"Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, previously known as Festival UK* 2022 is a national celebration in the United Kingdom first announced in 2018 by the Conservative government following the Brexit referendum.[1][2]
The concept was first proposed as a Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and referred to by Jacob Rees-Mogg, later minister for Brexit opportunities, as the Festival of Brexit—a nickname which became widely used—but was rebranded as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, and all mention of Brexit was avoided. It is taking place from March to 6 November 2022,[3] at a reported cost of £120 million.[4][5][6]
By 1 September 2022, 238,000 visitors had attended, 0.36% of the 66 million target.[7] The "Festival of Brexit" name has been blamed for failing to attract visitors by politicising the event.[8]"
I see it's very Brexity right down to scheduling and screwups:
'The opening of Weston’s ‘See Monster’ has been delayed for the second time.
The long-awaited art installation which was supposed to be the town’s top summer attraction now won’t open fully until after the school summer holidays.'
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am also a lifelong Conservative and Unionist.
Which is why I can't support the Kippers and associated swivel-eyed loons who took over the party after 2016
I hope I can vote Conservative again in the future
No Conservative leader bashed the EU more than David Cameron.
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am also a lifelong Conservative and Unionist.
Which is why I can't support the Kippers and associated swivel-eyed loons who took over the party after 2016
I hope I can vote Conservative again in the future
Could you if we didn't rejoin the EU again?
That seems more important to you.
I'm in Scott's boat - or one part of it - resigned from the Cons on account of the dramatic hollowing out of the "old" Cons party.
Just having BoJo go was a big plus but they seem at every available opportunity to tack right. And to prioritise idealism over pragmatism. They are appealing to an ever smaller constituency which is being fed red meat at a mind-boggling rate. This as we are seeing is hugely damaging to the country.
I could live with (and vote for) a Cons party that was sensible over the EU, sought to forge closer links short of rejoining and allowed the mood music to be more conciliatory.
Very impressed with Steve Baker (as I have been for some time) with his recent NI pronouncements and more of the same would be welcome.
I couldn't rejoin or vote for the party while it sees everything we do as a move against our arch enemy the EU. We left the EU, we get it - now we should try to create a mutually beneficial relationship between the two entities that leaves both of us in a better place from where we are now.
The thing that’s terminal is that Truss made the borrowing situation worse.
It’s all well and good of some right wing commentators revelling in the fact Labour will have to outline an approach, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that the vast majority of this situation was made worse by Truss and co. It is unforgivable
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
The Conservative party could be interpreted as serving the interests of those with household wealth. The problem is firstly that they have become dangerously irresponsible with the nations finance in doing so, and secondly that they have lost their interest in social mobility and aspiration, which is necessary to sustain their position. It is becoming too hard to cope with for many of its natural supporters.
The thing is: there's a perfectly Conservative case to be made about no longer being part of the political project that is the European Union, and for a measured and logical detachment to plot an alternative course for the UK. A perfectly Conservative one.
But what I don't understand is why a large contingent of the party felt they had to jump every shark in the pacific ocean in so doing, junk every other conservative principle in the process and become so utterly ideological and self-destructive.
The primary purpose of the Conservative Party is to conserve: stability and conservation, to allow the broader nation to prosper. Else, what is the point of it?
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am *this* close to campaigning for Labour at the next election.
LD for me. Tactical innit
Check the new boundaries.
I was astonished to learn recently that my constituency has changed and I am no longer in rock solid Tory Tewkesbury where the LDs come a distant but respectable second, but will be voting in the redistricted Cotswolds which looks like being highly marginal Tory/Lab.
"Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, previously known as Festival UK* 2022 is a national celebration in the United Kingdom first announced in 2018 by the Conservative government following the Brexit referendum.[1][2]
The concept was first proposed as a Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and referred to by Jacob Rees-Mogg, later minister for Brexit opportunities, as the Festival of Brexit—a nickname which became widely used—but was rebranded as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, and all mention of Brexit was avoided. It is taking place from March to 6 November 2022,[3] at a reported cost of £120 million.[4][5][6]
By 1 September 2022, 238,000 visitors had attended, 0.36% of the 66 million target.[7] The "Festival of Brexit" name has been blamed for failing to attract visitors by politicising the event.[8]"
I see it's very Brexity right down to scheduling and screwups:
'The opening of Weston’s ‘See Monster’ has been delayed for the second time.
The long-awaited art installation which was supposed to be the town’s top summer attraction now won’t open fully until after the school summer holidays.'
"For whatever reason voters don’t seem to warm to Truss"
OGH proving once again he is the master of understatement and circumspection.
I think most of us could list several hundred reasons why the voters don't warm to Truss.
At a personal level I don't think she's especially disliked - I know people from various points of the spectrum who feel sorry for her, quite like her innocent smile and think she's in an impossible position. But nearly everyone thinks she's out of her depth.
I think Truss has a rather endearing goofy grin. But her judgement of what she she had political capital for is pretty darn bad.
The miscalculation has been utterly seismic. From a purely political perspective, Truss is up there with the very worst PMs already purely because of how utterly tone deaf and reckless those first actions were.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am *this* close to campaigning for Labour at the next election.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
Don't worry you made the right decision to support CON. But now CON is not very good as you, I and many other CON on here have worked out!
So it looks likely that we will have to support someone else or stay at home for the next GE but in the longer term CON will sort itself out. It has been here since 1832! (ish)
That's my belief, Pubman.
They are unlikely to win my vote but a democracy needs a decent opposition. A large part of the reason we have had such shockingly bad government under the Tories is that until very recently the Opposition hasn't been up to snuff.
Ukraine is turning the tide against "exhausted" Russian forces, the head of Britain's GCHQ intelligence agency will say in a speech on Tuesday. Despite the missile attacks on targets across Ukraine on Monday, Sir Jeremy Fleming will claim Moscow is running out of ammunition. He will say President Vladimir Putin's decision-making has proved "flawed".
All together now:
No. Shit. Sherlock.
For the longer term, I was interested in his comments about China. Time to rebuild our electronics industry.
Nicola Sturgeon on Karen White, "He is NOT a trans woman, but a manipulative sex offender seeking to access vulnerable women." Nicola Sturgeon, "As IF a man who wishes to sexually assault women would go to all the trouble of changing gender!"
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am also a lifelong Conservative and Unionist.
Which is why I can't support the Kippers and associated swivel-eyed loons who took over the party after 2016
I hope I can vote Conservative again in the future
No Conservative leader bashed the EU more than David Cameron.
They certainly left him between a rock a rock and a hard place, but...
"Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, previously known as Festival UK* 2022 is a national celebration in the United Kingdom first announced in 2018 by the Conservative government following the Brexit referendum.[1][2]
The concept was first proposed as a Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and referred to by Jacob Rees-Mogg, later minister for Brexit opportunities, as the Festival of Brexit—a nickname which became widely used—but was rebranded as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, and all mention of Brexit was avoided. It is taking place from March to 6 November 2022,[3] at a reported cost of £120 million.[4][5][6]
By 1 September 2022, 238,000 visitors had attended, 0.36% of the 66 million target.[7] The "Festival of Brexit" name has been blamed for failing to attract visitors by politicising the event.[8]"
I see it's very Brexity right down to scheduling and screwups:
'The opening of Weston’s ‘See Monster’ has been delayed for the second time.
The long-awaited art installation which was supposed to be the town’s top summer attraction now won’t open fully until after the school summer holidays.'
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am *this* close to campaigning for Labour at the next election.
I couldn't do that.
I’m doing for it the Union I love.
I don’t want Starmer having to rely on the SNP.
My support for the Labour Party is limited to the present circumstances only.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
My constituency has shown that in microcosm. Last 3 MPs,
Peter LLoyd, Mark Hoban both middle of the road standard decent Conservatives
Then the local party chose someone, I suspect the decision was based mainly on her Brexit opinions.
Suella Braverman (nee Fernandes)
Brexit has done to the UK Tories what Trump has done to the US Republicans.
What's the overall record of open primaries?
Caroline Dinenage has done OK in Gosport, then there was the Doctor in Totnes(?). Were there any others?
Truss' error seems to have been to promise the membership the moon on a stick and then actually try and deliver it ! Clearly promising all sorts and then welching on it pdq is the better strategy - as Starmer has recently demonstrated.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am *this* close to campaigning for Labour at the next election.
I couldn't do that.
Thing is, I'm a lefty, you and a few others on here are righties, but I bet all of us would plump for a plumb centre government over what we have now (or what we might have had under Corbyn tbf).
