An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
If the other side is a death cult and wants nuclear Armageddon we have no choice, we have to fire our own nukes too. That's what we have them for. And hope that we somehow survive.
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.
Yep, unanimity from the world leaders to keep supporting Ukraine. Great to see.
I think we are now close to Biden and the Israelis agreeing to sell the Iron Dome to Ukraine, and for NATO aircraft to patrol inside Ukraine in a defensive capacity.
Quite extraordinary story. Even @Leon has to be impressed by 60 million books.
Rod McKuen Was the Bestselling Poet in American History. What Happened? He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Why was he forgotten?
https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/rod-mckuen-best-selling-poet-songs-what-happened.html ...There’s a catch, though. He can’t do anything with it, because the people who own the rights to use the material are Edward Habib’s heirs. Habib died in 2018 without any children, and his relatives don’t seem to see what could be so important about all of this, and have been unable to agree on any kind of deal. Zax is the guardian of Rod McKuen’s legacy, but he can’t do anything to perpetuate that legacy.
He’s been trying to get the Library of Congress or some university archive to take them. No one wants the tapes, because Rod McKuen has no cultural profile, but he’ll never recover that profile unless someone uses the tapes. The most salable poet in American history, and now he can’t get anyone to give a shit....
Thaks for that Nigel. A long read but absolutely fascinating. Not sure it has convinced me I should go looking for any McKuen stuff to be honest but a remarkable story and you kind of hope they do find a solution to allow for his stuff to be preserved properly.
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
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
No side is a death cult. That's just something people say when they don't have the inclination or the ability to imagine the other side's perspective. It is therefore used liberally to describe Brexit supporters, Trump supporters, Russians, Tory party members, or anyone else who it's easier to dehumanise than understand.
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.
The guy who wrote that FT article, suggesting an armistice, is a Russian of part-Ukrainian ancestry. And an academic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And a Muscovite
He’s a known Putin critic and in recent years was harassed by the regime, and eventually chased out of the Moscow branch of the Carnegie think tank
I suggest if there’s any voice we should listen to, it’s people like him. A Russian anti-Putinite who knows the mindset in Moscow - and is an actual expert in war and peace
But no. In your ridiculous world of black-and-white stupidness, we should listen to a sad dickless sofa sergeant like you, wanking himself purple as he cries total vengeance on Vlad from his cracked iPad in Warrington
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.
The guy who wrote that FT article, suggesting an armistice, is a Russian of part-Ukrainian ancestry. And an academic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And a Muscovite
He’s a known Putin critic and in recent years was harassed by the regime, and eventually chased out of the Moscow branch of the Carnegie think tank
I suggest if there’s any voice we should listen to, it’s people like him. A Russian anti-Putinite who knows the mindset in Moscow - and is an actual expert in war and peace
But no. In your ridiculous world of black-and-white stupidness, we should listen to a sad dickless sofa sergeant like you, wanking himself purple as he crises total vengeance on Vlad from his cracked iPad in Warrington
It’s getting quite tedious
*Yawn*
What's getting tedious is your manic depressive end of the world hysteria.
If it happens, it happens, but the people of Ukraine are literally fighting a defensive war for their own land from a totalitarian dictatorship. We can and should support them in that fight until the end of it.
If Putin decides to launch nukes, that's on him, and we can retaliate, but I for one am not prepared to sell out the Ukrainians to purchase a little temporary security for myself.
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.
While I agree with you that a new moderate consensus on our post-EU future is what is needed, that hoped for consensus is in reality an exercise in damage limitation. For different reasons neither Leavers nor Remainers voted for damage to be limited and so don't engage. Until we can accept the damage we can't move on. We'll get there eventually but it takes time. I predicted ten to fifteen years back in 2016 and was laughed at on here. We're now on year seven.
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
If the other side is a death cult and wants nuclear Armageddon we have no choice, we have to fire our own nukes too. That's what we have them for. And hope that we somehow survive.
If there is an all out nuclear war everyone dies, if not initially then soon afterwards. It’s what happens when one side has no choice but to fire them. It’s the equivalent of checking into dignitas because to continue living would be unbearably painful. I’m sorry but I don’t feel that Russia annexing part of Ukraine fits that description. It’s unpleasant sure but not terminal. Russia isn’t a death cult and it won’t nuke the West because it wants them to die.
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.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
Won a few lucky victories but ultimately loses the war and sees her side wiped within a generation.
She's going to roam about causing devastation for a decade?!
I need horses. Sorry all out of horses. Sold the last one yesterday. How about elephants? Haven’t had any elephants in for months. What have you got? I’ve got a Kwarteng. How many? Oh you only need the one.
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.
Not coincidentally because that was also the last time that remainers pretended to be democrats. The time for "Norway for Now" was immediately after the referendum, but the FBPEers just refused to admit that they had lost.
If you go back to the early Coronavirus PB threads, the people who were most oblivious of the risk, or in the deepest angriest denial, the “just a bad flu season, STFU” types - they are the ones most uncaring of the risks in the Ukraine war now. And want to beat a path to Moscow to lynch Putin
It’s quite striking
Of course you could say that’s because the opposing side are by definition the panicky types. The “hold on, this looks ominous” brigade. Maybe these “fucking appeasers” freak out at 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.
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.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
I think sufficient time has passed, and reality has kicked in hard to a lot of voters to allow this to be revisited. Whilst a few vocal nutters said they would be happy to be poorer - "I'd be happy to eat grass" said one bloke - that's not what most wanted.
Sovrinty doesn't keep food on the table. So as we face into the battle for growth the one that growing numbers of commentators point to is all the trade barriers and red tape we enacted after Brexit. That we have scrapped inbound customs checks is a big problem as we can't even negotiate standards equivalence as we have no idea what crap is coming in.
All of this is fixable. Not by KT and the Fuckup gang. Probably not by a caretaker Sunak government. But I expect Starmer will go at it because he has to. And all but the mouth-foamiest will accept it.
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
If the other side is a death cult and wants nuclear Armageddon we have no choice, we have to fire our own nukes too. That's what we have them for. And hope that we somehow survive.
If there is an all out nuclear war everyone dies, if not initially then soon afterwards. It’s what happens when one side has no choice but to fire them. It’s the equivalent of checking into dignitas because to continue living would be unbearably painful. I’m sorry but I don’t feel that Russia annexing part of Ukraine fits that description. It’s unpleasant sure but not terminal. Russia isn’t a death cult and it won’t nuke the West because it wants them to die.
Nobody is suggesting starting a nuclear war, but if Russia starts it then they fired first and we need to retaliate. And yes, we guaranteed to cover Ukraine too when they disarmed their own nukes and I think we should honour that commitment and treat a nuke on Ukraine as a nuke on ourselves as we said we would.
If Russia fires first, then we must fire back. If they aren't a death cult, then they won't fire first.
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
If the other side is a death cult and wants nuclear Armageddon we have no choice, we have to fire our own nukes too. That's what we have them for. And hope that we somehow survive.
