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Sunak and stopping the boats – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 12,213
edited March 25 in General
imageSunak and stopping the boats – politicalbetting.com

“Our priority is to stop the boats, which is why we have taken robust action to crack down on vile people smuggling gangs, deter migrants from making dangerous crossings and, alongside our French counterparts, intercept vessels.“This relentless action reduced crossings by 36% last year, despite numbers soaring by 80% in the Mediterranean, and more than 26,000 attempts were prevented.” UK Home Office, 8th March 2024.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,123
    The fatal thing for Sunak is that he appears not to be in control of anything. Even the Rwanda plan, where after the first plane it is under the control of Rwanda.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    Interesting header, even if I'm not really convinced Brexit was a vote about immigration, although it obviously was for some. More directly, CCHQ and Rishi are haunted by the ghost of Ukip, with Nigel Farage broadcasting from Dover.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    As PB's top punter, I am happy to share my Betfair Cheltenham record.


    In that time-worn phrase: just about breaking even!
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    Controversial Everton bidder 777 Partners sees owning football club as way to snap up sportstech bargains
    The controversial investment firm sees owning football clubs as a way to identify underpriced buyout targets in the sports tech sector

    https://www.standard.co.uk/business/everton-bidder-777-partners-buy-football-software-tech-premier-league-ownership-investment-firm-unicorn-sportstech-b1145653.html
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    How Covid made us more stupid: even mild infection ‘leads to fall in IQ’
    A large-scale study suggests the virus may have affected the intelligence of millions of people

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-covid-made-the-world-stupider-5qvz6sbhj (£££)
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    edited March 16
    Rishi Sunak is working towards an autumn general election on 10 October, The Independent has been told.
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/general-election-2024-date-rishi-sunak-b2513281.html

    Odds-against on Betfair and not front-page news for the Independent as the guessing games continue. As the paper notes, this date would wreck the party conference season.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,458

    How Covid made us more stupid: even mild infection ‘leads to fall in IQ’
    A large-scale study suggests the virus may have affected the intelligence of millions of people

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-covid-made-the-world-stupider-5qvz6sbhj (£££)

    Ah, so that explains the polling. Covid lowers intelligence, which means people are more likely to say they'll vote Labour!

    ;)
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    edited March 16
    Scotland Yard axes 60 murder detectives to save millions
    Met Police’s 20 homicide squads will each lose three detective constables to save £4.2 million from budget despite London’s high murder rate

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/15/met-police-murder-detectives-neil-cochin-homicide-budget/ (£££)

    Some of us believe it was Theresa May's police cuts, in the context of the two terrorist outrages during the election campaign, that lost the Conservatives their majority in 2017.

    Can Susan Hall weaponise this against Sadiq Khan? Tricky given a Conservative government.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 7,084
    Great article @TOPPING

    Thank you for it.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417

    How Covid made us more stupid: even mild infection ‘leads to fall in IQ’
    A large-scale study suggests the virus may have affected the intelligence of millions of people

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-covid-made-the-world-stupider-5qvz6sbhj (£££)

    Ah, so that explains the polling. Covid lowers intelligence, which means people are more likely to say they'll vote Labour!

    ;)
    A brighter PBer than me will remember which MP replied to an insult by saying that stupid people deserved to be represented in parliament.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,458

    How Covid made us more stupid: even mild infection ‘leads to fall in IQ’
    A large-scale study suggests the virus may have affected the intelligence of millions of people

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-covid-made-the-world-stupider-5qvz6sbhj (£££)

    Ah, so that explains the polling. Covid lowers intelligence, which means people are more likely to say they'll vote Labour!

    ;)
    A brighter PBer than me will remember which MP replied to an insult by saying that stupid people deserved to be represented in parliament.
    I'm so stupid I can't even remember that happening!
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,390
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    viewcode said:
    Same time. Everywhere. 💫

    Get ready for the global premiere of #DoctorWho on @BBCiPlayer in the UK 11th May and @DisneyPlus 10th May where available.


    Sorry, I don't understand how this is the "Same time. Everywhere." However you juggle time zones, doesn't this mean Disney+ subscribers get it before BBC viewers?
  • Penddu2Penddu2 Posts: 718
    Today is when we learn who will win race to be leader of Welsh Labour - and so become First Minister.

    The race is between Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles - Gething is seen as UK Labour's man and has Union support. Miles is more popular among members.

    I expect Miles to win the membership vote and Gething to win the union vote, and edging it overall, but it will be a close race.

    If Gething wins he will not be a popular leader and I expect Labour vote to slump.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,458

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
  • Penddu2Penddu2 Posts: 718
    My limited experience of AI (for @Leon ).
    1: Our communications team recently shot a promotional video in our office - but only shot a head and shoulders still photo of the individual concerned - forgetting that they were supposed to get a full body shot. Rather than remobilise a photographer they simply used AI to generate the missing photo. I would never have known if I had not been told...
    2: I needed a formal business photo for company website, but I only had passport photos and informal shots. So I used AI to generate a suitable photo for me. There were lots of unrecognisable shots (containing all of the matching details of my mouth, nose, eyes etc - but the overall effect was just wrong - like a dodgy waxwork model). But I eventually got a brilliant picture. Very professional. Looked exactly me.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,721
    edited March 16
    Penddu2 said:

    Today is when we learn who will win race to be leader of Welsh Labour - and so become First Minister.

    The race is between Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles - Gething is seen as UK Labour's man and has Union support. Miles is more popular among members.

    I expect Miles to win the membership vote and Gething to win the union vote, and edging it overall, but it will be a close race.

    If Gething wins he will not be a popular leader and I expect Labour vote to slump.

    Although so far nobody has got rich betting on Labour’s decline in Wales.

    Admittedly, Gething not only carries baggage but doesn’t speak Welsh, which will surely count against him.

    But who are those votes likely to leak to? Plaid? Not really a serious organisation. Y Ceidwadwyr Cymreig? Still less so.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    Penddu2 said:

    My limited experience of AI (for @Leon ).
    1: Our communications team recently shot a promotional video in our office - but only shot a head and shoulders still photo of the individual concerned - forgetting that they were supposed to get a full body shot. Rather than remobilise a photographer they simply used AI to generate the missing photo. I would never have known if I had not been told...
    2: I needed a formal business photo for company website, but I only had passport photos and informal shots. So I used AI to generate a suitable photo for me. There were lots of unrecognisable shots (containing all of the matching details of my mouth, nose, eyes etc - but the overall effect was just wrong - like a dodgy waxwork model). But I eventually got a brilliant picture. Very professional. Looked exactly me.

    What endangers professional photographers is not AI but mobile phones, even if they are clearly not permitted in your workplace. Who needs to frame shots when you can take hundreds and pick the best one later, with the phone (or camera) taking care of focus and lighting?

