I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
If lisbon had not been ratified which it was despite labours promise we could have a referendum on it. A manifesto promise no less. Then there would have been no article 50 to invoke. Brown and blairs fault completely
Brexit wouldn't have even been an issue if Cameron hadn't promised it for no reason.
He promised it because people were angry that politicians had showed the electorate that frankly they didn't have a say on the eu and we were pissed off with that. So of course when they finally were asked we told them and the europhiles to go fuck themselves
He promised it to get some votes from UKIP, in the hope he'd never have to do it as he would be governing with Nick again
He promised it because the electorate were pissed off with politicians not allowing them a voice. Something the left is always great at..dont let them have a say if they might say something we don't like
No he promised it to win an election. He didn't need to promise it, it wasn't even a big issue and if Labour had been in power it would have disappeared.
Thats why labour should never be in power its a party of lady parts
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
The only Brexiteer to ever admit he got it wrong.
Johnson would do it in a heartbeat if he thought it would damage Sunak.
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
If you've got 50 minutes - Adam Curtis's "'The Engineers' Plot'" is worth a watch.
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
Trotsky and chums were just as murderous as Stalin - they just wanted to murder a different, but overlapping set of people.
Both Lenin and Trotsky believed in the kind of “democracy” where the people were told what to do by the right leaders. And none of that multi party voting nonesense.
You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!
Trotsky, dissolving the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. Elected in perhaps the only democratic election ever held in Russia.
Yes. The Bolsheviks were anti Liberal Democracy. Despite being in the Liberal Democratic Party.
How close were the Bolshevik faction to failing, and Liberal Democracy winning out? The Kings could not have come back after agreeing to Democracy? Russia could have become like 1920s Germany?
PB Pop Quiz - Who were the four Brits, who first became Prime Minister with zero previous ministerial experience?
Ramsay MacDonald, Tony Blair, and David Cameron are the three I know.
Three out of four.
In the style of those funky puzzles published by "quality" rags in UK, the Fourth name is famous in the early history of US motor racing.
Hint - as name of county in one of the Carolinas famed, first for running moonshine, then (by natural progression) for stock car racing.
I'm assuming you mean Chatham, but technically (a) Paymaster General is a ministerial office and (b) also technically, the Duke of Devonshire was the official leader of the government.
No, but he also was commemorated (in a fashion) by NC's Chatham County (seat Pittsboro).
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
I was reflecting on whether the Russian state might collapse like the Soviet Union did and what factors are different now. There are some similarities and differences:
Similarities:
- Poor state governance - Hollowing out of enterprise, innovation and creativity in business - Expensive war - Unfavourable fuel prices (though for different reasons this time ie sanctions) - Poor demographics
Differences:
- No overarching ideology to be defeated - Mafia government rather than politburo - No Eastern European empire to crumble, so no Solidarinosc or Berlin Wall - Few obvious independence movements (vs Georgia, Ukraine, Baltics etc in 1991 - Chinese power ready to prop up the regime if it teeters
It’s possible the Chinese willingness to bail out an unreliable partner might wane if the Chinese economy continues to nosedive. But they could benefit from cheap Russian fuel.
Long term even Russia’s hydrocarbons cease to be a valuable resource. Once the world is on its way to full renewables Russia will be stuck selling oil, coal and gas to a dwindling market of predominantly poor countries at a big discount, and there will be no foreign investment coming in to improve efficiency.
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
Trotsky and chums were just as murderous as Stalin - they just wanted to murder a different, but overlapping set of people.
Both Lenin and Trotsky believed in the kind of “democracy” where the people were told what to do by the right leaders. And none of that multi party voting nonesense.
You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!
Trotsky, dissolving the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. Elected in perhaps the only democratic election ever held in Russia.
I'm getting real Cromwell dissolving the Rump Parliament vibes.
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
Trotsky and chums were just as murderous as Stalin - they just wanted to murder a different, but overlapping set of people.
Both Lenin and Trotsky believed in the kind of “democracy” where the people were told what to do by the right leaders. And none of that multi party voting nonesense.
You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!
Trotsky, dissolving the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. Elected in perhaps the only democratic election ever held in Russia.
Yes. The Bolsheviks were anti Liberal Democracy. Despite being in the Liberal Democratic Party.
How close were the Bolshevik faction to failing, and Liberal Democracy winning out? The Kings could not have come back after agreeing to Democracy? Russia could have become like 1920s Germany?
They weren't in the Liberal Democratic Party. They were in the Social Democratic Labour Party.
They were never that close to failing. The only group that could realistically have defeated them were the Germans, but the last thing they wanted in 1918 was to have to occupy Russia.
The Tsars would not have come back, democracy or no. They were too unpopular. That's why Michael, wisely, refused the throne.
And I'm sure most Russians would have loved their country to be like 1920s Germany and not what it became. But that wasn't on offer.
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
Trotsky and chums were just as murderous as Stalin - they just wanted to murder a different, but overlapping set of people.
Both Lenin and Trotsky believed in the kind of “democracy” where the people were told what to do by the right leaders. And none of that multi party voting nonesense.
You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!
Trotsky, dissolving the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. Elected in perhaps the only democratic election ever held in Russia.
“You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!”
Wait. Isn’t that Boris dissolving the 2017-2019 Parliament?
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
Trotsky and chums were just as murderous as Stalin - they just wanted to murder a different, but overlapping set of people.
Both Lenin and Trotsky believed in the kind of “democracy” where the people were told what to do by the right leaders. And none of that multi party voting nonesense.
You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!
Trotsky, dissolving the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. Elected in perhaps the only democratic election ever held in Russia.
I'm getting real Cromwell dissolving the Rump Parliament vibes.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
If lisbon had not been ratified which it was despite labours promise we could have a referendum on it. A manifesto promise no less. Then there would have been no article 50 to invoke. Brown and blairs fault completely
Brexit wouldn't have even been an issue if Cameron hadn't promised it for no reason.
That's because he'd left himself nowhere left to go.
In the absence of any meaningful renegotiation he offered an in/out choice, assuming people would, when pushed, plump for in, which would settle the matter (and it wouldn't have done even if they had done so for the same reasons).
It never would have happened had the underlying political concern regarding our relationship with the EU been addressed through meaningful reform.
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
I don't recall the Soviet Union (and precursor arrangement) of Lenin's time being fans of democratic and philosophical challenge.
It sounds like one of those takes that the nature of Lenin and Trotsky's preferred methods was a difference of kind from Stalin, rather than a difference of degree, which personally I would describe as charitably generous.
Difference of kind or difference of degree? Good point. I’m probably in completely over my head trying to explain the murderous difference between Stalinism and Trotskyism. 😵💫
I was reflecting on whether the Russian state might collapse like the Soviet Union did and what factors are different now. There are some similarities and differences:
Similarities:
- Poor state governance - Hollowing out of enterprise, innovation and creativity in business - Expensive war - Unfavourable fuel prices (though for different reasons this time ie sanctions) - Poor demographics
Differences:
- No overarching ideology to be defeated - Mafia government rather than politburo - No Eastern European empire to crumble, so no Solidarinosc or Berlin Wall - Few obvious independence movements (vs Georgia, Ukraine, Baltics etc in 1991 - Chinese power ready to prop up the regime if it teeters
It’s possible the Chinese willingness to bail out an unreliable partner might wane if the Chinese economy continues to nosedive. But they could benefit from cheap Russian fuel.
Long term even Russia’s hydrocarbons cease to be a valuable resource. Once the world is on its way to full renewables Russia will be stuck selling oil, coal and gas to a dwindling market of predominantly poor countries at a big discount, and there will be no foreign investment coming in to improve efficiency.
Russia is more f***ed than TSE's favour step-relatives on his favourite website.
I don't believe for one second that China is ready to step in to prop up the Putin regime if it should teeter. China is not interested in Putin, China is interested in China.
Never forget with China everything is about 'face'. And for China they've not just had to for the last couple of centuries play second-fiddle to the West, but in the East they have had to play second-fiddle to Russia/the USSR. Also China has been revanchist at seeking to regain its lost territory, and much historic Chinese territory is currently sovereign Russian territory. Just as Russia would like Ukraine "back", China would like Eastern Russian territories "back" too.
China isn't seeking a multipolar world where the USA is balanced against China, Russia and other powers. China is seeking to be a new superpower in its own right, and Russia is a threat or potential rival in the East against China.
A diminished, shrunken Russia shorn of aspersions that it is any longer a world power in its own right, that can be adopted within China's own sphere of influence, would suit China just fine. And that's not happening under Putin.
If Putin teeters, China will be preparing to deal with his successor - not step in to save him.
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
Trotsky and chums were just as murderous as Stalin - they just wanted to murder a different, but overlapping set of people.
Both Lenin and Trotsky believed in the kind of “democracy” where the people were told what to do by the right leaders. And none of that multi party voting nonesense.
You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!
Trotsky, dissolving the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. Elected in perhaps the only democratic election ever held in Russia.
I'm getting real Cromwell dissolving the Rump Parliament vibes.
No doubt THAT Leon intentionally copied/echoed Cromwellian rhetoric.
However, by the time the Lord Protector gave the Rump the heavy-ho in 1653, its longest-serving (remaining) MPs had been in office since 1640.
Wheres the Russian Constituent Assembly sat for a bit less time . . . 13 hours.
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
Trotsky and chums were just as murderous as Stalin - they just wanted to murder a different, but overlapping set of people.
Both Lenin and Trotsky believed in the kind of “democracy” where the people were told what to do by the right leaders. And none of that multi party voting nonesense.
You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!
