Regarding recent polling, is there any chance of Lee Anderson losing his seat? Every time that scruffy twat appears on telly a little part of what’s left of my faith in the political class dies
i.e. largely, we wish it was 2015 again, when we didn't have the hangover from covid lockdowns to pay for, or high energy prices due to a madman from Russia.
I would argue that fondness for the pre-Brexit era relates largely to issues which are not Brexit related.
I would say it's simpler than that. People heard Brexit will make you better off. People see we've Brexited and we are worse off. Arguing it's more complicated that that, well, that was the Remain line which folk couldn't be bothered listening to.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
I'd be interested to see the stats in where Brits have gone to work abroad pre- and post-Brexit.
My guess (and it is only a guess) is that both pre- and post-Brexit, most working abroad is in Anglophone countries.
There are numerous barriers to working abroad, and the administrative ones are fairly trivial compared to the barriers of language, of culture, of the sheer bloody hassle of uprooting a family and moving them to a different part of the world. If it is worth overcoming those latter barriers, overcoming the right to work issue is fairly minor.
The reality is that for the vast majority of Brits, going to live and work in a country where English is not the first language is such a large barrier to overcome that having the right to do so is irrelevant.
If we had the right to live and work in Australia and New Zealand and Canada, that would be a different matter. But I think we gave that up in 1974.
Top 3 countries to emigrate to from the UK are Australia, the US and Canada. Even Spain only 4th
Thanks HYUFD. And I rather suspect Spain is inflated through people moving there to retire - my guess is that it would perhaps rank lower if only people moving abroad to work were included.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? On my recent jaunt to the North of Finland, I met a Frenchman who had moved there from Lyon. (Lyon, was apparently, too crowded. He must have had a pretty low bar for 'too crowded' if he had to go all the way to Lapland for this criterion to be met. Anyway.) He had been there for 2 years. I asked him how he had managed with the language. He told me he liked a challenge, but had other things he wanted to do with his time than learn Finnish - he got by (including working) using English.
I am utterly baffled by this approach. How can you get by, working, when you don't have the same language as your co-workers? And indeed how can you get by using a language which is neither your first language nor theirs? And, as someone to whom foreign languages have always proved utterly ungraspable*, how do you begin to operate in a language which is not your own? Clearly people do. I just don't understand how.
*I got an A in GCSE German back in the early 90s. But this was based entirely on my ability to speak and write the language, which could be memorised with a bit of work. If I was trying to read or, especially, listen to the language, I largely had to guess what was going on. I just don't understand how people's brains can begin to process language which isn't their own.
I've worked in a few settings in Scandinavia, mostly short visits; longest in one go was six weeks. Likely influenced by me being there, but everything was in English, apart from some of the lunchtime chat.
Variety of settings, couple were universities, where the teams are normally from multiple countries so English the common language anyway, but the six week stint was in a small company (~8 employees) in which everyone else was Swedish.
You underestimate how embedded speaking English is among at least the higher educated in Scandinavia and, indeed, some other countries such as Germany, Denmark etc. Many university courses are largely in English, for example. It's completely second nature.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
That’s what the New Year needs - sunny optimism and fighting talk.
The reality is though its the Tories still slipping this month - going backwards to a new herding around mid to lower 20s. Quite understandable considering lightweight PM Sunak an electoral liability already, and makes Starmer look the better PM option.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
I'd be interested to see the stats in where Brits have gone to work abroad pre- and post-Brexit.
My guess (and it is only a guess) is that both pre- and post-Brexit, most working abroad is in Anglophone countries.
There are numerous barriers to working abroad, and the administrative ones are fairly trivial compared to the barriers of language, of culture, of the sheer bloody hassle of uprooting a family and moving them to a different part of the world. If it is worth overcoming those latter barriers, overcoming the right to work issue is fairly minor.
The reality is that for the vast majority of Brits, going to live and work in a country where English is not the first language is such a large barrier to overcome that having the right to do so is irrelevant.
If we had the right to live and work in Australia and New Zealand and Canada, that would be a different matter. But I think we gave that up in 1974.
Quite. FOM was great in theory for Brits, but in practice they voted with their feet. There are more Brits in Australia alone than in the entire EU.
FOM was great in practice for the EU as nearly 4 times as many EU citizens have made their lives in the U.K. than vice versa.
Just a shame that so many of our services needed those EU citizens in order to run properly, eh?
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Regarding recent polling, is there any chance of Lee Anderson losing his seat? Every time that scruffy twat appears on telly a little part of what’s left of my faith in the political class dies
Electoral Calculus has him coming third. I don't buy that at all, but it very much hinges on who stands for Ashfield Independents and how they pitch it. (Plus swing back of course).
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
It's certainly doable, after it it's how Starmer snuck up on Johnson in the second half of 2021.
Is it likely, given the economic funadmentals? Really unconvinced. (I suspect that the slow blue-to-red drift happened as the post-Covid economic feelgood began to dissipate and prices began to overtake wages for many.)
i.e. largely, we wish it was 2015 again, when we didn't have the hangover from covid lockdowns to pay for, or high energy prices due to a madman from Russia.
I would argue that fondness for the pre-Brexit era relates largely to issues which are not Brexit related.
I would say it's simpler than that. People heard Brexit will make you better off. People see we've Brexited and we are worse off. Arguing it's more complicated that that, well, that was the Remain line which folk couldn't be bothered listening to.
I suspect that a lot of it arises from the thought-provoking impact of running into - minor, in the scheme of things - inconveniences when travelling abroad last year, that weren't there before. I doubt many people have switched their view merely because of being held up when travelling, but while they were standing there it would be only natural to start wondering what the point of it all was?
And as the Economist points out in its current issue, there really hasn't been any benefit, at all.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Are there any stats on who moves where? There could be some interesting analysis in this. My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
What is clear is that the GOP establishment no longer have full control of the party. Trumpites can veto anything they propose, even their choice of Speaker
Given that this bunch are competely ignoring Trump himself, are they even Trumpites at this point? We need a new name clearly...
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? The Fistful of Dollars? The Unforgiven? The Million Dollar Babies? The Dirty Harry’s?
The Dirty Harry’s for me 🚬
The MAGGATS.
MagHats?
Fully Unhinged Conservative Knuckleheads Who Ignore Trump's Sensitivities?
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Part of the problem is the unshakeable belief that admitting there is an issue from either side is verboten.
We got here via a series of decisions that built a structure. In the UK it was something like
1) Deregulated labour market 2) FOM 3) An insistence on a labour market with no barriers to entry. 4) Shout down anyone who raised issues. 5) Refusal to discuss changes to the labour market system 6) BREXIT
In France it was something like
1) Highly stratified labour market - part is incredibly protected. 2) FOM 3) Point at 1, ignore those not protected. 4) No FREXIT, but a bunch voting for the National Ramblers.
I by no means think the current FOM is perfect . And changes should be made but in other EU countries FOM isn’t such a divisive issue .
The immigration from outside the EU is the biggest issue .
The point was making, is that other countries adapted or had existing policies that altered the effects of FOM.
The UK chose, repeatedly, to do nothing about the issues which were raised.
If we do nothing about those issues, it is highly probable that FOM won't be reintroduced.
I agree - the reaction was one of perceived “unfairness”. “EU citizens coming over here and getting free health care, benefits, taking up school places and social housing.” The fact that the overwhelming majority were young workers making net contributions to the economy was not seen. Being denounced as racist for raising these issues (in one of the least racist countries on the planet) was not a persuasive argument. In many ways, like Trump, BREXIT was a brick through the window, NOW will you listen?
The very frustrating thing about all of this is that instead of using the tools at its disposal to mitigate the negative impact people were feeling (or perceived to be feeling) from FOM: i.e:
1. Proper communication of information about benefits of FOM rather than relying on sloganeering or using it as convenient tool to bash the “other” (I.e the EU) with; 2. Legislative changes within member state competencies to mitigate the impact; 3. Actually using our voice in Europe to agree mitigating rules/policies/EU-level legislative change.
The government just got used to shrugging their shoulders and leaning into the “nothing we can do guys, it’s the EU rules innit” narrative. Convenient for them because it gave them someone else to blame, but look at the problems it’s caused in the long run.
In the last 24 hours I have taken my son and daughter in law to Heathrow for today's return flight to Vancouver
Yesterday the M6, M6 toll, M42, M40, M25, and M4 were almost like a Sunday with surprisingly less traffic then I have ever experienced and no delays
Similarly my return from Banbury early this morning (stayed overnight in Banbury) was even quieter
Where has everyone gone or is everyone now working from home and if so this must raise serious questions about the railways and City offices going forward
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
OTOH, Tories only need to slip an average of a point a month and Labour increase a point a month this year for Rishi to lead the Tories to an extinction event in the election next year
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Part of the problem is the unshakeable belief that admitting there is an issue from either side is verboten.
We got here via a series of decisions that built a structure. In the UK it was something like
1) Deregulated labour market 2) FOM 3) An insistence on a labour market with no barriers to entry. 4) Shout down anyone who raised issues. 5) Refusal to discuss changes to the labour market system 6) BREXIT
In France it was something like
1) Highly stratified labour market - part is incredibly protected. 2) FOM 3) Point at 1, ignore those not protected. 4) No FREXIT, but a bunch voting for the National Ramblers.
I by no means think the current FOM is perfect . And changes should be made but in other EU countries FOM isn’t such a divisive issue .
The immigration from outside the EU is the biggest issue .
The point was making, is that other countries adapted or had existing policies that altered the effects of FOM.
The UK chose, repeatedly, to do nothing about the issues which were raised.
If we do nothing about those issues, it is highly probable that FOM won't be reintroduced.
I agree - the reaction was one of perceived “unfairness”. “EU citizens coming over here and getting free health care, benefits, taking up school places and social housing.” The fact that the overwhelming majority were young workers making net contributions to the economy was not seen. Being denounced as racist for raising these issues (in one of the least racist countries on the planet) was not a persuasive argument. In many ways, like Trump, BREXIT was a brick through the window, NOW will you listen?
And what is a brick through the window supposed to persuade anyone of ?
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Are there any stats on who moves where? There could be some interesting analysis in this. My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Part of the problem is the unshakeable belief that admitting there is an issue from either side is verboten.