    Oh, and parsimony. Look at the number of news stories illustrated with stock photos.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,130
    edited March 16

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    Everything is temporary (including our EU membership as it turned out). But the huge, unprecedented, unexpected and unwanted flood of immigration from the East lasted for many years and did enough damage to our social cohesion to tip the balance towards Leave. Remember, 13,000 were expected, 3 million came. Of course there were lots of other reasons to leave the EU (our huge annual contributions, democracy, sovereignty, etc etc etc), but that was certainly the bale of straw that broke the camel's back.
  • CleitophonCleitophon Posts: 489

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 50,145

    How Covid made us more stupid: even mild infection ‘leads to fall in IQ’
    A large-scale study suggests the virus may have affected the intelligence of millions of people

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-covid-made-the-world-stupider-5qvz6sbhj (£££)

    Leon explained, at last!
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,458

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
    I agree with much of that, but firstly, it does not invalidate my point: the boats are a *symbol*. That might be unwise, or even stupid, but it's the case.

    Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
  • TazTaz Posts: 15,027
    viewcode said:
    You reckon ?

    Have you seen the reaction in certain sections of online fandom. 😂
  • CleitophonCleitophon Posts: 489

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
    I agree with much of that, but firstly, it does not invalidate my point: the boats are a *symbol*. That might be unwise, or even stupid, but it's the case.

    Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
    I agree that migrants have taken on a mythic status among some segments of the population.

    Regarding borders: look.at the Danish cpr system. Personal identifiers that are required to access any services whatsoever. Denmark has open physical borders but the most brutal cpr regulation. And it works.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,668
    Fishing said:

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    Everything is temporary (including our EU membership as it turned out). But the huge, unprecedented, unexpected and unwanted flood of immigration from the East lasted for many years and did enough damage to our social cohesion to tip the balance towards Leave. Remember, 13,000 were expected, 3 million came. Of course there were lots of other reasons to leave the EU (our huge annual contributions, democracy, sovereignty, etc etc etc), but that was certainly the bale of straw that broke the camel's back.

    Yes - the focus was always on the negative aspects of EU immigration, not the positive, and we did spend a decade being told that hardworking, largely socially conservative, Catholic Poles were a major danger to the UK's social cohesion. But Poland is a much richer country than it was and Poles tend to stay at home now, while our need for immigrants has only increased.

  • TazTaz Posts: 15,027
    Fishing said:

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    Everything is temporary (including our EU membership as it turned out). But the huge, unprecedented, unexpected and unwanted flood of immigration from the East lasted for many years and did enough damage to our social cohesion to tip the balance towards Leave. Remember, 13,000 were expected, 3 million came. Of course there were lots of other reasons to leave the EU (our huge annual contributions, democracy, sovereignty, etc etc etc), but that was certainly the bale of straw that broke the camel's back.
    I really doubt 13,000 were genuinely expected. Some groups forecast the higher numbers and were routinely derided but were right.

    Migration is a problem here because no govt has the decency to be honest with the people as to what they are doing and why.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    1-minute trailer for a new play about Nye Bevan
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEWGqDqgt6Q

  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,449

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
    I agree with much of that, but firstly, it does not invalidate my point: the boats are a *symbol*. That might be unwise, or even stupid, but it's the case.

    Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
    Trouble is that Rwanda has also become a symbolic fetish object. A couple of plane loads and people won't want to take the risk, yada yada. Which seems unlikely, given that the Home Office is now offering people a few grand to go there voluntarily.

    Given that the project only really started to try and shore up BoJo's collapsing support, it's not surprising that it's rubbish. What is surprising is that Rishi has embraced it, much like Colonel Nicholson embraced the Bridge on the River Kwai.

    (And as others have said before, the better answers involve a combination of better internal ID checks for work and suchlike, serious consequences for employers of illegal workers and some acceptance that the number of desperate people the UK should help is greater than zero. But all that inconveniences us, so it won't happen.)
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    edited March 16
    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s
  • StockyStocky Posts: 10,231
    Very good header @TOPPING
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,468
    Fishing said:

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    Everything is temporary (including our EU membership as it turned out). But the huge, unprecedented, unexpected and unwanted flood of immigration from the East lasted for many years and did enough damage to our social cohesion to tip the balance towards Leave. Remember, 13,000 were expected, 3 million came. Of course there were lots of other reasons to leave the EU (our huge annual contributions, democracy, sovereignty, etc etc etc), but that was certainly the bale of straw that broke the camel's back.
    In what way has our social cohesion been damaged by a bunch of Poles and Romanians?
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,898
    The Tories are all about divide and rule - it's howa corrupt oligarchy that has nothing in common with most of the population and is actively undermining their interests sustains itself in office. Hating on foreigners is a core plank of that strategy, Stop the Boats the latest iteration.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,123

    How Covid made us more stupid: even mild infection ‘leads to fall in IQ’
    A large-scale study suggests the virus may have affected the intelligence of millions of people

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-covid-made-the-world-stupider-5qvz6sbhj (£££)

    Not just more stupid either. Damage to the frontal lobe affects impulse control, reduces empathy, increases aggression, affects forward planning etc.

    Just what the world needs.
  • GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,860
    Taz said:

    viewcode said:
    You reckon ?

    Have you seen the reaction in certain sections of online fandom. 😂
    Being a fan of Warhammer and D&D I thought I knew toxic fandom.

    Then I dipped my toe into Dr Who. Genuinely unhinged.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,721
    Ghedebrav said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:
    You reckon ?

    Have you seen the reaction in certain sections of online fandom. 😂
    Being a fan of Warhammer and D&D I thought I knew toxic fandom.

    Then I dipped my toe into Dr Who. Genuinely unhinged.
    That's not the worst, though. You haven't lived until you've tried to have a rational conversation with a fan of Dominic Cummings.
  • GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,860

    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s

    I appalled myself recently when I realised that it is quite possible that the second best PM since Blair may well be Boris.

    He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.


    *Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
  • GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,860
    ydoethur said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:
    You reckon ?

    Have you seen the reaction in certain sections of online fandom. 😂
    Being a fan of Warhammer and D&D I thought I knew toxic fandom.

    Then I dipped my toe into Dr Who. Genuinely unhinged.
    That's not the worst, though. You haven't lived until you've tried to have a rational conversation with a fan of Dominic Cummings.
    Do such creatures exist?
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,899

    I know we disagree on a lot of things but I think this is an excellent thread header from @Topping.

    I would add that the one thing it misses is that there are a significant number of people who want to see the boats stopped because it is such a desperately unsafe way for those in need to get the the UK.