Trotsky, dissolving the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. Elected in perhaps the only democratic election ever held in Russia.
I'm getting real Cromwell dissolving the Rump Parliament vibes.
No doubt THAT Leon intentionally copied/echoed Cromwellian rhetoric.
However, by the time the Lord Protector gave the Rump the heavy-ho in 1653, its longest-serving (remaining) MPs had been in office since 1640.
Wheres the Russian Constituent Assembly sat for a bit less time . . . 13 hours.
Future Lord Protector please. When he dissolved his own parliaments it was in less memorably quoteable fashion.
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
I don't recall the Soviet Union (and precursor arrangement) of Lenin's time being fans of democratic and philosophical challenge.
It sounds like one of those takes that the nature of Lenin and Trotsky's preferred methods was a difference of kind from Stalin, rather than a difference of degree, which personally I would describe as charitably generous.
Difference of kind or difference of degree? Good point. I’m probably in completely over my head trying to explain the murderous difference between Stalinism and Trotskyism. 😵💫
About the only real difference was Trotsky (like Lenin) was using violence to build a new state which he genuinely believed would be a better place to live in. He therefore believed that the end justified the means.
Very dangerous attitude, but comprehensible and at some level logical.
Stalin's violence was merely the unhinged lashing out of a psychotic. Not only did it have no greater end or purpose but it was actually damaging to the system he was trying to create.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
I don't recall the Soviet Union (and precursor arrangement) of Lenin's time being fans of democratic and philosophical challenge.
It sounds like one of those takes that the nature of Lenin and Trotsky's preferred methods was a difference of kind from Stalin, rather than a difference of degree, which personally I would describe as charitably generous.
Difference of kind or difference of degree? Good point. I’m probably in completely over my head trying to explain the murderous difference between Stalinism and Trotskyism. 😵💫
About the only real difference was Trotsky (like Lenin) was using violence to build a new state which he genuinely believed would be a better place to live in. He therefore believed that the end justified the means.
Very dangerous attitude, but comprehensible and at some level logical.
Stalin's violence was merely the unhinged lashing out of a psychotic. Not only did it have no greater end or purpose but it was actually damaging to the system he was trying to create.
The Conservatives might do worse from tactical voting. On the other hand they could counteract that by squeezing ReformUK and DKs
To which the question to yourself, how do you juice the inviting reform and d/k titties? squeezing the juicy bags of those votes the polls are flagging up can only be good for the Tories? Or the truth is go right for polices and promises that chase those Reform and d/k votes won’t act alone on Blukip minded, but on all voters - for votes Con might gain back, even more tactical votes can go where Lab and Lib Dem need them, inspired by those harder, sillier, Blukip/Daily Mail positions.
Is that what you want? Because that’s how this politics machine works.
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
On topic. The Tories won't do worse than the polls. But tactical voting may disguise the extent of swing back.
We are in agreement, there will be tactical voting. But as psephologists and political bettors, it’s about anticipating exactly what and where. And why.
Our genial host has often pointed us to the largish lake of don’t knows out there, we need to keep an eye on it, if/when this starts to drain, is it breaking to the Tory total as much as it will need to?
The poll lead? Not for me, I prefer to keep an eye on what parties are polling, not the lead in the methodologies. Yes the lead shrinks, but if the most discernible movement in the polling is Lab to LibDem, and not Tory recovery, this is the scariest scenario bar none for the Tories in terms of tactical voting, the combined Lab+LibDem numbers in Blue Wall polling in particular.
There could be a gradual, almost unseen at first, move from Labour to LibDem over the next 12 months, though like have said so many times, I don’t think voters are at all honest with pollsters about tactical vote in all these polls we are seeing. An exit poll and PV so very different than the actual polls would not surprise me.
For example, if the polls in the last week of the General Election Campaign suggest a variant of Lab 43, Con 29, Lib Dem 12, reform 6 - a drop for Labour, rise for Con and Lib Dem from poll average today, I would not be shocked by a contrary exit poll of Lab 38 Con 28 LibDem 17, Ref 2. Not that Reform polling breaks to LibDem, the Refs sit on their hands disgusted with their own enablement of a parliament of incompetence and outright corruption, whilst LLG tactical votes always knew what to do in General Election, just never told pollsters about it. That would not surprise me one bit. In fact the resulting carnage would closely mirror real votes at the 2023 locals. A mirror of 2023 local election night is what I am expecting on General Election night, without expecting to ever see this in the polling.
If your "Dutch Salute" theory works out, it'll go down with @RodCrosby's prediction of a 2015 Con majority and @Andy_JS's spreadsheet as the best pieces of analysis in PB history
I’m not using that phrase anymore. If anyone looks it up in a Viz thesaurus I’ll be banned. Again. But you are right in what I am currently expecting on election night is Labour 38, Con 28, LibDem 17, even if none of the opinion polls ever say this, so a blue wall bloodbath for the Tories like it was in 2023 local elections. And my reasoning is, I don’t think voters give pollsters their honest tactical voting intention, or surely not waiting till the general election campaign to have an idea what that is? 🤷♀️
I thought Dutch salute meant the voters ARE now telling pollsters their true intention, hence the slow decline in Labour and rise in Lib Dem?
No it was meant to explain a shyness to give a tactical vote to pollsters, hence the disparity between all polls to voting day, with the exit poll and PV. Another good reason to drop the salute idea, as it suggests a salute, not lack of one.
Do we think voters only know their tactical vote with 2 weeks to go, or already know? I think they already know but pollsters are not getting it. So we need another term for instance where voters withhold tactical intent from polling.
Voters “not exposing their tactical titties” just yet? A drift from lab and green in polls to Lib Dem’s might be voters beginning to expose a bit more cleavage? Does that work? 🫤
Sex is great, but have you ever watched 10 man Liverpool come from behind to beat the Saudis at St. James' Park?
I’m surprised you survived all that.
1. Against Man City and Liverpool Toon have shown a worrying lack of cutting edge in the final third. Lack of composure, poor decision making, and a lack of team coherence when coming forward. 2. Darwin’s finishing was magnificent today. That should give him the belief to kick on. 🙂
On topic. The Tories won't do worse than the polls. But tactical voting may disguise the extent of swing back.
We are in agreement, there will be tactical voting. But as psephologists and political bettors, it’s about anticipating exactly what and where. And why.
Our genial host has often pointed us to the largish lake of don’t knows out there, we need to keep an eye on it, if/when this starts to drain, is it breaking to the Tory total as much as it will need to?
The poll lead? Not for me, I prefer to keep an eye on what parties are polling, not the lead in the methodologies. Yes the lead shrinks, but if the most discernible movement in the polling is Lab to LibDem, and not Tory recovery, this is the scariest scenario bar none for the Tories in terms of tactical voting, the combined Lab+LibDem numbers in Blue Wall polling in particular.
There could be a gradual, almost unseen at first, move from Labour to LibDem over the next 12 months, though like have said so many times, I don’t think voters are at all honest with pollsters about tactical vote in all these polls we are seeing. An exit poll and PV so very different than the actual polls would not surprise me.
For example, if the polls in the last week of the General Election Campaign suggest a variant of Lab 43, Con 29, Lib Dem 12, reform 6 - a drop for Labour, rise for Con and Lib Dem from poll average today, I would not be shocked by a contrary exit poll of Lab 38 Con 28 LibDem 17, Ref 2. Not that Reform polling breaks to LibDem, the Refs sit on their hands disgusted with their own enablement of a parliament of incompetence and outright corruption, whilst LLG tactical votes always knew what to do in General Election, just never told pollsters about it. That would not surprise me one bit. In fact the resulting carnage would closely mirror real votes at the 2023 locals. A mirror of 2023 local election night is what I am expecting on General Election night, without expecting to ever see this in the polling.
If your "Dutch Salute" theory works out, it'll go down with @RodCrosby's prediction of a 2015 Con majority and @Andy_JS's spreadsheet as the best pieces of analysis in PB history
I’m not using that phrase anymore. If anyone looks it up in a Viz thesaurus I’ll be banned. Again. But you are right in what I am currently expecting on election night is Labour 38, Con 28, LibDem 17, even if none of the opinion polls ever say this, so a blue wall bloodbath for the Tories like it was in 2023 local elections. And my reasoning is, I don’t think voters give pollsters their honest tactical voting intention, or surely not waiting till the general election campaign to have an idea what that is? 🤷♀️
I thought Dutch salute meant the voters ARE now telling pollsters their true intention, hence the slow decline in Labour and rise in Lib Dem?
No it was meant to explain a shyness to give a tactical vote to pollsters, hence the disparity between all polls to voting day, with the exit poll and PV. Another good reason to drop the salute idea, as it suggests a salute, not lack of one.
Do we think voters only know their tactical vote with 2 weeks to go, or already know? I think they already know but pollsters are not getting it. So we need another term for instance where voters withhold tactical intent from polling.
Voters “not exposing their tactical titties” just yet? A drift from lab and green in polls to Lib Dem’s might be voters beginning to expose a bit more cleavage? Does that work? 🫤
I suspect that Lib Dems really need a big local campaign to persuade voters in Blankton North and South Blankshire that they are the tactical choice in that specific constituency. So in a wave election, the Lib Dem seat count is limited by how many places they can do a full-on campaign. (They'll probably manage a near 100% hit rate, so the question is how many bullets they have to fire.)
But yes, in the runup to 1997, there was a definite Lab to Lib drift, but it only really kicked in once the campaign proper started.
