Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet
If Braverman represents "mainstream Tory opinion" then they deserve to lose, and can't fuck off quickly enough...
Well that is how democracy works - if people don't like a set of ideas, they can vote for someone else. What shouldn't happen is they vote for Tories and they get a bunch of useless social democrats who are considered less likely to cut tax than the Labour Party. If they were so confident in the electoral appeal of their political ideas, one wonders why they need to infest a Conservative Party that has people and ideas so offensive to their sensibilities.
Austin Carter, who was a 26-year-old security officer and a member of the Army Reserves at the time of his arrest in December 2022, admitted in a plea agreement that he “unlawfully and knowingly combined, conspired, and agreed with his co-defendant,” Edward Kelley, to kill FBI personnel.
Carter admitted that he provided a cooperating witness “with a list of FBI employees that CARTER received from KELLEY” on or about Dec. 13, 2022, and that Carter instructed the cooperating witness “to memorize the FBI employees identified on the list and then burn the list.” Kelley and Carter “discussed plans to attack the FBI Field Office in Knoxville, Tennessee” and that the purpose of the conspiracy was “to retaliate against government conduct,” Carter admitted.
A court filing from December said that the list Kelley provided included about 37 names of law enforcement personnel who worked on Kelley’s Jan. 6 case, and identified which officers were present when Kelley was arrested...
What shouldn't happen is they vote for Tories and they get a bunch of useless social democrats who are considered less likely to cut tax than the Labour Party.
The current government have the highest taxes not because they are social democrats, it's because they are Brexiteers
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posWe shouldh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Dude, get over it. You sound like some pathetic Remoaner, but worse.
We should never get over the fact a large part of the Establishment tried to overturn a democratic vote that they promised would be honoured. Of course, it is convenient for that same Establishment if we DO forget. Ditto the Trumpites and January 6
I note that Starmer is now totally allergic to even discussing Brexit. This is why. He did his best to demolish democracy and get the biggest vote in British history annulled: by a simple Decree of the Posh
That only holds if you don't believe in the supremacy of parliament. If you do - as many have over the years from across the political spectrum - then your argument simply evaporates. Having said that, I was always against a second vote with 'Cancel Brexit' as an option, as it would give too many people the serious hump and make them ripe for exploitation by the forces of darkness.
Let him alone. It’s one of yesterday’s arguments that really doesn’t matter that much.
Were YOU a second voter?
Let us have honesty
I remember when Alastair Meeks momentarily dallied with a 2nd vote. For months he'd been absolutely against it, because of course the idea is monstrous, dangerous and wrong, but for one or two hours he entertained it - but then to his credit he realised it was immoral, and he repudiated it, and he resigned himself - angrily - to Brexit
As I said, obsessed. Give it up; you’ll be happier.
Ah, so you WERE a Second Voter. Thanks
Ah, so you are a sad - and ill informed - obsessive. No thanks.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posWe shouldh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Dude, get over it. You sound like some pathetic Remoaner, but worse.
We should never get over the fact a large part of the Establishment tried to overturn a democratic vote that they promised would be honoured. Of course, it is convenient for that same Establishment if we DO forget. Ditto the Trumpites and January 6
I note that Starmer is now totally allergic to even discussing Brexit. This is why. He did his best to demolish democracy and get the biggest vote in British history annulled: by a simple Decree of the Posh
Having a second vote isn't really the same as having a decree though is it? And most of the really posh people were Leave.
It's also worth remembering that the 2nd Vote stuff would have never gained much traction outside those fighting a reverse UKIP campaign to get us back in someday if Brexiteers had looked like they knew what they wanted and what they were doing. Or had been prepared to compromise to get us officially out and then argue about whether to go further later.
The problem became that after the 2017 election (where the people had their say) the makeup of parliament meant that the kind of Brexit agreement that might have passed would have angered the Tory right and split the party. So we ended up in zombieland - with no Brexit May or then Johnson would put forward able to pass - and a 2nd Vote emerging as one method of breaking out of that as the only real method an anti-Brexit government could annul the first vote and claim some legitimacy.
If Brexit's leaders had displayed an ounce of competence and realism after 2016, it would have stayed a weird fantasy of people called Jolyon, or something some Remainers dreamed of one day, rather than a serious option.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posWe shouldh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Dude, get over it. You sound like some pathetic Remoaner, but worse.
We should never get over the fact a large part of the Establishment tried to overturn a democratic vote that they promised would be honoured. Of course, it is convenient for that same Establishment if we DO forget. Ditto the Trumpites and January 6
I note that Starmer is now totally allergic to even discussing Brexit. This is why. He did his best to demolish democracy and get the biggest vote in British history annulled: by a simple Decree of the Posh
That only holds if you don't believe in the supremacy of parliament. If you do - as many have over the years from across the political spectrum - then your argument simply evaporates. Having said that, I was always against a second vote with 'Cancel Brexit' as an option, as it would give too many people the serious hump and make them ripe for exploitation by the forces of darkness.
Let him alone. It’s one of yesterday’s arguments that really doesn’t matter that much.
Were YOU a second voter?
Let us have honesty
I remember when Alastair Meeks momentarily dallied with a 2nd vote. For months he'd been absolutely against it, because of course the idea is monstrous, dangerous and wrong, but for one or two hours he entertained it - but then to his credit he realised it was immoral, and he repudiated it, and he resigned himself - angrily - to Brexit
As I said, obsessed. Give it up; you’ll be happier.
Ah, so you WERE a Second Voter. Thanks
Ah, so you are a sad - and ill informed - obsessive. No thanks.
Well you would deny it if you weren't, so that's a Yes. You were a 2nd Voter
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Dude, get over it. You sound like some pathetic Remoaner, but worse.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posWe shouldh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Dude, get over it. You sound like some pathetic Remoaner, but worse.
We should never get over the fact a large part of the Establishment tried to overturn a democratic vote that they promised would be honoured. Of course, it is convenient for that same Establishment if we DO forget. Ditto the Trumpites and January 6
I note that Starmer is now totally allergic to even discussing Brexit. This is why. He did his best to demolish democracy and get the biggest vote in British history annulled: by a simple Decree of the Posh
That only holds if you don't believe in the supremacy of parliament. If you do - as many have over the years from across the political spectrum - then your argument simply evaporates. Having said that, I was always against a second vote with 'Cancel Brexit' as an option, as it would give too many people the serious hump and make them ripe for exploitation by the forces of darkness.
Let him alone. It’s one of yesterday’s arguments that really doesn’t matter that much.
Were YOU a second voter?
Let us have honesty
I remember when Alastair Meeks momentarily dallied with a 2nd vote. For months he'd been absolutely against it, because of course the idea is monstrous, dangerous and wrong, but for one or two hours he entertained it - but then to his credit he realised it was immoral, and he repudiated it, and he resigned himself - angrily - to Brexit
As I said, obsessed. Give it up; you’ll be happier.
Ah, so you WERE a Second Voter. Thanks
Ah, so you are a sad - and ill informed - obsessive. No thanks.
Well you would deny it if you weren't, so that's a Yes. You were a 2nd Voter
Thanks
Your name has gone in the little black book @Nigelb
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Dude, get over it. You sound like some pathetic Remoaner, but worse.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
That is utter rubbish. I thought almost everything in the 2019 Conservative manifesto was wrong. I didn’t vote for its implementation and I would be happy for there to be another general election where I can vote them out. I don’t feel morally obliged to wait until everything in their 2019 referendum is implemented. Why should I not feel the same about the Brexit referendum? Politics doesn’t stop because something is badged as a referendum instead of a general election.
Because there are elections every 4/5 years, and the referendum was sold as a once in a generation vote
There were 3 elections in 4 years between 2015 and 2019. People thought they were electing David Cameron for a term of 5 years but that turned out not to be the case. As I said politics doesn’t stop regardless of what people think or are told. I don’t understand why we are supposed to accept that the Brexit referendum should uniquely be preserved in amber for a generation.
Now that Brexit has been enacted I see no democratic argument against another referendum if that is what people want. What was important was that it was enacted before it was put to the question again.
Obviously I would vote against rejoining and personally I think another campaign would, be bloody stupid given the uncertainty it would generate going forward. It would set the precedent for new votes every few years as the popultion's view changed which would mean the EU would never be sure of our position. But if that was what peolpe wanted then that would be the way it wold be.
Yes, now it’s been enacted it’s fair enough to have another vote if the demand is there.
Of course. We could have another vote tomorrow if people want and parliament thus decides. Because we have Brexited
The idea we could cancel the Brexit vote without ever enacting it in the first place is utterly despicable, and those who advanced it are fucking morons who should be ashamed. The only possible excuse is total stupidity
Such an anti-democratic act would have permanently smashed our democracy in absolutely calamitous ways. For a start, who would ever vote again? Why bother, when the posh people can just ignore your vote, if they don't like it?
Anyone who pretends not to grasp this is contemptible
It’s the same ball park as Trump refusing to accept he lost, and they were full of outrage about that
"the Remain campaign from 2016-2019 was, indeed, a polite, elongated British version of what unfolded in Washington DC a year ago. It was a stupid and dangerous assault on democracy. We just skipped the buffalo-horn helmets."
People had every right to protest against Brexit. ultimately though it came down to MPs.
The January 6 protest was about stopping the peaceful transfer of power to the duly elected President. I don't see a comparison at all.
People had every right to protest against Biden. ultimately though it came down to Congress.
Biden was only "elected" by the fact he'd won an election and the principle that Congress would honour that election. Those opposed to Biden held onto the principle that the supremacy of Congress meant that election win could be overridden by Congress. Brexit was voted for by the fact it had won an election and the principle that Parliament would honour that election. Those opposed to Brexit held onto the principle that the supremacy of Parliament meant that election win could be overridden by Parliament.
They're the same thing.
Did you miss the part where people invaded the capitol and wanted to lynch Mike Pence? Perhaps you think that was merely performative but I don't remember anything similar from the FBPE crowd.
If there'd been no lynch mob and Congress had voted to strike down Biden's election win as some wanted, would that have been acceptable in your eyes?
That's no different in principle or in practice to what those trying to cancel Brexit were doing.
If we have a vote, that vote should be respected. Even if the vote is in favour of something you dislike, democracy is too important to throw away.
It was an advisory referendum. I'm not aware of US Presidential elections generally being regarded as advisory. I voted remain, then thought once the vote came in that we better leave. I didn't agree with the 2nd referendum crowd but they were entitled to protest. That right does not extend to occupying Parliament and threatening to kill people.
A more interesting point would be pro-Brexit people protesting if Parliament had decided to can Brexit. Again they would be free to express themselves but not undermine Parliament. It would be for voters to kick MPs out at the next election.
If your point is that the stop Brexit/2nd referendum protests were wrong in the same way the 6 January protests were then you have half a point. But those protests were seen as outrageous for the violence and intimidation they spawned.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
That is utter rubbish. I thought almost everything in the 2019 Conservative manifesto was wrong. I didn’t vote for its implementation and I would be happy for there to be another general election where I can vote them out. I don’t feel morally obliged to wait until everything in their 2019 referendum is implemented. Why should I not feel the same about the Brexit referendum? Politics doesn’t stop because something is badged as a referendum instead of a general election.
Because there are elections every 4/5 years, and the referendum was sold as a once in a generation vote
There were 3 elections in 4 years between 2015 and 2019. People thought they were electing David Cameron for a term of 5 years but that turned out not to be the case. As I said politics doesn’t stop regardless of what people think or are told. I don’t understand why we are supposed to accept that the Brexit referendum should uniquely be preserved in amber for a generation.