If there is an all out nuclear war everyone dies, if not initially then soon afterwards. It’s what happens when one side has no choice but to fire them. It’s the equivalent of checking into dignitas because to continue living would be unbearably painful. I’m sorry but I don’t feel that Russia annexing part of Ukraine fits that description. It’s unpleasant sure but not terminal. Russia isn’t a death cult and it won’t nuke the West because it wants them to die.
This shouldn't even need saying. Speaking blithely about the destruction of every human being 'that's on Putin', not just now, but every future human, including the Ukrainian ones, just because we need to teach Putin a lesson, is the very definition of 'death cult'.
If governments over expensive energy price freeze morphs into a Variable price cap that’s better targeted where needed, doesn’t waste billions on those who don’t need it and virtually pays for itself, those £60B of departmental cuts are not needed and the markets will be so overjoyed we are borrowing about a quarter of a trillion less, they will invite us round for Champaign and give us a credit card with about £120B borrowing on it.
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.
The guy who wrote that FT article, suggesting an armistice, is a Russian of part-Ukrainian ancestry. And an academic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And a Muscovite
He’s a known Putin critic and in recent years was harassed by the regime, and eventually chased out of the Moscow branch of the Carnegie think tank
I suggest if there’s any voice we should listen to, it’s people like him. A Russian anti-Putinite who knows the mindset in Moscow - and is an actual expert in war and peace
But no. In your ridiculous world of black-and-white stupidness, we should listen to a sad dickless sofa sergeant like you, wanking himself purple as he crises total vengeance on Vlad from his cracked iPad in Warrington
It’s getting quite tedious
*Yawn*
What's getting tedious is your manic depressive end of the world hysteria.
If it happens, it happens, but the people of Ukraine are literally fighting a defensive war for their own land from a totalitarian dictatorship. We can and should support them in that fight until the end of it.
If Putin decides to launch nukes, that's on him, and we can retaliate, but I for one am not prepared to sell out the Ukrainians to purchase a little temporary security for myself.
“ If Putin decides to launch nukes, that's on him, and we can retaliate”
I’ve just realised that all your commentary can be explained, once the reader understands that you are actually a 12 year old boy using his Dad’s computer
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.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
Of course the correct thing to do was determine what Leave would mean, at least in broad strokes with respect to the single market and/or customs union, either before or concurrently with the referendum.
But Cameron wouldn't countenance this because it would have acted against Project Fear which was the only card the inept Remain campaign knew how to play.
Quite extraordinary story. Even @Leon has to be impressed by 60 million books.
Rod McKuen Was the Bestselling Poet in American History. What Happened? He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Why was he forgotten?
https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/rod-mckuen-best-selling-poet-songs-what-happened.html ...There’s a catch, though. He can’t do anything with it, because the people who own the rights to use the material are Edward Habib’s heirs. Habib died in 2018 without any children, and his relatives don’t seem to see what could be so important about all of this, and have been unable to agree on any kind of deal. Zax is the guardian of Rod McKuen’s legacy, but he can’t do anything to perpetuate that legacy.
He’s been trying to get the Library of Congress or some university archive to take them. No one wants the tapes, because Rod McKuen has no cultural profile, but he’ll never recover that profile unless someone uses the tapes. The most salable poet in American history, and now he can’t get anyone to give a shit....
Thaks for that Nigel. A long read but absolutely fascinating. Not sure it has convinced me I should go looking for any McKuen stuff to be honest but a remarkable story and you kind of hope they do find a solution to allow for his stuff to be preserved properly.
Looking at a couple of reviews, and so on, he seems to occupy a similar niche to Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, Jack Vettriano or .. er .. Jeffrey Archer. Popular, but lowbrow?
If you go back to the early Coronavirus PB threads, the people who were most oblivious of the risk, or in the deepest angriest denial, the “just a bad flu season, STFU” types - they are the ones most uncaring of the risks in the Ukraine war now. And want to beat a path to Moscow to lynch Putin
It’s quite striking
Of course you could say that’s because the opposing side are by definition the panicky types. The “hold on, this looks ominous” brigade. Maybe these “fucking appeasers” freak out at everything
Hmm
And people like you - or rather to be specific - YOU - were claiming it was the end of the world and you were off to hide in a hut in Sout Wales because civilisation was going to collapse and we were all going to die.
You come out of the Pandemic no better than the bad flu season nutters.
Senate Foreign Relations chair: The US “must immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, incl. any arms sales & security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary to defend U.S. personnel and interests. https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1579566989190004736
It is very odd what KSA seems to have done to upset America recently. I don't think it's being a brutal autocracy, because that has never remotely bothered them before. Wonder if something happened during or after Biden visited.
They cut oil production: to raise prices
And at a time when the whole world was struggling with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It was a real f*ck you from KSA to the West.
KSA will be left, deliciously, to stew in its own juice as soon as the West no longer needs its oil.
I, for one, will really enjoy that day and seeing the House of Saud get their just desserts.
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
No side is a death cult. That's just something people say when they don't have the inclination or the ability to imagine the other side's perspective. It is therefore used liberally to describe Brexit supporters, Trump supporters, Russians, Tory party members, or anyone else who it's easier to dehumanise than understand.
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.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
Of course the correct thing to do was determine what Leave would mean, at least in broad strokes with respect to the single market and/or customs union, either before or concurrently with the referendum.
But Cameron wouldn't countenance this because it would have acted against Project Fear which was the only card the inept Remain campaign knew how to play.
The challenge for the incoming Labour government will be framing the renegotiation to come in language that doesn't provide rocks for the remaining Tories to hurl. Cutting red tape, removing trade barriers, normalising standards - these are all things the Tories used to campaign on which have been weaponised. Punters have woken up to how Brexit has gone wrong for them, so with a clear "we are not rejoining the EU" message I can't see many problems for them.
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.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
We didn't leave the ship because it was sinking, we left because some of us thought it was heading to the wrong port, and they decided it would be preferable to swim.
If you go back to the early Coronavirus PB threads, the people who were most oblivious of the risk, or in the deepest angriest denial, the “just a bad flu season, STFU” types - they are the ones most uncaring of the risks in the Ukraine war now. And want to beat a path to Moscow to lynch Putin
It’s quite striking
Of course you could say that’s because the opposing side are by definition the panicky types. The “hold on, this looks ominous” brigade. Maybe these “fucking appeasers” freak out at everything
Hmm
And people like you - or rather to be specific - YOU - were claiming it was the end of the world and you were off to hide in a hut in Sout Wales because civilisation was going to collapse and we were all going to die.
You come out of the Pandemic no better than the bad flu season nutters.
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
No side is a death cult. That's just something people say when they don't have the inclination or the ability to imagine the other side's perspective. It is therefore used liberally to describe Brexit supporters, Trump supporters, Russians, Tory party members, or anyone else who it's easier to dehumanise than understand.
The Aztecs?
'Is' - present tense. Their religion was a death cult, though arguably they were doing it to survive, rather than because they all embraced early death. Humans are programmed to want to live.
