Will they at some point recognise that Brexit is not in fact having the impact predicted by either side for good or ill and accept that our performance depends upon the quality of our own economic management?
The problem with that argument is the people nominally in charge of our economic management are the same people who said imposing economic sanctions on ourselves was a great idea.
You can't separate the current Government, or our economic woes, from Brexit.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Is anti-Conservative feeling driving support for rejoin, or is anti-Brexit feeling driving opposition to the Conservatives?
People are being told daily that the UK's poor economic performance is down to Brexit, thus ignoring the fact that our economic performance is no worse than the EU as a whole and much better than, say, Germany. There is a certain irony here in that everything bad got blamed by the Brexit nutters on the EU when we were in and now is blamed on Brexit by the rejoin nutters. Sauce for the goose I suppose but neither are true.
The UK is not Germany. Whether the German economy is doing worse or better than the UK’s doesn’t tell us whether the UK economy would be doing worse or better were we still in the EU.
Oh I agree but it is pretty difficult to sustain the argument that our economic performance is being damaged by Brexit when we are doing the same as the rest of Europe. Doesn't stop people trying though.
Most of this came from predictions that proved consistently pessimistic but that doesn't stop them either. Will they at some point recognise that Brexit is not in fact having the impact predicted by either side for good or ill and accept that our performance depends upon the quality of our own economic management? I am not holding my breath.
But we aren't doing the same as Europe. The Eurozone has GDP growth predicted of 1% this year rising to 1.7% next year, and had inflation of 5.5% in June.
Will they at some point recognise that Brexit is not in fact having the impact predicted by either side for good or ill and accept that our performance depends upon the quality of our own economic management?
The problem with that argument is the people nominally in charge of our economic management are the same people who said imposing economic sanctions on ourselves was a great idea.
You can't separate the current Government, or our economic woes, from Brexit.
I didn't try to. I have made repeated criticisms of the current government's economic policies and I fear that their replacements are going to be even worse but these are the factors that determine how we do, not Brexit.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Although on these numbers, there are a fair few people suffering Bregret.
Personally, I think the EU/Brexit is used by all and sundry as an excuse.
2015: Britain is struggling with austerity, and wages are below 2008 levels. It's the fault of the EU. 2023: Britain is struggling to get back to pre-Covid highs. It's the fault of Brexit.
Of course. But what if that's still the case in 2028 ?
And that is really quite likely.
The polling which Mike highlights in the header is frankly a surprise to me, FWIW.
It tends to be an article of faith in my children's generation, and it will take a lot to persuade them otherwise - but clearly a fair number of our age cohort have changed their minds, too.
But if polling like that persists, how can a party like the LibDems, which essentially agrees with the sentiment, ignore the fact ?
Worth asking what the EU position on this is. What does rejoin look like in practice?
It's a credible possibility. But probably not in a Ctrl+Z sort of way.
And politicians should be wary of complacency. For a long time it was assumed by many (including me) that Remain would win at a canter. Incredibly incompetent campaigning helped to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The complicated part about this is that there's no EU position, there are 28 different EU positions, multiplied by various parliament/senate/president veto points, plus one per EU institution.
I think for them to be resolved in any reasonable timeframe implies one of two schelling points: The standard menu with no special UK exceptions, and ctrl+z. I wouldn't quite rule out a quickie ctrl+z if UK support holds because this isn't just EU housekeeping, it's also *geopolitics*: Brexit seems to have been kind-of a Russian op, the EU is kind-of at war with Russia, the next UK government will probably be less coy than the current one about what it knows about the extent to which Brexit was a Russian op, and uniting to undo a Russian op would be fun.
Liking the Ctrl+Z meme. It has the advantage of completely baffling the surviving core Brexit vote, many of whom have never touched a computer.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Is anti-Conservative feeling driving support for rejoin, or is anti-Brexit feeling driving opposition to the Conservatives?
People are being told daily that the UK's poor economic performance is down to Brexit, thus ignoring the fact that our economic performance is no worse than the EU as a whole and much better than, say, Germany. There is a certain irony here in that everything bad got blamed by the Brexit nutters on the EU when we were in and now is blamed on Brexit by the rejoin nutters. Sauce for the goose I suppose but neither are true.
The UK is not Germany. Whether the German economy is doing worse or better than the UK’s doesn’t tell us whether the UK economy would be doing worse or better were we still in the EU.
Oh I agree but it is pretty difficult to sustain the argument that our economic performance is being damaged by Brexit when we are doing the same as the rest of Europe. Doesn't stop people trying though.
Most of this came from predictions that proved consistently pessimistic but that doesn't stop them either. Will they at some point recognise that Brexit is not in fact having the impact predicted by either side for good or ill and accept that our performance depends upon the quality of our own economic management? I am not holding my breath.
But we aren't doing the same as Europe. The Eurozone has GDP growth predicted of 1% this year rising to 1.7% next year, and had inflation of 5.5% in June.
The YoY growth of the EZ was 0.6% at the end of Q2 and 0.5% for the UK. Their future projections are probably optimistic and ours continue to surprise on the upside. My guess is that both will end up around 0.7% for the year.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Although on these numbers, there are a fair few people suffering Bregret.
Personally, I think the EU/Brexit is used by all and sundry as an excuse.
2015: Britain is struggling with austerity, and wages are below 2008 levels. It's the fault of the EU. 2023: Britain is struggling to get back to pre-Covid highs. It's the fault of Brexit.
Of course. But what if that's still the case in 2028 ?
And that is really quite likely.
The polling which Mike highlights in the header is frankly a surprise to me, FWIW.