Now that Brexit has been enacted I see no democratic argument against another referendum if that is what people want. What was important was that it was enacted before it was put to the question again.
Obviously I would vote against rejoining and personally I think another campaign would, be bloody stupid given the uncertainty it would generate going forward. It would set the precedent for new votes every few years as the popultion's view changed which would mean the EU would never be sure of our position. But if that was what peolpe wanted then that would be the way it wold be.
Yes, now it’s been enacted it’s fair enough to have another vote if the demand is there.
Of course. We could have another vote tomorrow if people want and parliament thus decides. Because we have Brexited
The idea we could cancel the Brexit vote without ever enacting it in the first place is utterly despicable, and those who advanced it are fucking morons who should be ashamed. The only possible excuse is total stupidity
Such an anti-democratic act would have permanently smashed our democracy in absolutely calamitous ways. For a start, who would ever vote again? Why bother, when the posh people can just ignore your vote, if they don't like it?
Anyone who pretends not to grasp this is contemptible
It’s the same ball park as Trump refusing to accept he lost, and they were full of outrage about that
"the Remain campaign from 2016-2019 was, indeed, a polite, elongated British version of what unfolded in Washington DC a year ago. It was a stupid and dangerous assault on democracy. We just skipped the buffalo-horn helmets."
People had every right to protest against Brexit. ultimately though it came down to MPs.
The January 6 protest was about stopping the peaceful transfer of power to the duly elected President. I don't see a comparison at all.
People had every right to protest against Biden. ultimately though it came down to Congress.
Biden was only "elected" by the fact he'd won an election and the principle that Congress would honour that election. Those opposed to Biden held onto the principle that the supremacy of Congress meant that election win could be overridden by Congress. Brexit was voted for by the fact it had won an election and the principle that Parliament would honour that election. Those opposed to Brexit held onto the principle that the supremacy of Parliament meant that election win could be overridden by Parliament.
They're the same thing.
It was democracy all the way through. The difficulties with Brexit stemmed almost entirely from the messy 2017 election and the various incompatible Brexit policies in parties's manifestos. Those manifestos, and particularly the ambiguity in the Tory manifesto (no deal better than bad deal etc) gave almost every single MP very good justification that their personal decisions met a democratic mandate. There was no single version of Brexit for anyone was democratically obligated to vote.
You may doubt some of the sincerity, but it's hard to draw straight lines from one step to another saying it was anything other than very democratic.
After that there were various democratic ways of breaking that impasse, another referendum was one, or the general election that ultimately did break the impasse. The feeling that Brexit ought to be delivered was prevalent even amongst some remainers and that feeling of obligation would have been present in any democratic mechanism that happened - so the anti-democratic argument would have been factored into any democratic vote proposed.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posWe shouldh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Dude, get over it. You sound like some pathetic Remoaner, but worse.
We should never get over the fact a large part of the Establishment tried to overturn a democratic vote that they promised would be honoured. Of course, it is convenient for that same Establishment if we DO forget. Ditto the Trumpites and January 6
I note that Starmer is now totally allergic to even discussing Brexit. This is why. He did his best to demolish democracy and get the biggest vote in British history annulled: by a simple Decree of the Posh
That only holds if you don't believe in the supremacy of parliament. If you do - as many have over the years from across the political spectrum - then your argument simply evaporates. Having said that, I was always against a second vote with 'Cancel Brexit' as an option, as it would give too many people the serious hump and make them ripe for exploitation by the forces of darkness.
Let him alone. It’s one of yesterday’s arguments that really doesn’t matter that much.
Were YOU a second voter?
Let us have honesty
I remember when Alastair Meeks momentarily dallied with a 2nd vote. For months he'd been absolutely against it, because of course the idea is monstrous, dangerous and wrong, but for one or two hours he entertained it - but then to his credit he realised it was immoral, and he repudiated it, and he resigned himself - angrily - to Brexit
As I said, obsessed. Give it up; you’ll be happier.
Ah, so you WERE a Second Voter. Thanks
Ah, so you are a sad - and ill informed - obsessive. No thanks.
Well you would deny it if you weren't, so that's a Yes. You were a 2nd Voter
Thanks
Your name has gone in the little black book @Nigelb
If he were really that obsessive he could spend a couple of hours with google and check for himself. But it’s just Friday night fun.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posWe shouldh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Dude, get over it. You sound like some pathetic Remoaner, but worse.
We should never get over the fact a large part of the Establishment tried to overturn a democratic vote that they promised would be honoured. Of course, it is convenient for that same Establishment if we DO forget. Ditto the Trumpites and January 6
I note that Starmer is now totally allergic to even discussing Brexit. This is why. He did his best to demolish democracy and get the biggest vote in British history annulled: by a simple Decree of the Posh
That only holds if you don't believe in the supremacy of parliament. If you do - as many have over the years from across the political spectrum - then your argument simply evaporates. Having said that, I was always against a second vote with 'Cancel Brexit' as an option, as it would give too many people the serious hump and make them ripe for exploitation by the forces of darkness.
Let him alone. It’s one of yesterday’s arguments that really doesn’t matter that much.
Were YOU a second voter?
Let us have honesty
I remember when Alastair Meeks momentarily dallied with a 2nd vote. For months he'd been absolutely against it, because of course the idea is monstrous, dangerous and wrong, but for one or two hours he entertained it - but then to his credit he realised it was immoral, and he repudiated it, and he resigned himself - angrily - to Brexit
As I said, obsessed. Give it up; you’ll be happier.
Ah, so you WERE a Second Voter. Thanks
Ah, so you are a sad - and ill informed - obsessive. No thanks.
Well you would deny it if you weren't, so that's a Yes. You were a 2nd Voter
Thanks
Your name has gone in the little black book @Nigelb
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posWe shouldh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Dude, get over it. You sound like some pathetic Remoaner, but worse.
We should never get over the fact a large part of the Establishment tried to overturn a democratic vote that they promised would be honoured. Of course, it is convenient for that same Establishment if we DO forget. Ditto the Trumpites and January 6
I note that Starmer is now totally allergic to even discussing Brexit. This is why. He did his best to demolish democracy and get the biggest vote in British history annulled: by a simple Decree of the Posh
Having a second vote isn't really the same as having a decree though is it? And most of the really posh people were Leave.
It's also worth remembering that the 2nd Vote stuff would have never gained much traction outside those fighting a reverse UKIP campaign to get us back in someday if Brexiteers had looked like they knew what they wanted and what they were doing. Or had been prepared to compromise to get us officially out and then argue about whether to go further later.
The problem became that after the 2017 election (where the people had their say) the makeup of parliament meant that the kind of Brexit agreement that might have passed would have angered the Tory right and split the party. So we ended up in zombieland - with no Brexit May or then Johnson would put forward able to pass - and a 2nd Vote emerging as one method of breaking out of that as the only real method an anti-Brexit government could annul the first vote and claim some legitimacy.
If Brexit's leaders had displayed an ounce of competence and realism after 2016, it would have stayed a weird fantasy of people called Jolyon, or something some Remainers dreamed of one day, rather than a serious option.
The problem with using the 2017 GE is we had people like Sir Keir campaigning on honouring the referendum result ‘as a point of principle’ before it, then agitating to rerun the vote and campaign for remain ‘as a point of principle’ afterwards.
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
If the Tories stood on a manifesto of Leave and won, they could legitimately overturn a prior remain vote, yes, absobloodylutely.
Well this has been some week. 1,000 miles of driving, shot 2 videos and edited one, big client progress made, successful baiting of anti-EV mob to explode my YouTube channel, and our shop is ready to open for the first time at 10am tomorrow.
Haven't finished working before 10pm any night this week - with a 1am finish Wednesday morning. I'm largely just doing back office management for the shop (its wifey's project), but there's been a chunk of that and likely more to come.
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
If the Tories stood on a manifesto of Leave and won, it would legitimately overturn a prior remain vote, yes.
So on that basis any referendum - even the biggest vote in British history - can simply be overturned in the following election, without the referendum result ever being enacted? So what exactly is the point in referendums? Especially referendums where the prime minister solemnly promises, to the British people:
"When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum"
Do you not see the nightmare landscape whereto you would lead us? Does it not occur to you that something wicked that way waits?
Why should the Scots ever bother voting in another Sindyref if the result can simply be overturned by some other election?? And Scotland never goes independent?
It is difficult to discern whether you are malign or stupid, or some toxic combination of both
These two clips of Sir Keir, the Republican who accepted a knighthood, the vegetarian who eats animals, the commoner who went to a fee paying school, are incompatible with his image as Honest John
One taken when he was campaigning to be elected in 2017, the other when he was Shadow Brexit Minister in 2019
No wonder Starmer is utterly averse to discussing Brexit in any way. Wow
There are so many examples of him saying one thing then disagreeing with himself afterwards. This Brexit nonsense, the leadership pledges, whether men have cervix’s etc etc In a campaign they’ll all be thrown at him.
Versus Boris his staid but upstanding schtick against Boris’s lying charlatan would have been in pieces
Unfortunately now he’s up against Rishi Sunak, with a twenty point head start
I think it’s fair to say that Nate Silver’s election guru status jumped the shark a little while ago.
It's probably foolish to think a NYC mayor will successfully translate into being a national political figure, but I still think Eric Adams would be in my top 5 for "who will be the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden?". https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1478138124425482240
Though TBF, I wasn’t predicting the FBI seizing Adam’s phones (a sad haul nowhere close to Giuliani’s 18) in pursuit of a corruption charge, either.
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revoker, that was silly. If a party promising a second vote won an election they would absolutely have a mandate to hold a confirmatory referendum. And the answer might well have been leave again, in which case fair enough. If not, then wouldn’t it make sense to change direction?
I sense the twitching, noisy death rattle of a failed idea, government and ideology. Raging against the dying of the light. Compassion for the soon to be departed is the kindest response.
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
If the Tories stood on a manifesto of Leave and won, it would legitimately overturn a prior remain vote, yes.
So on that basis any referendum - even the biggest vote in British history - can simply be overturned in the following election, without the referendum result ever being enacted? So what exactly is the point in referendums? Especially referendums where the prime minister solemnly promises, to the British people:
"When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum"
Do you not see the nightmare landscape whereto you would lead us? Does it not occur to you that something wicked that way waits?
Why should the Scots ever bother voting in another Sindyref if the result can simply be overturned by some other election?? And Scotland never goes independent?
It is difficult to discern whether you are malign or stupid, or some toxic combination of both
I'm not sure referenda are generally a good idea. Perhaps only for major constitutional changes. Does that include leaving the EU? There is obviously a tussle between referenda and having sovereignty of Parliament. I would always side with the latter but on issues of national independence aka where Parliament would no longer be sovereign a referendum does make sense.
Part of the problem is that the sovereign parliament is a kind of elective dictatorship where a government with a majority does what it wants and those governments have in recent years been elected by a smaller and smaller proportion of the electorate.
Well this has been some week. 1,000 miles of driving, shot 2 videos and edited one, big client progress made, successful baiting of anti-EV mob to explode my YouTube channel, and our shop is ready to open for the first time at 10am tomorrow.
Haven't finished working before 10pm any night this week - with a 1am finish Wednesday morning. I'm largely just doing back office management for the shop (its wifey's project), but there's been a chunk of that and likely more to come.
I don't feel tired - more like exhilarated.
Have you made enough money from your YouTube channel this week to pay for your £500 deposit for next year?
I sense the twitching, noisy death rattle of a failed idea, government and ideology. Raging against the dying of the light. Compassion for the soon to be departed is the kindest response.
