getting worse? 1) Covid and 2) 12 years underfunding leaving a capacity that couldn't cope with 1).
I seem to recall an argument being made on the side of a bus that Brexit would fix (2).
Comments
A free trade agreement doesn't mean zero border frictions - for that you need SM/CU membership.
So why did the PM appoint him deputy chief whip anyway?
https://twitter.com/EleniCourea/status/1542781913370431488
You could walk into 10 Downing Street with something like that and no one will turn a hair.
Apparently
I’ve had one disaster (Spain) but Germany has been good while Sweden was quick 3/4 times (once took +30 mins). London has been fine on all occasions.
But improving this is entirely up to the EU. They are choosing to make individuals lives a little bit worse for no security benefit.
Becoming Prime Minister with an 80-seat majority was, however, the worst thing that could have happened to Boris. If he enjoyed luck in navigating the treacherous waters of Brexit, the consequences of Covid and the Ukraine war have been harder to negotiate.
‘To govern is to choose,’ Pierre Mendès-France once said. And all prime ministers are eventually defined by the choices they make. But decisions are fatal for Boris, for whom an innate emptiness has been a key characteristic. Worse, the ‘partygate’ revelations showed the public something of the real Johnson, exposing as they did the inauthentic nature of Boris. People did not like what they saw.
...he will leave little trace, except a Conservative party more than usually confused as to what it stands for. There will be no Johnsonites fighting over a legacy: it will be as if Boris’s time in power never happened.
I'd probably say Ferrari, but recently the Red Bull's been looking hard to beat.
I could also post the Vote Leave flyer which promised a free trade zone all over Europe which we would be part of ensuring friction free trade.
Let me dig it out.
Free trade agreement? ✅
No free movement? ✅
No budget contributions? ✅
No supremacy of EU law? ✅*
Free trade still has frictions, since the Single Market goes well beyond traditional free trade agreements, but what we have now is a comprehensive free trade agreement.
* For GB. NI is currently under EU law on some issues of course, but the UK Parliament can unilaterally end that by passing Truss's excellent Bill.
Like: If the UK is a democratic sovereign nation within the EU describe (omitting all whataboutery) by what process, involving only voting and democratic and democratically elected parliamentary processes the people of the UK could effect a change in how EU rules on FoM or VAT worked in the UK, or repeal any part of EU legislation insofar as it touches the interests of the UK.
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1107648753/supreme-court-north-carolina-redistricting-independent-state-legislature-theory
Just to give you a taste of how fringe this theory is it holds that even if the actions of the state legislature explicitly violates the state's constitution the state courts cannot rule them illegal. That literally _any_ actions by the state legislature when it comes to Congressional and Presidential elections are legal.
This is _exactly_ the path that the John Eastmen memo was plotted out to overthrow the results of the election. Get state legislatures to throw out results. And it would be legal because of this wacky theory.
Heathrow Terminal 4
Heathrow Terminal 5
Heathrow Central
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Pincher
*Well we had to amputate his leg but there are plenty of good prosthetics around.
Speaking about raising concerns, they said: “Loads [of us] did when he was in frame for Chief Whip and he never got it. There were concerns, none of us had proof we could use. Pincher should have the whip suspended and a by-election.”
No10 have said as things stand he would face no further action and keep the party whip. Though understand some in government have personally raised concerns about this line, and think he should lose it.
https://twitter.com/ionewells/status/1542785708477259777
CHRISTOPHER Pincher, the Member of Parliament for Tamworth has been asked to rejoin the Government after stepping down from his post as Comptroller of the HM Household late last year.
As part of Teresa May’s cabinet reshuffle this week, Mr Pincher was asked to take up the role of Deputy Chief Whip, Treasurer of HM Household; a relatively senior position within politics.
He takes over from The Right Honorable Esther McVey MP who was appointed Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
Mr Pincher held the position of Comptroller of HM Household, Government Whip, from June 2017 to November 2017; prior to that, Assistant Government Whip from 17 July 2016 until 15 June 2017.
Chris Pincher stood down from the whips’ office in November and referred himself to the new Conservative complaints procedure following newspaper reports that he made inappropriate advances on Olympic rower and Conservative activist Alex Story.
He was cleared of the allegations in December by a panel headed by an independent QC. The claims emerged at the height of the Westminster sexual harassment scandal.
Government Whip
Whips are MPs or Lords appointed by each party to help organise their party’s contribution to parliamentary business. They are responsible for making sure the maximum number of their party members vote, and vote the way their party wants.