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
My constituency has shown that in microcosm. Last 3 MPs,
Peter LLoyd, Mark Hoban both middle of the road standard decent Conservatives
Then the local party chose someone, I suspect the decision was based mainly on her Brexit opinions.
Suella Braverman (nee Fernandes)
Brexit has done to the UK Tories what Trump has done to the US Republicans.
What's the overall record of open primaries?
Caroline Dinenage has done OK in Gosport, then there was the Doctor in Totnes(?). Were there any others?
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
Spot on. You weren't allowed to just think that the EU has faults but also has benefits for the UK. You had to prove your EUphobia and the person who was most virulently anti-EU won. As indeed was the case and still is in the Cons Party.
"Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, previously known as Festival UK* 2022 is a national celebration in the United Kingdom first announced in 2018 by the Conservative government following the Brexit referendum.[1][2]
The concept was first proposed as a Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and referred to by Jacob Rees-Mogg, later minister for Brexit opportunities, as the Festival of Brexit—a nickname which became widely used—but was rebranded as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, and all mention of Brexit was avoided. It is taking place from March to 6 November 2022,[3] at a reported cost of £120 million.[4][5][6]
By 1 September 2022, 238,000 visitors had attended, 0.36% of the 66 million target.[7] The "Festival of Brexit" name has been blamed for failing to attract visitors by politicising the event.[8]"
I see it's very Brexity right down to scheduling and screwups:
'The opening of Weston’s ‘See Monster’ has been delayed for the second time.
The long-awaited art installation which was supposed to be the town’s top summer attraction now won’t open fully until after the school summer holidays.'
"Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, previously known as Festival UK* 2022 is a national celebration in the United Kingdom first announced in 2018 by the Conservative government following the Brexit referendum.[1][2]
The concept was first proposed as a Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and referred to by Jacob Rees-Mogg, later minister for Brexit opportunities, as the Festival of Brexit—a nickname which became widely used—but was rebranded as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, and all mention of Brexit was avoided. It is taking place from March to 6 November 2022,[3] at a reported cost of £120 million.[4][5][6]
By 1 September 2022, 238,000 visitors had attended, 0.36% of the 66 million target.[7] The "Festival of Brexit" name has been blamed for failing to attract visitors by politicising the event.[8]"
I see it's very Brexity right down to scheduling and screwups:
'The opening of Weston’s ‘See Monster’ has been delayed for the second time.
The long-awaited art installation which was supposed to be the town’s top summer attraction now won’t open fully until after the school summer holidays.'
Nothing to see here. The brilliant leadership of KT fixed the problem already. Indeed Tory MPs should now rally behind them and Respect The Mandate of the senile old giffers who imposed these people on them.
Some political programs are shooting for the moon. This one is The Core, but an alternative script where the mission is to burrow the Tory % score into the earth and then stop the core so that everyone dies.
You have zero understanding of what has affected the markets, and your chuntering away on this issue is deeply embarrassing.
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am also a lifelong Conservative and Unionist.
Which is why I can't support the Kippers and associated swivel-eyed loons who took over the party after 2016
I hope I can vote Conservative again in the future
What precisely is your problem with a political party doing what the people told them to do?
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am *this* close to campaigning for Labour at the next election.
You are very welcome to come up to my bit of Yorkshire to campaign against Philip Davies.
The fact is with low unemployment and high inflation we need some more immigration now. And more houses, yes yes I know almost all newbuilds are architectural Barratt/Gleeson estate monstrosities but you can't have everything.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
The Conservative party could be interpreted as serving the interests of those with household wealth. The problem is firstly that they have become dangerously irresponsible with the nations finance in doing so, and secondly that they have lost their interest in social mobility and aspiration, which is necessary to sustain their position. It is becoming too hard to cope with for many of its natural supporters.
The thing is: there's a perfectly Conservative case to be made about no longer being part of the political project that is the European Union, and for a measured and logical detachment to plot an alternative course for the UK. A perfectly Conservative one.
But what I don't understand is why a large contingent of the party felt they had to jump every shark in the pacific ocean in so doing, junk every other conservative principle in the process and become so utterly ideological and self-destructive.
The main culprits are Cameron and May - one flounced unneccesarily, and one set the overall direction for Brexit without ever understanding it. Post-Lancaster House, the outcome was pretty much inevitable because the alternative - ignoring the biggest democratic vote in British history - was worse.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
My constituency has shown that in microcosm. Last 3 MPs,
Peter LLoyd, Mark Hoban both middle of the road standard decent Conservatives
Then the local party chose someone, I suspect the decision was based mainly on her Brexit opinions.
Suella Braverman (nee Fernandes)
Brexit has done to the UK Tories what Trump has done to the US Republicans.
What's the overall record of open primaries?
Caroline Dinenage has done OK in Gosport, then there was the Doctor in Totnes(?). Were there any others?
Was Totnes - Sarah Wollaston.
There's something of a lesson for the Tories there. Remember when all those MPs were jumping ship, for some bright new tomorrow? Completely forgotten. Barely warrants a footnote in twenty-first century British politics.
If the Tories got shot of Truss now, she would be barely a footnote either by the time of the next election. Voters move on. It will judged on what the current PM has done and offers. Who thought for a moment about Theresa May when casting their vote in 2019?
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
In some respects I think the problem gestated outside of the Tory party, in the think-tanks and media. Makes it harder to create a new party on the centre right, because what will you have to sustain it?
The media/think-tanks on the right, who encourage each other to wind up the left on twitter, are more of a problem than the Tory party.
This must be why Corbynism has dispersed so rapidly. It never won control of the leftish think-tanks or media. The only people left arguing for it now are Owen Jones and a few people on twitter.
Nothing to see here. The brilliant leadership of KT fixed the problem already. Indeed Tory MPs should now rally behind them and Respect The Mandate of the senile old giffers who imposed these people on them.
Some political programs are shooting for the moon. This one is The Core, but an alternative script where the mission is to burrow the Tory % score into the earth and then stop the core so that everyone dies.
You have zero understanding of what has affected the markets, and your chuntering away on this issue is deeply embarrassing.
... he says, totally oblivious to the universe of irony in his comment.
Nicola Sturgeon on Karen White, "He is NOT a trans woman, but a manipulative sex offender seeking to access vulnerable women." Nicola Sturgeon, "As IF a man who wishes to sexually assault women would go to all the trouble of changing gender!"
Nicola Sturgeon on Karen White, "He is NOT a trans woman, but a manipulative sex offender seeking to access vulnerable women." Nicola Sturgeon, "As IF a man who wishes to sexually assault women would go to all the trouble of changing gender!"
My opinions of our past PMs, and my voting record ...
Harold Wilson ... Cunning, professional politician and knew when to go. (I voted for him). Callaghan ... As above. Mrs T ... Too Tory for me, and she meant it. But no doubt about her patriotism. John Major. Felt a little artificial, nobody's dad was a circus performer. Tony B. Brilliant politican, but the only things he was genuine about, I disliked. I switched to LDs. Gordon B. Hopeless at politics. Ambition alone isn't enough. Cameron. Good at politics, but I stuck with LDs. May. Really? BoJo. Naked ambition, but voted Tory for the first ever time, purely to get Brexit done, hoping he'd be short-lived. Finish the sentence, you moron. Liz Truss. You're given a choice of about eight and you picked the worst one! Starmer a boring posho but as LDs now nonentities, SKS it will have to be.
Sorry about the deep philosophy involved, but that's how many others vote.
Here's how it could play out. Against a backdrop of rising US interest rates and global markets selling off, the UK remains a whipping boy, exacerbated by fears over the political and fiscal outlook. The BOE is forced to extend its bond buying and QT is shelved for the time being. The fiscal package announced at Halloween includes swingeing cuts to public spending. Tory MPs signal they won't vote for it. Kwarteng is forced to backtrack, announcing fewer cuts and implementing elements of Sunak's tax hikes. Tory divisions grow. The BOE hikes by 100bp at its early Nov meeting and publishes a dire forecast showing continuing high inflation and low growth. The markets sell off further. Banks withdraw more mortgage products. The housing market shuts down. Truss sacks Kwarteng and replaces him with Sunak, who is increasingly calling the shots. A faction coalescing around Johnson refuses to back the government's fiscal plans, which now include the full package of Sunak tax rises. Several red wall Tory MPs defect to Labour. The government narrowly wins a confidence vote but the Tories move against Truss, replacing her with Sunak after changing the party's rules to allow a coronation by MPs. Johnson leads a failed attempt to prevent Sunak's coronation and then leads a breakaway faction of Tory MPs. The government collapses. In a February General election the Tories fall to just over 100 seats. Starmer faces strong internal opposition to his fiscal austerity measures, despite placing equal burdens on tax increases and spending cuts. Market turmoil continues but the end of the war in Ukraine in the spring and the announcement of a referendum on joining the single market and customs union steady nerves. The referendum is won by 55:45. The Tories are third in the polls behind a new populist Eurosceptic party led by Farage that grows out of the no campaign. However, the feared resumption of heavy EU migration fails to materialise as the weak pound makes UK salaries uncompetitive with Polish ones. At this point my crystal ball becomes cloudy.