Well this has been some week. 1,000 miles of driving, shot 2 videos and edited one, big client progress made, successful baiting of anti-EV mob to explode my YouTube channel, and our shop is ready to open for the first time at 10am tomorrow.
Haven't finished working before 10pm any night this week - with a 1am finish Wednesday morning. I'm largely just doing back office management for the shop (its wifey's project), but there's been a chunk of that and likely more to come.
I don't feel tired - more like exhilarated.
Have you made enough money from your YouTube channel this week to pay for your £500 deposit for next year?
£500 deposit? For...? Looking at how November is going I could do £500 this month alone.
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
If the Tories stood on a manifesto of Leave and won, it would legitimately overturn a prior remain vote, yes.
So on that basis any referendum - even the biggest vote in British history - can simply be overturned in the following election, without the referendum result ever being enacted? So what exactly is the point in referendums? Especially referendums where the prime minister solemnly promises, to the British people:
"When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum"
Do you not see the nightmare landscape whereto you would lead us? Does it not occur to you that something wicked that way waits?
Why should the Scots ever bother voting in another Sindyref if the result can simply be overturned by some other election?? And Scotland never goes independent?
It is difficult to discern whether you are malign or stupid, or some toxic combination of both
The democratic safety mechanism here is that the party who reneged on the referendum would probably be slaughtered at the next election. If they're not it probably suggests the electorate had a change of heart and came to agree with them. Either way democracy prevails. Happy days!
Well this has been some week. 1,000 miles of driving, shot 2 videos and edited one, big client progress made, successful baiting of anti-EV mob to explode my YouTube channel, and our shop is ready to open for the first time at 10am tomorrow.
Haven't finished working before 10pm any night this week - with a 1am finish Wednesday morning. I'm largely just doing back office management for the shop (its wifey's project), but there's been a chunk of that and likely more to come.
I don't feel tired - more like exhilarated.
Have you made enough money from your YouTube channel this week to pay for your £500 deposit for next year?
£500 deposit? For...? Looking at how November is going I could do £500 this month alone.
For your possible electoral opportunity which you referenced the other day? (And where I think you could get a top 2 outcome)
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
If the Tories stood on a manifesto of Leave and won, it would legitimately overturn a prior remain vote, yes.
So on that basis any referendum - even the biggest vote in British history - can simply be overturned in the following election, without the referendum result ever being enacted? So what exactly is the point in referendums? Especially referendums where the prime minister solemnly promises, to the British people:
"When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum"
Do you not see the nightmare landscape whereto you would lead us? Does it not occur to you that something wicked that way waits?
Why should the Scots ever bother voting in another Sindyref if the result can simply be overturned by some other election?? And Scotland never goes independent?
It is difficult to discern whether you are malign or stupid, or some toxic combination of both
That's such total bollocks it's hard to know where to begin.
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
If the Tories stood on a manifesto of Leave and won, they could legitimately overturn a prior remain vote, yes, absobloodylutely.
The party management to get that into the manifesto in the face of a referendum vote and facing the country saying you would go contrary to it would be interesting and quite obviously part of the democratic shake down.
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
If the Tories stood on a manifesto of Leave and won, it would legitimately overturn a prior remain vote, yes.
So on that basis any referendum - even the biggest vote in British history - can simply be overturned in the following election, without the referendum result ever being enacted? So what exactly is the point in referendums? Especially referendums where the prime minister solemnly promises, to the British people:
"When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum"
Do you not see the nightmare landscape whereto you would lead us? Does it not occur to you that something wicked that way waits?
Why should the Scots ever bother voting in another Sindyref if the result can simply be overturned by some other election?? And Scotland never goes independent?
It is difficult to discern whether you are malign or stupid, or some toxic combination of both
I'm not sure referenda are generally a good idea. Perhaps only for major constitutional changes. Does that include leaving the EU? There is obviously a tussle between referenda and having sovereignty of Parliament. I would always side with the latter but on issues of national independence aka where Parliament would no longer be sovereign a referendum does make sense.
Part of the problem is that the sovereign parliament is a kind of elective dictatorship where a government with a majority does what it wants and those governments have in recent years been elected by a smaller and smaller proportion of the electorate.
If we had a proper written constitution, referendums should be used for changes to that constitution. That would include, to my mind, leaving the EU (and indeed joining the EU), changes to the voting system, independence for part of the UK, abolition/replacement of the HoL. Any such referendums should, in future, require a minimum of 50% of the entire electorate voting for the change or a two-thirds super majority, if either threshold is met the constitutional change passes.
Well this has been some week. 1,000 miles of driving, shot 2 videos and edited one, big client progress made, successful baiting of anti-EV mob to explode my YouTube channel, and our shop is ready to open for the first time at 10am tomorrow.
Haven't finished working before 10pm any night this week - with a 1am finish Wednesday morning. I'm largely just doing back office management for the shop (its wifey's project), but there's been a chunk of that and likely more to come.
I don't feel tired - more like exhilarated.
Have you made enough money from your YouTube channel this week to pay for your £500 deposit for next year?
£500 deposit? For...? Looking at how November is going I could do £500 this month alone.
For your possible electoral opportunity which you referenced the other day? (And where I think you could get a top 2 outcome)
Ah got you. Candidates don't pay the deposit, the party does.
Top 2? I know that the LDs used to have a good presence in the NE, but the emphasis is "used to"...
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
If the Tories stood on a manifesto of Leave and won, it would legitimately overturn a prior remain vote, yes.
So on that basis any referendum - even the biggest vote in British history - can simply be overturned in the following election, without the referendum result ever being enacted? So what exactly is the point in referendums? Especially referendums where the prime minister solemnly promises, to the British people:
"When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum"
Do you not see the nightmare landscape whereto you would lead us? Does it not occur to you that something wicked that way waits?
Why should the Scots ever bother voting in another Sindyref if the result can simply be overturned by some other election?? And Scotland never goes independent?
It is difficult to discern whether you are malign or stupid, or some toxic combination of both
I'm not sure referenda are generally a good idea. Perhaps only for major constitutional changes. Does that include leaving the EU? There is obviously a tussle between referenda and having sovereignty of Parliament. I would always side with the latter but on issues of national independence aka where Parliament would no longer be sovereign a referendum does make sense.
Part of the problem is that the sovereign parliament is a kind of elective dictatorship where a government with a majority does what it wants and those governments have in recent years been elected by a smaller and smaller proportion of the electorate.
Well there I totally agree with you
If I have learned anything from Brexit and Sindyref it is that referendums do not sit well with British parliamentary democracy. They are intensely divisive and must be handled with extreme caution and great care. David Cameron was unforgivably cavalier in the way he delivered the Brexit vote. Shame on him for that
However I believe referendums are probably inescapable for fundamental national decisions like Scottish indy or Brexit. These things are so huge they need explicit and singular democratic approval. So they had to be done, even if they are an awkward fit with our traditions (and they are)
What you cannot ever EVER do is then ignore the vote when is is given. Sweet Jesus: no
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
If the Tories stood on a manifesto of Leave and won, it would legitimately overturn a prior remain vote, yes.
So on that basis any referendum - even the biggest vote in British history - can simply be overturned in the following election, without the referendum result ever being enacted? So what exactly is the point in referendums? Especially referendums where the prime minister solemnly promises, to the British people:
"When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum"
Do you not see the nightmare landscape whereto you would lead us? Does it not occur to you that something wicked that way waits?
Why should the Scots ever bother voting in another Sindyref if the result can simply be overturned by some other election?? And Scotland never goes independent?
It is difficult to discern whether you are malign or stupid, or some toxic combination of both
That's such total bollocks it's hard to know where to begin.
Maybe don’t bother ?
I mean, I regret the many hours of my life I wasted arguing with Barty that May’s deal was a perfectly legitimate way of leaving the EU - but at least that was a live issue at the time.
This is just Leon masturbating; forgive me for not wanting to join in.
I sense the twitching, noisy death rattle of a failed idea, government and ideology. Raging against the dying of the light. Compassion for the soon to be departed is the kindest response.
Rage, rage against the dying of the Right.
It isn't such much the dying of the Right, as the dying of an aspect of the Right. In many ways the more palatable flavour. There were reasonable criticisms of the EU. And spending in public services. And of immigration and asylum. And wokery. Fair minds could see the yes but no but. But thirteen years of untrammelled power over events have given us an utter shitstorm of malfeasance, incompetence and grift that we'll have to paint with a darker palate for many years before folk will confess they may have been wrong.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posWe shouldh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
A second vote was an abomination as an idea. Truly evil. Appalling and irresponsible and might have destroyed our democracy forever
Here is Prime Minister David Cameron talking to the British people about the forthcoming Brexit vote, in 2015
‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’
‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
Dude, get over it. You sound like some pathetic Remoaner, but worse.
We should never get over the fact a large part of the Establishment tried to overturn a democratic vote that they promised would be honoured. Of course, it is convenient for that same Establishment if we DO forget. Ditto the Trumpites and January 6
I note that Starmer is now totally allergic to even discussing Brexit. This is why. He did his best to demolish democracy and get the biggest vote in British history annulled: by a simple Decree of the Posh
Having a second vote isn't really the same as having a decree though is it? And most of the really posh people were Leave.
It's also worth remembering that the 2nd Vote stuff would have never gained much traction outside those fighting a reverse UKIP campaign to get us back in someday if Brexiteers had looked like they knew what they wanted and what they were doing. Or had been prepared to compromise to get us officially out and then argue about whether to go further later.
The problem became that after the 2017 election (where the people had their say) the makeup of parliament meant that the kind of Brexit agreement that might have passed would have angered the Tory right and split the party. So we ended up in zombieland - with no Brexit May or then Johnson would put forward able to pass - and a 2nd Vote emerging as one method of breaking out of that as the only real method an anti-Brexit government could annul the first vote and claim some legitimacy.
If Brexit's leaders had displayed an ounce of competence and realism after 2016, it would have stayed a weird fantasy of people called Jolyon, or something some Remainers dreamed of one day, rather than a serious option.
The problem with using the 2017 GE is we had people like Sir Keir campaigning on honouring the referendum result ‘as a point of principle’ before it, then agitating to rerun the vote and campaign for remain ‘as a point of principle’ afterwards.
More Brexit lies!
They stood on implementing their own Brexit deal - not to vote for any one the Tories proposed. Now, there's a reasonable argument that with hindsight lots of Labour might have voted for May's deal as the best one they were going to get. But there were other incentives in play besides thwarting Brexit per se.
Corbyn, no friend of remain himself, knew that helping May would basically end his own project as he'd lose half his base. Labour moderates knew that doing so against their leadership would probably mean they lost the party for good. So neither did.
Of course the same could be argued of Brexit hardliners - who could have got May's deal through by agreeing to it, even when they didn't like it. After all they went along with Boris's despite its many issues in the name of 'getting it done'.
Then May herself. Who squandered her majority then failed to acknowledge that if her own hardliners weren't going to play ball, some kind of grand compromise that they could sell to their voters was needed to get Labour on board.
Plenty of blame to go round. Then we needed to break the deadlock - which probably meant what we got in terms of a general election that pitted two contrasting approaches against each other and gave one the mandate to get on with that.
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Well this has been some week. 1,000 miles of driving, shot 2 videos and edited one, big client progress made, successful baiting of anti-EV mob to explode my YouTube channel, and our shop is ready to open for the first time at 10am tomorrow.
Haven't finished working before 10pm any night this week - with a 1am finish Wednesday morning. I'm largely just doing back office management for the shop (its wifey's project), but there's been a chunk of that and likely more to come.
