We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it, that's another mark in the book against the democracy deniers of 2016-19.
So if the majority of the public doesn't get over it, that's a black mark against them?
It's a while since I did GCSE German, but I'm pretty sure Brecht wrote something along those lines.
Also the idea that a narrowly won referendum —- which failed to carry in significant regions, nations, and demographics —- is the be all and end all of democracy - is at best very stupid. And at worst, to Godwinise, it is fascist.
Nobody said it was the be all and the end all - but it did have to be accepted. Losers' consent is essential in a democracy - we've seen the problems in the US in 2000, more significantly in 2016 and most significantly in 2020 when it was absent. The correct response by the Adonises of the world would have been "OK, we lost, we're leaving - let's make the most of it and try to learn the lessons of why we lost so we can win a Rejoin campaign in 10 or 20 years".
So in short all the problems of Brexit are because of the people who opposed it and have not been in government for years?
No, not all of them. But the particular one I was talking about, yes.
Even as a remainer, I see there are some potential benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls, for example. Or better employment rights than before. Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK.
And no, I'm not necessarily advocating any of those, as the costs might outweigh the benefits. But there must be some where it wouldn't. I'm just saying we could do them if we wanted to but I don't hear anybody proposing anything like that.
The problem is that the Brexiteers don't know what they what, or rather, they want different things. Take for example your first point: environmental legislation. One set of Brexiteers would indeed like much tighter environmental and food quality controls, but another set would prefer looser environmental and quality controls. So taking advantage of our new-found freedom isn't going to be easy - any divergence from the current standards will be wildly unpopular with a substantial number of the very people that voted for the freedom to diverge. In addition, any move in either direction from EU standards comes with its own cost in terms of trade, making divergence even more difficult.
“Tighter” and “looser” are words that come with their own connotations.
“Different” is a better description, but written from British environmental food concerns, rather than those of many other countries with their own environmental problems and their own industries to protect.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it, that's another mark in the book against the democracy deniers of 2016-19.
So if the majority of the public doesn't get over it, that's a black mark against them?
It's a while since I did GCSE German, but I'm pretty sure Brecht wrote something along those lines.
Also the idea that a narrowly won referendum —- which failed to carry in significant regions, nations, and demographics —- is the be all and end all of democracy - is at best very stupid. And at worst, to Godwinise, it is fascist.
Nobody said it was the be all and the end all - but it did have to be accepted. Losers' consent is essential in a democracy - we've seen the problems in the US in 2000, more significantly in 2016 and most significantly in 2020 when it was absent. The correct response by the Adonises of the world would have been "OK, we lost, we're leaving - let's make the most of it and try to learn the lessons of why we lost so we can win a Rejoin campaign in 10 or 20 years".
Loser’s Consent relies on a widely accepted democratic procedure.
It was widely accepted right up until the moment the referendum result was declared that it would be decisive, both by the Prime Minister himself and by the Government in its information leaflet.
The PM in question constructed the referendum in essay crisis mode.
I accept that almost everyone went along with it beforehand. But it was a fundamentally unsound process that was not able really to withstand the inevitably (one way or another) narrow margin.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
As for the future? I suspect that a lot of the views that most of us have are about emoition and identity rather than reasoned weighing up of pros and cons. 2016 was just the moment where the generation who have always been suspicious of Europe (see the age breakdown from 1975) were in the ascendancy. A bit like the way that 2024 looks like it won't be about the relative details of the manifestoes, more that people are fed up with this government and not afraid of the alternative.
The short term effect of polling is that the Tories are chained to a corpse, and one that is beginning to get quite pungent. They won't be electable by a majority of voters until they accept Brexit was a mistake, and we need to reconcile with the EU.
The Tories have got it all wrong on pretty much all fronts.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
It strikes me that casting yourself out of a large trading block for the sake of sovereignty implies a desire to do your own thing and to hell with the consequences. Where are the ideas?
The problem, as Liz Truss discovered, is that doing your own thing comes with economic risk, and lacks democratic consent.
Which is why Brexiteers refused to specify before the vote, and are struggling to specify even now
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it, that's another mark in the book against the democracy deniers of 2016-19.
So if the majority of the public doesn't get over it, that's a black mark against them?
It's a while since I did GCSE German, but I'm pretty sure Brecht wrote something along those lines.
Also the idea that a narrowly won referendum —- which failed to carry in significant regions, nations, and demographics —- is the be all and end all of democracy - is at best very stupid. And at worst, to Godwinise, it is fascist.
Nobody said it was the be all and the end all - but it did have to be accepted. Losers' consent is essential in a democracy - we've seen the problems in the US in 2000, more significantly in 2016 and most significantly in 2020 when it was absent. The correct response by the Adonises of the world would have been "OK, we lost, we're leaving - let's make the most of it and try to learn the lessons of why we lost so we can win a Rejoin campaign in 10 or 20 years".
Loser’s Consent relies on a widely accepted democratic procedure.
It was widely accepted right up until the moment the referendum result was declared that it would be decisive, both by the Prime Minister himself and by the Government in its information leaflet.
The PM in question constructed the referendum in essay crisis mode. .
I'm not at all sure that's true. To me it looks like he constructed it to absolutely maximise the chances of a Remain win.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
As for the future? I suspect that a lot of the views that most of us have are about emoition and identity rather than reasoned weighing up of pros and cons. 2016 was just the moment where the generation who have always been suspicious of Europe (see the age breakdown from 1975) were in the ascendancy. A bit like the way that 2024 looks like it won't be about the relative details of the manifestoes, more that people are fed up with this government and not afraid of the alternative.
The short term effect of polling is that the Tories are chained to a corpse, and one that is beginning to get quite pungent. They won't be electable by a majority of voters until they accept Brexit was a mistake, and we need to reconcile with the EU.
The Tories have got it all wrong on pretty much all fronts.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
The polling on Brexit is so strongly that it was a mistake, and Brexit is so tied to the Tories as a policy that it is once again going to decide an election, only this time for the Tories to be buried.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
For the first time in more than 30 years I got what is apparently called a wage slip today. A deeply depressing document. A small number at the top from which numerous deductions are made leaving an even smaller number at the bottom.
I am seriously perplexed we don’t have more revolutions in this country.
Worse still is realising how little we get for it. The UK is a classic example of the state doing too much and doing it badly, the last few years of big government conservatism should become a learning experience for all other countries to avoid going down the same path that Theresa May set us on.
And it’s getting worse. Yesterday my M-in-L had an online appointment for old age psychiatry. This is not a joke. She does not have internet or a computer so she had to be brought to our house to do the call.
After this travesty, which inevitably concluded that a face to face meeting was required, in 3 months time, my wife gets a form to complete confirming how wonderful this service was. Negative answers were not allowed. So, for example, you could record how many miles you had saved. A negative number, as in our case, was not permitted. Every question was slanted this way but no doubt this will be “evidence” in due course of how wonderful this is.
My MiL is suffering delusions which are scaring her to the point she doesn’t feel safe in her own home. A crap meeting like this, where she struggled to hear, and a 3 month wait. These are what these deductions from my pay slip are for?
You’ve continually voted for this, though. Austerity, then Brexit, then Johnson.
Edit: this sound like a personal attack, not especially. “You” is the general public.
You forget that I live in Scotland and live under the glory of the Scottish government which has never had a Tory element. The fact that it provides services which are at least as bad despite spending more per capita should really get a lot more thought by those deluding themselves that a Labour government is going to make it better.
The SNP must be the most effective political party ever, the situation with public servies in Scotland seems to be worse than in England, yet they, as the governing party, never get the blame for it. A remarkable feat.
I'm curious if they deny it is as bad (obviously I've no idea if it is), or acknowledge it is but blame Westminster for that.
No idea, but the stats indicate that it is worse. Think of what happened this morning, a made up story about HS2 and Euston and people are outraged, "fucking useless tories" etc etc. They never seems to happen to the SNP. They have even got away with the prison rapist stuff.
But who made up the story ? The suggestion is that it was a deliberate distraction exercise by government. Someone senior briefed it, since the BBC also took it seriously, first thing this morning.
I wouldn't be surprised if the HS2 service did start initially at Old Oak Common. It is a fairly common approach to projects that are late and over budget. Get something working to buy time and generate at least some cash.
It is actually surprisingly common historically; there have been loads of 'temporary' terminuses. Who remembers Minories (13 years until Fenchurch Street was built)? Devonshire Street (Mile End - a temporary terminus for the line to Bishopsgate, which operated as a terminus for a year). Bishop’s Bridge Road - the first Paddington, whilst Paddington was built? And they're just from London.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
But in the case of HS2, it's unlikely, as OOC is not suited for a terminus - there could only be a very limited number of trains.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
As for the future? I suspect that a lot of the views that most of us have are about emoition and identity rather than reasoned weighing up of pros and cons. 2016 was just the moment where the generation who have always been suspicious of Europe (see the age breakdown from 1975) were in the ascendancy. A bit like the way that 2024 looks like it won't be about the relative details of the manifestoes, more that people are fed up with this government and not afraid of the alternative.
The short term effect of polling is that the Tories are chained to a corpse, and one that is beginning to get quite pungent. They won't be electable by a majority of voters until they accept Brexit was a mistake, and we need to reconcile with the EU.
The Tories have got it all wrong on pretty much all fronts.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
The polling on Brexit is so strongly that it was a mistake, and Brexit is so tied to the Tories as a policy that it is once again going to decide an election, only this time for the Tories to be buried.
Absolutely.
Even today, in 2023, “Brexit” essentially remains the only Tory policy. That, and a new round of austerity. Nothing else has been achieved in seven years.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
That is patently untrue.
You are absolving Johnson of his desperately poor deal and blaming Starmer. That's plain weird.
He could have led Labour in voting for May's deal, in which case it would have passed. Instead we ended up with Boris's deal which is certainly more detached from the EU than May's deal. What's weird about noting that?