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.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
We didn't leave the ship because it was sinking, we left because some of us thought it was heading to the wrong port, and they decided it would be preferable to swim.
If its going to the wrong destination, then getting off is the sensible thing to do.
Considering we got a trade deal etc and didn't end up in a no deal Brexit, we managed to get alternative transportation instead of having to go swimming.
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
No side is a death cult. That's just something people say when they don't have the inclination or the ability to imagine the other side's perspective. It is therefore used liberally to describe Brexit supporters, Trump supporters, Russians, Tory party members, or anyone else who it's easier to dehumanise than understand.
If you go back to the early Coronavirus PB threads, the people who were most oblivious of the risk, or in the deepest angriest denial, the “just a bad flu season, STFU” types - they are the ones most uncaring of the risks in the Ukraine war now. And want to beat a path to Moscow to lynch Putin
It’s quite striking
Of course you could say that’s because the opposing side are by definition the panicky types. The “hold on, this looks ominous” brigade. Maybe these “fucking appeasers” freak out at everything
Hmm
And people like you - or rather to be specific - YOU - were claiming it was the end of the world and you were off to hide in a hut in Sout Wales because civilisation was going to collapse and we were all going to die.
You come out of the Pandemic no better than the bad flu season nutters.
Worse, since it was much closer to a couple of bad flu seasons than to the collapse of civilisation.
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.
A big part of the problem was the Foreign Office style of dealing with the EU - give up x in return for… brownie points.
When Blair gave up the rebate in return for a “review” of the CAP, the response to Chirac calling him ill mannered for asking for the review to happen should have been - “oh, the rebate? It’s very ill mannered to ask for the money”.
Similarly, when EU rule were alleged to prevent sensible structuring of the railways, simply ignore them.
Everyone else in Europe seems to understand this - breaking/bending the rules is just playing the game.
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
If the other side is a death cult and wants nuclear Armageddon we have no choice, we have to fire our own nukes too. That's what we have them for. And hope that we somehow survive.
If there is an all out nuclear war everyone dies, if not initially then soon afterwards. It’s what happens when one side has no choice but to fire them. It’s the equivalent of checking into dignitas because to continue living would be unbearably painful. I’m sorry but I don’t feel that Russia annexing part of Ukraine fits that description. It’s unpleasant sure but not terminal. Russia isn’t a death cult and it won’t nuke the West because it wants them to die.
Actually without wanting to go down the “nuclear war wouldn’t be so bad route” (because it would, it really really would), the “everyone dies” line isn’t really likely.
Humanity would survive a nuclear war. People in the countries hit by nuclear weapons would survive a nuclear war. There is still debate on whether a nuclear winter would be triggered.
There was much more chance of complete wipeout of humanity at the height of the Cold War when nuclear stocks were much greater than now.
As it is, some people would live, it just wouldn’t in all likelihood be a particularly pleasant life. We’d be turning the clock back about 300 years, in all likelihood, and governmental structures would be either anarchic or necessarily autocratic.
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?
Like a lot of dramatic changes it tends to get hijacked by those who are also radical revolutionaries in other ways. They are much more certain about what they want and in chaos seize initiative.
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.
One of the problems with the Norway for Now option was that it had been unnecessarily trashed well before the referendum. Whilst some elements of Leave were very keen on it, others were only pushing it as it seemed a less violent jump into the dark and more easily sold to the public so they used it without ever actually believing in it. At the same time Remain hated it because they thought it was an effective argument in favour of Brexit and so went after it hammer and tongs for fear it made Leave more likely to win.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
I think sufficient time has passed, and reality has kicked in hard to a lot of voters to allow this to be revisited. Whilst a few vocal nutters said they would be happy to be poorer - "I'd be happy to eat grass" said one bloke - that's not what most wanted.
Sovrinty doesn't keep food on the table. So as we face into the battle for growth the one that growing numbers of commentators point to is all the trade barriers and red tape we enacted after Brexit. That we have scrapped inbound customs checks is a big problem as we can't even negotiate standards equivalence as we have no idea what crap is coming in.
All of this is fixable. Not by KT and the Fuckup gang. Probably not by a caretaker Sunak government. But I expect Starmer will go at it because he has to. And all but the mouth-foamiest will accept 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.
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?
Europhiles like you need to get over going back to the status quo ante bellum if you want peace and to move forwards on this.
I still see no sign of this level of self-awareness from too many of you and, so, the cancer will continue.
Won a few lucky victories but ultimately loses the war and sees her side wiped within a generation.
She's going to roam about causing devastation for a decade?!
I need horses. Sorry all out of horses. Sold the last one yesterday. How about elephants? Haven’t had any elephants in for months. What have you got? I’ve got a Kwarteng. How many? Oh you only need the one.
I have some horse arriving today - for the freezer. I believe it is South American.
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
No side is a death cult. That's just something people say when they don't have the inclination or the ability to imagine the other side's perspective. It is therefore used liberally to describe Brexit supporters, Trump supporters, Russians, Tory party members, or anyone else who it's easier to dehumanise than understand.
Suicide bombers?
Yes, the Islamic State is a good example of a strong challenge to the above statement. I didn't want them understood - I wanted them wiped out. But they did consist of people, and I suppose that they also had a rationale that could be understood.
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.
Yep, unanimity from the world leaders to keep supporting Ukraine. Great to see.
I think we are now close to Biden and the Israelis agreeing to sell the Iron Dome to Ukraine, and for NATO aircraft to patrol inside Ukraine in a defensive capacity.
Iron Dome isn’t what the Ukrainians need. It’s heavy SAMs. Patriot maybe. Can’t see the Israelis selling Arrow. And if they did, the Russians would go full tonto about a top tier ABM system in Ukraine
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.
Of course in Canada in the 1993 general election the Canadian Tories fell behind the populist rightwing Reform Party which became the main party of the right.
In a worse case scenario for the Tories they not only lose to Labour by a landslide but a new Farage populist party replaces them as the main party of the right.
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.
Yes, I broadly agree with this Ian. Sensible post.
Don't forget the UTOA Remainers though and the Bourbon restorationists.
They are - and still are - a potent force who believe they've been wholly vindicated and that things can simply return to where they were before, and some, with a routing victory.
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.
The guy who wrote that FT article, suggesting an armistice, is a Russian of part-Ukrainian ancestry. And an academic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And a Muscovite
He’s a known Putin critic and in recent years was harassed by the regime, and eventually chased out of the Moscow branch of the Carnegie think tank
I suggest if there’s any voice we should listen to, it’s people like him. A Russian anti-Putinite who knows the mindset in Moscow - and is an actual expert in war and peace
But no. In your ridiculous world of black-and-white stupidness, we should listen to a sad dickless sofa sergeant like you, wanking himself purple as he cries total vengeance on Vlad from his cracked iPad in Warrington
There are other informed viewpoints to yours Leon. Like this one from Putin’s former speechwriter.
Spoiler: he thinks Putin will voluntarily relinquish power to a chosen successor and that the hawks have already proven their strategy doesn’t work so it won’t be to them.