We got here via a series of decisions that built a structure. In the UK it was something like
1) Deregulated labour market 2) FOM 3) An insistence on a labour market with no barriers to entry. 4) Shout down anyone who raised issues. 5) Refusal to discuss changes to the labour market system 6) BREXIT
In France it was something like
1) Highly stratified labour market - part is incredibly protected. 2) FOM 3) Point at 1, ignore those not protected. 4) No FREXIT, but a bunch voting for the National Ramblers.
I by no means think the current FOM is perfect . And changes should be made but in other EU countries FOM isn’t such a divisive issue .
The immigration from outside the EU is the biggest issue .
The point was making, is that other countries adapted or had existing policies that altered the effects of FOM.
The UK chose, repeatedly, to do nothing about the issues which were raised.
If we do nothing about those issues, it is highly probable that FOM won't be reintroduced.
I agree - the reaction was one of perceived “unfairness”. “EU citizens coming over here and getting free health care, benefits, taking up school places and social housing.” The fact that the overwhelming majority were young workers making net contributions to the economy was not seen. Being denounced as racist for raising these issues (in one of the least racist countries on the planet) was not a persuasive argument. In many ways, like Trump, BREXIT was a brick through the window, NOW will you listen?
And what is a brick through the window supposed to persuade anyone of ?
That rarest of things, the necessity of making a call to a double glazing company?
Which makes me wonder, what are erstwhile double glazing salespeople doing nowadays? Flogging insulation?
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
Across the EU 4% of the population are other EU citizens, while 5% are non-EU citizens. Of course the range varies hugely, but in France, for example, other-EU citizens make up 2% of the population, while non-EU 6%. As noted upthread, some countries have found ways of making FOM difficult in practice. For perspective the non-U.K. born population of England & Wales is 17%
Regarding recent polling, is there any chance of Lee Anderson losing his seat? Every time that scruffy twat appears on telly a little part of what’s left of my faith in the political class dies
Electoral Calculus has him coming third. I don't buy that at all, but it very much hinges on who stands for Ashfield Independents and how they pitch it. (Plus swing back of course).
I think Zadrozny may well get in as an independent.
i.e. largely, we wish it was 2015 again, when we didn't have the hangover from covid lockdowns to pay for, or high energy prices due to a madman from Russia.
I would argue that fondness for the pre-Brexit era relates largely to issues which are not Brexit related.
I would say it's simpler than that. People heard Brexit will make you better off. People see we've Brexited and we are worse off. Arguing it's more complicated that that, well, that was the Remain line which folk couldn't be bothered listening to.
I suspect that a lot of it arises from the thought-provoking impact of running into - minor, in the scheme of things - inconveniences when travelling abroad last year, that weren't there before. I doubt many people have switched their view merely because of being held up when travelling, but while they were standing there it would be only natural to start wondering what the point of it all was?
And as the Economist points out in its current issue, there really hasn't been any benefit, at all.
Don't think so much. As many Leavers point out. A large part of it was a vote of rage and frustration at low wages, lack of opportunities and failing public services. The now will you listen vote? And the result? Falling real wages, fewer opportunities and public services which have collapsed. This may not be entirely causal, but that is almost totally irrelevant to folk. That YouGov shows many have caught on.
In the last 24 hours I have taken my son and daughter in law to Heathrow for today's return flight to Vancouver
Yesterday the M6, M6 toll, M42, M40, M25, and M4 were almost like a Sunday with surprisingly less traffic then I have ever experienced and no delays
Similarly my return from Banbury early this morning (stayed overnight in Banbury) was even quieter
Where has everyone gone or is everyone now working from home and if so this must raise serious questions about the railways and City offices going forward
Train strikes have definitely had an impact. Interestingly (purely anecdotally) before late-Autumn the trend I was seeing was that commuting was really accelerating at pace, but as the strikes hit there has been a noticeable and measurable drop in people commuting again.
In all honesty I think this will be the final nail - people just seem to have made up their minds now that majority office working comes with too many hurdles and not enough people are doing it to make it worth their while.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? On my recent jaunt to the North of Finland, I met a Frenchman who had moved there from Lyon. (Lyon, was apparently, too crowded. He must have had a pretty low bar for 'too crowded' if he had to go all the way to Lapland for this criterion to be met. Anyway.) He had been there for 2 years. I asked him how he had managed with the language. He told me he liked a challenge, but had other things he wanted to do with his time than learn Finnish - he got by (including working) using English.
I am utterly baffled by this approach. How can you get by, working, when you don't have the same language as your co-workers? And indeed how can you get by using a language which is neither your first language nor theirs? And, as someone to whom foreign languages have always proved utterly ungraspable*, how do you begin to operate in a language which is not your own? Clearly people do. I just don't understand how.
*I got an A in GCSE German back in the early 90s. But this was based entirely on my ability to speak and write the language, which could be memorised with a bit of work. If I was trying to read or, especially, listen to the language, I largely had to guess what was going on. I just don't understand how people's brains can begin to process language which isn't their own.
I struggled to a C in O level German and it comprised perhaps a third of my total O level workload. It was uphill, I wasn't a big foreign traveller as a kid, and once I'd passed, with no need to use it, it went. I topped up in a Saturday class for a bit around 2000, and could just string together some very basic tourist stuff from a bit of memory by the time I had a few visits between 2017-9.
I contrast that with my Italian from actually living there, and it is a different thing. In the lab was mixed, basic conversation in Italian, some technical in English and I hung around quite a bit with British people when I first lived there. There was a lot of switching, a lot of Italish. I ended up house sharing with Italians and that's when I really kicked on and I retain some reading understanding to this day, though I have to get my ear in to listen well.
And I come to the conclusion that language teaching at school in the UK is too often pushing water uphill. To do it well, you need to go with the synergies - where do people holiday? what are the languages you might hear locally? I'd suspect German rather than romance languages is rarely the right answer - indeed I think German has lost ground to Spanish in schools over the years (and I regret not doing French in hindsight). But, there are circumstances in which the class or religion of the school might determine whether French or Spanish or Polish or something else is the right answer.
Being denounced as racist for raising these issues (in one of the least racist countries on the planet) was not a persuasive argument. In many ways, like Trump, BREXIT was a brick through the window, NOW will you listen?
Except the 'message' in that analogy is entirely racist.
i.e. largely, we wish it was 2015 again, when we didn't have the hangover from covid lockdowns to pay for, or high energy prices due to a madman from Russia.
I would argue that fondness for the pre-Brexit era relates largely to issues which are not Brexit related.
I would say it's simpler than that. People heard Brexit will make you better off. People see we've Brexited and we are worse off. Arguing it's more complicated that that, well, that was the Remain line which folk couldn't be bothered listening to.
I suspect that a lot of it arises from the thought-provoking impact of running into - minor, in the scheme of things - inconveniences when travelling abroad last year, that weren't there before. I doubt many people have switched their view merely because of being held up when travelling, but while they were standing there it would be only natural to start wondering what the point of it all was?
And as the Economist points out in its current issue, there really hasn't been any benefit, at all.
I think we discussed this yesterday - but I don't agree. Based on my own very limited experience, and on admittedly limited anecdotal evidence of those I know who have travelled abroad, most people's experience of post-Brexit European travel is almost imperceptibly different from their experience of pre-Brexit European travel.
The Economist is looking at the macroeconomic level. Many individuals (e.g. lorry drivers) will have seen demand for their skills increase significantly. For many Brexit voters, there have been clear benefits. They're better off because of Brexit, though often this is eroded by worse-off because of covid-and-Ukraine driven inflation.
And many - most? - Brexit voters, ISTR, did not vote for Brexit for economic reasons but in order to retain some level of democratic control over their destiny. That's real, and has happened. You might argue our democratic control is weak, but that is a step up from nonexistent. You might argue that we haven't used our post-Brexit freedoms terribly well yet. But that doesn't mean the exercise was pointless.
TLDR - the Economist is judging this by the wrong metrics.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
The grandkids will just have to make do with the house....
On which subject: I am seeing increasingly frantic reports in the media of falling house prices. This is being reported in the tone that falling house prices are a bad thing. My guess is that most people who have thought about the matter have a view on what the 'right' value of houses should be - no-one genuinely thinks it a good thing if house prices continue to significantly outpace inflation, nor to fall away to nothing. My view is that house prices are some way above this 'right' level*, and have been for some time - and therefore, falling house prices are to be welcomed (cautiously - clearly there are winners and losers to this, and we don't want too many losers losing too much too quickly - a 'rebalancing' is probably preferable to a 'shock'.) My guess is that this has gone from being a minority position (as it probably would have been, in say, 1992) to a majority position (i.e. most people would welcome lower house prices). But again, this is a guess, and I would be genuinely interested if there is any evidence to where the balance lies.
(I am (largely through good fortune) a homeowner, so am notionally well off as a result of high house prices - but it is entirely notional: I need exactly one house to live in; I have no particular desire to move to another house, but if I did that other house would be expensive too. But I would like, one day, my children to be able to afford to be homeowners.)
*The 'right' level, for me, is that a steady but not necessarily massively well-paid middle class job - teacher, say, or policeman - should pay enough to be able to afford a mortgage on a 'normal' house - a three bed semi in Timperley, say - without needing an inheritance or other intergenerational assistance.
Apologies to keep bringing up same issue, but the fundamental problem is that house prices are falling, whilst build costs are rising, due to labour cost inflation and undersupply, and the rising cost of materials, and there is an increase in regulation around new building. Until build costs fall to the same degree as house prices, we are in deep trouble, because no houses can be built: the development industry will crash in large parts of the country. The only option open to the government is to deregulate, but they are heading in the opposite direction, more and more regulation, it is a bureaucrats bonanza - for instance, flats above a certain height now need to have two stairwells so there is an alternative fire exit.
I agree that house prices are too high, but ultimately house price inflation cannot be disentangled from general inflation. What I do think though is that undersupply in large parts of the country means that prices cannot fall that much, particularly given population increase.
Are you sure about his lack of building ?