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
As for the future? I suspect that a lot of the views that most of us have are about emoition and identity rather than reasoned weighing up of pros and cons. 2016 was just the moment where the generation who have always been suspicious of Europe (see the age breakdown from 1975) were in the ascendancy. A bit like the way that 2024 looks like it won't be about the relative details of the manifestoes, more that people are fed up with this government and not afraid of the alternative.
The short term effect of polling is that the Tories are chained to a corpse, and one that is beginning to get quite pungent. They won't be electable by a majority of voters until they accept Brexit was a mistake, and we need to reconcile with the EU.
The Tories have got it all wrong on pretty much all fronts.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
The polling on Brexit is so strongly that it was a mistake, and Brexit is so tied to the Tories as a policy that it is once again going to decide an election, only this time for the Tories to be buried.
I have my doubts. Brexit is such a complicated issue (and I think we all agree there) that people really will want to leave it alone.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
That is patently untrue.
You are absolving Johnson of his desperately poor deal and blaming Starmer. That's plain weird.
He could have led Labour in voting for May's deal, in which case it would have passed. Instead we ended up with Boris's deal which is certainly more detached from the EU than May's deal. What's weird about noting that?
What’s weird is that it is part of a long term desire by Brexiters to absolve themselves of the giant mess they supported, and in Johnson’s case, led.
Rest of South Lab 51% Con 28% LD 10% Grn 5% Ref 4%
Midlands and Wales Lab 48% Con 25% LD 10% Ref 7% Grn 5% PC 2%
North Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4%
Scotland SNP 57% Lab 21% Con 13% LD 4% Grn 2% Ref 2%
(PeoplePolling/GB News; 1,270; 24 January)
Awful results for the Tories in the north. I more and more think they should split, and join the advocates for PR, with future coalitions in mind . It would benefit them more than Labour in the near future.
Undemocratic Starmer trying to take us back into the single market ! Give us our vote on a new voting system to stop this travesty !
Starmer pro-single market? Huh? Gotta link?
Regarding the North of England, these findings - Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4% - are fairly consistent across pollsters, and for a long time now. They ain’t gonna suddenly change. Although it would be lovely with some proper English regional polling, especially for the South West. We haven’t even had a proper England poll for over a year.
I can’t understand why there isn’t more regional (or national, if you want to be knicker-knotty about it) polling.
When was the last Welsh poll, for example?
25 Nov - 1 Dec YouGov/ITV Cymru Wales; Cardiff University
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
As for the future? I suspect that a lot of the views that most of us have are about emoition and identity rather than reasoned weighing up of pros and cons. 2016 was just the moment where the generation who have always been suspicious of Europe (see the age breakdown from 1975) were in the ascendancy. A bit like the way that 2024 looks like it won't be about the relative details of the manifestoes, more that people are fed up with this government and not afraid of the alternative.
The short term effect of polling is that the Tories are chained to a corpse, and one that is beginning to get quite pungent. They won't be electable by a majority of voters until they accept Brexit was a mistake, and we need to reconcile with the EU.
The Tories have got it all wrong on pretty much all fronts.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
The polling on Brexit is so strongly that it was a mistake, and Brexit is so tied to the Tories as a policy that it is once again going to decide an election, only this time for the Tories to be buried.
I have my doubts. Brexit is such a complicated issue (and I think we all agree there) that people really will want to leave it alone.
Sure but the stench of Brexit hanging over the country will reflect badly on the Tories whether we Rejoin or not.
I say they are chained to that corpse because this side of a couple of election defeats they cannot leave it behind, as the Brexit vote is their core vote.
Rest of South Lab 51% Con 28% LD 10% Grn 5% Ref 4%
Midlands and Wales Lab 48% Con 25% LD 10% Ref 7% Grn 5% PC 2%
North Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4%
Scotland SNP 57% Lab 21% Con 13% LD 4% Grn 2% Ref 2%
(PeoplePolling/GB News; 1,270; 24 January)
Awful results for the Tories in the north. I more and more think they should split, and join the advocates for PR, with future coalitions in mind . It would benefit them more than Labour in the near future.
Undemocratic Starmer trying to take us back into the single market ! Give us our vote on a new voting system to stop this travesty !
Starmer pro-single market? Huh? Gotta link?
Regarding the North of England, these findings - Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4% - are fairly consistent across pollsters, and for a long time now. They ain’t gonna suddenly change. Although it would be lovely with some proper English regional polling, especially for the South West. We haven’t even had a proper England poll for over a year.
I can’t understand why there isn’t more regional (or national, if you want to be knicker-knotty about it) polling.
When was the last Welsh poll, for example?
25 Nov - 1 Dec YouGov/ITV Cymru Wales; Cardiff University
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
An alternate history, whereby Labour ambushed Mrs May’s deal with abstentions to ensure it passed, would have been quite fascinating.
I think we’d probably have had an immediate general election, with “deal or no deal” as the single campaign issue, but the Tories split in half. Farage would probably have won dozens of seats from Tory defectors, but Labour would have carried a majority or close to it.
Rest of South Lab 51% Con 28% LD 10% Grn 5% Ref 4%
Midlands and Wales Lab 48% Con 25% LD 10% Ref 7% Grn 5% PC 2%
North Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4%
Scotland SNP 57% Lab 21% Con 13% LD 4% Grn 2% Ref 2%
(PeoplePolling/GB News; 1,270; 24 January)
Awful results for the Tories in the north. I more and more think they should split, and join the advocates for PR, with future coalitions in mind . It would benefit them more than Labour in the near future.
Undemocratic Starmer trying to take us back into the single market ! Give us our vote on a new voting system to stop this travesty !
Starmer pro-single market? Huh? Gotta link?
Regarding the North of England, these findings - Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4% - are fairly consistent across pollsters, and for a long time now. They ain’t gonna suddenly change. Although it would be lovely with some proper English regional polling, especially for the South West. We haven’t even had a proper England poll for over a year.
I can’t understand why there isn’t more regional (or national, if you want to be knicker-knotty about it) polling.
When was the last Welsh poll, for example?
25 Nov - 1 Dec YouGov/ITV Cymru Wales; Cardiff University
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
(1) Yes, but it was all said at the time (2) Which was impossible once May's deal was done (3) Corbyn was the party leader - Sir Keir was the Shadow Brexit Secretary and architect of the Labour Brexit strategy from 2016-2019. (4) It would have been too late, if Parliament had voted for May's deal it would have been executed quicker than May could have been replaced - and even if not a replacement would have been anti-democratic in trying to re-open it.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
That is patently untrue.
You are absolving Johnson of his desperately poor deal and blaming Starmer. That's plain weird.
He could have led Labour in voting for May's deal, in which case it would have passed. Instead we ended up with Boris's deal which is certainly more detached from the EU than May's deal. What's weird about noting that?
What’s weird is that it is part of a long term desire by Brexiters to absolve themselves of the giant mess they supported, and in Johnson’s case, led.
I believe the kids call it gaslighting.
Don't blame me, I would have been happy with May's deal. But once Sir Keir led Labour in voting it down, Boris's deal it had to be.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
As for the future? I suspect that a lot of the views that most of us have are about emoition and identity rather than reasoned weighing up of pros and cons. 2016 was just the moment where the generation who have always been suspicious of Europe (see the age breakdown from 1975) were in the ascendancy. A bit like the way that 2024 looks like it won't be about the relative details of the manifestoes, more that people are fed up with this government and not afraid of the alternative.
The short term effect of polling is that the Tories are chained to a corpse, and one that is beginning to get quite pungent. They won't be electable by a majority of voters until they accept Brexit was a mistake, and we need to reconcile with the EU.
The Tories have got it all wrong on pretty much all fronts.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
The polling on Brexit is so strongly that it was a mistake, and Brexit is so tied to the Tories as a policy that it is once again going to decide an election, only this time for the Tories to be buried.
I have my doubts. Brexit is such a complicated issue (and I think we all agree there) that people really will want to leave it alone.
Sure but the stench of Brexit hanging over the country will reflect badly on the Tories whether we Rejoin or not.
I say they are chained to that corpse because this side of a couple of election defeats they cannot leave it behind, as the Brexit vote is their core vote.
The Tory core vote is just what it is and it's not about Brexit. Labour's core vote isn't about Brexit either, and I'd suggest that the issue has manhandled their fortunes more viciously.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
That is patently untrue.
You are absolving Johnson of his desperately poor deal and blaming Starmer. That's plain weird.
He could have led Labour in voting for May's deal, in which case it would have passed. Instead we ended up with Boris's deal which is certainly more detached from the EU than May's deal. What's weird about noting that?
What’s weird is that it is part of a long term desire by Brexiters to absolve themselves of the giant mess they supported, and in Johnson’s case, led.
I believe the kids call it gaslighting.
Don't blame me, I would have been happy with May's deal. But once Sir Keir led Labour in voting it down, Boris's deal it had to be.
No I am blaming you, because you are guilty of the precise behaviour I’m identifying here.
Rest of South Lab 51% Con 28% LD 10% Grn 5% Ref 4%
Midlands and Wales Lab 48% Con 25% LD 10% Ref 7% Grn 5% PC 2%
North Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4%
Scotland SNP 57% Lab 21% Con 13% LD 4% Grn 2% Ref 2%
(PeoplePolling/GB News; 1,270; 24 January)
Good grief that Rest of South figure is startling!
It is a stunner isn’t it.
I’m starting to think that Labour might do to the Blue Wall next time what the Tories did to the Red Wall last time.
Add in SCon extinction, near-WCon extinction and NI Unionist thrashing and this could be epochal.
Yougov has the Tories on 33% in the South and Deltapoll has the Tories still ahead in the South. Indeed it is the LDs not Labour second in most southern seats.
Yougov also has the SCons holding half their seats and Labour gaining more SNP seats than the SCons lose to the SNP.