It tends to be an article of faith in my children's generation, and it will take a lot to persuade them otherwise - but clearly a fair number of our age cohort have changed their minds, too.
But if polling like that persists, how can a party like the LibDems, which essentially agrees with the sentiment, ignore the fact ?
And why should they ?
Six years of mortality will have had an effect too.
I have made repeated criticisms of the current government's economic policies and I fear that their replacements are going to be even worse but these are the factors that determine how we do, not Brexit.
The current government's economic policies are Brexit.
They think not being in the single market is a good idea.
They think not having freedom of movement is an economic benefit.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
I will eat my hat if rejoin the EU ever becomes a serious movement.
There's a world of difference between responding to a prompted poll, and actually bringing up an issue unprompted or taking an issue seriously.
Even the Opposition have moved on from Brexit now. They (quite rightly) don't want the voters blaming Brexit for their ills, they want them blaming the Tories...
There is no difference between those two things, for now.
What happens if the LibDems do go with rejoin, and the next five years under Labour continue to be economically painful ?
Make sure you have a soft hat.
Jo Swinson tried that in GE2019.
She lost her seat.
A lot has changed since. The next election will not be a re-run of 2019.
What we're seeing here today is a lot of wishful thinking from the faithfull.
Yep, from the Tory Brexiteers...
I think a strong Rejoin movement is some years away, but anti-Brexit sentiment is going to be a strong driver of the ABC vote next year. Brexit will be an albatross around the neck of the Tory Party for at least another decade.
This is lost cause Jacobite stuff.
World has moved on. That doesn't necessarily mean we won't align more closely with the EU but it won't be through full membership of the extant EU.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
No body living off sickness benefit (aka UC now) is 'comfortably off middle class'.
You do realise how much people who can't work get?
We’ll probably rejoin at some stage. You cannot fight geography forever. But the EU will look very different when we do. That will be as a result of how it is reorganised in order to accommodate Ukraine. But it won’t happen for many years, like Ukraine joining the EU.
If the Tories want to prevent this, they need to come up with a way to deliver the prosperity that the Leave campaign promised us in 2016. They show no signs of being able to do so currently.
Geography thing is silly: Germany sells most to China and we buy most from there too.
Geography?
It's more because they are a lot of Western consumers on our doorstep who can take small-scale goods and agricultural products in a way that makes it still profitable to do so, or not. If they were very far away and we were an island off a poor continent it wouldn't happen and our trade patterns would differ, just as they do in Australia, NZ and the USA.
I will eat my hat if rejoin the EU ever becomes a serious movement.
There's a world of difference between responding to a prompted poll, and actually bringing up an issue unprompted or taking an issue seriously.
Even the Opposition have moved on from Brexit now. They (quite rightly) don't want the voters blaming Brexit for their ills, they want them blaming the Tories...
There is no difference between those two things, for now.
What happens if the LibDems do go with rejoin, and the next five years under Labour continue to be economically painful ?
Make sure you have a soft hat.
Jo Swinson tried that in GE2019.
She lost her seat.
A lot has changed since. The next election will not be a re-run of 2019.
There were plenty of people who wanted to stop it in its tracks before it happened in GE2019, including on this board, as the last chance saloon. Indeed, that's why she adopted it as a policy in the believe she'd reap a strong electoral dividend.
She went backwards. And that's when the choice was Corbyn v. Johnson and there should be have been a big ready market for her.
This simply isn't a primary motivator for most voters and, indeed, could turn them off; "I never want to go through that again" is one of the most common things I hear.
What we're seeing here today is a lot of wishful thinking from the faithfull.
The polling was the other way around in 2019. Wishful thinking from you to pretend otherwise.
Do you think it would hurt the LibDems electorally if they decided to run on rejoin at the next election ? I think that's unlikely.
It won't win them the election, and they won't pretend that it will, but it could well win them votes.
Once Nigel Farage becomes too old to headline the Stay Out campaign.
He may be irrelevant in reality, but he still has a hypnotic hold over the national conversation. He's 59 now, so 7-10 years?
As for the "in the economics, but not the politics" thing, is the UK really going to be happy with being a follower not a leader for 75/80/90/95 percent of the time?
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Not true for EE, unless you stay on the same contract you had before March 2022(?), as I recently found out.
Mr. Romford, that neglects that Farage's comments during the referendum campaign were of more use to Remain than Leave.
There's a reason why the Remain side tried to constantly use his name. The stupidity was linking it to Little England (home of 85% of the electorate) and assuming "man you don't like thinks this, you don't want to be on the same side, do you?" is the same argument as "Hitler was a vegetarian* you know."
A fixation on Farage is as misguided now, as then. What Remain/Rejoin needed/needs is to focus on a positive argument for what they want, not denigrating the electorate or pointing at Farage and screaming.
*The precise definition of vegetarian has varied over the years, and was rather looser back then.
As for the "in the economics, but not the politics" thing, is the UK really going to be happy with being a follower not a leader for 75/80/90/95 percent of the time?
I have made repeated criticisms of the current government's economic policies and I fear that their replacements are going to be even worse but these are the factors that determine how we do, not Brexit.
The current government's economic policies are Brexit.
They think not being in the single market is a good idea.
They think not having freedom of movement is an economic benefit.
You can't separate the two.
Sigh. The government's economic policy is faffing about with HS2 driving its costs ever higher. It is not doing enough to encourage investment and training. It is adopting a Canute like approach to public sector wages resulting in endless strikes. It is borrowing too much whilst claiming to reduce debt. It is tolerating the incompetence of the BoE's Monetary Policy committee. These are what are driving our (lack of) growth.