    Going all the way back to Cameron in 2014/2015, if the rest of the EU had picked up on his ideas about transporting the vulnerable directly from the camps around Syria to member states rather than making them undertake hazardous and difficult journeys that favoured the fittest and those least in need of help, then we might have seen a very different reaction across Europe to the migrant crisis.

    If Sunak really wanted to solve the migrant situation in the Channel then he could go a long way towards doing that by having safe, legal methods of asylum/immigration for the desperate people in France.

    Yes.

    One of Cameron's best policies - the contrast with Mutti was stark.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,449

    I know we disagree on a lot of things but I think this is an excellent thread header from @Topping.

    I would add that the one thing it misses is that there are a significant number of people who want to see the boats stopped because it is such a desperately unsafe way for those in need to get the the UK.

    Going all the way back to Cameron in 2014/2015, if the rest of the EU had picked up on his ideas about transporting the vulnerable directly from the camps around Syria to member states rather than making them undertake hazardous and difficult journeys that favoured the fittest and those least in need of help, then we might have seen a very different reaction across Europe to the migrant crisis.

    If Sunak really wanted to solve the migrant situation in the Channel then he could go a long way towards doing that by having safe, legal methods of asylum/immigration for the desperate people in France.

    Unfortunately, that's the tell that some of the intentions behind Stop The Boats are malign. The clandestine flow could be substantially reduced (and the objections to the Rwanda project tempered) by having a clear safe, legal route.

    But for most people, there isn't one.
  • GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,860

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
    I agree with much of that, but firstly, it does not invalidate my point: the boats are a *symbol*. That might be unwise, or even stupid, but it's the case.

    Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
    Trouble is that Rwanda has also become a symbolic fetish object. A couple of plane loads and people won't want to take the risk, yada yada. Which seems unlikely, given that the Home Office is now offering people a few grand to go there voluntarily.

    Given that the project only really started to try and shore up BoJo's collapsing support, it's not surprising that it's rubbish. What is surprising is that Rishi has embraced it, much like Colonel Nicholson embraced the Bridge on the River Kwai.

    (And as others have said before, the better answers involve a combination of better internal ID checks for work and suchlike, serious consequences for employers of illegal workers and some acceptance that the number of desperate people the UK should help is greater than zero. But all that inconveniences us, so it won't happen.)
    Sunak is axiomatically crap at politics.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,449
    ydoethur said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:
    You reckon ?

    Have you seen the reaction in certain sections of online fandom. 😂
    Being a fan of Warhammer and D&D I thought I knew toxic fandom.

    Then I dipped my toe into Dr Who. Genuinely unhinged.
    That's not the worst, though. You haven't lived until you've tried to have a rational conversation with a fan of Dominic Cummings.
    Apart from DC himself, do such people still exist?
  • GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,860
    MattW said:

    I know we disagree on a lot of things but I think this is an excellent thread header from @Topping.

    I would add that the one thing it misses is that there are a significant number of people who want to see the boats stopped because it is such a desperately unsafe way for those in need to get the the UK.

    Going all the way back to Cameron in 2014/2015, if the rest of the EU had picked up on his ideas about transporting the vulnerable directly from the camps around Syria to member states rather than making them undertake hazardous and difficult journeys that favoured the fittest and those least in need of help, then we might have seen a very different reaction across Europe to the migrant crisis.

    If Sunak really wanted to solve the migrant situation in the Channel then he could go a long way towards doing that by having safe, legal methods of asylum/immigration for the desperate people in France.

    Yes.

    One of Cameron's best policies - the contrast with Mutti was stark.
    The contrast with self-same Cameron’s decision to adventure into Libya and create an absolute open field for people traffickers in the central Med is also stark.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,704
    ydoethur said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:
    You reckon ?

    Have you seen the reaction in certain sections of online fandom. 😂
    Being a fan of Warhammer and D&D I thought I knew toxic fandom.

    Then I dipped my toe into Dr Who. Genuinely unhinged.
    That's not the worst, though. You haven't lived until you've tried to have a rational conversation with a fan of Dominic Cummings.
    A what? Does such a person exist?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,721

    ydoethur said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:
    You reckon ?

    Have you seen the reaction in certain sections of online fandom. 😂
    Being a fan of Warhammer and D&D I thought I knew toxic fandom.

    Then I dipped my toe into Dr Who. Genuinely unhinged.
    That's not the worst, though. You haven't lived until you've tried to have a rational conversation with a fan of Dominic Cummings.
    Apart from DC himself, do such people still exist?
    Well, to be fair I haven't met many just recently.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,177
    Very good header - though no one has mentioned the fanciful last paragraph.
    Did no one read that far ?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,721
    Ghedebrav said:

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
    I agree with much of that, but firstly, it does not invalidate my point: the boats are a *symbol*. That might be unwise, or even stupid, but it's the case.

    Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
    Trouble is that Rwanda has also become a symbolic fetish object. A couple of plane loads and people won't want to take the risk, yada yada. Which seems unlikely, given that the Home Office is now offering people a few grand to go there voluntarily.

    Given that the project only really started to try and shore up BoJo's collapsing support, it's not surprising that it's rubbish. What is surprising is that Rishi has embraced it, much like Colonel Nicholson embraced the Bridge on the River Kwai.

    (And as others have said before, the better answers involve a combination of better internal ID checks for work and suchlike, serious consequences for employers of illegal workers and some acceptance that the number of desperate people the UK should help is greater than zero. But all that inconveniences us, so it won't happen.)
    Sunak is axiomatically crap at politics.
    He is, let it not be forgotten, a fan of Dominic Cummings...
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,458
    Ghedebrav said:

    MattW said:

    I know we disagree on a lot of things but I think this is an excellent thread header from @Topping.

    I would add that the one thing it misses is that there are a significant number of people who want to see the boats stopped because it is such a desperately unsafe way for those in need to get the the UK.

    Going all the way back to Cameron in 2014/2015, if the rest of the EU had picked up on his ideas about transporting the vulnerable directly from the camps around Syria to member states rather than making them undertake hazardous and difficult journeys that favoured the fittest and those least in need of help, then we might have seen a very different reaction across Europe to the migrant crisis.

    If Sunak really wanted to solve the migrant situation in the Channel then he could go a long way towards doing that by having safe, legal methods of asylum/immigration for the desperate people in France.

    Yes.

    One of Cameron's best policies - the contrast with Mutti was stark.
    The contrast with self-same Cameron’s decision to adventure into Libya and create an absolute open field for people traffickers in the central Med is also stark.
    Libya was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation.

    I honestly don't think Gadhafi could have kept control of the entire country even before the west got involved. The UN were heavily involved.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_civil_war_(2011)
  • northern_monkeynorthern_monkey Posts: 1,640

    The Tories are all about divide and rule - it's howa corrupt oligarchy that has nothing in common with most of the population and is actively undermining their interests sustains itself in office. Hating on foreigners is a core plank of that strategy, Stop the Boats the latest iteration.