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.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
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.
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.
Yep, unanimity from the world leaders to keep supporting Ukraine. Great to see.
I think we are now close to Biden and the Israelis agreeing to sell the Iron Dome to Ukraine, and for NATO aircraft to patrol inside Ukraine in a defensive capacity.
Iron Dome isn’t what the Ukrainians need. It’s heavy SAMs. Patriot maybe. Can’t see the Israelis selling Arrow. And if they did, the Russians would go full tonto about a top tier ABM system in Ukraine
At this point, it’s an AND rather than an OR. Let the Russians go full Tonto, so long as their planes and missiles keep getting shot out of the sky.
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.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Bank of England warns of risk to financial stability
Is the BBC headline.
PB is mulling over a 2016 referendum.
Trying to learn lessons from it: If the Supreme Court rules in favour of nippie then we face a Brexit rules referendum which yes will win. The government wants growth but refuses to accept one of the big drivers dragging our economy down never mind wanting to do anything about it.
We can't do anything about KT and the Fuckup Gang trying to destroy the economy other than pledge our support for Labour in ever larger numbers to try and force Tory MPs to act. But this is living history and we should study it in the context of the events that brought us here.
"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.
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.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
"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.'
'It was Jacob Rees-Mogg who christened it a festival of Brexit – a moniker that might well have cursed it from the beginning.
Announced by Theresa May in the aftermath of Britain’s referendum on EU membership, and supposedly inspired by the 1851 Great Exhibition and 1951’s Festival of Britain, the then prime minister heralded a programme of events to be held this year to “showcase what makes our country great today”.
But four years on – and after two re-brandings – the public spending watchdog is to investigate what became known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, amid concern that visitor numbers have been less than 1% of early targets.
The National Audit Office (NAO) will examine how the £120m project was managed. About 240,000 visitors are reported to have visited events, in contrast to an early target of 66 million.'
“I expect NATO aircraft to patrol inside Ukraine in a defensive capacity”
I really hope you are wrong - and I am sure you are - because this is the perfect recipe for World War 3. NATO planes directly meeting Russian planes in a hot war zone. They will fight each other. That’s how you start nuclear war
This is Basic Deterrence Theory. It’s why NATO and the USSR fought countless wars by proxy. Direct confrontation was too dangerous. And even the loons in the Kremlin realised this
The fact that the adolescent would-be SAS warriors of PB, sitting in Cheshire or Dubai, have totally forgotten this, will - I hope and expect - not influence anyone in Washington.
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."
No conflict whatsoever. Attaining nation state sovereignty and deciding whether to pool some of it for the benefits of EU membership are separate things. And you can't choose or not choose the 2nd unless you achieve the 1st.
"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.'
'It was Jacob Rees-Mogg who christened it a festival of Brexit – a moniker that might well have cursed it from the beginning.
Announced by Theresa May in the aftermath of Britain’s referendum on EU membership, and supposedly inspired by the 1851 Great Exhibition and 1951’s Festival of Britain, the then prime minister heralded a programme of events to be held this year to “showcase what makes our country great today”.
But four years on – and after two re-brandings – the public spending watchdog is to investigate what became known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, amid concern that visitor numbers have been less than 1% of early targets.
The National Audit Office (NAO) will examine how the £120m project was managed. About 240,000 visitors are reported to have visited events, in contrast to an early target of 66 million.'
The concept itself is fine but should not have been badged as it was. Far too political for a visitor attraction - calling it Festival of Britain for instance would have tripled numbers on its own
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
If the other side is a death cult and wants nuclear Armageddon we have no choice, we have to fire our own nukes too. That's what we have them for. And hope that we somehow survive.
If there is an all out nuclear war everyone dies, if not initially then soon afterwards. It’s what happens when one side has no choice but to fire them. It’s the equivalent of checking into dignitas because to continue living would be unbearably painful. I’m sorry but I don’t feel that Russia annexing part of Ukraine fits that description. It’s unpleasant sure but not terminal. Russia isn’t a death cult and it won’t nuke the West because it wants them to die.
Actually without wanting to go down the “nuclear war wouldn’t be so bad route” (because it would, it really really would), the “everyone dies” line isn’t really likely.
Humanity would survive a nuclear war. People in the countries hit by nuclear weapons would survive a nuclear war. There is still debate on whether a nuclear winter would be triggered.
There was much more chance of complete wipeout of humanity at the height of the Cold War when nuclear stocks were much greater than now.
As it is, some people would live, it just wouldn’t in all likelihood be a particularly pleasant life. We’d be turning the clock back about 300 years, in all likelihood, and governmental structures would be either anarchic or necessarily autocratic.
Thanks that was an interesting comment. I was exaggerating slightly to make the point that for everyone nuclear war would mean the end of life as we know it. Life expectancy for survivors in any country hit would be dramatically shortened and the whole world order would collapse. There would be nothing that looks like a victory for anyone
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.
True. I am sure it's just a coincidence that the PMs and Cabinets government we have had since the Brexiteers took over the Tory Party have been the worst in living memory.
Bank of England warns of risk to financial stability
Is the BBC headline.
PB is mulling over a 2016 referendum.
One is a consequence of the other
There are many factors in this equation and brexit is one of them, but not the only one by any means, and continually attempting to attribute everything to brexit is nonsense
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.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
"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.'
'It was Jacob Rees-Mogg who christened it a festival of Brexit – a moniker that might well have cursed it from the beginning.
Announced by Theresa May in the aftermath of Britain’s referendum on EU membership, and supposedly inspired by the 1851 Great Exhibition and 1951’s Festival of Britain, the then prime minister heralded a programme of events to be held this year to “showcase what makes our country great today”.
But four years on – and after two re-brandings – the public spending watchdog is to investigate what became known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, amid concern that visitor numbers have been less than 1% of early targets.
The National Audit Office (NAO) will examine how the £120m project was managed. About 240,000 visitors are reported to have visited events, in contrast to an early target of 66 million.'
The concept itself is fine but should not have been badged as it was. Far too political for a visitor attraction - calling it Festival of Britain for instance would have tripled numbers on its own
No good. You need to include NI, as was required of the organisers, it seems. Mission to cover the whole of the UK, including the bit where the word 'Britain' is divisive.
Edit: as the OP linked, Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was the original title - slightly surprisingly given the length.
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.
True. I am sure it's just a coincidence that the PMs and Cabinets government we have had since the Brexiteers took over the Tory Party have been the worst in living memory.
Suella Braverman was selected in 2015, before Brexit
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.
If I am a politician and the public gives a specific instruction in a referendum, then my job is to implement that the best way possible. There were plenty of different Brexits available, but too many MPs voted against all or nearly all or them - and in the face of a specific mandate on this point from a referendum, that is democratically unacceptable.
The people are the boss of the politicians, not the other way around.
"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.'
'It was Jacob Rees-Mogg who christened it a festival of Brexit – a moniker that might well have cursed it from the beginning.