For voters under 50, or maybe even 55, the Tories are inextricably linked with gross economic failure as a result of following a reactionary and thoroughly derided flat-earth policy.
This is going to weigh on Tory fortunes for years, in a similar way to the poll tax did on Tory prospects in Scotland.
I have made repeated criticisms of the current government's economic policies and I fear that their replacements are going to be even worse but these are the factors that determine how we do, not Brexit.
The current government's economic policies are Brexit.
They think not being in the single market is a good idea.
They think not having freedom of movement is an economic benefit.
You can't separate the two.
This is the problem, a lot of Brexiteers don't even think of Brexit as a economic policy, they just close their eyes and imagine themselves stood on the white cliffs of Dover waving a union flag to the strains of Rule Britania and get a lovely warm feeling inside.
I will eat my hat if rejoin the EU ever becomes a serious movement.
There's a world of difference between responding to a prompted poll, and actually bringing up an issue unprompted or taking an issue seriously.
Even the Opposition have moved on from Brexit now. They (quite rightly) don't want the voters blaming Brexit for their ills, they want them blaming the Tories...
There is no difference between those two things, for now.
What happens if the LibDems do go with rejoin, and the next five years under Labour continue to be economically painful ?
Make sure you have a soft hat.
Jo Swinson tried that in GE2019.
She lost her seat.
A lot has changed since. The next election will not be a re-run of 2019.
What we're seeing here today is a lot of wishful thinking from the faithfull.
Yep, from the Tory Brexiteers...
I think a strong Rejoin movement is some years away, but anti-Brexit sentiment is going to be a strong driver of the ABC vote next year. Brexit will be an albatross around the neck of the Tory Party for at least another decade.
This is lost cause Jacobite stuff.
World has moved on. That doesn't necessarily mean we won't align more closely with the EU but it won't be through full membership of the extant EU.
Nah, no different to the withdrawal movement. It will be a long campaign and not go away as an issue. Brexit will be a major obstacle to the Conservatives making progress in the working age vote.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Not true for EE, unless you stay on the same contract you had before March 2022(?), as I recently found out.
I don't know about O2 and Vodafone.
Nope, I can go onto the EE website right now and get a contract that includes roaming data. It's just an "extra" they include on some contracts, not even very expensive ones either. Three is the only major provider that has got rid of the option completely. I have roaming in ~85 countries with my contract, for example including the EU and loads of other parts of the world. You just have to be savvy.
I have made repeated criticisms of the current government's economic policies and I fear that their replacements are going to be even worse but these are the factors that determine how we do, not Brexit.
The current government's economic policies are Brexit.
They think not being in the single market is a good idea.
They think not having freedom of movement is an economic benefit.
You can't separate the two.
Sigh. The government's economic policy is faffing about with HS2 driving its costs ever higher. It is not doing enough to encourage investment and training. It is adopting a Canute like approach to public sector wages resulting in endless strikes. It is borrowing too much whilst claiming to reduce debt. It is tolerating the incompetence of the BoE's Monetary Policy committee. These are what are driving our (lack of) growth.
For some bizarre reason, you want to ignore Brexit despite the demonstrable negative impact on foreign investment, export performance, currency valuation, share price performance, goods inflation, etc etc.
Not to excuse the government’s woeful performance across the board.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
If you have a contract lucrative enough for the service provider they will likely bundle roaming into it. Difference was that all contracts had to include it at no extra charge before
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
On topic, we used to get many threads like this about 10-15 years ago - sometimes off the back of high polling scores for Leave - but focused on Ipsos-MORI issues trackers that argued that "no-one cares about Europe".
Now, we seem to have the opposite argument.
Will this be a primary driver of voting intention? And do people really want to go through all this all over again (it would take years) and pay the political price for that? Or is it measuring Bregret/EUostalgia, fatigue, disillusionment with this government and the economy, and some general annoyance?
If it's the latter, and people are realists who know we can't go back to how it was 8-10 years ago and pretend it all never happened, then closer alignment would seem to me to be what happens over time, possibly through some new associate institutional architecture.
The peformance of the economy and the unpopularity of the government are key.
But, I'd expect the economy to do fairly well, over the coming decade. Labour shortages are actually making companies do what they ought to have been doing long ago - investing, and raising wages. Economic growth is the natural condition of any economy, and in the absence of external shocks, it will resume.
I will eat my hat if rejoin the EU ever becomes a serious movement.
There's a world of difference between responding to a prompted poll, and actually bringing up an issue unprompted or taking an issue seriously.
Even the Opposition have moved on from Brexit now. They (quite rightly) don't want the voters blaming Brexit for their ills, they want them blaming the Tories...
There is no difference between those two things, for now.
What happens if the LibDems do go with rejoin, and the next five years under Labour continue to be economically painful ?
Make sure you have a soft hat.
Jo Swinson tried that in GE2019.
She lost her seat.
A lot has changed since. The next election will not be a re-run of 2019.
What we're seeing here today is a lot of wishful thinking from the faithfull.
Yep, from the Tory Brexiteers...
I think a strong Rejoin movement is some years away, but anti-Brexit sentiment is going to be a strong driver of the ABC vote next year. Brexit will be an albatross around the neck of the Tory Party for at least another decade.
This is lost cause Jacobite stuff.
World has moved on. That doesn't necessarily mean we won't align more closely with the EU but it won't be through full membership of the extant EU.