Free trade and the single market are different things. And free trade is not the same as unregulated trade (it does not for example require that a 3 year old in the UK can lawfully acquire a working machine gun from abroad).
The single market is an ultra free trade zone within it, but highly protectionist with regard to outsiders.
If, of course, we could have had the SM with minor derogations from FoM all this would never have happened.
Ans: because the UK voted to join the club and the club has rules. Like if I wanted to go to the Royal Meeting at Ascot in the Royal Enclosure and tried to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the requirement is for formal dress. I can unilaterally decide that I will accept those rules or not. As regards the EU it was the latter.
All the actions of a perfectly "democratic sovereign nation".
Your welcome.
TL:DR, yes.
Without using Brexit as the answer, since you're anti-Brexit, how does the UK democratically cease to follow those rules?
If the answer is "well you need to leave the club to do so", then leaving the club was the correct decision. You can't have it both ways and say "you don't need to leave the club, because you were entitled to leave the club as an alternative to that".
https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1542787340179062784
https://twitter.com/irelandembgb/status/1542784248989483010
The Grundgesetz in Germany seems to work tolerably, though I'm not sure how it really works in the framework of the German judiciary. A cursory glance at Wikipedia seems to suggest that their constitutional court is split from their highest Civil and Criminal Court, which is interesting.
His time during covid will always be remembered for the partying and associated hypocrisy.
That is probably it.
Or as the sage of Brexit put it; "we were always sovereign".
Unless you mean the North Korea model, which is an entirely legitimate desire. I don't believe North Korea is a member of any international groups such as the EU, NATO, etc, where sovereignty is "pooled".
Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia.
269 - 269 if those are crooked into the GOP column.
But they also have Pennsylvania.
BREXIT IS DONEBrexit war of words continues in the pages of the Financial Times 👇
Irish Ambo to London responds to Liz Truss on the letters page https://twitter.com/IrelandEmbGB/status/1542784248989483010
Just the same as for our individual behaviour
Of course I'm Global Entry now, so life is simple...
But don't wail and moan about our lack of sovereignty because up until June 2016 we as a sovereign nation were perfectly happy to follow those rules.
As an aside, I think the Government's take on Northern Ireland is bloody silly. But then, the vainglorious satyriasic requires a distraction from his woes, so the national interest is hurled on the bonfire of his ego.
The idea that democratic decision making can only operate at one level is an odd one. Especially as Westminster politics leaves plenty of voters feeling like their wishes are always getting overruled by a distant majority.
Lab 41
Con 30
LD 15
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-early-general-election-tory-conservative-party-chris-pincher-b1009570.html
I've always used a hockey stick analogy for the benefits and costs of Brexit, I fully expect the most serious costs to be up-front, but the benefits will be virtually invisible up-front. Disruptions or changes normally are costly up-front.
The benefit from being different and outside the EU will accumulate over decades, potentially centuries to come.
I expect England/UK to be like Europe's version of Canada, while the EU will be Europe's version of the USA. Some people think the only thing that matters is size, so America/EU must be best, but I would rather a more local English/British/Canadian style control over laws and ability to evolve differently than trying to force 50/28 at times very different states to all be under the same laws, under the same roof.
New. 🏴
"Should Scotland be an independent country?"
Yes 46%
No 54%
Techne UK. All fieldwork after @NicolaSturgeon announcement #ScottishIndependence2023
The pet passport scheme is a classic example. Whereas Norway and Switzerland have signed up to the EU scheme and accepted that as an EU scheme, the EU will set the rules, the UK wants the EU to recognise our British rules as somehow equivalent so that we can be inside the scheme without being bound by it (not that there is anything in the rules that is, or could be, significantly binding). Of course the EU says no. So MPs write back to their unhappy constituents trying to pretend that we applied to join but the nasty EU said no - when the truth is that they are making requests that they fully know in advance are not going to be acceptable.
"It is important to remember that at present the European Union is not a federation (like the United States of America), nor is it just an international organisation like the United Nations (UN) where governments merely cooperate together. The EU’s member states remain separate independent states that have ‘pooled sovereignty’ in certain policy areas. This is to say that they have decided to work collectively on particular matters."
Lab 39 (+1)
Con 33 (+1)
LD 13 (-1)
Green 5 (-1)
SNP 4 (=)
A written constitution essentially turns your highest, ultimate powers to judges if they grant themselves the power of judicial review as it is their interpretation of the constitution which ultimately has weight over even parliament, POTUS or either house of congress. It's the reason you should never ever stick a 2/3rds bar on anything either.