    I think that’s true. The people who bankroll the Tory Party don’t really care about immigration, they just knew it was a useful lever to pull to get us out of the EU. They created the hysteria with their newspapers and fed it and nurtured it in order to ultimately remove us from a supranational organisation that wasn’t afraid to curtail their power.

    I was in a McDonalds yesterday and the number of Asian males shuttling in and out, picking up orders for delivery, was striking. Here in Yvette Cooper’s constituency, where we’ve a lot of warehouses and logistics and stuff cos we’re where the A1 and M62 cross, the rise since Brexit of non-white faces in the streets and supermarkets is extremely noticeable. Whereas before immigrants were generally white Europeans. Poles, etc.

    I welcome it, it’s about time we caught up with the diversity of Leeds, for example. But it isn’t what most Brexit voters round here anticipated as a result of their Leave vote.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    Ghedebrav said:

    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s

    I appalled myself recently when I realised that it is quite possible that the second best PM since Blair may well be Boris.

    He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.


    *Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
    David Cameron is Britain's worst prime minister since Lord North. Boris is sui generis; Liz Truss might be too; it is starting to look a bit crowded in that cop-out category. Rishi was dealt a bad hand and is playing it badly.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,123
    "Take Back Control" was a very powerful slogan for Leave, a concise what.three.words that expressed a lot of dissatisfaction.

    Since Brexit we have had the paradox of significantly increased immigration, and not just Ukranian refugees and fleeing Hong Kongers. There has been a significant increase in migration from the 3rd World, particularly the Subcontinent, Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, all authorised by our most anti-immigrant government in modern history.

    How do we square this paradox. In large part it is because those "in control" of immigration want and need it to keep various parts of the economy going, from universities to Health and Social Care. It's a bit like the desire of voters to vote for both lower taxes and for increased spending on services.

    So Leave voters are still the ones dissatisfied with migration despite being in control.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,668
    Whether the Brexit vote was or was not driven by immigration is largely immaterial. Those implementing Brexit decided that it was. That's what matters and it's why we ended up with the deal we did. The control (or sovereignty maximalism, to put it another way) that Topping refers to in his excellent piece was deemed more important than all other considerations. Other Brexits were available.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,458
    There are reports (unconfirmed) that the Russians are having issues with a brand new nuclear submarine, after issues with one of its missiles. The crew is having to be rescued.

    Probably untrue.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,721

    Ghedebrav said:

    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s

    I appalled myself recently when I realised that it is quite possible that the second best PM since Blair may well be Boris.

    He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.


    *Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
    David Cameron is Britain's worst prime minister since Lord North.
    Poor old Lord Goderich, always overlooked.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,123

    ydoethur said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:
    You reckon ?

    Have you seen the reaction in certain sections of online fandom. 😂
    Being a fan of Warhammer and D&D I thought I knew toxic fandom.

    Then I dipped my toe into Dr Who. Genuinely unhinged.
    That's not the worst, though. You haven't lived until you've tried to have a rational conversation with a fan of Dominic Cummings.
    A what? Does such a person exist?
    He is his own greatest fan!
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,721

    There are reports (unconfirmed) that the Russians are having issues with a brand new nuclear submarine, after issues with one of its missiles. The crew is having to be rescued.

    Probably untrue.

    How did it leak?

    Umm, the story, not the submarine.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,449
    Nigelb said:

    Very good header - though no one has mentioned the fanciful last paragraph.
    Did no one read that far ?

    From today's Times:

    The government’s flagship Rwanda legislation could also finally pass, with the Home Office planning for the first flights to take off by mid May. This would be followed quickly by further flights with plans for a large foreign language social media campaign featuring these people who had been deported — and targeted at those still looking to come to the UK...

    “Labour say they’re going to scrap the scheme — but if we can show that it’s working what are they going to say then? People on all sides are so convinced it’s not going to happen or that it’s not going to work that they are underestimating the political potential of it being successful.”


    Classy.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,668

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
    I agree with much of that, but firstly, it does not invalidate my point: the boats are a *symbol*. That might be unwise, or even stupid, but it's the case.

    Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
    Trouble is that Rwanda has also become a symbolic fetish object. A couple of plane loads and people won't want to take the risk, yada yada. Which seems unlikely, given that the Home Office is now offering people a few grand to go there voluntarily.

    Given that the project only really started to try and shore up BoJo's collapsing support, it's not surprising that it's rubbish. What is surprising is that Rishi has embraced it, much like Colonel Nicholson embraced the Bridge on the River Kwai.

    (And as others have said before, the better answers involve a combination of better internal ID checks for work and suchlike, serious consequences for employers of illegal workers and some acceptance that the number of desperate people the UK should help is greater than zero. But all that inconveniences us, so it won't happen.)

    Rwanda was a great policy for a mid-term government looking to change the conversation. It is much less so for an immensely unpopular one just months from an election. There will almost certainly be some flights there before we go to the polls but there will definitely be a lot more arrivals on small boats, so the balance of deportations to incomings will be negative. There is now no time to demonstrate any deterrence value to the scheme. Politically, it has failed.

  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,950
    Good morning, everyone.

    Well, that's needlessly annoying. WPS Office has decided that it wants a sign-in barrier if I actually want to edit documents in any way.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,668
    edited March 16
    Foxy said:

    "Take Back Control" was a very powerful slogan for Leave, a concise what.three.words that expressed a lot of dissatisfaction.

    Since Brexit we have had the paradox of significantly increased immigration, and not just Ukranian refugees and fleeing Hong Kongers. There has been a significant increase in migration from the 3rd World, particularly the Subcontinent, Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, all authorised by our most anti-immigrant government in modern history.

    How do we square this paradox. In large part it is because those "in control" of immigration want and need it to keep various parts of the economy going, from universities to Health and Social Care. It's a bit like the desire of voters to vote for both lower taxes and for increased spending on services.

    So Leave voters are still the ones dissatisfied with migration despite being in control.

    Broadly speaking, it's also the case that those who are most opposed to immigration - retirees - are the most dependent on it.

  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,704

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
    I agree with much of that, but firstly, it does not invalidate my point: the boats are a *symbol*. That might be unwise, or even stupid, but it's the case.

    Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
    Trouble is that Rwanda has also become a symbolic fetish object. A couple of plane loads and people won't want to take the risk, yada yada. Which seems unlikely, given that the Home Office is now offering people a few grand to go there voluntarily.

    Given that the project only really started to try and shore up BoJo's collapsing support, it's not surprising that it's rubbish. What is surprising is that Rishi has embraced it, much like Colonel Nicholson embraced the Bridge on the River Kwai.