Ukrainian claimed figures for Russian military losses published this morning show 46 extra cruise missiles shot down. The total figure for the entire war prior to then was 249. So a sixth of the total cruise missiles shot down happened just yesterday.
A few more seem to have been launched this morning but nothing like yesterday and some more shot down:
At about 7 AM on October 11, strategic Russian aircrafts, Tu-95 and Tu-160 missile carriers, were operating from the Caspian Sea region. X-101/X-555 missiles were fired on the territory of Ukraine. Four missile were destroyed. https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1579747375400517633
Yesterday does seem to me that Russia was scraping together whatever it could find left that worked to use. I cannot see it being sustained.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
Spot on. You weren't allowed to just think that the EU has faults but also has benefits for the UK. You had to prove your EUphobia and the person who was most virulently anti-EU won. As indeed was the case and still is in the Cons Party.
Hence our current pickle. Certainly since 2016, "Brexit without being a dick about it" ought to have been a winning policy that kept most of the public reasonably content. There really aren't that many people with the sort of emotional attachment to the EU than Brexit backers have to the concept of Brexit.
For whatever reason (hardball negotiation tactics? frustration at the lack of cake'n'eat it? a deeper resentment than most of us realised?), being a dick about it became part of the point of the project for some.
Just getting up to speed. I see Coffey has said our pensions are safe.
Buy baked beans and a gun.
There's nothing more reassuring than ministers doing the media rounds to say our pensions are safe. And I say that as someone who had an Equitable Life pension (oldest insurer, litterally couldn't be any safer).
So in 24 hours you've gone from we must give in to Russia because of nukes, to Russia's going to win the war using conventional weaponry bombing power plants, to its all too complicated let's just have an armistice and wait.
No, lets not wait. The fighting's happening and Russia are losing, and you're upset that your idol Putin is getting his comeuppance. Ukraine is liberating territory as they're winning the war, why stop now? You're right on only one thing, do not even attempt to negotiate a "peace" - Russia needs to be evicted out of all of Ukraine and then Ukraine can join NATO there can be enforced peace.
Here's how it could play out. Against a backdrop of rising US interest rates and global markets selling off, the UK remains a whipping boy, exacerbated by fears over the political and fiscal outlook. The BOE is forced to extend its bond buying and QT is shelved for the time being. The fiscal package announced at Halloween includes swingeing cuts to public spending. Tory MPs signal they won't vote for it. Kwarteng is forced to backtrack, announcing fewer cuts and implementing elements of Sunak's tax hikes. Tory divisions grow. The BOE hikes by 100bp at its early Nov meeting and publishes a dire forecast showing continuing high inflation and low growth. The markets sell off further. Banks withdraw more mortgage products. The housing market shuts down. Truss sacks Kwarteng and replaces him with Sunak, who is increasingly calling the shots. A faction coalescing around Johnson refuses to back the government's fiscal plans, which now include the full package of Sunak tax rises. Several red wall Tory MPs defect to Labour. The government narrowly wins a confidence vote but the Tories move against Truss, replacing her with Sunak after changing the party's rules to allow a coronation by MPs. Johnson leads a failed attempt to prevent Sunak's coronation and then leads a breakaway faction of Tory MPs. The government collapses. In a February General election the Tories fall to just over 100 seats. Starmer faces strong internal opposition to his fiscal austerity measures, despite placing equal burdens on tax increases and spending cuts. Market turmoil continues but the end of the war in Ukraine in the spring and the announcement of a referendum on joining the single market and customs union steady nerves. The referendum is won by 55:45. The Tories are third in the polls behind a new populist Eurosceptic party led by Farage that grows out of the no campaign. However, the feared resumption of heavy EU migration fails to materialise as the weak pound makes UK salaries uncompetitive with Polish ones. At this point my crystal ball becomes cloudy.
Why don't you tell us what you think might happen instead of sitting on the fence?
Seriously, that sequence of events is so implausible... it will probably come true.
I think when the Tories lose power this time it’s going to take change far beyond what Cameron offered to get them back to an election winning outfit. Of course they could be helped or hindered by the Labour performance in government too, but there are serious things they need to address as a minimum: a return to sound money, an understanding of public sector worker’s concerns rather than being suspicious of them, an interests in the needs of all nations in the union, a good working relationship with Europe and a serious plan to spread opportunity and wealth (not the lip service of “levelling up”).
I suspect they’ve probably got at least 8-10 years out of power however. If not more depending on how much of a clanger they drop in their first LOTO (if they pick Suella add another 4 years on, at least).
Parties often make a bad/extreme choice when they first go into opposition
I don’t expect the tories to immediately come to their senses, so Braverman, Badenoch, Baker, Mogg, Cleverly likely
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
Spot on. You weren't allowed to just think that the EU has faults but also has benefits for the UK. You had to prove your EUphobia and the person who was most virulently anti-EU won. As indeed was the case and still is in the Cons Party.
Hence our current pickle. Certainly since 2016, "Brexit without being a dick about it" ought to have been a winning policy that kept most of the public reasonably content. There really aren't that many people with the sort of emotional attachment to the EU than Brexit backers have to the concept of Brexit.
For whatever reason (hardball negotiation tactics? frustration at the lack of cake'n'eat it? a deeper resentment than most of us realised?), being a dick about it became part of the point of the project for some.
Because in the 2017-19 parliament, failing to be a dick about it would have seen the anti-democrats win. Sometimes when one side goes low the other side really has to go lower.
The key was identifying when to switch tack - but that requires both the EU as well as HMG to identify that co-operation is actually a good idea, and whilst the latter has shown some signs of coming around, I'm not at all sure that the former has.
As I mentioned yday, Four Hours at the Capitol on Netflix is well worth a watch and interviews many legislators from both sides who were there on the day.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
Nicola Sturgeon on Karen White, "He is NOT a trans woman, but a manipulative sex offender seeking to access vulnerable women." Nicola Sturgeon, "As IF a man who wishes to sexually assault women would go to all the trouble of changing gender!"
Just getting up to speed. I see Coffey has said our pensions are safe.
Buy baked beans and a gun.
There's nothing more reassuring than ministers doing the media rounds to say our pensions are safe. And I say that as someone who had an Equitable Life pension (oldest insurer, litterally couldn't be any safer).
Nothing to see here. The brilliant leadership of KT fixed the problem already. Indeed Tory MPs should now rally behind them and Respect The Mandate of the senile old giffers who imposed these people on them.
Some political programs are shooting for the moon. This one is The Core, but an alternative script where the mission is to burrow the Tory % score into the earth and then stop the core so that everyone dies.
You have zero understanding of what has affected the markets, and your chuntering away on this issue is deeply embarrassing.
This morning the CBI are reported as releasing a survey of members where three quarters say they have faced labour shortages and nearly half saying this has impacted their ability to grow their business.
Lack of migrant workers to fill the gaps. The "points-based immigration system" was supposed to enable us to bring in who we needed. Instead we just shut the door to the evil forrin and said "done".
Part of our answer will be to go for higher productivity, where we have a structural problem, and adjust the points scheme. Fizzy Lizzy says she supports markets - she will have to follow them.
High cost of housing in tourism areas. You can't "build more houses" without destroying these areas.
I don't see why building more houses is not possible - its been happening for many centuries; that's mainly politics.
I've long argued for gradual growth rather than freezing aspic - 1-2% per year for small communities (see Wales and limitations on villages, for example).
Prices substantially come back to the same problem no one on PB likes to talk about - Home Owners are addicted to the free profits they get driven by tax breaks, and to homes as a money-making proposition.
There's been a secular shift across much of Europe to put CGT or equivalent on main residences, and we need to follow; everything else is rearranging deckchairs.
