I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
I have no idea - though that would increase the risk if counterflanking manoeuvre, would it not ?
That's why we're not generals.
Yes. I suspect the Ukrainians know what they're doing.
We can be fairly sure the Russians don't know what they're doing, anyway.
With luck they will be surprised by the Ukrainians as well.
I think the Russians will be surprised by themselves. Badly.
WHOA! The Supreme Court's final decision of the day is a 5–4 ruling that AFFIRMS the Voting Rights Act's protection against racial vote dilution! Roberts and Kavanaugh join the liberals. This is a HUGE surprise and a major voting rights victory.
I think even as a conservative he knows how badly things are going and now has taken it upon himself to moderate his views to protect the constitution.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
I have no idea - though that would increase the risk if counterflanking manoeuvre, would it not ?
That's why we're not generals.
Yes. I suspect the Ukrainians know what they're doing.
We can be fairly sure the Russians don't know what they're doing, anyway.
With luck they will be surprised by the Ukrainians as well.
I think the Russians will be surprised by themselves. Badly.
Is this a reference to the ongoing hostilities with Prigozhin?
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
This is just dogma, and it's based on the implicitly anti-American perspective that defines 'genuine' influence as doing something in opposition to the US.
No, it defines it as a genuinely independent influence. I wouldn't describe myself as anti-American, and it's an indisputable fact that the Britain has had far more genuine independence in its dealings and initiatives within Europe, than when it has been acting in co-ordination with much a larger power.
These are again just facts of power, rather than dogma, or opposition to America. On the other side, one could equally describe the idea that Britain's interests are always naturally and inherently aligned with those of the US, as dogma.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
I object to the implication that there's anything wrong with toy soldiers.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
This is just dogma, and it's based on the implicitly anti-American perspective that defines 'genuine' influence as doing something in opposition to the US.
No, it defines it as a genuinely independent influence. I wouldn't describe myself as anti-American, but it's an indisputable fact that the Britain has had far more genuine independence in its dealings and initiatives within Europe, than when it has been acting in co-ordination with much a larger power.
These are again just facts of power, rather than dogma. One could equally describe the idea that Britain's interests are always naturally and essentially aligned with those of the US as dogma.
If you want to be genuinely independent then you have to be pro Brexit.
Otherwise you're sacrificing your independence to devision making in other nations.
We absolutely can independently work with other countries, whether in Europe or out of it. No need to sacrifice our genuine independence to do so.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
You in favour of condemning people to a lifetime of Russian oppression then?
Australia all out for 469 and frankly they wasted quite a few overs on 9, 10 and 11 with relatively few runs for it. They may come to regret that. Does anyone know what happens if this test is a draw?
They share the trophy
They do have an extra day if they need it, but presumably only for weather stoppages and they won’t go past 450 overs plus half an hour.
Yep
"The WTC final does have a reserve day scheduled. But it will be used only if there has been play lost due to bad weather across the regular five days, they are unable to make up for it in those five days, and no result has been reached by the end of day five. The 2019-21 WTC final saw the first day completely washed out, and the game eventually went into the reserve day"
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and PR would make a repeat more likely. However, if you are looking for some form of more proportional system that Labour might be prepared to adopt, and which would promote stable government, I suggest that something similar to the majority bonus system currently in use in Greece and formerly in Italy is your best bet. (The Greece version awards the seat bonus to the largest party, the Italian version awarded the bonus to the largest pre-formed coalition.) It puts a high premium on parties forming a coalition before an election, so that would benefit Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens and the mutual interest would make a coalition likely in order to deliver bonus seats and a stable government. It's much more democratic because the choice of coalition would be made transparent before people vote, just about every other PR system leaves it coalitions to form in smoke filled rooms with no regard to the electorate may have wanted.
What I cannot see Starmer doing is conceding a form of PR that would in future allow the Lib Dems to play kingmaker once people have voted. The experience of Clegg in 2010 is still a bitter one for many in Labour.
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and occurred under FPTP. It's hardly a good argument against PR to say we got these problems without PR!
If you prize "stability" in a system, defined here as a clear winner (be it a single party or a pre-formed coalition), then the approach used in many countries is to directly elect the executive. I think that's neater than a majority bonus system in some ways, but the problem with directly electing the executive is that usually means electing a president and there are downsides to presidential systems.
I appreciate that the instability of our government in 2018-19 took place under FPTP, but at least it was the exception to the rule. There have been very few instances in my lifetime where a UK government could not properly function under the present system and they were short lived and resolved by a subsequent election. Under some forms of PR that situation it would either become the rule rather than the exception or be resolved by negotiation often lasting months between politicians from which the public is wholly excluded. How many of the Irish electorate when casting their votes thought that they were voting for a FF/FG coalition for example, and what worth are promises made during an election when they can be readily discarded as soon as post election negotiations kick off?
The majority bonus system seems to me to be a reasonable compromise, incorporating a large dose of PR but with elections being potentially conducted between two coalitions, designed to deliver stable government with the largest coalition being chosen by the electorate.
Lots of countries with PR have no difficulty regularly delivering single party majority government (e.g., Japan, South Africa, Malta). Lots of countries with FPTP repeatedly fail to produce single party majorities in the legislature (India, France). The relationship is more complicated than FPTP good/PR bad. The effective number of active political parties is what really matters: when that's between 1 and 2, systems produce reliable single party government. When that gets much bigger than 2, then systems fail to produce reliable single party government. PR is associated with somewhat higher effective numbers of parties, but many other factors matter too.
The UK, under FPTP, has been slowly moving away from a 2 party system, with the slow resurgence of the Liberals/Alliance/LibDems, the faster growth of the SNP, and Northern Ireland diverging and having its own parties. That means the UK is seeing more hung parliaments. When you say there "have been very few instances in my lifetime where a UK government could not properly function under the present system", I'd note that the 2010 and 2017 elections both produced hung Parliaments, so that's half of the last four. A hung parliament is a fairly likely outcome at the next election.
Unless we see the UK's third, fourth and fifth parties withering away, we're going to continue to have hung results being common under FPTP.
I think you need to step back and rationally consider what you want from an electoral system. If you want a clear single party winner, how do you achieve that? Because FPTP is going to continue faring poorly!
One way to do that is your proposal, PR with a winning party boost. I think that might work. It's downsides are: (a) it can still fail to produce a winner, (b) it can seem arbitrary if the first and second placed party are very close and neither is that close to 50%, and (c) it can create tactical voting incentives that are unhelpful. But no voting system is perfect, as Arrow taught us.
Directly electing the executive (which usually means a President) is another approach. It guarantees you have a clear winner. You can have some ordinality in the voting (multiple rounds, AV, SV) to avoid some of the downsides of FPTP. However, presidential systems have their own problems, like worries the whole election becomes too much driven by personalities, and how does the president then work with a legislature afterwards. You could have a legislative election with a parallel presidential election, but the president gets to appoint X MPs to the legislature, a boost for the winning party.
So I agree with you more than I disagree with you! Let's pick a voting system that delivers what we want.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
I have no idea - though that would increase the risk if counterflanking manoeuvre, would it not ?
That's why we're not generals.
Yes. I suspect the Ukrainians know what they're doing.
We can be fairly sure the Russians don't know what they're doing, anyway.
With luck they will be surprised by the Ukrainians as well.
I think the Russians will be surprised by themselves. Badly.
Is this a reference to the ongoing hostilities with Prigozhin?
I’m thinking more of a Koom Valley style self ambush….
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
This is just dogma, and it's based on the implicitly anti-American perspective that defines 'genuine' influence as doing something in opposition to the US.
No, it defines it as a genuinely independent influence. I wouldn't describe myself as anti-American, but it's an indisputable fact that the Britain has had far more genuine independence in its dealings and initiatives within Europe, than when it has been acting in co-ordination with much a larger power.
These are again just facts of power, rather than dogma, or opposition to America. On the other side, one could equally describe the idea that Britain's interests are always naturally and inherently aligned with those of the US, as dogma.
This is a self-defeating position. If you have a confederation, its members can't all simultaneously increase their independence, unless they give up their independence altogether to form a new entity.
Your argument would make more sense if you were advocating something closer to the post-Brexit reality of eschewing membership of a confederation like the EU in favour of a system of overlapping looser alliances.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Last year I read 'A Small Corner of Hell'. Whatever it takes seems more appealing then being Chechnya mk2.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
I have no idea - though that would increase the risk if counterflanking manoeuvre, would it not ?
