I'm sympathetic to those wanting pay increases in line with inflation. In particular, teaching ought to be a more highly valued profession. But:
- The only way for public sector workers to have more is for others to have less.
This is not how the economy works!
Paying teachers more will require tax rises or cuts elsewhere, that will other people poorer. That is the immediate effect.
Now you may say the case for teachers or some other public sector employees being paid more is worth the (most likely) tax rise or (less likely) cuts elsewhere. The teaching unions have to lay out a business plan for it just as I do when I make the case for members of my team getting pay rises. What additional responsibilities will they be taking on, what productivity gains can we expect from them and what will the end result be from the pay rises.
For nurses, the actual numbers are pretty easy to see, pay them a bit more, increase retention rates, increase training places due to better and more reliable staffing and ease the short term healthcare crunch and get the million "sick" back into work. That the government is unable to see this means they are still beholden to treasury groupthink. For teachers the case is much, much less clear cut. Teacher salaries in the UK are comparable to similar countries across Europe and there's not exactly a huge international market for teachers as there is for healthcare workers. There's also huge quality issues surrounding teaching and education in general, the sector seems to have decided bells and whistles like interactive whiteboards and touch screen tablets will make up for not actually teaching the kids very much, that may or may not be the fault of the DoE but that's where we're at.
Agree with some of this - my central point is -> it is untrue that giving pay rises to these public sector workers means others in private sector will get paid less. You can make the system more efficient/grow the economy. You can have false economies on staffing which end up costing you more. I'm convinced that is where we are in healthcare, possibly we are there in education also.
For nurses. We could probably increase pay and save money on freelancers in some trusts. We certainly would save money as an economy to have people healthy, and we know we don't have enough staff.
On teachers, I think it's clear we have a problem retaining them and so have to spend more on recruiting, training etc. Possibly higher wages would help, possibly there are working condition things that would help more instead.
I sense it will be sellable, the tide against Brexit is one way and it is powerful. You can feel it
The Tories have blown it. Blown Brexit
Not at all.
This version of Brexit is plausibly the best version there ever could be.
We told you before you voted for it, it would be a shitshow.
And now here we are...
Clearly bollocks from you as even most Remainers admit.
Richard is right. I bow to nobody in my loathing for Brexit and its proponents.
I still gnash my teeth when I remember how Gisela Stuart dissembled in the televised pre referendum debate about the effect on Northern Ireland.
But the truth is we have had a lowest decile Brexit. Pretty much everything that could go wrong for the Brexiteers has gone wrong - no US FTA, Trump lost to Biden, the EU played hardball (talking about Swexit and Italexit during negotiations was an own goal by Farage).
There have been almost no economic benefits from Brexit to talk about - and our post-Brexit trade deals under Truss were to our disadvantage.
Even the political mood music - continued political confrontation with the Citizens of Nowhere as part of a misguided Red Wall strategy - was ill chosen.
None of this was certain in 2016.
The worst thing is that I feel deep sympathy for committed Brexiteers. To work for something for decades and to see it mishandled so grievously must be really upsetting.
I hear kids in primary schools are now using Brexit as shorthand for screwed up. Not good.
And .ore widely - not good for the country. A period of competent administration is desperately needed.
This of course is the Brexit as socialism view. Brexit is pure and wonderful just that it hasn't been tried properly yet.
So the logical conclusion of your claim is that May, Johnson and Truss were top notch politicians and leaders who made no mistakes, created the best possible Brexit and were only bought low by the project rather than by their own incompetence and ineptitude? Its a 'courageous' theory at least.
But, like communism, it is no good having a world view that requires five impossible things before breakfast in order to work. If you support radical change it has to survive contact with the real, messy world - including the shortcomings of our rulers - otherwise when you are old you’ll just be sitting there, repeating over and over, “it would have worked, if only…if only….”
It shouldn't have been an impossible thing for the losers to have accepted defeat and worked for the option that from their point of view was the less bad.
It’s telling I think that people expect - and probably with some reason - higher standards from the remainder side than the brexiteers, and are disappointed when they seem to be playing partisan political games. Whereas they expect Brexiteers to play partisan political games and don’t think any the worse of them for that.
There’s a sense that the remainers were supposed to be the sensible ones. The mothers. Whereas for the leavers, well boys will be boys.
It's not quite as simple as that.
The ERG voted down May's deal because there was a deal available that, from their point of view, was better.
Labour (ringleader: Sir Keir Starmer) voted down May's deal even though there was no deal available that, from their point of view, was better.
It's pretty obvious that the latter deserves greater contempt.
I am loving the rewriting of Brexit history by the regretful Brexiteers. The Conservatives are thus absolved of Johnson's catastrophic deal because Opposition parties didn't support May's deal.
At the time, May's deal was poor. It didn't have to be, but it was. There was no attempt at consensus, and I would have thought such an arch-Brexiteer like Corbyn would have been open to leaving on reasonable terms. There was no contrition at each moment the deal failed in the HoC. It just kept being put back to the (HoC) electorate until it passed. The very thing the Brexiteer justices of democracy were denying to second referenda advocates.
I would not, and could not support May's deal. With the benefit of hindsight it was less bad than what came next, but that's not my fault. It was the responsibility of the Prime Minister who claimed there would be no Border in the Irish Sea and duly stuck one in the middle of the North Channel.
I agree with all of this - but of course I am not regretful. The only point at which I differ is I could and would have supported May's deal - though it was too hard a Brexit in my mind. I lay the bulk of the blame for the Brexit we got at the feet of those negotiating it and making decisions under the influence of the ERG. Though I do think the Remainers made a massive error by not rising above the politics (something the Brexit supporters mostly failed to do) and going for (in their eyes) the least harmful form of Brexit possible. They had the votes. They just misplayed their hand.