There's about 6 new estates going up within a 5 mile radius circle of my house.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Are there any stats on who moves where? There could be some interesting analysis in this. My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
In general Western Europeans do not share the stark British terror of learning a foreign language so I don't think that is too much of a factor. The younger ones follow employment, educational and cultural opportunities so they end up in cities like Bruxelles, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The older ones follow the sun south.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
I miss all your Starmer baiting. Brittas, Captain Hindsight, Keith Stormer. You don't appear to have your heart in it any more.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
Across the EU 4% of the population are other EU citizens, while 5% are non-EU citizens. Of course the range varies hugely, but in France, for example, other-EU citizens make up 2% of the population, while non-EU 6%. As noted upthread, some countries have found ways of making FOM difficult in practice. For perspective the non-U.K. born population of England & Wales is 17%
Austria is surprisingly high, France and the Netherlands surprisingly low. The large share of non-EU citizens in Estonia and Latvia shouldn't need much explanation.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
For Rishi to be back in the game the Tories need a lead of 4-5%. Worse than that then Starmer would likely become PM
Regarding recent polling, is there any chance of Lee Anderson losing his seat? Every time that scruffy twat appears on telly a little part of what’s left of my faith in the political class dies
Electoral Calculus has him coming third. I don't buy that at all, but it very much hinges on who stands for Ashfield Independents and how they pitch it. (Plus swing back of course).
I think Zadrozny may well get in as an independent.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
I'd be interested to see the stats in where Brits have gone to work abroad pre- and post-Brexit.
My guess (and it is only a guess) is that both pre- and post-Brexit, most working abroad is in Anglophone countries.
There are numerous barriers to working abroad, and the administrative ones are fairly trivial compared to the barriers of language, of culture, of the sheer bloody hassle of uprooting a family and moving them to a different part of the world. If it is worth overcoming those latter barriers, overcoming the right to work issue is fairly minor.
The reality is that for the vast majority of Brits, going to live and work in a country where English is not the first language is such a large barrier to overcome that having the right to do so is irrelevant.
If we had the right to live and work in Australia and New Zealand and Canada, that would be a different matter. But I think we gave that up in 1974.
Top 3 countries to emigrate to from the UK are Australia, the US and Canada. Even Spain only 4th
Thanks HYUFD. And I rather suspect Spain is inflated through people moving there to retire - my guess is that it would perhaps rank lower if only people moving abroad to work were included.
As usual with the internet it is not necessarily factual. I was surprised France wasn't in the top 10 list so I looked elsewhere and there are lots of lists all different. However the top 4 seem consistent.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
The grandkids will just have to make do with the house....
On which subject: I am seeing increasingly frantic reports in the media of falling house prices. This is being reported in the tone that falling house prices are a bad thing. My guess is that most people who have thought about the matter have a view on what the 'right' value of houses should be - no-one genuinely thinks it a good thing if house prices continue to significantly outpace inflation, nor to fall away to nothing. My view is that house prices are some way above this 'right' level*, and have been for some time - and therefore, falling house prices are to be welcomed (cautiously - clearly there are winners and losers to this, and we don't want too many losers losing too much too quickly - a 'rebalancing' is probably preferable to a 'shock'.) My guess is that this has gone from being a minority position (as it probably would have been, in say, 1992) to a majority position (i.e. most people would welcome lower house prices). But again, this is a guess, and I would be genuinely interested if there is any evidence to where the balance lies.
(I am (largely through good fortune) a homeowner, so am notionally well off as a result of high house prices - but it is entirely notional: I need exactly one house to live in; I have no particular desire to move to another house, but if I did that other house would be expensive too. But I would like, one day, my children to be able to afford to be homeowners.)
*The 'right' level, for me, is that a steady but not necessarily massively well-paid middle class job - teacher, say, or policeman - should pay enough to be able to afford a mortgage on a 'normal' house - a three bed semi in Timperley, say - without needing an inheritance or other intergenerational assistance.
Apologies to keep bringing up same issue, but the fundamental problem is that house prices are falling, whilst build costs are rising, due to labour cost inflation and undersupply, and the rising cost of materials, and there is an increase in regulation around new building. Until build costs fall to the same degree as house prices, we are in deep trouble, because no houses can be built: the development industry will crash in large parts of the country. The only option open to the government is to deregulate, but they are heading in the opposite direction, more and more regulation, it is a bureaucrats bonanza - for instance, flats above a certain height now need to have two stairwells so there is an alternative fire exit.
I agree that house prices are too high, but ultimately house price inflation cannot be disentangled from general inflation. What I do think though is that undersupply in large parts of the country means that prices cannot fall that much, particularly given population increase.
Are you sure about his lack of building ?
There's about 6 new estates going up within a 5 mile radius circle of my house.
In Southern Hampshire if feels like every field is being filled with houses, and we are getting a whole new town shortly, Welbourne.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
For Rishi to be back in the game the Tories need a lead of 4-5%. Worse than that then Starmer would likely become PM
At the election, perhaps (though I still think you're overselling the certainty of hung parliament = Sir Keir becomes PM).
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
Across the EU 4% of the population are other EU citizens, while 5% are non-EU citizens. Of course the range varies hugely, but in France, for example, other-EU citizens make up 2% of the population, while non-EU 6%. As noted upthread, some countries have found ways of making FOM difficult in practice. For perspective the non-U.K. born population of England & Wales is 17%
Austria is surprisingly high, France and the Netherlands surprisingly low. The large share of non-EU citizens in Estonia and Latvia shouldn't need much explanation.
Austria is a small-ish country with a large country next door which speaks the same language. My guess is that there are a lot of Germans in Austria. Apologies if I'm sounding a bit obsessed with language. I really can't not see it as the main issue.
In the last 24 hours I have taken my son and daughter in law to Heathrow for today's return flight to Vancouver
Yesterday the M6, M6 toll, M42, M40, M25, and M4 were almost like a Sunday with surprisingly less traffic then I have ever experienced and no delays
Similarly my return from Banbury early this morning (stayed overnight in Banbury) was even quieter
Where has everyone gone or is everyone now working from home and if so this must raise serious questions about the railways and City offices going forward
Train strikes have definitely had an impact. Interestingly (purely anecdotally) before late-Autumn the trend I was seeing was that commuting was really accelerating at pace, but as the strikes hit there has been a noticeable and measurable drop in people commuting again.
In all honesty I think this will be the final nail - people just seem to have made up their minds now that majority office working comes with too many hurdles and not enough people are doing it to make it worth their while.
It certainly seems possible as yesterday and today I travelled 520 miles on UK principle motorways and it was almost sereal how quieter they were, though plenty of hgvs and vans
In the last 24 hours I have taken my son and daughter in law to Heathrow for today's return flight to Vancouver
Yesterday the M6, M6 toll, M42, M40, M25, and M4 were almost like a Sunday with surprisingly less traffic then I have ever experienced and no delays
Similarly my return from Banbury early this morning (stayed overnight in Banbury) was even quieter
Where has everyone gone or is everyone now working from home and if so this must raise serious questions about the railways and City offices going forward
Two possible other contributory explanations. From my anecdotal experience folk were determined to have a proper Christmas after the last two. I didn't see much scrimping. Therefore, a large number are now skint. So aren't going anywhere soon for pleasure. Secondly. Schools haven't gone back yet in many places. We aren't back till the 10th.
And many - most? - Brexit voters, ISTR, did not vote for Brexit for economic reasons but in order to retain some level of democratic control over their destiny. That's real, and has happened. You might argue our democratic control is weak, but that is a step up from nonexistent. You might argue that we haven't used our post-Brexit freedoms terribly well yet. But that doesn't mean the exercise was pointless.
We have less democratic control than before.
We used to be able to vote Dan Hannan out of office.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? On my recent jaunt to the North of Finland, I met a Frenchman who had moved there from Lyon. (Lyon, was apparently, too crowded. He must have had a pretty low bar for 'too crowded' if he had to go all the way to Lapland for this criterion to be met. Anyway.) He had been there for 2 years. I asked him how he had managed with the language. He told me he liked a challenge, but had other things he wanted to do with his time than learn Finnish - he got by (including working) using English.
I am utterly baffled by this approach. How can you get by, working, when you don't have the same language as your co-workers? And indeed how can you get by using a language which is neither your first language nor theirs? And, as someone to whom foreign languages have always proved utterly ungraspable*, how do you begin to operate in a language which is not your own? Clearly people do. I just don't understand how.
*I got an A in GCSE German back in the early 90s. But this was based entirely on my ability to speak and write the language, which could be memorised with a bit of work. If I was trying to read or, especially, listen to the language, I largely had to guess what was going on. I just don't understand how people's brains can begin to process language which isn't their own.
I struggled to a C in O level German and it comprised perhaps a third of my total O level workload. It was uphill, I wasn't a big foreign traveller as a kid, and once I'd passed, with no need to use it, it went. I topped up in a Saturday class for a bit around 2000, and could just string together some very basic tourist stuff from a bit of memory by the time I had a few visits between 2017-9.
I contrast that with my Italian from actually living there, and it is a different thing. In the lab was mixed, basic conversation in Italian, some technical in English and I hung around quite a bit with British people when I first lived there. There was a lot of switching, a lot of Italish. I ended up house sharing with Italians and that's when I really kicked on and I retain some reading understanding to this day, though I have to get my ear in to listen well.
And I come to the conclusion that language teaching at school in the UK is too often pushing water uphill. To do it well, you need to go with the synergies - where do people holiday? what are the languages you might hear locally? I'd suspect German rather than romance languages is rarely the right answer - indeed I think German has lost ground to Spanish in schools over the years (and I regret not doing French in hindsight). But, there are circumstances in which the class or religion of the school might determine whether French or Spanish or Polish or something else is the right answer.
Life is very unfair on the Brit. English is the most common second language taught to pesky foreigners, and they learn it pretty well. For the Brits is not clear which language to learn (French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Japanese) and frankly since everyone else speaks really good English, why bother. And even when we do try, as others report, the pesky foreigners speak back in English.
And as Leon will no doubt chip in when he rears Kraken-like XBB1.5-like, AI will soon translate every language directly into your ear, in the style of the legendary Babel Fish.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Are there any stats on who moves where? There could be some interesting analysis in this. My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
In general Western Europeans do not share the stark British terror of learning a foreign language so I don't think that is too much of a factor. The younger ones follow employment, educational and cultural opportunities so they end up in cities like Bruxelles, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The older ones follow the sun south.