That's why we're not generals.
Yes. I suspect the Ukrainians know what they're doing.
We can be fairly sure the Russians don't know what they're doing, anyway.
With luck they will be surprised by the Ukrainians as well.
I think the Russians will be surprised by themselves. Badly.
Is this a reference to the ongoing hostilities with Prigozhin?
I’m thinking more of a Koom Valley style self ambush….
At koom valley I believe it was a case of both sides managing to ambush the other rather than self ambush
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
I object to the implication that there's anything wrong with toy soldiers.
This thread unaccountably brings back memories of the Beano of rather a long time ago.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Ask the Ukranians then. They’ll give you a damn straight answer, this is existential for them, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to secure their homeland from the invaders.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
I object to the implication that there's anything wrong with toy soldiers.
This thread unaccountably brings back memories of the Beano of rather a long time ago.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
I have no idea - though that would increase the risk if counterflanking manoeuvre, would it not ?
That's why we're not generals.
Yes. I suspect the Ukrainians know what they're doing.
We can be fairly sure the Russians don't know what they're doing, anyway.
With luck they will be surprised by the Ukrainians as well.
I think the Russians will be surprised by themselves. Badly.
Is this a reference to the ongoing hostilities with Prigozhin?
I’m thinking more of a Koom Valley style self ambush….
At koom valley I believe it was a case of both sides managing to ambush the other rather than self ambush
The story got reworked a couple of times - the truth ended up as factions within each side ambushing each other IIRC.
Australia all out for 469 and frankly they wasted quite a few overs on 9, 10 and 11 with relatively few runs for it. They may come to regret that. Does anyone know what happens if this test is a draw?
They share the trophy
They do have an extra day if they need it, but presumably only for weather stoppages and they won’t go past 450 overs plus half an hour.
Yep
"The WTC final does have a reserve day scheduled. But it will be used only if there has been play lost due to bad weather across the regular five days, they are unable to make up for it in those five days, and no result has been reached by the end of day five. The 2019-21 WTC final saw the first day completely washed out, and the game eventually went into the reserve day"
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
This is just dogma, and it's based on the implicitly anti-American perspective that defines 'genuine' influence as doing something in opposition to the US.
No, it defines it as a genuinely independent influence. I wouldn't describe myself as anti-American, but it's an indisputable fact that the Britain has had far more genuine independence in its dealings and initiatives within Europe, than when it has been acting in co-ordination with much a larger power.
These are again just facts of power, rather than dogma, or opposition to America. On the other side, one could equally describe the idea that Britain's interests are always naturally and inherently aligned with those of the US, as dogma.
This is a self-defeating position. If you have a confederation, its members can't all simultaneously increase their independence, unless they give up their independence altogether to form a new entity.
Your argument would make more sense if you were advocating something closer to the post-Brexit reality of eschewing membership of a confederation like the EU in favour of a system of overlapping looser alliances.
The EPC is one such looser alliance, and the author of the article below seems to eschew even that ! As I said, it's a very odd psychological position where the article makes, relatively speaking, zilch mention of the security of one's own continent, in favour solely of sailing the Pacific as the US's emissary.
As I mentioned, the article makes hardly any mention of pan-European security. I just think there's something very strange in the psychology of all this somewhere, both apparently prioritising relationships with further abroad than closer to home, and almost not trusting one's own capacity or power, at some very fundamental level.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Responding to an invasion and initiating one are slightly different situations.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Responding to an invasion and initiating one are slightly different situations.
Yes, I know. I'm just saying about the phrase. Not keen. Bit trite and tainted by Tone.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
This is just dogma, and it's based on the implicitly anti-American perspective that defines 'genuine' influence as doing something in opposition to the US.
No, it defines it as a genuinely independent influence. I wouldn't describe myself as anti-American, but it's an indisputable fact that the Britain has had far more genuine independence in its dealings and initiatives within Europe, than when it has been acting in co-ordination with much a larger power.
These are again just facts of power, rather than dogma, or opposition to America. On the other side, one could equally describe the idea that Britain's interests are always naturally and inherently aligned with those of the US, as dogma.
This is a self-defeating position. If you have a confederation, its members can't all simultaneously increase their independence, unless they give up their independence altogether to form a new entity.
Your argument would make more sense if you were advocating something closer to the post-Brexit reality of eschewing membership of a confederation like the EU in favour of a system of overlapping looser alliances.
The EPC is one such looser alliance, and the author of the article below seems to eschew even that ! As I said, it's a very odd psychological position where the article makes neither any mention of the security of one's own continent, or to act much on one's own initiative the closer one is to home, in favour of sailing the Pacific as the US's bag-carrier.
As I mentioned, the article makes hardly any mention of pan-European security. I just think there's something very strange in the psychology of all this somewhere, both apparently prioritising relationships with further abroad than closer to home, and almost not trusting one's own capacity or power, at some very fundamental level.
As he doesn't mention it but does refer to "Britain's almost hyperactive policy toward Ukraine", I don't see how you can arrive at the conclusion that he eschews it and doesn't care about European security unless you are reading the article through an obsessively ideological lens, ready to pounce on any hint of wrong-think about European integration.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
This is just dogma, and it's based on the implicitly anti-American perspective that defines 'genuine' influence as doing something in opposition to the US.
No, it defines it as a genuinely independent influence. I wouldn't describe myself as anti-American, but it's an indisputable fact that the Britain has had far more genuine independence in its dealings and initiatives within Europe, than when it has been acting in co-ordination with much a larger power.
These are again just facts of power, rather than dogma, or opposition to America. On the other side, one could equally describe the idea that Britain's interests are always naturally and inherently aligned with those of the US, as dogma.
This is a self-defeating position. If you have a confederation, its members can't all simultaneously increase their independence, unless they give up their independence altogether to form a new entity.
Your argument would make more sense if you were advocating something closer to the post-Brexit reality of eschewing membership of a confederation like the EU in favour of a system of overlapping looser alliances.
The EPC is one such looser alliance, and the author of the article below seems to eschew even that ! As I said, it's a very odd psychological position where the article makes neither any mention of the security of one's own continent, or to act much on one's own initiative the closer one is to home, in favour of sailing the Pacific as the US's bag-carrier.
As I mentioned, the article makes hardly any mention of pan-European security. I just think there's something very strange in the psychology of all this somewhere, both apparently prioritising relationships with further abroad than closer to home, and almost not trusting one's own capacity or power, at some very fundamental level.
As he doesn't mention it but does refer to "Britain's almost hyperactive policy toward Ukraine", I don't see how you can arrive at the conclusion that he eschews it and doesn't care about European security unless you are reading the article through an obsessively ideological lens, ready to pounce on any hint of wrong-think about European integration.
I wouldn't describe myself as a supporter of huge European integration, more of Britain exercising its greater local than Pacific influence, in a more rational and less ideological way.
"Britain's almost hyperactive policy in Ukraine" is, really, typical of the article. No reference to Europe, as if Britain is striking out alone, like Poseidon.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
That's a pretty strange interpretation of history. We are where we were, prior to 1973, and an important part of a major military alliance. The British "Empire" consisted of a strip of Eastern American seaboard, Hudsons Bay, and a few trading posts and islands in 1707. By 1800, we'd added Bengal and the Carnatic, but had lost the American seaboard.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
You're just in favour of these young men throwing themselves on the mercy of Vladimir Putin.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
Some people claim that it is Remainers who are really the ones suffering from imperial nostalgia, but it's rare to see EU membership framed as a substitute for Empire as explicitly as that.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
That's a pretty strange interpretation of history. We are where we were, prior to 1973, and an important part of a major military alliance. The British "Empire" consisted of a strip of Eastern American seaboard, Hudsons Bay, and a few trading posts and islands in 1707. By 1800, we'd added Bengal and the Carnatic, but had lost the American seaboard.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
January 2025 is looking a long way away for Putin now.
Australia all out for 469 and frankly they wasted quite a few overs on 9, 10 and 11 with relatively few runs for it. They may come to regret that. Does anyone know what happens if this test is a draw?
They share the trophy
They do have an extra day if they need it, but presumably only for weather stoppages and they won’t go past 450 overs plus half an hour.