They did to an extent, but after Lancaster House we were all under no illusion as to what Brexit meant. Not only did "Brexit mean Brexit" but it also meant no single market and no freedom of movement.
I'm sympathetic to those wanting pay increases in line with inflation. In particular, teaching ought to be a more highly valued profession. But:
- The only way for public sector workers to have more is for others to have less.
This is not how the economy works!
Paying teachers more will require tax rises or cuts elsewhere, that will other people poorer. That is the immediate effect.
Now you may say the case for teachers or some other public sector employees being paid more is worth the (most likely) tax rise or (less likely) cuts elsewhere. The teaching unions have to lay out a business plan for it just as I do when I make the case for members of my team getting pay rises. What additional responsibilities will they be taking on, what productivity gains can we expect from them and what will the end result be from the pay rises.
For nurses, the actual numbers are pretty easy to see, pay them a bit more, increase retention rates, increase training places due to better and more reliable staffing and ease the short term healthcare crunch and get the million "sick" back into work. That the government is unable to see this means they are still beholden to treasury groupthink. For teachers the case is much, much less clear cut. Teacher salaries in the UK are comparable to similar countries across Europe and there's not exactly a huge international market for teachers as there is for healthcare workers. There's also huge quality issues surrounding teaching and education in general, the sector seems to have decided bells and whistles like interactive whiteboards and touch screen tablets will make up for not actually teaching the kids very much, that may or may not be the fault of the DoE but that's where we're at.
But come on Max, you are the one who has been saying - with some justification - that we should be taxing the elderly more (or paying them less) to try and equalise the generational differences and to support working people more. This seems to me to be a damn good example of that.
But that's not what's going to happen, the cost of public sector pay rises and following pension costs will be lumped onto working age people and backloaded onto the young rather than the almost of retirement age.
Both the Tories and Labour seem incapable of standing up to my parents generation and calling them out for what they are, selfish and greedy. The next big clash will be intergenerational, one of the parties (my money is actually on the Tories, oddly) will decide to go all in on a new strategy within 5-7 years and start campaigning on how shit of a deal young people get, simply it's where the votes will be in the 2030s and 2040s.
Yep. That’s also the LibDems’ missed opportunity, which Clegg was feeling his way toward before 2010 but trashed with his record in coalition, and now the party is stuck representing a handful of seats mostly stuffed with winners from the current economic settlement, critically hampering their ability to put forward the radical changes that are needed.
Allowing fees to rise to £9k was both a disaster for the Lib Dems and the nation, in retrospect. There is no party for people under 40 (maybe even 50) to vote for that will look out for their interests, and therefore there is no party that gives any fucks about the future. It's all about solving today's problems with tomorrow's money. Borrowing for current spending should not be possible, yet the UK, along with many other countries, seems to be addicted to it and all it does is bring forwards economic activity from future years to cover for low productivity.
The LibDems were laying the foundations of being the party for the young - not just tuition fees but their policies on housing, the first party to propose a wealth tax, their political reform agenda, votes at 16, and their liberal approach to social issues that broadly aligns with the views of the upcoming generation. The coalition blew this apart, and the party doesn’t now have the courage to advocate the changes that are needed, because radical wealth taxes probably won’t go down well in the handful of very middle class seats that is pretty much all they have left.
It might also be said, pace MaxPB, that the SNP (and, in Holyrood, the Scottish Greens) are very much a party of the young, as shown in their policies on student fees . the franchise, and social issues such as trans (which is, in very large part, a woke young woke vs reactionarly old conflict). It's also interesting that the Scottish Labour Party does make noises about this sort of thing - e.g. they are agin tuition fees as well, and their position on trans is very much in conflict with the High Central Leadership in London.
Carnyx, Labour vote woke in Holyrood , ie GRR, where do you see them being anti anything or actually having a policy,, ANAS is a useless tosser.
I sense it will be sellable, the tide against Brexit is one way and it is powerful. You can feel it
The Tories have blown it. Blown Brexit
Not at all.
This version of Brexit is plausibly the best version there ever could be.
We told you before you voted for it, it would be a shitshow.
And now here we are...
Clearly bollocks from you as even most Remainers admit.
Richard is right. I bow to nobody in my loathing for Brexit and its proponents.
I still gnash my teeth when I remember how Gisela Stuart dissembled in the televised pre referendum debate about the effect on Northern Ireland.
But the truth is we have had a lowest decile Brexit. Pretty much everything that could go wrong for the Brexiteers has gone wrong - no US FTA, Trump lost to Biden, the EU played hardball (talking about Swexit and Italexit during negotiations was an own goal by Farage).
There have been almost no economic benefits from Brexit to talk about - and our post-Brexit trade deals under Truss were to our disadvantage.
Even the political mood music - continued political confrontation with the Citizens of Nowhere as part of a misguided Red Wall strategy - was ill chosen.
None of this was certain in 2016.
The worst thing is that I feel deep sympathy for committed Brexiteers. To work for something for decades and to see it mishandled so grievously must be really upsetting.
I hear kids in primary schools are now using Brexit as shorthand for screwed up. Not good.
And .ore widely - not good for the country. A period of competent administration is desperately needed.
This of course is the Brexit as socialism view. Brexit is pure and wonderful just that it hasn't been tried properly yet.
So the logical conclusion of your claim is that May, Johnson and Truss were top notch politicians and leaders who made no mistakes, created the best possible Brexit and were only bought low by the project rather than by their own incompetence and ineptitude? Its a 'courageous' theory at least.