Rest of South Lab 51% Con 28% LD 10% Grn 5% Ref 4%
Midlands and Wales Lab 48% Con 25% LD 10% Ref 7% Grn 5% PC 2%
North Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4%
Scotland SNP 57% Lab 21% Con 13% LD 4% Grn 2% Ref 2%
(PeoplePolling/GB News; 1,270; 24 January)
Awful results for the Tories in the north. I more and more think they should split, and join the advocates for PR, with future coalitions in mind . It would benefit them more than Labour in the near future.
Undemocratic Starmer trying to take us back into the single market ! Give us our vote on a new voting system to stop this travesty !
Starmer pro-single market? Huh? Gotta link?
Regarding the North of England, these findings - Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4% - are fairly consistent across pollsters, and for a long time now. They ain’t gonna suddenly change. Although it would be lovely with some proper English regional polling, especially for the South West. We haven’t even had a proper England poll for over a year.
I can’t understand why there isn’t more regional (or national, if you want to be knicker-knotty about it) polling.
When was the last Welsh poll, for example?
25 Nov - 1 Dec YouGov/ITV Cymru Wales; Cardiff University
Rest of South Lab 51% Con 28% LD 10% Grn 5% Ref 4%
Midlands and Wales Lab 48% Con 25% LD 10% Ref 7% Grn 5% PC 2%
North Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4%
Scotland SNP 57% Lab 21% Con 13% LD 4% Grn 2% Ref 2%
(PeoplePolling/GB News; 1,270; 24 January)
Awful results for the Tories in the north. I more and more think they should split, and join the advocates for PR, with future coalitions in mind . It would benefit them more than Labour in the near future.
Undemocratic Starmer trying to take us back into the single market ! Give us our vote on a new voting system to stop this travesty !
Starmer pro-single market? Huh? Gotta link?
Regarding the North of England, these findings - Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4% - are fairly consistent across pollsters, and for a long time now. They ain’t gonna suddenly change. Although it would be lovely with some proper English regional polling, especially for the South West. We haven’t even had a proper England poll for over a year.
I can’t understand why there isn’t more regional (or national, if you want to be knicker-knotty about it) polling.
When was the last Welsh poll, for example?
25 Nov - 1 Dec YouGov/ITV Cymru Wales; Cardiff University
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
For the first time in more than 30 years I got what is apparently called a wage slip today. A deeply depressing document. A small number at the top from which numerous deductions are made leaving an even smaller number at the bottom.
I am seriously perplexed we don’t have more revolutions in this country.
Worse still is realising how little we get for it. The UK is a classic example of the state doing too much and doing it badly, the last few years of big government conservatism should become a learning experience for all other countries to avoid going down the same path that Theresa May set us on.
And it’s getting worse. Yesterday my M-in-L had an online appointment for old age psychiatry. This is not a joke. She does not have internet or a computer so she had to be brought to our house to do the call.
After this travesty, which inevitably concluded that a face to face meeting was required, in 3 months time, my wife gets a form to complete confirming how wonderful this service was. Negative answers were not allowed. So, for example, you could record how many miles you had saved. A negative number, as in our case, was not permitted. Every question was slanted this way but no doubt this will be “evidence” in due course of how wonderful this is.
My MiL is suffering delusions which are scaring her to the point she doesn’t feel safe in her own home. A crap meeting like this, where she struggled to hear, and a 3 month wait. These are what these deductions from my pay slip are for?
You’ve continually voted for this, though. Austerity, then Brexit, then Johnson.
Edit: this sound like a personal attack, not especially. “You” is the general public.
You forget that I live in Scotland and live under the glory of the Scottish government which has never had a Tory element. The fact that it provides services which are at least as bad despite spending more per capita should really get a lot more thought by those deluding themselves that a Labour government is going to make it better.
The SNP must be the most effective political party ever, the situation with public servies in Scotland seems to be worse than in England, yet they, as the governing party, never get the blame for it. A remarkable feat.
I'm curious if they deny it is as bad (obviously I've no idea if it is), or acknowledge it is but blame Westminster for that.
No idea, but the stats indicate that it is worse. Think of what happened this morning, a made up story about HS2 and Euston and people are outraged, "fucking useless tories" etc etc. They never seems to happen to the SNP. They have even got away with the prison rapist stuff.
But who made up the story ? The suggestion is that it was a deliberate distraction exercise by government. Someone senior briefed it, since the BBC also took it seriously, first thing this morning.
I wouldn't be surprised if the HS2 service did start initially at Old Oak Common. It is a fairly common approach to projects that are late and over budget. Get something working to buy time and generate at least some cash.
It is actually surprisingly common historically; there have been loads of 'temporary' terminuses. Who remembers Minories (13 years until Fenchurch Street was built)? Devonshire Street (Mile End - a temporary terminus for the line to Bishopsgate, which operated as a terminus for a year). Bishop’s Bridge Road - the first Paddington, whilst Paddington was built? And they're just from London.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
But in the case of HS2, it's unlikely, as OOC is not suited for a terminus - there could only be a very limited number of trains.
I haven't been following HS2 closely but it seems as it is (ie Nov 22) that Old Oak Common with six platforms was targeted to be the initial London terminus from about 2030, and designed as such, with the revamped Euston Station following on about five years later. I can see both dates pushing to the right.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
As for the future? I suspect that a lot of the views that most of us have are about emoition and identity rather than reasoned weighing up of pros and cons. 2016 was just the moment where the generation who have always been suspicious of Europe (see the age breakdown from 1975) were in the ascendancy. A bit like the way that 2024 looks like it won't be about the relative details of the manifestoes, more that people are fed up with this government and not afraid of the alternative.
The short term effect of polling is that the Tories are chained to a corpse, and one that is beginning to get quite pungent. They won't be electable by a majority of voters until they accept Brexit was a mistake, and we need to reconcile with the EU.
The Tories have got it all wrong on pretty much all fronts.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
The polling on Brexit is so strongly that it was a mistake, and Brexit is so tied to the Tories as a policy that it is once again going to decide an election, only this time for the Tories to be buried.
I have my doubts. Brexit is such a complicated issue (and I think we all agree there) that people really will want to leave it alone.
Sure but the stench of Brexit hanging over the country will reflect badly on the Tories whether we Rejoin or not.
I say they are chained to that corpse because this side of a couple of election defeats they cannot leave it behind, as the Brexit vote is their core vote.
The Tory core vote is just what it is and it's not about Brexit. Labour's core vote isn't about Brexit either, and I'd suggest that the issue has manhandled their fortunes more viciously.
It is not so much Brexit itself that is the Tory core vote, nor Remain for the other parties, but rather the set of cultural values that Brexit represents. We either look at at the inward looking autarchy of Brexit positively or find it anathema.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
That is patently untrue.
You are absolving Johnson of his desperately poor deal and blaming Starmer. That's plain weird.
He could have led Labour in voting for May's deal, in which case it would have passed. Instead we ended up with Boris's deal which is certainly more detached from the EU than May's deal. What's weird about noting that?
What’s weird is that it is part of a long term desire by Brexiters to absolve themselves of the giant mess they supported, and in Johnson’s case, led.
I believe the kids call it gaslighting.
Don't blame me, I would have been happy with May's deal. But once Sir Keir led Labour in voting it down, Boris's deal it had to be.
No I am blaming you, because you are guilty of the precise behaviour I’m identifying here.
Well, I'm sorry that when Sir Keir reduced the choice between two bad options I supported the less bad one.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
Exactly. And the concept is sufficiently old that Aesop wrote about it.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
An alternate history, whereby Labour ambushed Mrs May’s deal with abstentions to ensure it passed, would have been quite fascinating.
I think we’d probably have had an immediate general election, with “deal or no deal” as the single campaign issue, but the Tories split in half. Farage would probably have won dozens of seats from Tory defectors, but Labour would have carried a majority or close to it.
It was one of the options suggested at the time, and they might have pulled it off.
Shame they didn't try - though it's hard to see Corbyn doing it. I think the Corbyn factor would still have denied Labour a majority.
Interesting that Brexit benefits appear to be > possible, potential, theoretical, ideological
Whereas the demerits of Brexit appear to be > actual, measurable, quantifiable, practical
Some crossover, but not much?
The depressing thing is all of that was known, and stated in terms, before the vote.
And yet you were still so shit you lost.
Does that make you feel better about the electorate being persuaded to vote for something they regret ?
If we'd voted to Remain, the electorate would have regretted that too.
A minority, sure.
A majority. We'd still have had Covid (with less good vaccines), we'd still have had lockdown and all the consequential harms that we're now living through, and human nature being what it is the electorate would have looked back and thought "what if?"
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
That is patently untrue.
You are absolving Johnson of his desperately poor deal and blaming Starmer. That's plain weird.
He could have led Labour in voting for May's deal, in which case it would have passed. Instead we ended up with Boris's deal which is certainly more detached from the EU than May's deal. What's weird about noting that?
What’s weird is that it is part of a long term desire by Brexiters to absolve themselves of the giant mess they supported, and in Johnson’s case, led.
I believe the kids call it gaslighting.
Don't blame me, I would have been happy with May's deal. But once Sir Keir led Labour in voting it down, Boris's deal it had to be.
No I am blaming you, because you are guilty of the precise behaviour I’m identifying here.
Well, I'm sorry that when Sir Keir reduced the choice between two bad options I supported the less bad one.
You don’t appear to be very sorry. You appear to derive some satisfaction from trying to pin the blame for the Brexit mess on Keir or Remainers.
Still, you implicitly acknowledge that Brexit is a total shitshow, which is vague progress.
As I said early on, Brexit is economics (and trade, and foreign policy) for slow learners.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
An alternate history, whereby Labour ambushed Mrs May’s deal with abstentions to ensure it passed, would have been quite fascinating.
I think we’d probably have had an immediate general election, with “deal or no deal” as the single campaign issue, but the Tories split in half. Farage would probably have won dozens of seats from Tory defectors, but Labour would have carried a majority or close to it.
It was one of the options suggested at the time, and they might have pulled it off.