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Ireland now has GDP per capita around twice the UK, having lagged behind at the time of entry to the EEC. Spain’s GDP per capita, even after a lost decade post financial crisis, is many orders of magnitude greater than it was on accession. The “almost third world nations” are in some cases close to overtaking us on GDP per capita. One only has to compare the EU members in the former Yugoslavia with those that remain outside to see EU sclerosis is not the issue.
The outlier in your EU-US comparisons is the US. It has outperformed almost every large developed nation with the exception of Korea. It’s outpaced EU and non-EU European states, and massively outpaced Japan. Japan from being one of the richest countries on earth would now be a middle ranking country in the EU on GDP per capita, around the Italy level. The US benefits from dynamic immigration, strong demographics, a well developed stock market and VC ecosystem, continental scale labour market all speaking the same language, and its own sources of cheap fuel. The EU has some but not all of that.
I’m not arguing the EU has the power to transform an economy that doesn’t want to be transformed. But the travails of some European countries (including us during our membership) and the successes of others are largely down to choices those countries make. EU governance is nowhere near powerful enough to have the sort of effect you describe. The one thing it is able to do is remove trading and migration barriers, and that’s a very helpful thing.
On topic. The Tories won't do worse than the polls. But tactical voting may disguise the extent of swing back.
We are in agreement, there will be tactical voting. But as psephologists and political bettors, it’s about anticipating exactly what and where. And why.
Our genial host has often pointed us to the largish lake of don’t knows out there, we need to keep an eye on it, if/when this starts to drain, is it breaking to the Tory total as much as it will need to?
The poll lead? Not for me, I prefer to keep an eye on what parties are polling, not the lead in the methodologies. Yes the lead shrinks, but if the most discernible movement in the polling is Lab to LibDem, and not Tory recovery, this is the scariest scenario bar none for the Tories in terms of tactical voting, the combined Lab+LibDem numbers in Blue Wall polling in particular.
There could be a gradual, almost unseen at first, move from Labour to LibDem over the next 12 months, though like have said so many times, I don’t think voters are at all honest with pollsters about tactical vote in all these polls we are seeing. An exit poll and PV so very different than the actual polls would not surprise me.
For example, if the polls in the last week of the General Election Campaign suggest a variant of Lab 43, Con 29, Lib Dem 12, reform 6 - a drop for Labour, rise for Con and Lib Dem from poll average today, I would not be shocked by a contrary exit poll of Lab 38 Con 28 LibDem 17, Ref 2. Not that Reform polling breaks to LibDem, the Refs sit on their hands disgusted with their own enablement of a parliament of incompetence and outright corruption, whilst LLG tactical votes always knew what to do in General Election, just never told pollsters about it. That would not surprise me one bit. In fact the resulting carnage would closely mirror real votes at the 2023 locals. A mirror of 2023 local election night is what I am expecting on General Election night, without expecting to ever see this in the polling.
If your "Dutch Salute" theory works out, it'll go down with @RodCrosby's prediction of a 2015 Con majority and @Andy_JS's spreadsheet as the best pieces of analysis in PB history
I’m not using that phrase anymore. If anyone looks it up in a Viz thesaurus I’ll be banned. Again. But you are right in what I am currently expecting on election night is Labour 38, Con 28, LibDem 17, even if none of the opinion polls ever say this, so a blue wall bloodbath for the Tories like it was in 2023 local elections. And my reasoning is, I don’t think voters give pollsters their honest tactical voting intention, or surely not waiting till the general election campaign to have an idea what that is? 🤷♀️
I thought Dutch salute meant the voters ARE now telling pollsters their true intention, hence the slow decline in Labour and rise in Lib Dem?
No it was meant to explain a shyness to give a tactical vote to pollsters, hence the disparity between all polls to voting day, with the exit poll and PV. Another good reason to drop the salute idea, as it suggests a salute, not lack of one.
Do we think voters only know their tactical vote with 2 weeks to go, or already know? I think they already know but pollsters are not getting it. So we need another term for instance where voters withhold tactical intent from polling.
Voters “not exposing their tactical titties” just yet? A drift from lab and green in polls to Lib Dem’s might be voters beginning to expose a bit more cleavage? Does that work? 🫤
Again, the actual experience of - or rather by - tactical voters in 1997 is worth examining.
True, the world has moved on in past quarter-century. But still think, that the voters of 2024 will prove capable, somehow, of figuring things out yet again.
One perhaps major difference (but y'all tell me) is increased risk that bad actors (say one of PB regular weekend visitors) deliberately misleading voters.
That is, beyond traditional efforts of multi-party bar-chart enthusiasts!
Good evening all. The Mid Beds by election will be a good test of whether voters can choose who is the best option to defeat the Tories. Given that either Labour or the Lib Dems could win, and presumably both parties will be trying to win, a split vote will be a good indicator of whether the Tories can hang on in seats they would otherwise lose. (Sorry if this has been discussed earlier.)
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Ireland now has GDP per capita around twice the UK, having lagged behind at the time of entry to the EEC. Spain’s GDP per capita, even after a lost decade post financial crisis, is many orders of magnitude greater than it was on accession. The “almost third world nations” are in some cases close to overtaking us on GDP per capita. One only has to compare the EU members in the former Yugoslavia with those that remain outside to see EU sclerosis is not the issue.
The outlier in your EU-US comparisons is the US. It has outperformed almost every large developed nation with the exception of Korea. It’s outpaced EU and non-EU European states, and massively outpaced Japan. Japan from being one of the richest countries on earth would now be a middle ranking country in the EU on GDP per capita, around the Italy level. The US benefits from dynamic immigration, strong demographics, a well developed stock market and VC ecosystem, continental scale labour market all speaking the same language, and its own sources of cheap fuel. The EU has done but not all of that.
I’m not arguing the EU has the power to transform an economy that doesn’t want to be transformed. But the travails of some European countries (including us during our membership) and the successes of others are largely down to choices those countries make. EU governance is nowhere near powerful enough to have the sort of effect you describe. The one thing it is able to do is remove trading and migration barriers, and that’s a very helpful thing.
Ireland is sui generis as its GDP figures are completely distorted by having American businesses register large volumes of their business in Europe there, which then has a small Irish population (rather than the entire continents population) as a denominator then. The whole of Europe can't follow the Irish model of being an offshoot of American firms, with a tiny population.
The US is not the outlier, Japan is, its demographic decline and unique issues with deflation and debt are its own story.
You don't need to compare just the US, but look at other non-EU, non-Japanese developed nations. I mentioned Australia too, or you can look at New Zealand, or Canada or Korea, or others.
The simple reality is that Europe is a region in decline. Apart from Ireland, who have grown by being European HQ for Apple and other American firms with only a tiny local population, there is no developed European nation that has grown matching other developed nations standards.
There have been no successes in the past three decades, amongst any developed major European nations.
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Ireland now has GDP per capita around twice the UK, having lagged behind at the time of entry to the EEC. Spain’s GDP per capita, even after a lost decade post financial crisis, is many orders of magnitude greater than it was on accession. The “almost third world nations” are in some cases close to overtaking us on GDP per capita. One only has to compare the EU members in the former Yugoslavia with those that remain outside to see EU sclerosis is not the issue.
@bigjohnowls great job on the Twitter doc exposing SKS, your voice was what I expected it to be like, having spent so many years in your mum's basement.
Good evening all. The Mid Beds by election will be a good test of whether voters can choose who is the best option to defeat the Tories. Given that either Labour or the Lib Dems could win, and presumably both parties will be trying to win, a split vote will be a good indicator of whether the Tories can hang on in seats they would otherwise lose. (Sorry if this has been discussed earlier.)
As MoonRabit rightly points out (I think) that development of tactical voting strategies, intentions and actuality among parties, candidates, other interests AND voters, is a work in progress.
Plenty of evidence already in recent by-elections, with the stakes getting wratched upwards as different specific circumstances apply AND the real crunch time of the next general election comes ever closer.
Just had an idea for a publishing sensation - the UnWoke Bible.
Holy Writ purged of the Woke bits, that ruined the Roman Empire, and are ruining America & the West today.
Such as Sermon on the Mount, turn the other cheek, etc., etc., etc.
With expurgated remarks of Jesus in red.
Pretty much Old Testament + Paul then.
Which is the problem with evangelical Christians, they're almost all Paulians and pay no regard to the teachings of Christ.
Evangelical Christians by and large have no interest in "woke" nonsense like "its easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter the kingdom of god", or "let he who is without sin cast the first stone", or spending time with the poor and prostitutes, or turning over tables etc (all woke nonsense, who'd be interested in that).
Stuff Christ never spoke about, like pre-marital sex, or homosexuality, well now that's interesting to them.
Just had an idea for a publishing sensation - the UnWoke Bible.
Holy Writ purged of the Woke bits, that ruined the Roman Empire, and are ruining America & the West today.
Such as Sermon on the Mount, turn the other cheek, etc., etc., etc.
With expurgated remarks of Jesus in red.
Pretty much Old Testament + Paul then.
Which is the problem with evangelical Christians, they're almost all Paulians and pay no regard to the teachings of Christ.
Evangelical Christians by and large have no interest in "woke" nonsense like "its easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter the kingdom of god", or "let he who is without sin cast the first stone", or spending time with the poor and prostitutes, or turning over tables etc (all woke nonsense, who'd be interested in that).
Stuff Christ never spoke about, like pre-marital sex, or homosexuality, well now that's interesting to them.
You too can be part of my expanding sales network! From the convenience of your own home!!
