"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
Well, things don't work like that, do they? Any more than the Treaty of Versailles sorted the whole Germany vs the rest thing. Leave voters did not vote themselves into immunity from having it pointed out that they were dupes misled by liars and that we must put decades of work into ameliorating the consequenxces of their stupidity.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
Well tough shit. We have open political debates in this country. If people want to live in a country where everyone agrees with the government they can go and live in China.
You're not having an honest debate though - if you were, you'd be advocating joining the euro (and, most likely, Schengen), because that is what rejoining would mean.
One thing I don't get with the Albanians claiming asylum line is why would they claim asylum if they are coming to commit crimes? Wouldn't they just melt into the black economy and get on with it, rather than give themselves up and start living under close supervision?
Is it every Albanian who claims asylum, or just those who get caught?
Further question - what if they are seeking asylum from the criminal gangs?
Reading that thread that Carlotta posted, it does sound a bit like female Albanians are getting asylum by definition of being here (i.e. the assumption being that they have been trafficked).
Problem is if we follow that logic, we have a wet foot, dry foot policy. IE, you make it to our shore, you can stay by benefit of getting here and how you get here.
The question is three fold
1) Can we even control immigration 2) Should we control immigration. 3) What is the link between asylum and immigration, or are they now actually the same thing,
Politicians on both sides are not being straight with the public on what both can happen, and what should happen,
Oxford University: “People who originally came to the UK to seek asylum made up an estimated 5% of the UK’s foreign-born population“
Most immigration isn’t about asylum seekers. Most illegal immigration isn’t via boats over the channel (it’s from people overstaying visas).
Agreed. It still leads to the same issue of bodies being in the country.
If you think there are too many bodies in the country, direct your ire at the Government who has greatly increased the number coming over on work visas.
I'm not saying theres too many bodies in the country. What I'm saying is that we need systems which work and which the public, broadly has faith in, and we don't/
Processing times for asylum seekers have massively increased under the Conservatives. Deportations have massively decreased. The Conservatives like to talk about Rwanda and the EHCR, but the problems don't actually appear to be what the rules are. The problems appear to be that the Home Office is unable to run the current system due to cuts in funding and mismanagement. The solution is not inflammatory rhetoric. The solution is putting someone vaguely competent in as Home Secretary.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
Well tough shit. We have open political debates in this country. If people want to live in a country where everyone agrees with the government they can go and live in China.
It's not a matter of agreeing with the government, but your eagerness to deport people who don't share our values is noted.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix rather unsportingly pointed out that he voted Remain.
On the general point, forget it. That's just not going to happen, Even as the percentage of those saying Brexit was a mistake continues to climb.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
One thing I don't get with the Albanians claiming asylum line is why would they claim asylum if they are coming to commit crimes? Wouldn't they just melt into the black economy and get on with it, rather than give themselves up and start living under close supervision?
Is it every Albanian who claims asylum, or just those who get caught?
Further question - what if they are seeking asylum from the criminal gangs?
Reading that thread that Carlotta posted, it does sound a bit like female Albanians are getting asylum by definition of being here (i.e. the assumption being that they have been trafficked).
Problem is if we follow that logic, we have a wet foot, dry foot policy. IE, you make it to our shore, you can stay by benefit of getting here and how you get here.
The question is three fold
1) Can we even control immigration 2) Should we control immigration. 3) What is the link between asylum and immigration, or are they now actually the same thing,
Politicians on both sides are not being straight with the public on what both can happen, and what should happen,
Oxford University: “People who originally came to the UK to seek asylum made up an estimated 5% of the UK’s foreign-born population“
Most immigration isn’t about asylum seekers. Most illegal immigration isn’t via boats over the channel (it’s from people overstaying visas).
Agreed. It still leads to the same issue of bodies being in the country.
If you think there are too many bodies in the country, direct your ire at the Government who has greatly increased the number coming over on work visas.
I'm not saying theres too many bodies in the country. What I'm saying is that we need systems which work and which the public, broadly has faith in, and we don't/
And we sort of never have. It is part of modern life.
The question is intent, demand from the public, efficacy, money, pragmatism.
I have no idea what the right level of immigration legal or otherwise is in the UK.
Yesterday we had half a dozen examples of interactions with perhaps illegal immigrants, perhaps just legal immigrants doing people things and none was exactly at the level of threat to western democracy.
I see (or used to - a lot have vanished over Covid) car washes which I must suspect is an issue, although is in broad daylight so see the points above, and those eastern European women (I guess) begging or selling the Big Issue outside Boots but I haven't pinned down the societal threat yet.
"In the year ending June 2021, around 37,000 people applied for asylum in the UK. The ONS’s best assessment of immigration in that year (excluding asylum seekers) was approximately 573,000, meaning that the number of asylum seekers was equivalent to around 6% of immigration."
Section 2.6 (page 19 onwards) discusses where immigration comes from. It's mostly students (who go home again) or on work visas. The graph at the top of page 22 starkly shows the changes under post-Brexit Conservative governments.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
c.f. Trussonomics.
The Truss wing fought a long, bitter battle against economic reality.
They finally got what they wanted, and it was shit.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
You can only put debate to an end by restricting freedom of speech. Democratic mandates in the UK don't last forever, otherwise the Lloyd George Liberals would be the government.
Constitutional questions need to be resolved one way or the other to allow normal politics to function, otherwise we'd still be fighting the civil war.
Um, we are? The issues of the Civil War were only even provisionally settled in 1701 and then 1707, and the 1707 bit is as contentious, here and elsewhere, as brexit.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix rather unsportingly pointed out that he voted Remain.
On the general point, forget it. That's just not going to happen, Even as the percentage of those saying Brexit was a mistake continues to climb.
The last point is irrelevant unless they also want to join the euro.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
You can only put debate to an end by restricting freedom of speech. Democratic mandates in the UK don't last forever, otherwise the Lloyd George Liberals would be the government.
Constitutional questions need to be resolved one way or the other to allow normal politics to function, otherwise we'd still be fighting the civil war.
If only this particular question had been resolved. The implementation of the post-Brexit arrangement has failed - we dropped all inbound checks and have broken the NI political system. To say nothing of the economic damage.
Further changes are need to fix these things. None of these will involve rejoining the EU. Leaving the EU is not the source of our problems - all the other things we left as well as the EU and what we did afterwards is our problem.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Who hasn't accepted it? Of course we accept it. But does that mean we can't point out how it's failing? Does that mean we can't argue that it was sold on a false prospectus? Does that mean we can't lobby for a closer relationship with the EU? Does that mean we can't argue for a vote to rejoin at some point in the future? It would be good to know precisely what limits on our free speech you are advocating so that we can comply.
You're free to do all of that, but you don't get to claim the moral high ground or complain about division when you are essentially acting as a mirror image of Nigel Farage circa 2005.
I don't blame Farage for anything to be honest. He's a pretty nasty thuggish kind of guy but they always exist in politics. He had every right to advocate for us to leave the EU. I blame Cameron for the division, for taking an issue that was way down the list of priorities for most people and elevating it to the central political concern, to the extent that it has sucked the air out of our political discourse while everything else goes to shit. All because of his party management problem. And I blame Johnson, for getting the Leave side over the line when he can't possibly believe it is in the country's best interests, purely to satisfy his own ambition. I will keep advocating for us to at least join the single market and customs union, because I think otherwise we will be condemned to economic decline and I don't want that future for my children. I am genuinely sorry if that creates division but I think it is my patriotic duty to advocate against policies that harm our country.
FWIW it seems to me the whole asylum/migration stuff, while of course there are real things to say (like our population going up 8 million since 2002 while many countries have stayed quite static), is really a proxy for something else.
That something else is the sense that almost no important government/state/state-funded institutions are run with ordinary basic competence. So that every crisis is adding to an already improperly managed country.
I think there is a lot of truth in this. But I'd say it goes beyond government, even. So much stuff in this country just doesn't seem to work very well.
Yes. State management is only the start. The image of the UK might once have been a friendly policeman and bowler hatted blokes going to work reading the Times, but the image of the UK now is things like waiting for hours on a phone line, at your expense, failing to be able to do anything to put right the mistakes of the organisation you cannot contact, both state and private.
Competence is infinitely more significant than policy at the moment.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix rather unsportingly pointed out that he voted Remain.
On the general point, forget it. That's just not going to happen, Even as the percentage of those saying Brexit was a mistake continues to climb.
The last point is irrelevant unless they also want to join the euro.
Is it ? I take the view that public opinion is quite important in a democracy.
One thing I don't get with the Albanians claiming asylum line is why would they claim asylum if they are coming to commit crimes? Wouldn't they just melt into the black economy and get on with it, rather than give themselves up and start living under close supervision?
Is it every Albanian who claims asylum, or just those who get caught?
Further question - what if they are seeking asylum from the criminal gangs?
Reading that thread that Carlotta posted, it does sound a bit like female Albanians are getting asylum by definition of being here (i.e. the assumption being that they have been trafficked).
Problem is if we follow that logic, we have a wet foot, dry foot policy. IE, you make it to our shore, you can stay by benefit of getting here and how you get here.