Why do you think that is? Is it that Europeans are simply more exposed to other languages (principally, I suppose, English) through film, pop music, etc? I don't think I was ever terrified of learning a language - indeed, ISTR, I was quite keen to do so; I am genuinely very interested in language - but once it moved beyond simply memorising vocab, I simply couldn't do it.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
The grandkids will just have to make do with the house....
On which subject: I am seeing increasingly frantic reports in the media of falling house prices. This is being reported in the tone that falling house prices are a bad thing. My guess is that most people who have thought about the matter have a view on what the 'right' value of houses should be - no-one genuinely thinks it a good thing if house prices continue to significantly outpace inflation, nor to fall away to nothing. My view is that house prices are some way above this 'right' level*, and have been for some time - and therefore, falling house prices are to be welcomed (cautiously - clearly there are winners and losers to this, and we don't want too many losers losing too much too quickly - a 'rebalancing' is probably preferable to a 'shock'.) My guess is that this has gone from being a minority position (as it probably would have been, in say, 1992) to a majority position (i.e. most people would welcome lower house prices). But again, this is a guess, and I would be genuinely interested if there is any evidence to where the balance lies.
(I am (largely through good fortune) a homeowner, so am notionally well off as a result of high house prices - but it is entirely notional: I need exactly one house to live in; I have no particular desire to move to another house, but if I did that other house would be expensive too. But I would like, one day, my children to be able to afford to be homeowners.)
*The 'right' level, for me, is that a steady but not necessarily massively well-paid middle class job - teacher, say, or policeman - should pay enough to be able to afford a mortgage on a 'normal' house - a three bed semi in Timperley, say - without needing an inheritance or other intergenerational assistance.
Apologies to keep bringing up same issue, but the fundamental problem is that house prices are falling, whilst build costs are rising, due to labour cost inflation and undersupply, and the rising cost of materials, and there is an increase in regulation around new building. Until build costs fall to the same degree as house prices, we are in deep trouble, because no houses can be built: the development industry will crash in large parts of the country. The only option open to the government is to deregulate, but they are heading in the opposite direction, more and more regulation, it is a bureaucrats bonanza - for instance, flats above a certain height now need to have two stairwells so there is an alternative fire exit.
I agree that house prices are too high, but ultimately house price inflation cannot be disentangled from general inflation. What I do think though is that undersupply in large parts of the country means that prices cannot fall that much, particularly given population increase.
Falling house prices will eventually mean falling rent, as well. Which will mean cheaper labour costs, as people won't need such big pay rises to actually pay for accomodation.
This will reduce, in turn, the cost of building new properties.
Any vaguely significant block of flats should have two stairwells, and be designed so that they can work as alternative escape routes.
Being denounced as racist for raising these issues (in one of the least racist countries on the planet) was not a persuasive argument. In many ways, like Trump, BREXIT was a brick through the window, NOW will you listen?
Except the 'message' in that analogy is entirely racist.
"We don't want foreigners coming here"
We heard the message, and now we're fucked
Every country in the world controls immigration, so by your account every country in the world is racist. Unless you think it is non-racist to think there are right and wrong sorts of foreigner?
And many - most? - Brexit voters, ISTR, did not vote for Brexit for economic reasons but in order to retain some level of democratic control over their destiny. That's real, and has happened. You might argue our democratic control is weak, but that is a step up from nonexistent. You might argue that we haven't used our post-Brexit freedoms terribly well yet. But that doesn't mean the exercise was pointless.
We have less democratic control than before.
We used to be able to vote Dan Hannan out of office.
Now he has a job in our legislature for life.
We have exactly the same number of House of Lordses in our decision-making process that we did before Brexit. But fewer European Commissions.
In general Western Europeans do not share the stark British terror of learning a foreign language so I don't think that is too much of a factor. The younger ones follow employment, educational and cultural opportunities so they end up in cities like Bruxelles, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The older ones follow the sun south.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Are there any stats on who moves where? There could be some interesting analysis in this. My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
In general Western Europeans do not share the stark British terror of learning a foreign language so I don't think that is too much of a factor. The younger ones follow employment, educational and cultural opportunities so they end up in cities like Bruxelles, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The older ones follow the sun south.
Why do you think that is? Is it that Europeans are simply more exposed to other languages (principally, I suppose, English) through film, pop music, etc? I don't think I was ever terrified of learning a language - indeed, ISTR, I was quite keen to do so; I am genuinely very interested in language - but once it moved beyond simply memorising vocab, I simply couldn't do it.
I genuinely think its easier for most Western Europeans to learn English than for the Brit to learn other languages. Like it or not English dominates the world, whether by film, TV or music. Its the automatic second language choice in a way that is much harder for Brits (which do we choose? French, German, Japanese, Spanish etc).
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Part of the problem is the unshakeable belief that admitting there is an issue from either side is verboten.
We got here via a series of decisions that built a structure. In the UK it was something like
1) Deregulated labour market 2) FOM 3) An insistence on a labour market with no barriers to entry. 4) Shout down anyone who raised issues. 5) Refusal to discuss changes to the labour market system 6) BREXIT
In France it was something like
1) Highly stratified labour market - part is incredibly protected. 2) FOM 3) Point at 1, ignore those not protected. 4) No FREXIT, but a bunch voting for the National Ramblers.
I by no means think the current FOM is perfect . And changes should be made but in other EU countries FOM isn’t such a divisive issue .
The immigration from outside the EU is the biggest issue .
The point was making, is that other countries adapted or had existing policies that altered the effects of FOM.
The UK chose, repeatedly, to do nothing about the issues which were raised.
If we do nothing about those issues, it is highly probable that FOM won't be reintroduced.
I agree - the reaction was one of perceived “unfairness”. “EU citizens coming over here and getting free health care, benefits, taking up school places and social housing.” The fact that the overwhelming majority were young workers making net contributions to the economy was not seen. Being denounced as racist for raising these issues (in one of the least racist countries on the planet) was not a persuasive argument. In many ways, like Trump, BREXIT was a brick through the window, NOW will you listen?
The very frustrating thing about all of this is that instead of using the tools at its disposal to mitigate the negative impact people were feeling (or perceived to be feeling) from FOM: i.e:
1. Proper communication of information about benefits of FOM rather than relying on sloganeering or using it as convenient tool to bash the “other” (I.e the EU) with; 2. Legislative changes within member state competencies to mitigate the impact; 3. Actually using our voice in Europe to agree mitigating rules/policies/EU-level legislative change.
The government just got used to shrugging their shoulders and leaning into the “nothing we can do guys, it’s the EU rules innit” narrative. Convenient for them because it gave them someone else to blame, but look at the problems it’s caused in the long run.
Limiting benefits (as other countries do) was seen as impossible - complete re-write of the system, plus there would be the accusations of racism at withdrawing benefits from foreigners.
It's a bit like the stripping people of citizenship thing - a response in a series of action-response-action-response etc that goes back at least to the 1990s
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
Across the EU 4% of the population are other EU citizens, while 5% are non-EU citizens. Of course the range varies hugely, but in France, for example, other-EU citizens make up 2% of the population, while non-EU 6%. As noted upthread, some countries have found ways of making FOM difficult in practice. For perspective the non-U.K. born population of England & Wales is 17%
Austria is surprisingly high, France and the Netherlands surprisingly low. The large share of non-EU citizens in Estonia and Latvia shouldn't need much explanation.
Austria is a small-ish country with a large country next door which speaks the same language. My guess is that there are a lot of Germans in Austria. Apologies if I'm sounding a bit obsessed with language. I really can't not see it as the main issue.
That's true, but it's also a poorer country, so you'd expect the net flow to be the other way. Unless it's a case of moving to retire not to work?
Being denounced as racist for raising these issues (in one of the least racist countries on the planet) was not a persuasive argument. In many ways, like Trump, BREXIT was a brick through the window, NOW will you listen?
Except the 'message' in that analogy is entirely racist.
"We don't want foreigners coming here"
We heard the message, and now we're fucked
Why has the U.K. (or E&W, which didn’t screw up their census) got nearly twice as many foreign born residents than the EU and more than any large EU country? Rest easy, immigration is continuing at a high level, just we’re choosing who comes.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Are there any stats on who moves where? There could be some interesting analysis in this. My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
In general Western Europeans do not share the stark British terror of learning a foreign language so I don't think that is too much of a factor. The younger ones follow employment, educational and cultural opportunities so they end up in cities like Bruxelles, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The older ones follow the sun south.
British people aren't afraid to learn a foreign language. They just generally don't need to, and if they try to speak a foreign language in that language's country they usually find people speaking english back at them.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Are there any stats on who moves where? There could be some interesting analysis in this. My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
In general Western Europeans do not share the stark British terror of learning a foreign language so I don't think that is too much of a factor. The younger ones follow employment, educational and cultural opportunities so they end up in cities like Bruxelles, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The older ones follow the sun south.
Why do you think that is? Is it that Europeans are simply more exposed to other languages (principally, I suppose, English) through film, pop music, etc? I don't think I was ever terrified of learning a language - indeed, ISTR, I was quite keen to do so; I am genuinely very interested in language - but once it moved beyond simply memorising vocab, I simply couldn't do it.
I genuinely think its easier for most Western Europeans to learn English than for the Brit to learn other languages. Like it or not English dominates the world, whether by film, TV or music. Its the automatic second language choice in a way that is much harder for Brits (which do we choose? French, German, Japanese, Spanish etc).
Helpfully, this specifically is not a problem in the USA where Spanish is naturally the most-taught language, outstripping all others by an order of magnitude.
And many - most? - Brexit voters, ISTR, did not vote for Brexit for economic reasons but in order to retain some level of democratic control over their destiny. That's real, and has happened. You might argue our democratic control is weak, but that is a step up from nonexistent. You might argue that we haven't used our post-Brexit freedoms terribly well yet. But that doesn't mean the exercise was pointless.
We have less democratic control than before.
We used to be able to vote Dan Hannan out of office.
Now he has a job in our legislature for life.
Even by your standards this is idiotic. We can vote him out of office by electing a government to abolish the Lords.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Are there any stats on who moves where? There could be some interesting analysis in this. My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
In general Western Europeans do not share the stark British terror of learning a foreign language so I don't think that is too much of a factor. The younger ones follow employment, educational and cultural opportunities so they end up in cities like Bruxelles, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The older ones follow the sun south.