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Ireland now has GDP per capita around twice the UK, having lagged behind at the time of entry to the EEC. Spain’s GDP per capita, even after a lost decade post financial crisis, is many orders of magnitude greater than it was on accession. The “almost third world nations” are in some cases close to overtaking us on GDP per capita. One only has to compare the EU members in the former Yugoslavia with those that remain outside to see EU sclerosis is not the issue.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Good evening all. The Mid Beds by election will be a good test of whether voters can choose who is the best option to defeat the Tories. Given that either Labour or the Lib Dems could win, and presumably both parties will be trying to win, a split vote will be a good indicator of whether the Tories can hang on in seats they would otherwise lose. (Sorry if this has been discussed earlier.)
As MoonRabit rightly points out (I think) that development of tactical voting strategies, intentions and actuality among parties, candidates, other interests AND voters, is a work in progress.
Plenty of evidence already in recent by-elections, with the stakes getting wratched upwards as different specific circumstances apply AND the real crunch time of the next general election comes ever closer.
For most of the recent by-elections, though, apart from Selby, it has been clear who was the main challenger to the Tories. In Mid Beds, it’s not so clear.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Staggered you both voted Leave to be honest. But thanks for being honest.
Good evening all. The Mid Beds by election will be a good test of whether voters can choose who is the best option to defeat the Tories. Given that either Labour or the Lib Dems could win, and presumably both parties will be trying to win, a split vote will be a good indicator of whether the Tories can hang on in seats they would otherwise lose. (Sorry if this has been discussed earlier.)
As MoonRabit rightly points out (I think) that development of tactical voting strategies, intentions and actuality among parties, candidates, other interests AND voters, is a work in progress.
Plenty of evidence already in recent by-elections, with the stakes getting wratched upwards as different specific circumstances apply AND the real crunch time of the next general election comes ever closer.
For most of the recent by-elections, though, apart from Selby, it has been clear who was the main challenger to the Tories. In Mid Beds, it’s not so clear.
Exactly. Or rather, precisely! Different kettle of fish, for the fish to figure out how best to exit the Tory fishtrap.
Good evening all. The Mid Beds by election will be a good test of whether voters can choose who is the best option to defeat the Tories. Given that either Labour or the Lib Dems could win, and presumably both parties will be trying to win, a split vote will be a good indicator of whether the Tories can hang on in seats they would otherwise lose. (Sorry if this has been discussed earlier.)
As MoonRabit rightly points out (I think) that development of tactical voting strategies, intentions and actuality among parties, candidates, other interests AND voters, is a work in progress.
Plenty of evidence already in recent by-elections, with the stakes getting wratched upwards as different specific circumstances apply AND the real crunch time of the next general election comes ever closer.
I’m sure not saying Tactical Voting is currently as coherent as “work in progress” - I’m saying I don’t think anyone currently knows what the hells going on, or can say what’s going to happen next.
Romford Stu helped, posting some Mori Government and PM satisfaction ratings from equivalent time before 1997, compared with the latest. that were virtually the same as today. Which leads us to assume 97 all over again.
Incidentally, when not posting here I posted in ConHome, and got into a debate with someone called HYUFD, HY defending the Freedom Of Information act I suspect because it keeps Information Managers in employment, and it went on for days. Longer than Jaundice against Jaundice - in the end I posted a white flag.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
As PB confessions go, not quite in same league as Nick P's famous hat trick.
Good evening all. The Mid Beds by election will be a good test of whether voters can choose who is the best option to defeat the Tories. Given that either Labour or the Lib Dems could win, and presumably both parties will be trying to win, a split vote will be a good indicator of whether the Tories can hang on in seats they would otherwise lose. (Sorry if this has been discussed earlier.)
As MoonRabit rightly points out (I think) that development of tactical voting strategies, intentions and actuality among parties, candidates, other interests AND voters, is a work in progress.
Plenty of evidence already in recent by-elections, with the stakes getting wratched upwards as different specific circumstances apply AND the real crunch time of the next general election comes ever closer.
For most of the recent by-elections, though, apart from Selby, it has been clear who was the main challenger to the Tories. In Mid Beds, it’s not so clear.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
Trotsky and chums were just as murderous as Stalin - they just wanted to murder a different, but overlapping set of people.
Both Lenin and Trotsky believed in the kind of “democracy” where the people were told what to do by the right leaders. And none of that multi party voting nonesense.
“Both Lenin and Trotsky believed in the kind of “democracy” where the people were told what to do by the right leaders. And none of that multi party voting nonesense.” Yes I agree. to clarify the difference being they believed in the “leadership” group there should always be more democratic challenge.
One of the few joys of totalitarian systems is the way that members of “the leadership group” scream, cry and drag their nails along the floor. As they are hauled out for execution. Which isn’t supposed to happen to Them - The Elect*. Just to the lesser people.
Just had an idea for a publishing sensation - the UnWoke Bible.
Holy Writ purged of the Woke bits, that ruined the Roman Empire, and are ruining America & the West today.
Such as Sermon on the Mount, turn the other cheek, etc., etc., etc.
With expurgated remarks of Jesus in red.
Pretty much Old Testament + Paul then.
Which is the problem with evangelical Christians, they're almost all Paulians and pay no regard to the teachings of Christ.
Evangelical Christians by and large have no interest in "woke" nonsense like "its easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter the kingdom of god", or "let he who is without sin cast the first stone", or spending time with the poor and prostitutes, or turning over tables etc (all woke nonsense, who'd be interested in that).
Stuff Christ never spoke about, like pre-marital sex, or homosexuality, well now that's interesting to them.
And loads of Paul being horrible to women. "The disciple whom jesus loved?" no, none of that Mary Magdalene shit thank you, women should be subjugated by men. or you're going to HELL. etc
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Ireland now has GDP per capita around twice the UK, having lagged behind at the time of entry to the EEC. Spain’s GDP per capita, even after a lost decade post financial crisis, is many orders of magnitude greater than it was on accession. The “almost third world nations” are in some cases close to overtaking us on GDP per capita. One only has to compare the EU members in the former Yugoslavia with those that remain outside to see EU sclerosis is not the issue.
(Irelands's economic growth is nonetheless impressive, but the average irishman has no more income than the average briton)
There’s actually a bit of mythology on top of the mythology there.
The median household income (excluding corporate profits) in Ireland is also way above that in the UK. The only measure where they have performed similarly is consumer spending. There is definitely distortion - I know, my job largely involves helping multinationals decide where to put stuff - but it doesn’t eliminate the outperformance vs the UK or other major economies,
The UK’s economy is also distorted by foreign (largely US) inflows of capital and corporate profits. Nobody has measured it, though the treasury are going through an exercise at the moment attempting to, but it probably explains why our GDP per capita is at or slightly above France but our median household income is way way below.
“Flexcit” was the only Brexit that ever made sense. Move over time from EEA toward something else.
It had the “disadvantage” that it was a soft Brexit (in the old sense, ie it retained single market access), and that it didn’t have a clear timetable on it, thus open to criticism that was vulnerable to politically-driven stasis.
This was the one that Alastair Meeks was seriously considering.
He described it as a 'conscious uncoupling' from the EU via the EEC.
It is the one I was pushing for and wrote articles in support of both before and after the vote.
My personal view is that what we have now is better than EU membership but worse than EEA membership (or something like it). I am still of the view that we will eventually move back to an EEA style relationship but that we will never rejoin the EU as a full member. The longer we are out the more that becomes the case as the EU moves further and further from just a trading bloc
Just had an idea for a publishing sensation - the UnWoke Bible.
Holy Writ purged of the Woke bits, that ruined the Roman Empire, and are ruining America & the West today.
Such as Sermon on the Mount, turn the other cheek, etc., etc., etc.
With expurgated remarks of Jesus in red.
Pretty much Old Testament + Paul then.
Which is the problem with evangelical Christians, they're almost all Paulians and pay no regard to the teachings of Christ.
Evangelical Christians by and large have no interest in "woke" nonsense like "its easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter the kingdom of god", or "let he who is without sin cast the first stone", or spending time with the poor and prostitutes, or turning over tables etc (all woke nonsense, who'd be interested in that).
Stuff Christ never spoke about, like pre-marital sex, or homosexuality, well now that's interesting to them.
And loads of Paul being horrible to women. "The disciple whom jesus loved?" no, none of that Mary Magdalene shit thank you, women should be subjugated by men. or you're going to HELL. etc
Wasn't it Jesus who said you can't be his disciple unless you hate your wife and children?
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Me too but I voted for a Soft Brexit, I had no idea it would be so messy, for which I blame rhe French, Boris Johnson and the Labour Party (with
All this stupid shit on here today and talk of a "single state" explains fucking precisely why so many of your compatriots voted to Leave.
You fed and fuelled it and have no-one to blame but yourselves.
Taking a fucking look at yourselves.
Who is arguing for a “single state”. Maybe @OldKingCole? But I don’t think he deserves such venom.
One of the few things that Orwell got right was that the only truly worthy political goal was a socialist United States of Europe.
Shame Stalin didn’t manage to shoot Orwell for being a Trot, we would have been spared the denigration of pigs. 🐖🐖❤️Not that Animal Farm was Orwell’s idea, his wife wrote it, based on her life under him.
Waiting in Counterfactual Corner is a discussion where Stalin and his idea’s flee to Mexico, and Trotsky is the heir of Lenin, so what would have been different?
I would suggest quite a lot. Take Spanish history alone, if POUM and other Trotskyist parties had not been purged and liquidated by Stalinists in the middle of a conflict with the Nationalists, the whole Spanish history to this date could have been different. Likewise UK and many other countries if Communist parties of the world were not just affiliates of Stalin’s Communist party of the USSR.
I suggest Ace, no one can support both Marx-Lenin-Trotsky on the one hand Stalin-USSR on the other - such a position doesn’t understand such fundamental differences as between anti-capitalist Revolutionary vs. Conservative, or brotherhood of workers v Imperialism.