But, like communism, it is no good having a world view that requires five impossible things before breakfast in order to work. If you support radical change it has to survive contact with the real, messy world - including the shortcomings of our rulers - otherwise when you are old you’ll just be sitting there, repeating over and over, “it would have worked, if only…if only….”
Not at all. If we only made changes that were 100% bound to work in the any we wanted and were proofed against any possible abuse, irrespective of how much the system we were seeking to change had failed, then we would still all be living under the feudal system. All change has its shortcomings. And the idea of the status quo over any length of time is, in itself, ether possible or desirable is another of those 'impossible things'.
Your political antenna let you down, Richard, you let your idealism get the better of you.
You should have taken a look at all the politicians you rightly excoriate and asked yourself the question: "are these people likely not to make a complete hash of it?"
The answer after the briefest moment of contemplation is of course that they would be guaranteed to make a hash of it yet you still voted for it.
Now that is weird.
Not at all. Unless you are claiming that all possible candidates for PM were ignorant, dishonest incompetents. Which, given that until that point this was your party (and note, not mine) would be a remarkable claim. Bear in mind May was a Remainer and previous Home Secretary in a Government you supported.
Brexit was necessary no matter who was going to be running the country afterwards. There was no status quo and the longer we waited to leave the more difficult it would have been. You only have to look at the recent Elysee statement to see it is filled with the sorts of things Remain supporters said would not happen.
And, as I say, had we voted the other way we would have been having exactly the same arguments now in reverse.
Your position of any flavour of Brexit is better than having stayed in is consistent. But it slightly throws those who are in a less fortunate position than you are to the dogs. As we are seeing with the IMF forecast.
Your idealism meant that you would rather conduct a huge experiment with the country, suspecting that it would fail but at least we tried, than opt for a more moderate course which would likely have protected a greater number of needy people.
You were in that fortunate position to be able to conduct that experiment and hence again the similarity to socialism.
I couldn't possibly call you a Champagne Brexiter, but perhaps a Medium Sweet English Sparkling White one.
It was not an experiment but an inevitable necessity.
Well of course I disagree. In theory. In practice the country by 2019 absolutely wanted Brexit and they wanted it good and hard. And their wishes have been granted.
But staying in the EU was not as unimaginable as you maintain. Especially with Dave's Deal which protected against many of the federalist elements of the EU. And even without it we have been able, as with the Fiscal Compact, and the Euro for that matter, to decline to participate in various elements of that ever closer union.
Once the referendum result had been declared, staying in the EU was unimaginable.
Yes and no. I think government would have been pretty difficult to have a vote every three weeks on this but a second vote is not imo undemocratic. And hence not unimaginable.
"You got it wrong, vote again" was undemocratic when the EU did it in Ireland and Denmark - and those were a goodly share of the problem.
Not half as tiresome as the whining from the irreconcilable remoaners.
You are getting off lightly. Europhiles had to put with the antics and whining of Farage et al for several decades. The Brexit vote was not even a decade ago.
They could have stopped it by giving us a referendum on Maastricht, the euro, or the constitution in either of its guises amongst other opportunities.
They?
I couldn't have done any of those things so I feel I am perfectly at liberty to point out what a disaster Brexit is. As predicted.
You could have voted for a party that would have.
Which party should I have voted for to get a referendum on Maastrict? I certainly never voted for the party that signed up to it.
The euro? Remind me, when did we join the euro without a referendum?
A referendum on the euro would have been an opportunity for the British people to make clear that they were unhappy with the direction of travel of the EU without having to pull out of the thing entirely. That could tehn have been leveraged into politial pressure against integration.
But Blair, Brown and Cameron couldn't see beyond integration.
I suspect the UK will be back in the EU in time, 'maybe not in my lifetime but in yours'.
Possibly. But at least if we are it will be as a full member, which will be an improvement on the previous status.
Not a "full member"? Here you go again rewriting history.
Not in the euro. Not in Schengen. Not a full member.
I sense it will be sellable, the tide against Brexit is one way and it is powerful. You can feel it
The Tories have blown it. Blown Brexit
Not at all.
This version of Brexit is plausibly the best version there ever could be.
We told you before you voted for it, it would be a shitshow.
And now here we are...
Clearly bollocks from you as even most Remainers admit.
Richard is right. I bow to nobody in my loathing for Brexit and its proponents.
I still gnash my teeth when I remember how Gisela Stuart dissembled in the televised pre referendum debate about the effect on Northern Ireland.
But the truth is we have had a lowest decile Brexit. Pretty much everything that could go wrong for the Brexiteers has gone wrong - no US FTA, Trump lost to Biden, the EU played hardball (talking about Swexit and Italexit during negotiations was an own goal by Farage).
There have been almost no economic benefits from Brexit to talk about - and our post-Brexit trade deals under Truss were to our disadvantage.
Even the political mood music - continued political confrontation with the Citizens of Nowhere as part of a misguided Red Wall strategy - was ill chosen.
None of this was certain in 2016.
The worst thing is that I feel deep sympathy for committed Brexiteers. To work for something for decades and to see it mishandled so grievously must be really upsetting.
I hear kids in primary schools are now using Brexit as shorthand for screwed up. Not good.
And .ore widely - not good for the country. A period of competent administration is desperately needed.
This of course is the Brexit as socialism view. Brexit is pure and wonderful just that it hasn't been tried properly yet.
So the logical conclusion of your claim is that May, Johnson and Truss were top notch politicians and leaders who made no mistakes, created the best possible Brexit and were only bought low by the project rather than by their own incompetence and ineptitude? Its a 'courageous' theory at least.
But, like communism, it is no good having a world view that requires five impossible things before breakfast in order to work. If you support radical change it has to survive contact with the real, messy world - including the shortcomings of our rulers - otherwise when you are old you’ll just be sitting there, repeating over and over, “it would have worked, if only…if only….”