Indeed, the idea of re-joining the EU is as ridiculous as, I don't know, the English Commonwealth restoring the monarchy after executing Charles I.
That took just over 11 years - rejoin in 2031 sounds plausible ;-)
On topic, we used to get many threads like this about 10-15 years ago - sometimes off the back of high polling scores for Leave - but focused on Ipsos-MORI issues trackers that argued that "no-one cares about Europe".
Now, we seem to have the opposite argument.
Will this be a primary driver of voting intention? And do people really want to go through all this all over again (it would take years) and pay the political price for that? Or is it measuring Bregret/EUostalgia, fatigue, disillusionment with this government and the economy, and some general annoyance?
If it's the latter, and people are realists who know we can't go back to how it was 8-10 years ago and pretend it all never happened, then closer alignment would seem to me to be what happens over time, possibly through some new associate institutional architecture.
The peformance of the economy and the unpopularity of the government are key.
But, I'd expect the economy to do fairly well, over the coming decade. Labour shortages are actually making companies do what they ought to have been doing long ago - investing, and raising wages. Economic growth is the natural condition of any economy, and in the absence of external shocks, it will resume.
Economically working class northerners are having the best opportunities for generations.
For young middle class southerners - debt laden, unaffordable housing, threated by AI and globalisation - its another matter.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
Zero chance of Rejoin becoming a serious movement for at least a decade. Starmer's first task is to win back the strongly Leave redwall seats under FPTP to have a chance even of becoming PM let alone with a majority. 37% for Leave is about 10% above the current Tory poll rating, so zero chance of the Tories touching it as if they go into Opposition the next Conservative leader will want to shore up that still significant pro Brexit vote behind the Tories. The LDs might push Rejoin as all their current seats and most of their target seats voted Remain but they are too small a party now to make much difference unless in a hung parliament.
Ironically therefore Remainders best chance of a rejoin referendum is a hung parliament at the next general election rather than a Starmer Labour majority with the LDs holding the balance of power. The SNP if they held the balance of power would likely put indyref2 first instead.
Otherwise it would likely take a second general election victory for a Labour government to even reconsider joining the EEA with free movement let alone the full EU and even then most likely only on the terms we had in 2016
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Don't disagree at all. I include that as the red button, stick it to the man reason. My life is shit, has been for years, despite governments of every colour promising to make it better so fuck 'em. I'm going to vote to leave the EU. That'll show them.
Are peoples' lives better? Did Brexit deliver that much yearned for change of economic circumstance for such people? No. No it didn't. Wages have gone up, as have prices, as has immigration.
But I don't blame people for wanting to try. I would also add that these are not the most informed of voters but that is by the by, their vote counts just as much as yours.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Most phone contracts do require you to pay a daily fee to avoid charges in Europe, although not all have yet moved. EE do, although BT who use EE don't yet. Most do so. If you didn't pay you were lucky. On my recent trip to France mine was free (BT), my friend on EE was about £3 a day.
If you arrive at a major airport (not regional) and you are unlucky to arrive at the same time as flights from say the USA you might have a very long wait. We waited 3 hours Lisbon in a queue with hundreds of yanks while the EU lane was empty.
Queues at peak times on ferries run into many hours, previously it was roll on and off.
Try taking your dog to France now you can't get a pet passport. Horrendous forward planning and cost.
If you have a property in the EU planning your trips so as not to fall foul of the time limits is a pain. There are apps, but you get a flight delay and you can be screwed.
Yes they want us and on many trips I have had little hassle, but to claim there are no issues is bonkers.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Extending your argument, with the economy outside the South East flatlining, at best, the vote against the status quo now is Rejoin. But it’s not going to happen. You can relax!
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Likewise the Conservatives need to listen to the young people of southern England and remember they're supposed to be the party of aspiration.
Labour is “breathing down the SNP’s neck” ahead of the next general election despite Humza Yousaf receiving a belated popularity bounce as first minister, a new poll has found.
Sir Keir Starmer, who was campaigning on Tuesday in Rutherglen ahead of October’s bellwether by-election in the seat, will be buoyed by his party narrowing the gap on the nationalists to just four points.
Research by YouGov put the SNP on 36 per cent, down a point since April, when the company last polled voting intentions in the general election. Labour’s vote share increased by four points over the same period to 32 per cent.
Analysis of the results by Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, suggested these figures would see Starmer win 22 seats in Scotland under the current boundaries. The party has just one at the moment.
Rishi holds all the Tory seats in Scotland on that forecast then, even if he is polling poorly in England and Wales Scots don't seem to mind him too much
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
The enduring myth that Brexit was a rebellion of those at the bottom of the pile against the elite.
No, it was a poujadiste rebellion, an intra-bourgeois spat led by the traditional middle class against metropolitans.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Not true for EE, unless you stay on the same contract you had before March 2022(?), as I recently found out.
I don't know about O2 and Vodafone.
Nope, I can go onto the EE website right now and get a contract that includes roaming data. It's just an "extra" they include on some contracts, not even very expensive ones either. Three is the only major provider that has got rid of the option completely. I have roaming in ~85 countries with my contract, for example including the EU and loads of other parts of the world. You just have to be savvy.
I don't disagree with that - I did the same myself. But you end up paying more unless you can bundle in other services. My example, I had a SIM only contract, I needed a bit more data, which I could have quite cheaply but (and this was only confirmed by the sneaky bastards when I explicitly asked) I would lose my free roaming because: new contract.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Not true for EE, unless you stay on the same contract you had before March 2022(?), as I recently found out.
I don't know about O2 and Vodafone.