If the roles were reversed, perhaps the ideals would have been too. Isn't that what a Marxist analysis would say? In other words, Trotsky would have become Stalin.
No. The point is they believed in completely different things. Particularly the absence of the democratic dynamic of being able to question the philosophical direction the leader is taking them with their policies.
Would you argue Sunak has or can become Truss?
You could say that Truss had already become Sunak prior to resigning when she backtracked and appointed Hunt.
But that was different in trying to save her political life, not doing what she actually believed. Like a Protestant converting to Catholicism on the night of the St Bartholomew Massacre.
Her political blood ended up running through the gutter anyway.
The question is what would Trotsky have needed to do to save his position at the head of the USSR? Probably not what he actually believed in.
The actual answer is Stalin did do exactly as he thought and pleased “because” he didn’t believe in the degree of democratic challenge Marx, Lenin and Trotsky understood to be so important to the philosophy of a workers movement taking ownership of the means of production and control.
Lenin and Trotsky believed that? Really?
That is the argument I am making, yes. At least to the degree that Stalin believed something different, was not a fellow traveller with them as to the degree his authority should be democratically and philosophically challenged. This being that difference between Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, and Stalin on the other, and pretty much supported by Trotsky fleeing to exile as well as the Trotskyite faction George Orwell joined being crushed in the same brutal way by same Stalinist agency and for same purpose as Trotsky’s assassination.
I don't recall the Soviet Union (and precursor arrangement) of Lenin's time being fans of democratic and philosophical challenge.
It sounds like one of those takes that the nature of Lenin and Trotsky's preferred methods was a difference of kind from Stalin, rather than a difference of degree, which personally I would describe as charitably generous.
Difference of kind or difference of degree? Good point. I’m probably in completely over my head trying to explain the murderous difference between Stalinism and Trotskyism. 😵💫
About the only real difference was Trotsky (like Lenin) was using violence to build a new state which he genuinely believed would be a better place to live in. He therefore believed that the end justified the means.
Very dangerous attitude, but comprehensible and at some level logical.
Stalin's violence was merely the unhinged lashing out of a psychotic. Not only did it have no greater end or purpose but it was actually damaging to the system he was trying to create.
No.
According to those who actually were around him, Stalin believed deeply and utterly in the Leninist Communist dream.
He also believed that he was the only one with the strength, Will etc to Save The Country.
Which meant he rationalised any vague idea of the slightest opposition as treason.
Yes it is. And it’s very much in line with the BMG monthly polls who consistently put Tories 29-27 and the lead 14-17. During the Truss Debacle they put Tories on 26.
So can’t be compared with other polls to say Tory recovery - indeed the headline being used is no sign of recovery, it’s statis in their sequence ”i” are “interpreting” as time running out for Tories.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
Why I am a sadder and wiser engine is that I have realised the unspeakable truth - that we can't be trusted to recognise just how shit this country is. Whilst a lot of people voted Brexit because things are shit and they were being promised the moon on a stick, that means they think we just say WE ARE BRITAIN and the forrin do as they are told and we won two world wars and one world cup anyway.
Its crap. Until the English let go of the empire, we will never be able to start healing ourselves because we can't accept that we are a fading former imperial power who are now being surpassed by countries like Poland. We would now be better going all in - the Euro, Schengen, the whole smash.
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Ireland now has GDP per capita around twice the UK, having lagged behind at the time of entry to the EEC. Spain’s GDP per capita, even after a lost decade post financial crisis, is many orders of magnitude greater than it was on accession. The “almost third world nations” are in some cases close to overtaking us on GDP per capita. One only has to compare the EU members in the former Yugoslavia with those that remain outside to see EU sclerosis is not the issue.
(Irelands's economic growth is nonetheless impressive, but the average irishman has no more income than the average briton)
There’s actually a bit of mythology on top of the mythology there.
The median household income (excluding corporate profits) in Ireland is also way above that in the UK. The only measure where they have performed similarly is consumer spending. There is definitely distortion - I know, my job largely involves helping multinationals decide where to put stuff - but it doesn’t eliminate the outperformance vs the UK or other major economies,
The UK’s economy is also distorted by foreign (largely US) inflows of capital and corporate profits. Nobody has measured it, though the treasury are going through an exercise at the moment attempting to, but it probably explains why our GDP per capita is at or slightly above France but our median household income is way way below.
So what explains the difference in household income vs spending. Do they have a markedly higher savings rate, or is the factor unknown?
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Ireland now has GDP per capita around twice the UK, having lagged behind at the time of entry to the EEC. Spain’s GDP per capita, even after a lost decade post financial crisis, is many orders of magnitude greater than it was on accession. The “almost third world nations” are in some cases close to overtaking us on GDP per capita. One only has to compare the EU members in the former Yugoslavia with those that remain outside to see EU sclerosis is not the issue.
The outlier in your EU-US comparisons is the US. It has outperformed almost every large developed nation with the exception of Korea. It’s outpaced EU and non-EU European states, and massively outpaced Japan. Japan from being one of the richest countries on earth would now be a middle ranking country in the EU on GDP per capita, around the Italy level. The US benefits from dynamic immigration, strong demographics, a well developed stock market and VC ecosystem, continental scale labour market all speaking the same language, and its own sources of cheap fuel. The EU has done but not all of that.
I’m not arguing the EU has the power to transform an economy that doesn’t want to be transformed. But the travails of some European countries (including us during our membership) and the successes of others are largely down to choices those countries make. EU governance is nowhere near powerful enough to have the sort of effect you describe. The one thing it is able to do is remove trading and migration barriers, and that’s a very helpful thing.
Ireland is sui generis as its GDP figures are completely distorted by having American businesses register large volumes of their business in Europe there, which then has a small Irish population (rather than the entire continents population) as a denominator then. The whole of Europe can't follow the Irish model of being an offshoot of American firms, with a tiny population.
The US is not the outlier, Japan is, its demographic decline and unique issues with deflation and debt are its own story.
You don't need to compare just the US, but look at other non-EU, non-Japanese developed nations. I mentioned Australia too, or you can look at New Zealand, or Canada or Korea, or others.
The simple reality is that Europe is a region in decline. Apart from Ireland, who have grown by being European HQ for Apple and other American firms with only a tiny local population, there is no developed European nation that has grown matching other developed nations standards.
There have been no successes in the past three decades, amongst any developed major European nations.
Germany's median household income has done pretty well, especially when you consider that that period includes the reunification costs.
Good evening all. The Mid Beds by election will be a good test of whether voters can choose who is the best option to defeat the Tories. Given that either Labour or the Lib Dems could win, and presumably both parties will be trying to win, a split vote will be a good indicator of whether the Tories can hang on in seats they would otherwise lose. (Sorry if this has been discussed earlier.)
As MoonRabit rightly points out (I think) that development of tactical voting strategies, intentions and actuality among parties, candidates, other interests AND voters, is a work in progress.
Plenty of evidence already in recent by-elections, with the stakes getting wratched upwards as different specific circumstances apply AND the real crunch time of the next general election comes ever closer.
I’m sure not saying Tactical Voting is currently as coherent as “work in progress” - I’m saying I don’t think anyone currently knows what the hells going on, or can say what’s going to happen next.
Romford Stu helped, posting some Mori Government and PM satisfaction ratings from equivalent time before 1997, compared with the latest. that were virtually the same as today. Which leads us to assume 97 all over again.
Incidentally, when not posting here I posted in ConHome, and got into a debate with someone called HYUFD, HY defending the Freedom Of Information act I suspect because it keeps Information Managers in employment, and it went on for days. Longer than Jaundice against Jaundice - in the end I posted a white flag.
Whole point of tactical voting, at least 99.46% of the time as practiced in UK elections, to to vote the bastards out.
With the bastards being the government roughly 19 times out of 20.
So real question at present and for near term for many voters will be, which opposition candidate should I vote for, in my specific constituency, to defeat the Tory?
Whether of not an individual answers that question, to their satisfaction, next week or next year, is NOT as significant, as the simple determination to do so, along with some means of actually doing it, via pre-election polling, blogging, media social and otherwise, canvassing, kibitzing and other personal imputs.
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Ireland now has GDP per capita around twice the UK, having lagged behind at the time of entry to the EEC. Spain’s GDP per capita, even after a lost decade post financial crisis, is many orders of magnitude greater than it was on accession. The “almost third world nations” are in some cases close to overtaking us on GDP per capita. One only has to compare the EU members in the former Yugoslavia with those that remain outside to see EU sclerosis is not the issue.
(Irelands's economic growth is nonetheless impressive, but the average irishman has no more income than the average briton)
There’s actually a bit of mythology on top of the mythology there.
The median household income (excluding corporate profits) in Ireland is also way above that in the UK. The only measure where they have performed similarly is consumer spending. There is definitely distortion - I know, my job largely involves helping multinationals decide where to put stuff - but it doesn’t eliminate the outperformance vs the UK or other major economies,
The UK’s economy is also distorted by foreign (largely US) inflows of capital and corporate profits. Nobody has measured it, though the treasury are going through an exercise at the moment attempting to, but it probably explains why our GDP per capita is at or slightly above France but our median household income is way way below.
So what explains the difference in household income vs spending. Do they have a markedly higher savings rate, or is the factor unknown?
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
Why I am a sadder and wiser engine is that I have realised the unspeakable truth - that we can't be trusted to recognise just how shit this country is. Whilst a lot of people voted Brexit because things are shit and they were being promised the moon on a stick, that means they think we just say WE ARE BRITAIN and the forrin do as they are told and we won two world wars and one world cup anyway.