British people aren't afraid to learn a foreign language. They just generally don't need to, and if they try to speak a foreign language in that language's country they usually find people speaking english back at them.
Quite. Eventually you stop trying, because everyone you want to practise on, wants to practise on you.
In the last 24 hours I have taken my son and daughter in law to Heathrow for today's return flight to Vancouver
Yesterday the M6, M6 toll, M42, M40, M25, and M4 were almost like a Sunday with surprisingly less traffic then I have ever experienced and no delays
Similarly my return from Banbury early this morning (stayed overnight in Banbury) was even quieter
Where has everyone gone or is everyone now working from home and if so this must raise serious questions about the railways and City offices going forward
Two possible other contributory explanations. From my anecdotal experience folk were determined to have a proper Christmas after the last two. I didn't see much scrimping. Therefore, a large number are now skint. So aren't going anywhere soon for pleasure. Secondly. Schools haven't gone back yet in many places. We aren't back till the 10th.
Didn’t see that at Gatwick - Emirates are sending two full A380s to Dubai daily….
We have exactly the same number of House of Lordses in our decision-making process that we did before Brexit. But fewer European Commissions.
Which doesn't negate my point or answer the question, "how do we get rid of him now?"
No, but the same is true pre- and post-Brexit of any lord or bishop. The HoL is a daft anachronism. The fact it now has an additional Lord you dislike personally doesn't make it any less democratic. The answer to your question, of course, is 'elect a government which will abolish the House of Lords'.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Are there any stats on who moves where? There could be some interesting analysis in this. My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
In general Western Europeans do not share the stark British terror of learning a foreign language so I don't think that is too much of a factor. The younger ones follow employment, educational and cultural opportunities so they end up in cities like Bruxelles, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The older ones follow the sun south.
Why do you think that is? Is it that Europeans are simply more exposed to other languages (principally, I suppose, English) through film, pop music, etc? I don't think I was ever terrified of learning a language - indeed, ISTR, I was quite keen to do so; I am genuinely very interested in language - but once it moved beyond simply memorising vocab, I simply couldn't do it.
I genuinely think its easier for most Western Europeans to learn English than for the Brit to learn other languages. Like it or not English dominates the world, whether by film, TV or music. Its the automatic second language choice in a way that is much harder for Brits (which do we choose? French, German, Japanese, Spanish etc).
It's true that they are exposed to English whether they like it or not, but it's never been easier for anyone to learn a foreign language thanks to the internet. You can immerse yourself in the most exotic language you like without leaving home.
In the last 24 hours I have taken my son and daughter in law to Heathrow for today's return flight to Vancouver
Yesterday the M6, M6 toll, M42, M40, M25, and M4 were almost like a Sunday with surprisingly less traffic then I have ever experienced and no delays
Similarly my return from Banbury early this morning (stayed overnight in Banbury) was even quieter
Where has everyone gone or is everyone now working from home and if so this must raise serious questions about the railways and City offices going forward
Two possible other contributory explanations. From my anecdotal experience folk were determined to have a proper Christmas after the last two. I didn't see much scrimping. Therefore, a large number are now skint. So aren't going anywhere soon for pleasure. Secondly. Schools haven't gone back yet in many places. We aren't back till the 10th.
Didn’t see that at Gatwick - Emirates are sending two full A380s to Dubai daily….
Well of course. A substantial number are doing very well indeed thank you very much.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
Across the EU 4% of the population are other EU citizens, while 5% are non-EU citizens. Of course the range varies hugely, but in France, for example, other-EU citizens make up 2% of the population, while non-EU 6%. As noted upthread, some countries have found ways of making FOM difficult in practice. For perspective the non-U.K. born population of England & Wales is 17%
Austria is surprisingly high, France and the Netherlands surprisingly low. The large share of non-EU citizens in Estonia and Latvia shouldn't need much explanation.
Austria is a small-ish country with a large country next door which speaks the same language. My guess is that there are a lot of Germans in Austria. Apologies if I'm sounding a bit obsessed with language. I really can't not see it as the main issue.
That's true, but it's also a poorer country, so you'd expect the net flow to be the other way. Unless it's a case of moving to retire not to work?
The net flow may be the other way, but if 1m Germans move to Austria and 1.5m Austrians move to Germany, that will still be a bigger proportion of the Austrian than German population from another EU country.
In the last 24 hours I have taken my son and daughter in law to Heathrow for today's return flight to Vancouver
Yesterday the M6, M6 toll, M42, M40, M25, and M4 were almost like a Sunday with surprisingly less traffic then I have ever experienced and no delays
Similarly my return from Banbury early this morning (stayed overnight in Banbury) was even quieter
Where has everyone gone or is everyone now working from home and if so this must raise serious questions about the railways and City offices going forward
Two possible other contributory explanations. From my anecdotal experience folk were determined to have a proper Christmas after the last two. I didn't see much scrimping. Therefore, a large number are now skint. So aren't going anywhere soon for pleasure. Secondly. Schools haven't gone back yet in many places. We aren't back till the 10th.
Didn’t see that at Gatwick - Emirates are sending two full A380s to Dubai daily….
Two nations. Don't need that many people to full up a couple of A380s.
We have exactly the same number of House of Lordses in our decision-making process that we did before Brexit. But fewer European Commissions.
Which doesn't negate my point or answer the question, "how do we get rid of him now?"
No, but the same is true pre- and post-Brexit of any lord or bishop. The HoL is a daft anachronism. The fact it now has an additional Lord you dislike personally doesn't make it any less democratic. The answer to your question, of course, is 'elect a government which will abolish the House of Lords'.
With my commute costing £50 per day, working at home has its attractions. Especially on the majority of days when work means talking to teams and customers outside the U.K. The internet connection is better at home.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
For Rishi to be back in the game the Tories need a lead of 4-5%. Worse than that then Starmer would likely become PM
Tories gaining 1% a month this year and Labour losing 1% a month would see the Tories going into 2024 leading 37% - 34%.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
I miss all your Starmer baiting. Brittas, Captain Hindsight, Keith Stormer. You don't appear to have your heart in it any more.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
For Rishi to be back in the game the Tories need a lead of 4-5%. Worse than that then Starmer would likely become PM
Tories gaining 1% a month this year and Labour losing 1% a month would see the Tories going into 2024 leading 37% - 34%.
Like I said, back in the game...
I just can't see it. Much as I think @Heathener doesn't really exist, the views espoused by the poster are probably on the money. I think for the time being the country is done with the Tories. Its Labour's turn. There is little enthusiasm yet for Starmer and his policies (which are starting to emerge, blinking into the face a mildly hostile media) and I think there is little actual hatred for Sunak. I just think its over. I don't know if it will a Labour majority, or merely largest party, but it will be a Labour government of some kind.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? On my recent jaunt to the North of Finland, I met a Frenchman who had moved there from Lyon. (Lyon, was apparently, too crowded. He must have had a pretty low bar for 'too crowded' if he had to go all the way to Lapland for this criterion to be met. Anyway.) He had been there for 2 years. I asked him how he had managed with the language. He told me he liked a challenge, but had other things he wanted to do with his time than learn Finnish - he got by (including working) using English.
I am utterly baffled by this approach. How can you get by, working, when you don't have the same language as your co-workers? And indeed how can you get by using a language which is neither your first language nor theirs? And, as someone to whom foreign languages have always proved utterly ungraspable*, how do you begin to operate in a language which is not your own? Clearly people do. I just don't understand how.
*I got an A in GCSE German back in the early 90s. But this was based entirely on my ability to speak and write the language, which could be memorised with a bit of work. If I was trying to read or, especially, listen to the language, I largely had to guess what was going on. I just don't understand how people's brains can begin to process language which isn't their own.
Early in my career I had the opportunity to work in various different EU countries (albeit within the same organisation). In Finance a number is a number regardless of language. I was there to do a specific job, not learn a language.
Language learning is an experience not an academic exercise. Brits tend to see it as the latter, because we see it as a school subject. Leading to a qualification. If you live in Switzerland, or Luxembourg you see it is as an indispensable social tool. In Scandinavia, necessary if you ever want to leave your locality. It's surprising how quickly even the least able picks stuff up when you really have to to live your daily life.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
The grandkids will just have to make do with the house....
On which subject: I am seeing increasingly frantic reports in the media of falling house prices. This is being reported in the tone that falling house prices are a bad thing. My guess is that most people who have thought about the matter have a view on what the 'right' value of houses should be - no-one genuinely thinks it a good thing if house prices continue to significantly outpace inflation, nor to fall away to nothing. My view is that house prices are some way above this 'right' level*, and have been for some time - and therefore, falling house prices are to be welcomed (cautiously - clearly there are winners and losers to this, and we don't want too many losers losing too much too quickly - a 'rebalancing' is probably preferable to a 'shock'.) My guess is that this has gone from being a minority position (as it probably would have been, in say, 1992) to a majority position (i.e. most people would welcome lower house prices). But again, this is a guess, and I would be genuinely interested if there is any evidence to where the balance lies.
(I am (largely through good fortune) a homeowner, so am notionally well off as a result of high house prices - but it is entirely notional: I need exactly one house to live in; I have no particular desire to move to another house, but if I did that other house would be expensive too. But I would like, one day, my children to be able to afford to be homeowners.)
*The 'right' level, for me, is that a steady but not necessarily massively well-paid middle class job - teacher, say, or policeman - should pay enough to be able to afford a mortgage on a 'normal' house - a three bed semi in Timperley, say - without needing an inheritance or other intergenerational assistance.
Apologies to keep bringing up same issue, but the fundamental problem is that house prices are falling, whilst build costs are rising, due to labour cost inflation and undersupply, and the rising cost of materials, and there is an increase in regulation around new building. Until build costs fall to the same degree as house prices, we are in deep trouble, because no houses can be built: the development industry will crash in large parts of the country. The only option open to the government is to deregulate, but they are heading in the opposite direction, more and more regulation, it is a bureaucrats bonanza - for instance, flats above a certain height now need to have two stairwells so there is an alternative fire exit.
I agree that house prices are too high, but ultimately house price inflation cannot be disentangled from general inflation. What I do think though is that undersupply in large parts of the country means that prices cannot fall that much, particularly given population increase.