Not at all. If we only made changes that were 100% bound to work in the any we wanted and were proofed against any possible abuse, irrespective of how much the system we were seeking to change had failed, then we would still all be living under the feudal system. All change has its shortcomings. And the idea of the status quo over any length of time is, in itself, ether possible or desirable is another of those 'impossible things'.
Your political antenna let you down, Richard, you let your idealism get the better of you.
You should have taken a look at all the politicians you rightly excoriate and asked yourself the question: "are these people likely not to make a complete hash of it?"
The answer after the briefest moment of contemplation is of course that they would be guaranteed to make a hash of it yet you still voted for it.
Now that is weird.
Not at all. Unless you are claiming that all possible candidates for PM were ignorant, dishonest incompetents. Which, given that until that point this was your party (and note, not mine) would be a remarkable claim. Bear in mind May was a Remainer and previous Home Secretary in a Government you supported.
Brexit was necessary no matter who was going to be running the country afterwards. There was no status quo and the longer we waited to leave the more difficult it would have been. You only have to look at the recent Elysee statement to see it is filled with the sorts of things Remain supporters said would not happen.
And, as I say, had we voted the other way we would have been having exactly the same arguments now in reverse.
Your position of any flavour of Brexit is better than having stayed in is consistent. But it slightly throws those who are in a less fortunate position than you are to the dogs. As we are seeing with the IMF forecast.
Your idealism meant that you would rather conduct a huge experiment with the country, suspecting that it would fail but at least we tried, than opt for a more moderate course which would likely have protected a greater number of needy people.
You were in that fortunate position to be able to conduct that experiment and hence again the similarity to socialism.
I couldn't possibly call you a Champagne Brexiter, but perhaps a Medium Sweet English Sparkling White one.
It was not an experiment but an inevitable necessity.
Well of course I disagree. In theory. In practice the country by 2019 absolutely wanted Brexit and they wanted it good and hard. And their wishes have been granted.
But staying in the EU was not as unimaginable as you maintain. Especially with Dave's Deal which protected against many of the federalist elements of the EU. And even without it we have been able, as with the Fiscal Compact, and the Euro for that matter, to decline to participate in various elements of that ever closer union.
Once the referendum result had been declared, staying in the EU was unimaginable.
To the winners.
To any democrat.
If there was a clamour from the public to correct the error by means of a new democratic vote, what's undemocratic in asking for the public's second opinion once they had more information available to them as to what Brexit meant before it was too late?
Like a good European. Keep asking the question until you get the answer you want. It is a shame you fail to see that this attitude was part of the reason people voted to leave in the first place.
I daresay there is a large helping of that narrative in my argument, but if Brexit regret could stop Brexit in its tracks, the time to do it was before we left. We've left and it's too late now, and your BINO Brexit is a way off now too. The second referendum didn't necessarily have to be "in" or "out". It could have been "your Brexit" or the "ERG Brexit". What would have been undemocratic about that?
I'm sympathetic to those wanting pay increases in line with inflation. In particular, teaching ought to be a more highly valued profession. But:
- The only way for public sector workers to have more is for others to have less.
This is not how the economy works!
Paying teachers more will require tax rises or cuts elsewhere, that will other people poorer. That is the immediate effect.
Now you may say the case for teachers or some other public sector employees being paid more is worth the (most likely) tax rise or (less likely) cuts elsewhere. The teaching unions have to lay out a business plan for it just as I do when I make the case for members of my team getting pay rises. What additional responsibilities will they be taking on, what productivity gains can we expect from them and what will the end result be from the pay rises.
For nurses, the actual numbers are pretty easy to see, pay them a bit more, increase retention rates, increase training places due to better and more reliable staffing and ease the short term healthcare crunch and get the million "sick" back into work. That the government is unable to see this means they are still beholden to treasury groupthink. For teachers the case is much, much less clear cut. Teacher salaries in the UK are comparable to similar countries across Europe and there's not exactly a huge international market for teachers as there is for healthcare workers. There's also huge quality issues surrounding teaching and education in general, the sector seems to have decided bells and whistles like interactive whiteboards and touch screen tablets will make up for not actually teaching the kids very much, that may or may not be the fault of the DoE but that's where we're at.
(1) Workloads are not. We have either larger classes or higher expectations of what needs to be done.
(2) There really is. It is extremely easy to get a job in just about any country if you are trained in delivering English exams. There are enormous numbers of international schools who would snap me up (for example) except I don't have a particular desire to live anywhere else.
(3) No there isn't. In fact, I would say the key issue from that point of view in most schools at present is the lack of tech in schools due to the Luddite-like attitude of the DfE. Where prepackaged lessons are delivered by rote that's because they can't recruit anyone. Will salaries sort that? Possibly, possibly not, but it's idle to pretend they're not part of the conversation.
I would avoid facile analyses from the Daily Mail, the DfE and other drunks who don't know what they're talking about but have a very definite agenda to push. It makes you look ignorant.
Not half as tiresome as the whining from the irreconcilable remoaners.
You are getting off lightly. Europhiles had to put with the antics and whining of Farage et al for several decades. The Brexit vote was not even a decade ago.
They could have stopped it by giving us a referendum on Maastricht, the euro, or the constitution in either of its guises amongst other opportunities.
They?
I couldn't have done any of those things so I feel I am perfectly at liberty to point out what a disaster Brexit is. As predicted.
You could have voted for a party that would have.
Which party should I have voted for to get a referendum on Maastrict? I certainly never voted for the party that signed up to it.
The euro? Remind me, when did we join the euro without a referendum?