Nope, I can go onto the EE website right now and get a contract that includes roaming data. It's just an "extra" they include on some contracts, not even very expensive ones either. Three is the only major provider that has got rid of the option completely. I have roaming in ~85 countries with my contract, for example including the EU and loads of other parts of the world. You just have to be savvy.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Extending your argument, with the economy outside the South East flatlining, at best, the vote against the status quo now is Rejoin. But it’s not going to happen. You can relax!
Phew for a minute there I was worried, but when you said it was inevitable I knew I could relax.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
I will eat my hat if rejoin the EU ever becomes a serious movement.
There's a world of difference between responding to a prompted poll, and actually bringing up an issue unprompted or taking an issue seriously.
Even the Opposition have moved on from Brexit now. They (quite rightly) don't want the voters blaming Brexit for their ills, they want them blaming the Tories...
There is no difference between those two things, for now.
What happens if the LibDems do go with rejoin, and the next five years under Labour continue to be economically painful ?
Make sure you have a soft hat.
Jo Swinson tried that in GE2019.
She lost her seat.
Yep, amazing how she was beaten in her constituency by pro Brexit sentiment.
The most encouraging aspect is the same people who assured us Brexit would not be the disaster it inevitably became telling us that it can never be reversed.
My question to the edentulous leavers is, what the fuck did they expect to happen?
Beyond the usual glib platitude of 'leaving the EU' of course.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Likewise the Conservatives need to listen to the young people of southern England and remember they're supposed to be the party of aspiration.
Of course and at present the Cons have zero ideas on putting this right.
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Is anyone else getting 'deja vu all over again' with this thread?
What I would suggest it shows as much as anything is despite any polling numbers Nothing Has Changed.
"despite any polling numbers" = "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..."
Here's what Has Changed: the referendum was fought on the NHS and immigration. Here's a picture, and if I erased the title, I bet people would have a no better than random chance of guessing which one it was about
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
It's only an extra cost if you want it to be one or you're oddly loyal to a phone network company. 🤷♂️
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
Hah! I choose EE every time because... it's the only service I can get at home. Large swathes of the country still have very patchy coverage at best.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
It's only an extra cost if you want it to be one or you're oddly loyal to a phone network company. 🤷♂️
Show me via screenshot on EE where there is no roaming charge. And I don't mean in the "free" glass of champagne in First Class sense.
The most encouraging aspect is the same people who assured us Brexit would not be the disaster it inevitably became telling us that it can never be reversed.
My question to the edentulous leavers is, what the fuck did they expect to happen?
Beyond the usual glib platitude of 'leaving the EU' of course.
I think they expected their "win" to be perpetual and inviolate, and are very irked that reality is once again pissing all over their chips.
It's as if they actually believed the bullshit from the campaign frontmen about sunlit uplands and easiest deals
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
It's only an extra cost if you want it to be one or you're oddly loyal to a phone network company. 🤷♂️
Show me via screenshot on EE where there is no roaming charge. And I don't mean in the "free" glass of champagne in First Class sense.
In my experience you have to speak to retentions to get the Roam Abroad pass added for free/part of an inclusive extra.
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Ah, HYUFD arithmetic where a minority of Unionist msps beats a majority of pro Indy msps. Who do you think votes in an FM? Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
On topic it may well be that at some future date the UK rejoins the EU, but to be honest it is not something I would fret about day by day as we need to recognise we are in an ever changing world with untold events and consequences on the horizon that it's impossible to predict the future relationship between both but in simple terms it makes sense to grow closer to the EU in cooperation and even trade.
Another pretty big drop in CPI, I think the end of year rate is probably going to be ~4.5%, if oil prices fall then maybe 4%.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
No body living off sickness benefit (aka UC now) is 'comfortably off middle class'.
You do realise how much people who can't work get?
I doubt many people are using it as a long term career choice but how about as an effective way to early retire, work from home and generally toss it off at work at the expense of their employer and fellow workers ?
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Poeple voted our for sovereignty and because they couldnt see any advantage from being in. Remain had a case they could have made stressing the positives but they decided to go negative and it failed.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
The enduring myth that Brexit was a rebellion of those at the bottom of the pile against the elite.
No, it was a poujadiste rebellion, an intra-bourgeois spat led by the traditional middle class against metropolitans.
well us oldies went through punk and sex and drugs and rock and roll, The youngers just followed the rules as delivered by their iPhones, and sought social media conformity.
The most encouraging aspect is the same people who assured us Brexit would not be the disaster it inevitably became telling us that it can never be reversed.
My question to the edentulous leavers is, what the fuck did they expect to happen?
Beyond the usual glib platitude of 'leaving the EU' of course.
Probably something along the lines of this:
It’s 24 June, 2025, and Britain is marking its annual Independence Day celebration. As the fireworks stream through the summer sky, still not quite dark, we wonder why it took us so long to leave. The years that followed the 2016 referendum didn’t just reinvigorate our economy, our democracy and our liberty. They improved relations with our neighbours. The United Kingdom is now the region’s foremost knowledge-based economy. We lead the world in biotech, law, education, the audio-visual sector, financial services and software. New industries, from 3D printing to driverless cars, have sprung up around the country. Older industries, too, have revived as energy prices have fallen back to global levels: steel, cement, paper, plastics and ceramics producers have become competitive again.
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Ah, HYUFD arithmetic where a minority of Unionist msps beats a majority of pro Indy msps. Who do you think votes in an FM? Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
The MI5 controlled SNP will make Sarwar FM on those figures.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
The Conservatives have been so stupid/useless that they haven't even tried to take credit for full employment.