    (And as others have said before, the better answers involve a combination of better internal ID checks for work and suchlike, serious consequences for employers of illegal workers and some acceptance that the number of desperate people the UK should help is greater than zero. But all that inconveniences us, so it won't happen.)

    Rwanda was a great policy for a mid-term government looking to change the conversation. It is much less so for an immensely unpopular one just months from an election. There will almost certainly be some flights there before we go to the polls but there will definitely be a lot more arrivals on small boats, so the balance of deportations to incomings will be negative. There is now no time to demonstrate any deterrence value to the scheme. Politically, it has failed.

    Assuming of course, that nothing goes wrong in Rwanda.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,668

    Nigelb said:

    Very good header - though no one has mentioned the fanciful last paragraph.
    Did no one read that far ?

    From today's Times:

    The government’s flagship Rwanda legislation could also finally pass, with the Home Office planning for the first flights to take off by mid May. This would be followed quickly by further flights with plans for a large foreign language social media campaign featuring these people who had been deported — and targeted at those still looking to come to the UK...

    “Labour say they’re going to scrap the scheme — but if we can show that it’s working what are they going to say then? People on all sides are so convinced it’s not going to happen or that it’s not going to work that they are underestimating the political potential of it being successful.”


    Classy.

    This might work if people were still giving the government the benefit of the doubt. But that was squandered a long time ago.

  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,890
    ..
    Ghedebrav said:

    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s

    I appalled myself recently when I realised that it is quite possible that the second best PM since Blair may well be Boris.

    He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.


    *Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
    I just don't see Johnson anywhere except at the bottom of the heap. I don't like Cameron, however like Blair he is characterised by starkly misjudged foreign policy, but beyond that there was competence and levity. Johnson was punctuated by such a series of egregious scandals, but more than that his time in office was all about being seen through smoke and mirrors, claiming world beating competence out of his incompetence; "I got all the big calls right" (did you, bollocks!).

    However Johnson's malignancy is best borne out by the culture he brought with him and stamped on the Party and the Country. His legacy is a damaged party and "broken Britain".
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,721

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
    I agree with much of that, but firstly, it does not invalidate my point: the boats are a *symbol*. That might be unwise, or even stupid, but it's the case.

    Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
    Trouble is that Rwanda has also become a symbolic fetish object. A couple of plane loads and people won't want to take the risk, yada yada. Which seems unlikely, given that the Home Office is now offering people a few grand to go there voluntarily.

    Given that the project only really started to try and shore up BoJo's collapsing support, it's not surprising that it's rubbish. What is surprising is that Rishi has embraced it, much like Colonel Nicholson embraced the Bridge on the River Kwai.

    (And as others have said before, the better answers involve a combination of better internal ID checks for work and suchlike, serious consequences for employers of illegal workers and some acceptance that the number of desperate people the UK should help is greater than zero. But all that inconveniences us, so it won't happen.)

    Rwanda was a great policy for a mid-term government looking to change the conversation. It is much less so for an immensely unpopular one just months from an election. There will almost certainly be some flights there before we go to the polls but there will definitely be a lot more arrivals on small boats, so the balance of deportations to incomings will be negative. There is now no time to demonstrate any deterrence value to the scheme. Politically, it has failed.

    Assuming of course, that nothing goes wrong in Rwanda.
    Given the organisational skills of these idiots, they'll put them on a Boeing plane which explodes on the runway due to a leaking fuel tank.
  • Penddu2Penddu2 Posts: 718
    ydoethur said:

    Penddu2 said:

    Today is when we learn who will win race to be leader of Welsh Labour - and so become First Minister.

    The race is between Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles - Gething is seen as UK Labour's man and has Union support. Miles is more popular among members.

    I expect Miles to win the membership vote and Gething to win the union vote, and edging it overall, but it will be a close race.

    If Gething wins he will not be a popular leader and I expect Labour vote to slump.

    Although so far nobody has got rich betting on Labour’s decline in Wales.

    Admittedly, Gething not only carries baggage but doesn’t speak Welsh, which will surely count against him.

    But who are those votes likely to leak to? Plaid? Not really a serious organisation. Y Ceidwadwyr Cymreig? Still less so.
    Plaid will pick up some votes - others will drift to Reform - but can not see anyone going to the Gammon Tractor party.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,704

    ..

    Ghedebrav said:

    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s

    I appalled myself recently when I realised that it is quite possible that the second best PM since Blair may well be Boris.

    He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.


    *Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
    I just don't see Johnson anywhere except at the bottom of the heap. I don't like Cameron, however like Blair he is characterised by starkly misjudged foreign policy, but beyond that there was competence and levity. Johnson was punctuated by such a series of egregious scandals, but more than that his time in office was all about being seen through smoke and mirrors, claiming world beating competence out of his incompetence; "I got all the big calls right" (did you, bollocks!).

    However Johnson's malignancy is best borne out by the culture he brought with him and stamped on the Party and the Country. His legacy is a damaged party and "broken Britain".
    Just been trying to think of some of the things the Cameron government got right. Their immigration policy was suspect… May’s vans ….. student tuition fees…… cutting back on aid for poorer families …… cutting back on legal aid at the courts. I seem to recall they did a good job on pensions, thanks to Steve Webb.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,177

    Nigelb said:

    Very good header - though no one has mentioned the fanciful last paragraph.
    Did no one read that far ?

    From today's Times:

    The government’s flagship Rwanda legislation could also finally pass, with the Home Office planning for the first flights to take off by mid May. This would be followed quickly by further flights with plans for a large foreign language social media campaign featuring these people who had been deported — and targeted at those still looking to come to the UK...

    “Labour say they’re going to scrap the scheme — but if we can show that it’s working what are they going to say then? People on all sides are so convinced it’s not going to happen or that it’s not going to work that they are underestimating the political potential of it being successful.”


    Classy.

    This might work if people were still giving the government the benefit of the doubt. But that was squandered a long time ago.

    For clarity, I've bolded the fanciful bit. Topping is likely right about what the government thinks it 'calculates'..
    The Government, meanwhile, has seen what happens when the public believes a ruling party has no control in this area and calculates that if it can take back control of The Boats it will inspire the trust of the voters for it to take back control over other policy areas and, who knows, perhaps even parliament itself come the next General Election.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,123

    Foxy said:

    "Take Back Control" was a very powerful slogan for Leave, a concise what.three.words that expressed a lot of dissatisfaction.

    Since Brexit we have had the paradox of significantly increased immigration, and not just Ukranian refugees and fleeing Hong Kongers. There has been a significant increase in migration from the 3rd World, particularly the Subcontinent, Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, all authorised by our most anti-immigrant government in modern history.