A referendum on the euro would have been an opportunity for the British people to make clear that they were unhappy with the direction of travel of the EU without having to pull out of the thing entirely. That could tehn have been leveraged into politial pressure against integration.
But Blair, Brown and Cameron couldn't see beyond integration.
I suspect the UK will be back in the EU in time, 'maybe not in my lifetime but in yours'.
Possibly. But at least if we are it will be as a full member, which will be an improvement on the previous status.
Not a "full member"? Here you go again rewriting history.
Not in the euro. Not in Schengen. Not a full member.
That was our sovereign choice. Not a full member? My a***!
I sense it will be sellable, the tide against Brexit is one way and it is powerful. You can feel it
The Tories have blown it. Blown Brexit
Not at all.
This version of Brexit is plausibly the best version there ever could be.
We told you before you voted for it, it would be a shitshow.
And now here we are...
Clearly bollocks from you as even most Remainers admit.
Richard is right. I bow to nobody in my loathing for Brexit and its proponents.
I still gnash my teeth when I remember how Gisela Stuart dissembled in the televised pre referendum debate about the effect on Northern Ireland.
But the truth is we have had a lowest decile Brexit. Pretty much everything that could go wrong for the Brexiteers has gone wrong - no US FTA, Trump lost to Biden, the EU played hardball (talking about Swexit and Italexit during negotiations was an own goal by Farage).
There have been almost no economic benefits from Brexit to talk about - and our post-Brexit trade deals under Truss were to our disadvantage.
Even the political mood music - continued political confrontation with the Citizens of Nowhere as part of a misguided Red Wall strategy - was ill chosen.
None of this was certain in 2016.
The worst thing is that I feel deep sympathy for committed Brexiteers. To work for something for decades and to see it mishandled so grievously must be really upsetting.
I hear kids in primary schools are now using Brexit as shorthand for screwed up. Not good.
And .ore widely - not good for the country. A period of competent administration is desperately needed.
This of course is the Brexit as socialism view. Brexit is pure and wonderful just that it hasn't been tried properly yet.
So the logical conclusion of your claim is that May, Johnson and Truss were top notch politicians and leaders who made no mistakes, created the best possible Brexit and were only bought low by the project rather than by their own incompetence and ineptitude? Its a 'courageous' theory at least.
But, like communism, it is no good having a world view that requires five impossible things before breakfast in order to work. If you support radical change it has to survive contact with the real, messy world - including the shortcomings of our rulers - otherwise when you are old you’ll just be sitting there, repeating over and over, “it would have worked, if only…if only….”
Not at all. If we only made changes that were 100% bound to work in the any we wanted and were proofed against any possible abuse, irrespective of how much the system we were seeking to change had failed, then we would still all be living under the feudal system. All change has its shortcomings. And the idea of the status quo over any length of time is, in itself, ether possible or desirable is another of those 'impossible things'.
Your political antenna let you down, Richard, you let your idealism get the better of you.
You should have taken a look at all the politicians you rightly excoriate and asked yourself the question: "are these people likely not to make a complete hash of it?"
The answer after the briefest moment of contemplation is of course that they would be guaranteed to make a hash of it yet you still voted for it.
Now that is weird.
Not at all. Unless you are claiming that all possible candidates for PM were ignorant, dishonest incompetents. Which, given that until that point this was your party (and note, not mine) would be a remarkable claim. Bear in mind May was a Remainer and previous Home Secretary in a Government you supported.
Brexit was necessary no matter who was going to be running the country afterwards. There was no status quo and the longer we waited to leave the more difficult it would have been. You only have to look at the recent Elysee statement to see it is filled with the sorts of things Remain supporters said would not happen.
And, as I say, had we voted the other way we would have been having exactly the same arguments now in reverse.
Your position of any flavour of Brexit is better than having stayed in is consistent. But it slightly throws those who are in a less fortunate position than you are to the dogs. As we are seeing with the IMF forecast.
Your idealism meant that you would rather conduct a huge experiment with the country, suspecting that it would fail but at least we tried, than opt for a more moderate course which would likely have protected a greater number of needy people.
You were in that fortunate position to be able to conduct that experiment and hence again the similarity to socialism.
I couldn't possibly call you a Champagne Brexiter, but perhaps a Medium Sweet English Sparkling White one.
It was not an experiment but an inevitable necessity.
Well of course I disagree. In theory. In practice the country by 2019 absolutely wanted Brexit and they wanted it good and hard. And their wishes have been granted.
But staying in the EU was not as unimaginable as you maintain. Especially with Dave's Deal which protected against many of the federalist elements of the EU. And even without it we have been able, as with the Fiscal Compact, and the Euro for that matter, to decline to participate in various elements of that ever closer union.
Once the referendum result had been declared, staying in the EU was unimaginable.
To the winners.
To any democrat.
If there was a clamour from the public to correct the error by means of a new democratic vote, what's undemocratic in asking for the public's second opinion once they had more information available to them as to what Brexit meant before it was too late?
Like a good European. Keep asking the question until you get the answer you want. It is a shame you fail to see that this attitude was part of the reason people voted to leave in the first place.
I daresay there is a large helping of that narrative in my argument, but if Brexit regret could stop Brexit in its tracks, the time to do it was before we left. We've left and it's too late now, and your BINO Brexit is a way off now too. The second referendum didn't necessarily have to be "in" or "out". It could have been "your Brexit" or the "ERG Brexit". What would have been undemocratic about that?
You and I both know that was not what any second referendum was going to be. No matter how much you might try to pretend otherwise.
I sense it will be sellable, the tide against Brexit is one way and it is powerful. You can feel it
The Tories have blown it. Blown Brexit
Not at all.
This version of Brexit is plausibly the best version there ever could be.