But we could tax to death the second homes which lie empty much of the year
That depends on the meaning of "tax to death". I'd say empty homes taxes provide a good model - up to 4 times Council Tax already. And some bizarre exceptions to CT could be closed, such as no CT when granny has gone into a home; that should stop after 1-3 months.
In England we already have tax rules based on extent of occupation each year - is this not in place throughout the UK? (I don't know).
Drivers are needed to increase occupation density for holiday accommodation / holiday lets, as for general housing where there are millions of unused second spare bedrooms.
One problem is that the trend to unitise small local councils, so the money will be sucked to (say) County, and local support could be lost.
High cost of childcare. Plenty of people want to work but can't because wages don't cover childcare costs. High cost of and lack of public transport - the infamous IDS visit up the valleys imploring local unemployed to take jobs in booming Cardiff. In bars. With no public transport to get them home or childcare.
Child Care is devolved iirc. Is local public transport? Talk to Mr Drakeford?
How about we start by getting back to a Conservative Party that admits Brexit was a really bad idea* but did it anyway, rather than one that chases further down the Faragist rabbit hole to catch ever more elusive unicorns?
*This being official party policy until the day after the vote
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
I think when the Tories lose power this time it’s going to take change far beyond what Cameron offered to get them back to an election winning outfit. Of course they could be helped or hindered by the Labour performance in government too, but there are serious things they need to address as a minimum: a return to sound money, an understanding of public sector worker’s concerns rather than being suspicious of them, an interests in the needs of all nations in the union, a good working relationship with Europe and a serious plan to spread opportunity and wealth (not the lip service of “levelling up”).
I suspect they’ve probably got at least 8-10 years out of power however. If not more depending on how much of a clanger they drop in their first LOTO (if they pick Suella add another 4 years on, at least).
Parties often make a bad/extreme choice when they first go into opposition
I don’t expect the tories to immediately come to their senses, so Braverman, Badenoch, Baker, Mogg, Cleverly likely
Do they? The last two were Miliband and Hague, and they were both better and less extreme than their disastrous successors.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
Spot on. You weren't allowed to just think that the EU has faults but also has benefits for the UK. You had to prove your EUphobia and the person who was most virulently anti-EU won. As indeed was the case and still is in the Cons Party.
Hence our current pickle. Certainly since 2016, "Brexit without being a dick about it" ought to have been a winning policy that kept most of the public reasonably content. There really aren't that many people with the sort of emotional attachment to the EU than Brexit backers have to the concept of Brexit.
For whatever reason (hardball negotiation tactics? frustration at the lack of cake'n'eat it? a deeper resentment than most of us realised?), being a dick about it became part of the point of the project for some.
Because in the 2017-19 parliament, failing to be a dick about it would have seen the anti-democrats win. Sometimes when one side goes low the other side really has to go lower.
The key was identifying when to switch tack - but that requires both the EU as well as HMG to identify that co-operation is actually a good idea, and whilst the latter has shown some signs of coming around, I'm not at all sure that the former has.
Its the "anti-democrats" thing that baffles me. We had an election and voted in MPs. Who in our representative democracy can do whatever they can get through parliament - which happened to be nothing.
The argument against the 2017 parliament is usually "none of them stood on a manifesto of stopping Brexit" - not that half of the rejected proposals would stop us leaving the EU, just a hard as nails version of Brexit.
But those same people who bemoaned the lack of democratic mandate also laud the Truss government's total mandate to tear up the 2019 manifesto and go economically mad because they have a majority. Erm, you can't have it both ways. When you are out-argued by Nadine Fucking Dorries you have lost the argument.
How about we start by getting back to a Conservative Party that admits Brexit was a really bad idea* but did it anyway, rather than one that chases further down the Faragist rabbit hole to catch ever more elusive unicorns?
*This being official party policy until the day after the vote
I don't think you can say it was a really bad idea if the overwhelming majority of your supporters support(ed) it. But you should be leading, not following. And hence I think you can say that we are where we are and the challenge now is to find a way forward that suits our own circumstances.
You might replay the LBC interviews this morning describing the 52% vacancy rate in some care home providers, previously filled by EU citizens who post-2016 felt unwelcome in the UK and move on from there.
As you say, baby steps. But as @JosiasJessop has so accurately pointed out, the disease of acute EUphobia is far from expunged in the Conservative Party.
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am also a lifelong Conservative and Unionist.
Which is why I can't support the Kippers and associated swivel-eyed loons who took over the party after 2016
I hope I can vote Conservative again in the future
What precisely is your problem with a political party doing what the people told them to do?
You will do stuff you don't agree with because someone told you to do it?
If the people decide to do something you disagree with you vote for someone else. You hope others will agree and you can change minds. Of course you might fail and have to accept the consequences, but you don't blindly go along with stuff you disagree with because, well it is my party. It isn't a football team.
Good on @Casino_Royale for not being a robot and having principles. I don't share some of @Casino_Royale views, but I admire his principles.
Just getting up to speed. I see Coffey has said our pensions are safe.
Buy baked beans and a gun.
There's nothing more reassuring than ministers doing the media rounds to say our pensions are safe. And I say that as someone who had an Equitable Life pension (oldest insurer, literally couldn't be any safer).
Ah sympathies re the Equitable pension.
I was working for them when they went bust. One reason: hubris. Ideologue in charge, surrounded by yes men (and they were all men at that time).
I think when the Tories lose power this time it’s going to take change far beyond what Cameron offered to get them back to an election winning outfit. Of course they could be helped or hindered by the Labour performance in government too, but there are serious things they need to address as a minimum: a return to sound money, an understanding of public sector worker’s concerns rather than being suspicious of them, an interests in the needs of all nations in the union, a good working relationship with Europe and a serious plan to spread opportunity and wealth (not the lip service of “levelling up”).
I suspect they’ve probably got at least 8-10 years out of power however. If not more depending on how much of a clanger they drop in their first LOTO (if they pick Suella add another 4 years on, at least).
Parties often make a bad/extreme choice when they first go into opposition
I don’t expect the tories to immediately come to their senses, so Braverman, Badenoch, Baker, Mogg, Cleverly likely
Do they? The last two were Miliband and Hague, and they were both better and less extreme than their disastrous successors.
Though both at the time seemed extreme themselves. Hague campaigning to "save the pound" when Euro membership was already subject to a future referendum if it was going to happen, and "Red Ed" insisting Labour hadn't overspent and getting laughed at as a result.
In hindsight because of what happened later on they now seem less extreme, especially Hague!
Jacob Rees Mogg in a position of serious power in our country is the perfect symbol of Conservative Brexit. A serious mistake. I'm hoping the Labour party can make a better fist of it.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
Spot on. You weren't allowed to just think that the EU has faults but also has benefits for the UK. You had to prove your EUphobia and the person who was most virulently anti-EU won. As indeed was the case and still is in the Cons Party.
Hence our current pickle. Certainly since 2016, "Brexit without being a dick about it" ought to have been a winning policy that kept most of the public reasonably content. There really aren't that many people with the sort of emotional attachment to the EU than Brexit backers have to the concept of Brexit.
For whatever reason (hardball negotiation tactics? frustration at the lack of cake'n'eat it? a deeper resentment than most of us realised?), being a dick about it became part of the point of the project for some.
If those on the remain side, especially in Parliament, had accepted the result, rather than being dicks about it by trying to tie the hands of the government, then we would be in a better place. But they didn’t want to compromise, they wanted to overturn the will of the People, so we are where we are.
Appreciate you trying to carry on in the face of the terrible formatting issues! Have had to completely snip your post as I can't get the formatting to work either...
In response, my point about housebuilding in tourism spots is that concreting over the place rather ruins their draw for tourists - at least that's what people who live in the m say pretty universally. If the empty 2nd homes were available there would be sufficient housing, so take harsher action against them.
As for childcare, I'm sure it is devolved. And to councils as well - thats why I described it as a structural problem for the UK. Not one shared elsewhere as childcare is much much cheaper thanks to subsidy from government.
We have people who want to work. We have unfillable jobs. We have a high cost to the economy in letting this continue. Yet nothing is ever done to fix the issue with the fairly obvious solutions done elsewhere. Because in the UK we have stopped considering need or even value and simply point at Cost - how do we afford that and who pays? Regardless of the cost of *not* acting.
I don't think you can say it was a really bad idea if the overwhelming majority of your supporters support(ed) it.
Therein lies the problem.
Conservatives didn't support it.
Swivel eyed loons and Faragists supported it.
When the Tories went chasing the latter at the expense of the former we ended up here.
The majority of the country supported it.