The question is three fold
1) Can we even control immigration 2) Should we control immigration. 3) What is the link between asylum and immigration, or are they now actually the same thing,
Politicians on both sides are not being straight with the public on what both can happen, and what should happen,
Oxford University: “People who originally came to the UK to seek asylum made up an estimated 5% of the UK’s foreign-born population“
Most immigration isn’t about asylum seekers. Most illegal immigration isn’t via boats over the channel (it’s from people overstaying visas).
Agreed. It still leads to the same issue of bodies being in the country.
Not at all. Your post implied that bodies being in the country was a problem. You since said no it's not a problem just that we need a system that works, etc.
But we the British public don't really want a system that works or we would be prepared to resource it. And we are not.
One thing I don't get with the Albanians claiming asylum line is why would they claim asylum if they are coming to commit crimes? Wouldn't they just melt into the black economy and get on with it, rather than give themselves up and start living under close supervision?
Is it every Albanian who claims asylum, or just those who get caught?
Further question - what if they are seeking asylum from the criminal gangs?
Reading that thread that Carlotta posted, it does sound a bit like female Albanians are getting asylum by definition of being here (i.e. the assumption being that they have been trafficked).
Problem is if we follow that logic, we have a wet foot, dry foot policy. IE, you make it to our shore, you can stay by benefit of getting here and how you get here.
The question is three fold
1) Can we even control immigration 2) Should we control immigration. 3) What is the link between asylum and immigration, or are they now actually the same thing,
Politicians on both sides are not being straight with the public on what both can happen, and what should happen,
Oxford University: “People who originally came to the UK to seek asylum made up an estimated 5% of the UK’s foreign-born population“
Most immigration isn’t about asylum seekers. Most illegal immigration isn’t via boats over the channel (it’s from people overstaying visas).
Agreed. It still leads to the same issue of bodies being in the country.
If you think there are too many bodies in the country, direct your ire at the Government who has greatly increased the number coming over on work visas.
I'm not saying theres too many bodies in the country. What I'm saying is that we need systems which work and which the public, broadly has faith in, and we don't/
And we sort of never have. It is part of modern life.
The question is intent, demand from the public, efficacy, money, pragmatism.
I have no idea what the right level of immigration legal or otherwise is in the UK.
Yesterday we had half a dozen examples of interactions with perhaps illegal immigrants, perhaps just legal immigrants doing people things and none was exactly at the level of threat to western democracy.
In which case the government (and the opposition) need to be honest with the public and say.. 'fuck it, this is too hard to control and we don't want to anyway, and we're just going to have open borders'.
I'm not saying people shouldn't claim asylum or have a level of immigration. What I'm saying is that both the level of information and the systems don't work.
I think both of these posts are rather defeatist. It's not that the British people don't really want a system that works. It's not that it's too hard to control. It's that the Conservatives specifically have failed to run the system effectively.
Don't presume that the incompetence of one government, which has proven to be incompetent on many things, means that the basic problems are unsolvable. Just because Suella Braverman can't solve a problem, doesn't mean another politician, or indeed a reasonably educated 12 year old, couldn't do a better job.
We’ve had numerous requests for data about Albanian asylum seekers following reports of an increase in the number of Albanian citizens crossing the English Channel over the summer.
Here’s a thread with some data about what we do and don’t know.
It is: It seems that the high success rate of asylum applications is down to women being protected from traffickers. That sounds an appropriate use of an asylum system to me.
It is a good thread that puts the Albanian so called 'threat' into perspective.
That said, looking purely from a coherence point of view the thread doesn't seem to make sense in terms of the contradictory numbers it quotes.
"Over the past two years the share of Albanian asylum applicants who were men has increased, from 70% of adult applicants in Q2 2019 to 91% in Q2 2022."
"Of all the positive decisions on adult Albanians’ asylum applications in the year ending 30 June 2022, 86% were for women, and 14% for men."
These two stats make sense and can be reconciled. But they also say:
"In the first half of 2022, 55% of adult Albanian applicants were successful at the initial decision."
This cannot be reconciled with the two previous claims. If only 9% of applicants are women and 55% of all applications (male and female) are successful, then it simply cannot be that 86% of successful applications were by women.
It makes no difference to the overall narrative of the piece, but such discrepancies muddy the water and are annoying.
One positive from that thread is that successful applications in the system overall (not just Albanians) has increased from 33% in 2018 to 72% in 2021.
The numbers are reconciliable, I believe, because they cover different time periods: “past two years”, “year ending 30 June 2022” (i.e. 1 July 2021-30 June 2022) and “first half of 2022” (i.e. 1 January 2022-30 June 2022).
No, the increase is in the past two years (70% to 91%). The actual number I used was from 2022. - 91%.
So, we are still in the position where they say that in 2022 91% of applicants were men and 55% of applicants were successful. The only figure that doesn't fall into that timeframe is the 86% of successful applicants which covers an additional 6 months (the second half of 2021). It would require such a massive change in demographics in that 6 months that it seems unrealistic to me.
Some of the reporting does suggest a big shift in demographics.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
That is nonsense. Making Brexit a success is the job of the government. The government supports Brexit. They have all the powers they need. Nobody is stopping them. If Brexit isn't working then either the Brexit supporting government isnt trying hard enough, or Brexit is just rubbish. This stabbed in back myth, Brexit would have been magnificent if a load of randos on Twitter hadn't somehow thwarted it through the power of their Remoaner magic, is absolute garbage.
Don't presume that the incompetence of one government, which has proven to be incompetent on many things, means that the basic problems are unsolvable. Just because Suella Braverman can't solve a problem, doesn't mean another politician, or indeed a reasonably educated 12 year old, couldn't do a better job.
Suella can't solve the problem because she can't admit what's actually broken.
She is trying to fix a policy problem with "enforcement"
Only a politician not wedded to her fanatical political stance could make progress
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix rather unsportingly pointed out that he voted Remain.
On the general point, forget it. That's just not going to happen, Even as the percentage of those saying Brexit was a mistake continues to climb.
The last point is irrelevant unless they also want to join the euro.
Why? Not that it is relevant as we aren't rejoining in the near future anyway, but several countries have joined the EU without joining the Euro and of all those countries the UK would have the greatest reason for keeping its currency. So on what basis do you think we would have to join the Euro? The evidence is to the contrary.
We’ve had numerous requests for data about Albanian asylum seekers following reports of an increase in the number of Albanian citizens crossing the English Channel over the summer.
Here’s a thread with some data about what we do and don’t know.
Interesting. Is it reasonable to describe 4,700 Albanian asylum seekers of which 86% are women as an invasion?
Good for the Independent for giving us some facts and perhaps helping to put a stop to the disgraceful prejudice and hatred being fanned by the Home Secretary and her followers
If that's an invasion it's a good job the Nazis never actually gave it a go.
It is thought that maybe 20,000 Normans settled in England in the years after the Conquest
70-80,000 dinghy people have crossed the Channel in the last four years. 40,000 will probably cross this year
Yes and they constituted exactly the same proportion of the population, then and now.
T**t.
The Normans also moved directly into positions of overlordship and power because they really did invade and conquer.
We have just had a change of monarch. Has anyone checked to make sure that this Charles fella isn't actually an Albanian? He does have a bit of a funny accent.
The King might be the only person left in public life who still speaks with the RP (received pronunciation) accent. Or at least, I cannot think of anyone else. William and Harry certainly do not.
Quite a few observations like this in the last few days. First time I've seen on major UK news programme a reminder that the UK receives FAR FEWER asylum claims than most EU countries - it's NINETEENTH in Europe per population !! https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexTaylorNews/status/1587570994255896576
It's notable that the asylum processing backlog has grown at a far faster rate than has the number of asylum claims.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
Brexit will never be settled.
The Eurosceptic shits made life hell from Macmillan to Cameron. Now the boot is on the other foot and we’re going to kick and kick and kick the shits in the goolies til the cows come home.
Quite a few observations like this in the last few days. First time I've seen on major UK news programme a reminder that the UK receives FAR FEWER asylum claims than most EU countries - it's NINETEENTH in Europe per population !! https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexTaylorNews/status/1587570994255896576
It's notable that the asylum processing backlog has grown at a far faster rate than has the number of asylum claims.
Per population being the measure to make it look fewer.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix rather unsportingly pointed out that he voted Remain.
On the general point, forget it. That's just not going to happen, Even as the percentage of those saying Brexit was a mistake continues to climb.
The last point is irrelevant unless they also want to join the euro.
Is it ? I take the view that public opinion is quite important in a democracy.
Yep, because unless it coalesces around a viable alternative, what effect does the opinion have?
One thing I don't get with the Albanians claiming asylum line is why would they claim asylum if they are coming to commit crimes? Wouldn't they just melt into the black economy and get on with it, rather than give themselves up and start living under close supervision?
Is it every Albanian who claims asylum, or just those who get caught?
Further question - what if they are seeking asylum from the criminal gangs?
Reading that thread that Carlotta posted, it does sound a bit like female Albanians are getting asylum by definition of being here (i.e. the assumption being that they have been trafficked).