Announced by Theresa May in the aftermath of Britain’s referendum on EU membership, and supposedly inspired by the 1851 Great Exhibition and 1951’s Festival of Britain, the then prime minister heralded a programme of events to be held this year to “showcase what makes our country great today”.
But four years on – and after two re-brandings – the public spending watchdog is to investigate what became known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, amid concern that visitor numbers have been less than 1% of early targets.
The National Audit Office (NAO) will examine how the £120m project was managed. About 240,000 visitors are reported to have visited events, in contrast to an early target of 66 million.'
The concept itself is fine but should not have been badged as it was. Far too political for a visitor attraction - calling it Festival of Britain for instance would have tripled numbers on its own
No good. You need to include NI, as was required of the organisers, it seems. Mission to cover the whole of the UK, including the bit where the word 'Britain' is divisive.
"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.'
'It was Jacob Rees-Mogg who christened it a festival of Brexit – a moniker that might well have cursed it from the beginning.
Announced by Theresa May in the aftermath of Britain’s referendum on EU membership, and supposedly inspired by the 1851 Great Exhibition and 1951’s Festival of Britain, the then prime minister heralded a programme of events to be held this year to “showcase what makes our country great today”.
But four years on – and after two re-brandings – the public spending watchdog is to investigate what became known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, amid concern that visitor numbers have been less than 1% of early targets.
The National Audit Office (NAO) will examine how the £120m project was managed. About 240,000 visitors are reported to have visited events, in contrast to an early target of 66 million.'
The concept itself is fine but should not have been badged as it was. Far too political for a visitor attraction - calling it Festival of Britain for instance would have tripled numbers on its own
No good. You need to include NI, as was required of the organisers, it seems. Mission to cover the whole of the UK, including the bit where the word 'Britain' is divisive.
Edit: as the OP linked, Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was the original title - slightly surprisingly given the length.
ok then The UK Festival - my point is not to include brexit
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.
True. I am sure it's just a coincidence that the PMs and Cabinets government we have had since the Brexiteers took over the Tory Party have been the worst in living memory.
Suella Braverman was selected in 2015, before Brexit
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
If the other side is a death cult and wants nuclear Armageddon we have no choice, we have to fire our own nukes too. That's what we have them for. And hope that we somehow survive.
If there is an all out nuclear war everyone dies, if not initially then soon afterwards. It’s what happens when one side has no choice but to fire them. It’s the equivalent of checking into dignitas because to continue living would be unbearably painful. I’m sorry but I don’t feel that Russia annexing part of Ukraine fits that description. It’s unpleasant sure but not terminal. Russia isn’t a death cult and it won’t nuke the West because it wants them to die.
Actually without wanting to go down the “nuclear war wouldn’t be so bad route” (because it would, it really really would), the “everyone dies” line isn’t really likely.
Humanity would survive a nuclear war. People in the countries hit by nuclear weapons would survive a nuclear war. There is still debate on whether a nuclear winter would be triggered.
There was much more chance of complete wipeout of humanity at the height of the Cold War when nuclear stocks were much greater than now.
As it is, some people would live, it just wouldn’t in all likelihood be a particularly pleasant life. We’d be turning the clock back about 300 years, in all likelihood, and governmental structures would be either anarchic or necessarily autocratic.
Thanks that was an interesting comment. I was exaggerating slightly to make the point that for everyone nuclear war would mean the end of life as we know it. Life expectancy for survivors in any country hit would be dramatically shortened and the whole world order would collapse. There would be nothing that looks like a victory for anyone
Absolutely. It would not be a pleasant time to live through, to put it mildly.
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.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
"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.'
'It was Jacob Rees-Mogg who christened it a festival of Brexit – a moniker that might well have cursed it from the beginning.
Announced by Theresa May in the aftermath of Britain’s referendum on EU membership, and supposedly inspired by the 1851 Great Exhibition and 1951’s Festival of Britain, the then prime minister heralded a programme of events to be held this year to “showcase what makes our country great today”.
But four years on – and after two re-brandings – the public spending watchdog is to investigate what became known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, amid concern that visitor numbers have been less than 1% of early targets.
The National Audit Office (NAO) will examine how the £120m project was managed. About 240,000 visitors are reported to have visited events, in contrast to an early target of 66 million.'
The concept itself is fine but should not have been badged as it was. Far too political for a visitor attraction - calling it Festival of Britain for instance would have tripled numbers on its own
No good. You need to include NI, as was required of the organisers, it seems. Mission to cover the whole of the UK, including the bit where the word 'Britain' is divisive.
Edit: as the OP linked, Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was the original title - slightly surprisingly given the length.
ok then The UK Festival - my point is not to include brexit
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.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
Singapore on Thames won't win if Labour win the next general election. Instead it will be back to a largely redwall Brexit as Boris was elected to do, ie still out of the single market so EU migration can be controlled but Starmer will align more with EU regulations and with Reeves increase taxes and spending compared to Truss and
Does that £62b include coping with the energy bailout, which may in the end be nowhere near as big as feared?
Why do you think it will end up cheaper?
True in where energy costs are going is not known, hence final cost of a quarter of a trillion is just estimate, might come down a bit, but other variables on the price are happening too. The borrowing to pay for it currently getting more expensive all the time, is it not?
To run this monstrosity of a regressive policy up to the election requires a quarter of a trillion. So there will be some INSANE MOUNTAIN of borrowing involved. And that insane mountain grows bigger based on growing costs.
Quite extraordinary story. Even @Leon has to be impressed by 60 million books.
Rod McKuen Was the Bestselling Poet in American History. What Happened? He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Why was he forgotten?
https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/rod-mckuen-best-selling-poet-songs-what-happened.html ...There’s a catch, though. He can’t do anything with it, because the people who own the rights to use the material are Edward Habib’s heirs. Habib died in 2018 without any children, and his relatives don’t seem to see what could be so important about all of this, and have been unable to agree on any kind of deal. Zax is the guardian of Rod McKuen’s legacy, but he can’t do anything to perpetuate that legacy.
He’s been trying to get the Library of Congress or some university archive to take them. No one wants the tapes, because Rod McKuen has no cultural profile, but he’ll never recover that profile unless someone uses the tapes. The most salable poet in American history, and now he can’t get anyone to give a shit....
Thaks for that Nigel. A long read but absolutely fascinating. Not sure it has convinced me I should go looking for any McKuen stuff to be honest but a remarkable story and you kind of hope they do find a solution to allow for his stuff to be preserved properly.
Very much my reaction. Though you're probably familiar with "Seasons in the Sun".
Some fascinating social history, though. ...“If you’re between 45 and 55, there’s a pretty good chance you were conceived to this album,” said Andy Zax, a music historian and archival producer. “It was a make-out record, for lack of a better term. I’m not sure that really does it justice, but that does explain some of its popularity, which was immense.” The album sold and sold, to ambitious bachelors and young couples, to leches and romantics both. It remained on the Billboard album charts for 143 weeks. Even years after its release, it continued to sell: According to Zax, until Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 Rumours became a perennial, The Sea was the bestselling album in the Warner Bros. back catalog...