Shame they didn't try - though it's hard to see Corbyn doing it. I think the Corbyn factor would still have denied Labour a majority.
Yes but it took Boris and getting Brexit done to get a Conservative majority v Corbyn
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
An alternate history, whereby Labour ambushed Mrs May’s deal with abstentions to ensure it passed, would have been quite fascinating.
I think we’d probably have had an immediate general election, with “deal or no deal” as the single campaign issue, but the Tories split in half. Farage would probably have won dozens of seats from Tory defectors, but Labour would have carried a majority or close to it.
I was working on the campaign of my then MP during the 2019 election.
Frankly, I knew we'd win a majority as soon as Brexit Party stood down in Tory seats. The mood on the ground was unlike any election I'd ever been involved in. Even those who didn't really want Brexit were fed up with the Grieve-ites and their ilk by that point. Lifelong LDs expressed their distaste for whas-her-name who was going to be the 'next PM' on grounds of democracy.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
As for the future? I suspect that a lot of the views that most of us have are about emoition and identity rather than reasoned weighing up of pros and cons. 2016 was just the moment where the generation who have always been suspicious of Europe (see the age breakdown from 1975) were in the ascendancy. A bit like the way that 2024 looks like it won't be about the relative details of the manifestoes, more that people are fed up with this government and not afraid of the alternative.
The short term effect of polling is that the Tories are chained to a corpse, and one that is beginning to get quite pungent. They won't be electable by a majority of voters until they accept Brexit was a mistake, and we need to reconcile with the EU.
The Tories have got it all wrong on pretty much all fronts.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
The polling on Brexit is so strongly that it was a mistake, and Brexit is so tied to the Tories as a policy that it is once again going to decide an election, only this time for the Tories to be buried.
I have my doubts. Brexit is such a complicated issue (and I think we all agree there) that people really will want to leave it alone.
Sure but the stench of Brexit hanging over the country will reflect badly on the Tories whether we Rejoin or not.
I say they are chained to that corpse because this side of a couple of election defeats they cannot leave it behind, as the Brexit vote is their core vote.
The Tory core vote is just what it is and it's not about Brexit. Labour's core vote isn't about Brexit either, and I'd suggest that the issue has manhandled their fortunes more viciously.
It is not so much Brexit itself that is the Tory core vote, nor Remain for the other parties, but rather the set of cultural values that Brexit represents. We either look at at the inward looking autarchy of Brexit positively or find it anathema.
I voted to leave. I very much doubt that my cultural values are so very different from yours.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
As for the future? I suspect that a lot of the views that most of us have are about emoition and identity rather than reasoned weighing up of pros and cons. 2016 was just the moment where the generation who have always been suspicious of Europe (see the age breakdown from 1975) were in the ascendancy. A bit like the way that 2024 looks like it won't be about the relative details of the manifestoes, more that people are fed up with this government and not afraid of the alternative.
The short term effect of polling is that the Tories are chained to a corpse, and one that is beginning to get quite pungent. They won't be electable by a majority of voters until they accept Brexit was a mistake, and we need to reconcile with the EU.
The Tories have got it all wrong on pretty much all fronts.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
The polling on Brexit is so strongly that it was a mistake, and Brexit is so tied to the Tories as a policy that it is once again going to decide an election, only this time for the Tories to be buried.
I have my doubts. Brexit is such a complicated issue (and I think we all agree there) that people really will want to leave it alone.
Sure but the stench of Brexit hanging over the country will reflect badly on the Tories whether we Rejoin or not.
I say they are chained to that corpse because this side of a couple of election defeats they cannot leave it behind, as the Brexit vote is their core vote.
The Tory core vote is just what it is and it's not about Brexit. Labour's core vote isn't about Brexit either, and I'd suggest that the issue has manhandled their fortunes more viciously.
It is not so much Brexit itself that is the Tory core vote, nor Remain for the other parties, but rather the set of cultural values that Brexit represents. We either look at at the inward looking autarchy of Brexit positively or find it anathema.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
That is patently untrue.
You are absolving Johnson of his desperately poor deal and blaming Starmer. That's plain weird.
He could have led Labour in voting for May's deal, in which case it would have passed. Instead we ended up with Boris's deal which is certainly more detached from the EU than May's deal. What's weird about noting that?
What’s weird is that it is part of a long term desire by Brexiters to absolve themselves of the giant mess they supported, and in Johnson’s case, led.
I believe the kids call it gaslighting.
Don't blame me, I would have been happy with May's deal. But once Sir Keir led Labour in voting it down, Boris's deal it had to be.
No I am blaming you, because you are guilty of the precise behaviour I’m identifying here.
Well, I'm sorry that when Sir Keir reduced the choice between two bad options I supported the less bad one.
You don’t appear to be very sorry. You appear to derive some satisfaction from trying to pin the blame for the Brexit mess on Keir or Remainers.
Still, you implicitly acknowledge that Brexit is a total shitshow, which is vague progress.
As I said early on, Brexit is economics (and trade, and foreign policy) for slow learners.
I acknowledge that whatever we'd done after 2016 it would have been a shitshow, because decades of governments of both colours integrating us deeper in the EU quite possibly against the wishes of the electorate led us to a position where there were no good options and the status quo was unsustainable.
Since 2016 (maybe earlier, but definitely from that point) it was always about choosing the least bad option - my contempt for Sir Keir in particular is because when May's deal came to Parliament, he should have seen it as the least bad option and consequently led Labour in voting for it. Instead he led Labour in voting it down and ended up with what he surely considers a worse option than what he could have had.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
That is patently untrue.
You are absolving Johnson of his desperately poor deal and blaming Starmer. That's plain weird.
He could have led Labour in voting for May's deal, in which case it would have passed. Instead we ended up with Boris's deal which is certainly more detached from the EU than May's deal. What's weird about noting that?
What’s weird is that it is part of a long term desire by Brexiters to absolve themselves of the giant mess they supported, and in Johnson’s case, led.
I believe the kids call it gaslighting.
Don't blame me, I would have been happy with May's deal. But once Sir Keir led Labour in voting it down, Boris's deal it had to be.
No I am blaming you, because you are guilty of the precise behaviour I’m identifying here.
Well, I'm sorry that when Sir Keir reduced the choice between two bad options I supported the less bad one.
At the moment it appears that on a number of issues only bad and worse options are available. Most notably on relations with the EU and the Scotland question. But NHS, debt, public finances, COLC, migration all run a close second.
Glittering prizes await a genius leader (it may have been Boris but for his inability to overcome egregious flaws, because he had the genius) who can form the stuff of this into a decent narrative in which the current time is a better springboard than we thought, and a plan and will for the future is visible.
We are some way off such a person. But it is quite a prize.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
What with that and "Wages will go up if we vote leave", the Remain campaign did a grand job persuading people to vote leave.
How’s that wage growth going? Perhaps sample some of the folks down at Hebden Bridge.
Millions of people who were on minimum wage in 2019, are now earning 20% or 30% more than that, paying more taxes and claiming fewer benefits. Minimum wage is no longer seen as the maximum wage in a whole number of industries.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
I don’t agree. It’s all about the trend. And the trend is BAAAAD for Brexit.
Brexit is a part of history, a given fact, an axiom. "The trend" is not some force of nature that will continue unabated - if Rejoin is to happen then at some point, its advocates have to win a referendum based on actual new terms of membership and not just by saying "leaving in 2016 was a mistake". Remain failed in 2016 solely because its advocates wouldn't - more likely couldn't - articulate a single actual positive reason to vote for continued membership. If the EU supporters don't learn that lesson, they won't win a Rejoin referendum, and no irrelevant perceived "trend" a few years in the past will help them.
Sure, for the time being, Brexit means Brexit. The interesting question is- what does this do to the British State of Mind. What will it be like to be in a country where there's something fundamental that a majority of voters don't like but don't think can be changed. A minority can be expected to get over it and make the best of it. But a majority? That's going to be odd and not in a good way.
As for the future? I suspect that a lot of the views that most of us have are about emoition and identity rather than reasoned weighing up of pros and cons. 2016 was just the moment where the generation who have always been suspicious of Europe (see the age breakdown from 1975) were in the ascendancy. A bit like the way that 2024 looks like it won't be about the relative details of the manifestoes, more that people are fed up with this government and not afraid of the alternative.
The short term effect of polling is that the Tories are chained to a corpse, and one that is beginning to get quite pungent. They won't be electable by a majority of voters until they accept Brexit was a mistake, and we need to reconcile with the EU.
The Tories have got it all wrong on pretty much all fronts.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
The polling on Brexit is so strongly that it was a mistake, and Brexit is so tied to the Tories as a policy that it is once again going to decide an election, only this time for the Tories to be buried.
I have my doubts. Brexit is such a complicated issue (and I think we all agree there) that people really will want to leave it alone.
Sure but the stench of Brexit hanging over the country will reflect badly on the Tories whether we Rejoin or not.
I say they are chained to that corpse because this side of a couple of election defeats they cannot leave it behind, as the Brexit vote is their core vote.
The Tory core vote is just what it is and it's not about Brexit. Labour's core vote isn't about Brexit either, and I'd suggest that the issue has manhandled their fortunes more viciously.
It is not so much Brexit itself that is the Tory core vote, nor Remain for the other parties, but rather the set of cultural values that Brexit represents. We either look at at the inward looking autarchy of Brexit positively or find it anathema.
Even as a remainer, I see there are some potential benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls, for example. Or better employment rights than before. Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK.
And no, I'm not necessarily advocating any of those, as the costs might outweigh the benefits. But there must be some where it wouldn't. I'm just saying we could do them if we wanted to but I don't hear anybody proposing anything like that.