You've just become a swivel eyed loon in the opposite direction, which is why now everything bad that happens is because of Brexit to you, while anything good is despite Brexit.
You've become like a parody of the FBPE crowd on Twitter.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
Spot on. You weren't allowed to just think that the EU has faults but also has benefits for the UK. You had to prove your EUphobia and the person who was most virulently anti-EU won. As indeed was the case and still is in the Cons Party.
Hence our current pickle. Certainly since 2016, "Brexit without being a dick about it" ought to have been a winning policy that kept most of the public reasonably content. There really aren't that many people with the sort of emotional attachment to the EU than Brexit backers have to the concept of Brexit.
For whatever reason (hardball negotiation tactics? frustration at the lack of cake'n'eat it? a deeper resentment than most of us realised?), being a dick about it became part of the point of the project for some.
One of the problems is that the debate has become unmoored from the substance.
If you'd tried to define "Brexit without being a dick about it" back in 2016 before Theresa May's red lines and when most people were unable to define a customs union, it would have looked very much like what we've got now.
If those on the remain side, especially in Parliament, had accepted the result, rather than being dicks about it by trying to tie the hands of the government, then we would be in a better place.
Nope
They tried to stop us ending up exactly where we are now
Brexit is a shitshow because of the people who wanted it, campaigned for it, voted for it, not those who opposed it.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
Spot on. You weren't allowed to just think that the EU has faults but also has benefits for the UK. You had to prove your EUphobia and the person who was most virulently anti-EU won. As indeed was the case and still is in the Cons Party.
Hence our current pickle. Certainly since 2016, "Brexit without being a dick about it" ought to have been a winning policy that kept most of the public reasonably content. There really aren't that many people with the sort of emotional attachment to the EU than Brexit backers have to the concept of Brexit.
For whatever reason (hardball negotiation tactics? frustration at the lack of cake'n'eat it? a deeper resentment than most of us realised?), being a dick about it became part of the point of the project for some.
One of the problems is that the debate has become unmoored from the substance.
If you'd tried to define "Brexit without being a dick about it" back in 2016 before Theresa May's red lines and when most people were unable to define a customs union, it would have looked very much like what we've got now.
Agreed, what we have now is pretty much what Vote Leave and Remainers both said we would have if we voted to Leave the EU in 2016, before the Referendum.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
I think when the Tories lose power this time it’s going to take change far beyond what Cameron offered to get them back to an election winning outfit. Of course they could be helped or hindered by the Labour performance in government too, but there are serious things they need to address as a minimum: a return to sound money, an understanding of public sector worker’s concerns rather than being suspicious of them, an interests in the needs of all nations in the union, a good working relationship with Europe and a serious plan to spread opportunity and wealth (not the lip service of “levelling up”).
I suspect they’ve probably got at least 8-10 years out of power however. If not more depending on how much of a clanger they drop in their first LOTO (if they pick Suella add another 4 years on, at least).
Parties often make a bad/extreme choice when they first go into opposition
I don’t expect the tories to immediately come to their senses, so Braverman, Badenoch, Baker, Mogg, Cleverly likely
Do they? The last two were Miliband and Hague, and they were both better and less extreme than their disastrous successors.
That's the latest step to be added to the dance of death, which now goes
1. Lose election. 2. Choose someone on the fringe of plausibility (Hague, MiliEd). 3. Lose again. 4. Choose someone utterly batso and self indulgent (IDS, Corbyn).
Over a decade in opposition doesn't take long if you say it quickly.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am *this* close to campaigning for Labour at the next election.
I couldn't do that.
Funnily enough, I've promised Aaron Bell [Tissue Price] that I will pop up to Newcastle-under-Lyme and do a day's campaigning for him. Obviously I can't vote for him and it looks like I'll be voting Labour in the new Cotswold Constituency but I have this quaint belief that we should support good MPs of any colour if we know them to be genuinely good at their job and decent honourable people.
It's a Quixotic gesture of course. Aaron is very unlikely to survive the coming tsunami of Labour votes. But he's a good MP and any token of support is worthwhile.
Edit: And now I have to go walk the dogs. Lovely morning here in Gloucestershire.
If those on the remain side, especially in Parliament, had accepted the result, rather than being dicks about it by trying to tie the hands of the government, then we would be in a better place.
Nope
They tried to stop us ending up exactly where we are now
Brexit is a shitshow because of the people who wanted it, campaigned for it, voted for it, not those who opposed it.
Theresa May's backstop would have kept us in the Single Market and the Customs Union with no unilateral exit from those arrangements, which is why those who passionate opposed the Single Market etc were horrified by that. It was the most flaccidly soft Brexit plausible.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
Spot on. You weren't allowed to just think that the EU has faults but also has benefits for the UK. You had to prove your EUphobia and the person who was most virulently anti-EU won. As indeed was the case and still is in the Cons Party.
Hence our current pickle. Certainly since 2016, "Brexit without being a dick about it" ought to have been a winning policy that kept most of the public reasonably content. There really aren't that many people with the sort of emotional attachment to the EU than Brexit backers have to the concept of Brexit.
For whatever reason (hardball negotiation tactics? frustration at the lack of cake'n'eat it? a deeper resentment than most of us realised?), being a dick about it became part of the point of the project for some.
I think one of the most interesting things about the rapid fall of the Truss government is how peripheral the EU/Brexit has been to it. This indicates that the problems for the Tories go beyond Britain's relationship with the EU, but are a more profound shift to an idealistic ideology that derides cautious pragmatism.
The state of the debate over Brexit is just one symptom of this, but it's not the root of the problem.
Jacob Rees Mogg in a position of serious power in our country is the perfect symbol of Conservative Brexit. A serious mistake. I'm hoping the Labour party can make a better fist of it.
As I keep pointing out, leaving the European Union is not our problem. What we did *after* doing so is our problem - leaving the EEA & CU, demanding 3rd country status, not carrying over the various bilateral alignments and agreements we already had with countries like America etc etc etc.
We can fix Brexit without rejoining the political project.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
Ukraine is turning the tide against "exhausted" Russian forces, the head of Britain's GCHQ intelligence agency will say in a speech on Tuesday. Despite the missile attacks on targets across Ukraine on Monday, Sir Jeremy Fleming will claim Moscow is running out of ammunition. He will say President Vladimir Putin's decision-making has proved "flawed".
All together now:
No. Shit. Sherlock.
For the longer term, I was interested in his comments about China. Time to rebuild our electronics industry.
Nicola Sturgeon on Karen White, "He is NOT a trans woman, but a manipulative sex offender seeking to access vulnerable women." Nicola Sturgeon, "As IF a man who wishes to sexually assault women would go to all the trouble of changing gender!"
So in 24 hours you've gone from we must give in to Russia because of nukes, to Russia's going to win the war using conventional weaponry bombing power plants, to its all too complicated let's just have an armistice and wait.
No, lets not wait. The fighting's happening and Russia are losing, and you're upset that your idol Putin is getting his comeuppance. Ukraine is liberating territory as they're winning the war, why stop now? You're right on only one thing, do not even attempt to negotiate a "peace" - Russia needs to be evicted out of all of Ukraine and then Ukraine can join NATO there can be enforced peace.
Win the peace, don't negotiate it.
I am encouraged that the messaging from Scholz, Macron, Biden, Truss and Von Der Leyen yesterday was all in the same vein. More support will be provided to Ukraine so that Russian aggression can be defeated.
Hopefully we will see practical evidence of this before the end of the month.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am *this* close to campaigning for Labour at the next election.
LD for me. Tactical innit
Check the new boundaries.
I was astonished to learn recently that my constituency has changed and I am no longer in rock solid Tory Tewkesbury where the LDs come a distant but respectable second, but will be voting in the redistricted Cotswolds which looks like being highly marginal Tory/Lab.
Now, what do I do....?
I would be surprised if Labour could ever win the Cotswolds, but I say that without having checked the new boundaries
Nicola Sturgeon on Karen White, "He is NOT a trans woman, but a manipulative sex offender seeking to access vulnerable women." Nicola Sturgeon, "As IF a man who wishes to sexually assault women would go to all the trouble of changing gender!"
Assuming Julie Bindel has that correct, Is that a reverse ferret, or the backwards logic of a "no true Scotsman"? (I believe *this* generally, therefore *that* can't have happened.)
I thought Karen White met Sturgeon's criteria for being a transgender woman?