Falling house prices will eventually mean falling rent, as well. Which will mean cheaper labour costs, as people won't need such big pay rises to actually pay for accomodation.
This will reduce, in turn, the cost of building new properties.
Any vaguely significant block of flats should have two stairwells, and be designed so that they can work as alternative escape routes.
I would suggest that high rents are to do with a lack of available properties caused by landlords quitting the market due to various factors, most notably excessive regulation. If you have a lack of supply, plus massive immigration (0.5 million per year), and little to no alternative provision (ie through council housing) the likely consequence can be increases in rent - it is just supply and demand. Falling prices won't change this that much, unless they fall to such a level that landlords return to the market, but the same inflationary factors remain (regulation, increased demand).
The problem with things like second stairwells is that they make building high density flats in urban locations more and more expensive... lost floor area, increased build costs.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
I'd be interested to see the stats in where Brits have gone to work abroad pre- and post-Brexit.
My guess (and it is only a guess) is that both pre- and post-Brexit, most working abroad is in Anglophone countries.
There are numerous barriers to working abroad, and the administrative ones are fairly trivial compared to the barriers of language, of culture, of the sheer bloody hassle of uprooting a family and moving them to a different part of the world. If it is worth overcoming those latter barriers, overcoming the right to work issue is fairly minor.
The reality is that for the vast majority of Brits, going to live and work in a country where English is not the first language is such a large barrier to overcome that having the right to do so is irrelevant.
If we had the right to live and work in Australia and New Zealand and Canada, that would be a different matter. But I think we gave that up in 1974.
We had lots of conversations about this before the vote.
People love FoM, up to a point. The issue pre-2016 is that the inflow we had into the UK was into the millions, and people thought it was too much and no-one was doing anything about it - with no end in sight to it.
Clearly, that didn't wash. Why would it?
Free movement (up to 3 years) for young people up to age 35 or 40, say, or to work temporarily at any age for up to 6 months, or to retire if income exceeds a certain level all seem sensible to me.
We might even take an open-ended one, provided the limits/emergency brake criteria are clear.
What isn't acceptable is a completely open-ended right and shrugging off any criticism of this; we see something similar to this at the moment with the 'safe and legal' routes for refugees.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
Across the EU 4% of the population are other EU citizens, while 5% are non-EU citizens. Of course the range varies hugely, but in France, for example, other-EU citizens make up 2% of the population, while non-EU 6%. As noted upthread, some countries have found ways of making FOM difficult in practice. For perspective the non-U.K. born population of England & Wales is 17%
Austria is surprisingly high, France and the Netherlands surprisingly low. The large share of non-EU citizens in Estonia and Latvia shouldn't need much explanation.
Austria is a small-ish country with a large country next door which speaks the same language. My guess is that there are a lot of Germans in Austria. Apologies if I'm sounding a bit obsessed with language. I really can't not see it as the main issue.
That's true, but it's also a poorer country, so you'd expect the net flow to be the other way. Unless it's a case of moving to retire not to work?
Why do you think Austria is poorer? I’d imagine they’re pretty similar (GDP pc is higher in Austria I think).
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
For Rishi to be back in the game the Tories need a lead of 4-5%. Worse than that then Starmer would likely become PM
Tories gaining 1% a month this year and Labour losing 1% a month would see the Tories going into 2024 leading 37% - 34%.
Like I said, back in the game...
Well it would. I can't perceive any obvious reason why that ought to be the case this year, though. It isn't the trend.
There are rumours that things are not going in the Ukrainian's favour to the north of Bahkmut; it could be domething to do with a Russian push.
The Ukrainians are suffering more to the south of Bahkmut I think. However, let's see how the Russians do when facing Bradleys and other much better kit.
It is now quite easy to believe those who have said that America has provided just enough kit to date to bleed the Russian army of any aggressive capability for at least a decade. Of course, this has only been made possible by Russia's initial invasion - and then battleplans that have destroyed vast amounts of Russian manpower and equipment whilst losing half the territory they initially took.
The Ukrainians have undoubtedly performed wonders to date. The Russians are now down to the remnants of their fighting vehicles, whilst Ukraine is about to have its best capability to get aggressive since February 2022. Interesting spring campaign ahead.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
I miss all your Starmer baiting. Brittas, Captain Hindsight, Keith Stormer. You don't appear to have your heart in it any more.
We're just taking a break.
He's still massively underwhelming.
Like Starmer, Mr Sunak is no gold-dusted national treasure comedy turn like Johnson either.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? On my recent jaunt to the North of Finland, I met a Frenchman who had moved there from Lyon. (Lyon, was apparently, too crowded. He must have had a pretty low bar for 'too crowded' if he had to go all the way to Lapland for this criterion to be met. Anyway.) He had been there for 2 years. I asked him how he had managed with the language. He told me he liked a challenge, but had other things he wanted to do with his time than learn Finnish - he got by (including working) using English.
I am utterly baffled by this approach. How can you get by, working, when you don't have the same language as your co-workers? And indeed how can you get by using a language which is neither your first language nor theirs? And, as someone to whom foreign languages have always proved utterly ungraspable*, how do you begin to operate in a language which is not your own? Clearly people do. I just don't understand how.
*I got an A in GCSE German back in the early 90s. But this was based entirely on my ability to speak and write the language, which could be memorised with a bit of work. If I was trying to read or, especially, listen to the language, I largely had to guess what was going on. I just don't understand how people's brains can begin to process language which isn't their own.
Early in my career I had the opportunity to work in various different EU countries (albeit within the same organisation). In Finance a number is a number regardless of language. I was there to do a specific job, not learn a language.
What? I mean, equally in medicine a spleen is a spleen is a spleen, but good verbal communication is still kind of helpful. This only worked because other people spoke English.
Language learning is an experience not an academic exercise. Brits tend to see it as the latter, because we see it as a school subject. Leading to a qualification. If you live in Switzerland, or Luxembourg you see it is as an indispensable social tool. In Scandinavia, necessary if you ever want to leave your locality. It's surprising how quickly even the least able picks stuff up when you really have to to live your daily life.
I was mildly amused to note, in Lapland, that Father Christmas is (but of course) multilingual, slipping easily between Finnish, English, German and Spanish. I expect he has dozens of others. He is, of course, hundreds of years old so has had plenty of time to learn. I don't know whether he has picked these languages up professionally or socially or academically.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? On my recent jaunt to the North of Finland, I met a Frenchman who had moved there from Lyon. (Lyon, was apparently, too crowded. He must have had a pretty low bar for 'too crowded' if he had to go all the way to Lapland for this criterion to be met. Anyway.) He had been there for 2 years. I asked him how he had managed with the language. He told me he liked a challenge, but had other things he wanted to do with his time than learn Finnish - he got by (including working) using English.
I am utterly baffled by this approach. How can you get by, working, when you don't have the same language as your co-workers? And indeed how can you get by using a language which is neither your first language nor theirs? And, as someone to whom foreign languages have always proved utterly ungraspable*, how do you begin to operate in a language which is not your own? Clearly people do. I just don't understand how.
*I got an A in GCSE German back in the early 90s. But this was based entirely on my ability to speak and write the language, which could be memorised with a bit of work. If I was trying to read or, especially, listen to the language, I largely had to guess what was going on. I just don't understand how people's brains can begin to process language which isn't their own.
Early in my career I had the opportunity to work in various different EU countries (albeit within the same organisation). In Finance a number is a number regardless of language. I was there to do a specific job, not learn a language.
What? I mean, equally in medicine a spleen is a spleen is a spleen, but good verbal communication is still kind of helpful. This only worked because other people spoke English.
I'm fortunate to live in a world where ambitious people value speaking in English.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? .
I commend you to the French film L'Auberge Espagnole for an insight into the dynamics of this.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
Are there any stats on who moves where? There could be some interesting analysis in this. My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
In general Western Europeans do not share the stark British terror of learning a foreign language so I don't think that is too much of a factor. The younger ones follow employment, educational and cultural opportunities so they end up in cities like Bruxelles, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The older ones follow the sun south.
Why do you think that is? Is it that Europeans are simply more exposed to other languages (principally, I suppose, English) through film, pop music, etc? I don't think I was ever terrified of learning a language - indeed, ISTR, I was quite keen to do so; I am genuinely very interested in language - but once it moved beyond simply memorising vocab, I simply couldn't do it.
I genuinely think its easier for most Western Europeans to learn English than for the Brit to learn other languages. Like it or not English dominates the world, whether by film, TV or music. Its the automatic second language choice in a way that is much harder for Brits (which do we choose? French, German, Japanese, Spanish etc).
Helpfully, this specifically is not a problem in the USA where Spanish is naturally the most-taught language, outstripping all others by an order of magnitude.
And also where even the uneducated often speak Spanish to fair degree. Just to get by.
In Texas, for example, it is probably hard to spend a day without running into someone who speaks next to no English but is fluent in Spanish.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
The grandkids will just have to make do with the house....
On which subject: I am seeing increasingly frantic reports in the media of falling house prices. This is being reported in the tone that falling house prices are a bad thing. My guess is that most people who have thought about the matter have a view on what the 'right' value of houses should be - no-one genuinely thinks it a good thing if house prices continue to significantly outpace inflation, nor to fall away to nothing. My view is that house prices are some way above this 'right' level*, and have been for some time - and therefore, falling house prices are to be welcomed (cautiously - clearly there are winners and losers to this, and we don't want too many losers losing too much too quickly - a 'rebalancing' is probably preferable to a 'shock'.) My guess is that this has gone from being a minority position (as it probably would have been, in say, 1992) to a majority position (i.e. most people would welcome lower house prices). But again, this is a guess, and I would be genuinely interested if there is any evidence to where the balance lies.
(I am (largely through good fortune) a homeowner, so am notionally well off as a result of high house prices - but it is entirely notional: I need exactly one house to live in; I have no particular desire to move to another house, but if I did that other house would be expensive too. But I would like, one day, my children to be able to afford to be homeowners.)
*The 'right' level, for me, is that a steady but not necessarily massively well-paid middle class job - teacher, say, or policeman - should pay enough to be able to afford a mortgage on a 'normal' house - a three bed semi in Timperley, say - without needing an inheritance or other intergenerational assistance.