I don't feel tired - more like exhilarated.
Have you made enough money from your YouTube channel this week to pay for your £500 deposit for next year?
£500 deposit? For...? Looking at how November is going I could do £500 this month alone.
For your possible electoral opportunity which you referenced the other day? (And where I think you could get a top 2 outcome)
Ah got you. Candidates don't pay the deposit, the party does.
Top 2? I know that the LDs used to have a good presence in the NE, but the emphasis is "used to"...
I know the party pays! Yes SLD weren't that close to SNP last time but there will be a big SNP drop and you did ok in the ward you stood in last year. But you won't beat Big David though! I think you will do ok (assuming it comes off) 👍
Forgive a note of exhaustion here. For the umpteenth time, and struggling now to maintain any hope that they will ever learn, your columnist girds himself to warn yet another Tory leader, in yet another stand-off with yet another lunatic on the party’s right, that there’s no accommodating these people.
They will come for you. In the end they will always come for you. You can compromise here, you can give ground there, you can echo their language and try to lure them, you can even put them in your cabinet and hope that office might calm them down; but finally they will come for you. They can smell their own kind and if you aren’t their kind they will sniff that out, and they will kick you.
Suella Braverman kicks from that quarter. Her unpardonable attack wasn’t really about Remembrance Sunday.
Matthew Parris. Another 2nd voter, another Remainer, a man who campaigned for the Lib Dems. The time when he was remotely influential in the Tory Pary is long gone, thank the Lord
He's just.... OLD, bless him
He’s right about the Tory right though. Appeasement never works.
Come off it. The 'Tory right' within the Cabinet, despite the party itself holding settled right of centre views, consists entirely of Suella Braverman, whose power seems confined to writing Oped pieces for the Times. If Sunak gets rid of Braverman it will be the last representation of mainstream Tory opinion within the Cabinet, a fact which despite his addled brain, Matthew Parris is well aware of.
Parris is such a creepaloid freak he quit the Tory Party to join the Lib Dems... .in 2019..., when their Brexit policy was simply Revoke. They didn't even want the charade of a 2nd Vote. Just "Revoke" the biggest democratic vote ever held in UK history, simply pretend it didn't happen, and everything will be fine and dandy. The politics of a four-year-old on acid
"Ex-Conservative MP Matthew Parris to quit party and vote Lib Dem
Times columnist asked Tory remainers to join him to defeat pro-Brexit ‘zealots’ in the party"
Fair enough. If the Lib Dems had won the election they'd be perfectly entitled to revoke Brexit. You seem to be saying that a one-off policy of David Cameron is tantamount to a decree from God. Sorry but Dave wasn't infallible. His policies could be as subject to revision as anyone else's.
On your same logic an incoming Tory government could decide to ignore a Remain vote and Leave the EU, anyway, because fuck it, parliament is supreme, right?
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
If the Tories stood on a manifesto of Leave and won, it would legitimately overturn a prior remain vote, yes.
So on that basis any referendum - even the biggest vote in British history - can simply be overturned in the following election, without the referendum result ever being enacted? So what exactly is the point in referendums? Especially referendums where the prime minister solemnly promises, to the British people:
"When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum"
Do you not see the nightmare landscape whereto you would lead us? Does it not occur to you that something wicked that way waits?
Why should the Scots ever bother voting in another Sindyref if the result can simply be overturned by some other election?? And Scotland never goes independent?
It is difficult to discern whether you are malign or stupid, or some toxic combination of both
I'm not sure referenda are generally a good idea. Perhaps only for major constitutional changes. Does that include leaving the EU? There is obviously a tussle between referenda and having sovereignty of Parliament. I would always side with the latter but on issues of national independence aka where Parliament would no longer be sovereign a referendum does make sense.
Part of the problem is that the sovereign parliament is a kind of elective dictatorship where a government with a majority does what it wants and those governments have in recent years been elected by a smaller and smaller proportion of the electorate.
If we had a proper written constitution, referendums should be used for changes to that constitution. That would include, to my mind, leaving the EU (and indeed joining the EU), changes to the voting system, independence for part of the UK, abolition/replacement of the HoL. Any such referendums should, in future, require a minimum of 50% of the entire electorate voting for the change or a two-thirds super majority, if either threshold is met the constitutional change passes.
Yes, I agree with you in principle if not in detail. If we are to have solemn and massive referendums on the fundamental issues that go beyond party politics - and we surely do need them - then there should be rules agreed by all. Not least so that poisonous ideas like a "2nd Brexit vote without enacting the first" can never gain traction again, even amonst apparently clever, sensible people
Well this has been some week. 1,000 miles of driving, shot 2 videos and edited one, big client progress made, successful baiting of anti-EV mob to explode my YouTube channel, and our shop is ready to open for the first time at 10am tomorrow.
Haven't finished working before 10pm any night this week - with a 1am finish Wednesday morning. I'm largely just doing back office management for the shop (its wifey's project), but there's been a chunk of that and likely more to come.
I don't feel tired - more like exhilarated.
Have you made enough money from your YouTube channel this week to pay for your £500 deposit for next year?
£500 deposit? For...? Looking at how November is going I could do £500 this month alone.
For your possible electoral opportunity which you referenced the other day? (And where I think you could get a top 2 outcome)
Ah got you. Candidates don't pay the deposit, the party does.
Top 2? I know that the LDs used to have a good presence in the NE, but the emphasis is "used to"...
There's Aberdeenshire, and there's Aberdeenshire. The bit @RochdalePioneers is contesting, with its old fishing towns and generally robust take on things, is not and never has been Liberal country. You need to go further south, and away from the coast for that. (Although even there the Lib vote has evaporated, squeezed out by the existential fight between Nat and Tory).
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
Well this has been some week. 1,000 miles of driving, shot 2 videos and edited one, big client progress made, successful baiting of anti-EV mob to explode my YouTube channel, and our shop is ready to open for the first time at 10am tomorrow.
Haven't finished working before 10pm any night this week - with a 1am finish Wednesday morning. I'm largely just doing back office management for the shop (its wifey's project), but there's been a chunk of that and likely more to come.
I don't feel tired - more like exhilarated.
Have you made enough money from your YouTube channel this week to pay for your £500 deposit for next year?
£500 deposit? For...? Looking at how November is going I could do £500 this month alone.
For your possible electoral opportunity which you referenced the other day? (And where I think you could get a top 2 outcome)
Ah got you. Candidates don't pay the deposit, the party does.
Top 2? I know that the LDs used to have a good presence in the NE, but the emphasis is "used to"...
I know the party pays! Yes SLD weren't that close to SNP last time but there will be a big SNP drop and you did ok in the ward you stood in last year. But you won't beat Big David though! I think you will do ok (assuming it comes off) 👍
Thanks! And yes, I did ok. I came 3rd on first preferences when they were electing 3 councillors. Only the transfer votes from the Tory pushed me into 4th, and it took 5 rounds of transfers to do so...
I’d see the failure to implement the result of a referendum that the establishment had promised was once in a generation as an outrageous deceit
The implementation was not defined before the vote, so "failure to implement" would only ever be subjective
I hate to argue the case here but I would assume the implementation would involve some flavour of leaving
Can you imagine how these people would be, how many angry tweets would be pasted, if we voted to to rejoin, but a majority of the house were leavers and they just didn’t bother doing anything about making it happen for nearly four years, whilst demanding another go at it?
Pretty inevitable that if there was a referendum vote to rejoin that it would take several years before rejoin happened (if ever), and if a party that campaigned to stay out after all won a subsequent general election, then the UK would in fact stay out (at least until further elections).
Sure Rejoiners would be pissed off, but it wouldn't be "the end of democracy" or whatever hyperbolic bollocks Leon is raving about.
Well this has been some week. 1,000 miles of driving, shot 2 videos and edited one, big client progress made, successful baiting of anti-EV mob to explode my YouTube channel, and our shop is ready to open for the first time at 10am tomorrow.
Haven't finished working before 10pm any night this week - with a 1am finish Wednesday morning. I'm largely just doing back office management for the shop (its wifey's project), but there's been a chunk of that and likely more to come.
I don't feel tired - more like exhilarated.
Have you made enough money from your YouTube channel this week to pay for your £500 deposit for next year?
£500 deposit? For...? Looking at how November is going I could do £500 this month alone.
For your possible electoral opportunity which you referenced the other day? (And where I think you could get a top 2 outcome)
Ah got you. Candidates don't pay the deposit, the party does.
Top 2? I know that the LDs used to have a good presence in the NE, but the emphasis is "used to"...
There's Aberdeenshire, and there's Aberdeenshire. The bit @RochdalePioneers is contesting, with its old fishing towns and generally robust take on things, is not and never has been Liberal country. You need to go further south, and away from the coast for that. (Although even there the Lib vote has evaporated, squeezed out by the existential fight between Nat and Tory).
Its a fight between the Corrupt Tories and the Corrupt SNP. Nobody else will get a look in. Though I would hope that their votes drop precipitously.
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
There were no good options thanks to the morons who campaigned for Brexit on a multitude of mutually incompatible prospectuses. We're left with a gigantic mess that is impoverishing all of us, and hasn't even been fully implemented yet. I have no doubt a second referendum would have poisoned our democracy. Instead we have a failed policy that is poisoning our prosperity and has weakened our country. I don't know which is worse to be honest. I don't even care that much anymore. It's your country now, Leon, I hope you're enjoying it.
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
There were no good options thanks to the morons who campaigned for Brexit on a multitude of mutually incompatible prospectuses. We're left with a gigantic mess that is impoverishing all of us, and hasn't even been fully implemented yet. I have no doubt a second referendum would have poisoned our democracy. Instead we have a failed policy that is poisoning our prosperity and has weakened our country. I don't know which is worse to be honest. I don't even care that much anymore. It's your country now, Leon, I hope you're enjoying it.
Well obviously some of us seriously disagree with your extremely warped view of where we are now and yes we are enjoying it.
Emergence and spread of feline infection peritonitis due to a highly pathogenic canine/feline recombinant coronavirus https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.08.566182v1 Cross-species transmission of coronaviruses (CoVs) poses a serious threat to both animal and human health. Whilst the large RNA genome of CoVs shows relatively low mutation rates, recombination within genera is frequently observed and demonstrated. Companion animals are often overlooked in the transmission cycle of viral diseases; however, the close relationship of feline (FCoV) and canine CoV (CCoV) to human hCoV-229E, as well as their susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 highlight their importance in potential transmission cycles. Whilst recombination between CCoV and FCoV of a large fragment spanning orf1b to M has been previously described, here we report the emergence of a novel, highly pathogenic FCoV-CCoV recombinant responsible for a rapidly spreading outbreak of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), originating in Cyprus. The recombination, spanning spike, shows 97% sequence identity to the pantropic canine coronavirus CB/05. Infection is spreading fast and infecting cats of all ages. Development of FIP appears rapid and likely non-reliant on biotype switch. High sequence identity of isolates from cats in different districts of the island is strongly supportive of direct transmission. A deletion and several amino acid changes in spike, particularly the receptor binding domain, compared to other FCoV-2s, indicate changes to receptor binding and likely cell tropism.
I’d see the failure to implement the result of a referendum that the establishment had promised was once in a generation as an outrageous deceit
The implementation was not defined before the vote, so "failure to implement" would only ever be subjective
I hate to argue the case here but I would assume the implementation would involve some flavour of leaving
Can you imagine how these people would be, how many angry tweets would be pasted, if we voted to to rejoin, but a majority of the house were leavers and they just didn’t bother doing anything about making it happen for nearly four years, whilst demanding another go at it?