“I expect NATO aircraft to patrol inside Ukraine in a defensive capacity”
I really hope you are wrong - and I am sure you are - because this is the perfect recipe for World War 3. NATO planes directly meeting Russian planes in a hot war zone. They will fight each other. That’s how you start nuclear war
This is Basic Deterrence Theory. It’s why NATO and the USSR fought countless wars by proxy. Direct confrontation was too dangerous. And even the loons in the Kremlin realised this
The fact that the adolescent would-be SAS warriors of PB, sitting in Cheshire or Dubai, have totally forgotten this, will - I hope and expect - not influence anyone in Washington.
Doubt they would meet many Ru planes over Ukraine to be honest.
“I expect NATO aircraft to patrol inside Ukraine in a defensive capacity”
I really hope you are wrong - and I am sure you are - because this is the perfect recipe for World War 3. NATO planes directly meeting Russian planes in a hot war zone. They will fight each other. That’s how you start nuclear war
This is Basic Deterrence Theory. It’s why NATO and the USSR fought countless wars by proxy. Direct confrontation was too dangerous. And even the loons in the Kremlin realised this
The fact that the adolescent would-be SAS warriors of PB, sitting in Cheshire or Dubai, have totally forgotten this, will - I hope and expect - not influence anyone in Washington.
Not attacking Russia, defending Ukraine from within Ukraine.
Unlike the many armchair warriors sitting in London or on a ‘holiday’ by a nice beach, some of us actually have a stake in this conflict, have already had to replace one load of windows, and don’t want to have to do it again!
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.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
All very sensible but remember the end of FM was totemic and no form of Brexit that kept it was possible under a Tory PM (since they'd have been vonced and out). And given we had a Tory PM it therefore wasn't an option.
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.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Yes there is, the 2016 referendum result was irrelevant for 3 years until Boris got a majority to deliver it in the Commons in 2016.
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
“I expect NATO aircraft to patrol inside Ukraine in a defensive capacity”
I really hope you are wrong - and I am sure you are - because this is the perfect recipe for World War 3. NATO planes directly meeting Russian planes in a hot war zone. They will fight each other. That’s how you start nuclear war
This is Basic Deterrence Theory. It’s why NATO and the USSR fought countless wars by proxy. Direct confrontation was too dangerous. And even the loons in the Kremlin realised this
The fact that the adolescent would-be SAS warriors of PB, sitting in Cheshire or Dubai, have totally forgotten this, will - I hope and expect - not influence anyone in Washington.
Not attacking Russia, defending Ukraine from within Ukraine.
Unlike the many armchair warriors sitting in London or on a ‘holiday’ by a nice beach, some of us actually have a stake in this conflict, have already had to replace one load of windows, and don’t want to have to do it again!
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.
Yes, I broadly agree with this Ian. Sensible post.
Don't forget the UTOA Remainers though and the Bourbon restorationists.
They are - and still are - a potent force who believe they've been wholly vindicated and that things can simply return to where they were before, and some, with a routing victory.
It isn't a sensible post whatsoever. Neither May, nor Boris, ever attempted to make the preparations necessary for leaving the EU without an agreement. Both attempted to mask this with rhetoric, but it's a basic fact. We could not walk away, and therefore we had to accept whatever was being offered - David Frost confirmed this. It is deeply specious to claim that the deficiencies of the deal we landed upon are due to us failing to be sufficiently obsequious to the EU when actually the failure lay in going naked into the negotiations thanks to Phil.
An issue with MAD is what happens when the other side is a death cult?
If the other side is a death cult and wants nuclear Armageddon we have no choice, we have to fire our own nukes too. That's what we have them for. And hope that we somehow survive.
If there is an all out nuclear war everyone dies, if not initially then soon afterwards. It’s what happens when one side has no choice but to fire them. It’s the equivalent of checking into dignitas because to continue living would be unbearably painful. I’m sorry but I don’t feel that Russia annexing part of Ukraine fits that description. It’s unpleasant sure but not terminal. Russia isn’t a death cult and it won’t nuke the West because it wants them to die.
Actually without wanting to go down the “nuclear war wouldn’t be so bad route” (because it would, it really really would), the “everyone dies” line isn’t really likely.
Humanity would survive a nuclear war. People in the countries hit by nuclear weapons would survive a nuclear war. There is still debate on whether a nuclear winter would be triggered.
There was much more chance of complete wipeout of humanity at the height of the Cold War when nuclear stocks were much greater than now.
As it is, some people would live, it just wouldn’t in all likelihood be a particularly pleasant life. We’d be turning the clock back about 300 years, in all likelihood, and governmental structures would be either anarchic or necessarily autocratic.
Thanks that was an interesting comment. I was exaggerating slightly to make the point that for everyone nuclear war would mean the end of life as we know it. Life expectancy for survivors in any country hit would be dramatically shortened and the whole world order would collapse. There would be nothing that looks like a victory for anyone
I think this depends heavily on 2 things:
1. Whether nuclear war would be all-out: both sides emptying their entire arsenals and targeting cities as well as military targets. Or more limited followed by an armistice or even short term defeat for one side 2. The physics of nuclear winter. If the worst case studies are correct then life as we know it in the Northern Hemisphere would be over, and the SH would suffer from massive food shortages and famine. If the more optimistic studies are right then there might not be much of a nuclear winter at all. Therefore the only deaths would be from direct blast and radiation, plus knock-on societal and economic disruption. More like what Germany and Japan faced during the closing months of WW2.
I'm not keen to find out, but we do tend to assume that once the red button is pressed it's all out total war with the entire armoury emptied out and nothing left of the Northern Hemisphere.
I expect certain countries even in the worst case would do OK. New Zealand, Chile and Argentina, South Africa, Brazil. And we'd have the internet so the learning curve to get back up and running would be far quicker than after events like the Black Death.
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.
You're putting me off again with your posts this morning.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
If you're referring to the frothing at the mouth comment, that phrase was in the post I was responding to.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
Mouth foaming went on with both extremes as it does the extremes of any contentious issue. The point about Brexit-foamers was that the Singapore-on-Thames advocates have seized power - their views haven't been radicalised by Steve Bray have they? They wanted to do this thing before there was a Steve Bray.
I totally agree that all sides can be foaming. The Singapore on Thames advocates by and large aren't foamers, they've got a political agenda which they want to pursue which is the same as any.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
The exciting legacy of the referendum is that there is no such thing as an "advisory" referendum. If the SC grants the Scottish Government the power to hold a Brexit-rules referendum then that's it for the union.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
Well, no, the legacy of the referendum is that all referenda are advisory, as per Miller, which has opened the door to allowing a Brexit-rules referendum. The Supreme Court must surely, following its own precedence, rule that Sturgeon does hold powers to hold a referendum precisely because as per Miller the referendum won't affect the Union or any other reserved matters.
What the politicians do after that, is up to the people we elect, just as it was in 2019. Hopefully a majority is elected to respect the vote, but we can choose not to if we choose. I wouldn't vote for anyone who wants to override democracy, but millions did in 2019 including yourself so it all remains possible.