Problem is if we follow that logic, we have a wet foot, dry foot policy. IE, you make it to our shore, you can stay by benefit of getting here and how you get here.
The question is three fold
1) Can we even control immigration 2) Should we control immigration. 3) What is the link between asylum and immigration, or are they now actually the same thing,
Politicians on both sides are not being straight with the public on what both can happen, and what should happen,
Oxford University: “People who originally came to the UK to seek asylum made up an estimated 5% of the UK’s foreign-born population“
Most immigration isn’t about asylum seekers. Most illegal immigration isn’t via boats over the channel (it’s from people overstaying visas).
Agreed. It still leads to the same issue of bodies being in the country.
Not at all. Your post implied that bodies being in the country was a problem. You since said no it's not a problem just that we need a system that works, etc.
But we the British public don't really want a system that works or we would be prepared to resource it. And we are not.
One thing I don't get with the Albanians claiming asylum line is why would they claim asylum if they are coming to commit crimes? Wouldn't they just melt into the black economy and get on with it, rather than give themselves up and start living under close supervision?
Is it every Albanian who claims asylum, or just those who get caught?
Further question - what if they are seeking asylum from the criminal gangs?
Reading that thread that Carlotta posted, it does sound a bit like female Albanians are getting asylum by definition of being here (i.e. the assumption being that they have been trafficked).
Problem is if we follow that logic, we have a wet foot, dry foot policy. IE, you make it to our shore, you can stay by benefit of getting here and how you get here.
The question is three fold
1) Can we even control immigration 2) Should we control immigration. 3) What is the link between asylum and immigration, or are they now actually the same thing,
Politicians on both sides are not being straight with the public on what both can happen, and what should happen,
Oxford University: “People who originally came to the UK to seek asylum made up an estimated 5% of the UK’s foreign-born population“
Most immigration isn’t about asylum seekers. Most illegal immigration isn’t via boats over the channel (it’s from people overstaying visas).
Agreed. It still leads to the same issue of bodies being in the country.
If you think there are too many bodies in the country, direct your ire at the Government who has greatly increased the number coming over on work visas.
I'm not saying theres too many bodies in the country. What I'm saying is that we need systems which work and which the public, broadly has faith in, and we don't/
And we sort of never have. It is part of modern life.
The question is intent, demand from the public, efficacy, money, pragmatism.
I have no idea what the right level of immigration legal or otherwise is in the UK.
Yesterday we had half a dozen examples of interactions with perhaps illegal immigrants, perhaps just legal immigrants doing people things and none was exactly at the level of threat to western democracy.
In which case the government (and the opposition) need to be honest with the public and say.. 'fuck it, this is too hard to control and we don't want to anyway, and we're just going to have open borders'.
I'm not saying people shouldn't claim asylum or have a level of immigration. What I'm saying is that both the level of information and the systems don't work.
I think both of these posts are rather defeatist. It's not that the British people don't really want a system that works. It's not that it's too hard to control. It's that the Conservatives specifically have failed to run the system effectively.
Don't presume that the incompetence of one government, which has proven to be incompetent on many things, means that the basic problems are unsolvable. Just because Suella Braverman can't solve a problem, doesn't mean another politician, or indeed a reasonably educated 12 year old, couldn't do a better job.
Overly optimistic. The solutions are reasonably obvious, but they require spending unimaginable sums over multiple decades to bring almost every aspect of infrastructure up to speed at the same time as coping with aging population and climate crises. Even done right they have the unfortunate side effect of literally abolishing all that remains of the English countryside. And they won't be done right because the voters won't stand for the taxes involved.
One thing I don't get with the Albanians claiming asylum line is why would they claim asylum if they are coming to commit crimes? Wouldn't they just melt into the black economy and get on with it, rather than give themselves up and start living under close supervision?
Is it every Albanian who claims asylum, or just those who get caught?
Further question - what if they are seeking asylum from the criminal gangs?
Reading that thread that Carlotta posted, it does sound a bit like female Albanians are getting asylum by definition of being here (i.e. the assumption being that they have been trafficked).
Problem is if we follow that logic, we have a wet foot, dry foot policy. IE, you make it to our shore, you can stay by benefit of getting here and how you get here.
The question is three fold
1) Can we even control immigration 2) Should we control immigration. 3) What is the link between asylum and immigration, or are they now actually the same thing,
Politicians on both sides are not being straight with the public on what both can happen, and what should happen,
Oxford University: “People who originally came to the UK to seek asylum made up an estimated 5% of the UK’s foreign-born population“
Most immigration isn’t about asylum seekers. Most illegal immigration isn’t via boats over the channel (it’s from people overstaying visas).
Agreed. It still leads to the same issue of bodies being in the country.
God that piece is so embarrassingly unfunny and pointless.
If you want to reduce all of politics to the question Am I alright, Jack, personally with all this, the answer is they are spending my tax dollar on these fuckers instead of beefing up the triple lock for when I need it to help cope with my drinks bill in 2027.
I also have views on abortion, despite not being a woman.
But you know that abortion exists. If you had views on, say, aliens, then that would be the analogy.
People are complaining about immigration. On this very board. But no one really knows what "immigration" means. Some kids in Primrose Hill nicking smarties, some bloke rough sleeping.
You yourself said you had had no direct experience of the ills of immigration but also that you can object to it because it exists.
What exists? What are your views on immigration and illegal immigration?
FFS. Immigration means people coming to live here permanently. People need places to live, schools and hospitals to go to, trains and roads to get around the place on. So crowded roads, hospital waits, loss of countryside to housing, all affecting me. If you think linking to some talentless loser proving that satire is harder than it looks alters the case, it does not. It's like writing an article saying hur hur hur, man believes earth orbits around sun.
Asylum seekers are a very small proportion of immigration. If your concern is about too much immigration, then complain about the Government issuing lots of work visas. That's what's driving immigration.
People do need housing, schools, hospitals, trains, etc. However, more people also means more economic activity to pay for housing, schools, hospitals, trains, etc. The UK had a population of around 18 million in 1922, but 67 million now. This has worked out broadly fine because we built more houses, schools, hospitals, trains, etc. Indeed, many commentators (particularly on the right) worry about the population not growing and not having enough working age people to support an ageing population. In short, a growing tax base means shorter hospital waits.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
We just had 40 days and 40 nights of a government "trying to make Brexit a success" and it ended with the decapitation of the Tory Party by bond markets.
Many of them did not exist before we left the EU, and only exist because we are not now members.
You can't fix some of those problems without addressing membership
I would say that the ideological collapse of neoliberalism post the 2008 financial crisis is the source of our problems. That was when standards of living started to decline for a lot of people, and everything else has been a reaction to that.
Thatcher's brand of capitalism worked as long as there were state assets to flog off and an economic boom - that boom lasted as long as North Sea Oil was a thing and the highly financialised market was stable. Neither of these things can be the cause of a boom any longer, but politicians have refused to understand that means a significantly different kind of politics is needed.
Brexit was a coalition of the typical Tory pensioner who had been radicalised by the papers, the disaffected poor, and a few rich people and the people they tricked into believing that Britain could be a swashbuckling free marketeer again (not that we ever were that). The disaffected poor specifically were kicking back against a system they had seen as failing them (Blairism and then austerity) whilst the Tory pensioners and business people were sheltered from those things by safe pensions and rising house prices so still thought "things could only get better". Notice how those Tories who threaten the safety of pensioners (May with the dementia tax and Truss with her economic mess) were the underperformers / poll losers for the Tories.
We have a system at the moment where economic security is only somewhat guaranteed to our very old (which is a good thing) and very rich, but not any one else (which is a bad thing). So people become extreme and politicians who don't want to deal with the underlying conditions are happy to play culture war instead.
Starmer is going to start out with a joke about I'm a Celebrity and relate it to Rishi/the Cons.
I'd like to know what Starmer's solution is to the migration crisis. It's a pity it isn't Leader of the Opposition questions
The answer should be fairly simple to give. Take the bloody thing seriously and resource it properly. Clear the backlog, invest in infrastructure, work more closely with France etc. Stop playing political games and grow up. But that’s for Yvette Cooper to say, as she has - pretty much - been saying.
Great idea. What would they cut to pay for it?
Borrow money to pay for it. The investment will pay for itself fairly quickly because people waiting for asylum decisions costs us lots of money, whereas it's cheap to deport people, and those granted asylum can start contributing to the economy.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
That is nonsense. Making Brexit a success is the job of the government. The government supports Brexit. They have all the powers they need. Nobody is stopping them. If Brexit isn't working then either the Brexit supporting government isnt trying hard enough, or Brexit is just rubbish. This stabbed in back myth, Brexit would have been magnificent if a load of randos on Twitter hadn't somehow thwarted it through the power of their Remoaner magic, is absolute garbage.
Not randos on Twitter - elected MPs in the 2017-9 parliament (admittedly, egged on by randos on Twitter). If they had acted as per their manifesto we would have ended up with a better Brexit.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix rather unsportingly pointed out that he voted Remain.
On the general point, forget it. That's just not going to happen, Even as the percentage of those saying Brexit was a mistake continues to climb.
The last point is irrelevant unless they also want to join the euro.