Yep
"The WTC final does have a reserve day scheduled. But it will be used only if there has been play lost due to bad weather across the regular five days, they are unable to make up for it in those five days, and no result has been reached by the end of day five. The 2019-21 WTC final saw the first day completely washed out, and the game eventually went into the reserve day"
Losers. If timeless tests were good enough for Bradman, Hammond and Constantine they should be good enough for this generation.
Edit - TBF, if India keep batting like this the point is moot.
I thought there was only one timeless Test which they had to abandon after 11 days because England's ship home was down in the harbour hooting impatiently.
Of course, I could just as easily google the true facts but it's a pity to spoil a good story.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
To be honest, I don't think "keyboard warriors" need have any sleepless nights about the possible consequences of their words. I may be wrong, but I doubt the Ukrainian High Command is nervously scanning this site for tips on military tactics (or even military strategy).
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
What a load of rubbish. Those unions were effectively conquests in all but name. The Normans conqured England in 1066 and the English then tried to conquer Scotland on various occasions and eventually succeeded on 1603. Oh we might call it union but it was effectively England taking control of Scotland. Something that has become all the more apparent over the centuries.
In one way though your analogy is correct because membership of the EU was another form of conquest. One we have thankfully begun to escape.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Others have given decent responses, but it's a bit off to insinuate that I want thousands to die.
I don't.
If the Russians were to leave all the occupied territories tomorrow, I'd be ecstatic. Better if they were to pay reparations and for their leaders to face the Hague, but I'd settle for them just leaving.
If 'we' (the west, I have f-all power or control over this) abandon Ukraine - then thousands will die. Thousands of civilians, thousands of military. Thousands of kids will be separated from the families and transported thousands of miles. And Russia - and other countries with ill intent - will see that it works.
There is no 'good' choice here. Don't pretend there is.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
"Doing nothing is not an option" I think was Tony Blair's words at the time. Not only.was doing nothing an option, but it was clearly the better option, as you point out.
"Rishi Sunak has annoyed experts, politicians, and journalists across Europe after claiming that the UK was “taking the lead” on illegal migration at a summit in Moldova – which had nothing to do with migration at all."
A way to build local influence, in a system of looser alliances. The narcissism was so strong that the isolationist-Tory mindset didn't even want to talk primarily about co-ordination within Europe on Ukraine, let alone building up the EPC, at this particular meet-up.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
"Doing nothing is not an option" I think was Tony Blair's words at the time. Not only.was doing nothing an option, but it was clearly the better option, as you point out.
To be fair to him, I don't think he saw the "doing nothing" option as not invading Iraq, but sitting back and watching the US do it alone.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
January 2025 is looking a long way away for Putin now.
There's a good chance of him being driven out of Ukraine before then iyo?
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
"Doing nothing is not an option" I think was Tony Blair's words at the time. Not only.was doing nothing an option, but it was clearly the better option, as you point out.
Absolutely, and the Ukraine war is the exact opposite.
"Rishi Sunak has annoyed experts, politicians, and journalists across Europe after claiming that the UK was “taking the lead” on illegal migration at a summit in Moldova – which had nothing to do with migration at all."
A way to build local influence, in a system of looser alliances.
If you think the likes of Dave Keating are the gatekeepers to European influence, then we have a bigger problem...
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
The problem with inaction is that it led us here. We did not do enough over Georgia in 2008. We did not do enough over Litvinenko. We did not do enough over MH17. We did not do enough about Crimea or the Donbass. We did not do enough after Salisbury.
Each time, Putin tested us, saw our reaction, and measured how far he could push us next time. It is alleged that the Russian government calculated what sanctions would be placed on them after a Ukraine invasion, and made measures to cope with those sanctions.
Unfortunately for them, they miscalculated, and the sanctions have been far deeper than they expected. Because, for once in that hideous list above, our response was greater than they planned for.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
"Doing nothing is not an option" I think was Tony Blair's words at the time. Not only.was doing nothing an option, but it was clearly the better option, as you point out.
Absolutely, and the Ukraine war is the exact opposite.
Doing nothing in Ukraine is the coward’s choice.
It would also be the fools choice, since there is no way that Putin would stop until he is stopped.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
The problem with inaction is that it led us here. We did not do enough over Georgia in 2008. We did not do enough over Litvinenko. We did not do enough over MH17. We did not do enough about Crimea or the Donbass. We did not do enough after Salisbury.
Each time, Putin tested us, saw our reaction, and measured how far he could push us next time. It is alleged that the Russian government calculated what sanctions would be placed on them after a Ukraine invasion, and made measures to cope with those sanctions.
Unfortunately for them, they miscalculated, and the sanctions have been far deeper than they expected. Because, for once in that hideous list above, our response was greater than they planned for.
The miscalculation was not on the sanctions, but their overconfidence about being able to seize Kyiv quickly. Everything else flows from their initial military failure.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner "with a polite smile" told Ambassador Melnyk that Ukraine had only a few hours left, so it was "senseless" to supply weapons to Kyiv & disconnect Russia from SWIFT, Melnyk told FAZ
"Rishi Sunak has annoyed experts, politicians, and journalists across Europe after claiming that the UK was “taking the lead” on illegal migration at a summit in Moldova – which had nothing to do with migration at all."
A way to build local influence, in a system of looser alliances.
If you think the likes of Dave Keating are the gatekeepers to European influence, then we have a bigger problem...
The EPC is an opportunity for Britain to rebuild intra-European relationships, prestige and influence, while still being outside the structures of the EU ; surely something many voters might agree would help.
It's not taken that opportunity so far ; quite the reverse.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
The problem with inaction is that it led us here. We did not do enough over Georgia in 2008. We did not do enough over Litvinenko. We did not do enough over MH17. We did not do enough about Crimea or the Donbass. We did not do enough after Salisbury.
Each time, Putin tested us, saw our reaction, and measured how far he could push us next time. It is alleged that the Russian government calculated what sanctions would be placed on them after a Ukraine invasion, and made measures to cope with those sanctions.
Unfortunately for them, they miscalculated, and the sanctions have been far deeper than they expected. Because, for once in that hideous list above, our response was greater than they planned for.
The miscalculation was not on the sanctions, but their overconfidence about being able to seize Kyiv quickly. Everything else flows from their initial military failure.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner "with a polite smile" told Ambassador Melnyk that Ukraine had only a few hours left, so it was "senseless" to supply weapons to Kyiv & disconnect Russia from SWIFT, Melnyk told FAZ
Just as well that the British planes delivering the NLAWs, were able to divert around Germany on their way to Kiev the week before.
"Rishi Sunak has annoyed experts, politicians, and journalists across Europe after claiming that the UK was “taking the lead” on illegal migration at a summit in Moldova – which had nothing to do with migration at all."
A way to build local influence, in a system of looser alliances.
If you think the likes of Dave Keating are the gatekeepers to European influence, then we have a bigger problem...
The EPC is an opportunity for Britain to rebuild intra-European relationships, prestige and influence, while still being outside the structures of the EU ; surely something many voters might agree would help.
It's not taken that opportunity so far ; quite the reverse.
What will rebuild British prestige in Europe, to the extent that it's been lost, is economic success "despite Brexit", not ostentatious collegiality that nobody will respect.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
"Doing nothing is not an option" I think was Tony Blair's words at the time. Not only.was doing nothing an option, but it was clearly the better option, as you point out.
Absolutely, and the Ukraine war is the exact opposite.
Doing nothing in Ukraine is the coward’s choice.
Actually I think the motivation behind getting rid of a horrible dictator was a.good one, even if it was mixed up in oil supplies, the Bush family wanting to prove a point, America wanting to kick ass following 9/11 and a British prime minister wanting to be seen as the US's bestest most reliable ally.
My real objection with Iraq was that it was never likely to be a success. Also I was doubtful Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
What a load of rubbish. Those unions were effectively conquests in all but name. The Normans conqured England in 1066 and the English then tried to conquer Scotland on various occasions and eventually succeeded on 1603. Oh we might call it union but it was effectively England taking control of Scotland. Something that has become all the more apparent over the centuries.
In one way though your analogy is correct because membership of the EU was another form of conquest. One we have thankfully begun to escape.