    How do we square this paradox. In large part it is because those "in control" of immigration want and need it to keep various parts of the economy going, from universities to Health and Social Care. It's a bit like the desire of voters to vote for both lower taxes and for increased spending on services.

    So Leave voters are still the ones dissatisfied with migration despite being in control.

    Broadly speaking, it's also the case that those who are most opposed to immigration - retirees - are the most dependent on it.

    And paradoxically living in the areas of England where there is little international migration.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,099

    Other Brexits were available.

    And all of them were shit
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,123
    ydoethur said:

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
    I agree with much of that, but firstly, it does not invalidate my point: the boats are a *symbol*. That might be unwise, or even stupid, but it's the case.

    Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
    Trouble is that Rwanda has also become a symbolic fetish object. A couple of plane loads and people won't want to take the risk, yada yada. Which seems unlikely, given that the Home Office is now offering people a few grand to go there voluntarily.

    Given that the project only really started to try and shore up BoJo's collapsing support, it's not surprising that it's rubbish. What is surprising is that Rishi has embraced it, much like Colonel Nicholson embraced the Bridge on the River Kwai.

    (And as others have said before, the better answers involve a combination of better internal ID checks for work and suchlike, serious consequences for employers of illegal workers and some acceptance that the number of desperate people the UK should help is greater than zero. But all that inconveniences us, so it won't happen.)

    Rwanda was a great policy for a mid-term government looking to change the conversation. It is much less so for an immensely unpopular one just months from an election. There will almost certainly be some flights there before we go to the polls but there will definitely be a lot more arrivals on small boats, so the balance of deportations to incomings will be negative. There is now no time to demonstrate any deterrence value to the scheme. Politically, it has failed.

    Assuming of course, that nothing goes wrong in Rwanda.
    Given the organisational skills of these idiots, they'll put them on a Boeing plane which explodes on the runway due to a leaking fuel tank.
    Would that be a plus or minus for REFUK voters?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,721
    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    The current immigration problem is not down to the EU; it's the boats. The boats are the symbol of the fact we don't have control.

    Now, if I may put my tinfoil hat on, I might suggest that we might look towards Russia for *some* (not all), of this.
    When people go down to the supermarket to pick up some cheese or buy some socks they just see the object in front of them. This is called product fetishisation. It is when you are blind to the enormous global supply chains and infrastructures that must be in place for those products to exist. In reality the product is like an iceberg: the visible tangiable objects is just 10% peeking out of the water. Thr people focusing on boats or the individual migrant landing on the shore is a victim to context blindness. It is a fetishisation of the migrant. Treating a problem with global vectors as if it is a local issue is a loser' game. Context blindness leave people prone to solutions that seem common sense but are in fact complicated. Thinking physical borders work in the 21st century... looking out the window and being assured the world is flat because that is what.your eyes are telling you. 🤷
    I agree with much of that, but firstly, it does not invalidate my point: the boats are a *symbol*. That might be unwise, or even stupid, but it's the case.

    Secondly, borders can 'work', if a country wants them to. Making them work might become nasty, though. It is much easier to make them 'work' in a country like the UK.
    Trouble is that Rwanda has also become a symbolic fetish object. A couple of plane loads and people won't want to take the risk, yada yada. Which seems unlikely, given that the Home Office is now offering people a few grand to go there voluntarily.

    Given that the project only really started to try and shore up BoJo's collapsing support, it's not surprising that it's rubbish. What is surprising is that Rishi has embraced it, much like Colonel Nicholson embraced the Bridge on the River Kwai.

    (And as others have said before, the better answers involve a combination of better internal ID checks for work and suchlike, serious consequences for employers of illegal workers and some acceptance that the number of desperate people the UK should help is greater than zero. But all that inconveniences us, so it won't happen.)

    Rwanda was a great policy for a mid-term government looking to change the conversation. It is much less so for an immensely unpopular one just months from an election. There will almost certainly be some flights there before we go to the polls but there will definitely be a lot more arrivals on small boats, so the balance of deportations to incomings will be negative. There is now no time to demonstrate any deterrence value to the scheme. Politically, it has failed.

    Assuming of course, that nothing goes wrong in Rwanda.
    Given the organisational skills of these idiots, they'll put them on a Boeing plane which explodes on the runway due to a leaking fuel tank.
    Would that be a plus or minus for REFUK voters?
    Minus. Imported plane, you see.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,963

    The Tories are all about divide and rule - it's howa corrupt oligarchy that has nothing in common with most of the population and is actively undermining their interests sustains itself in office. Hating on foreigners is a core plank of that strategy, Stop the Boats the latest iteration.

    I think that’s true. The people who bankroll the Tory Party don’t really care about immigration, they just knew it was a useful lever to pull to get us out of the EU. They created the hysteria with their newspapers and fed it and nurtured it in order to ultimately remove us from a supranational organisation that wasn’t afraid to curtail their power.

    I was in a McDonalds yesterday and the number of Asian males shuttling in and out, picking up orders for delivery, was striking. Here in Yvette Cooper’s constituency, where we’ve a lot of warehouses and logistics and stuff cos we’re where the A1 and M62 cross, the rise since Brexit of non-white faces in the streets and supermarkets is extremely noticeable. Whereas before immigrants were generally white Europeans. Poles, etc.

    I welcome it, it’s about time we caught up with the diversity of Leeds, for example. But it isn’t what most Brexit voters round here anticipated as a result of their Leave vote.
    Indeed. Though as I have pointed out endlessly the people who wanted the foreign to go home didn’t actually want to do the jobs the foreigners were doing. That’s why we need migration.

    Our society has decided that we all need the ability to click on our phone and have anything we like delivered quickly. That means we need an army of workers doing shitty jobs. So we want people delivering McDonalds but “I’m not getting a job delivering McDonalds”. So we have migrants but “how do we stop all these foreigners coming here and delivering my McDonalds”

    We can’t blame Covid for making people stupid. Many people pre-date Covid in that regard
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,458

    ..

    Ghedebrav said:

    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s

    I appalled myself recently when I realised that it is quite possible that the second best PM since Blair may well be Boris.

    He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.


    *Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
    I just don't see Johnson anywhere except at the bottom of the heap. I don't like Cameron, however like Blair he is characterised by starkly misjudged foreign policy, but beyond that there was competence and levity. Johnson was punctuated by such a series of egregious scandals, but more than that his time in office was all about being seen through smoke and mirrors, claiming world beating competence out of his incompetence; "I got all the big calls right" (did you, bollocks!).

    However Johnson's malignancy is best borne out by the culture he brought with him and stamped on the Party and the Country. His legacy is a damaged party and "broken Britain".
    For me, from best to worst:

    Cameron
    Steadied the ship. Worked well in a coalition.