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
It's only an extra cost if you want it to be one or you're oddly loyal to a phone network company. 🤷♂️
Show me via screenshot on EE where there is no roaming charge. And I don't mean in the "free" glass of champagne in First Class sense.
In my experience you have to speak to retentions to get the Roam Abroad pass added for free/part of an inclusive extra.
Edit : That’s from my MyEE app.
"speak to retentions". So you either have to be on EE to start with or have a pre-July 21 contract?
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
It's only an extra cost if you want it to be one or you're oddly loyal to a phone network company. 🤷♂️
Show me via screenshot on EE where there is no roaming charge. And I don't mean in the "free" glass of champagne in First Class sense.
In my experience you have to speak to retentions to get the Roam Abroad pass added for free/part of an inclusive extra.
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Ah, HYUFD arithmetic where a minority of Unionist msps beats a majority of pro Indy msps. Who do you think votes in an FM? Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
The MI5 controlled SNP will make Sarwar FM on those figures.
The Kate’n’Ash section could never back pro GRR Sarwar.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
It's only an extra cost if you want it to be one or you're oddly loyal to a phone network company. 🤷♂️
Show me via screenshot on EE where there is no roaming charge. And I don't mean in the "free" glass of champagne in First Class sense.
In my experience you have to speak to retentions to get the Roam Abroad pass added for free/part of an inclusive extra.
I'll say it again, we have the world's best spies, MI5 and the SIS have no rivals in the world.
Agents of the British state have “captured and controlled” the SNP government after successfully infiltrating the party, a former MSP has claimed.
Campbell Martin, who represented the nationalists at Holyrood and worked in its whips office, alleged that security service assets have risen through the ranks of the SNP to positions where they can shape policy.
Martin, 63, claims the party’s focus on “gender policies” is being pushed by infiltrators in a bid to make it unelectable and discredit the idea of breaking up the UK.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
It's only an extra cost if you want it to be one or you're oddly loyal to a phone network company. 🤷♂️
Show me via screenshot on EE where there is no roaming charge. And I don't mean in the "free" glass of champagne in First Class sense.
In my experience you have to speak to retentions to get the Roam Abroad pass added for free/part of an inclusive extra.
Edit : That’s from my MyEE app.
"speak to retentions". So you either have to be on EE to start with or have a pre-July 21 contract?
No.
You can sign up to it now as a new customer.
Just get a plan with an inclusive extra.
I have something like 9 contracts with EE, I get huge discounts but I have to speak to retentions to get those discounts added back on at the end of the contract.
"Also the extra hassle for Brits when traveling in Europe is not helping" says OGH.
I've made three trips to Europe in past 18 months and haven't found any hassle. Mobile phone works as in UK at no extra cost; no additional queues at borders etc. The impression I got last week was that the Spanish were tripping over themselves to welcome Brits.
What is driving these polls is anti Conservative feeling; the economic situation and blame everything on Brexit, just as pre-Brexit everything was blamed on EU.
Mobile phones at no extra cost? Are you sure? Perhaps you have a legacy contract but AFAIA operators (well, Three) started charging for using mobile data in the EU a while ago.
O2, Vodafone and EE all have roaming contracts. Three are the odd man out tbh.
Blimmin' typical.
costs an extra £10 for the month on EE, but that covers Can/US as well as EU
£5/day for EU with Three.
Switch to O2 if it's important to you. Vote with your wallet! It's the single best way to send a message to companies that don't provide a good enough service.
It's not important enough to me. It is an extra cost, however, which was my point.
It's only an extra cost if you want it to be one or you're oddly loyal to a phone network company. 🤷♂️
Show me via screenshot on EE where there is no roaming charge. And I don't mean in the "free" glass of champagne in First Class sense.
In my experience you have to speak to retentions to get the Roam Abroad pass added for free/part of an inclusive extra.
Edit : That’s from my MyEE app.
"speak to retentions". So you either have to be on EE to start with or have a pre-July 21 contract?
No.
You can sign up to it now as a new customer.
Just get a plan with an inclusive extra.
I have something like 9 contracts with EE, I get huge discounts but I have to speak to retentions to get those discounts added back on at the end of the contract.
So we have an admin with 8 burner phones, and a "journalist" for a patently fictitious publication who travels under a false ID in Ukraine, and then down to Falmouth to ask faux naif questions about RFAs and back to Exeter to "see the cathedral spire."
Is anyone else getting 'deja vu all over again' with this thread?
What I would suggest it shows as much as anything is despite any polling numbers Nothing Has Changed.
"despite any polling numbers" = "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..."
Here's what Has Changed: the referendum was fought on the NHS and immigration. Here's a picture, and if I erased the title, I bet people would have a no better than random chance of guessing which one it was about
The NHS got the extra money.
And another 300k workers during the last four years.
That it seems to swallow money and workers as if its the national Sarlacc pit is another matter.
The poll also suggested that there would be another pro-independence majority after the next Holyrood election, with the SNP winning 57 seats and the Greens ten. Labour would return 38 MSPs to comfortably overtake the Conservatives whose representation at Holyrood would almost halve, to 16 MSPs. The Liberal Democrats would win eight seats under this scenario.
YouGov interviewed 1,086 people aged 16 and older in Scotland between August 3 and 8.