In 1603 King James VI of Scots became King James I "of Great Britain". NOT any kind of conquest. and the rest of your history is equally wrong. Graded F - must try harder.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
"Doing nothing is not an option" I think was Tony Blair's words at the time. Not only.was doing nothing an option, but it was clearly the better option, as you point out.
A few phrases come back to memory. "Doing nothing had costs too" - I recall that one. Also the "calculus of risk changed after 9/11". These were by way of debating and justifying after the event. Then beforehand there was the rather stirring "the Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us." A hugely gifted communicator but it all went to his head a bit, is my sense of things with Tony and foreign policy.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
That's a pretty strange interpretation of history. We are where we were, prior to 1973, and an important part of a major military alliance. The British "Empire" consisted of a strip of Eastern American seaboard, Hudsons Bay, and a few trading posts and islands in 1707. By 1800, we'd added Bengal and the Carnatic, but had lost the American seaboard.
Ahem
“Splendid Isolation?”
The East India Company certainly recruited a substantial army in India, after 1760, but it was deployed exclusively in India. The UK's military power in the Napoleonic Wars depended almost entirely on men who were recruited from the UK, or foreigners who enlisted in British service, like the Kings German Legion, or Chasseurs Britannique. The Empire can hardly be said to have existed in 1800, and was certainly not a significant contributor to the UK's military power until much later in the 19th century.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
I don't think we are strategically vulnerable in any sense. Even an attempted blockade (ww1&ww2) wouldn't have achieved an end state for those wars.
"Rishi Sunak has annoyed experts, politicians, and journalists across Europe after claiming that the UK was “taking the lead” on illegal migration at a summit in Moldova – which had nothing to do with migration at all."
A way to build local influence, in a system of looser alliances.
If you think the likes of Dave Keating are the gatekeepers to European influence, then we have a bigger problem...
The EPC is an opportunity for Britain to rebuild intra-European relationships, prestige and influence, while still being outside the structures of the EU ; surely something many voters might agree would help.
It's not taken that opportunity so far ; quite the reverse.
What will rebuild British prestige in Europe, to the extent that it's been lost, is economic success "despite Brexit", not ostentatious collegiality that nobody will respect.
Collegiality built the single market.
Collegiality built the expansion into Eastern Europe.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
January 2025 is looking a long way away for Putin now.
There's a good chance of him being driven out of Ukraine before then iyo?
I think that many figures in the Russian hierarchy are starting to think about how best to protect their position - and weaken the position of their rivals - in a post-Putin Russia. It's possible that Putin will find his time is up before Russia is completely defeated in Ukraine.
I certainly get the sense that victory in the war with Ukraine is not really everyone's greatest concern in the Russian leadership, compared with surviving the fallout from its failure.
Australia all out for 469 and frankly they wasted quite a few overs on 9, 10 and 11 with relatively few runs for it. They may come to regret that. Does anyone know what happens if this test is a draw?
They share the trophy
They do have an extra day if they need it, but presumably only for weather stoppages and they won’t go past 450 overs plus half an hour.
Yep
"The WTC final does have a reserve day scheduled. But it will be used only if there has been play lost due to bad weather across the regular five days, they are unable to make up for it in those five days, and no result has been reached by the end of day five. The 2019-21 WTC final saw the first day completely washed out, and the game eventually went into the reserve day"
Losers. If timeless tests were good enough for Bradman, Hammond and Constantine they should be good enough for this generation.
Edit - TBF, if India keep batting like this the point is moot.
I thought there was only one timeless Test which they had to abandon after 11 days because England's ship home was down in the harbour hooting impatiently.
Of course, I could just as easily google the true facts but it's a pity to spoil a good story.
Any deciding test in a series (I.e. one where the series could still be won by either party, or drawn with a win) was timeless until World War Two. There were around a hundred of them, but not all of them are obvious from the records. For example, the Oval Test of 1938 was timeless but England won in four days anyway.
You're thinking of the Durban Test of 1939, which lasted twelve days (three rest days) until England had to catch their boat and made timeless tests unpopular.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
What a load of rubbish. Those unions were effectively conquests in all but name. The Normans conqured England in 1066 and the English then tried to conquer Scotland on various occasions and eventually succeeded on 1603. Oh we might call it union but it was effectively England taking control of Scotland. Something that has become all the more apparent over the centuries.
In one way though your analogy is correct because membership of the EU was another form of conquest. One we have thankfully begun to escape.
Scotland wasn't conquered in 1603, the crowns entered personal Union. No violence was involved and they remained separate kingdoms including with separate foreign policies for another hundred years.
You could make a case it was conquered in 1651 or 1746, but not 1603.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and PR would make a repeat more likely. However, if you are looking for some form of more proportional system that Labour might be prepared to adopt, and which would promote stable government, I suggest that something similar to the majority bonus system currently in use in Greece and formerly in Italy is your best bet. (The Greece version awards the seat bonus to the largest party, the Italian version awarded the bonus to the largest pre-formed coalition.) It puts a high premium on parties forming a coalition before an election, so that would benefit Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens and the mutual interest would make a coalition likely in order to deliver bonus seats and a stable government. It's much more democratic because the choice of coalition would be made transparent before people vote, just about every other PR system leaves it coalitions to form in smoke filled rooms with no regard to the electorate may have wanted.
What I cannot see Starmer doing is conceding a form of PR that would in future allow the Lib Dems to play kingmaker once people have voted. The experience of Clegg in 2010 is still a bitter one for many in Labour.
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and occurred under FPTP. It's hardly a good argument against PR to say we got these problems without PR!
If you prize "stability" in a system, defined here as a clear winner (be it a single party or a pre-formed coalition), then the approach used in many countries is to directly elect the executive. I think that's neater than a majority bonus system in some ways, but the problem with directly electing the executive is that usually means electing a president and there are downsides to presidential systems.
I appreciate that the instability of our government in 2018-19 took place under FPTP, but at least it was the exception to the rule. There have been very few instances in my lifetime where a UK government could not properly function under the present system and they were short lived and resolved by a subsequent election. Under some forms of PR that situation it would either become the rule rather than the exception or be resolved by negotiation often lasting months between politicians from which the public is wholly excluded. How many of the Irish electorate when casting their votes thought that they were voting for a FF/FG coalition for example, and what worth are promises made during an election when they can be readily discarded as soon as post election negotiations kick off?
The majority bonus system seems to me to be a reasonable compromise, incorporating a large dose of PR but with elections being potentially conducted between two coalitions, designed to deliver stable government with the largest coalition being chosen by the electorate.
Lots of countries with PR have no difficulty regularly delivering single party majority government (e.g., Japan, South Africa, Malta). Lots of countries with FPTP repeatedly fail to produce single party majorities in the legislature (India, France). The relationship is more complicated than FPTP good/PR bad. The effective number of active political parties is what really matters: when that's between 1 and 2, systems produce reliable single party government. When that gets much bigger than 2, then systems fail to produce reliable single party government. PR is associated with somewhat higher effective numbers of parties, but many other factors matter too.
The UK, under FPTP, has been slowly moving away from a 2 party system, with the slow resurgence of the Liberals/Alliance/LibDems, the faster growth of the SNP, and Northern Ireland diverging and having its own parties. That means the UK is seeing more hung parliaments. When you say there "have been very few instances in my lifetime where a UK government could not properly function under the present system", I'd note that the 2010 and 2017 elections both produced hung Parliaments, so that's half of the last four. A hung parliament is a fairly likely outcome at the next election.
Unless we see the UK's third, fourth and fifth parties withering away, we're going to continue to have hung results being common under FPTP.
I think you need to step back and rationally consider what you want from an electoral system. If you want a clear single party winner, how do you achieve that? Because FPTP is going to continue faring poorly!
One way to do that is your proposal, PR with a winning party boost. I think that might work. It's downsides are: (a) it can still fail to produce a winner, (b) it can seem arbitrary if the first and second placed party are very close and neither is that close to 50%, and (c) it can create tactical voting incentives that are unhelpful. But no voting system is perfect, as Arrow taught us.
Directly electing the executive (which usually means a President) is another approach. It guarantees you have a clear winner. You can have some ordinality in the voting (multiple rounds, AV, SV) to avoid some of the downsides of FPTP. However, presidential systems have their own problems, like worries the whole election becomes too much driven by personalities, and how does the president then work with a legislature afterwards. You could have a legislative election with a parallel presidential election, but the president gets to appoint X MPs to the legislature, a boost for the winning party.