    May
    Did a reasonable job with a party that was not behind her. Had some good instincts.

    Brown
    Spent years trying to defenestrate the party leader, then did not know what to do with the job when he got it. Let an awful economic inheritance from his time as chancellor. Could have been so much more than he ended up being.

    Johnson
    Got two big calls right, many others wrong. Was never suited to be PM, but he was faced with an unprecedented crisis that few PMs would have come well out of.

    Sunak
    Dealt a bad hand, which he has played terribly so far.

    Truss
    Doesn't really figure; a footnote. She may have surprised on the upside; her subsequent actions suggest otherwise.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 39,668
    Scott_xP said:

    Other Brexits were available.

    And all of them were shit

    There are degrees of crap, though. I think most of us could have lived with a much closer relationship in which there was still an element of pooled sovereignty and we accepted the four freedoms. It's pretty certain that's where we are going to end up.

  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,890
    edited March 16
    Penddu2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Penddu2 said:

    Today is when we learn who will win race to be leader of Welsh Labour - and so become First Minister.

    The race is between Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles - Gething is seen as UK Labour's man and has Union support. Miles is more popular among members.

    I expect Miles to win the membership vote and Gething to win the union vote, and edging it overall, but it will be a close race.

    If Gething wins he will not be a popular leader and I expect Labour vote to slump.

    Although so far nobody has got rich betting on Labour’s decline in Wales.

    Admittedly, Gething not only carries baggage but doesn’t speak Welsh, which will surely count against him.

    But who are those votes likely to leak to? Plaid? Not really a serious organisation. Y Ceidwadwyr Cymreig? Still less so.
    Plaid will pick up some votes - others will drift to Reform - but can not see anyone going to the Gammon Tractor party.
    I have the inside story on Gething and Dauson Group. It is going to get worse (an aromatic landfill near Haverfordwest).

    Gething's competence is called into question that he thought an Environment Minister bankrolled by a waste management company looked anything other than corrupt, even if every penny received was legitimate.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,449

    The Tories are all about divide and rule - it's howa corrupt oligarchy that has nothing in common with most of the population and is actively undermining their interests sustains itself in office. Hating on foreigners is a core plank of that strategy, Stop the Boats the latest iteration.

    I think that’s true. The people who bankroll the Tory Party don’t really care about immigration, they just knew it was a useful lever to pull to get us out of the EU. They created the hysteria with their newspapers and fed it and nurtured it in order to ultimately remove us from a supranational organisation that wasn’t afraid to curtail their power.

    I was in a McDonalds yesterday and the number of Asian males shuttling in and out, picking up orders for delivery, was striking. Here in Yvette Cooper’s constituency, where we’ve a lot of warehouses and logistics and stuff cos we’re where the A1 and M62 cross, the rise since Brexit of non-white faces in the streets and supermarkets is extremely noticeable. Whereas before immigrants were generally white Europeans. Poles, etc.

    I welcome it, it’s about time we caught up with the diversity of Leeds, for example. But it isn’t what most Brexit voters round here anticipated as a result of their Leave vote.
    Indeed. Though as I have pointed out endlessly the people who wanted the foreign to go home didn’t actually want to do the jobs the foreigners were doing. That’s why we need migration.

    Our society has decided that we all need the ability to click on our phone and have anything we like delivered quickly. That means we need an army of workers doing shitty jobs. So we want people delivering McDonalds but “I’m not getting a job delivering McDonalds”. So we have migrants but “how do we stop all these foreigners coming here and delivering my McDonalds”

    We can’t blame Covid for making people stupid. Many people pre-date Covid in that regard
    ... Whilst still having things delivered cheaply.

    One of the legit complaints about the pre-2016 situation was that the costs and benefits of immigration weren't fairly distributed. Brexit hasn't solved that and has probably made things worse.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,458

    The Tories are all about divide and rule - it's howa corrupt oligarchy that has nothing in common with most of the population and is actively undermining their interests sustains itself in office. Hating on foreigners is a core plank of that strategy, Stop the Boats the latest iteration.

    I think that’s true. The people who bankroll the Tory Party don’t really care about immigration, they just knew it was a useful lever to pull to get us out of the EU. They created the hysteria with their newspapers and fed it and nurtured it in order to ultimately remove us from a supranational organisation that wasn’t afraid to curtail their power.

    I was in a McDonalds yesterday and the number of Asian males shuttling in and out, picking up orders for delivery, was striking. Here in Yvette Cooper’s constituency, where we’ve a lot of warehouses and logistics and stuff cos we’re where the A1 and M62 cross, the rise since Brexit of non-white faces in the streets and supermarkets is extremely noticeable. Whereas before immigrants were generally white Europeans. Poles, etc.

    I welcome it, it’s about time we caught up with the diversity of Leeds, for example. But it isn’t what most Brexit voters round here anticipated as a result of their Leave vote.
    Indeed. Though as I have pointed out endlessly the people who wanted the foreign to go home didn’t actually want to do the jobs the foreigners were doing. That’s why we need migration.

    Our society has decided that we all need the ability to click on our phone and have anything we like delivered quickly. That means we need an army of workers doing shitty jobs. So we want people delivering McDonalds but “I’m not getting a job delivering McDonalds”. So we have migrants but “how do we stop all these foreigners coming here and delivering my McDonalds”

    We can’t blame Covid for making people stupid. Many people pre-date Covid in that regard
    Yet again, I'll point out that we're *all* stupid in some regards. We all have things where our beliefs outweigh any appeal to rationality; we all have things we think we know, but do not, or know incorrectly.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,498
    Assume just insomnia for you being on the prowl so early John.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417

    ..

    Ghedebrav said:

    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s

    I appalled myself recently when I realised that it is quite possible that the second best PM since Blair may well be Boris.

    He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.


    *Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
    I just don't see Johnson anywhere except at the bottom of the heap. I don't like Cameron, however like Blair he is characterised by starkly misjudged foreign policy, but beyond that there was competence and levity. Johnson was punctuated by such a series of egregious scandals, but more than that his time in office was all about being seen through smoke and mirrors, claiming world beating competence out of his incompetence; "I got all the big calls right" (did you, bollocks!).

    However Johnson's malignancy is best borne out by the culture he brought with him and stamped on the Party and the Country. His legacy is a damaged party and "broken Britain".
    David Cameron is the Conservative Prime Minister from central casting. Smooth, personable, even handsome in a certain light; Eton and Oxford; socially liberal. You could imagine him played by Hugh Grant in a hit romcom.

    Leaving foreign policy to one side, Cameron's shadow cabinet spent five years preparing for government, yet gave us a health policy (Lansley's reforms) that was disowned and reversed by Cameron, a social policy, Universal Credit, whose introduction was a shambles, and which was undermined by the Chancellor, an economic policy that killed the recovery inherited from Labour and destroyed any prospect of growth, and that left debt at record levels. Local government was starved of funds. Traditional Tory values were thrown to the wolves as police and defence were cut.