Apologies to keep bringing up same issue, but the fundamental problem is that house prices are falling, whilst build costs are rising, due to labour cost inflation and undersupply, and the rising cost of materials, and there is an increase in regulation around new building. Until build costs fall to the same degree as house prices, we are in deep trouble, because no houses can be built: the development industry will crash in large parts of the country. The only option open to the government is to deregulate, but they are heading in the opposite direction, more and more regulation, it is a bureaucrats bonanza - for instance, flats above a certain height now need to have two stairwells so there is an alternative fire exit.
I agree that house prices are too high, but ultimately house price inflation cannot be disentangled from general inflation. What I do think though is that undersupply in large parts of the country means that prices cannot fall that much, particularly given population increase.
Falling house prices will eventually mean falling rent, as well. Which will mean cheaper labour costs, as people won't need such big pay rises to actually pay for accomodation.
This will reduce, in turn, the cost of building new properties.
Any vaguely significant block of flats should have two stairwells, and be designed so that they can work as alternative escape routes.
I would suggest that high rents are to do with a lack of available properties caused by landlords quitting the market due to various factors, most notably excessive regulation. If you have a lack of supply, plus massive immigration (0.5 million per year), and little to no alternative provision (ie through council housing) the likely consequence can be increases in rent - it is just supply and demand. Falling prices won't change this that much, unless they fall to such a level that landlords return to the market, but the same inflationary factors remain (regulation, increased demand).
The problem with things like second stairwells is that they make building high density flats in urban locations more and more expensive... lost floor area, increased build costs.
There are few to no empty properties - landlords quitting the rental sector are selling.
The reason for high prices is scarcity.
In this day and age, flats simply have to have multiple exits. A stairwell doesn't take up that much space - the fact that we are discussing it relates to the absurd cost of land you can build on.
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
But - genuine question - why? How many genuinely move? And how do they do it? Is language just not an issue for our continental counterparts? On my recent jaunt to the North of Finland, I met a Frenchman who had moved there from Lyon. (Lyon, was apparently, too crowded. He must have had a pretty low bar for 'too crowded' if he had to go all the way to Lapland for this criterion to be met. Anyway.) He had been there for 2 years. I asked him how he had managed with the language. He told me he liked a challenge, but had other things he wanted to do with his time than learn Finnish - he got by (including working) using English.
I am utterly baffled by this approach. How can you get by, working, when you don't have the same language as your co-workers? And indeed how can you get by using a language which is neither your first language nor theirs? And, as someone to whom foreign languages have always proved utterly ungraspable*, how do you begin to operate in a language which is not your own? Clearly people do. I just don't understand how.
*I got an A in GCSE German back in the early 90s. But this was based entirely on my ability to speak and write the language, which could be memorised with a bit of work. If I was trying to read or, especially, listen to the language, I largely had to guess what was going on. I just don't understand how people's brains can begin to process language which isn't their own.
In Finland most business is transacted in English, it being the common language amongst people who speak Finnish, Swedish, and Russian at home. It's one of things that make it a great place to do business.
Language learning is an experience not an academic exercise. Brits tend to see it as the latter, because we see it as a school subject. Leading to a qualification. If you live in Switzerland, or Luxembourg you see it is as an indispensable social tool. In Scandinavia, necessary if you ever want to leave your locality. It's surprising how quickly even the least able picks stuff up when you really have to to live your daily life.
I was mildly amused to note, in Lapland, that Father Christmas is (but of course) multilingual, slipping easily between Finnish, English, German and Spanish. I expect he has dozens of others. He is, of course, hundreds of years old so has had plenty of time to learn. I don't know whether he has picked these languages up professionally or socially or academically.
Professionally of course. How do you think he reads all those letters?
Permission to be surprised how small that shift is, Sir?
OK, it's one data point, and People Polling has never been tested in battle. But if rejoin is ahead (albeit within MoE and with a lot of don't knows) on "rejoin even after all the downsides are listed", that feels significant.
Except they don't list all the downsides. A commitment to join the Euro should be added to that list because even though it is something we might try to delay indefinitely, it would still be a legal commitment.
I can see this issue is going to be a major battlefield once the rejoin campaign starts. As I've said previously, as someone who doesn't want us to join the euro in the foreseeable future, the legal commitment to join at some point - with the option to defer indefinitely - doesn't keep me awake at night.
You're very optimistic if you think we'll be offered that. The EU will not take any risks on us leaving for a second time, and the best way for them to ensure that is for us to join the euro on day one of membership.
That is impossible under the rules governing euro membership. These rules are designed to ensure that the euro isn't compromised by economies joining before they are ready. I actually think the EU will be quite wary of us joining the Euro given how we crashed out of the ERM. Protecting the Euro is much more important to the EU than stopping us leaving, they're not going to endanger the former in pursuit of the latter.
An interesting interpretation of the EU's historical actions. In particular "it's the rules" has never stopped them doing what they want to do.
Exactly - if they want us and we don't want the €, they will find a way for us to stick with our own currency for yonks, like the Swedes have done. The question is whether they would want us, not what are the rules.
A minor derogation from FoM would have allowed 'Remain' to win in 2016. The EU would not do it. Yes, rules don't matter when the EU wants to do something, but when they don't they are a bunch of fundamentalists.
One problem is not seeing things from the other guys point of view.
In the case of the EU, the leading counties - France, Germany etc - saw FOM as a difficult thing. For them. The issues about wages for the low/no skilled apply there, as well as to the U.K.. Hence the riots in France on a regular basis.
What politicians, in those countries, saw was that if they compromised on FOM, everyone would want an “adjustment”.
The pro EU politicians involved saw FOM as something that they had jointly sacrificed for - a lynch pin of their wider vision for the EU.
So it was an unshakeable redline.
FOM is one of the greatest things about the EU and the right to live and work in 27 other countries is why I voted to Remain.
Thankfully I managed to protect that because of my family but am really sad that many younger people can no longer enjoy that.
Shame on all those so called loving grandparents who robbed their grandchildren of that freedom !
Indeed surveys in EU countries including France and Germany show people are overwhelmingly in favour of EU freedom of movement, and for most people it's the most valuable thing about being in the EU.
Across the EU 4% of the population are other EU citizens, while 5% are non-EU citizens. Of course the range varies hugely, but in France, for example, other-EU citizens make up 2% of the population, while non-EU 6%. As noted upthread, some countries have found ways of making FOM difficult in practice. For perspective the non-U.K. born population of England & Wales is 17%
Austria is surprisingly high, France and the Netherlands surprisingly low. The large share of non-EU citizens in Estonia and Latvia shouldn't need much explanation.
Austria is a small-ish country with a large country next door which speaks the same language. My guess is that there are a lot of Germans in Austria. Apologies if I'm sounding a bit obsessed with language. I really can't not see it as the main issue.
That's true, but it's also a poorer country, so you'd expect the net flow to be the other way. Unless it's a case of moving to retire not to work?
Why do you think Austria is poorer? I’d imagine they’re pretty similar (GDP pc is higher in Austria I think).
Austria's ahead of the East and behind the West. It is much more rural and has one city really connected to the world economy versus several in Germany. It also has a bit of the Ireland phenomenon where foreign investment boosts activity metrics but the profits end up overseas.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
I miss all your Starmer baiting. Brittas, Captain Hindsight, Keith Stormer. You don't appear to have your heart in it any more.
We're just taking a break.
He's still massively underwhelming.
Like Starmer, Mr Sunak is no gold-dusted national treasure comedy turn like Johnson either.
He just needs to quietly get the job done this year. And he'll have stolen the only prospect Starmer has to offer.
Though I'm puzzled - how does one reconcile with an "archnemesis" ?
And is Elizabeth Arden on the todger a thing these days ?
In all seriousness, do we all think Harry is OK? Revealing those Afghanistan deaths seems odd
Not really, no.
But to be fair, I very much doubt he wrote the book. I doubt if he's even read it. Some ghost writer has had a series of conversations with him, in which he has had no-one around to advise him on how guarded to be. He isn't really a thoughtful or reflective sort - I expect he's sort of thought at the high level 'I want to write a tell all book' and instructed someone to make it happen, and not really thought too deeply about its implications.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
For Rishi to be back in the game the Tories need a lead of 4-5%. Worse than that then Starmer would likely become PM
Tories gaining 1% a month this year and Labour losing 1% a month would see the Tories going into 2024 leading 37% - 34%.
Like I said, back in the game...
Well it would. I can't perceive any obvious reason why that ought to be the case this year, though. It isn't the trend.
The trend is very much in the Tories favour, as long as you believe, like Yazz and the Plastic Population, that the only way is up.
Language learning is an experience not an academic exercise. Brits tend to see it as the latter, because we see it as a school subject. Leading to a qualification. If you live in Switzerland, or Luxembourg you see it is as an indispensable social tool. In Scandinavia, necessary if you ever want to leave your locality. It's surprising how quickly even the least able picks stuff up when you really have to to live your daily life.
I was mildly amused to note, in Lapland, that Father Christmas is (but of course) multilingual, slipping easily between Finnish, English, German and Spanish. I expect he has dozens of others. He is, of course, hundreds of years old so has had plenty of time to learn. I don't know whether he has picked these languages up professionally or socially or academically.
Professionally of course. How do you think he reads all those letters?
Unpaid "voluntary" labour - don't you find the whole elves/factory stuff a bit suspicious?
Specifically on migration, Austria has the same phenomenon as Germany of Balkan and Turkish migration. Well of course it also borders the Balkans, but it's not just Slovenes near Graz.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
For Rishi to be back in the game the Tories need a lead of 4-5%. Worse than that then Starmer would likely become PM
Tories gaining 1% a month this year and Labour losing 1% a month would see the Tories going into 2024 leading 37% - 34%.
Like I said, back in the game...
Well it would. I can't perceive any obvious reason why that ought to be the case this year, though. It isn't the trend.
Not sure how you could discern any trend through Covid, Johnson's party lies, The Awfulness of Liz Truss and then on to Rishi Sunak.
We should see something of the coming trends by the end of the summer.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
For Rishi to be back in the game the Tories need a lead of 4-5%. Worse than that then Starmer would likely become PM
Tories gaining 1% a month this year and Labour losing 1% a month would see the Tories going into 2024 leading 37% - 34%.
Like I said, back in the game...
Well it would. I can't perceive any obvious reason why that ought to be the case this year, though. It isn't the trend.