So I agree with you more than I disagree with you! Let's pick a voting system that delivers what we want.
Let me think, does PR give us more of what we, the electorate, want than FPTP?
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and PR would make a repeat more likely. However, if you are looking for some form of more proportional system that Labour might be prepared to adopt, and which would promote stable government, I suggest that something similar to the majority bonus system currently in use in Greece and formerly in Italy is your best bet. (The Greece version awards the seat bonus to the largest party, the Italian version awarded the bonus to the largest pre-formed coalition.) It puts a high premium on parties forming a coalition before an election, so that would benefit Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens and the mutual interest would make a coalition likely in order to deliver bonus seats and a stable government. It's much more democratic because the choice of coalition would be made transparent before people vote, just about every other PR system leaves it coalitions to form in smoke filled rooms with no regard to the electorate may have wanted.
What I cannot see Starmer doing is conceding a form of PR that would in future allow the Lib Dems to play kingmaker once people have voted. The experience of Clegg in 2010 is still a bitter one for many in Labour.
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and occurred under FPTP. It's hardly a good argument against PR to say we got these problems without PR!
If you prize "stability" in a system, defined here as a clear winner (be it a single party or a pre-formed coalition), then the approach used in many countries is to directly elect the executive. I think that's neater than a majority bonus system in some ways, but the problem with directly electing the executive is that usually means electing a president and there are downsides to presidential systems.
I appreciate that the instability of our government in 2018-19 took place under FPTP, but at least it was the exception to the rule. There have been very few instances in my lifetime where a UK government could not properly function under the present system and they were short lived and resolved by a subsequent election. Under some forms of PR that situation it would either become the rule rather than the exception or be resolved by negotiation often lasting months between politicians from which the public is wholly excluded. How many of the Irish electorate when casting their votes thought that they were voting for a FF/FG coalition for example, and what worth are promises made during an election when they can be readily discarded as soon as post election negotiations kick off?
The majority bonus system seems to me to be a reasonable compromise, incorporating a large dose of PR but with elections being potentially conducted between two coalitions, designed to deliver stable government with the largest coalition being chosen by the electorate.
Lots of countries with PR have no difficulty regularly delivering single party majority government (e.g., Japan, South Africa, Malta). Lots of countries with FPTP repeatedly fail to produce single party majorities in the legislature (India, France). The relationship is more complicated than FPTP good/PR bad. The effective number of active political parties is what really matters: when that's between 1 and 2, systems produce reliable single party government. When that gets much bigger than 2, then systems fail to produce reliable single party government. PR is associated with somewhat higher effective numbers of parties, but many other factors matter too.
The UK, under FPTP, has been slowly moving away from a 2 party system, with the slow resurgence of the Liberals/Alliance/LibDems, the faster growth of the SNP, and Northern Ireland diverging and having its own parties. That means the UK is seeing more hung parliaments. When you say there "have been very few instances in my lifetime where a UK government could not properly function under the present system", I'd note that the 2010 and 2017 elections both produced hung Parliaments, so that's half of the last four. A hung parliament is a fairly likely outcome at the next election.
Unless we see the UK's third, fourth and fifth parties withering away, we're going to continue to have hung results being common under FPTP.
I think you need to step back and rationally consider what you want from an electoral system. If you want a clear single party winner, how do you achieve that? Because FPTP is going to continue faring poorly!
One way to do that is your proposal, PR with a winning party boost. I think that might work. It's downsides are: (a) it can still fail to produce a winner, (b) it can seem arbitrary if the first and second placed party are very close and neither is that close to 50%, and (c) it can create tactical voting incentives that are unhelpful. But no voting system is perfect, as Arrow taught us.
Directly electing the executive (which usually means a President) is another approach. It guarantees you have a clear winner. You can have some ordinality in the voting (multiple rounds, AV, SV) to avoid some of the downsides of FPTP. However, presidential systems have their own problems, like worries the whole election becomes too much driven by personalities, and how does the president then work with a legislature afterwards. You could have a legislative election with a parallel presidential election, but the president gets to appoint X MPs to the legislature, a boost for the winning party.
So I agree with you more than I disagree with you! Let's pick a voting system that delivers what we want.
Let me think, does PR give us more of what we, the electorate, want than FPTP?
So, jumping the gun slightly, if Johnson is suspended and then recalled and then stands for re-election... how does the by-election pan out?
That’s up to Rishi Sunak, to decide if Johnson is the Conservative candidate in the by-election.
Rishi won't have him suspended from the party. He's useless but he's not stupid.
Oh I think he is. His oven ready deal showed he's stupid. As did Cummings. And Partygate. And his interior decorating. And all that business with secret loans...oh hold on, by 'he' do you mean Sunak?
So, jumping the gun slightly, if Johnson is suspended and then recalled and then stands for re-election... how does the by-election pan out?
Best case scenario for Sunak is that Johnson becomes a scapegoat for everyone's frustrations over the pandemic, the sense of unfairness, the current economic situation, etc, and the wipeout he suffers as a result draws a lot of the sting from that anger.
Worst case, Johnson wins, reputation as an election-winner enhanced, can claim vindication over the reasons for his ejection from Number Ten and surfs a tide straight back into power.
Labour will hope to not only defeat Johnson, but tie Sunak to him, so that the electorate repeat the cleansing ritual at the general election.
For those of us not au fait with motorsport is this our Lewis with Mr Alonso’s other half ?
No, Gerard Pique's ex wife
And after Piqué left her for someone half her age she wrote a song with the lyric: "I'm worth two 22 year olds. You've swapped a Ferrari for a Twingo. You've swapped a Rolex for a Casio."
So, jumping the gun slightly, if Johnson is suspended and then recalled and then stands for re-election... how does the by-election pan out?
Best case scenario for Sunak is that Johnson becomes a scapegoat for everyone's frustrations over the pandemic, the sense of unfairness, the current economic situation, etc, and the wipeout he suffers as a result draws a lot of the sting from that anger.
Worst case, Johnson wins, reputation as an election-winner enhanced, can claim vindication over the reasons for his ejection from Number Ten and surfs a tide straight back into power.
Labour will hope to not only defeat Johnson, but tie Sunak to him, so that the electorate repeat the cleansing ritual at the general election.
If there is a by-election, Johnson should stand.
Because he will lose, and that will purge the fever from the Tories.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
What a load of rubbish. Those unions were effectively conquests in all but name. The Normans conqured England in 1066 and the English then tried to conquer Scotland on various occasions and eventually succeeded on 1603. Oh we might call it union but it was effectively England taking control of Scotland. Something that has become all the more apparent over the centuries.
In one way though your analogy is correct because membership of the EU was another form of conquest. One we have thankfully begun to escape.
Scotland wasn't conquered in 1603, the crowns entered personal Union. No violence was involved and they remained separate kingdoms including with separate foreign policies for another hundred years.
You could make a case it was conquered in 1651 or 1746, but not 1603.
Do you reckon one could make a case for conquest against the Scots in 1603, 1651 and 1746? One of my best friends is Scottish
So, jumping the gun slightly, if Johnson is suspended and then recalled and then stands for re-election... how does the by-election pan out?
That’s up to Rishi Sunak, to decide if Johnson is the Conservative candidate in the by-election.
Rishi won't have him suspended from the party. He's useless but he's not stupid.
My personal view is that Boris will go the other way, and not wish to stand in a by-election where he knows he’ll get smashed. He might chicken run back to Henley if he can, but otherwise he’s done in politics and can concentrate on writing the memoir.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
What a load of rubbish. Those unions were effectively conquests in all but name. The Normans conqured England in 1066 and the English then tried to conquer Scotland on various occasions and eventually succeeded on 1603. Oh we might call it union but it was effectively England taking control of Scotland. Something that has become all the more apparent over the centuries.
In one way though your analogy is correct because membership of the EU was another form of conquest. One we have thankfully begun to escape.
Scotland wasn't conquered in 1603, the crowns entered personal Union. No violence was involved and they remained separate kingdoms including with separate foreign policies for another hundred years.
You could make a case it was conquered in 1651 or 1746, but not 1603.
Do you reckon one could make a case for conquest against the Scots in 1603, 1651 and 1746? One of my best friends is Scottish
Only the latter two.