Combined Unionist parties on 62 MSPs however ahead of the SNP on 57 MSPs on that projection and just 5 behind the combined SNP and Greens total. Sarwar now has a net positive rating with Scots unlike Yousaf so at least a chance he will be next FM
Ah, HYUFD arithmetic where a minority of Unionist msps beats a majority of pro Indy msps. Who do you think votes in an FM? Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
Agree with that. Starmer/Sarwar still struggling to achieve definitive tipping point. The main danger to SNP is civil war breaking out over the alliance with the Greens. That would follow if Nats get hammered at GE but the result still appears open at the moment.
Rejoiners dont know why theyd rejoin, except for a Trump like sulk that they lost an election, they think they should have won.
Yes and no.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ? Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
Leavers still don't understand that they had to deliver that "moon on a stick" and have completely failed to do so. The resilient parts of the country are Remania, those in decline are Leaverstan. Nothing has changed.
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
Thats also true.
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
The Conservatives have been so stupid/useless that they haven't even tried to take credit for full employment.
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
They do talk about the employment rate quite a lot, don't they?
But the problem with claiming full employment specifically is that it invites questions about low productivity, poor growth and how to fill the huge numbers of job vacancies in essential services that there are.
Comments
You can't separate the current Government, or our economic woes, from Brexit.
We regret having left on account of the immense damage it did to the UK for no particular gain, save "sovereignty"*. Hence push us into a corner and we believe that 93% of the people who voted for Brexit were doing so either because they were given a red button to push, were told they couldn't push it, so pushed it; didn't like johnny foreigner, or believed that Brexit would deliver them some kind of benefit which they haven't been able to articulate then or now. Or that, simply, they were not very bright.
7% of those who voted for Brexit knew we had always been sovereign, knew that it would deliver harm to the nation with no tangible benefit, but believed that it was a price worth paying to not be in the club with all its funny rules any more, even though the rules were designed to benefit all. Fair enough.
So we know why we shouldn't have left but we are not 100% sure we would want to rejoin because of all the palaver plus divisiveness.
We would settle for sane people running post-Brexit UK. Not those who believe that it is not sufficient to have left the EU but for whom the EU has become the enemy whereby even discussing possible common widget standards is tantamount to treason.
*we were always sovereign.
Core CPI looks tougher to shift with wage data endlessly rising and 2.5m people long term sick. If the government wants to fix the labour market then it needs to get serious about sickness benefits reform. Matthew Paris had it bang on a couple of weeks ago, too many people are realising that it's easy to get signed off sick for stress and opt out of working. For people aged 50-64 who have paid off mortgages it's a realistic option to live on sickness benefits plus all the other assistance you get for it like council tax reductions etc...
Once again the safety net has become a way of life for some people. This time it's the comfortably off middle classes opting out of work by saying they're too stressed. It's something the Labour will need to address on day one because it now seems that young people are not only being asked to support pensions for the old, childcare for their kids, endless student loan repayments, old age care in the NHS but now also for the lazy middle classes who are deciding not to work because they're "stressed".
It tends to be an article of faith in my children's generation, and it will take a lot to persuade them otherwise - but clearly a fair number of our age cohort have changed their minds, too.
But if polling like that persists, how can a party like the LibDems, which essentially agrees with the sentiment, ignore the fact ?
And why should they ?
They think not being in the single market is a good idea.
They think not having freedom of movement is an economic benefit.
You can't separate the two.
World has moved on. That doesn't necessarily mean we won't align more closely with the EU but it won't be through full membership of the extant EU.
You do realise how much people who can't work get?
Geography?
It's more because they are a lot of Western consumers on our doorstep who can take small-scale goods and agricultural products in a way that makes it still profitable to do so, or not. If they were very far away and we were an island off a poor continent it wouldn't happen and our trade patterns would differ, just as they do in Australia, NZ and the USA.
Don't overegg the pudding.
Once Nigel Farage becomes too old to headline the Stay Out campaign.
He may be irrelevant in reality, but he still has a hypnotic hold over the national conversation. He's 59 now, so 7-10 years?
As for the "in the economics, but not the politics" thing, is the UK really going to be happy with being a follower not a leader for 75/80/90/95 percent of the time?
I don't know about O2 and Vodafone.
There's a reason why the Remain side tried to constantly use his name. The stupidity was linking it to Little England (home of 85% of the electorate) and assuming "man you don't like thinks this, you don't want to be on the same side, do you?" is the same argument as "Hitler was a vegetarian* you know."
A fixation on Farage is as misguided now, as then. What Remain/Rejoin needed/needs is to focus on a positive argument for what they want, not denigrating the electorate or pointing at Farage and screaming.
*The precise definition of vegetarian has varied over the years, and was rather looser back then.
For voters under 50, or maybe even 55, the Tories are inextricably linked with gross economic failure as a result of following a reactionary and thoroughly derided flat-earth policy.
This is going to weigh on Tory fortunes for years, in a similar way to the poll tax did on Tory prospects in Scotland.
Remainers still dont understand why people at the bottom of the pile were more likely to vote out - these are your core Red wallers. If you have seen your job outsourced and people turning up on your doorstep to run say hand car washes and anyone earning wages around you has seen their real pay decline why wouldnt you say something has to change ?
Its in vour economic interest to vote for change since there is precious little downside.
We still have that problem none of the political parties want to address it. Labour may or may not reclaim big chunks of the Red Wall, but the mould has been broken and those constituencies will never be nailed on again. For me thats a good thing as politicians might now have to listen to their constituents,
Not to excuse the government’s woeful performance across the board.
What I would suggest it shows as much as anything is despite any polling numbers Nothing Has Changed.
But, I'd expect the economy to do fairly well, over the coming decade. Labour shortages are actually making companies do what they ought to have been doing long ago - investing, and raising wages. Economic growth is the natural condition of any economy, and in the absence of external shocks, it will resume.