Its crap. Until the English let go of the empire, we will never be able to start healing ourselves because we can't accept that we are a fading former imperial power who are now being surpassed by countries like Poland. We would now be better going all in - the Euro, Schengen, the whole smash.
If you see being surpassed by Poland as such an abject humilation (in fact they're catching up just as fast with France and Germany), then perhaps you are you the one who has an empire complex and misplaced sense of superiority towards the 'forrin'.
First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
Why I am a sadder and wiser engine is that I have realised the unspeakable truth - that we can't be trusted to recognise just how shit this country is. Whilst a lot of people voted Brexit because things are shit and they were being promised the moon on a stick, that means they think we just say WE ARE BRITAIN and the forrin do as they are told and we won two world wars and one world cup anyway.
Its crap. Until the English let go of the empire, we will never be able to start healing ourselves because we can't accept that we are a fading former imperial power who are now being surpassed by countries like Poland. We would now be better going all in - the Euro, Schengen, the whole smash.
And some could say that’s all about joining the next Empire. Why?
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Ireland now has GDP per capita around twice the UK, having lagged behind at the time of entry to the EEC. Spain’s GDP per capita, even after a lost decade post financial crisis, is many orders of magnitude greater than it was on accession. The “almost third world nations” are in some cases close to overtaking us on GDP per capita. One only has to compare the EU members in the former Yugoslavia with those that remain outside to see EU sclerosis is not the issue.
(Irelands's economic growth is nonetheless impressive, but the average irishman has no more income than the average briton)
There’s actually a bit of mythology on top of the mythology there.
The median household income (excluding corporate profits) in Ireland is also way above that in the UK. The only measure where they have performed similarly is consumer spending. There is definitely distortion - I know, my job largely involves helping multinationals decide where to put stuff - but it doesn’t eliminate the outperformance vs the UK or other major economies,
The UK’s economy is also distorted by foreign (largely US) inflows of capital and corporate profits. Nobody has measured it, though the treasury are going through an exercise at the moment attempting to, but it probably explains why our GDP per capita is at or slightly above France but our median household income is way way below.
So what explains the difference in household income vs spending. Do they have a markedly higher savings rate, or is the factor unknown?
I remember when reading 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies being struck by his take on the Soviet Union being impressively blunt, including fairly casual dismissal of the idea it all just went wrong after its start.
Many factors contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall. They include defeat in Afghanistan, an unsustainable arms race, financial bankruptcy, laggardly technology, sclerotic political structures, a discredited ideology, a generation gap between rulers and ruled, and much else besides; discussion of them fills any number of weighty tomes, but none in itself gives a sufficient explanation.
The essence lies deeper, and is not complicated. The Soviet System was built on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and huge barefaced lies.
Its a good point.
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
You used sclerotic several times in that post, but simply saying it doesn’t make it so.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
Other than what were almost third world nations post-Soviet Union catching up though as they embraced the West, there has been no dynamism and growth within the EU though, only decline. Even Germany has declined and only succeeded if you compare it to other EU nations, not compared to the rest of the world.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher. Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Ireland now has GDP per capita around twice the UK, having lagged behind at the time of entry to the EEC. Spain’s GDP per capita, even after a lost decade post financial crisis, is many orders of magnitude greater than it was on accession. The “almost third world nations” are in some cases close to overtaking us on GDP per capita. One only has to compare the EU members in the former Yugoslavia with those that remain outside to see EU sclerosis is not the issue.
(Irelands's economic growth is nonetheless impressive, but the average irishman has no more income than the average briton)
Give us Corporation Tax at ROI levels for a steady decade and do the comparison again.
That ship has sailed. Pillar II which will come in over the next 2 years gives everyone a floor of 15%. Ireland’s rate for large corporates will rise to 15, with 12.5% retained for smaller groups (under €750m global sales).
That alone needn’t be a problem, but the arbitrage has been wiped out on the other side. When I started doing what was then called “tax efficient supply chain management” you had effective rates around 8-12% in several small countries and zero in various havens plus UAE. Versus rates above 30% and sometimes as high as 40% in the US, Japan, France, Italy and elsewhere.
Then they all started inexorably dropping. Now all the big outbound investment countries are at around 25% except the likes of Australia, India and Brazil, plus Germany. France, Japan, UK, Korea, Italy, Spain, China, Netherlands etc etc. All around 25% mark. So the max arbitrage you’re getting is 10%. Couple that with incentives like those under the US IRA, and the various R&D credits and patent boxes around the world, and the gap has gone.
Ireland will witness the unwinding effect firstly with a steep increase in tax take as previously offshore (Bermuda and Cayman) profits have been coming onshore since the double Irish structure was killed, and then as amortisation from previous onshoring step ups is exhausted. So they’ll get a bonanza to tide them over. Then things will start dropping as US groups keep their dollars in the US. Already happening in Britain too - and yes, the 25% rate has probably accelerated it in places.
It's a hot sunny day in Seattle . . . except the sunshine is obscured somewhat by the wildfire smoke that is creating affect similar to old-fashioned smog.
Meaning that yours truly is NOT eager to spend much time outside, even though it's starting to get a bit toasty in my humble abode. Seeing as how the air quality in my hood is rated "unhealthy for sensitive groups". And the Great Outdoors of the Great Pacific Northwest smells like your grandma's old fireplace . . . or your granddad's old ashtray . . . or possibly visa versa.
To go on topic for a minute, we have to consider the political mood that we will face in 12 months time. We know the government will still be in the same mire as they have few policies of substance and no ability to implement them or anything else.
Another 12 months of malevolence and corrupt grift and promoting petty brutality isn't going to win back any lost votes, regardless of whether Sir Donkey grows a pair or not.
So the opportunity truly is there for an organised ABC vote. If the Tories suffer millions of their 2019 vote even just sitting on their hands, that could absolutely demolish them in all kinds of exciting places that UNS would say are impossible.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
Why I am a sadder and wiser engine is that I have realised the unspeakable truth - that we can't be trusted to recognise just how shit this country is. Whilst a lot of people voted Brexit because things are shit and they were being promised the moon on a stick, that means they think we just say WE ARE BRITAIN and the forrin do as they are told and we won two world wars and one world cup anyway.
Its crap. Until the English let go of the empire, we will never be able to start healing ourselves because we can't accept that we are a fading former imperial power who are now being surpassed by countries like Poland. We would now be better going all in - the Euro, Schengen, the whole smash.
Craven self-loathing provides no more of an accurate perspective of where we are than flag waving boosterism. We are a medium-sized nation with a number of natural advantages. There's no information-backed reason that we cannot do extremely well as an independent sovereign nation - just a feeling of 'waaaahhhh', typified by your post above.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
Why I am a sadder and wiser engine is that I have realised the unspeakable truth - that we can't be trusted to recognise just how shit this country is. Whilst a lot of people voted Brexit because things are shit and they were being promised the moon on a stick, that means they think we just say WE ARE BRITAIN and the forrin do as they are told and we won two world wars and one world cup anyway.
Its crap. Until the English let go of the empire, we will never be able to start healing ourselves because we can't accept that we are a fading former imperial power who are now being surpassed by countries like Poland. We would now be better going all in - the Euro, Schengen, the whole smash.
If you see being surpassed by Poland as such an abject humilation (in fact they're catching up just as fast with France and Germany), then perhaps you are you the one who has an empire complex and misplaced sense of superiority towards the 'forrin'.
First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
I don't think we have the right to be bigger than anyone. And what is wrong with Poland? Its the little Englanders who think they are superior. In reality Poland and now Slovakia are threatening to overhaul us economically. We're nothing special.
“Flexcit” was the only Brexit that ever made sense. Move over time from EEA toward something else.
It had the “disadvantage” that it was a soft Brexit (in the old sense, ie it retained single market access), and that it didn’t have a clear timetable on it, thus open to criticism that was vulnerable to politically-driven stasis.
This was the one that Alastair Meeks was seriously considering.
He described it as a 'conscious uncoupling' from the EU via the EEC.
It is the one I was pushing for and wrote articles in support of both before and after the vote.
My personal view is that what we have now is better than EU membership but worse than EEA membership (or something like it). I am still of the view that we will eventually move back to an EEA style relationship but that we will never rejoin the EU as a full member. The longer we are out the more that becomes the case as the EU moves further and further from just a trading bloc
But if it was a in (an EU even more further up a mythical state jacksie from just a trading bloc we left) or stay out referendum, can we be sure what the UK electorate of 2037 would actually vote? The actual campaign of 2037 would just be bamboozling ******s - “in” means prevent world war 3 and we all get better off through more trade and less restrictions - a debate no help to voters.
How many voters in area’s run down in 2016 and still run down and even poorer in 2037 will it take to think they have absolutely nothing to lose voting in, to create a narrow 52/48 in win?
My impression of Ireland is that incomes are a lot more middle than in the UK, which could well mean the median is higher because it doesn't have either the blue wall elite or the deprivation common in the north of England / Wales / second-tier cities, and the latter is more numerous. There is no opera house* but there's likely fewer food banks per cap.
*It turns out there is one in Wexford, population 20k.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
Why I am a sadder and wiser engine is that I have realised the unspeakable truth - that we can't be trusted to recognise just how shit this country is. Whilst a lot of people voted Brexit because things are shit and they were being promised the moon on a stick, that means they think we just say WE ARE BRITAIN and the forrin do as they are told and we won two world wars and one world cup anyway.
Its crap. Until the English let go of the empire, we will never be able to start healing ourselves because we can't accept that we are a fading former imperial power who are now being surpassed by countries like Poland. We would now be better going all in - the Euro, Schengen, the whole smash.