And you could really annoy them by pointing out the last battle of the 1650-51 campaign that doomed Scotland to subjugation was actually Worcester.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
The problem with inaction is that it led us here. We did not do enough over Georgia in 2008. We did not do enough over Litvinenko. We did not do enough over MH17. We did not do enough about Crimea or the Donbass. We did not do enough after Salisbury.
Each time, Putin tested us, saw our reaction, and measured how far he could push us next time. It is alleged that the Russian government calculated what sanctions would be placed on them after a Ukraine invasion, and made measures to cope with those sanctions.
Unfortunately for them, they miscalculated, and the sanctions have been far deeper than they expected. Because, for once in that hideous list above, our response was greater than they planned for.
The miscalculation was not on the sanctions, but their overconfidence about being able to seize Kyiv quickly. Everything else flows from their initial military failure.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner "with a polite smile" told Ambassador Melnyk that Ukraine had only a few hours left, so it was "senseless" to supply weapons to Kyiv & disconnect Russia from SWIFT, Melnyk told FAZ
I think Russia's attack last year had a realistic chance of success. That it didn't succeed, at least initially, was probably down to Zelenskyy staying put in Kiyv and rallying the Ukrainian response, and the coordinated support from western countries, for which Joe Biden can take a lot of the credit.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
"Doing nothing is not an option" I think was Tony Blair's words at the time. Not only.was doing nothing an option, but it was clearly the better option, as you point out.
To be fair to him, I don't think he saw the "doing nothing" option as not invading Iraq, but sitting back and watching the US do it alone.
Yep, prioritizing the Special Relationship. That's what he advances now as the biggest and best argument for joining the invasion. Perfectly respectable argument too. However I suspect he was unduly swayed by personal vanity. Being so lionized in the States turned his head. The Special Relationship he deep down loved was between America and HIM. Pity since I otherwise have the softest of spots for TB. He gave us the unsurpassably thrilling 1st May 1997.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
What a load of rubbish. Those unions were effectively conquests in all but name. The Normans conqured England in 1066 and the English then tried to conquer Scotland on various occasions and eventually succeeded on 1603. Oh we might call it union but it was effectively England taking control of Scotland. Something that has become all the more apparent over the centuries.
In one way though your analogy is correct because membership of the EU was another form of conquest. One we have thankfully begun to escape.
Scotland wasn't conquered in 1603, the crowns entered personal Union. No violence was involved and they remained separate kingdoms including with separate foreign policies for another hundred years.
You could make a case it was conquered in 1651 or 1746, but not 1603.
Conquest doesn't always have to involve violence. The effect was to subjugate the Scots to English power up to this present day. That is conquest.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
What a load of rubbish. Those unions were effectively conquests in all but name. The Normans conqured England in 1066 and the English then tried to conquer Scotland on various occasions and eventually succeeded on 1603. Oh we might call it union but it was effectively England taking control of Scotland. Something that has become all the more apparent over the centuries.
In one way though your analogy is correct because membership of the EU was another form of conquest. One we have thankfully begun to escape.
Scotland wasn't conquered in 1603, the crowns entered personal Union. No violence was involved and they remained separate kingdoms including with separate foreign policies for another hundred years.
You could make a case it was conquered in 1651 or 1746, but not 1603.
Do you reckon one could make a case for conquest against the Scots in 1603, 1651 and 1746? One of my best friends is Scottish
Only the latter two.
And you could really annoy them by pointing out the last battle of the 1650-51 campaign that doomed Scotland to subjugation was actually Worcester.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
I've gone off that one because TB used it incessantly to try and justify Iraq.
Doing nothing was the *better* action in that case.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
Yep and it often is. Deep strategic inaction is generally underrated. Although not on Ukraine of course. Action was (and is and will continue to be) needed there. The unprovoked aggression of Vladimir Putin should bear no fruit. Hopefully the US will not elect an isolationist GOP president. That's Putin's long term best chance imo.
The problem with inaction is that it led us here. We did not do enough over Georgia in 2008. We did not do enough over Litvinenko. We did not do enough over MH17. We did not do enough about Crimea or the Donbass. We did not do enough after Salisbury.
Each time, Putin tested us, saw our reaction, and measured how far he could push us next time. It is alleged that the Russian government calculated what sanctions would be placed on them after a Ukraine invasion, and made measures to cope with those sanctions.
Unfortunately for them, they miscalculated, and the sanctions have been far deeper than they expected. Because, for once in that hideous list above, our response was greater than they planned for.
The miscalculation was not on the sanctions, but their overconfidence about being able to seize Kyiv quickly. Everything else flows from their initial military failure.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner "with a polite smile" told Ambassador Melnyk that Ukraine had only a few hours left, so it was "senseless" to supply weapons to Kyiv & disconnect Russia from SWIFT, Melnyk told FAZ
I think Russia's attack last year had a realistic chance of success. That it didn't succeed, at least initially, was probably down to Zelenskyy staying put in Kiyv and rallying the Ukrainian response, and the coordinated support from western countries, for which Joe Biden can take a lot of the credit.
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
What a load of rubbish. Those unions were effectively conquests in all but name. The Normans conqured England in 1066 and the English then tried to conquer Scotland on various occasions and eventually succeeded on 1603. Oh we might call it union but it was effectively England taking control of Scotland. Something that has become all the more apparent over the centuries.
In one way though your analogy is correct because membership of the EU was another form of conquest. One we have thankfully begun to escape.
Scotland wasn't conquered in 1603, the crowns entered personal Union. No violence was involved and they remained separate kingdoms including with separate foreign policies for another hundred years.
You could make a case it was conquered in 1651 or 1746, but not 1603.
The Union of 1707 was driven through the Scottish parliament with a not at all hidden threat of invasion. That it eventually turned out quite successful was almost an accident.
Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.
From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.
Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.
If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.
If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and PR would make a repeat more likely. However, if you are looking for some form of more proportional system that Labour might be prepared to adopt, and which would promote stable government, I suggest that something similar to the majority bonus system currently in use in Greece and formerly in Italy is your best bet. (The Greece version awards the seat bonus to the largest party, the Italian version awarded the bonus to the largest pre-formed coalition.) It puts a high premium on parties forming a coalition before an election, so that would benefit Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens and the mutual interest would make a coalition likely in order to deliver bonus seats and a stable government. It's much more democratic because the choice of coalition would be made transparent before people vote, just about every other PR system leaves it coalitions to form in smoke filled rooms with no regard to the electorate may have wanted.
What I cannot see Starmer doing is conceding a form of PR that would in future allow the Lib Dems to play kingmaker once people have voted. The experience of Clegg in 2010 is still a bitter one for many in Labour.
The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and occurred under FPTP. It's hardly a good argument against PR to say we got these problems without PR!
If you prize "stability" in a system, defined here as a clear winner (be it a single party or a pre-formed coalition), then the approach used in many countries is to directly elect the executive. I think that's neater than a majority bonus system in some ways, but the problem with directly electing the executive is that usually means electing a president and there are downsides to presidential systems.
I appreciate that the instability of our government in 2018-19 took place under FPTP, but at least it was the exception to the rule. There have been very few instances in my lifetime where a UK government could not properly function under the present system and they were short lived and resolved by a subsequent election. Under some forms of PR that situation it would either become the rule rather than the exception or be resolved by negotiation often lasting months between politicians from which the public is wholly excluded. How many of the Irish electorate when casting their votes thought that they were voting for a FF/FG coalition for example, and what worth are promises made during an election when they can be readily discarded as soon as post election negotiations kick off?
The majority bonus system seems to me to be a reasonable compromise, incorporating a large dose of PR but with elections being potentially conducted between two coalitions, designed to deliver stable government with the largest coalition being chosen by the electorate.
Lots of countries with PR have no difficulty regularly delivering single party majority government (e.g., Japan, South Africa, Malta). Lots of countries with FPTP repeatedly fail to produce single party majorities in the legislature (India, France). The relationship is more complicated than FPTP good/PR bad. The effective number of active political parties is what really matters: when that's between 1 and 2, systems produce reliable single party government. When that gets much bigger than 2, then systems fail to produce reliable single party government. PR is associated with somewhat higher effective numbers of parties, but many other factors matter too.