To me this sounds like Sturgeon's chiselling away on TV about how sexual harassment was all about misogyny when one of her female front benchers had been suspended for sexual harassment.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
Spot on. You weren't allowed to just think that the EU has faults but also has benefits for the UK. You had to prove your EUphobia and the person who was most virulently anti-EU won. As indeed was the case and still is in the Cons Party.
Hence our current pickle. Certainly since 2016, "Brexit without being a dick about it" ought to have been a winning policy that kept most of the public reasonably content. There really aren't that many people with the sort of emotional attachment to the EU than Brexit backers have to the concept of Brexit.
For whatever reason (hardball negotiation tactics? frustration at the lack of cake'n'eat it? a deeper resentment than most of us realised?), being a dick about it became part of the point of the project for some.
Because in the 2017-19 parliament, failing to be a dick about it would have seen the anti-democrats win. Sometimes when one side goes low the other side really has to go lower.
The key was identifying when to switch tack - but that requires both the EU as well as HMG to identify that co-operation is actually a good idea, and whilst the latter has shown some signs of coming around, I'm not at all sure that the former has.
Its the "anti-democrats" thing that baffles me. We had an election and voted in MPs. Who in our representative democracy can do whatever they can get through parliament - which happened to be nothing.
The argument against the 2017 parliament is usually "none of them stood on a manifesto of stopping Brexit" - not that half of the rejected proposals would stop us leaving the EU, just a hard as nails version of Brexit.
But those same people who bemoaned the lack of democratic mandate also laud the Truss government's total mandate to tear up the 2019 manifesto and go economically mad because they have a majority. Erm, you can't have it both ways. When you are out-argued by Nadine Fucking Dorries you have lost the argument.
It shouldn't baffle you - there's a qualitative decision between a referendum, where the people give a direct instruction to all politicians on a single point, and a general election, where the people choose a set of politicians to implement policies based on conditions prevailing for the next few years. And the former clearly democratically trumps the latter - even if (as you note) the anti-democrats (on both sides) pretended not to be. The last paragraph shows you haven't grasped this basic distinction.
Jacob Rees Mogg in a position of serious power in our country is the perfect symbol of Conservative Brexit. A serious mistake. I'm hoping the Labour party can make a better fist of it.
As I keep pointing out, leaving the European Union is not our problem. What we did *after* doing so is our problem - leaving the EEA & CU, demanding 3rd country status, not carrying over the various bilateral alignments and agreements we already had with countries like America etc etc etc.
We can fix Brexit without rejoining the political project.
If Nicola Sturgeon adopted this position in relation to the UK, she would be laughed out of Scotland.
"We can still let Westminster set our regulations and negotiate our trade treaties without being part of the Westminster political project."
Just getting up to speed. I see Coffey has said our pensions are safe.
Buy baked beans and a gun.
There's nothing more reassuring than ministers doing the media rounds to say our pensions are safe. And I say that as someone who had an Equitable Life pension (oldest insurer, literally couldn't be any safer).
Ah sympathies re the Equitable pension.
I was working for them when they went bust. One reason: hubris. Ideologue in charge, surrounded by yes men (and they were all men at that time).
I was lucky we were only in their scheme for a couple of years, so relatively speaking we got off very lightly. But the turn around from "blue chip, it can't be beat" to "it's gone bust" couldn't have been starker.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
Verhofstadht or Junker were not British, and especially not in the Conservative Party.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
It doesn't matter that Verhoftstadht and Jucker were not British, they were in the EU. Indeed the later was the President! If you want to be in the EU then you must take with that all of it, which is including Juncker etc, not just the British elements of it.
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
We were talking about the EUphobia disease within the Conservative Party. Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln and the Dalai Lama could have been leading the EU, and the phobics within the party would have been frothing at the mouth about them.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, we had quite rational Euroscepticism precisely because the EU being led by people like Juncker wasn't what the British public were voting for.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
"But we didn't have EUphobia within the Conservative Party, "
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
I am *this* close to campaigning for Labour at the next election.
LD for me. Tactical innit
Check the new boundaries.
I was astonished to learn recently that my constituency has changed and I am no longer in rock solid Tory Tewkesbury where the LDs come a distant but respectable second, but will be voting in the redistricted Cotswolds which looks like being highly marginal Tory/Lab.
Now, what do I do....?
I would be surprised if Labour could ever win the Cotswolds, but I say that without having checked the new boundaries
Electoral calculus makes it an extreme marginal on current voting trends.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
There’s a fair bit of truth in that OP. But it needn’t have been like that.
Brexit was allowed to become, by and within the conservatives, a test of purity, where any attempt at reconciliation with the real, pragmatic, world is denounced as heresy, and so politics detaches from reality in a way often seen in revolutions. What we have missed is a Cromwell or Napoleon figure who would turn on and marginalise the extremists and bring (or try, at least, in Cromwell’s case) the ‘project’ back toward the centre. I had hoped Mrs May would do the necessary, but she proved too weak, too stubborn, and too desperate to prove her credentials to the leavers.
“Norway for now” (which might have led either to “Norway forever” or moves toward further detachment, when we were ready and had thought things through) was always the most sensible position - but the last time leavers were willing to accept and talk about this was when they still needed our votes in the referendum.
How about we start by getting back to a Conservative Party that admits Brexit was a really bad idea* but did it anyway, rather than one that chases further down the Faragist rabbit hole to catch ever more elusive unicorns?
*This being official party policy until the day after the vote
I don't think you can say it was a really bad idea if the overwhelming majority of your supporters support(ed) it. But you should be leading, not following. And hence I think you can say that we are where we are and the challenge now is to find a way forward that suits our own circumstances.
You might replay the LBC interviews this morning describing the 52% vacancy rate in some care home providers, previously filled by EU citizens who post-2016 felt unwelcome in the UK and move on from there.
As you say, baby steps. But as @JosiasJessop has so accurately pointed out, the disease of acute EUphobia is far from expunged in the Conservative Party.
More likely the Conservative party is expunged before that is.
Well, it shouldn't. A direct vote on a specific policy would trump a genral manifesto on many points - even if (as you noted) the anti-democrats pretended not to be such.
Glad to see that Vanilla is dicking about with formatting again - have just had to paste your comment in as it had replaced it with ... for some reason!
The 2017 parliament feels like ancient history now and the only real interest is how it impacts today. If - and its a big if - the Supreme Court backs the Scottish Government's petition to hold a Brexit-rules independence referendum, we have a problem.
I am certain that a Westminster-approved binding referendum would be won by No. But a Brexit-rules advisory not advisory one will be won by Yes. In part by haughty pro-Union Tories boycotting it as "a waste of public money as its only advisory". Missing the massive irony that they say the opposite about the Brexit vote which was legally identical.
Making a non-binding in the 2015 parliament referendum politically binding on a successor parliament has opened a can of worms that will be hard to contain.
So in 24 hours you've gone from we must give in to Russia because of nukes, to Russia's going to win the war using conventional weaponry bombing power plants, to its all too complicated let's just have an armistice and wait.
No, lets not wait. The fighting's happening and Russia are losing, and you're upset that your idol Putin is getting his comeuppance. Ukraine is liberating territory as they're winning the war, why stop now? You're right on only one thing, do not even attempt to negotiate a "peace" - Russia needs to be evicted out of all of Ukraine and then Ukraine can join NATO there can be enforced peace.
Win the peace, don't negotiate it.
I am encouraged that the messaging from Scholz, Macron, Biden, Truss and Von Der Leyen yesterday was all in the same vein. More support will be provided to Ukraine so that Russian aggression can be defeated.
Hopefully we will see practical evidence of this before the end of the month.
The article says Putin's response is erratic and emotional. This may well be true. But another interpretation is that he is chopping and swinging between competing kremlin factions and his downfall is soon when one of them gains the upper hand. We can only hope it is not the ultra-nationalist death cult ones.
I don't think Truss is going anywhere because MPs could never agree on a successor and any such successor would simply be faced with internecine strife from another wing of the party, most likely the ERG ultras which is simply another way of wiping out the majority.
The only way it ends (with any hope of a rebuild) is electoral destruction, and probably many years of blaming each other for it after, so that's what I expect to happen.
It could end in financial meltdown long before the election
For the first time I'm now wondering if I've made a serious mistake with my (near) lifelong alliance to the Conservative Party.
No, I'm not a leftie or anything like that but I wonder if the institution is fundamentally corrupted and we need a new centre-right party to supersede it.
You won't like me saying this, but the party's problem is Brexit. At least, the way the party spent decades seeing Europhobia as being the only 'true' Conservatism.