That took just over 11 years - rejoin in 2031 sounds plausible ;-)
For young middle class southerners - debt laden, unaffordable housing, threated by AI and globalisation - its another matter.
Ironically therefore Remainders best chance of a rejoin referendum is a hung parliament at the next general election rather than a Starmer Labour majority with the LDs holding the balance of power. The SNP if they held the balance of power would likely put indyref2 first instead.
Otherwise it would likely take a second general election victory for a Labour government to even reconsider joining the EEA with free movement let alone the full EU and even then most likely only on the terms we had in 2016
Bregret and Brejoin have been in the low-mid 60s for some time.
I’m waiting for them to reach high 60s which is my mental threshold for “overwhelming”. Not quite there yet.
Are peoples' lives better? Did Brexit deliver that much yearned for change of economic circumstance for such people? No. No it didn't. Wages have gone up, as have prices, as has immigration.
But I don't blame people for wanting to try. I would also add that these are not the most informed of voters but that is by the by, their vote counts just as much as yours.
The country remains locked in a sterile and stagnant debate.
Only in this respect do @DavidL’s arguments make sense, ie that there are other things we ought to attending to in aid of British prosperity.
If you arrive at a major airport (not regional) and you are unlucky to arrive at the same time as flights from say the USA you might have a very long wait. We waited 3 hours Lisbon in a queue with hundreds of yanks while the EU lane was empty.
Queues at peak times on ferries run into many hours, previously it was roll on and off.
Try taking your dog to France now you can't get a pet passport. Horrendous forward planning and cost.
If you have a property in the EU planning your trips so as not to fall foul of the time limits is a pain. There are apps, but you get a flight delay and you can be screwed.
Yes they want us and on many trips I have had little hassle, but to claim there are no issues is bonkers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zf8j6rd
(Don't wish to boast, but I got 8 out of 8. Equally, it's not that hard.)
They know that they were sold a pup, and will be out for electoral revenge. When Starmer fails to deliver too, fingers will point even more to Brexit being the problem.
Parties cannot ignore the polling forever. The laws of political gravity apply.
No, it was a poujadiste rebellion, an intra-bourgeois spat led by the traditional middle class against metropolitans.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/brexit-and-the-squeezed-middle/
And a rebellion of the old against the young.
Beyond the usual glib platitude of 'leaving the EU' of course.
Start with affordable housing.
Indeed there was already a surprising overture on the Eurostar.
Here's what Has Changed: the referendum was fought on the NHS and immigration. Here's a picture, and if I erased the title, I bet people would have a no better than random chance of guessing which one it was about
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jul/18/england-women-squad-euro-2022-whiteness-diversity
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/feb/25/england-women-all-white-xi-shines-light-on-a-deep-rooted-problem
It's as if they actually believed the bullshit from the campaign frontmen about sunlit uplands and easiest deals
The Leavers as yet have still to deliver upside on the vote. The conservatives who are the main drivers of this have been a shitshow, They spent ages fighting among themselves on the In\out divisions in their party and then had the bad luck to have two black swans land in their pond - Covid and Putin. You could argue that the crises should have made them put their arse in gear but instead we have rabbits in headlights.
As for electoral revenge when we have PM Tice youll know it has arrived.
One day, you'll figure that out.
Edit : That’s from my MyEE app.
Rumours of the death of the SNP greatly exaggerated in any case.
On topic it may well be that at some future date the UK rejoins the EU, but to be honest it is not something I would fret about day by day as we need to recognise we are in an ever changing world with untold events and consequences on the horizon that it's impossible to predict the future relationship between both but in simple terms it makes sense to grow closer to the EU in cooperation and even trade.
They were asking for it.
It’s 24 June, 2025, and Britain is marking its annual Independence Day celebration. As the fireworks stream through the summer sky, still not quite dark, we wonder why it took us so long to leave. The years that followed the 2016 referendum didn’t just reinvigorate our economy, our democracy and our liberty. They improved relations with our neighbours.
The United Kingdom is now the region’s foremost knowledge-based economy. We lead the world in biotech, law, education, the audio-visual sector, financial services and software. New industries, from 3D printing to driverless cars, have sprung up around the country. Older industries, too, have revived as energy prices have fallen back to global levels: steel, cement, paper, plastics and ceramics producers have become competitive again.
https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/
Partially because some think that because there was high unemployment under Thatcher then high unemployment must be a good thing.
Partially because some are fully committed to rentierism and think that the only thing that should be allowed to increase are house prices.
Partially because some are so thick/unaware that they don't realise there's full employment.
For a lot of tariffs you can add it on for free via an inclusive extra.
https://ee.co.uk/help/mobile/roaming/roam-abroad-pass
You can sign up to it now as a new customer.
Just get a plan with an inclusive extra.
I have something like 9 contracts with EE, I get huge discounts but I have to speak to retentions to get those discounts added back on at the end of the contract.
Shall we start the what if I want to move a horse to/from the EU one instead.
selection of offers for new customers. roaming is an "Inclusive Extra"
It does show how higher pay, and higher interest rates, benefits tens of millions.
Whereas the negatives are concentrated on fewer people.
22 women down under.
nothing fishy here at all.
And another 300k workers during the last four years.
That it seems to swallow money and workers as if its the national Sarlacc pit is another matter.
with the Greens. That would follow if Nats get hammered at GE but the result still appears open at the moment.
But the problem with claiming full employment specifically is that it invites questions about low productivity, poor growth and how to fill the huge numbers of job vacancies in essential services that there are.