The UK, under FPTP, has been slowly moving away from a 2 party system, with the slow resurgence of the Liberals/Alliance/LibDems, the faster growth of the SNP, and Northern Ireland diverging and having its own parties. That means the UK is seeing more hung parliaments. When you say there "have been very few instances in my lifetime where a UK government could not properly function under the present system", I'd note that the 2010 and 2017 elections both produced hung Parliaments, so that's half of the last four. A hung parliament is a fairly likely outcome at the next election.
Unless we see the UK's third, fourth and fifth parties withering away, we're going to continue to have hung results being common under FPTP.
I think you need to step back and rationally consider what you want from an electoral system. If you want a clear single party winner, how do you achieve that? Because FPTP is going to continue faring poorly!
One way to do that is your proposal, PR with a winning party boost. I think that might work. It's downsides are: (a) it can still fail to produce a winner, (b) it can seem arbitrary if the first and second placed party are very close and neither is that close to 50%, and (c) it can create tactical voting incentives that are unhelpful. But no voting system is perfect, as Arrow taught us.
Directly electing the executive (which usually means a President) is another approach. It guarantees you have a clear winner. You can have some ordinality in the voting (multiple rounds, AV, SV) to avoid some of the downsides of FPTP. However, presidential systems have their own problems, like worries the whole election becomes too much driven by personalities, and how does the president then work with a legislature afterwards. You could have a legislative election with a parallel presidential election, but the president gets to appoint X MPs to the legislature, a boost for the winning party.
So I agree with you more than I disagree with you! Let's pick a voting system that delivers what we want.
Let me think, does PR give us more of what we, the electorate, want than FPTP?
No. It gives the politicians and parties more of what they want. And an excuse for ignoring us.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
Who is talking about inaction? It's the distasteful luxuriating in battle strategy by the beardy-weirdly gamers on here that grates.
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
You're just in favour of these young men throwing themselves on the mercy of Vladimir Putin.
So, jumping the gun slightly, if Johnson is suspended and then recalled and then stands for re-election... how does the by-election pan out?
Best case scenario for Sunak is that Johnson becomes a scapegoat for everyone's frustrations over the pandemic, the sense of unfairness, the current economic situation, etc, and the wipeout he suffers as a result draws a lot of the sting from that anger.
Worst case, Johnson wins, reputation as an election-winner enhanced, can claim vindication over the reasons for his ejection from Number Ten and surfs a tide straight back into power.
Labour will hope to not only defeat Johnson, but tie Sunak to him, so that the electorate repeat the cleansing ritual at the general election.
If there is a by-election, Johnson should stand.
Because he will lose, and that will purge the fever from the Tories.
Ashcroft poll says he'd win, (which I find amazing)
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
What a load of rubbish. Those unions were effectively conquests in all but name. The Normans conqured England in 1066 and the English then tried to conquer Scotland on various occasions and eventually succeeded on 1603. Oh we might call it union but it was effectively England taking control of Scotland. Something that has become all the more apparent over the centuries.
In one way though your analogy is correct because membership of the EU was another form of conquest. One we have thankfully begun to escape.
Scotland wasn't conquered in 1603, the crowns entered personal Union. No violence was involved and they remained separate kingdoms including with separate foreign policies for another hundred years.
You could make a case it was conquered in 1651 or 1746, but not 1603.
Conquest doesn't always have to involve violence. The effect was to subjugate the Scots to English power up to this present day. That is conquest.
So, jumping the gun slightly, if Johnson is suspended and then recalled and then stands for re-election... how does the by-election pan out?
Best case scenario for Sunak is that Johnson becomes a scapegoat for everyone's frustrations over the pandemic, the sense of unfairness, the current economic situation, etc, and the wipeout he suffers as a result draws a lot of the sting from that anger.
Worst case, Johnson wins, reputation as an election-winner enhanced, can claim vindication over the reasons for his ejection from Number Ten and surfs a tide straight back into power.
Labour will hope to not only defeat Johnson, but tie Sunak to him, so that the electorate repeat the cleansing ritual at the general election.
If there is a by-election, Johnson should stand.
Because he will lose, and that will purge the fever from the Tories.
Ashcroft poll says he'd win, (which I find amazing)
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
You in favour of condemning people to a lifetime of Russian oppression then?
"Rishi Sunak has annoyed experts, politicians, and journalists across Europe after claiming that the UK was “taking the lead” on illegal migration at a summit in Moldova – which had nothing to do with migration at all."
A way to build local influence, in a system of looser alliances.
If you think the likes of Dave Keating are the gatekeepers to European influence, then we have a bigger problem...
The EPC is an opportunity for Britain to rebuild intra-European relationships, prestige and influence, while still being outside the structures of the EU ; surely something many voters might agree would help.
It's not taken that opportunity so far ; quite the reverse.
What will rebuild British prestige in Europe, to the extent that it's been lost, is economic success "despite Brexit", not ostentatious collegiality that nobody will respect.
Collegiality built the single market.
Collegiality built the expansion into Eastern Europe.
A strange response that is not only irrelevant in a post-Brexit context, but also memory-holes just how uncollegiate our relations with the rest of the EC/EU were during much of that period.
So, jumping the gun slightly, if Johnson is suspended and then recalled and then stands for re-election... how does the by-election pan out?
Best case scenario for Sunak is that Johnson becomes a scapegoat for everyone's frustrations over the pandemic, the sense of unfairness, the current economic situation, etc, and the wipeout he suffers as a result draws a lot of the sting from that anger.
Worst case, Johnson wins, reputation as an election-winner enhanced, can claim vindication over the reasons for his ejection from Number Ten and surfs a tide straight back into power.
Labour will hope to not only defeat Johnson, but tie Sunak to him, so that the electorate repeat the cleansing ritual at the general election.
If there is a by-election, Johnson should stand.
Because he will lose, and that will purge the fever from the Tories.
Ashcroft poll says he'd win, (which I find amazing)
I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now." https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177
Interesting location.
I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war?
As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
The difference being I don’t pontificate on military strategy while encouraging policies that would send thousands of young men to a likely death, unlike the “Whatever It Takes” beardy wargamers on here.
Actually you do. Inaction is just another action.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
Who is talking about inaction? It's the distasteful luxuriating in battle strategy by the beardy-weirdly gamers on here that grates.
We pontificate on a lot of things on here. Why shouldn't the major news story of the past year be one of them?
I'd have more sympathy with the banks if they weren't whacking up rates on borrowing like there was no tomorrow. But they are, while clearly using oligopoly power to keep the rates on savings low.
So, jumping the gun slightly, if Johnson is suspended and then recalled and then stands for re-election... how does the by-election pan out?
Best case scenario for Sunak is that Johnson becomes a scapegoat for everyone's frustrations over the pandemic, the sense of unfairness, the current economic situation, etc, and the wipeout he suffers as a result draws a lot of the sting from that anger.
Worst case, Johnson wins, reputation as an election-winner enhanced, can claim vindication over the reasons for his ejection from Number Ten and surfs a tide straight back into power.
Labour will hope to not only defeat Johnson, but tie Sunak to him, so that the electorate repeat the cleansing ritual at the general election.
If there is a by-election, Johnson should stand.
Because he will lose, and that will purge the fever from the Tories.
Ashcroft poll says he'd win, (which I find amazing)
A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.
We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.
It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.
There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.
It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.
If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
Britain absolutely does have the power to act alone in Europe. Not that we need to if like minded fellow nations agree to work with us on a case by case basis.
To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty. Outside the EU countries don't do that. They work together, have alliances etc, but ultimately make their own decisions and are accountable to their own electorate.
No reason the UK should lack the self-confidence and self-esteem to do the same.
"To think otherwise is to have a distinct lack of self-confidence and self-esteem."
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
That's a pretty strange interpretation of history. We are where we were, prior to 1973, and an important part of a major military alliance. The British "Empire" consisted of a strip of Eastern American seaboard, Hudsons Bay, and a few trading posts and islands in 1707. By 1800, we'd added Bengal and the Carnatic, but had lost the American seaboard.
Ahem
“Splendid Isolation?”
The East India Company certainly recruited a substantial army in India, after 1760, but it was deployed exclusively in India. The UK's military power in the Napoleonic Wars depended almost entirely on men who were recruited from the UK, or foreigners who enlisted in British service, like the Kings German Legion, or Chasseurs Britannique. The Empire can hardly be said to have existed in 1800, and was certainly not a significant contributor to the UK's military power until much later in the 19th century.