Pretty inevitable that if there was a referendum vote to rejoin that it would take several years before rejoin happened (if ever), and if a party that campaigned to stay out after all won a subsequent general election, then the UK would in fact stay out (at least until further elections).
Sure Rejoiners would be pissed off, but it wouldn't be "the end of democracy" or whatever hyperbolic bollocks Leon is raving about.
Nah. If we voted to rejoin it would be absolutely vital for the future of democracy that we did so. Ignoring a rejoin vote because we didn't like it would be as damaging as ignoring the leave vote would have been.
Why bother with democracy if the powers that be are just going to ignore it?
Very interesting discussion on Newsnight about Braverman with Philip Blond.
I can’t imagine Tory MPs would be mad enough to have another leadership challenge. I know we live in strange times but surely not that strange !
They have to get shut of Sunak - he is leading them to ELE.
Yes it would be absolute madness. But so what - the alternative is the abyss. 30p Lee for PM. Vote Tory* or Fuck Off.
*I like Conservatives. Disagree politically, but they are honourable. With a few exceptions, the current lot aren't Conservatives, they are Tories. With the emphasis on robbing.
I think the fault of remainers (of which I was one) post-defeat, was not accepting defeat on the principle of Brexit quickly and moving quickly to argue positively for a compromise Brexit deal that respected the wishes of the majority to leave the EU, but retained close ties as possible.
A compromise deal with May would have likely left us in a better position than where we ended up today with Boris forcing through a hard Brexit.
However, as we've seen it's been a phyric victory for the Tory right as the sunlit uplands that were promised have comprehensively failed to be delivered.
And so we'll gradually move closer towards the compromise deal that could have been, inching towards Europe but not ever within the EU - at least not for many decades. The reality that close trade relations with your closest neighbours is a good thing for growth will rule supreme over considerations over what people did or didn't mean by leaving the EU years beforehand.
The political capital it'd take to rejoin is too high vs other deals that could be delivered from the outside.
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
Off topic, but do you have a new job writing the BBC website headlines?
I’d see the failure to implement the result of a referendum that the establishment had promised was once in a generation as an outrageous deceit
The implementation was not defined before the vote, so "failure to implement" would only ever be subjective
I hate to argue the case here but I would assume the implementation would involve some flavour of leaving
Can you imagine how these people would be, how many angry tweets would be pasted, if we voted to to rejoin, but a majority of the house were leavers and they just didn’t bother doing anything about making it happen for nearly four years, whilst demanding another go at it?
Pretty inevitable that if there was a referendum vote to rejoin that it would take several years before rejoin happened (if ever), and if a party that campaigned to stay out after all won a subsequent general election, then the UK would in fact stay out (at least until further elections).
Sure Rejoiners would be pissed off, but it wouldn't be "the end of democracy" or whatever hyperbolic bollocks Leon is raving about.
Nah. If we voted to rejoin it would be absolutely vital for the future of democracy that we did so. Ignoring a rejoin vote because we didn't like it would be as damaging as ignoring the leave vote would have been.
Why bother with democracy if the powers that be are just going to ignore it?
Referendum decisions aren't always carried out.
In the case of a vote to Rejoin: if the EU then decided to only allow the UK to rejoin at the same time as joining the euro and this turned out to be fairly unpopular in the UK leading stalemate in the rejoin negotiations and an anti-Rejoin party winning a general election, then what?
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
There were no good options thanks to the morons who campaigned for Brexit on a multitude of mutually incompatible prospectuses. We're left with a gigantic mess that is impoverishing all of us, and hasn't even been fully implemented yet. I have no doubt a second referendum would have poisoned our democracy. Instead we have a failed policy that is poisoning our prosperity and has weakened our country. I don't know which is worse to be honest. I don't even care that much anymore. It's your country now, Leon, I hope you're enjoying it.
Cool. And yes I am enjoying life in a country which is significantly freer and more democratic than it was in the EU
Is it economically in the toilet of stagnancy? Sadly, yes. Does it face innumerable problems due to climate change, culture wars, post-Covid debt, Ukrainian energy crises, and so on and so forth? Also yes. But then, these problems are common across the West, and actually and significantly WORSE in multiple EU countries - Sweden for migration, Germany for growth, Italy for demography, Spain for climate change, and so on - and every country in the world faces the epochal challenge of AI
Meanwhile, I am thankful that Britain has given herself the democratic tools to act nimbly and independently, if we so desire, via Brexit. It is up to us now, no British politician can henceforth "blame it on Brussels"
I’d see the failure to implement the result of a referendum that the establishment had promised was once in a generation as an outrageous deceit
The implementation was not defined before the vote, so "failure to implement" would only ever be subjective
I hate to argue the case here but I would assume the implementation would involve some flavour of leaving
Can you imagine how these people would be, how many angry tweets would be pasted, if we voted to to rejoin, but a majority of the house were leavers and they just didn’t bother doing anything about making it happen for nearly four years, whilst demanding another go at it?
Pretty inevitable that if there was a referendum vote to rejoin that it would take several years before rejoin happened (if ever), and if a party that campaigned to stay out after all won a subsequent general election, then the UK would in fact stay out (at least until further elections).
Sure Rejoiners would be pissed off, but it wouldn't be "the end of democracy" or whatever hyperbolic bollocks Leon is raving about.
Nah. If we voted to rejoin it would be absolutely vital for the future of democracy that we did so. Ignoring a rejoin vote because we didn't like it would be as damaging as ignoring the leave vote would have been.
Why bother with democracy if the powers that be are just going to ignore it?
Referendum decisions aren't always carried out.
In the case of a vote to Rejoin: if the EU then decided to only allow the UK to rejoin at the same time as joining the euro and this turned out to be fairly unpopular in the UK leading stalemate in the rejoin negotiations and an anti-Rejoin party winning a general election, then what?
"Referendum decisions aren't always carried out IN THE EU"
There. Fixed that for you.
In Britain, we respect referendums (even after great struggles with people who should know better). That is why our democracy is superior to the EU, that is why we voted Leave
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
This.
And I’ll be a remainer until I die.
But I’m a democrat more so. The complaints against the utter mendacity of the leave campaign are all valid but that’s how our democracy works.
It’s all Cameron’s fault really. Why he didn’t design a system that had a first ‘in principle’ referendum and then a second multi-option confirmatory referendum once we had the details sorted I have no idea.
I’d see the failure to implement the result of a referendum that the establishment had promised was once in a generation as an outrageous deceit
The implementation was not defined before the vote, so "failure to implement" would only ever be subjective
I hate to argue the case here but I would assume the implementation would involve some flavour of leaving
Can you imagine how these people would be, how many angry tweets would be pasted, if we voted to to rejoin, but a majority of the house were leavers and they just didn’t bother doing anything about making it happen for nearly four years, whilst demanding another go at it?
Pretty inevitable that if there was a referendum vote to rejoin that it would take several years before rejoin happened (if ever), and if a party that campaigned to stay out after all won a subsequent general election, then the UK would in fact stay out (at least until further elections).
Sure Rejoiners would be pissed off, but it wouldn't be "the end of democracy" or whatever hyperbolic bollocks Leon is raving about.
Nah. If we voted to rejoin it would be absolutely vital for the future of democracy that we did so. Ignoring a rejoin vote because we didn't like it would be as damaging as ignoring the leave vote would have been.
Why bother with democracy if the powers that be are just going to ignore it?
Referendum decisions aren't always carried out.
In the case of a vote to Rejoin: if the EU then decided to only allow the UK to rejoin at the same time as joining the euro and this turned out to be fairly unpopular in the UK leading stalemate in the rejoin negotiations and an anti-Rejoin party winning a general election, then what?
You can be sure that the Out side would have trumpeted all of yhat as a serious risk in the campaign and if the voters had still chosen rejoin then it would be incumbent on the Government to accept that and rejoin even under those circumstances.
Obviously, that is just my opinion, but you have to be consistent in these things or democracy is pointless.
These two clips of Sir Keir, the Republican who accepted a knighthood, the vegetarian who eats animals, the commoner who went to a fee paying school, are incompatible with his image as Honest John
One taken when he was campaigning to be elected in 2017, the other when he was Shadow Brexit Minister in 2019
No wonder Starmer is utterly averse to discussing Brexit in any way. Wow
“The commoner who went to a fee paying school” deserves a PB community note. He went to a state school which became fee paying during his tenure, but not for his year group which was grandfathered.
I must say I had not realised that last bit about grandfather rights. That's very interesting - in view of the frequency with which PB Tories keep claiming SKS did go to a fee paying school (as if he was responsible for his parents' decisions, but that is another matter).
At least they have given up on the Savile stuff, for now anyway.
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
There were no good options thanks to the morons who campaigned for Brexit on a multitude of mutually incompatible prospectuses. We're left with a gigantic mess that is impoverishing all of us, and hasn't even been fully implemented yet. I have no doubt a second referendum would have poisoned our democracy. Instead we have a failed policy that is poisoning our prosperity and has weakened our country. I don't know which is worse to be honest. I don't even care that much anymore. It's your country now, Leon, I hope you're enjoying it.
Cool. And yes I am enjoying life in a country which is significantly freer and more democratic than it was in the EU
Is it economically in the toilet of stagnancy? Sadly, yes. Does it face innumerable problems due to climate change, culture wars, post-Covid debt, Ukrainian energy crises, and so on and so forth? Also yes. But then, these problems are common across the West, and actually and significantly WORSE in multiple EU countries - Sweden for migration, Germany for growth, Italy for demography, Spain for climate change, and so on - and every country in the world faces the epochal challenge of AI
Meanwhile, I am thankful that Britain has given herself the democratic tools to act nimbly and independently, if we so desire, via Brexit. It is up to us now, no British politician can henceforth "blame it on Brussels"
Yes, they're just blaming their own governance on the opposition instead, which is more obviously laughable, but not that much more substantially laughable.
Very interesting discussion on Newsnight about Braverman with Philip Blond.
I can’t imagine Tory MPs would be mad enough to have another leadership challenge. I know we live in strange times but surely not that strange !
They have to get shut of Sunak - he is leading them to ELE.
Yes it would be absolute madness. But so what - the alternative is the abyss. 30p Lee for PM. Vote Tory* or Fuck Off.
*I like Conservatives. Disagree politically, but they are honourable. With a few exceptions, the current lot aren't Conservatives, they are Tories. With the emphasis on robbing.
"The Abyss Or Madness" sounds like it could have been a Lovecraft short story.
Katie White @KatieJWhite I am delighted and incredibly honoured to have received the endorsement to be selected to run as MP for Leeds North West from Neil Kinnock, our former party leader and Honorary President for the Labour Movement for Europe. Thank you, Neil, your support is greatly appreciated 🙏🏼
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
There were no good options thanks to the morons who campaigned for Brexit on a multitude of mutually incompatible prospectuses. We're left with a gigantic mess that is impoverishing all of us, and hasn't even been fully implemented yet. I have no doubt a second referendum would have poisoned our democracy. Instead we have a failed policy that is poisoning our prosperity and has weakened our country. I don't know which is worse to be honest. I don't even care that much anymore. It's your country now, Leon, I hope you're enjoying it.
Meanwhile, I am thankful that Britain has given herself the democratic tools to act nimbly
A key feature of Britain’s stagnation, unrelated to the EU, Brexit or anyone else but our own particular lifestyle choices, is the fact we exercise with relish the democratic tools to act NIMBY.
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
This.