Why? Not that it is relevant as we aren't rejoining in the near future anyway, but several countries have joined the EU without joining the Euro and of all those countries the UK would have the greatest reason for keeping its currency. So on what basis do you think we would have to join the Euro? The evidence is to the contrary.
We would have to join the euro because if we ask to rejoin, the EU is going to make damn sure it's irreversible this time.
We’ve had numerous requests for data about Albanian asylum seekers following reports of an increase in the number of Albanian citizens crossing the English Channel over the summer.
Here’s a thread with some data about what we do and don’t know.
Interesting. Is it reasonable to describe 4,700 Albanian asylum seekers of which 86% are women as an invasion?
Good for the Independent for giving us some facts and perhaps helping to put a stop to the disgraceful prejudice and hatred being fanned by the Home Secretary and her followers
If that's an invasion it's a good job the Nazis never actually gave it a go.
It is thought that maybe 20,000 Normans settled in England in the years after the Conquest
70-80,000 dinghy people have crossed the Channel in the last four years. 40,000 will probably cross this year
Yes and they constituted exactly the same proportion of the population, then and now.
T**t.
The Normans also moved directly into positions of overlordship and power because they really did invade and conquer.
We have just had a change of monarch. Has anyone checked to make sure that this Charles fella isn't actually an Albanian? He does have a bit of a funny accent.
It is true that Charles's dad was born on an island, Corfu, just off the coast of Albania.
Quite a few observations like this in the last few days. First time I've seen on major UK news programme a reminder that the UK receives FAR FEWER asylum claims than most EU countries - it's NINETEENTH in Europe per population !! https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexTaylorNews/status/1587570994255896576
It's notable that the asylum processing backlog has grown at a far faster rate than has the number of asylum claims.
Per population being the measure to make it look fewer.
In numeric terms we are far higher than 19th.
Why is per captia not a fair way to judge this? I would argue that per capita, or even GDP, should be more significant in the number of asylum seekers taker in rather than raw numbers.
FWIW it seems to me the whole asylum/migration stuff, while of course there are real things to say (like our population going up 8 million since 2002 while many countries have stayed quite static), is really a proxy for something else.
That something else is the sense that almost no important government/state/state-funded institutions are run with ordinary basic competence. So that every crisis is adding to an already improperly managed country.
I think there is a lot of truth in this. But I'd say it goes beyond government, even. So much stuff in this country just doesn't seem to work very well.
Yes. State management is only the start. The image of the UK might once have been a friendly policeman and bowler hatted blokes going to work reading the Times, but the image of the UK now is things like waiting for hours on a phone line, at your expense, failing to be able to do anything to put right the mistakes of the organisation you cannot contact, both state and private.
Competence is infinitely more significant than policy at the moment.
I don't think the Tories / Tory supporters recognise or accept the general acceptance of things being largely broken. Its always whataboutery. Let me give you one example - trains. In prime red wall territory trains have largely stopped running. Somewhere like Grimsby is down to a handful of trains a day on some days, with Transpennine Express simply cancelling everything and leaving 12 hour gaps between services.
The cause of this is complicated - an onerous franchise agreement, a moron MD now departed, and right now a franchise that the DfT won't take full control of (so as not to be responsible) but also one where there is no sanction for the operator and no ability to fix the resource issues. Similar with Northern and Avanti.
So it's broken, nobody is doing anything to fix it, and buck-passing is policy. For all the people who can't get GP appointments or a dentist, this is normal. Saying "an appointment in 14 days" cements the floor of mediocrity, a system that simply has ceased functioning.
Its an interesting Q whether, assuming their prospects continue to look bleak, the Tories hang together, or start to fall apart.
That there is no love lost between various leading personalities is fairly obvious, and that the same is true for many members is clear from a scan of comments on ConHome. It already looks as if the free-market Brexiters and the little England Brexiters are falling out after the Truss debacle, and it isn't impossible to see a scenario where the different types of Brexiters come to hate each other more than the growing majority of those who see Brexit as damaging per se.
Starmer is going to start out with a joke about I'm a Celebrity and relate it to Rishi/the Cons.
I'd like to know what Starmer's solution is to the migration crisis. It's a pity it isn't Leader of the Opposition questions
The answer should be fairly simple to give. Take the bloody thing seriously and resource it properly. Clear the backlog, invest in infrastructure, work more closely with France etc. Stop playing political games and grow up. But that’s for Yvette Cooper to say, as she has - pretty much - been saying.
Great idea. What would they cut to pay for it?
Borrow money to pay for it. The investment will pay for itself fairly quickly because people waiting for asylum decisions costs us lots of money, whereas it's cheap to deport people, and those granted asylum can start contributing to the economy.
Ah, the Gordon Brown solution.
Government borrowing is just deferred taxation - "borrow money to pay for it" is not an answer to the question "how do you pay for X".
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
Theresa May's deal failed to go through parliament because of Remainers who thought Brexit could be stopped.
Hancocks bad press confuses me. There are far nastier, more corrupt and more useless Tories that escape this level of abuse. His biggest mistake was to appear human. Unforgivable.
He was a very poor health secretary. Apart from his pandemic rule-breaking escapades, he managed to give large and important emergency contracts to his mates down the local pub. He wasn't responsible for the one thing that really went well -> vaccines, which were swiftly taken out of his control.
He delayed COVID testing so that he could claim he met his 100k/day testing target. He took lots of money from horseracing, and then surprisingly horseracing got brought back first out of major sports.
Since then he's been shilling crypto.
But generally I would agree - he's probably not the most corrupt and he's certainly not the most useless (Chris Grayling surely still for the win).
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
The owner standing out in the street is clearly "to blame" for pointing out that his house is on fire?
Starmer is going to start out with a joke about I'm a Celebrity and relate it to Rishi/the Cons.
I'd like to know what Starmer's solution is to the migration crisis. It's a pity it isn't Leader of the Opposition questions
The answer should be fairly simple to give. Take the bloody thing seriously and resource it properly. Clear the backlog, invest in infrastructure, work more closely with France etc. Stop playing political games and grow up. But that’s for Yvette Cooper to say, as she has - pretty much - been saying.
Great idea. What would they cut to pay for it?
Borrow money to pay for it. The investment will pay for itself fairly quickly because people waiting for asylum decisions costs us lots of money, whereas it's cheap to deport people, and those granted asylum can start contributing to the economy.
Cheap to deport people?
Figure 4 shows that among the top 10 nationalities leaving detention in the year ending June 2022, in most cases the individual was bailed. Of the top 10, only Albanian, Romanian and Polish nationals saw notable numbers returned to their country of origin.
...
In the year ending March 2022, there were 3,231 enforced returns, 55% fewer than in 2019 pre-pandemic (7,198). The vast majority of enforced returns in the latest year were of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) and 51% were EU nationals.
Not costed, but given diseconomies of lack of scale I would guess shipping a measly 3k people to places they don't wanna go is, what, £100,000 a head inc overheads?
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
Theresa May's deal failed to go through parliament because of Remainers who thought Brexit could be stopped.
And the ERG repeatedly voting it down had nothing to do with it? It's a view.
Ditto that the clown desperately wanted May to fail so he could fulfil his lifelong ambition of getting to sit in the big chair.
Starmer is going to start out with a joke about I'm a Celebrity and relate it to Rishi/the Cons.
I'd like to know what Starmer's solution is to the migration crisis. It's a pity it isn't Leader of the Opposition questions
The answer should be fairly simple to give. Take the bloody thing seriously and resource it properly. Clear the backlog, invest in infrastructure, work more closely with France etc. Stop playing political games and grow up. But that’s for Yvette Cooper to say, as she has - pretty much - been saying.
Great idea. What would they cut to pay for it?
Borrow money to pay for it. The investment will pay for itself fairly quickly because people waiting for asylum decisions costs us lots of money, whereas it's cheap to deport people, and those granted asylum can start contributing to the economy.
Ah, the Gordon Brown solution.
Government borrowing is just deferred taxation - "borrow money to pay for it" is not an answer to the question "how do you pay for X".
I mean, if you reduced the cost of detention and private hotels, and privately chartered planes and privatised contracts to G4S and the like, you could probably balance the books. But at the moment the cost is high and the outcomes are bad anyway.
What solution is there other than talk to them and process them? Do you want them blown out of the water if they try to cross the channel by cannon?
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
They stopped us having a better Brexit in the 2017-9 parliament, because all the energy had to be spent on getting any Brexit through in the face of their anti-democratic obstructionism, leaving no bandwidth to work on getting the best Brexit.
If they had started in June 2016 by saying "we lost, but only narrowly, there's a mandate to leave the political structures of the EU but no mandate for a hard Brexit" and actually worked for a soft Brexit from day one then that's what we would have got. Instead they left the choice of Brexit to a majority of a majority, which is still a minority.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
Theresa May's deal failed to go through parliament because of Remainers who thought Brexit could be stopped.
And the ERG repeatedly voting it down had nothing to do with it? It's a view.
Ditto that the clown wanted May to fail so he could get to sit in the big chair.
When exactly did the ERG have a majority in parliament?