The problem is that the Brexiteers don't know what they what, or rather, they want different things. Take for example your first point: environmental legislation. One set of Brexiteers would indeed like much tighter environmental and food quality controls, but another set would prefer looser environmental and quality controls. So taking advantage of our new-found freedom isn't going to be easy - any divergence from the current standards will be wildly unpopular with a substantial number of the very people that voted for the freedom to diverge. In addition, any move in either direction from EU standards comes with its own cost in terms of trade, making divergence even more difficult.
It doesn't matter what 'the Brexiteers' want. Now that we have left the EU we have the ability, as a country, to decide what we want in terms of environmental legislation, employment rights and the awarding of contracts. That is the whole point. What 'Brexiteers' want is irrelevant as they have no more right to decide than any other section of our society. If public opinion is for tighter environmental and quality controls and that is what they vote for then that is what will happen irrespective of what 'Brexiteers' might want.
This comes back to what I said a few weeks ago. Brexit is currently unpopular because the Government is unpopular and the people who are supposed to be taking advantage of Brexit on our behalf are inept and corrupt. If Starmer does win then there will be a sea change in attitude in Government towards Brexit. It will be much closer to what I and many others wanted with compromise and negotiation not grandstanding. I don't expect that everyone will suddenly be happy with Brexit - too many irreconcilable Remainers will still whine about it to their dying days. But removing from power/influence the extremist ERG mindset will defuse a lot of the conflict and allow the Government to rule for the benefit of the country rather than just a small fanatical clique.
And if you want a Brexit benefit. It has destroyed the Tory party in the long term and that is something I can be very happy with and I am sure you can be too.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
Even as a remainer, I see there are some potential benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls, for example. Or better employment rights than before. Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK.
And no, I'm not necessarily advocating any of those, as the costs might outweigh the benefits. But there must be some where it wouldn't. I'm just saying we could do them if we wanted to but I don't hear anybody proposing anything like that.
The problem is that the Brexiteers don't know what they what, or rather, they want different things. Take for example your first point: environmental legislation. One set of Brexiteers would indeed like much tighter environmental and food quality controls, but another set would prefer looser environmental and quality controls. So taking advantage of our new-found freedom isn't going to be easy - any divergence from the current standards will be wildly unpopular with a substantial number of the very people that voted for the freedom to diverge. In addition, any move in either direction from EU standards comes with its own cost in terms of trade, making divergence even more difficult.
It doesn't matter what 'the Brexiteers' want. Now that we have left the EU we have the ability, as a country, to decide what we want in terms of environmental legislation, employment rights and the awarding of contracts. That is the whole point. What 'Brexiteers' want is irrelevant as they have no more right to decide than any other section of our society. If public opinion is for tighter environmental and quality controls and that is what they vote for then that is what will happen irrespective of what 'Brexiteers' might want.
This comes back to what I said a few weeks ago. Brexit is currently unpopular because the Government is unpopular and the people who are supposed to be taking advantage of Brexit on our behalf are inept and corrupt. If Starmer does win then there will be a sea change in attitude in Government towards Brexit. It will be much closer to what I and many others wanted with compromise and negotiation not grandstanding. I don't expect that everyone will suddenly be happy with Brexit - too many irreconcilable Remainers will still whine about it to their dying days. But removing from power/influence the extremist ERG mindset will defuse a lot of the conflict and allow the Government to rule for the benefit of the country rather than just a small fanatical clique.
And if you want a Brexit benefit. It has destroyed the Tory party in the long term and that is something I can be very happy with and I am sure you can be too.
Well, we can hope so. But this is high on the list of things he needs to talk about before the election lest he find himself with a paper small majority which he can't use to push through anything not in the manifesto.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
Bond Street was the only late-comer, opening five months after the others, last October.
I used the Elizabeth Line a few times this week. It's still bloody miraculous. We need to just get on and build infrastructure like HS2. It is transformational.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
And we couldn’t possibly have a referendum where people don’t fully understand what they are voting for, right?
Anyhow, who is to say what terms would be available. The hurdle will be their wanting to accept us back, rather than any technicalities around the terms. If we get to a point where they genuinely want us back, any issues around the terms will be easily resolved. If they don’t want us back, it’s all academic.
Even as a remainer, I see there are some potential benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls, for example. Or better employment rights than before. Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK.
And no, I'm not necessarily advocating any of those, as the costs might outweigh the benefits. But there must be some where it wouldn't. I'm just saying we could do them if we wanted to but I don't hear anybody proposing anything like that.
The problem is that the Brexiteers don't know what they what, or rather, they want different things. Take for example your first point: environmental legislation. One set of Brexiteers would indeed like much tighter environmental and food quality controls, but another set would prefer looser environmental and quality controls. So taking advantage of our new-found freedom isn't going to be easy - any divergence from the current standards will be wildly unpopular with a substantial number of the very people that voted for the freedom to diverge. In addition, any move in either direction from EU standards comes with its own cost in terms of trade, making divergence even more difficult.
It doesn't matter what 'the Brexiteers' want. Now that we have left the EU we have the ability, as a country, to decide what we want in terms of environmental legislation, employment rights and the awarding of contracts. That is the whole point. What 'Brexiteers' want is irrelevant as they have no more right to decide than any other section of our society. If public opinion is for tighter environmental and quality controls and that is what they vote for then that is what will happen irrespective of what 'Brexiteers' might want.
This comes back to what I said a few weeks ago. Brexit is currently unpopular because the Government is unpopular and the people who are supposed to be taking advantage of Brexit on our behalf are inept and corrupt. If Starmer does win then there will be a sea change in attitude in Government towards Brexit. It will be much closer to what I and many others wanted with compromise and negotiation not grandstanding. I don't expect that everyone will suddenly be happy with Brexit - too many irreconcilable Remainers will still whine about it to their dying days. But removing from power/influence the extremist ERG mindset will defuse a lot of the conflict and allow the Government to rule for the benefit of the country rather than just a small fanatical clique.
And if you want a Brexit benefit. It has destroyed the Tory party in the long term and that is something I can be very happy with and I am sure you can be too.
Well, we can hope so. But this is high on the list of things he needs to talk about before the election lest he find himself with a paper small majority which he can't use to push through anything not in the manifesto.
I am not sure that is the case. I spoke of a sea change in attitude in Government. That is not so much about votes in Parliament or new laws - although obviously they will play the part. It is more about the way they deal with the EU on a day to day basis. The way they deal with legacy EU regulation - changing only where needed on the basis of improvement rather than simply on the basis of it having been derived from the EU. There is massive scope for improvement in the way they deal with Brexit that requires only a change in attitude and I hope - though of course I don't know - that Starmer will provide that.
Even as a remainer, I see there are some potential benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls, for example. Or better employment rights than before. Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK.
But that is not a list of unalloyed benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls. "We could make food much more expensive for UK consumers"
Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. "We could make everything much more expensive in the UK and raise taxes to pay for it"
Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK. "We can shift all production of electric cars overseas"
How would insisting that all Evs sold in the UK are fitted with UK-made batteries shift production of EVs away from the UK?
It would result in the immediate suspension of all trade agreements between the UK and other countries as we would have rather breached the "no completely obvious non-tariff barriers" rule.
And therefore the only market for those EVs would be the UK.
Autarky has rarely been a successful economic strategy.
I was not suggesting it would be successful, nor recommending the policy. I was merely correcting what appears to have been a basic error in ScottP's comprehension.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
Bond Street was the only late-comer, opening five months after the others, last October.
I used the Elizabeth Line a few times this week. It's still bloody miraculous. We need to just get on and build infrastructure like HS2. It is transformational.
If you go from Paddignton to Tottenham Court Road you'll walk about a third of the way (it seems to me) in the stations.
Even as a remainer, I see there are some potential benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls, for example. Or better employment rights than before. Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK.
But that is not a list of unalloyed benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls. "We could make food much more expensive for UK consumers"
Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. "We could make everything much more expensive in the UK and raise taxes to pay for it"
Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK. "We can shift all production of electric cars overseas"
How would insisting that all Evs sold in the UK are fitted with UK-made batteries shift production of EVs away from the UK?
It would result in the immediate suspension of all trade agreements between the UK and other countries as we would have rather breached the "no completely obvious non-tariff barriers" rule.
And therefore the only market for those EVs would be the UK.
Autarky has rarely been a successful economic strategy.
I was not suggesting it would be successful, nor recommending the policy. I was merely correcting what appears to have been a basic error in ScottP's comprehension.
But it was the same with your list of prospective benefits posted the other day. Ban foreign fishing fleets and fish our own fish, you suggested. Yet any deal on fish was always going to require compromise with the EU, and it was naive to suggest otherwise. Not least because we catch mostly crab, herring and mackerel yet Brits want to eat cod, plaice and haddock.
Brexit led our fisherfolk up the garden path, and I can assure you that the ones around here are now very well aware of it.
For the first time in more than 30 years I got what is apparently called a wage slip today. A deeply depressing document. A small number at the top from which numerous deductions are made leaving an even smaller number at the bottom.
I am seriously perplexed we don’t have more revolutions in this country.
Worse still is realising how little we get for it. The UK is a classic example of the state doing too much and doing it badly, the last few years of big government conservatism should become a learning experience for all other countries to avoid going down the same path that Theresa May set us on.
And it’s getting worse. Yesterday my M-in-L had an online appointment for old age psychiatry. This is not a joke. She does not have internet or a computer so she had to be brought to our house to do the call.
After this travesty, which inevitably concluded that a face to face meeting was required, in 3 months time, my wife gets a form to complete confirming how wonderful this service was. Negative answers were not allowed. So, for example, you could record how many miles you had saved. A negative number, as in our case, was not permitted. Every question was slanted this way but no doubt this will be “evidence” in due course of how wonderful this is.
My MiL is suffering delusions which are scaring her to the point she doesn’t feel safe in her own home. A crap meeting like this, where she struggled to hear, and a 3 month wait. These are what these deductions from my pay slip are for?
You’ve continually voted for this, though. Austerity, then Brexit, then Johnson.
Edit: this sound like a personal attack, not especially. “You” is the general public.