If you see being surpassed by Poland as such an abject humilation (in fact they're catching up just as fast with France and Germany), then perhaps you are you the one who has an empire complex and misplaced sense of superiority towards the 'forrin'.
First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Yes - ultimately, the effect of globalisation is that GDP per head and various other metrics will even out.
I recall when Japan’s race from Second to First World was interpreted at them Ruling Ze Vurld in the 21st cent.
Instead they turned into the first Grey Nation - where the historical inevitability of productivity cost catching up with the rest of the world and an aging population combined to stop their progress.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
Why I am a sadder and wiser engine is that I have realised the unspeakable truth - that we can't be trusted to recognise just how shit this country is. Whilst a lot of people voted Brexit because things are shit and they were being promised the moon on a stick, that means they think we just say WE ARE BRITAIN and the forrin do as they are told and we won two world wars and one world cup anyway.
Its crap. Until the English let go of the empire, we will never be able to start healing ourselves because we can't accept that we are a fading former imperial power who are now being surpassed by countries like Poland. We would now be better going all in - the Euro, Schengen, the whole smash.
And some could say that’s all about joining the next Empire. Why?
Empire? At most it is a confederation. Co-operation and collaboration are the ways to get ahead in the economic place we are in. If we haven't yet learned that lesson, the Good News is that we will have more years to slide further behind until we're in a position to change that.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
Why I am a sadder and wiser engine is that I have realised the unspeakable truth - that we can't be trusted to recognise just how shit this country is. Whilst a lot of people voted Brexit because things are shit and they were being promised the moon on a stick, that means they think we just say WE ARE BRITAIN and the forrin do as they are told and we won two world wars and one world cup anyway.
Its crap. Until the English let go of the empire, we will never be able to start healing ourselves because we can't accept that we are a fading former imperial power who are now being surpassed by countries like Poland. We would now be better going all in - the Euro, Schengen, the whole smash.
Craven self-loathing provides no more of an accurate perspective of where we are than flag waving boosterism. We are a medium-sized nation with a number of natural advantages. There's no information-backed reason that we cannot do extremely well as an independent sovereign nation - just a feeling of 'waaaahhhh', typified by your post above.
No information backed reason about from our current reality. But if you ignore that, sure. We're doing great.
Brexit is totally labours fault. If the brown/blair labour party had given us a vote on lisbon as promised there would not have been a brexit referendum. Anyone suggesting it wasn't labours fault is stupid
No it was the fault of the people who voted for it. None of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Let Leave voters have agency.
I agree. I voted Leave, which I now regard as a mistake, and that's on me.
Same here.
Make that 3 of us and like you two now know it was a mistake
Why I am a sadder and wiser engine is that I have realised the unspeakable truth - that we can't be trusted to recognise just how shit this country is. Whilst a lot of people voted Brexit because things are shit and they were being promised the moon on a stick, that means they think we just say WE ARE BRITAIN and the forrin do as they are told and we won two world wars and one world cup anyway.
Its crap. Until the English let go of the empire, we will never be able to start healing ourselves because we can't accept that we are a fading former imperial power who are now being surpassed by countries like Poland. We would now be better going all in - the Euro, Schengen, the whole smash.
If you see being surpassed by Poland as such an abject humilation (in fact they're catching up just as fast with France and Germany), then perhaps you are you the one who has an empire complex and misplaced sense of superiority towards the 'forrin'.
First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
I don't think we have the right to be bigger than anyone. And what is wrong with Poland? Its the little Englanders who think they are superior. In reality Poland and now Slovakia are threatening to overhaul us economically. We're nothing special.
You've just been accused of something you did NOT say, let alone think.
Good evening all. The Mid Beds by election will be a good test of whether voters can choose who is the best option to defeat the Tories. Given that either Labour or the Lib Dems could win, and presumably both parties will be trying to win, a split vote will be a good indicator of whether the Tories can hang on in seats they would otherwise lose. (Sorry if this has been discussed earlier.)
As MoonRabit rightly points out (I think) that development of tactical voting strategies, intentions and actuality among parties, candidates, other interests AND voters, is a work in progress.
Plenty of evidence already in recent by-elections, with the stakes getting wratched upwards as different specific circumstances apply AND the real crunch time of the next general election comes ever closer.
I’m sure not saying Tactical Voting is currently as coherent as “work in progress” - I’m saying I don’t think anyone currently knows what the hells going on, or can say what’s going to happen next.
Romford Stu helped, posting some Mori Government and PM satisfaction ratings from equivalent time before 1997, compared with the latest. that were virtually the same as today. Which leads us to assume 97 all over again.
Incidentally, when not posting here I posted in ConHome, and got into a debate with someone called HYUFD, HY defending the Freedom Of Information act I suspect because it keeps Information Managers in employment, and it went on for days. Longer than Jaundice against Jaundice - in the end I posted a white flag.
Whole point of tactical voting, at least 99.46% of the time as practiced in UK elections, to to vote the bastards out.
With the bastards being the government roughly 19 times out of 20.
So real question at present and for near term for many voters will be, which opposition candidate should I vote for, in my specific constituency, to defeat the Tory?
Whether of not an individual answers that question, to their satisfaction, next week or next year, is NOT as significant, as the simple determination to do so, along with some means of actually doing it, via pre-election polling, blogging, media social and otherwise, canvassing, kibitzing and other personal imputs.
It could be vote to keep in opposition what you (middle ground voter) don’t want in. Like the 2019 and 2015 elections perhaps,
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora's_Box_(British_TV_series)#Part_1._'The_Engineers'_Plot'
How close were the Bolshevik faction to failing, and Liberal Democracy winning out? The Kings could not have come back after agreeing to Democracy? Russia could have become like 1920s Germany?
What's all the more remarkable, is that having seen the decline of the USSR, Europe has chosen to embrace its sclerotic political structures which has led to European economic decline.
That is not to say 'EUSSR', the EU does not have the killings etc associated with the USSR, but it is its own failed ideology of sclerotic political structures all the same.
The UK my have its own issues, but can now debate them in a sovereign Parliament and forge our own path. Sunak is not doing a good job, so maybe the opposition will do better if elected? And if not then a few years later we can keep kicking out our government until we get one that does a good job.
Better than being mired in decline with a sclerotic political structure that is incapable of facing democratic reform.
Similarities:
- Poor state governance
- Hollowing out of enterprise, innovation and creativity in business
- Expensive war
- Unfavourable fuel prices (though for different reasons this time ie sanctions)
- Poor demographics
Differences:
- No overarching ideology to be defeated
- Mafia government rather than politburo
- No Eastern European empire to crumble, so no Solidarinosc or Berlin Wall
- Few obvious independence movements (vs Georgia, Ukraine, Baltics etc in 1991
- Chinese power ready to prop up the regime if it teeters
It’s possible the Chinese willingness to bail out an unreliable partner might wane if the Chinese economy continues to nosedive. But they could benefit from cheap Russian fuel.
Long term even Russia’s hydrocarbons cease to be a valuable resource. Once the world is on its way to full renewables Russia will be stuck selling oil, coal and gas to a dwindling market of predominantly poor countries at a big discount, and there will be no foreign investment coming in to improve efficiency.
They were never that close to failing. The only group that could realistically have defeated them were the Germans, but the last thing they wanted in 1918 was to have to occupy Russia.
The Tsars would not have come back, democracy or no. They were too unpopular. That's why Michael, wisely, refused the throne.
And I'm sure most Russians would have loved their country to be like 1920s Germany and not what it became. But that wasn't on offer.
Wait. Isn’t that Boris dissolving the 2017-2019 Parliament?
In the absence of any meaningful renegotiation he offered an in/out choice, assuming people would, when pushed, plump for in, which would settle the matter (and it wouldn't have done even if they had done so for the same reasons).
It never would have happened had the underlying political concern regarding our relationship with the EU been addressed through meaningful reform.
The diversity of economic outcomes across the EU 27, from dynamism and growth to [sclerotic] decline shows the members are perfectly capable of forging their own paths.
What the EU gives them is common consumer standards, virtually frictionless trade, regional scale levelling up with vast infrastructure investment in the poorer regions, greater geopolitical agency than possible alone - see sanctions on Russia - and a suite of favourable trade deals around the world.
I don't believe for one second that China is ready to step in to prop up the Putin regime if it should teeter. China is not interested in Putin, China is interested in China.
Never forget with China everything is about 'face'. And for China they've not just had to for the last couple of centuries play second-fiddle to the West, but in the East they have had to play second-fiddle to Russia/the USSR. Also China has been revanchist at seeking to regain its lost territory, and much historic Chinese territory is currently sovereign Russian territory. Just as Russia would like Ukraine "back", China would like Eastern Russian territories "back" too.
China isn't seeking a multipolar world where the USA is balanced against China, Russia and other powers. China is seeking to be a new superpower in its own right, and Russia is a threat or potential rival in the East against China.
A diminished, shrunken Russia shorn of aspersions that it is any longer a world power in its own right, that can be adopted within China's own sphere of influence, would suit China just fine. And that's not happening under Putin.
If Putin teeters, China will be preparing to deal with his successor - not step in to save him.
However, by the time the Lord Protector gave the Rump the heavy-ho in 1653, its longest-serving (remaining) MPs had been in office since 1640.
Wheres the Russian Constituent Assembly sat for a bit less time . . . 13 hours.
Very dangerous attitude, but comprehensible and at some level logical.
Stalin's violence was merely the unhinged lashing out of a psychotic. Not only did it have no greater end or purpose but it was actually damaging to the system he was trying to create.