Until June 2016 we weren't "perfectly happy" to follow those rules, which is why Europe has been a schism in British politics for as long as I've been politically aware, why repeated Parliament's reneged on their promises at the prior election to hold a referendum, and why when we finally had one in 2016 we voted to leave. But I'm glad that you've agreed that Brexit was the solution. Had we been happy to follow the rules and never be able to change them unilaterally then we could have remained, but we weren't, so that's that.
The EU is horribly and painfully undemocratic, it was designed that way. You can accept that this corrosion of our democracy is worth it in return for the benefits - single market, free movement, etc - but you cannot deny it, as many Remainers once tried to do
🇺🇦🇪🇺 https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1542787624213123072/video/1
Brexit is done. We're post-Brexit now. Post-Brexit evolution and politics will never be done.
Murray made a run to the third round in 2005 as an 18-year-old in his first season as a professional. Tim Henman was right at the end of his career and they were casting about for "the next big thing."
Since he started to become less successful (largely due to injury), the media did try Kyle Edmund, but he didn't really spark.
Raducanu made a run to the fourth round in Wimbledon as an 18-year-old in her first attempt and then won the French Open.
Norrie is 26 and really only started making the 3rd round of Grand Slams in the past year - and no further. If he gets to the fourth round, he'll likely get Kyle Edmund level of coverage; if he gets to the quarters, he'll probably be catapulted into wider coverage.
Well, 1 out of three ain't bad.
I assure you that my response was more a function of having to join a call rather than being rattled by your incisive wit.
I think we should assume that profound enlightening debate could follow and save time, cut to the chase wish each other a happy Friday.
Being in the eu there were winners and losers
Brexiting there are winners and losers
Some of the winners from being in the eu are now losers.
In my case I cite pay. Using my pay in 1997 as a baseline below is everytime I changed job and my %pay increase vs my 1997 pay. Many of my friends are seeing similar patterns.
1997 baseline
2003 -8.25%
2007 0%
2014 0%
2017 +12.5%
2022 +32.5%
What I would be earning if my pay had kept up with inflation since 1997 +97%
Can I prove its down to brexit....well no but the fact I am only seeing payrises when moving job since brexit happened while maybe coincidental is indicative and with others I know seeing a similar pattern something is happening
Rules negotiated and agreed between sovereign governments are binding. If you are genuinely arguing for democratic oversight over international trade agreements, where is your outrage about Truss's rapidly passed application to the CPTPP - surely the fact that there was NO debate about what we have agreed to should upset you equally, no?
Should we withdraw because it will prevent us from banning GM food imports - or introducing tighter phytosanitary standards than other CPTPP members?
I don't think we will have any right to renegotiate if Johnson is replaced by Starmer. How is that different?
I really don't think you want to be fighting on that ground.
Then we wouldn't have to obey laws we hadn't voted for.
If so, I find it frankly unbelievable that your pay in 2014 was 8.25% below what it was in 1997.
There was an attempt to make the SCOTUK go full political during the Coalition government - a case was presented that any changes in any government benefit had to meet an extreme test of equality to all recipients. The effect would have been to make any change in pensions and benefits impossible, without sign off from the court. The SC specifically and carefully rejected the whole thing.
"constitutions are made for men, not men for constitutions" - JA Froude is still right.
Trying to impose "virtue" on the populace from a great height always falls down on Who Guards The Guardians? At best, a constitution is a speed bump.
I would favour the Swiss idea that everything is, ultimately, controlled by referenda.
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
·
1h
Everyone in Westminster knows Pincher is going to end up having the whip withdrawn today. Except for the Prime Minister and the Chief Whip. Again, who is actually running the Tory party.
The idea that Britain was somehow less democratic in the EU, is the same argument to say that Cornwall and every other county is somehow less democratic if it remains in the UK.
b) How is it we always blame the EU for being dogmatic. It was our decision to exclude ourselves. We have to accept the consequences.
c) Yes I know they have the inhouse expertise to do this stuff as otherwise it would never happen and I'm guessing there is a lot more flexibility because frankly it is impossible otherwise. I mean on every trip there must be stuff that doesn't come back (not sure what happens about that), but the point is it would stop me doing it (if I hadn't retired) and the person I referred to earlier whom I was chatting with a couple of weeks ago said it has destroyed his exhibition business as far as the EU is concerned because of the temporary export issue.