And I’ll be a remainer until I die.
But I’m a democrat more so. The complaints against the utter mendacity of the leave campaign are all valid but that’s how our democracy works.
It’s all Cameron’s fault really. Why he didn’t design a system that had a first ‘in principle’ referendum and then a second multi-option confirmatory referendum once we had the details sorted I have no idea.
Lack of hindsight I suppose.
I completely agree. History will not be kind to David Cameron, the essay-crisis prime minister. He really thought he could wing it all; he is *misplaced Etonian arrogance* frozen into the sober, unforgiving stone of history
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
This.
And I’ll be a remainer until I die.
But I’m a democrat more so. The complaints against the utter mendacity of the leave campaign are all valid but that’s how our democracy works.
It’s all Cameron’s fault really. Why he didn’t design a system that had a first ‘in principle’ referendum and then a second multi-option confirmatory referendum once we had the details sorted I have no idea.
Lack of hindsight I suppose.
I completely agree. History will not be kind to David Cameron, the essay-crisis prime minister. He really thought he could wing it all; he is *misplaced Etonian arrogance* frozen into the sober, unforgiving stone of history
He had gambled and won on Scotland, and on PR. Third time's the charm.
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
This.
And I’ll be a remainer until I die.
But I’m a democrat more so. The complaints against the utter mendacity of the leave campaign are all valid but that’s how our democracy works.
It’s all Cameron’s fault really. Why he didn’t design a system that had a first ‘in principle’ referendum and then a second multi-option confirmatory referendum once we had the details sorted I have no idea.
Lack of hindsight I suppose.
I completely agree. History will not be kind to David Cameron, the essay-crisis prime minister. He really thought he could wing it all; he is *misplaced Etonian arrogance* frozen into the sober, unforgiving stone of history
He had gambled and won on Scotland, and on PR. Third time's the charm.
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
There were no good options thanks to the morons who campaigned for Brexit on a multitude of mutually incompatible prospectuses. We're left with a gigantic mess that is impoverishing all of us, and hasn't even been fully implemented yet. I have no doubt a second referendum would have poisoned our democracy. Instead we have a failed policy that is poisoning our prosperity and has weakened our country. I don't know which is worse to be honest. I don't even care that much anymore. It's your country now, Leon, I hope you're enjoying it.
Cool. And yes I am enjoying life in a country which is significantly freer and more democratic than it was in the EU
Is it economically in the toilet of stagnancy? Sadly, yes. Does it face innumerable problems due to climate change, culture wars, post-Covid debt, Ukrainian energy crises, and so on and so forth? Also yes. But then, these problems are common across the West, and actually and significantly WORSE in multiple EU countries - Sweden for migration, Germany for growth, Italy for demography, Spain for climate change, and so on - and every country in the world faces the epochal challenge of AI
Meanwhile, I am thankful that Britain has given herself the democratic tools to act nimbly and independently, if we so desire, via Brexit. It is up to us now, no British politician can henceforth "blame it on Brussels"
The politicians most inclined to “blame it on Brussels” were the ones who supported leave. Are you saying that Brexit solved a problem confected by the people who campaigned for it?
I’d see the failure to implement the result of a referendum that the establishment had promised was once in a generation as an outrageous deceit
The implementation was not defined before the vote, so "failure to implement" would only ever be subjective
I hate to argue the case here but I would assume the implementation would involve some flavour of leaving
Can you imagine how these people would be, how many angry tweets would be pasted, if we voted to to rejoin, but a majority of the house were leavers and they just didn’t bother doing anything about making it happen for nearly four years, whilst demanding another go at it?
Pretty inevitable that if there was a referendum vote to rejoin that it would take several years before rejoin happened (if ever), and if a party that campaigned to stay out after all won a subsequent general election, then the UK would in fact stay out (at least until further elections).
Sure Rejoiners would be pissed off, but it wouldn't be "the end of democracy" or whatever hyperbolic bollocks Leon is raving about.
Nah. If we voted to rejoin it would be absolutely vital for the future of democracy that we did so. Ignoring a rejoin vote because we didn't like it would be as damaging as ignoring the leave vote would have been.
Why bother with democracy if the powers that be are just going to ignore it?
Referendum decisions aren't always carried out.
In the case of a vote to Rejoin: if the EU then decided to only allow the UK to rejoin at the same time as joining the euro and this turned out to be fairly unpopular in the UK leading stalemate in the rejoin negotiations and an anti-Rejoin party winning a general election, then what?
As opposed to the zero plan put forward by the Leave side in 2016 I think rejoin would need to have already negotiated what that would actually mean . You can’t have a vote to rejoin without having agreed those terms .
"“We were together all the time. He was my brother. I have been his friend since third grade. He was a very nice person, a very aggressive fighter. He was never afraid. This will strengthen us but we are carrying our weapons to be martyred. Of course he is a lucky one. He is a martyr. I am happy for him. This is my wish too. Our wish is to be martyred. But I miss him, of course. We used to play soccer and go swimming every day.”"
If people want to march and demand that *both sides* call a ceasefire, that would be one thing. But this march is not going to do, is it? It will call for *the Israelis* to ceasefire, and not the "I want to be a martyr" lot.
The march is co-organised by FOA. Hardly a surprise that a pro-Hamas organisation isn't calling out Hamas.
Katie White @KatieJWhite I am delighted and incredibly honoured to have received the endorsement to be selected to run as MP for Leeds North West from Neil Kinnock, our former party leader and Honorary President for the Labour Movement for Europe. Thank you, Neil, your support is greatly appreciated 🙏🏼
Charles Lane watched the terrorist videos so we don't have to.: 'What was revelatory — what you really do have to see and hear to believe — is the attitude of the terrorists. They are having the time of their lives. Some whoop with delight over dead civilians lying on a highway. A team of gunmen brings a dead Israeli soldier back to Gaza and stands triumphantly over his body, as a crowd spontaneously rushes forward to kick and stomp the corpse. Young, heavily armed members of Hamas’s elite Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades pose for a video selfie, shouting in Arabic, “that’s how it’s done.” (The embassy provided translations.)
Surely, the most chilling part of the film is an audio-only clip: a terrorist calling home to tell his parents that he is in Israel and killing Jews — 10, he boasts, including a woman whose phone he is using. “Their blood is on my hands,” he cries, joyously. “Your son’s a hero.”' source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/01/hamas-attack-videos-described/
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
This.
And I’ll be a remainer until I die.
But I’m a democrat more so. The complaints against the utter mendacity of the leave campaign are all valid but that’s how our democracy works.
It’s all Cameron’s fault really. Why he didn’t design a system that had a first ‘in principle’ referendum and then a second multi-option confirmatory referendum once we had the details sorted I have no idea.
Lack of hindsight I suppose.
I completely agree. History will not be kind to David Cameron, the essay-crisis prime minister. He really thought he could wing it all; he is *misplaced Etonian arrogance* frozen into the sober, unforgiving stone of history
He had gambled and won on Scotland, and on PR. Third time's the charm.
Yup
Supposedly he boasted of this to Merkel when she asked him about the Brexit vote. He chortled and said "Oh, I'll win that easily"
Amazingly, she then refused to give him a decent renegotiation deal, which might have won it for Remain. And given that she had been reassured by the same man that the vote could not be lost, what was in it for her, to do so?
He is an object lesson in hubris, and Brexit is his melancholy epitaph, and now he spends his time writing bollocks in a fucking wooden caravan
Had a bottle of Hambledon this evening, after the usual Friday night Macon Villages (Cuvee jules Richard from the Aze coop, always good value). Worth a try for its historical value: not only the birthplace of cricket, but the post-war birthplace of English wine.
A good classic cuvee sparkling at the Chapel Down classic cuvee level but not quite up there with the standard bearers of Nyetimber, Gusbourne or some of the boutiques like Oxney.
Which brings me to planning permission for wineries and visitor centres in Southern England. In the past 12 months we’ve seen planning turned down for a new headquarters for Chapel Down off the A2 at Bridge, which would have been a huge tourist draw and game changer for East Kent, and planning refused for Britain’s largest winery - beautifully modernistic, carbon neutral - in Cuxton near Gravesend, in a valley which is already covered in vines. Why?
"“We were together all the time. He was my brother. I have been his friend since third grade. He was a very nice person, a very aggressive fighter. He was never afraid. This will strengthen us but we are carrying our weapons to be martyred. Of course he is a lucky one. He is a martyr. I am happy for him. This is my wish too. Our wish is to be martyred. But I miss him, of course. We used to play soccer and go swimming every day.”"
If people want to march and demand that *both sides* call a ceasefire, that would be one thing. But this march is not going to do, is it? It will call for *the Israelis* to ceasefire, and not the "I want to be a martyr" lot.
The march is co-organised by FOA. Hardly a surprise that a pro-Hamas organisation isn't calling out Hamas.
Katie White @KatieJWhite I am delighted and incredibly honoured to have received the endorsement to be selected to run as MP for Leeds North West from Neil Kinnock, our former party leader and Honorary President for the Labour Movement for Europe. Thank you, Neil, your support is greatly appreciated 🙏🏼
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
This.
And I’ll be a remainer until I die.
But I’m a democrat more so. The complaints against the utter mendacity of the leave campaign are all valid but that’s how our democracy works.
It’s all Cameron’s fault really. Why he didn’t design a system that had a first ‘in principle’ referendum and then a second multi-option confirmatory referendum once we had the details sorted I have no idea.
Lack of hindsight I suppose.
I completely agree. History will not be kind to David Cameron, the essay-crisis prime minister. He really thought he could wing it all; he is *misplaced Etonian arrogance* frozen into the sober, unforgiving stone of history
He had gambled and won on Scotland, and on PR. Third time's the charm.
Katie White @KatieJWhite I am delighted and incredibly honoured to have received the endorsement to be selected to run as MP for Leeds North West from Neil Kinnock, our former party leader and Honorary President for the Labour Movement for Europe. Thank you, Neil, your support is greatly appreciated 🙏🏼
Had a bottle of Hambledon this evening, after the usual Friday night Macon Villages (Cuvee jules Richard from the Aze coop, always good value). Worth a try for its historical value: not only the birthplace of cricket, but the post-war birthplace of English wine.
A good classic cuvee sparkling at the Chapel Down classic cuvee level but not quite up there with the standard bearers of Nyetimber, Gusbourne or some of the boutiques like Oxney.
Which brings me to planning permission for wineries and visitor centres in Southern England. In the past 12 months we’ve seen planning turned down for a new headquarters for Chapel Down off the A2 at Bridge, which would have been a huge tourist draw and game changer for East Kent, and planning refused for Britain’s largest winery - beautifully modernistic, carbon neutral - in Cuxton near Gravesend, in a valley which is already covered in vines. Why?
That is ridic. Wine is obviously a growth industry for southern Britain, with enormous potential for the next 50 years
We want to be the new Champagne/Loire/Rhine Valley etc
STUPID
And wineries can be made to look really beautiful, even when seriously industrial. They are not coal mines
Let’s be honest, Brexit wasn’t a fight between elite remainers and the leave-inclined people. Nor was it a coup by the eurosceptic Etonian elite against the hoodwinked people. It was a battle between two elites. Two versions of power. That’s Western political history, for the last several centuries.
Were YOU a Second Voter?
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
Yes, I was certainly a second voter. Not a revolver, that was silly.
Shameful
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Yeah thank God we have Brexit, which is going so well and is so fucking popular. Yay!
You are absolutely free to say Brexit is a pile of shite, in retrospect. Campaign to reverse it or remodel it, as you will
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
This.