When I was a frustrated 15 year old boy, full of repressed testosterone in dull provincial England decades ago, I went through a weird hawkish Cold War phase. When I wanted to fight Russia
I would argue with my Dad and he’d wearily explain nuclear war and deterrence to me. And then I’d say “but I don’t care let’s attack them! Are we cowards??!” Then he’d wearily explain deterrence AGAIN and I’d say “that’s pathetic, let’s hit them first!” And so on
This is the level of most PB commentary on Ukraine A bunch of 15 year old wankers with low understanding but a need to look macho. Fight Putin to the end! Fire our nukes!
I’ve no desire to spend another working day arguing with foolish adolescents, so I shall bid you all goodbye, for now
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.
The guy who wrote that FT article, suggesting an armistice, is a Russian of part-Ukrainian ancestry. And an academic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And a Muscovite
He’s a known Putin critic and in recent years was harassed by the regime, and eventually chased out of the Moscow branch of the Carnegie think tank
I suggest if there’s any voice we should listen to, it’s people like him. A Russian anti-Putinite who knows the mindset in Moscow - and is an actual expert in war and peace
But no. In your ridiculous world of black-and-white stupidness, we should listen to a sad dickless sofa sergeant like you, wanking himself purple as he cries total vengeance on Vlad from his cracked iPad in Warrington
There are other informed viewpoints to yours Leon. Like this one from Putin’s former speechwriter.
Spoiler: he thinks Putin will voluntarily relinquish power to a chosen successor and that the hawks have already proven their strategy doesn’t work so it won’t be to them.
"a sad dickless sofa sergeant like you, wanking himself purple as he cries total vengeance on Vlad from his cracked iPad in Warrington"
Does Garry Kasparov fall into this category of yours? He's been telling the West for years that Putin must be defeated.
If you go back to the early Coronavirus PB threads, the people who were most oblivious of the risk, or in the deepest angriest denial, the “just a bad flu season, STFU” types - they are the ones most uncaring of the risks in the Ukraine war now. And want to beat a path to Moscow to lynch Putin
It’s quite striking
Of course you could say that’s because the opposing side are by definition the panicky types. The “hold on, this looks ominous” brigade. Maybe these “fucking appeasers” freak out at everything
Hmm
As I've pointed out to you before, there isn't really a plausible route to your "armistice" which doesn't involve coercing Ukraine to give up fighting, and effectively to surrender a large chunk of territory. (Which is to assume that they'd give in to such coercion.)
That would be a clear demonstration that nuclear blackmail by an aggressor state works. It would cement the hard liners in power in Russia, and pretty well ensure round three in a few years time.
I don't minimise the nuclear risks: they are real. But I don't think your approach does much, if anything at all, to reduce them.
All very sensible but remember the end of FM was totemic and no form of Brexit that kept it was possible under a Tory PM (since they'd have been vonced and out). And given we had a Tory PM it therefore wasn't an option.
Comments
I think we are now close to Biden and the Israelis agreeing to sell the Iron Dome to Ukraine, and for NATO aircraft to patrol inside Ukraine in a defensive capacity.
He’s a known Putin critic and in recent years was harassed by the regime, and eventually chased out of the Moscow branch of the Carnegie think tank
I suggest if there’s any voice we should listen to, it’s people like him. A Russian anti-Putinite who knows the mindset in Moscow - and is an actual expert in war and peace
But no. In your ridiculous world of black-and-white stupidness, we should listen to a sad dickless sofa sergeant like you, wanking himself purple as he cries total vengeance on Vlad from his cracked iPad in Warrington
It’s getting quite tedious
I know which I prefer.
What's getting tedious is your manic depressive end of the world hysteria.
If it happens, it happens, but the people of Ukraine are literally fighting a defensive war for their own land from a totalitarian dictatorship. We can and should support them in that fight until the end of it.
If Putin decides to launch nukes, that's on him, and we can retaliate, but I for one am not prepared to sell out the Ukrainians to purchase a little temporary security for myself.
So by the time Leave did actually win, both sides had thoroughly undermined the most reasonable and obvious post-Brexit destination. Brexit wasn't an act of self-harm any more than leaving a sinking ship would be. Choosing to abandon the lifeboats because they still had the name of the ship on the side of them was.
Sorry all out of horses. Sold the last one yesterday.
How about elephants?
Haven’t had any elephants in for months.
What have you got?
I’ve got a Kwarteng.
How many?
Oh you only need the one.
It’s quite striking
Of course you could say that’s because the opposing side are by definition the panicky types. The “hold on, this looks ominous” brigade. Maybe these “fucking appeasers” freak out at everything
Hmm
Sovrinty doesn't keep food on the table. So as we face into the battle for growth the one that growing numbers of commentators point to is all the trade barriers and red tape we enacted after Brexit. That we have scrapped inbound customs checks is a big problem as we can't even negotiate standards equivalence as we have no idea what crap is coming in.
All of this is fixable. Not by KT and the Fuckup gang. Probably not by a caretaker Sunak government. But I expect Starmer will go at it because he has to. And all but the mouth-foamiest will accept it.
If Russia fires first, then we must fire back. If they aren't a death cult, then they won't fire first.
No need for tax increases.
If governments over expensive energy price freeze morphs into a Variable price cap that’s better targeted where needed, doesn’t waste billions on those who don’t need it and virtually pays for itself, those £60B of departmental cuts are not needed and the markets will be so overjoyed we are borrowing about a quarter of a trillion less, they will invite us round for Champaign and give us a credit card with about £120B borrowing on it.
I’ve just realised that all your commentary can be explained, once the reader understands that you are actually a 12 year old boy using his Dad’s computer
But Cameron wouldn't countenance this because it would have acted against Project Fear which was the only card the inept Remain campaign knew how to play.
You come out of the Pandemic no better than the bad flu season nutters.
Ack. Just go and pound sand will you…
😂
Considering we got a trade deal etc and didn't end up in a no deal Brexit, we managed to get alternative transportation instead of having to go swimming.
Is the BBC headline.
PB is mulling over a 2016 referendum.
When Blair gave up the rebate in return for a “review” of the CAP, the response to Chirac calling him ill mannered for asking for the review to happen should have been - “oh, the rebate? It’s very ill mannered to ask for the money”.
Similarly, when EU rule were alleged to prevent sensible structuring of the railways, simply ignore them.
Everyone else in Europe seems to understand this - breaking/bending the rules is just playing the game.
Humanity would survive a nuclear war. People in the countries hit by nuclear weapons would survive a nuclear war. There is still debate on whether a nuclear winter would be triggered.
There was much more chance of complete wipeout of humanity at the height of the Cold War when nuclear stocks were much greater than now.
As it is, some people would live, it just wouldn’t in all likelihood be a particularly pleasant life. We’d be turning the clock back about 300 years, in all likelihood, and governmental structures would be either anarchic or necessarily autocratic.