Anyone who was Eurosceptic got called Europhile because only Europhobes were truly anti-Europe. Vast amounts of talent were chucked out of the party, or discouraged from joining, because they were not seen as being strongly enough anti-Europe. This left a very weak talent pool, and we are reaping the consequences.
Europhobia is a madness that has destroyed the Conservative Party. For many, such as Bone or JRM, it is all that matters.
There's some truth in that and it works both ways. There was an institutional europhilia that for years defied what the median British person wanted on the EU, and they were roundly ignored. And for every Nigel Farage there was a Guy Verhofstadht. For every Bill Cash a Jean-Claude Junker.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
There’s a fair bit of truth in that OP. But it needn’t have been like that.
Brexit was allowed to become, by and within the conservatives, a test of purity, where any attempt at reconciliation with the real, pragmatic, world is denounced as heresy, and so politics detaches from reality in a way often seen in revolutions. What we have missed is a Cromwell or Napoleon figure who would turn on and marginalise the extremists and bring (or try, at least, in Cromwell’s case) the ‘project’ back toward the centre. I had hoped Mrs May would do the necessary, but she proved too weak, too stubborn, and too desperate to prove her credentials to the leavers.
“Norway for now” (which might have led either to “Norway forever” or moves toward further detachment, when we were ready and had thought things through) was always the most sensible position - but the last time leavers were willing to accept and talk about this was when they still needed our votes in the referendum.
Theresa May's deal would have been Single Market and Customs Union "for now" and likely "forever" via the backstop.
It was rejected by the Opposition benches, so we got a cleaner Brexit with a trade deal instead.
Comments
And it's the explanation for that oil rig at Weston-s-Mare!!
https://www.burnham-on-sea.com/news/opening-of-weston-super-mare-see-monster-art-display-is-delayed/
I see it's very Brexity right down to scheduling and screwups:
'The opening of Weston’s ‘See Monster’ has been delayed for the second time.
The long-awaited art installation which was supposed to be the town’s top summer attraction now won’t open fully until after the school summer holidays.'
Opened at the end of September ...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-62967408
Just having BoJo go was a big plus but they seem at every available opportunity to tack right. And to prioritise idealism over pragmatism. They are appealing to an ever smaller constituency which is being fed red meat at a mind-boggling rate. This as we are seeing is hugely damaging to the country.
I could live with (and vote for) a Cons party that was sensible over the EU, sought to forge closer links short of rejoining and allowed the mood music to be more conciliatory.
Very impressed with Steve Baker (as I have been for some time) with his recent NI pronouncements and more of the same would be welcome.
I couldn't rejoin or vote for the party while it sees everything we do as a move against our arch enemy the EU. We left the EU, we get it - now we should try to create a mutually beneficial relationship between the two entities that leaves both of us in a better place from where we are now.
Particularly if you're a Tory.
It’s all well and good of some right wing commentators revelling in the fact Labour will have to outline an approach, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that the vast majority of this situation was made worse by Truss and co. It is unforgivable
But what I don't understand is why a large contingent of the party felt they had to jump every shark in the pacific ocean in so doing, junk every other conservative principle in the process and become so utterly ideological and self-destructive.
The primary purpose of the Conservative Party is to conserve: stability and conservation, to allow the broader nation to prosper. Else, what is the point of it?
I was astonished to learn recently that my constituency has changed and I am no longer in rock solid Tory Tewkesbury where the LDs come a distant but respectable second, but will be voting in the redistricted Cotswolds which looks like being highly marginal Tory/Lab.
Now, what do I do....?
I don’t want Starmer having to rely on the SNP.
My support for the Labour Party is limited to the present circumstances only.
Caroline Dinenage has done OK in Gosport, then there was the Doctor in Totnes(?). Were there any others?
Clearly promising all sorts and then welching on it pdq is the better strategy - as Starmer has recently demonstrated.
Now, you certainly argue that "Brexit" as delivered is a problem and has corrupted the Conservative Party. But you also have to acknowledge that EU fealty and fatalism about Ever Closer Union also corrupted the other parties before, and arguably since.
What most people mean when they say the party's problem is Brexit is that they want it revoked and to go to the status quo antebellum, whereupon all our problems will be magically solved. That fuels some of the extreme dogma and paranoia on the other side. Both really hate each other and are deeply suspicious of one another.
What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future, or the war will never end.
I would not have gone to a Festival of Brexit though.
Genius branding from Mr R-M, though.
If the Tories got shot of Truss now, she would be barely a footnote either by the time of the next election. Voters move on. It will judged on what the current PM has done and offers. Who thought for a moment about Theresa May when casting their vote in 2019?
The media/think-tanks on the right, who encourage each other to wind up the left on twitter, are more of a problem than the Tory party.
This must be why Corbynism has dispersed so rapidly. It never won control of the leftish think-tanks or media. The only people left arguing for it now are Owen Jones and a few people on twitter.
Harold Wilson ... Cunning, professional politician and knew when to go. (I voted for him).
Callaghan ... As above.
Mrs T ... Too Tory for me, and she meant it. But no doubt about her patriotism.
John Major. Felt a little artificial, nobody's dad was a circus performer.
Tony B. Brilliant politican, but the only things he was genuine about, I disliked. I switched to LDs.
Gordon B. Hopeless at politics. Ambition alone isn't enough.
Cameron. Good at politics, but I stuck with LDs.
May. Really?
BoJo. Naked ambition, but voted Tory for the first ever time, purely to get Brexit done, hoping he'd be short-lived. Finish the sentence, you moron.
Liz Truss. You're given a choice of about eight and you picked the worst one! Starmer a boring posho but as LDs now nonentities, SKS it will have to be.
Sorry about the deep philosophy involved, but that's how many others vote.
Against a backdrop of rising US interest rates and global markets selling off, the UK remains a whipping boy, exacerbated by fears over the political and fiscal outlook. The BOE is forced to extend its bond buying and QT is shelved for the time being. The fiscal package announced at Halloween includes swingeing cuts to public spending. Tory MPs signal they won't vote for it. Kwarteng is forced to backtrack, announcing fewer cuts and implementing elements of Sunak's tax hikes. Tory divisions grow.
The BOE hikes by 100bp at its early Nov meeting and publishes a dire forecast showing continuing high inflation and low growth. The markets sell off further. Banks withdraw more mortgage products. The housing market shuts down.
Truss sacks Kwarteng and replaces him with Sunak, who is increasingly calling the shots. A faction coalescing around Johnson refuses to back the government's fiscal plans, which now include the full package of Sunak tax rises. Several red wall Tory MPs defect to Labour. The government narrowly wins a confidence vote but the Tories move against Truss, replacing her with Sunak after changing the party's rules to allow a coronation by MPs. Johnson leads a failed attempt to prevent Sunak's coronation and then leads a breakaway faction of Tory MPs. The government collapses. In a February General election the Tories fall to just over 100 seats.
Starmer faces strong internal opposition to his fiscal austerity measures, despite placing equal burdens on tax increases and spending cuts. Market turmoil continues but the end of the war in Ukraine in the spring and the announcement of a referendum on joining the single market and customs union steady nerves. The referendum is won by 55:45. The Tories are third in the polls behind a new populist Eurosceptic party led by Farage that grows out of the no campaign. However, the feared resumption of heavy EU migration fails to materialise as the weak pound makes UK salaries uncompetitive with Polish ones.
At this point my crystal ball becomes cloudy.
Source: https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1579747263244820481
A few more seem to have been launched this morning but nothing like yesterday and some more shot down:
At about 7 AM on October 11, strategic Russian aircrafts, Tu-95 and Tu-160 missile carriers, were operating from the Caspian Sea region. X-101/X-555 missiles were fired on the territory of Ukraine. Four missile were destroyed.
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1579747375400517633
Yesterday does seem to me that Russia was scraping together whatever it could find left that worked to use. I cannot see it being sustained.
For whatever reason (hardball negotiation tactics? frustration at the lack of cake'n'eat it? a deeper resentment than most of us realised?), being a dick about it became part of the point of the project for some.
https://medium.com/deans-list/senator-sasse-throws-in-the-towel-on-the-gop-8f7c84dce1ee
No, lets not wait. The fighting's happening and Russia are losing, and you're upset that your idol Putin is getting his comeuppance. Ukraine is liberating territory as they're winning the war, why stop now? You're right on only one thing, do not even attempt to negotiate a "peace" - Russia needs to be evicted out of all of Ukraine and then Ukraine can join NATO there can be enforced peace.
Win the peace, don't negotiate it.