And I’ll be a remainer until I die.
But I’m a democrat more so. The complaints against the utter mendacity of the leave campaign are all valid but that’s how our democracy works.
It’s all Cameron’s fault really. Why he didn’t design a system that had a first ‘in principle’ referendum and then a second multi-option confirmatory referendum once we had the details sorted I have no idea.
Lack of hindsight I suppose.
I completely agree. History will not be kind to David Cameron, the essay-crisis prime minister. He really thought he could wing it all; he is *misplaced Etonian arrogance* frozen into the sober, unforgiving stone of history
He had gambled and won on Scotland, and on PR. Third time's the charm.
Repeat after me: AV is NOT PR!
If you're explaining, you're losing.
It's not proportional. STV would be proportional, but NOT AV.
Charles Lane watched the terrorist videos so we don't have to.: 'What was revelatory — what you really do have to see and hear to believe — is the attitude of the terrorists. They are having the time of their lives. Some whoop with delight over dead civilians lying on a highway. A team of gunmen brings a dead Israeli soldier back to Gaza and stands triumphantly over his body, as a crowd spontaneously rushes forward to kick and stomp the corpse. Young, heavily armed members of Hamas’s elite Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades pose for a video selfie, shouting in Arabic, “that’s how it’s done.” (The embassy provided translations.)
Surely, the most chilling part of the film is an audio-only clip: a terrorist calling home to tell his parents that he is in Israel and killing Jews — 10, he boasts, including a woman whose phone he is using. “Their blood is on my hands,” he cries, joyously. “Your son’s a hero.”' source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/01/hamas-attack-videos-described/
So, not torn with guilt and uncertainty, unlike the Nazi SS apparently...
I’d see the failure to implement the result of a referendum that the establishment had promised was once in a generation as an outrageous deceit
The implementation was not defined before the vote, so "failure to implement" would only ever be subjective
I hate to argue the case here but I would assume the implementation would involve some flavour of leaving
Can you imagine how these people would be, how many angry tweets would be pasted, if we voted to to rejoin, but a majority of the house were leavers and they just didn’t bother doing anything about making it happen for nearly four years, whilst demanding another go at it?
Pretty inevitable that if there was a referendum vote to rejoin that it would take several years before rejoin happened (if ever), and if a party that campaigned to stay out after all won a subsequent general election, then the UK would in fact stay out (at least until further elections).
Sure Rejoiners would be pissed off, but it wouldn't be "the end of democracy" or whatever hyperbolic bollocks Leon is raving about.
Nah. If we voted to rejoin it would be absolutely vital for the future of democracy that we did so. Ignoring a rejoin vote because we didn't like it would be as damaging as ignoring the leave vote would have been.
Why bother with democracy if the powers that be are just going to ignore it?
Referendum decisions aren't always carried out.
In the case of a vote to Rejoin: if the EU then decided to only allow the UK to rejoin at the same time as joining the euro and this turned out to be fairly unpopular in the UK leading stalemate in the rejoin negotiations and an anti-Rejoin party winning a general election, then what?
As opposed to the zero plan put forward by the Leave side in 2016 I think rejoin would need to have already negotiated what that would actually mean . You can’t have a vote to rejoin without having agreed those terms .
Whilst I agree with you it has to be pointed out that the only people who were in a position to actually negotiate with Brussels what Leave would mean were the people who called the referendum and campaigned for Remain.
I am damn certain that if Brussels had started negotiating with the Leave side over the heads or behind the backs of the British Government prior to the vote then there would have been hell to pay.
Cameron wanted there to be no clear picture of what Leave would mean as he thought this would make it more likely for people to cling to Nanny's skirts.
"“We were together all the time. He was my brother. I have been his friend since third grade. He was a very nice person, a very aggressive fighter. He was never afraid. This will strengthen us but we are carrying our weapons to be martyred. Of course he is a lucky one. He is a martyr. I am happy for him. This is my wish too. Our wish is to be martyred. But I miss him, of course. We used to play soccer and go swimming every day.”"
If people want to march and demand that *both sides* call a ceasefire, that would be one thing. But this march is not going to do, is it? It will call for *the Israelis* to ceasefire, and not the "I want to be a martyr" lot.
The march is co-organised by FOA. Hardly a surprise that a pro-Hamas organisation isn't calling out Hamas.
11,000 deaths not enough for you?
I want this to stop! Its awful! But to stop you need to have both sides willing to stop - and neither side do. Hamas have no intention of stopping, and a ceasefire now would give them ample opportunity to both push out propaganda and re-arm for the next atrocity. And yet they do not want one.
So your march tomorrow - organised in part by a pro-Hamas organisation - will demand that Israel and *only Israel* will ceasefire. No demands of Hamas. No blame on Hamas. No accusations or negative banners or placards about Hamas. Only the Jews.
Charles Lane watched the terrorist videos so we don't have to.: 'What was revelatory — what you really do have to see and hear to believe — is the attitude of the terrorists. They are having the time of their lives. Some whoop with delight over dead civilians lying on a highway. A team of gunmen brings a dead Israeli soldier back to Gaza and stands triumphantly over his body, as a crowd spontaneously rushes forward to kick and stomp the corpse. Young, heavily armed members of Hamas’s elite Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades pose for a video selfie, shouting in Arabic, “that’s how it’s done.” (The embassy provided translations.)
Surely, the most chilling part of the film is an audio-only clip: a terrorist calling home to tell his parents that he is in Israel and killing Jews — 10, he boasts, including a woman whose phone he is using. “Their blood is on my hands,” he cries, joyously. “Your son’s a hero.”' source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/01/hamas-attack-videos-described/
So, not torn with guilt and uncertainty, unlike the Nazi SS apparently...
Looks like the Israelis have "revised" their death toll on 7.10 from 1,400 down to 1,200.
Very interesting discussion on Newsnight about Braverman with Philip Blond.
I can’t imagine Tory MPs would be mad enough to have another leadership challenge. I know we live in strange times but surely not that strange !
They have to get shut of Sunak - he is leading them to ELE.
Yes it would be absolute madness. But so what - the alternative is the abyss. 30p Lee for PM. Vote Tory* or Fuck Off.
*I like Conservatives. Disagree politically, but they are honourable. With a few exceptions, the current lot aren't Conservatives, they are Tories. With the emphasis on robbing.
"The Abyss Or Madness" sounds like it could have been a Lovecraft short story.
These two clips of Sir Keir, the Republican who accepted a knighthood, the vegetarian who eats animals, the commoner who went to a fee paying school, are incompatible with his image as Honest John
One taken when he was campaigning to be elected in 2017, the other when he was Shadow Brexit Minister in 2019
No wonder Starmer is utterly averse to discussing Brexit in any way. Wow
“The commoner who went to a fee paying school” deserves a PB community note. He went to a state school which became fee paying during his tenure, but not for his year group which was grandfathered.
I must say I had not realised that last bit about grandfather rights. That's very interesting - in view of the frequency with which PB Tories keep claiming SKS did go to a fee paying school (as if he was responsible for his parents' decisions, but that is another matter).
At least they have given up on the Savile stuff, for now anyway.
He went to a Grammar School which became a fee paying school. He had the fees paid for him by the council. Says he had a ‘great state education’. But he refuses to give ‘working class’ kids the same opportunity.
The reason it’s worth banging on about is that he has u-turned and lied so often. Maybe because he was contrasted with Boris, maybe because he comes across as dull, people think he is an honest, straight up guy. I would have thought the videos lined up for the GE campaign to show his duplicity will have him stuttering like a maniac during the debates
Comments
I'm kinda hoping you weren't, as you seem to be a likeable chap
But hmmm. You were a Lib Dem in 2019. You might even be a Revoker
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/tennessee-man-says-conspired-jan-6-defendant-kill-fbi-agents-rcna124683
… An associate of a Jan. 6 defendant pleaded guilty this week to charges that the two men plotted “to murder employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Austin Carter, who was a 26-year-old security officer and a member of the Army Reserves at the time of his arrest in December 2022, admitted in a plea agreement that he “unlawfully and knowingly combined, conspired, and agreed with his co-defendant,” Edward Kelley, to kill FBI personnel.
Carter admitted that he provided a cooperating witness “with a list of FBI employees that CARTER received from KELLEY” on or about Dec. 13, 2022, and that Carter instructed the cooperating witness “to memorize the FBI employees identified on the list and then burn the list.” Kelley and Carter “discussed plans to attack the FBI Field Office in Knoxville, Tennessee” and that the purpose of the conspiracy was “to retaliate against government conduct,” Carter admitted.
A court filing from December said that the list Kelley provided included about 37 names of law enforcement personnel who worked on Kelley’s Jan. 6 case, and identified which officers were present when Kelley was arrested...
When will be put out of our collective misery and be given a GE?
No thanks.
The problem became that after the 2017 election (where the people had their say) the makeup of parliament meant that the kind of Brexit agreement that might have passed would have angered the Tory right and split the party. So we ended up in zombieland - with no Brexit May or then Johnson would put forward able to pass - and a 2nd Vote emerging as one method of breaking out of that as the only real method an anti-Brexit government could annul the first vote and claim some legitimacy.
If Brexit's leaders had displayed an ounce of competence and realism after 2016, it would have stayed a weird fantasy of people called Jolyon, or something some Remainers dreamed of one day, rather than a serious option.
Thanks
A more interesting point would be pro-Brexit people protesting if Parliament had decided to can Brexit. Again they would be free to express themselves but not undermine Parliament. It would be for voters to kick MPs out at the next election.
If your point is that the stop Brexit/2nd referendum protests were wrong in the same way the 6 January protests were then you have half a point. But those protests were seen as outrageous for the violence and intimidation they spawned.
justification that their personal decisions met a democratic mandate. There was no single version of Brexit for anyone was democratically obligated to vote.
You may doubt some of the sincerity, but it's hard to draw straight lines from one step to another saying it was anything other than very democratic.
After that there were various democratic ways of breaking that impasse, another referendum was one, or the general election that ultimately did break the impasse. The feeling that Brexit ought to be delivered was prevalent even amongst some remainers and that feeling of obligation would have been present in any democratic mechanism that happened - so the anti-democratic argument would have been factored into any democratic vote proposed.
None of that describes a coup.
Give over, this is ridiculous and insulting. We all knew the Brexit referendum was once and for all, a big deciding vote, "the people will have their say". That is why we have referendums rarely, and why they are always honoured. They are for the really big decisions. As the PM told us
Can you imagine if Scotland had votes YES and then Holyrood had simply said Nah, we're staying in the UK? We would have seen bloody violence in the streets, because the Nats would rightly have asserted that if their vote is not respected then there is no democratic route to indy, and only direct action remains
Ditto Brexit. It just happened that the people returned an unexpected verdict the Establishment did not like. Leave. Tougn shit. It had to be honoured, and thank God it has been honoured
You are now free to campaign for Rejoin for the rest of your life, and good luck to you. If we ever have another EU referendum, and we vote Rejoin, I will acccept that democratic verdict, even if I personally loathe it. Democracy is worth more than the passing tantrums of the rich-but-annoyed
More Brexit lies!
Lab 415
Con 151
LD 30
SNP 30
PC 4
Green 1
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today
Haven't finished working before 10pm any night this week - with a 1am finish Wednesday morning. I'm largely just doing back office management for the shop (its wifey's project), but there's been a chunk of that and likely more to come.
I don't feel tired - more like exhilarated.
"When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum"
Do you not see the nightmare landscape whereto you would lead us? Does it not occur to you that something wicked that way waits?