We told you before you voted for it, it would be a shitshow.
And now here we are...
Clearly bollocks from you as even most Remainers admit.
Richard is right. I bow to nobody in my loathing for Brexit and its proponents.
I still gnash my teeth when I remember how Gisela Stuart dissembled in the televised pre referendum debate about the effect on Northern Ireland.
But the truth is we have had a lowest decile Brexit. Pretty much everything that could go wrong for the Brexiteers has gone wrong - no US FTA, Trump lost to Biden, the EU played hardball (talking about Swexit and Italexit during negotiations was an own goal by Farage).
There have been almost no economic benefits from Brexit to talk about - and our post-Brexit trade deals under Truss were to our disadvantage.
Even the political mood music - continued political confrontation with the Citizens of Nowhere as part of a misguided Red Wall strategy - was ill chosen.
None of this was certain in 2016.
The worst thing is that I feel deep sympathy for committed Brexiteers. To work for something for decades and to see it mishandled so grievously must be really upsetting.
I hear kids in primary schools are now using Brexit as shorthand for screwed up. Not good.
And .ore widely - not good for the country. A period of competent administration is desperately needed.
This of course is the Brexit as socialism view. Brexit is pure and wonderful just that it hasn't been tried properly yet.
So the logical conclusion of your claim is that May, Johnson and Truss were top notch politicians and leaders who made no mistakes, created the best possible Brexit and were only bought low by the project rather than by their own incompetence and ineptitude? Its a 'courageous' theory at least.
But, like communism, it is no good having a world view that requires five impossible things before breakfast in order to work. If you support radical change it has to survive contact with the real, messy world - including the shortcomings of our rulers - otherwise when you are old you’ll just be sitting there, repeating over and over, “it would have worked, if only…if only….”
It shouldn't have been an impossible thing for the losers to have accepted defeat and worked for the option that from their point of view was the less bad.
It’s telling I think that people expect - and probably with some reason - higher standards from the remainder side than the brexiteers, and are disappointed when they seem to be playing partisan political games. Whereas they expect Brexiteers to play partisan political games and don’t think any the worse of them for that.
There’s a sense that the remainers were supposed to be the sensible ones. The mothers. Whereas for the leavers, well boys will be boys.
It's not quite as simple as that.
The ERG voted down May's deal because there was a deal available that, from their point of view, was better.
Labour (ringleader: Sir Keir Starmer) voted down May's deal even though there was no deal available that, from their point of view, was better.
It's pretty obvious that the latter deserves greater contempt.
I am loving the rewriting of Brexit history by the regretful Brexiteers. The Conservatives are thus absolved of Johnson's catastrophic deal because Opposition parties didn't support May's deal.
At the time, May's deal was poor. It didn't have to be, but it was. There was no attempt at consensus, and I would have thought such an arch-Brexiteer like Corbyn would have been open to leaving on reasonable terms. There was no contrition at each moment the deal failed in the HoC. It just kept being put back to the (HoC) electorate until it passed. The very thing the Brexiteer justices of democracy were denying to second referenda advocates.
I would not, and could not support May's deal. With the benefit of hindsight it was less bad than what came next, but that's not my fault. It was the responsibility of the Prime Minister who claimed there would be no Border in the Irish Sea and duly stuck one in the middle of the North Channel.
Of course not. How could anyone but a geriatric moron be expected to support such clear and obvious self immolation whatever the referendum result. As our rulers parliamentarians have a duty of care. For that reason my preferred option would be for SKS to put in his manifesto that he would reverse Brexit without a referendum if Labour were to win an election. Brexit has been so manifestly stupid that no manner of continuing the present Brexit policy makes any sense at all.
I sense it will be sellable, the tide against Brexit is one way and it is powerful. You can feel it
The Tories have blown it. Blown Brexit
Not at all.
This version of Brexit is plausibly the best version there ever could be.
We told you before you voted for it, it would be a shitshow.
And now here we are...
Clearly bollocks from you as even most Remainers admit.
Richard is right. I bow to nobody in my loathing for Brexit and its proponents.
I still gnash my teeth when I remember how Gisela Stuart dissembled in the televised pre referendum debate about the effect on Northern Ireland.
But the truth is we have had a lowest decile Brexit. Pretty much everything that could go wrong for the Brexiteers has gone wrong - no US FTA, Trump lost to Biden, the EU played hardball (talking about Swexit and Italexit during negotiations was an own goal by Farage).
There have been almost no economic benefits from Brexit to talk about - and our post-Brexit trade deals under Truss were to our disadvantage.
Even the political mood music - continued political confrontation with the Citizens of Nowhere as part of a misguided Red Wall strategy - was ill chosen.
None of this was certain in 2016.
The worst thing is that I feel deep sympathy for committed Brexiteers. To work for something for decades and to see it mishandled so grievously must be really upsetting.
I hear kids in primary schools are now using Brexit as shorthand for screwed up. Not good.
And .ore widely - not good for the country. A period of competent administration is desperately needed.
This of course is the Brexit as socialism view. Brexit is pure and wonderful just that it hasn't been tried properly yet.
So the logical conclusion of your claim is that May, Johnson and Truss were top notch politicians and leaders who made no mistakes, created the best possible Brexit and were only bought low by the project rather than by their own incompetence and ineptitude? Its a 'courageous' theory at least.
But, like communism, it is no good having a world view that requires five impossible things before breakfast in order to work. If you support radical change it has to survive contact with the real, messy world - including the shortcomings of our rulers - otherwise when you are old you’ll just be sitting there, repeating over and over, “it would have worked, if only…if only….”