You forget that I live in Scotland and live under the glory of the Scottish government which has never had a Tory element. The fact that it provides services which are at least as bad despite spending more per capita should really get a lot more thought by those deluding themselves that a Labour government is going to make it better.
The SNP must be the most effective political party ever, the situation with public servies in Scotland seems to be worse than in England, yet they, as the governing party, never get the blame for it. A remarkable feat.
I'm curious if they deny it is as bad (obviously I've no idea if it is), or acknowledge it is but blame Westminster for that.
No idea, but the stats indicate that it is worse. Think of what happened this morning, a made up story about HS2 and Euston and people are outraged, "fucking useless tories" etc etc. They never seems to happen to the SNP. They have even got away with the prison rapist stuff.
But who made up the story ? The suggestion is that it was a deliberate distraction exercise by government. Someone senior briefed it, since the BBC also took it seriously, first thing this morning.
I wouldn't be surprised if the HS2 service did start initially at Old Oak Common. It is a fairly common approach to projects that are late and over budget. Get something working to buy time and generate at least some cash.
It is actually surprisingly common historically; there have been loads of 'temporary' terminuses. Who remembers Minories (13 years until Fenchurch Street was built)? Devonshire Street (Mile End - a temporary terminus for the line to Bishopsgate, which operated as a terminus for a year). Bishop’s Bridge Road - the first Paddington, whilst Paddington was built? And they're just from London.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
But in the case of HS2, it's unlikely, as OOC is not suited for a terminus - there could only be a very limited number of trains.
I haven't been following HS2 closely but it seems as it is (ie Nov 22) that Old Oak Common with six platforms was targeted to be the initial London terminus from about 2030, and designed as such, with the revamped Euston Station following on about five years later. I can see both dates pushing to the right.
For the first time in more than 30 years I got what is apparently called a wage slip today. A deeply depressing document. A small number at the top from which numerous deductions are made leaving an even smaller number at the bottom.
I am seriously perplexed we don’t have more revolutions in this country.
Worse still is realising how little we get for it. The UK is a classic example of the state doing too much and doing it badly, the last few years of big government conservatism should become a learning experience for all other countries to avoid going down the same path that Theresa May set us on.
And it’s getting worse. Yesterday my M-in-L had an online appointment for old age psychiatry. This is not a joke. She does not have internet or a computer so she had to be brought to our house to do the call.
After this travesty, which inevitably concluded that a face to face meeting was required, in 3 months time, my wife gets a form to complete confirming how wonderful this service was. Negative answers were not allowed. So, for example, you could record how many miles you had saved. A negative number, as in our case, was not permitted. Every question was slanted this way but no doubt this will be “evidence” in due course of how wonderful this is.
My MiL is suffering delusions which are scaring her to the point she doesn’t feel safe in her own home. A crap meeting like this, where she struggled to hear, and a 3 month wait. These are what these deductions from my pay slip are for?
You’ve continually voted for this, though. Austerity, then Brexit, then Johnson.
Edit: this sound like a personal attack, not especially. “You” is the general public.
You forget that I live in Scotland and live under the glory of the Scottish government which has never had a Tory element. The fact that it provides services which are at least as bad despite spending more per capita should really get a lot more thought by those deluding themselves that a Labour government is going to make it better.
That's the point. The Government is tired and ready for the chop, but will Labour tackle poor public sector productivity? Record levels of taxation? Boats? Northern Ireland? Reduce energy costs? I cannot see any big question we face to which Labour is the answer.
No politicians of any party are the answer because they all still believe in the status quo. It needs changing....we cant have the state do all it does now because we cant afford it and the answer is not rich people being taxed more because there really arent enough of them. The answer is tax ordinary people more or do less but fund it properly.
No political party will ever sell the answer and get elected at this point frankly democracy is a failure because there is no democratic answer to the question and all we are doing is kicking the can down the road.
Note : I am a supporter of democracy and I am still saying at this point democracy is failing
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
What with that and "Wages will go up if we vote leave", the Remain campaign did a grand job persuading people to vote leave.
How’s that wage growth going? Perhaps sample some of the folks down at Hebden Bridge.
Millions of people who were on minimum wage in 2019, are now earning 20% or 30% more than that, paying more taxes and claiming fewer benefits. Minimum wage is no longer seen as the maximum wage in a whole number of industries.
Whilst true at the moment with the 10% increase in April it's likely that a lot of people will find themselves in that position again.
Mind you becuase of the money most of us earn we probably all struggle to imagine the difference that £12 rather than £11 an hour would make to someone.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
Bond Street was the only late-comer, opening five months after the others, last October.
I used the Elizabeth Line a few times this week. It's still bloody miraculous. We need to just get on and build infrastructure like HS2. It is transformational.
I challenge anyone sceptical of HS2 to travel from, say, Oxford Circus to Canterbury and back, using the old line one way and HS1 the other, and then tell me it doesn't matter which you use.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
And we couldn’t possibly have a referendum where people don’t fully understand what they are voting for, right?
Anyhow, who is to say what terms would be available. The hurdle will be their wanting to accept us back, rather than any technicalities around the terms. If we get to a point where they genuinely want us back, any issues around the terms will be easily resolved. If they don’t want us back, it’s all academic.
It's takes two to tango and the sane option for the EU would be to tell us to sod off.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
Bond Street was the only late-comer, opening five months after the others, last October.
I used the Elizabeth Line a few times this week. It's still bloody miraculous. We need to just get on and build infrastructure like HS2. It is transformational.
I challenge anyone sceptical of HS2 to travel from, say, Oxford Circus to Canterbury and back, using the old line one way and HS1 the other, and then tell me it doesn't matter which you use.
For the first time in more than 30 years I got what is apparently called a wage slip today. A deeply depressing document. A small number at the top from which numerous deductions are made leaving an even smaller number at the bottom.
I am seriously perplexed we don’t have more revolutions in this country.
Worse still is realising how little we get for it. The UK is a classic example of the state doing too much and doing it badly, the last few years of big government conservatism should become a learning experience for all other countries to avoid going down the same path that Theresa May set us on.
And it’s getting worse. Yesterday my M-in-L had an online appointment for old age psychiatry. This is not a joke. She does not have internet or a computer so she had to be brought to our house to do the call.
After this travesty, which inevitably concluded that a face to face meeting was required, in 3 months time, my wife gets a form to complete confirming how wonderful this service was. Negative answers were not allowed. So, for example, you could record how many miles you had saved. A negative number, as in our case, was not permitted. Every question was slanted this way but no doubt this will be “evidence” in due course of how wonderful this is.
My MiL is suffering delusions which are scaring her to the point she doesn’t feel safe in her own home. A crap meeting like this, where she struggled to hear, and a 3 month wait. These are what these deductions from my pay slip are for?
You’ve continually voted for this, though. Austerity, then Brexit, then Johnson.
Edit: this sound like a personal attack, not especially. “You” is the general public.
You forget that I live in Scotland and live under the glory of the Scottish government which has never had a Tory element. The fact that it provides services which are at least as bad despite spending more per capita should really get a lot more thought by those deluding themselves that a Labour government is going to make it better.
The SNP must be the most effective political party ever, the situation with public servies in Scotland seems to be worse than in England, yet they, as the governing party, never get the blame for it. A remarkable feat.
I'm curious if they deny it is as bad (obviously I've no idea if it is), or acknowledge it is but blame Westminster for that.
No idea, but the stats indicate that it is worse. Think of what happened this morning, a made up story about HS2 and Euston and people are outraged, "fucking useless tories" etc etc. They never seems to happen to the SNP. They have even got away with the prison rapist stuff.
But who made up the story ? The suggestion is that it was a deliberate distraction exercise by government. Someone senior briefed it, since the BBC also took it seriously, first thing this morning.
I wouldn't be surprised if the HS2 service did start initially at Old Oak Common. It is a fairly common approach to projects that are late and over budget. Get something working to buy time and generate at least some cash.
It is actually surprisingly common historically; there have been loads of 'temporary' terminuses. Who remembers Minories (13 years until Fenchurch Street was built)? Devonshire Street (Mile End - a temporary terminus for the line to Bishopsgate, which operated as a terminus for a year). Bishop’s Bridge Road - the first Paddington, whilst Paddington was built? And they're just from London.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
But in the case of HS2, it's unlikely, as OOC is not suited for a terminus - there could only be a very limited number of trains.
I haven't been following HS2 closely but it seems as it is (ie Nov 22) that Old Oak Common with six platforms was targeted to be the initial London terminus from about 2030, and designed as such, with the revamped Euston Station following on about five years later. I can see both dates pushing to the right.
I'd be fascinated to know your reasoning on that.
That's only the case because the IRP decided that they could save a few pennies (but add 5 years of construction hell to Euston) by changing the design of Euston's HS2 station whilst it was being built.
Even as a remainer, I see there are some potential benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls, for example. Or better employment rights than before. Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK.
And no, I'm not necessarily advocating any of those, as the costs might outweigh the benefits. But there must be some where it wouldn't. I'm just saying we could do them if we wanted to but I don't hear anybody proposing anything like that.
The problem is that the Brexiteers don't know what they what, or rather, they want different things. Take for example your first point: environmental legislation. One set of Brexiteers would indeed like much tighter environmental and food quality controls, but another set would prefer looser environmental and quality controls. So taking advantage of our new-found freedom isn't going to be easy - any divergence from the current standards will be wildly unpopular with a substantial number of the very people that voted for the freedom to diverge. In addition, any move in either direction from EU standards comes with its own cost in terms of trade, making divergence even more difficult.
It doesn't matter what 'the Brexiteers' want. Now that we have left the EU we have the ability, as a country, to decide what we want in terms of environmental legislation, employment rights and the awarding of contracts. That is the whole point. What 'Brexiteers' want is irrelevant as they have no more right to decide than any other section of our society. If public opinion is for tighter environmental and quality controls and that is what they vote for then that is what will happen irrespective of what 'Brexiteers' might want.