I would without hesitation
I still see no sign of this level of self-awareness from too many of you and, so, the cancer will continue.
Also one of those square Scottish sausages.
Iron Dome isn’t what the Ukrainians need. It’s heavy SAMs. Patriot maybe. Can’t see the Israelis selling Arrow. And if they did, the Russians would go full tonto about a top tier ABM system in Ukraine
In a worse case scenario for the Tories they not only lose to Labour by a landslide but a new Farage populist party replaces them as the main party of the right.
However for now that at least is not in prospect
Don't forget the UTOA Remainers though and the Bourbon restorationists.
They are - and still are - a potent force who believe they've been wholly vindicated and that things can simply return to where they were before, and some, with a routing victory.
There are other informed viewpoints to yours Leon. Like this one from Putin’s former speechwriter.
Spoiler: he thinks Putin will voluntarily relinquish power to a chosen successor and that the hawks have already proven their strategy doesn’t work so it won’t be to them.
Stop it. Think more carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it.
Apologies if you think that went too far, but I was turning around what I was responding to.
If the Supreme Court rules in favour of nippie then we face a Brexit rules referendum which yes will win.
The government wants growth but refuses to accept one of the big drivers dragging our economy down never mind wanting to do anything about it.
We can't do anything about KT and the Fuckup Gang trying to destroy the economy other than pledge our support for Labour in ever larger numbers to try and force Tory MPs to act. But this is living history and we should study it in the context of the events that brought us here.
Did no one stop and say “actually that’s quite a lot”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/11/public-spending-watchdog-to-investigate-festival-of-brexit
'It was Jacob Rees-Mogg who christened it a festival of Brexit – a moniker that might well have cursed it from the beginning.
Announced by Theresa May in the aftermath of Britain’s referendum on EU membership, and supposedly inspired by the 1851 Great Exhibition and 1951’s Festival of Britain, the then prime minister heralded a programme of events to be held this year to “showcase what makes our country great today”.
But four years on – and after two re-brandings – the public spending watchdog is to investigate what became known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, amid concern that visitor numbers have been less than 1% of early targets.
The National Audit Office (NAO) will examine how the £120m project was managed. About 240,000 visitors are reported to have visited events, in contrast to an early target of 66 million.'
“I expect NATO aircraft to patrol inside Ukraine in a defensive capacity”
I really hope you are wrong - and I am sure you are - because this is the perfect recipe for World War 3. NATO planes directly meeting Russian planes in a hot war zone. They will fight each other. That’s how you start nuclear war
This is Basic Deterrence Theory. It’s why NATO and the USSR fought countless wars by proxy. Direct confrontation was too dangerous. And even the loons in the Kremlin realised this
The fact that the adolescent would-be SAS warriors of PB, sitting in Cheshire or Dubai, have totally forgotten this, will - I hope and expect - not influence anyone in Washington.
The likes of Steve Bray didn't cause the Singapore on Thames advocates wanting what they want, but they did help them get in power by rejecting all alternatives.
When the likes of Bray were joined by the likes of Starmer in 2017 rather than repudiated that allowed the very soft Brexit Theresa May's backstop would have left us in (inside both the Single Market and Customs Union) to be replaced by a much cleaner Brexit deal instead outside the SM and CU.
When the "moderates" choose to align with their own "foamers", instead of other "moderates" then one set of "foamers" is going to win.
Edit: as the OP linked, Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was the original title - slightly surprisingly given the length.
The people are the boss of the politicians, not the other way around.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
True in where energy costs are going is not known, hence final cost of a quarter of a trillion is just estimate, might come down a bit, but other variables on the price are happening too. The borrowing to pay for it currently getting more expensive all the time, is it not?
To run this monstrosity of a regressive policy up to the election requires a quarter of a trillion. So there will be some INSANE MOUNTAIN of borrowing involved. And that insane mountain grows bigger based on growing costs.
Though you're probably familiar with "Seasons in the Sun".
Some fascinating social history, though.
...“If you’re between 45 and 55, there’s a pretty good chance you were conceived to this album,” said Andy Zax, a music historian and archival producer. “It was a make-out record, for lack of a better term. I’m not sure that really does it justice, but that does explain some of its popularity, which was immense.” The album sold and sold, to ambitious bachelors and young couples, to leches and romantics both. It remained on the Billboard album charts for 143 weeks. Even years after its release, it continued to sell: According to Zax, until Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 Rumours became a perennial, The Sea was the bestselling album in the Warner Bros. back catalog...
Unlike the many armchair warriors sitting in London or on a ‘holiday’ by a nice beach, some of us actually have a stake in this conflict, have already had to replace one load of windows, and don’t want to have to do it again!
Even in the unlikely event the SC allowed a Scottish independence referendum the result would be irrelevant unless Westminster respected it as the future of the Union is reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
1. Whether nuclear war would be all-out: both sides emptying their entire arsenals and targeting cities as well as military targets. Or more limited followed by an armistice or even short term defeat for one side
2. The physics of nuclear winter. If the worst case studies are correct then life as we know it in the Northern Hemisphere would be over, and the SH would suffer from massive food shortages and famine. If the more optimistic studies are right then there might not be much of a nuclear winter at all. Therefore the only deaths would be from direct blast and radiation, plus knock-on societal and economic disruption. More like what Germany and Japan faced during the closing months of WW2.
I'm not keen to find out, but we do tend to assume that once the red button is pressed it's all out total war with the entire armoury emptied out and nothing left of the Northern Hemisphere.
I expect certain countries even in the worst case would do OK. New Zealand, Chile and Argentina, South Africa, Brazil. And we'd have the internet so the learning curve to get back up and running would be far quicker than after events like the Black Death.
What the politicians do after that, is up to the people we elect, just as it was in 2019. Hopefully a majority is elected to respect the vote, but we can choose not to if we choose. I wouldn't vote for anyone who wants to override democracy, but millions did in 2019 including yourself so it all remains possible.
When I was a frustrated 15 year old boy, full of repressed testosterone in dull provincial England decades ago, I went through a weird hawkish Cold War phase. When I wanted to fight Russia
I would argue with my Dad and he’d wearily explain nuclear war and deterrence to me. And then I’d say “but I don’t care let’s attack them! Are we cowards??!” Then he’d wearily explain deterrence AGAIN and I’d say “that’s pathetic, let’s hit them first!” And so on
This is the level of most PB commentary on Ukraine A bunch of 15 year old wankers with low understanding but a need to look macho. Fight Putin to the end! Fire our nukes!
I’ve no desire to spend another working day arguing with foolish adolescents, so I shall bid you all goodbye, for now
cracked iPad in Warrington"
Does Garry Kasparov fall into this category of yours? He's been telling the West for years that Putin must be defeated.
(Which is to assume that they'd give in to such coercion.)
That would be a clear demonstration that nuclear blackmail by an aggressor state works. It would cement the hard liners in power in Russia, and pretty well ensure round three in a few years time.
I don't minimise the nuclear risks: they are real. But I don't think your approach does much, if anything at all, to reduce them.