Not at all. If we only made changes that were 100% bound to work in the any we wanted and were proofed against any possible abuse, irrespective of how much the system we were seeking to change had failed, then we would still all be living under the feudal system. All change has its shortcomings. And the idea of the status quo over any length of time is, in itself, ether possible or desirable is another of those 'impossible things'.
Your political antenna let you down, Richard, you let your idealism get the better of you.
You should have taken a look at all the politicians you rightly excoriate and asked yourself the question: "are these people likely not to make a complete hash of it?"
The answer after the briefest moment of contemplation is of course that they would be guaranteed to make a hash of it yet you still voted for it.
Now that is weird.
Not at all. Unless you are claiming that all possible candidates for PM were ignorant, dishonest incompetents. Which, given that until that point this was your party (and note, not mine) would be a remarkable claim. Bear in mind May was a Remainer and previous Home Secretary in a Government you supported.
Brexit was necessary no matter who was going to be running the country afterwards. There was no status quo and the longer we waited to leave the more difficult it would have been. You only have to look at the recent Elysee statement to see it is filled with the sorts of things Remain supporters said would not happen.
And, as I say, had we voted the other way we would have been having exactly the same arguments now in reverse.
Your position of any flavour of Brexit is better than having stayed in is consistent. But it slightly throws those who are in a less fortunate position than you are to the dogs. As we are seeing with the IMF forecast.
Your idealism meant that you would rather conduct a huge experiment with the country, suspecting that it would fail but at least we tried, than opt for a more moderate course which would likely have protected a greater number of needy people.
You were in that fortunate position to be able to conduct that experiment and hence again the similarity to socialism.
I couldn't possibly call you a Champagne Brexiter, but perhaps a Medium Sweet English Sparkling White one.
It was not an experiment but an inevitable necessity.
Well of course I disagree. In theory. In practice the country by 2019 absolutely wanted Brexit and they wanted it good and hard. And their wishes have been granted.
But staying in the EU was not as unimaginable as you maintain. Especially with Dave's Deal which protected against many of the federalist elements of the EU. And even without it we have been able, as with the Fiscal Compact, and the Euro for that matter, to decline to participate in various elements of that ever closer union.
Once the referendum result had been declared, staying in the EU was unimaginable.
To the winners.
To any democrat.
If there was a clamour from the public to correct the error by means of a new democratic vote, what's undemocratic in asking for the public's second opinion once they had more information available to them as to what Brexit meant before it was too late?
Like a good European. Keep asking the question until you get the answer you want. It is a shame you fail to see that this attitude was part of the reason people voted to leave in the first place.
I daresay there is a large helping of that narrative in my argument, but if Brexit regret could stop Brexit in its tracks, the time to do it was before we left. We've left and it's too late now, and your BINO Brexit is a way off now too. The second referendum didn't necessarily have to be "in" or "out". It could have been "your Brexit" or the "ERG Brexit". What would have been undemocratic about that?
You and I both know that was not what any second referendum was going to be. No matter how much you might try to pretend otherwise.
True. But it could have been organised as such by the Government of the day. It would have resolved rather a lot I suspect.
I'm sympathetic to those wanting pay increases in line with inflation. In particular, teaching ought to be a more highly valued profession. But:
- The only way for public sector workers to have more is for others to have less.
This is not how the economy works!
Paying teachers more will require tax rises or cuts elsewhere, that will other people poorer. That is the immediate effect.
Now you may say the case for teachers or some other public sector employees being paid more is worth the (most likely) tax rise or (less likely) cuts elsewhere. The teaching unions have to lay out a business plan for it just as I do when I make the case for members of my team getting pay rises. What additional responsibilities will they be taking on, what productivity gains can we expect from them and what will the end result be from the pay rises.
For nurses, the actual numbers are pretty easy to see, pay them a bit more, increase retention rates, increase training places due to better and more reliable staffing and ease the short term healthcare crunch and get the million "sick" back into work. That the government is unable to see this means they are still beholden to treasury groupthink. For teachers the case is much, much less clear cut. Teacher salaries in the UK are comparable to similar countries across Europe and there's not exactly a huge international market for teachers as there is for healthcare workers. There's also huge quality issues surrounding teaching and education in general, the sector seems to have decided bells and whistles like interactive whiteboards and touch screen tablets will make up for not actually teaching the kids very much, that may or may not be the fault of the DoE but that's where we're at.
But come on Max, you are the one who has been saying - with some justification - that we should be taxing the elderly more (or paying them less) to try and equalise the generational differences and to support working people more. This seems to me to be a damn good example of that.
But that's not what's going to happen, the cost of public sector pay rises and following pension costs will be lumped onto working age people and backloaded onto the young rather than the almost of retirement age.
Both the Tories and Labour seem incapable of standing up to my parents generation and calling them out for what they are, selfish and greedy. The next big clash will be intergenerational, one of the parties (my money is actually on the Tories, oddly) will decide to go all in on a new strategy within 5-7 years and start campaigning on how shit of a deal young people get, simply it's where the votes will be in the 2030s and 2040s.
No it won’t.
The average voter will still be 50 not 30 even in the 2030s or 2040s
I sense it will be sellable, the tide against Brexit is one way and it is powerful. You can feel it
The Tories have blown it. Blown Brexit
Not at all.
This version of Brexit is plausibly the best version there ever could be.
We told you before you voted for it, it would be a shitshow.
And now here we are...
Clearly bollocks from you as even most Remainers admit.
Richard is right. I bow to nobody in my loathing for Brexit and its proponents.
I still gnash my teeth when I remember how Gisela Stuart dissembled in the televised pre referendum debate about the effect on Northern Ireland.