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
Theresa May's deal failed to go through parliament because of Remainers who thought Brexit could be stopped.
May's deal was rubbish. Even Brexiteers voted against it. Why should people on both sides who thought it was rubbish have voted for it? If May had whipped her party to support a deal leaving us more closely aligned to the single market it would have passed. Why didn't she do that?
Sir John Curtice warns Rishi Sunak will find it 'extremely difficult' to turn Tory electoral fortunes around as party faces potential landslide defeat in 2024
Tories have lost ground 'across the whole of the electorate' and are no longer trusted by public to run the country
Back to the vexed question of what does Starmer lead on in PMQs. Tricky one. There are a few angles.
I feel his strongest overall strategy is to ram home the tired old Tories theme. Same old same old. The veneer of change but the rot still there underneath.
To do this he might consider a bit of a greatest hits collection rather than one topic. There are several:
- New leader supposed to be about integrity but he rehired Braverman - Restoring confidence in fiscal policy but this morning Badenoch is mouthing off about the OBR - Huge sewage release in the sea off Cornwall - doubtless a few good NHS waiting list type stats to throw in too
I would avoid, because they are too easy to bat away or obfuscate, Sunak not attending COP27 (unless setting him up for a u-turn) and the details of the Manston story.
Big mistake for Starmer to reference words like 'tired' and 'old' about anyone....
FWIW it seems to me the whole asylum/migration stuff, while of course there are real things to say (like our population going up 8 million since 2002 while many countries have stayed quite static), is really a proxy for something else.
That something else is the sense that almost no important government/state/state-funded institutions are run with ordinary basic competence. So that every crisis is adding to an already improperly managed country.
I think there is a lot of truth in this. But I'd say it goes beyond government, even. So much stuff in this country just doesn't seem to work very well.
Yes. State management is only the start. The image of the UK might once have been a friendly policeman and bowler hatted blokes going to work reading the Times, but the image of the UK now is things like waiting for hours on a phone line, at your expense, failing to be able to do anything to put right the mistakes of the organisation you cannot contact, both state and private.
Competence is infinitely more significant than policy at the moment.
I don't think the Tories / Tory supporters recognise or accept the general acceptance of things being largely broken. Its always whataboutery. Let me give you one example - trains. In prime red wall territory trains have largely stopped running. Somewhere like Grimsby is down to a handful of trains a day on some days, with Transpennine Express simply cancelling everything and leaving 12 hour gaps between services.
The cause of this is complicated - an onerous franchise agreement, a moron MD now departed, and right now a franchise that the DfT won't take full control of (so as not to be responsible) but also one where there is no sanction for the operator and no ability to fix the resource issues. Similar with Northern and Avanti.
So it's broken, nobody is doing anything to fix it, and buck-passing is policy. For all the people who can't get GP appointments or a dentist, this is normal. Saying "an appointment in 14 days" cements the floor of mediocrity, a system that simply has ceased functioning.
Incidentally, I dont think it is whataboutery at all.
It is more different strokes for different folks. Down here in my part of Dorset, the train system works really well. I don't drive - and even if I did, couldn't get to London or any major city faster than by train.
What is broken for some isn't for others - the consequence is that those who don't have a problem are baffled by the need for them to pay ever higher taxes for the bits that are broken, that largely don't affect them.
Its the same for education and health, IMO. I have private healthcare - and if I need to see a GP I fork out £70 or whatever when I'm in town. One of the reasons I favour the proposal (Australian system, I believe?) where those over a certain income threshold pay for insurance or pay a tax surcharge.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
Theresa May's deal failed to go through parliament because of Remainers who thought Brexit could be stopped.
And the ERG repeatedly voting it down had nothing to do with it? It's a view.
Ditto that the clown desperately wanted May to fail so he could fulfil his lifelong ambition of getting to sit in the big chair.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
They stopped us having a better Brexit in the 2017-9 parliament, because all the energy had to be spent on getting any Brexit through in the face of their anti-democratic obstructionism, leaving no bandwidth to work on getting the best Brexit.
If they had started in June 2016 by saying "we lost, but only narrowly, there's a mandate to leave the political structures of the EU but no mandate for a hard Brexit" and actually worked for a soft Brexit from day one then that's what we would have got. Instead they left the choice of Brexit to a majority of a majority, which is still a minority.
Oh please, this is nonsense. May immediately pivoted to a hard Brexit and whipped her party to vote down any compromise.
They stopped us having a better Brexit in the 2017-9 parliament, because all the energy had to be spent on getting any Brexit through in the face of their anti-democratic obstructionism, leaving no bandwidth to work on getting the best Brexit.
FWIW it seems to me the whole asylum/migration stuff, while of course there are real things to say (like our population going up 8 million since 2002 while many countries have stayed quite static), is really a proxy for something else.
That something else is the sense that almost no important government/state/state-funded institutions are run with ordinary basic competence. So that every crisis is adding to an already improperly managed country.
I think there is a lot of truth in this. But I'd say it goes beyond government, even. So much stuff in this country just doesn't seem to work very well.
Yes. State management is only the start. The image of the UK might once have been a friendly policeman and bowler hatted blokes going to work reading the Times, but the image of the UK now is things like waiting for hours on a phone line, at your expense, failing to be able to do anything to put right the mistakes of the organisation you cannot contact, both state and private.
Competence is infinitely more significant than policy at the moment.
I don't think the Tories / Tory supporters recognise or accept the general acceptance of things being largely broken. Its always whataboutery. Let me give you one example - trains. In prime red wall territory trains have largely stopped running. Somewhere like Grimsby is down to a handful of trains a day on some days, with Transpennine Express simply cancelling everything and leaving 12 hour gaps between services.
The cause of this is complicated - an onerous franchise agreement, a moron MD now departed, and right now a franchise that the DfT won't take full control of (so as not to be responsible) but also one where there is no sanction for the operator and no ability to fix the resource issues. Similar with Northern and Avanti.
So it's broken, nobody is doing anything to fix it, and buck-passing is policy. For all the people who can't get GP appointments or a dentist, this is normal. Saying "an appointment in 14 days" cements the floor of mediocrity, a system that simply has ceased functioning.
Why shouldn't it be broken? The government have set no stall by running things at all for 12 years, as if believing in a small state is simply equivalent to the basic functioning of public services not mattering:
- Cameron offloaded day to day running and updating state provision to "gentleman amateurs" like Gove, Lansley and IDS - May liked administration but did little other than Brexit - Johnson didn't do the day job, and did everything last minute and minimal even for COVID, he quiet quit from day 1.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
Theresa May's deal failed to go through parliament because of Remainers who thought Brexit could be stopped.
May's deal was rubbish. Even Brexiteers voted against it. Why should people on both sides who thought it was rubbish have voted for it? If May had whipped her party to support a deal leaving us more closely aligned to the single market it would have passed. Why didn't she do that?
Because people moved the goal posts on what "Brexit" really means... During the campaign we had many surrogates for the Leave camp make it clear they didn't mean leaving the Single Market or Customs Union, that of course this wouldn't impact business; it's about control of our laws and control of our borders. But that melted away once they won because a) they never thought they were going to win and b) a reasonable solution to the thorny issue of continental cooperation was never what they were interested in.
They stopped us having a better Brexit in the 2017-9 parliament, because all the energy had to be spent on getting any Brexit through in the face of their anti-democratic obstructionism, leaving no bandwidth to work on getting the best Brexit.
There is no "best" Brexit
Varying degrees of shit, all the way down...
Attitudes like this are exactly why the Spartan Remainers are perfectly characterised by William below - they hoped to overturn it.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix rather unsportingly pointed out that he voted Remain.
On the general point, forget it. That's just not going to happen, Even as the percentage of those saying Brexit was a mistake continues to climb.
The last point is irrelevant unless they also want to join the euro.
Why? Not that it is relevant as we aren't rejoining in the near future anyway, but several countries have joined the EU without joining the Euro and of all those countries the UK would have the greatest reason for keeping its currency. So on what basis do you think we would have to join the Euro? The evidence is to the contrary.
We would have to join the euro because if we ask to rejoin, the EU is going to make damn sure it's irreversible this time.
Sorry I didn't realise you had a crystal ball. They may, they may not. neither you nor I know, but they haven't with others so presumably you are assuming they will make us because they are bitter and twisted. Not a good start to a negotiation so there won't be any until those on both sides aren't. If they aren't then it isn't an issue.
But rather than being bitter and twisted let's look at some facts instead. Any of the 7 non Euro members could easily be incorporated into the Euro, but are allowed not to be. The UK on the other hand is a different kettle of fish. Incorporating us into the Euro is a big task and with dangers to the stability of the Euro if it goes wrong and has disadvantages to us. So even if it were a long term objective I would not see us joining the Euro on joining the EU. That I believe would be a 2 stage affair.
I could be wrong, but I think your assumption is based upon your hatred of the EU and assuming it is reciprocated. You may be right. Hopefully there are enough of us around who don't.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
They stopped us having a better Brexit in the 2017-9 parliament, because all the energy had to be spent on getting any Brexit through in the face of their anti-democratic obstructionism, leaving no bandwidth to work on getting the best Brexit.