Not sure how you could discern any trend through Covid, Johnson's party lies, The Awfulness of Liz Truss and then on to Rishi Sunak.
We should see something of the coming trends by the end of the summer.
But then it won't be the coming trend, it will be the trend through whatever set of disasters and disappointments befall us through winter and spring. And we can reset again for the next trend which will, I confidently predict, be declared to be upward.
Though I'm puzzled - how does one reconcile with an "archnemesis" ?
And is Elizabeth Arden on the todger a thing these days ?
In all seriousness, do we all think Harry is OK? Revealing those Afghanistan deaths seems odd
Living your life half as if youre in the Truman show, have your mum die when a young child after a marriage break up and have to attend the worlds biggest funeral, whilst always having your destiny defined by your older brother regardless of what you do is rarely going to result in someone who has good mental health.
Tories only need to increase an average of a point a month and Labour slip a point a month this year for Rishi to be back in the game for the election next year.
Quite doable against Starmer.
For Rishi to be back in the game the Tories need a lead of 4-5%. Worse than that then Starmer would likely become PM
Tories gaining 1% a month this year and Labour losing 1% a month would see the Tories going into 2024 leading 37% - 34%.
Like I said, back in the game...
Well it would. I can't perceive any obvious reason why that ought to be the case this year, though. It isn't the trend.
Labour may only have Starmer but then he is up against Sunak so the one counters the other.
Comments
People heard Brexit will make you better off.
People see we've Brexited and we are worse off.
Arguing it's more complicated that that, well, that was the Remain line which folk couldn't be bothered listening to.
And I rather suspect Spain is inflated through people moving there to retire - my guess is that it would perhaps rank lower if only people moving abroad to work were included.
Variety of settings, couple were universities, where the teams are normally from multiple countries so English the common language anyway, but the six week stint was in a small company (~8 employees) in which everyone else was Swedish.
You underestimate how embedded speaking English is among at least the higher educated in Scandinavia and, indeed, some other countries such as Germany, Denmark etc. Many university courses are largely in English, for example. It's completely second nature.
- 23 tanks
- 38 vehicles
- 16 APV
- 8 artillery
- 5 MLRS
- 1 plane + 1 helicopter
Targeted prep for a new push, perhaps?
The reality is though its the Tories still slipping this month - going backwards to a new herding around mid to lower 20s. Quite understandable considering lightweight PM Sunak an electoral liability already, and makes Starmer look the better PM option.
Lots do move around - particularly the younger generation. Hyper-particularly anybody who did Erasmus.
I don't buy that at all, but it very much hinges on who stands for Ashfield Independents and how they pitch it.
(Plus swing back of course).
Is it likely, given the economic funadmentals? Really unconvinced. (I suspect that the slow blue-to-red drift happened as the post-Covid economic feelgood began to dissipate and prices began to overtake wages for many.)
And as the Economist points out in its current issue, there really hasn't been any benefit, at all.
My guess is that the highest movements are between countries which share a language (UK/Ireland, France/Belgium, Germany/Austria) and from other countries to the UK (since the European youth appears to speak English with ease). But there may well be much more at play here.
1. Proper communication of information about benefits of FOM rather than relying on sloganeering or using it as convenient tool to bash the “other” (I.e the EU) with;
2. Legislative changes within member state competencies to mitigate the impact;
3. Actually using our voice in Europe to agree mitigating rules/policies/EU-level legislative change.
The government just got used to shrugging their shoulders and leaning into the “nothing we can do guys, it’s the EU rules innit” narrative. Convenient for them because it gave them someone else to blame, but look at the problems it’s caused in the long run.
Yesterday the M6, M6 toll, M42, M40, M25, and M4 were almost like a Sunday with surprisingly less traffic then I have ever experienced and no delays
Similarly my return from Banbury early this morning (stayed overnight in Banbury) was even quieter
Where has everyone gone or is everyone now working from home and if so this must raise serious questions about the railways and City offices going forward
Which makes me wonder, what are erstwhile double glazing salespeople doing nowadays? Flogging insulation?
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220330-2
As many Leavers point out. A large part of it was a vote of rage and frustration at low wages, lack of opportunities and failing public services.
The now will you listen vote?
And the result?
Falling real wages, fewer opportunities and public services which have collapsed.
This may not be entirely causal, but that is almost totally irrelevant to folk.
That YouGov shows many have caught on.
In all honesty I think this will be the final nail - people just seem to have made up their minds now that majority office working comes with too many hurdles and not enough people are doing it to make it worth their while.
I contrast that with my Italian from actually living there, and it is a different thing. In the lab was mixed, basic conversation in Italian, some technical in English and I hung around quite a bit with British people when I first lived there. There was a lot of switching, a lot of Italish. I ended up house sharing with Italians and that's when I really kicked on and I retain some reading understanding to this day, though I have to get my ear in to listen well.
And I come to the conclusion that language teaching at school in the UK is too often pushing water uphill. To do it well, you need to go with the synergies - where do people holiday? what are the languages you might hear locally? I'd suspect German rather than romance languages is rarely the right answer - indeed I think German has lost ground to Spanish in schools over the years (and I regret not doing French in hindsight). But, there are circumstances in which the class or religion of the school might determine whether French or Spanish or Polish or something else is the right answer.
"We don't want foreigners coming here"
We heard the message, and now we're fucked
The Economist is looking at the macroeconomic level. Many individuals (e.g. lorry drivers) will have seen demand for their skills increase significantly. For many Brexit voters, there have been clear benefits. They're better off because of Brexit, though often this is eroded by worse-off because of covid-and-Ukraine driven inflation.
And many - most? - Brexit voters, ISTR, did not vote for Brexit for economic reasons but in order to retain some level of democratic control over their destiny. That's real, and has happened. You might argue our democratic control is weak, but that is a step up from nonexistent. You might argue that we haven't used our post-Brexit freedoms terribly well yet. But that doesn't mean the exercise was pointless.
TLDR - the Economist is judging this by the wrong metrics.
There's about 6 new estates going up within a 5 mile radius circle of my house.
But not by the end of this year.
Apologies if I'm sounding a bit obsessed with language. I really can't not see it as the main issue.
From my anecdotal experience folk were determined to have a proper Christmas after the last two. I didn't see much scrimping. Therefore, a large number are now skint. So aren't going anywhere soon for pleasure.
Secondly. Schools haven't gone back yet in many places. We aren't back till the 10th.
We used to be able to vote Dan Hannan out of office.
Now he has a job in our legislature for life.
And as Leon will no doubt chip in when he rears
Kraken-likeXBB1.5-like, AI will soon translate every language directly into your ear, in the style of the legendary Babel Fish.Is it that Europeans are simply more exposed to other languages (principally, I suppose, English) through film, pop music, etc?
I don't think I was ever terrified of learning a language - indeed, ISTR, I was quite keen to do so; I am genuinely very interested in language - but once it moved beyond simply memorising vocab, I simply couldn't do it.
This will reduce, in turn, the cost of building new properties.
Any vaguely significant block of flats should have two stairwells, and be designed so that they can work as alternative escape routes.
It's a bit like the stripping people of citizenship thing - a response in a series of action-response-action-response etc that goes back at least to the 1990s
The answer to your question, of course, is 'elect a government which will abolish the House of Lords'.
A substantial number are doing very well indeed thank you very much.
Like I said, back in the game...
https://slate.com/culture/2023/01/prince-harry-william-book-spare-nazi-penis.html
Though I'm puzzled - how does one reconcile with an "archnemesis" ?
And is Elizabeth Arden on the todger a thing these days ?
He's still massively underwhelming.
Brits tend to see it as the latter, because we see it as a school subject. Leading to a qualification.
If you live in Switzerland, or Luxembourg you see it is as an indispensable social tool. In Scandinavia, necessary if you ever want to leave your locality.
It's surprising how quickly even the least able picks stuff up when you really have to to live your daily life.
The problem with things like second stairwells is that they make building high density flats in urban locations more and more expensive... lost floor area, increased build costs.
People love FoM, up to a point. The issue pre-2016 is that the inflow we had into the UK was into the millions, and people thought it was too much and no-one was doing anything about it - with no end in sight to it.
Clearly, that didn't wash. Why would it?
Free movement (up to 3 years) for young people up to age 35 or 40, say, or to work temporarily at any age for up to 6 months, or to retire if income exceeds a certain level all seem sensible to me.
We might even take an open-ended one, provided the limits/emergency brake criteria are clear.
What isn't acceptable is a completely open-ended right and shrugging off any criticism of this; we see something similar to this at the moment with the 'safe and legal' routes for refugees.
I can't perceive any obvious reason why that ought to be the case this year, though. It isn't the trend.
It is now quite easy to believe those who have said that America has provided just enough kit to date to bleed the Russian army of any aggressive capability for at least a decade. Of course, this has only been made possible by Russia's initial invasion - and then battleplans that have destroyed vast amounts of Russian manpower and equipment whilst losing half the territory they initially took.
The Ukrainians have undoubtedly performed wonders to date. The Russians are now down to the remnants of their fighting vehicles, whilst Ukraine is about to have its best capability to get aggressive since February 2022. Interesting spring campaign ahead.
Especially if the Tigers come out to play.
He is, of course, hundreds of years old so has had plenty of time to learn.
I don't know whether he has picked these languages up professionally or socially or academically.
In Texas, for example, it is probably hard to spend a day without running into someone who speaks next to no English but is fluent in Spanish. There are few to no empty properties - landlords quitting the rental sector are selling.
The reason for high prices is scarcity.
In this day and age, flats simply have to have multiple exits. A stairwell doesn't take up that much space - the fact that we are discussing it relates to the absurd cost of land you can build on.
He's clearly a very troubled man.
How do you think he reads all those letters?
But to be fair, I very much doubt he wrote the book. I doubt if he's even read it. Some ghost writer has had a series of conversations with him, in which he has had no-one around to advise him on how guarded to be. He isn't really a thoughtful or reflective sort - I expect he's sort of thought at the high level 'I want to write a tell all book' and instructed someone to make it happen, and not really thought too deeply about its implications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Graphical_summary
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3801247-trumps-clout-takes-hit-from-speakers-fight/
I think (still) that Trump is done as a serious contender.
We should see something of the coming trends by the end of the summer.