Why should the Scots ever bother voting in another Sindyref if the result can simply be overturned by some other election?? And Scotland never goes independent?
It is difficult to discern whether you are malign or stupid, or some toxic combination of both
Versus Boris his staid but upstanding schtick against Boris’s lying charlatan would have been in pieces
Unfortunately now he’s up against
Rishi Sunak, with a twenty point head start
It's probably foolish to think a NYC mayor will successfully translate into being a national political figure, but I still think Eric Adams would be in my top 5 for "who will be the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden?".
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1478138124425482240
Though TBF, I wasn’t predicting the FBI seizing Adam’s phones (a sad haul nowhere close to Giuliani’s 18) in pursuit of a corruption charge, either.
Raging against the dying of the light.
Compassion for the soon to be departed is the kindest response.
Part of the problem is that the sovereign parliament is a kind of elective dictatorship where a government with a majority does what it wants and those governments have in recent years been elected by a smaller and smaller proportion of the electorate.
I'm sorry, but that is and was shameful. The idea of a 2nd vote without enacting the first was immoral
Worse than that, it was dangerously DUMB. Imagine the campaign in the 2nd referendum, imagine how turnout would have plummeted from 75% to 40% as all the Leavers rightly said "what's the point in voting, they just ignore us". Imagine the long term damage to British democracy of a Remain vote shoved through via a 2nd vote, after never enacting the first, and on a collapsed, illegitimate turnout, after an excruciating campaign of lying excuses "honestly we mean it this time, we will honour any vote, we won't have a third referendum, promise"
A fucking nightmare would have ensued that would have taken decades to resolve. You should pray thanks to God every night, that your wish did not come true
Top 2? I know that the LDs used to have a good presence in the NE, but the emphasis is "used to"...
If I have learned anything from Brexit and Sindyref it is that referendums do not sit well with British parliamentary democracy. They are intensely divisive and must be handled with extreme caution and great care. David Cameron was unforgivably cavalier in the way he delivered the Brexit vote. Shame on him for that
However I believe referendums are probably inescapable for fundamental national decisions like Scottish indy or Brexit. These things are so huge they need explicit and singular democratic approval. So they had to be done, even if they are an awkward fit with our traditions (and they are)
What you cannot ever EVER do is then ignore the vote when is is given. Sweet Jesus: no
I mean, I regret the many hours of my life I wasted arguing with Barty that May’s deal was a perfectly legitimate way of leaving the EU - but at least that was a live issue at the time.
This is just Leon masturbating; forgive me for not wanting to join in.
There were reasonable criticisms of the EU. And spending in public services. And of immigration and asylum. And wokery. Fair minds could see the yes but no but.
But thirteen years of untrammelled power over events have given us an utter shitstorm of malfeasance, incompetence and grift that we'll have to paint with a darker palate for many years before folk will confess they may have been wrong.
Corbyn, no friend of remain himself, knew that helping May would basically end his own project as he'd lose half his base. Labour moderates knew that doing so against their leadership would probably mean they lost the party for good. So neither did.
Of course the same could be argued of Brexit hardliners - who could have got May's deal through by agreeing to it, even when they didn't like it. After all they went along with Boris's despite its many issues in the name of 'getting it done'.
Then May herself. Who squandered her majority then failed to acknowledge that if her own hardliners weren't going to play ball, some kind of grand compromise that they could sell to their voters was needed to get Labour on board.
Plenty of blame to go round. Then we needed to break the deadlock - which probably meant what we got in terms of a general election that pitted two contrasting approaches against each other and gave one the mandate to get on with that.
How ridiculously stupid you are.
That is democracy. Simply anulling democratic votes, as too many on here wanted to do, is - fairly obviously - not democratic
Ten minutes spent imagining how the "2nd vote" campaign would have panned out is enough to prove that. Try it
Tom Tugendhat
@TomTugendhat
·
1h
There’s a fake audio recording of the Mayor of London being circulated. Please don’t repost or amplify it.
The Met is aware, and are actively investigating.
Sure Rejoiners would be pissed off, but it wouldn't be "the end of democracy" or whatever hyperbolic bollocks Leon is raving about.
Thanks.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.08.566182v1
Cross-species transmission of coronaviruses (CoVs) poses a serious threat to both animal and human health. Whilst the large RNA genome of CoVs shows relatively low mutation rates, recombination within genera is frequently observed and demonstrated. Companion animals are often overlooked in the transmission cycle of viral diseases; however, the close relationship of feline (FCoV) and canine CoV (CCoV) to human hCoV-229E, as well as their susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 highlight their importance in potential transmission cycles. Whilst recombination between CCoV and FCoV of a large fragment spanning orf1b to M has been previously described, here we report the emergence of a novel, highly pathogenic FCoV-CCoV recombinant responsible for a rapidly spreading outbreak of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), originating in Cyprus. The recombination, spanning spike, shows 97% sequence identity to the pantropic canine coronavirus CB/05. Infection is spreading fast and infecting cats of all ages. Development of FIP appears rapid and likely non-reliant on biotype switch. High sequence identity of isolates from cats in different districts of the island is strongly supportive of direct transmission. A deletion and several amino acid changes in spike, particularly the receptor binding domain, compared to other FCoV-2s, indicate changes to receptor binding and likely cell tropism.
Why bother with democracy if the powers that be are just going to ignore it?
Yes it would be absolute madness. But so what - the alternative is the abyss. 30p Lee for PM. Vote Tory* or Fuck Off.
*I like Conservatives. Disagree politically, but they are honourable. With a few exceptions, the current lot aren't Conservatives, they are Tories. With the emphasis on robbing.
A compromise deal with May would have likely left us in a better position than where we ended up today with Boris forcing through a hard Brexit.
However, as we've seen it's been a phyric victory for the Tory right as the sunlit uplands that were promised have comprehensively failed to be delivered.
And so we'll gradually move closer towards the compromise deal that could have been, inching towards Europe but not ever within the EU - at least not for many decades. The reality that close trade relations with your closest neighbours is a good thing for growth will rule supreme over considerations over what people did or didn't mean by leaving the EU years beforehand.
The political capital it'd take to rejoin is too high vs other deals that could be delivered from the outside.
Police brace for largest pro-Palestinian protest
Answer - oh yeah, sorry I asked.
In the case of a vote to Rejoin: if the EU then decided to only allow the UK to rejoin at the same time as joining the euro and this turned out to be fairly unpopular in the UK leading stalemate in the rejoin negotiations and an anti-Rejoin party winning a general election, then what?
Is it economically in the toilet of stagnancy? Sadly, yes. Does it face innumerable problems due to climate change, culture wars, post-Covid debt, Ukrainian energy crises, and so on and so forth? Also yes. But then, these problems are common across the West, and actually and significantly WORSE in multiple EU countries - Sweden for migration, Germany for growth, Italy for demography, Spain for climate change, and so on - and every country in the world faces the epochal challenge of AI
Meanwhile, I am thankful that Britain has given herself the democratic tools to act nimbly and independently, if we so desire, via Brexit. It is up to us now, no British politician can henceforth "blame it on Brussels"
There. Fixed that for you.
In Britain, we respect referendums (even after great struggles with people who should know better). That is why our democracy is superior to the EU, that is why we voted Leave
And I’ll be a remainer until I die.
But I’m a democrat more so. The complaints against the utter mendacity of the leave campaign are all valid but that’s how our democracy works.
It’s all Cameron’s fault really. Why he didn’t design a system that had a first ‘in principle’ referendum and then a second multi-option confirmatory referendum once we had the details sorted I have no idea.
Lack of hindsight I suppose.
Obviously, that is just my opinion, but you have to be consistent in these things or democracy is pointless.
At least they have given up on the Savile stuff, for now anyway.
Katie White
@KatieJWhite
I am delighted and incredibly honoured to have received the endorsement to be selected to run as MP for Leeds North West from Neil Kinnock, our former party leader and Honorary President for the Labour Movement for Europe. Thank you, Neil, your support is greatly appreciated 🙏🏼
https://twitter.com/KatieJWhite
https://www.katie4leedsnw.com/
Her video even includes the famous "first generation of my family to go to university".
Ed M and Kinnock endorsing.
Very long term betting people take note imho.
"“We were together all the time. He was my brother. I have been his friend since third grade. He was a very nice person, a very aggressive fighter. He was never afraid. This will strengthen us but we are carrying our weapons to be martyred. Of course he is a lucky one. He is a martyr. I am happy for him. This is my wish too. Our wish is to be martyred. But I miss him, of course. We used to play soccer and go swimming every day.”"
If people want to march and demand that *both sides* call a ceasefire, that would be one thing. But this march is not going to do, is it? It will call for *the Israelis* to ceasefire, and not the "I want to be a martyr" lot.
The march is co-organised by FOA. Hardly a surprise that a pro-Hamas organisation isn't calling out Hamas.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Leeds North West
'What was revelatory — what you really do have to see and hear to believe — is the attitude of the terrorists. They are having the time of their lives. Some whoop with delight over dead civilians lying on a highway. A team of gunmen brings a dead Israeli soldier back to Gaza and stands triumphantly over his body, as a crowd spontaneously rushes forward to kick and stomp the corpse. Young, heavily armed members of Hamas’s elite Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades pose for a video selfie, shouting in Arabic, “that’s how it’s done.” (The embassy provided translations.)
Surely, the most chilling part of the film is an audio-only clip: a terrorist calling home to tell his parents that he is in Israel and killing Jews — 10, he boasts, including a woman whose phone he is using. “Their blood is on my hands,” he cries, joyously. “Your son’s a hero.”'
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/01/hamas-attack-videos-described/
Supposedly he boasted of this to Merkel when she asked him about the Brexit vote. He chortled and said "Oh, I'll win that easily"
Amazingly, she then refused to give him a decent renegotiation deal, which might have won it for Remain. And given that she had been reassured by the same man that the vote could not be lost, what was in it for her, to do so?
He is an object lesson in hubris, and Brexit is his melancholy epitaph, and now he spends his time writing bollocks in a fucking wooden caravan
A good classic cuvee sparkling at the Chapel Down classic cuvee level but not quite up there with the standard bearers of Nyetimber, Gusbourne or some of the boutiques like Oxney.
Which brings me to planning permission for wineries and visitor centres in Southern England. In the past 12 months we’ve seen planning turned down for a new headquarters for Chapel Down off the A2 at Bridge, which would have been a huge tourist draw and game changer for East Kent, and planning refused for Britain’s largest winery - beautifully modernistic, carbon neutral - in Cuxton near Gravesend, in a valley which is already covered in vines. Why?
Obviously my rune reading has been v wrong before. DYOR.
We want to be the new Champagne/Loire/Rhine Valley etc
STUPID
And wineries can be made to look really beautiful, even when seriously industrial. They are not coal mines
I am damn certain that if Brussels had started negotiating with the Leave side over the heads or behind the backs of the British Government prior to the vote then there would have been hell to pay.
Cameron wanted there to be no clear picture of what Leave would mean as he thought this would make it more likely for people to cling to Nanny's skirts.
So your march tomorrow - organised in part by a pro-Hamas organisation - will demand that Israel and *only Israel* will ceasefire. No demands of Hamas. No blame on Hamas. No accusations or negative banners or placards about Hamas. Only the Jews.
20MPH
TRUSS
BRACE
The reason it’s worth banging on about is that he has u-turned and lied so often. Maybe because he was contrasted with Boris, maybe because he comes across as dull, people think he is an honest, straight up guy. I would have thought the videos lined up for the GE campaign to show his duplicity will have him stuttering like a maniac during the debates