This comes back to what I said a few weeks ago. Brexit is currently unpopular because the Government is unpopular and the people who are supposed to be taking advantage of Brexit on our behalf are inept and corrupt. If Starmer does win then there will be a sea change in attitude in Government towards Brexit. It will be much closer to what I and many others wanted with compromise and negotiation not grandstanding. I don't expect that everyone will suddenly be happy with Brexit - too many irreconcilable Remainers will still whine about it to their dying days. But removing from power/influence the extremist ERG mindset will defuse a lot of the conflict and allow the Government to rule for the benefit of the country rather than just a small fanatical clique.
And if you want a Brexit benefit. It has destroyed the Tory party in the long term and that is something I can be very happy with and I am sure you can be too.
We actually need two strong parties with our system. Not a fan of either main party but want them to be the best representations of themselves rather than the worst as after 5-10 years in power whoever is in office generally needs replacing.
It doesn't matter what 'the Brexiteers' want. Now that we have left the EU we have the ability, as a country, to decide what we want in terms of environmental legislation, employment rights and the awarding of contracts. That is the whole point.
This is still Brexit fantasy.
What "we" want is the highest standard of environmental protection at the lowest cost to the consumer, maximum employment rights with minimal public inconvenience, protectionism for local industry with maximum consumer choice.
That is what Brexiteers voted for.
If any Government, of any stripe, in any Country at any time, had any way to deliver these wildly incompatible aims, we wouldn't be having this debate.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
Bond Street was the only late-comer, opening five months after the others, last October.
I used the Elizabeth Line a few times this week. It's still bloody miraculous. We need to just get on and build infrastructure like HS2. It is transformational.
If you go from Paddignton to Tottenham Court Road you'll walk about a third of the way (it seems to me) in the stations.
Secret govt plan to combat obesity and reduce demand for the NHS.
We are heading for 1/3 Brexit, 2/3 Brejoin, which is astonishing really.
"Rejoin", if not properly qualified in the question, will be inferred as "under the previous terms of membership" by the vast majority of people answering the question, who won't realise those terms are no longer available. So this polling, whilst not quite as bogus as treating a negative response to "in hindsight, should we have left" as equivalent to wanting to rejoin, is still sufficiently bogus to be not worth the paper it's written on. And it's on a screen not on paper.
And we couldn’t possibly have a referendum where people don’t fully understand what they are voting for, right?
Anyhow, who is to say what terms would be available. The hurdle will be their wanting to accept us back, rather than any technicalities around the terms. If we get to a point where they genuinely want us back, any issues around the terms will be easily resolved. If they don’t want us back, it’s all academic.
The point is that even if they do genuinely want us back, they'll make absolutely certain that we can't change our mind again a few years down the line.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
Bond Street was the only late-comer, opening five months after the others, last October.
I used the Elizabeth Line a few times this week. It's still bloody miraculous. We need to just get on and build infrastructure like HS2. It is transformational.
I challenge anyone sceptical of HS2 to travel from, say, Oxford Circus to Canterbury and back, using the old line one way and HS1 the other, and then tell me it doesn't matter which you use.
Victoria Station (shudders)...
Or Charing Cross/London Bridge to Canterbury West (which is where HS1 goes)...
Even as a remainer, I see there are some potential benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls, for example. Or better employment rights than before. Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK.
But that is not a list of unalloyed benefits.
We could have much tighter environmental and food quality controls. "We could make food much more expensive for UK consumers"
Or insist that all government contracts must only be let to UK-owned companies providing goods or services produced in the UK. "We could make everything much more expensive in the UK and raise taxes to pay for it"
Or that all electronic cars sold in the UK must be fitted with batteries made in the UK. "We can shift all production of electric cars overseas"
How would insisting that all Evs sold in the UK are fitted with UK-made batteries shift production of EVs away from the UK?
It would result in the immediate suspension of all trade agreements between the UK and other countries as we would have rather breached the "no completely obvious non-tariff barriers" rule.
And therefore the only market for those EVs would be the UK.
Autarky has rarely been a successful economic strategy.
I was not suggesting it would be successful, nor recommending the policy. I was merely correcting what appears to have been a basic error in ScottP's comprehension.
But it was the same with your list of prospective benefits posted the other day. Ban foreign fishing fleets and fish our own fish, you suggested. Yet any deal on fish was always going to require compromise with the EU, and it was naive to suggest otherwise. Not least because we catch mostly crab, herring and mackerel yet Brits want to eat cod, plaice and haddock.
Brexit led our fisherfolk up the garden path, and I can assure you that the ones around here are now very well aware of it.
I did not suggest that. I said ban a specific type of trawler, often used by foreign fishing fleets, from our waters, to protect fish stocks. As there's usually a high correlation between europhiles and concern for the environment, I am surprised that this idea did not reccomend itself to you, but perhaps for some, continental Europe offers a more forgiveable type of fish sucking megatrawler, just as they offer a more forgiveable type of fascist.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
Bond Street was the only late-comer, opening five months after the others, last October.
I used the Elizabeth Line a few times this week. It's still bloody miraculous. We need to just get on and build infrastructure like HS2. It is transformational.
I challenge anyone sceptical of HS2 to travel from, say, Oxford Circus to Canterbury and back, using the old line one way and HS1 the other, and then tell me it doesn't matter which you use.
Victoria Station (shudders)...
Or Charing Cross/London Bridge to Canterbury West (which is where HS1 goes)...
shudders - and even slower than the Victoria services..
Granted I left North Kent 25 years ago but I remember what it's like.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,
But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.
Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.
His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.
And he was right.
But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
This is utterly pathetic and contemptible stuff from the Republicans.
The Trump administration incurred a quarter of the entire debt in US history - including $1.8 trillion for an unfunded tax cut - and increased the debt ceiling several times to accommodate it. Now they want to fuck up the economy for no reason at all other than perceived political gain.
They make the Tories appear exemplars of moral principle.
The GOP faction are willing to trash the economy and cause a global meltdown unless their hostage demands are met . They want huge cuts to social security and Medicare . Both programmers ironically used by many GOP voters . The problem now is McCarthy is a hostage to them and it only takes one house member to call a vote of confidence in him . The Dems should have made more of the danger the GOP would be to the debt ceiling in the mid terms .
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
Bond Street was the only late-comer, opening five months after the others, last October.
I used the Elizabeth Line a few times this week. It's still bloody miraculous. We need to just get on and build infrastructure like HS2. It is transformational.
I challenge anyone sceptical of HS2 to travel from, say, Oxford Circus to Canterbury and back, using the old line one way and HS1 the other, and then tell me it doesn't matter which you use.
Victoria Station (shudders)...
Or Charing Cross/London Bridge to Canterbury West (which is where HS1 goes)...
shudders - and even slower than the Victoria services..
Granted I left North Kent 25 years ago but I remember what it's like.
Indeed. I just put it into Google Maps: Oxford Circus to a semi-random point in the middle of Canterbury, pretty equidistant between the two stations, mid-afternoon on Monday - via HS1: 1:21, via the old line: 1:51 (27% time saving). "Transformational" is the right word.
Rest of South Lab 51% Con 28% LD 10% Grn 5% Ref 4%
Midlands and Wales Lab 48% Con 25% LD 10% Ref 7% Grn 5% PC 2%
North Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4%
Scotland SNP 57% Lab 21% Con 13% LD 4% Grn 2% Ref 2%
(PeoplePolling/GB News; 1,270; 24 January)
Awful results for the Tories in the north. I more and more think they should split, and join the advocates for PR, with future coalitions in mind . It would benefit them more than Labour in the near future.
Undemocratic Starmer trying to take us back into the single market ! Give us our vote on a new voting system to stop this travesty !
Starmer pro-single market? Huh? Gotta link?
Regarding the North of England, these findings - Lab 55% Con 18% Ref 10% Grn 6% LD 4% - are fairly consistent across pollsters, and for a long time now. They ain’t gonna suddenly change. Although it would be lovely with some proper English regional polling, especially for the South West. We haven’t even had a proper England poll for over a year.
I can’t understand why there isn’t more regional (or national, if you want to be knicker-knotty about it) polling.
When was the last Welsh poll, for example?
25 Nov - 1 Dec YouGov/ITV Cymru Wales; Cardiff University
Not often I ‘Like’ a Gardenwalker post, but yes, Lol.
Hi mate. Hope you are keeping well
Hi CHB. Yes thank you. I am in rude good health. Spectating agog as Prime Minister Kristersson goofs up. The Swedish Social Democrats can hardly contain their glee.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,
But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.
Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.
His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.
And he was right.
But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
When did the euphiles ever take eurosceptics into account in the last 40 years when they tied us to mastriicht, the lisbon abomination, blair giving away our rebate for nothing, the lack of a moratorium for free movement form new accession states. If they had maybe brexit voters might not be sticking up two fingers and calling remainer folk "C****"
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,
But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.
Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.
His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.
And he was right.
But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
This was the problem of electing May in 2016 - she felt that as a previous Remain supporter she had to pander to the Leavers. Actually, it's worse than that - to her perception of Leavers.
I'm not sure Boris had much option - by the time he got to be PM he had to force through any Brexit possible, and there was only one Brexit possible at that point.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
Bond Street was the only late-comer, opening five months after the others, last October.
I used the Elizabeth Line a few times this week. It's still bloody miraculous. We need to just get on and build infrastructure like HS2. It is transformational.
I challenge anyone sceptical of HS2 to travel from, say, Oxford Circus to Canterbury and back, using the old line one way and HS1 the other, and then tell me it doesn't matter which you use.
Yes, if you nitpick away at the financials, or listen to special pleading and vested interests, then it's never the right time to do these projects. Always some supposedly better way to spend the money, always looks a stupidly big number, always bound to go overtime and overbudget, always possible to not do it and just get by instead, spend less and focus it on more immediate things, but you keep on doing that and what happens is you slide ever so gradually - frog boiling fashion - into a state of disrepair until one day it dawns on you, oh shit nothing works properly, other places seem to be much better.