If they had started in June 2016 by saying "we lost, but only narrowly, there's a mandate to leave the political structures of the EU but no mandate for a hard Brexit" and actually worked for a soft Brexit from day one then that's what we would have got. Instead they left the choice of Brexit to a majority of a majority, which is still a minority.
Oh please, this is nonsense. May immediately pivoted to a hard Brexit and whipped her party to vote down any compromise.
May had to do that because the FBPE element was already set on reversal. By the time of the Lancaster House speech (seven months after the referendum) it was already clear that getting any Brexit through would be difficult. Then after the 2017 election, Labour set about making it impossible, despite their manifesto pledge without which they wouldn't have been able to get a hung parliament even after May's social care policy.
It's really important to understand who the villain of the piece is here, because of the job now held by the ringleader.
One thing I don't get with the Albanians claiming asylum line is why would they claim asylum if they are coming to commit crimes? Wouldn't they just melt into the black economy and get on with it, rather than give themselves up and start living under close supervision?
Is it every Albanian who claims asylum, or just those who get caught?
Further question - what if they are seeking asylum from the criminal gangs?
Reading that thread that Carlotta posted, it does sound a bit like female Albanians are getting asylum by definition of being here (i.e. the assumption being that they have been trafficked).
Problem is if we follow that logic, we have a wet foot, dry foot policy. IE, you make it to our shore, you can stay by benefit of getting here and how you get here.
The question is three fold
1) Can we even control immigration 2) Should we control immigration. 3) What is the link between asylum and immigration, or are they now actually the same thing,
Politicians on both sides are not being straight with the public on what both can happen, and what should happen,
Oxford University: “People who originally came to the UK to seek asylum made up an estimated 5% of the UK’s foreign-born population“
Most immigration isn’t about asylum seekers. Most illegal immigration isn’t via boats over the channel (it’s from people overstaying visas).
Agreed. It still leads to the same issue of bodies being in the country.
Not at all. Your post implied that bodies being in the country was a problem. You since said no it's not a problem just that we need a system that works, etc.
But we the British public don't really want a system that works or we would be prepared to resource it. And we are not.
One thing I don't get with the Albanians claiming asylum line is why would they claim asylum if they are coming to commit crimes? Wouldn't they just melt into the black economy and get on with it, rather than give themselves up and start living under close supervision?
Is it every Albanian who claims asylum, or just those who get caught?
Further question - what if they are seeking asylum from the criminal gangs?
Reading that thread that Carlotta posted, it does sound a bit like female Albanians are getting asylum by definition of being here (i.e. the assumption being that they have been trafficked).
Problem is if we follow that logic, we have a wet foot, dry foot policy. IE, you make it to our shore, you can stay by benefit of getting here and how you get here.
The question is three fold
1) Can we even control immigration 2) Should we control immigration. 3) What is the link between asylum and immigration, or are they now actually the same thing,
Politicians on both sides are not being straight with the public on what both can happen, and what should happen,
Oxford University: “People who originally came to the UK to seek asylum made up an estimated 5% of the UK’s foreign-born population“
Most immigration isn’t about asylum seekers. Most illegal immigration isn’t via boats over the channel (it’s from people overstaying visas).
Agreed. It still leads to the same issue of bodies being in the country.
If you think there are too many bodies in the country, direct your ire at the Government who has greatly increased the number coming over on work visas.
I'm not saying theres too many bodies in the country. What I'm saying is that we need systems which work and which the public, broadly has faith in, and we don't/
And we sort of never have. It is part of modern life.
The question is intent, demand from the public, efficacy, money, pragmatism.
I have no idea what the right level of immigration legal or otherwise is in the UK.
Yesterday we had half a dozen examples of interactions with perhaps illegal immigrants, perhaps just legal immigrants doing people things and none was exactly at the level of threat to western democracy.
In which case the government (and the opposition) need to be honest with the public and say.. 'fuck it, this is too hard to control and we don't want to anyway, and we're just going to have open borders'.
I'm not saying people shouldn't claim asylum or have a level of immigration. What I'm saying is that both the level of information and the systems don't work.
I think both of these posts are rather defeatist. It's not that the British people don't really want a system that works. It's not that it's too hard to control. It's that the Conservatives specifically have failed to run the system effectively.
Don't presume that the incompetence of one government, which has proven to be incompetent on many things, means that the basic problems are unsolvable. Just because Suella Braverman can't solve a problem, doesn't mean another politician, or indeed a reasonably educated 12 year old, couldn't do a better job.
Overly optimistic. The solutions are reasonably obvious, but they require spending unimaginable sums over multiple decades to bring almost every aspect of infrastructure up to speed at the same time as coping with aging population and climate crises. Even done right they have the unfortunate side effect of literally abolishing all that remains of the English countryside. And they won't be done right because the voters won't stand for the taxes involved.
If we're talking about illegal immigration and/or asylum seeker numbers, then, no, we don't need unimaginable sums. We need some investment, that would probably pay for itself, and a vaguely competent Home Secretary.
If we're talking about immigration in general, or indeed about population numbers, then that's a different conversation. It's one that the Conservatives are very divided on, between the neo-liberals who want freedom of labour and the supply of workers it brings, to be paid for by consequent economic activity, and another group who want low levels of immigration.
Starmer is going to start out with a joke about I'm a Celebrity and relate it to Rishi/the Cons.
I'd like to know what Starmer's solution is to the migration crisis. It's a pity it isn't Leader of the Opposition questions
The answer should be fairly simple to give. Take the bloody thing seriously and resource it properly. Clear the backlog, invest in infrastructure, work more closely with France etc. Stop playing political games and grow up. But that’s for Yvette Cooper to say, as she has - pretty much - been saying.
Great idea. What would they cut to pay for it?
Borrow money to pay for it. The investment will pay for itself fairly quickly because people waiting for asylum decisions costs us lots of money, whereas it's cheap to deport people, and those granted asylum can start contributing to the economy.
Ah, the Gordon Brown solution.
Government borrowing is just deferred taxation - "borrow money to pay for it" is not an answer to the question "how do you pay for X".
We are borrowing money already and spending £more for a worse solution.
Quite a few observations like this in the last few days. First time I've seen on major UK news programme a reminder that the UK receives FAR FEWER asylum claims than most EU countries - it's NINETEENTH in Europe per population !! https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexTaylorNews/status/1587570994255896576
It's notable that the asylum processing backlog has grown at a far faster rate than has the number of asylum claims.
Per population being the measure to make it look fewer.
In numeric terms we are far higher than 19th.
Why is per captia not a fair way to judge this? I would argue that per capita, or even GDP, should be more significant in the number of asylum seekers taker in rather than raw numbers.
The current population of Malta is 444,278. Malta is on the list.
I find it literally impossible to imagine what it must be like to be someone who thinks that a raw number comparison with the UK pop 65m would be a useful statistic. Like that "what it is like to be a bat" thing.
They stopped us having a better Brexit in the 2017-9 parliament, because all the energy had to be spent on getting any Brexit through in the face of their anti-democratic obstructionism, leaving no bandwidth to work on getting the best Brexit.
There is no "best" Brexit
Varying degrees of shit, all the way down...
And yet all of them were better than voting to leave and not.
They stopped us having a better Brexit in the 2017-9 parliament, because all the energy had to be spent on getting any Brexit through in the face of their anti-democratic obstructionism, leaving no bandwidth to work on getting the best Brexit.
There is no "best" Brexit
Varying degrees of shit, all the way down...
And yet all of them were better than voting to leave and not.
So voting not to leave would have been quite clever, then.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix rather unsportingly pointed out that he voted Remain.
On the general point, forget it. That's just not going to happen, Even as the percentage of those saying Brexit was a mistake continues to climb.
The last point is irrelevant unless they also want to join the euro.
Why? Not that it is relevant as we aren't rejoining in the near future anyway, but several countries have joined the EU without joining the Euro and of all those countries the UK would have the greatest reason for keeping its currency. So on what basis do you think we would have to join the Euro? The evidence is to the contrary.
We would have to join the euro because if we ask to rejoin, the EU is going to make damn sure it's irreversible this time.
This seems like an overly confident prediction based on a hypothetical.
We could start a conversation with the EU and actually find out what they would require. I don't think anyone who supports rejoin would say we should rejoin without such a conversation first!
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
Theresa May's deal failed to go through parliament because of Remainers who thought Brexit could be stopped.
And? We left didn't we? Driver is talking about remainers who are preventing that being a success. How?
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
That’s ridiculous. The debate would have been settled years ago if Brexit were even remotely a success.
The Eurosceptics fought a long, bitter and for the most part lonely battle against our membership for decades. They finally got what they wanted, and it’s shit. Now they want everyone to shut up about it - just like they did (not).
Total nonsense, I'm afraid. The FBPE crowd never accepted that they had lost and, insofar as Brexit isn't a success, a significant share of the blame falls on those who spent years trying to overturn the referendum result rather than working to make it a success.
What bollocks. How do those who tried to overturn it prevent it being a success? They have no powers to do so. Have they completely screwed the Northern Ireland situation? Have they created the nightmare for our exporters? No they haven't because they don't have one iota of power to do so even if they wanted to.