But the truth is we have had a lowest decile Brexit. Pretty much everything that could go wrong for the Brexiteers has gone wrong - no US FTA, Trump lost to Biden, the EU played hardball (talking about Swexit and Italexit during negotiations was an own goal by Farage).
There have been almost no economic benefits from Brexit to talk about - and our post-Brexit trade deals under Truss were to our disadvantage.
Even the political mood music - continued political confrontation with the Citizens of Nowhere as part of a misguided Red Wall strategy - was ill chosen.
None of this was certain in 2016.
The worst thing is that I feel deep sympathy for committed Brexiteers. To work for something for decades and to see it mishandled so grievously must be really upsetting.
I hear kids in primary schools are now using Brexit as shorthand for screwed up. Not good.
And .ore widely - not good for the country. A period of competent administration is desperately needed.
This of course is the Brexit as socialism view. Brexit is pure and wonderful just that it hasn't been tried properly yet.
So the logical conclusion of your claim is that May, Johnson and Truss were top notch politicians and leaders who made no mistakes, created the best possible Brexit and were only bought low by the project rather than by their own incompetence and ineptitude? Its a 'courageous' theory at least.
But, like communism, it is no good having a world view that requires five impossible things before breakfast in order to work. If you support radical change it has to survive contact with the real, messy world - including the shortcomings of our rulers - otherwise when you are old you’ll just be sitting there, repeating over and over, “it would have worked, if only…if only….”
It shouldn't have been an impossible thing for the losers to have accepted defeat and worked for the option that from their point of view was the less bad.
It’s telling I think that people expect - and probably with some reason - higher standards from the remainder side than the brexiteers, and are disappointed when they seem to be playing partisan political games. Whereas they expect Brexiteers to play partisan political games and don’t think any the worse of them for that.
There’s a sense that the remainers were supposed to be the sensible ones. The mothers. Whereas for the leavers, well boys will be boys.
It's not quite as simple as that.
The ERG voted down May's deal because there was a deal available that, from their point of view, was better.
Labour (ringleader: Sir Keir Starmer) voted down May's deal even though there was no deal available that, from their point of view, was better.
It's pretty obvious that the latter deserves greater contempt.
I am loving the rewriting of Brexit history by the regretful Brexiteers. The Conservatives are thus absolved of Johnson's catastrophic deal because Opposition parties didn't support May's deal.
At the time, May's deal was poor. It didn't have to be, but it was. There was no attempt at consensus, and I would have thought such an arch-Brexiteer like Corbyn would have been open to leaving on reasonable terms. There was no contrition at each moment the deal failed in the HoC. It just kept being put back to the (HoC) electorate until it passed. The very thing the Brexiteer justices of democracy were denying to second referenda advocates.
I would not, and could not support May's deal. With the benefit of hindsight it was less bad than what came next, but that's not my fault. It was the responsibility of the Prime Minister who claimed there would be no Border in the Irish Sea and duly stuck one in the middle of the North Channel.
Of course not. How could anyone but a geriatric moron be expected to support such clear and obvious self immolation whatever the referendum result. As our rulers parliamentarians have a duty of care. For that reason my preferred option would be for SKS to put in his manifesto that he would reverse Brexit without a referendum if Labour were to win an election. Brexit has been so manifestly stupid that no manner of continuing the present Brexit policy makes any sense at all.
There has to be a referendum to undo any of the carnage, and then referenda must be banished by statute. We are a sovereign nation, and Parliament is sovereign.
Not half as tiresome as the whining from the irreconcilable remoaners.
You are getting off lightly. Europhiles had to put with the antics and whining of Farage et al for several decades. The Brexit vote was not even a decade ago.
They could have stopped it by giving us a referendum on Maastricht, the euro, or the constitution in either of its guises amongst other opportunities.
They?
I couldn't have done any of those things so I feel I am perfectly at liberty to point out what a disaster Brexit is. As predicted.
You could have voted for a party that would have.
Which party should I have voted for to get a referendum on Maastrict? I certainly never voted for the party that signed up to it.
The euro? Remind me, when did we join the euro without a referendum?
A referendum on the euro would have been an opportunity for the British people to make clear that they were unhappy with the direction of travel of the EU without having to pull out of the thing entirely. That could tehn have been leveraged into politial pressure against integration.
But Blair, Brown and Cameron couldn't see beyond integration.
I suspect the UK will be back in the EU in time, 'maybe not in my lifetime but in yours'.
Possibly. But at least if we are it will be as a full member, which will be an improvement on the previous status.
Not a "full member"? Here you go again rewriting history.
Not in the euro. Not in Schengen. Not a full member.
That was our sovereign choice. Not a full member? My a***!
It was our sovereign choice not to be a full member, then our sovereign choice to stop being a member at all.
Comments
For nurses. We could probably increase pay and save money on freelancers in some trusts. We certainly would save money as an economy to have people healthy, and we know we don't have enough staff.
On teachers, I think it's clear we have a problem retaining them and so have to spend more on recruiting, training etc. Possibly higher wages would help, possibly there are working condition things that would help more instead.
(2) There really is. It is extremely easy to get a job in just about any country if you are trained in delivering English exams. There are enormous numbers of international schools who would snap me up (for example) except I don't have a particular desire to live anywhere else.
(3) No there isn't. In fact, I would say the key issue from that point of view in most schools at present is the lack of tech in schools due to the Luddite-like attitude of the DfE. Where prepackaged lessons are delivered by rote that's because they can't recruit anyone. Will salaries sort that? Possibly, possibly not, but it's idle to pretend they're not part of the conversation.
I would avoid facile analyses from the Daily Mail, the DfE and other drunks who don't know what they're talking about but have a very definite agenda to push. It makes you look ignorant.
The average voter will still be 50 not 30 even in the 2030s or 2040s