If the majority doesn't get over it and want to make the best of it
We do want to make the best of it, by reversing as much as possible
Then why did Sir Keir lead Labour in choosing Boris's deal over May's?
The two were not on the table at the same time, so your question is bunk.
No, it really isn't. He certainly should have known in leading his party against May's deal that if he was successful in defeating it, something very much like Boris's deal was inevitable. Certainly the ERG realised that!
This is all hindsight chat.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Far too great a chunk of *influential* (press, MPs etc) Remainer thinking was on reversal. They went max, and lost. Again.
They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
Sure the FBPE guys and the People's Vote guys, and the like were scum,
But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.
Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.
His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.
And he was right.
But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
This was the problem of electing May in 2016 - she felt that as a previous Remain supporter she had to pander to the Leavers. Actually, it's worse than that - to her perception of Leavers.
I'm not sure Boris had much option - by the time he got to be PM he had to force through any Brexit possible, and there was only one Brexit possible at that point.
The fundamental problem was, and still is, that all possible Brexits were bad, just bad in different ways. Anything else was always just Cakeism.
It is arguable that even Communism delivered better results for the Soviet Union in the 1920s, than Brexit has for Britain in the 2010s and 2020s.
No you can’t argue that! 😠 because any Communism benefits came as spin from those who believed in communism, those who didn’t believe in communism were never given any evidence of actual real benefits.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
Bond Street was the only late-comer, opening five months after the others, last October.
I used the Elizabeth Line a few times this week. It's still bloody miraculous. We need to just get on and build infrastructure like HS2. It is transformational.
I challenge anyone sceptical of HS2 to travel from, say, Oxford Circus to Canterbury and back, using the old line one way and HS1 the other, and then tell me it doesn't matter which you use.
Yes, if you nitpick away at the financials, or listen to special pleading and vested interests, then it's never the right time to do these projects. Always some supposedly better way to spend the money, always looks a stupidly big number, always bound to go overtime and overbudget, always possible to not do it and just get by instead, spend less and focus it on more immediate things, but you keep on doing that and what happens is you slide ever so gradually - frog boiling fashion - into a state of disrepair until one day it dawns on you, oh shit nothing works properly, other places seem much better at all this stuff. Which I fear is close to where we are.
Put it this way it's going to require millions (or some sort of clemancy) to get the courts back to a vaguely fair justice systems where justice is served wthin Months rather than years and that's one tiny area.
You then have education, higher education where because fees haven't risen finances are running tight, local Government .... Basically everywhere you look the public sector is on it's last legs desperately trying to keep going.
Comments
“Different” is a better description, but written from British environmental food concerns, rather than those of many other countries with their own environmental problems and their own industries to protect.
I accept that almost everyone went along with it beforehand. But it was a fundamentally unsound process that was not able really to withstand the inevitably (one way or another) narrow margin.
Personally I don't imagine that their woefulness on Brexit delivery reflects anything about a general regret.
This is a bit of a different way for the Tories to get things wrong. Labour have traditionally just spent the caution. This time though there's nothing to spend.
Which is why Brexiteers refused to specify before the vote, and are struggling to specify even now
You are absolving Johnson of his desperately poor deal and blaming Starmer. That's plain weird.
May’s deal even unto itself was a “hard” Brexit, as that term was understood in the early post-vote period.
Remainer opponents of May’s deal hoped first and foremost to swing Brexit toward terms thought more favourable to Remainers (48% of the population, lest we forget).
Even if Labour (which was led by Corbyn at the time) HAD voted for May’s deal, she would just as likely have been deposed by her own party to prevent its execution and in retaliation at the disgrace of trying to pass a deal over the heads of the large rump of Tory backbenchers.
Even nowadays, the Elizabeth Line was open, but without some stations on routes, for quite a while before it fully opened.
But in the case of HS2, it's unlikely, as OOC is not suited for a terminus - there could only be a very limited number of trains.
Even today, in 2023, “Brexit” essentially remains the only Tory policy. That, and a new round of austerity. Nothing else has been achieved in seven years.
I’m starting to think that Labour might do to the Blue Wall next time what the Tories did to the Red Wall last time.
Add in SCon extinction, near-WCon extinction and NI Unionist thrashing and this could be epochal.
I believe the kids call it gaslighting.
YouGov/ITV Cymru Wales; Cardiff University
WLab 51%
WCon 18%
PC 13%
Ref 8%
Grn 4%
WLD 4%
oth 2%
I say they are chained to that corpse because this side of a couple of election defeats they cannot leave it behind, as the Brexit vote is their core vote.
I think we’d probably have had an immediate general election, with “deal or no deal” as the single campaign issue, but the Tories split in half. Farage would probably have won dozens of seats from Tory defectors, but Labour would have carried a majority or close to it.
(2) Which was impossible once May's deal was done
(3) Corbyn was the party leader - Sir Keir was the Shadow Brexit Secretary and architect of the Labour Brexit strategy from 2016-2019.
(4) It would have been too late, if Parliament had voted for May's deal it would have been executed quicker than May could have been replaced - and even if not a replacement would have been anti-democratic in trying to re-open it.
Yougov also has the SCons holding half their seats and Labour gaining more SNP seats than the SCons lose to the SNP.
Northern Irish polling shows barely any change from 2019 under FPTP
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/01/25/voting-intention-con-26-lab-48-18-19-jan-2023
They learned nothing from the actual campaign.
It was the Remainers who were duped by the bus.
Shame they didn't try - though it's hard to see Corbyn doing it.
I think the Corbyn factor would still have denied Labour a majority.
You appear to derive some satisfaction from trying to pin the blame for the Brexit mess on Keir or Remainers.
Still, you implicitly acknowledge that Brexit is a total shitshow, which is vague progress.
As I said early on, Brexit is economics (and trade, and foreign policy) for slow learners.
Frankly, I knew we'd win a majority as soon as Brexit Party stood down in Tory seats. The mood on the ground was unlike any election I'd ever been involved in. Even those who didn't really want Brexit were fed up with the Grieve-ites and their ilk by that point. Lifelong LDs expressed their distaste for whas-her-name who was going to be the 'next PM' on grounds of democracy.
Autarchy? Knock youself out.
What with that and "Wages will go up if we vote leave", the Remain campaign did a grand job persuading people to vote leave.
Since 2016 (maybe earlier, but definitely from that point) it was always about choosing the least bad option - my contempt for Sir Keir in particular is because when May's deal came to Parliament, he should have seen it as the least bad option and consequently led Labour in voting for it. Instead he led Labour in voting it down and ended up with what he surely considers a worse option than what he could have had.
Glittering prizes await a genius leader (it may have been Boris but for his inability to overcome egregious flaws, because he had the genius) who can form the stuff of this into a decent narrative in which the current time is a better springboard than we thought, and a plan and will for the future is visible.
We are some way off such a person. But it is quite a prize.
Perhaps sample some of the folks down at Hebden Bridge.
No surprise at all that when they left Labour started winning again. Johnson and the Tories have never been popular
This comes back to what I said a few weeks ago. Brexit is currently unpopular because the Government is unpopular and the people who are supposed to be taking advantage of Brexit on our behalf are inept and corrupt. If Starmer does win then there will be a sea change in attitude in Government towards Brexit. It will be much closer to what I and many others wanted with compromise and negotiation not grandstanding. I don't expect that everyone will suddenly be happy with Brexit - too many irreconcilable Remainers will still whine about it to their dying days. But removing from power/influence the extremist ERG mindset will defuse a lot of the conflict and allow the Government to rule for the benefit of the country rather than just a small fanatical clique.
And if you want a Brexit benefit. It has destroyed the Tory party in the long term and that is something I can be very happy with and I am sure you can be too.
Anyhow, who is to say what terms would be available. The hurdle will be their wanting to accept us back, rather than any technicalities around the terms. If we get to a point where they genuinely want us back, any issues around the terms will be easily resolved. If they don’t want us back, it’s all academic.
Brexit led our fisherfolk up the garden path, and I can assure you that the ones around here are now very well aware of it.
No political party will ever sell the answer and get elected at this point frankly democracy is a failure because there is no democratic answer to the question and all we are doing is kicking the can down the road.
Note : I am a supporter of democracy and I am still saying at this point democracy is failing
Mind you becuase of the money most of us earn we probably all struggle to imagine the difference that £12 rather than £11 an hour would make to someone.
What "we" want is the highest standard of environmental protection at the lowest cost to the consumer, maximum employment rights with minimal public inconvenience, protectionism for local industry with maximum consumer choice.
That is what Brexiteers voted for.
If any Government, of any stripe, in any Country at any time, had any way to deliver these wildly incompatible aims, we wouldn't be having this debate.
Granted I left North Kent 25 years ago but I remember what it's like.
But I don't remember the clamour of offers from our side for a compromise Brexit.
Before the referendum, when it looked like a narrow Remain win was likely, Dominic Raab gave a little speech, where he said that a narrow win for one side should mean that we shouldn't discount the losers.
His point was that if Remain won narrowly, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that the British were gung ho for further integration, but rather that it was narrowly balanced, and we should make sure the tens of millions of people who voted Leave were not forgotten.
And he was right.
But that cuts both ways too. While there was no serious effort from the losers to find a compromise, nor was their any effort from May or Johnson to reach out to the muddy middle.
I'm not sure Boris had much option - by the time he got to be PM he had to force through any Brexit possible, and there was only one Brexit possible at that point.
just Cakeism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv9jVgfvmLU
Put it this way it's going to require millions (or some sort of clemancy) to get the courts back to a vaguely fair justice systems where justice is served wthin Months rather than years and that's one tiny area.
You then have education, higher education where because fees haven't risen finances are running tight, local Government .... Basically everywhere you look the public sector is on it's last legs desperately trying to keep going.