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
They stopped us having a better Brexit in the 2017-9 parliament, because all the energy had to be spent on getting any Brexit through in the face of their anti-democratic obstructionism, leaving no bandwidth to work on getting the best Brexit.
If they had started in June 2016 by saying "we lost, but only narrowly, there's a mandate to leave the political structures of the EU but no mandate for a hard Brexit" and actually worked for a soft Brexit from day one then that's what we would have got. Instead they left the choice of Brexit to a majority of a majority, which is still a minority.
Oh please, this is nonsense. May immediately pivoted to a hard Brexit and whipped her party to vote down any compromise.
May had to do that because the FBPE element was already set on reversal. By the time of the Lancaster House speech (seven months after the referendum) it was already clear that getting any Brexit through would be difficult. Then after the 2017 election, Labour set about making it impossible, despite their manifesto pledge without which they wouldn't have been able to get a hung parliament even after May's social care policy.
It's really important to understand who the villain of the piece is here, because of the job now held by the ringleader.
If May had embraced a milder form of Brexit that Labour supported it would have sailed through parliament. Or at the very least, she would have called Labour's bluff if - as you believe - they were set on thwarting Brexit regardless. So why didn't she do that?
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix rather unsportingly pointed out that he voted Remain.
On the general point, forget it. That's just not going to happen, Even as the percentage of those saying Brexit was a mistake continues to climb.
The last point is irrelevant unless they also want to join the euro.
Why? Not that it is relevant as we aren't rejoining in the near future anyway, but several countries have joined the EU without joining the Euro and of all those countries the UK would have the greatest reason for keeping its currency. So on what basis do you think we would have to join the Euro? The evidence is to the contrary.
We would have to join the euro because if we ask to rejoin, the EU is going to make damn sure it's irreversible this time.
Sorry I didn't realise you had a crystal ball. They may, they may not. neither you nor I know, but they haven't with others so presumably you are assuming they will make us because they are bitter and twisted. Not a good start to a negotiation so there won't be any until those on both sides aren't. If they aren't then it isn't an issue.
But rather than being bitter and twisted let's look at some facts instead. Any of the 7 non Euro members could easily be incorporated into the Euro, but are allowed not to be. The UK on the other hand is a different kettle of fish. Incorporating us into the Euro is a big task and with dangers to the stability of the Euro if it goes wrong and has disadvantages to us. So even if it were a long term objective I would not see us joining the Euro on joining the EU. That I believe would be a 2 stage affair.
I could be wrong, but I think your assumption is based upon your hatred of the EU and assuming it is reciprocated. You may be right. Hopefully there are enough of us around who don't.
Not a crystal ball, just three decades of watching how Brussels behaves.
I'm not assuming they're bitter and twisted - logically, losing a member state is bad for them, losing the same one twice could be catastrophic. So the logical thing would be to make rejoining irreversible, and the best way to do that would be to require joining the euro.
We’ve had numerous requests for data about Albanian asylum seekers following reports of an increase in the number of Albanian citizens crossing the English Channel over the summer.
Here’s a thread with some data about what we do and don’t know.
Won't stop PB wetting its knickers about the Albanian menace ofc.
Doesn't say anything about accompanying children because we still need to explain away @Leon's hordes of Albanian infants nicking kitkats from his local co op.
Every time the asylum system gets into the headlines the actual issue seems the same: basic lack of resources. The home office trying to do border control, refugee policy and resettlement on the cheap.
It doesn’t work for education, or healthcare, it doesn’t work for policing and it certainly doesn’t work here.
The Tory (British? I see it in business all the time) belief that you can just sweat assets and starve the P&L so long as you talk a good game is a handicap for this country.
I see it around the world. Working with some Germans at the moment whose big idea is to freeze recruitment and see how far they can push the diminishing organisation to do the same work.
From my experience of government services and IT, I think I could save percentages of GDP. This would require, first, investing a lot of money over a number of years. My first target would be process flow automation. DVLA, for example has an incredibly manual processes.
Rather than a big bang. Use a BPMN type tool, which can be used to build flow automation for individual flows.
Internal IT teams, led and partially staffed by permanent staff, bulked out with contractors in the build phase. When the system goes live, the contractors move on, and the permis keep the knowledge.
To give an example - in one alt bank I worked with, the aim was that 99% of sign up, from first contact to a full account with KYC and a card, would require *zero* human intervention.
"Austerity in the Treasury; a hostile environment at the Home Office. After 12 years and four prime ministers, British politics has cycled back to where it started, but that much meaner and poorer. All for what? Where did the journey take us? To Brexit, to rage, to division and economic downgrade. A dozen years wasted. A crusade whipped up by nationalist zealots to a holy land that doesn’t exist to fight an enemy that was actually our friend, defeating no one but ourselves."
Hmm. Becajuse there is no inflation or energy crisis in the EU. There are no EU countries with immigration policies like the UK. The EU central bank is not raising interest rates. There are no riots in France, or protests in Spain......No EU country has far right parties snapping at the heels of power.....
First class whataboutery. Try reading the article. The point it is making isn't that the EU is better than us. It is that leaving the EU hasn't helped the UK in any way, while stoking division and distracting policymakers from our real problems - a point that voters seem to agree with.
Brexit happened. You need to move on. As does the Guardian.
The only way to move on is to accept the damage that Brexit has caused and seek to mitigate that damage. You need to realise that, accept responsibility for the division and harm you’ve caused, and work with the people to remedy it.
Felix voted Remain.
It's stunningly hypocritical for people who still haven't accepted the result of a democratic vote to demand atonement for the creation of division from the people who have.
Six years ago, longer than the lifetime of a Parliament, and you got what you wanted. But I've never seen a group of winners more bitter at the shitness of the prize they won, while also insisting it be treated as an irreversible state religion.
I also voted Remain.
It may be hard to remember now, but many people genuinely did think that by voting for Brexit, they would put an end to the interminable debate about the European question in British politics. The primary reason this has not happened is because of Remainers not accepting the outcome.
It will only be true to say that people who voted for Brexit got what they wanted when the issue is regarded as settled.
You can only put debate to an end by restricting freedom of speech. Democratic mandates in the UK don't last forever, otherwise the Lloyd George Liberals would be the government.
Starmer is going to start out with a joke about I'm a Celebrity and relate it to Rishi/the Cons.
I'd like to know what Starmer's solution is to the migration crisis. It's a pity it isn't Leader of the Opposition questions
The answer should be fairly simple to give. Take the bloody thing seriously and resource it properly. Clear the backlog, invest in infrastructure, work more closely with France etc. Stop playing political games and grow up. But that’s for Yvette Cooper to say, as she has - pretty much - been saying.
Great idea. What would they cut to pay for it?
Borrow money to pay for it. The investment will pay for itself fairly quickly because people waiting for asylum decisions costs us lots of money, whereas it's cheap to deport people, and those granted asylum can start contributing to the economy.
Ah, the Gordon Brown solution.
Government borrowing is just deferred taxation - "borrow money to pay for it" is not an answer to the question "how do you pay for X".
We are borrowing money already and spending £more for a worse solution.
TimS suggested we needed to spend more than we are now, which is why I asked how to pay for it.
We can't simultaneously need to spend more and be spending more than we could.
Comments
On the general point, forget it. That's just not going to happen,
Even as the percentage of those saying Brexit was a mistake continues to climb.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06077/SN06077.pdf
"In the year ending June 2021, around 37,000 people applied for asylum in the UK. The ONS’s best assessment of immigration in that year (excluding asylum seekers) was approximately 573,000, meaning that the number of asylum seekers was equivalent to around 6% of immigration."
Section 2.6 (page 19 onwards) discusses where immigration comes from. It's mostly students (who go home again) or on work visas. The graph at the top of page 22 starkly shows the changes under post-Brexit Conservative governments.
The Truss wing fought a long, bitter battle against economic reality.
They finally got what they wanted, and it was shit.
The tide turned.
Brexit is next
After BoZo revealed he is going.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1587748469061599235
He'll be getting a seat in the Lords as a mark of gratitude.
Average price in London of prosecco by the glass: £9.03.
Further changes are need to fix these things. None of these will involve rejoining the EU. Leaving the EU is not the source of our problems - all the other things we left as well as the EU and what we did afterwards is our problem.
I blame Cameron for the division, for taking an issue that was way down the list of priorities for most people and elevating it to the central political concern, to the extent that it has sucked the air out of our political discourse while everything else goes to shit. All because of his party management problem. And I blame Johnson, for getting the Leave side over the line when he can't possibly believe it is in the country's best interests, purely to satisfy his own ambition.
I will keep advocating for us to at least join the single market and customs union, because I think otherwise we will be condemned to economic decline and I don't want that future for my children. I am genuinely sorry if that creates division but I think it is my patriotic duty to advocate against policies that harm our country.
Competence is infinitely more significant than policy at the moment.
I take the view that public opinion is quite important in a democracy.
Many of them did not exist before we left the EU, and only exist because we are not now members.