Indeed. Officially India wasn't even part of the British Empire until after the Indian mutiny. It became a colony following the Government of India Act of 1858. Though it was used as training ground for British officers who served under the East India Company.
Comments
India 11
Draw 4.4
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/cricket/test-matches/australia-v-india-betting-32183614
Is a draw really more likely than an Indian win? Not sure.
Wow.
That is unforseen and fortuitous.
I think even as a conservative he knows how badly things are going and now has taken it upon himself to moderate his views to protect the constitution.
Credit to him for that.
These are again just facts of power, rather than dogma, or opposition to America. On the other side, one could equally describe the idea that Britain's interests are always naturally and inherently aligned with those of the US, as dogma.
Plus I think you have an inflated sense of the power of PB.
Otherwise you're sacrificing your independence to devision making in other nations.
We absolutely can independently work with other countries, whether in Europe or out of it. No need to sacrifice our genuine independence to do so.
"The WTC final does have a reserve day scheduled. But it will be used only if there has been play lost due to bad weather across the regular five days, they are unable to make up for it in those five days, and no result has been reached by the end of day five. The 2019-21 WTC final saw the first day completely washed out, and the game eventually went into the reserve day"
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/world-test-championship-final-faqs-dukes-ball-reserve-day-a-first-oval-test-in-june-and-more-1379859
The UK, under FPTP, has been slowly moving away from a 2 party system, with the slow resurgence of the Liberals/Alliance/LibDems, the faster growth of the SNP, and Northern Ireland diverging and having its own parties. That means the UK is seeing more hung parliaments. When you say there "have been very few instances in my lifetime where a UK government could not properly function under the present system", I'd note that the 2010 and 2017 elections both produced hung Parliaments, so that's half of the last four. A hung parliament is a fairly likely outcome at the next election.
Unless we see the UK's third, fourth and fifth parties withering away, we're going to continue to have hung results being common under FPTP.
I think you need to step back and rationally consider what you want from an electoral system. If you want a clear single party winner, how do you achieve that? Because FPTP is going to continue faring poorly!
One way to do that is your proposal, PR with a winning party boost. I think that might work. It's downsides are: (a) it can still fail to produce a winner, (b) it can seem arbitrary if the first and second placed party are very close and neither is that close to 50%, and (c) it can create tactical voting incentives that are unhelpful. But no voting system is perfect, as Arrow taught us.
Directly electing the executive (which usually means a President) is another approach. It guarantees you have a clear winner. You can have some ordinality in the voting (multiple rounds, AV, SV) to avoid some of the downsides of FPTP. However, presidential systems have their own problems, like worries the whole election becomes too much driven by personalities, and how does the president then work with a legislature afterwards. You could have a legislative election with a parallel presidential election, but the president gets to appoint X MPs to the legislature, a boost for the winning party.
So I agree with you more than I disagree with you! Let's pick a voting system that delivers what we want.
Your argument would make more sense if you were advocating something closer to the post-Brexit reality of eschewing membership of a confederation like the EU in favour of a system of overlapping looser alliances.
https://addiator.blogspot.com/2012/09/general-jumbo.html
And now three down for not that much...
Edit - TBF, if India keep batting like this the point is moot.
Though Stop The War were banging on about sanctions being genocide….
As I mentioned, the article makes hardly any mention of pan-European security. I just think there's something very strange in the psychology of all this somewhere, both apparently prioritising relationships with further abroad than closer to home, and almost not trusting one's own capacity or power, at some very fundamental level.
No - to think otherwise is realistic and takes account of the political and historical realities.
"There is no requirement at all to pool and share sovereignty."
Yes there is. A basic knowledge of British history shows that. Since the Norman Conquest, England itself has only been outside any form of Union for 150 years, from 1453 (surrender of Bordeaux) to 1603 (Union of the Crowns). Even that ignores the annexation of Wales. The UK, and previously Great Britain, and before that England, had almost never never not been part of a larger union - until Brexit.
Great Britain and then the UK (in and of themselves a union of nations that have "pooled" their sovereignties) had, for the entirely of its existence starting in 1707 and 1805 respectively, been part of larger political unions, whether the British Empire, or the EEC/EU.
We are a weak and strategically vulnerable island nation, as wiser heads than you have always recognised. To make up for that, the UK and, previously, Great Britain, always placed itself within larger political unions.
Brexiteers, in their ignorance of history, have put us in a position we have literally never been in before. Totally on our own, outside valuable political unions (the Empire has gone and we self-harmed by leaving the EU) and thus smaller than we have ever been, and with less influence without the Empire or the EU to amplify our voice.
"Britain's almost hyperactive policy in Ukraine" is, really, typical of the article. No reference to Europe, as if Britain is striking out alone, like Poseidon.
IndiaAustralia are bowling.Edited for oops moment,
“Splendid Isolation?”
71 / 4
Of course, I could just as easily google the true facts but it's a pity to spoil a good story.
In one way though your analogy is correct because membership of the EU was another form of conquest. One we have thankfully begun to escape.
I don't.
If the Russians were to leave all the occupied territories tomorrow, I'd be ecstatic. Better if they were to pay reparations and for their leaders to face the Hague, but I'd settle for them just leaving.
If 'we' (the west, I have f-all power or control over this) abandon Ukraine - then thousands will die. Thousands of civilians, thousands of military. Thousands of kids will be separated from the families and transported thousands of miles. And Russia - and other countries with ill intent - will see that it works.
There is no 'good' choice here. Don't pretend there is.
A way to build local influence, in a system of looser alliances. The narcissism was so strong that the isolationist-Tory mindset didn't even want to talk primarily about co-ordination within Europe on Ukraine, let alone building up the EPC, at this particular meet-up.
Doing nothing in Ukraine is the coward’s choice.
Thank you India.
Each time, Putin tested us, saw our reaction, and measured how far he could push us next time. It is alleged that the Russian government calculated what sanctions would be placed on them after a Ukraine invasion, and made measures to cope with those sanctions.
Unfortunately for them, they miscalculated, and the sanctions have been far deeper than they expected. Because, for once in that hideous list above, our response was greater than they planned for.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1509052353579831297
After Russia invaded Ukraine, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner "with a polite smile" told Ambassador Melnyk that Ukraine had only a few hours left, so it was "senseless" to supply weapons to Kyiv & disconnect Russia from SWIFT, Melnyk told FAZ
It's not taken that opportunity so far ; quite the reverse.
Boris Johnson has been sent findings of an investigation into whether he misled Parliament over the Downing Street parties scandal
He has 2 weeks to respond
If he is sanctioned for 10 days or more he faces by-election
Johnson's has no legal recourse if he objects to findings
Privileges committee says only that it will take further submissions 'into account'
'If committee decides to criticise Mr Johnson it will not come to final conclusion until it has taken into account further submissions'
https://twitter.com/steven_swinford/status/1666829153235005440?s=46
My real objection with Iraq was that it was never likely to be a success. Also I was doubtful Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
Collegiality built the expansion into Eastern Europe.
I certainly get the sense that victory in the war with Ukraine is not really everyone's greatest concern in the Russian leadership, compared with surviving the fallout from its failure.
You're thinking of the Durban Test of 1939, which lasted twelve days (three rest days) until England had to catch their boat and made timeless tests unpopular.
You could make a case it was conquered in 1651 or 1746, but not 1603.
Worst case, Johnson wins, reputation as an election-winner enhanced, can claim vindication over the reasons for his ejection from Number Ten and surfs a tide straight back into power.
Labour will hope to not only defeat Johnson, but tie Sunak to him, so that the electorate repeat the cleansing ritual at the general election.
Because he will lose, and that will purge the fever from the Tories.
And you could really annoy them by pointing out the last battle of the 1650-51 campaign that doomed Scotland to subjugation was actually Worcester.
https://conservativehome.com/2023/06/06/lord-ashcroft-my-new-poll-suggests-that-johnson-would-win-a-by-election-in-uxbridge-and-south-ruislip/
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/39417?redirectedFrom=Conquer#eid
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/conquering
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conquering
Banks accused of 'measly' interest rates on savings
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65844839
I'd have more sympathy with the banks if they weren't whacking up rates on borrowing like there was no tomorrow. But they are, while clearly using oligopoly power to keep the rates on savings low.