Seriously, that sequence of events is so implausible... it will probably come true.
I don’t expect the tories to immediately come to their senses, so Braverman, Badenoch, Baker, Mogg, Cleverly likely
The key was identifying when to switch tack - but that requires both the EU as well as HMG to identify that co-operation is actually a good idea, and whilst the latter has shown some signs of coming around, I'm not at all sure that the former has.
Mogg is unlikely to retain his seat. Not sure about the others.
Yes, there were (and are) pro-EU loons. But they're irrelevant for the disease that infested the Conservative Party. The disease that got rid of so many good politicians and left us with a pathetic rump. The fault lies entirely within the party, and particularly with the Europhobes within it.
"What we desperately need is a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future"
What happens if that consensus is pro-EU?
This is a cross-Europe issue. Germany - 87% of family businesses with this problem. France 50%. Germany has broken ranks on Russia and offered to let 1 million Russians in. France is targeting their structural unemployment problem.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/labour-shortages-felt-all-over-europe/
Part of our answer will be to go for higher productivity, where we have a structural problem, and adjust the points scheme. Fizzy Lizzy says she supports markets - she will have to follow them. I don't see why building more houses is not possible - its been happening for many centuries; that's mainly politics.
I've long argued for gradual growth rather than freezing aspic - 1-2% per year for small communities (see Wales and limitations on villages, for example).
Prices substantially come back to the same problem no one on PB likes to talk about - Home Owners are addicted to the free profits they get driven by tax breaks, and to homes as a money-making proposition.
There's been a secular shift across much of Europe to put CGT or equivalent on main residences, and we need to follow; everything else is rearranging deckchairs. That depends on the meaning of "tax to death". I'd say empty homes taxes provide a good model - up to 4 times Council Tax already. And some bizarre exceptions to CT could be closed, such as no CT when granny has gone into a home; that should stop after 1-3 months.
In England we already have tax rules based on extent of occupation each year - is this not in place throughout the UK? (I don't know).
Drivers are needed to increase occupation density for holiday accommodation / holiday lets, as for general housing where there are millions of unused second spare bedrooms.
One problem is that the trend to unitise small local councils, so the money will be sucked to (say) County, and local support could be lost. Child Care is devolved iirc. Is local public transport? Talk to Mr Drakeford?
How about we start by getting back to a Conservative Party that admits Brexit was a really bad idea* but did it anyway, rather than one that chases further down the Faragist rabbit hole to catch ever more elusive unicorns?
*This being official party policy until the day after the vote
Indeed the fact that people like Juncker who weren't typical of anyone in British politics would become the President of the EU is precisely part of the problem of why Britain was an uncomfortable and unwilling member of the project.
The argument against the 2017 parliament is usually "none of them stood on a manifesto of stopping Brexit" - not that half of the rejected proposals would stop us leaving the EU, just a hard as nails version of Brexit.
But those same people who bemoaned the lack of democratic mandate also laud the Truss government's total mandate to tear up the 2019 manifesto and go economically mad because they have a majority. Erm, you can't have it both ways. When you are out-argued by Nadine Fucking Dorries you have lost the argument.
You might replay the LBC interviews this morning describing the 52% vacancy rate in some care home providers, previously filled by EU citizens who post-2016 felt unwelcome in the UK and move on from there.
As you say, baby steps. But as @JosiasJessop has so accurately pointed out, the disease of acute EUphobia is far from expunged in the Conservative Party.
You will do stuff you don't agree with because someone told you to do it?
If the people decide to do something you disagree with you vote for someone else. You hope others will agree and you can change minds. Of course you might fail and have to accept the consequences, but you don't blindly go along with stuff you disagree with because, well it is my party. It isn't a football team.
Good on @Casino_Royale for not being a robot and having principles. I don't share some of @Casino_Royale views, but I admire his principles.
I was working for them when they went bust. One reason: hubris. Ideologue in charge, surrounded by yes men (and they were all men at that time).
In hindsight because of what happened later on they now seem less extreme, especially Hague!
Conservatives didn't support it.
Swivel eyed loons and Faragists supported it.
When the Tories went chasing the latter at the expense of the former we ended up here.
Jacob Rees Mogg in a position of serious power in our country is the perfect symbol of Conservative Brexit. A serious mistake. I'm hoping the Labour party can make a better fist of it.
In response, my point about housebuilding in tourism spots is that concreting over the place rather ruins their draw for tourists - at least that's what people who live in the m say pretty universally. If the empty 2nd homes were available there would be sufficient housing, so take harsher action against them.
As for childcare, I'm sure it is devolved. And to councils as well - thats why I described it as a structural problem for the UK. Not one shared elsewhere as childcare is much much cheaper thanks to subsidy from government.
We have people who want to work. We have unfillable jobs. We have a high cost to the economy in letting this continue. Yet nothing is ever done to fix the issue with the fairly obvious solutions done elsewhere. Because in the UK we have stopped considering need or even value and simply point at Cost - how do we afford that and who pays? Regardless of the cost of *not* acting.
You've just become a swivel eyed loon in the opposite direction, which is why now everything bad that happens is because of Brexit to you, while anything good is despite Brexit.
You've become like a parody of the FBPE crowd on Twitter.
If you'd tried to define "Brexit without being a dick about it" back in 2016 before Theresa May's red lines and when most people were unable to define a customs union, it would have looked very much like what we've got now.
They tried to stop us ending up exactly where we are now
Brexit is a shitshow because of the people who wanted it, campaigned for it, voted for it, not those who opposed it.
*That's* the problem. The EUPhobics have winnowed out any talent; any reasonableness. MPs were not judged on their merits or ideas, but on how 'true' they were to being anti-EU. Even when they faked it, like Boris. Being hostile to the EU became the one issue that mattered.
1. Lose election.
2. Choose someone on the fringe of plausibility (Hague, MiliEd).
3. Lose again.
4. Choose someone utterly batso and self indulgent (IDS, Corbyn).
Over a decade in opposition doesn't take long if you say it quickly.
It's a Quixotic gesture of course. Aaron is very unlikely to survive the coming tsunami of Labour votes. But he's a good MP and any token of support is worthwhile.
Edit: And now I have to go walk the dogs. Lovely morning here in Gloucestershire.
That was rejected by your crowd though.
The state of the debate over Brexit is just one symptom of this, but it's not the root of the problem.
We can fix Brexit without rejoining the political project.
In 2016 the majority of the Conservative Party MPs were Remainers, despite the majority of the public not being, so your thesis is utterly false.
The only people who left were the frothing at the mouth extremists who voted against not extending Article 50 yet again even post-Brexit when it was put to a Confidence Vote in the Commons.
Hopefully we will see practical evidence of this before the end of the month.
I thought Karen White met Sturgeon's criteria for being a transgender woman?
To me this sounds like Sturgeon's chiselling away on TV about how sexual harassment was all about misogyny when one of her female front benchers had been suspended for sexual harassment.
"We can still let Westminster set our regulations and negotiate our trade treaties without being part of the Westminster political project."
Wow. Just wow.
Brexit was allowed to become, by and within the conservatives, a test of purity, where any attempt at reconciliation with the real, pragmatic, world is denounced as heresy, and so politics detaches from reality in a way often seen in revolutions. What we have missed is a Cromwell or Napoleon figure who would turn on and marginalise the extremists and bring (or try, at least, in Cromwell’s case) the ‘project’ back toward the centre. I had hoped Mrs May would do the necessary, but she proved too weak, too stubborn, and too desperate to prove her credentials to the leavers.
“Norway for now” (which might have led either to “Norway forever” or moves toward further detachment, when we were ready and had thought things through) was always the most sensible position - but the last time leavers were willing to accept and talk about this was when they still needed our votes in the referendum.
Grow a pair and stop worrying about the fact they have nukes, we have them as well.
The 2017 parliament feels like ancient history now and the only real interest is how it impacts today. If - and its a big if - the Supreme Court backs the Scottish Government's petition to hold a Brexit-rules independence referendum, we have a problem.
I am certain that a Westminster-approved binding referendum would be won by No. But a Brexit-rules advisory not advisory one will be won by Yes. In part by haughty pro-Union Tories boycotting it as "a waste of public money as its only advisory". Missing the massive irony that they say the opposite about the Brexit vote which was legally identical.
Making a non-binding in the 2015 parliament referendum politically binding on a successor parliament has opened a can of worms that will be hard to contain.
It was rejected by the Opposition benches, so we got a cleaner Brexit with a trade deal instead.