You can't fix some of those problems without addressing membership
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1587628038770024452
It’s like Heathers running the country. ~AA https://twitter.com/rishisunak/status/1587746521457500160
Don't presume that the incompetence of one government, which has proven to be incompetent on many things, means that the basic problems are unsolvable. Just because Suella Braverman can't solve a problem, doesn't mean another politician, or indeed a reasonably educated 12 year old, couldn't do a better job.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63484971
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/rishi-sunak-u-turns-and-announces-he-will-attend-cop27_uk_63623effe4b0ff210e68f792
This stabbed in back myth, Brexit would have been magnificent if a load of randos on Twitter hadn't somehow thwarted it through the power of their Remoaner magic, is absolute garbage.
She is trying to fix a policy problem with "enforcement"
Only a politician not wedded to her fanatical political stance could make progress
Is Ted Heath's old seat by the gangway still available? Not that he'll spend much time in the House, I expect.
First time I've seen on major UK news programme a reminder that the UK receives FAR FEWER asylum claims than most EU countries - it's NINETEENTH in Europe per population !!
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexTaylorNews/status/1587570994255896576
It's notable that the asylum processing backlog has grown at a far faster rate than has the number of asylum claims.
In numeric terms we are far higher than 19th.
He needs to go as Bojo is going and he needs to go to appease green activists on social media and the green lobby.
People do need housing, schools, hospitals, trains, etc. However, more people also means more economic activity to pay for housing, schools, hospitals, trains, etc. The UK had a population of around 18 million in 1922, but 67 million now. This has worked out broadly fine because we built more houses, schools, hospitals, trains, etc. Indeed, many commentators (particularly on the right) worry about the population not growing and not having enough working age people to support an ageing population. In short, a growing tax base means shorter hospital waits.
Our local activists are not enthused by him. Voters wont be either, I suspect.
At least the managed declinists can own this defeat.
Thatcher's brand of capitalism worked as long as there were state assets to flog off and an economic boom - that boom lasted as long as North Sea Oil was a thing and the highly financialised market was stable. Neither of these things can be the cause of a boom any longer, but politicians have refused to understand that means a significantly different kind of politics is needed.
Brexit was a coalition of the typical Tory pensioner who had been radicalised by the papers, the disaffected poor, and a few rich people and the people they tricked into believing that Britain could be a swashbuckling free marketeer again (not that we ever were that). The disaffected poor specifically were kicking back against a system they had seen as failing them (Blairism and then austerity) whilst the Tory pensioners and business people were sheltered from those things by safe pensions and rising house prices so still thought "things could only get better". Notice how those Tories who threaten the safety of pensioners (May with the dementia tax and Truss with her economic mess) were the underperformers / poll losers for the Tories.
We have a system at the moment where economic security is only somewhat guaranteed to our very old (which is a good thing) and very rich, but not any one else (which is a bad thing). So people become extreme and politicians who don't want to deal with the underlying conditions are happy to play culture war instead.
Rishi Sunak
@RishiSunak
United Kingdom government official
There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change.
There is no energy security without investing in renewables.
That is why I will attend
@COP27P
next week: to deliver on Glasgow's legacy of building a secure and sustainable future.
Huzzah!
Do you honestly think there are remainer business people going 'I'm just going to refuse to export to the EU to teach those leavers a lesson'?
So how does a single remainer prevent it from being a success?
The cause of this is complicated - an onerous franchise agreement, a moron MD now departed, and right now a franchise that the DfT won't take full control of (so as not to be responsible) but also one where there is no sanction for the operator and no ability to fix the resource issues. Similar with Northern and Avanti.
So it's broken, nobody is doing anything to fix it, and buck-passing is policy. For all the people who can't get GP appointments or a dentist, this is normal. Saying "an appointment in 14 days" cements the floor of mediocrity, a system that simply has ceased functioning.
That there is no love lost between various leading personalities is fairly obvious, and that the same is true for many members is clear from a scan of comments on ConHome. It already looks as if the free-market Brexiters and the little England Brexiters are falling out after the Truss debacle, and it isn't impossible to see a scenario where the different types of Brexiters come to hate each other more than the growing majority of those who see Brexit as damaging per se.
Government borrowing is just deferred taxation - "borrow money to pay for it" is not an answer to the question "how do you pay for X".
He delayed COVID testing so that he could claim he met his 100k/day testing target. He took lots of money from horseracing, and then surprisingly horseracing got brought back first out of major sports.
Since then he's been shilling crypto.
But generally I would agree - he's probably not the most corrupt and he's certainly not the most useless (Chris Grayling surely still for the win).
https://news.sky.com/story/tax-rises-likely-as-government-faces-unpalatable-menu-to-fill-40bn-black-hole-leading-think-tank-warns-12735375
"Now that you flip flopped on COP27, how long until you flip flop on appointing serial security risk Leaky Sue?"
Figure 4 shows that among the top 10 nationalities leaving detention in the year ending June 2022, in most cases the individual was bailed. Of the top 10, only Albanian, Romanian and Polish nationals saw notable numbers returned to their country of origin.
...
In the year ending March 2022, there were 3,231 enforced returns, 55% fewer than in 2019 pre-pandemic (7,198). The vast majority of enforced returns in the latest year were of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) and 51% were EU nationals.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-year-ending-june-2022/how-many-people-are-detained-or-returned
Not costed, but given diseconomies of lack of scale I would guess shipping a measly 3k people to places they don't wanna go is, what, £100,000 a head inc overheads?
Ditto that the clown desperately wanted May to fail so he could fulfil his lifelong ambition of getting to sit in the big chair.
What solution is there other than talk to them and process them? Do you want them blown out of the water if they try to cross the channel by cannon?
The "Spartans" voted against it every time
If they had started in June 2016 by saying "we lost, but only narrowly, there's a mandate to leave the political structures of the EU but no mandate for a hard Brexit" and actually worked for a soft Brexit from day one then that's what we would have got. Instead they left the choice of Brexit to a majority of a majority, which is still a minority.
Jan 23 trading at ~£3 per therm, compared to a peak of £6-9 over the summer.
Anything between 50p and £1.50 per therm would be normal variation.
If May had whipped her party to support a deal leaving us more closely aligned to the single market it would have passed. Why didn't she do that?
Tories have lost ground 'across the whole of the electorate' and are no longer trusted by public to run the country
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1587753887695392768
It is more different strokes for different folks. Down here in my part of Dorset, the train system works really well. I don't drive - and even if I did, couldn't get to London or any major city faster than by train.
What is broken for some isn't for others - the consequence is that those who don't have a problem are baffled by the need for them to pay ever higher taxes for the bits that are broken, that largely don't affect them.
Its the same for education and health, IMO. I have private healthcare - and if I need to see a GP I fork out £70 or whatever when I'm in town. One of the reasons I favour the proposal (Australian system, I believe?) where those over a certain income threshold pay for insurance or pay a tax surcharge.
Varying degrees of shit, all the way down...
- Cameron offloaded day to day running and updating state provision to "gentleman amateurs" like Gove, Lansley and IDS
- May liked administration but did little other than Brexit
- Johnson didn't do the day job, and did everything last minute and minimal even for COVID, he quiet quit from day 1.
But rather than being bitter and twisted let's look at some facts instead. Any of the 7 non Euro members could easily be incorporated into the Euro, but are allowed not to be. The UK on the other hand is a different kettle of fish. Incorporating us into the Euro is a big task and with dangers to the stability of the Euro if it goes wrong and has disadvantages to us. So even if it were a long term objective I would not see us joining the Euro on joining the EU. That I believe would be a 2 stage affair.
I could be wrong, but I think your assumption is based upon your hatred of the EU and assuming it is reciprocated. You may be right. Hopefully there are enough of us around who don't.
It's really important to understand who the villain of the piece is here, because of the job now held by the ringleader.
If we're talking about immigration in general, or indeed about population numbers, then that's a different conversation. It's one that the Conservatives are very divided on, between the neo-liberals who want freedom of labour and the supply of workers it brings, to be paid for by consequent economic activity, and another group who want low levels of immigration.
I find it literally impossible to imagine what it must be like to be someone who thinks that a raw number comparison with the UK pop 65m would be a useful statistic. Like that "what it is like to be a bat" thing.
We could start a conversation with the EU and actually find out what they would require. I don't think anyone who supports rejoin would say we should rejoin without such a conversation first!
I'm not assuming they're bitter and twisted - logically, losing a member state is bad for them, losing the same one twice could be catastrophic. So the logical thing would be to make rejoining irreversible, and the best way to do that would be to require joining the euro.
He already has a well paid job
He should do it
End of.
From my experience of government services and IT, I think I could save percentages of GDP. This would require, first, investing a lot of money over a number of years. My first target would be process flow automation. DVLA, for example has an incredibly manual processes.
Rather than a big bang. Use a BPMN type tool, which can be used to build flow automation for individual flows.
Internal IT teams, led and partially staffed by permanent staff, bulked out with contractors in the build phase. When the system goes live, the contractors move on, and the permis keep the knowledge.
To give an example - in one alt bank I worked with, the aim was that 99% of sign up, from first contact to a full account with KYC and a card, would require *zero* human intervention.
We can't simultaneously need to spend more and be spending more than we could.