Is that what you want? Because that’s how this politics machine works.
Prior to the EEC becoming the EU, western Europe was the world's leading economic region. Western Europe was combined a bloc that was bigger than America, as Thatcher famously said.
Fast forward three decades, and Thatcher's promised dynamic single market has instead become a failed, sclerotic, region of decline.
Pro-EU people still love to claim the EU is the 'world's biggest market' (which was true when it was founded) despite the fact that America alone let alone NAFTA is streets ahead of Europe now, and the EU is now dropping down into 4th place.
The EU has failed in its promise. The fact that you don't like Brexiteers, doesn't make the EU's economic decline and failure any more real.
In 1992 (so post-reunification) Germany had a GDP per capita higher than Americas, and 50% higher than Australia's.
Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis, and American GDP per capita isn't behind Germany's anymore, its 40% higher.
Fast forward three decades under EU sclerosis and Germany isn't 50% ahead of Australia anymore on GDP per capita, Australia are 20% ahead of Germany instead.
And considering Germany had the opportunity to bring Eastern Germany up to western standards, that decline is all the more stark. But its happened in every developed western European nations under eurosclerosis.
Tony Blair was one of the worst PMs ever for younger generations.
Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham
In 1785, after American Revolution, the North Carolina Assembly named Rockingham County (seat Wentworth) in his honor of Lord R's pro-Americanism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockingham_County,_North_Carolina
Do we think voters only know their tactical vote with 2 weeks to go, or already know? I think they already know but pollsters are not getting it. So we need another term for instance where voters withhold tactical intent from polling.
Voters “not exposing their tactical titties” just yet? A drift from lab and green in polls to Lib Dem’s might be voters beginning to expose a bit more cleavage? Does that work? 🫤
1. Against Man City and Liverpool Toon have shown a worrying lack of cutting edge in the final third. Lack of composure, poor decision making, and a lack of team coherence when coming forward.
2. Darwin’s finishing was magnificent today. That should give him the belief to kick on. 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Y_5a9OStI
But yes, in the runup to 1997, there was a definite Lab to Lib drift, but it only really kicked in once the campaign proper started.
The outlier in your EU-US comparisons is the US. It has outperformed almost every large developed nation with the exception of Korea. It’s outpaced EU and non-EU European states, and massively outpaced Japan. Japan from being one of the richest countries on earth would now be a middle ranking country in the EU on GDP per capita, around the Italy level. The US benefits from dynamic immigration, strong demographics, a well developed stock market and VC ecosystem, continental scale labour market all speaking the same language, and its own sources of cheap fuel. The EU has some but not all of that.
I’m not arguing the EU has the power to transform an economy that doesn’t want to be transformed. But the travails of some European countries (including us during our membership) and the successes of others are largely down to choices those countries make. EU governance is nowhere near powerful enough to have the sort of effect you describe. The one thing it is able to do is remove trading and migration barriers, and that’s a very helpful thing.
True, the world has moved on in past quarter-century. But still think, that the voters of 2024 will prove capable, somehow, of figuring things out yet again.
One perhaps major difference (but y'all tell me) is increased risk that bad actors (say one of PB regular weekend visitors) deliberately misleading voters.
That is, beyond traditional efforts of multi-party bar-chart enthusiasts!
The US is not the outlier, Japan is, its demographic decline and unique issues with deflation and debt are its own story.
You don't need to compare just the US, but look at other non-EU, non-Japanese developed nations. I mentioned Australia too, or you can look at New Zealand, or Canada or Korea, or others.
The simple reality is that Europe is a region in decline. Apart from Ireland, who have grown by being European HQ for Apple and other American firms with only a tiny local population, there is no developed European nation that has grown matching other developed nations standards.
There have been no successes in the past three decades, amongst any developed major European nations.
Holy Writ purged of the Woke bits, that ruined the Roman Empire, and are ruining America & the West today.
Such as Sermon on the Mount, turn the other cheek, etc., etc., etc.
With expurgated remarks of Jesus in red.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun_economics
(Irelands's economic growth is nonetheless impressive, but the average irishman has no more income than the average briton)
Plenty of evidence already in recent by-elections, with the stakes getting wratched upwards as different specific circumstances apply AND the real crunch time of the next general election comes ever closer.
Which is the problem with evangelical Christians, they're almost all Paulians and pay no regard to the teachings of Christ.
Evangelical Christians by and large have no interest in "woke" nonsense like "its easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter the kingdom of god", or "let he who is without sin cast the first stone", or spending time with the poor and prostitutes, or turning over tables etc (all woke nonsense, who'd be interested in that).
Stuff Christ never spoke about, like pre-marital sex, or homosexuality, well now that's interesting to them.
Third Millennium's answer to Tuperware!!!
Romford Stu helped, posting some Mori Government and PM satisfaction ratings from equivalent time before 1997, compared with the latest. that were virtually the same as today. Which leads us to assume 97 all over again.
Incidentally, when not posting here I posted in ConHome, and got into a debate with someone called HYUFD, HY defending the Freedom Of Information act I suspect because it keeps Information Managers in employment, and it went on for days. Longer than Jaundice against Jaundice - in the end I posted a white flag.
Yet worthy of honorable mention nevertheless.
15 point lead with BMG.
*completely unelected by anyone, of course.
The median household income (excluding corporate profits) in Ireland is also way above that in the UK. The only measure where they have performed similarly is consumer spending. There is definitely distortion - I know, my job largely involves helping multinationals decide where to put stuff - but it doesn’t eliminate the outperformance vs the UK or other major economies,
The UK’s economy is also distorted by foreign (largely US) inflows of capital and corporate profits. Nobody has measured it, though the treasury are going through an exercise at the moment attempting to, but it probably explains why our GDP per capita is at or slightly above France but our median household income is way way below.
My personal view is that what we have now is better than EU membership but worse than EEA membership (or something like it). I am still of the view that we will eventually move back to an EEA style relationship but that we will never rejoin the EU as a full member. The longer we are out the more that becomes the case as the EU moves further and further from just a trading bloc
According to those who actually were around him, Stalin believed deeply and utterly in the Leninist Communist dream.
He also believed that he was the only one with the strength, Will etc to Save The Country.
Which meant he rationalised any vague idea of the slightest opposition as treason.
So can’t be compared with other polls to say Tory recovery - indeed the headline being used is no sign of recovery, it’s statis in their sequence ”i” are “interpreting” as time running out for Tories.
Its crap. Until the English let go of the empire, we will never be able to start healing ourselves because we can't accept that we are a fading former imperial power who are now being surpassed by countries like Poland. We would now be better going all in - the Euro, Schengen, the whole smash.
Lab 44 per cent (no change) compared with the Tories’ 29 per cent (up two points), a 15-point lead.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats slid back to 10 per cent, down from 14 per cent last month.
With the bastards being the government roughly 19 times out of 20.
So real question at present and for near term for many voters will be, which opposition candidate should I vote for, in my specific constituency, to defeat the Tory?
Whether of not an individual answers that question, to their satisfaction, next week or next year, is NOT as significant, as the simple determination to do so, along with some means of actually doing it, via pre-election polling, blogging, media social and otherwise, canvassing, kibitzing and other personal imputs.
First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
I am suitably chastised :-)
That alone needn’t be a problem, but the arbitrage has been wiped out on the other side. When I started doing what was then called “tax efficient supply chain management” you had effective rates around 8-12% in several small countries and zero in various havens plus UAE. Versus rates above 30% and sometimes as high as 40% in the US, Japan, France, Italy and elsewhere.
Then they all started inexorably dropping. Now all the big outbound investment countries are at around 25% except the likes of Australia, India and Brazil, plus Germany. France, Japan, UK, Korea, Italy, Spain, China, Netherlands etc etc. All around 25% mark. So the max arbitrage you’re getting is 10%. Couple that with incentives like those under the US IRA, and the various R&D credits and patent boxes around the world, and the gap has gone.
Ireland will witness the unwinding effect firstly with a steep increase in tax take as previously offshore (Bermuda and Cayman) profits have been coming onshore since the double Irish structure was killed, and then as amortisation from previous onshoring step ups is exhausted. So they’ll get a bonanza to tide them over. Then things will start dropping as US groups keep their dollars in the US. Already happening in Britain too - and yes, the 25% rate has probably accelerated it in places.
Meaning that yours truly is NOT eager to spend much time outside, even though it's starting to get a bit toasty in my humble abode. Seeing as how the air quality in my hood is rated "unhealthy for sensitive groups". And the Great Outdoors of the Great Pacific Northwest smells like your grandma's old fireplace . . . or your granddad's old ashtray . . . or possibly visa versa.
Another 12 months of malevolence and corrupt grift and promoting petty brutality isn't going to win back any lost votes, regardless of whether Sir Donkey grows a pair or not.
So the opportunity truly is there for an organised ABC vote. If the Tories suffer millions of their 2019 vote even just sitting on their hands, that could absolutely demolish them in all kinds of exciting places that UNS would say are impossible.
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/06/08/household-savings-rate-falls-back-to-pre-pandemic-level/
How many voters in area’s run down in 2016 and still run down and even poorer in 2037 will it take to think they have absolutely nothing to lose voting in, to create a narrow 52/48 in win?
*It turns out there is one in Wexford, population 20k.
I recall when Japan’s race from Second to First World was interpreted at them Ruling Ze Vurld in the 21st cent.
Instead they turned into the first Grey Nation - where the historical inevitability of productivity cost catching up with the rest of the world and an aging population combined to stop their progress.
Latest hit-and-run by PB serial sophist.