    Cameron was also bad at retail politics, at which he was supposed to shine. His relentlessly negative campaign style converted healthy leads over Labour into a hung parliament, almost lost Scotland and did lose Europe. (And before anyone points to 2015, that Conservative victory was due to the SNP driving Labour out of Scotland, not Cameron.)

    Worst of all is Cameron's gerrymandering, tampering with the electoral system for partisan advantage. Ironically, it would probably cause Brexit and the end of Cameron's ministry.

    David Cameron was our worst prime minister since Lord North.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,721
    edited March 16

    ..

    Ghedebrav said:

    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s

    I appalled myself recently when I realised that it is quite possible that the second best PM since Blair may well be Boris.

    He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.


    *Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
    I just don't see Johnson anywhere except at the bottom of the heap. I don't like Cameron, however like Blair he is characterised by starkly misjudged foreign policy, but beyond that there was competence and levity. Johnson was punctuated by such a series of egregious scandals, but more than that his time in office was all about being seen through smoke and mirrors, claiming world beating competence out of his incompetence; "I got all the big calls right" (did you, bollocks!).

    However Johnson's malignancy is best borne out by the culture he brought with him and stamped on the Party and the Country. His legacy is a damaged party and "broken Britain".
    David Cameron is the Conservative Prime Minister from central casting. Smooth, personable, even handsome in a certain light; Eton and Oxford; socially liberal. You could imagine him played by Hugh Grant in a hit romcom.

    Leaving foreign policy to one side, Cameron's shadow cabinet spent five years preparing for government, yet gave us a health policy (Lansley's reforms) that was disowned and reversed by Cameron, a social policy, Universal Credit, whose introduction was a shambles, and which was undermined by the Chancellor, an economic policy that killed the recovery inherited from Labour and destroyed any prospect of growth, and that left debt at record levels. Local government was starved of funds. Traditional Tory values were thrown to the wolves as police and defence were cut.

    Cameron was also bad at retail politics, at which he was supposed to shine. His relentlessly negative campaign style converted healthy leads over Labour into a hung parliament, almost lost Scotland and did lose Europe. (And before anyone points to 2015, that Conservative victory was due to the SNP driving Labour out of Scotland, not Cameron.)

    Worst of all is Cameron's gerrymandering, tampering with the electoral system for partisan advantage. Ironically, it would probably cause Brexit and the end of Cameron's ministry.

    David Cameron was our worst prime minister since Lord North.
    You've missed out:

    1) Lord Goderich

    2) Education - academy chains, botched exam reforms and Amanda Spielman at OFSTED.

    Edit - and you're wrong about 2015. The SNP performance was irrelevant to the result as the Tories gained no seats in Scotland even as they added 25 seats overall. It was the collapse of the Liberal Democrats handing many English seats to the Tories that won them that election.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 43,046
    Taz said:

    Fishing said:

    Ironically, the large scale net immigration we saw with FoM over the decade before the Brexit vote was a temporary, not a permanent, phenomenon. As countries in Central and Eastern Europe become wealthier within the EU, the need to leave to find work reduces. There is data to back this hypothesis up:

    https://www.intellinews.com/net-outflow-of-migrants-from-cee-slowing-as-life-at-home-improves-287076/

    We have inflicted significant restrictions on our own freedoms and on our economy in response to what turns out to have been a moment in time.

    This is one of the reasons why I think that a new, non-Tory, government will have a lot more space to get closer to the EU than might currently seem the case.

    Everything is temporary (including our EU membership as it turned out). But the huge, unprecedented, unexpected and unwanted flood of immigration from the East lasted for many years and did enough damage to our social cohesion to tip the balance towards Leave. Remember, 13,000 were expected, 3 million came. Of course there were lots of other reasons to leave the EU (our huge annual contributions, democracy, sovereignty, etc etc etc), but that was certainly the bale of straw that broke the camel's back.
    I really doubt 13,000 were genuinely expected. Some groups forecast the higher numbers and were routinely derided but were right.

    Migration is a problem here because no govt has the decency to be honest with the people as to what they are doing and why.
    Ed Balls, when asked why transition controls weren't imposed for the 2004 accession countries, said that they genuinely didn't expect many people to come.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,449

    Scott_xP said:

    Other Brexits were available.

    And all of them were shit

    There are degrees of crap, though. I think most of us could have lived with a much closer relationship in which there was still an element of pooled sovereignty and we accepted the four freedoms. It's pretty certain that's where we are going to end up.

    No, because that was (roughly) Dave's Deal. Fully involved in the discussions, able to opt out of anything proposed in the future. That, ultimately, didn't fly.

    The menu of options (more access for more alignment) broadly is what it is. Barnier's staircase and all that. The hope that there was some other deal under the counter, more of what we wanted for less of what we didn't want, has turned out to be a mirage. That was always pretty likely.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,177

    The Tories are all about divide and rule - it's howa corrupt oligarchy that has nothing in common with most of the population and is actively undermining their interests sustains itself in office. Hating on foreigners is a core plank of that strategy, Stop the Boats the latest iteration.

    I think that’s true. The people who bankroll the Tory Party don’t really care about immigration, they just knew it was a useful lever to pull to get us out of the EU. They created the hysteria with their newspapers and fed it and nurtured it in order to ultimately remove us from a supranational organisation that wasn’t afraid to curtail their power.

    I was in a McDonalds yesterday and the number of Asian males shuttling in and out, picking up orders for delivery, was striking. Here in Yvette Cooper’s constituency, where we’ve a lot of warehouses and logistics and stuff cos we’re where the A1 and M62 cross, the rise since Brexit of non-white faces in the streets and supermarkets is extremely noticeable. Whereas before immigrants were generally white Europeans. Poles, etc.

    I welcome it, it’s about time we caught up with the diversity of Leeds, for example. But it isn’t what most Brexit voters round here anticipated as a result of their Leave vote.
    Indeed. Though as I have pointed out endlessly the people who wanted the foreign to go home didn’t actually want to do the jobs the foreigners were doing. That’s why we need migration.

    Our society has decided that we all need the ability to click on our phone and have anything we like delivered quickly. That means we need an army of workers doing shitty jobs. So we want people delivering McDonalds but “I’m not getting a job delivering McDonalds”. So we have migrants but “how do we stop all these foreigners coming here and delivering my McDonalds”

    We can’t blame Covid for making people stupid. Many people pre-date Covid in that regard
    Yet again, I'll point out that we're *all* stupid in some regards. We all have things where our beliefs outweigh any appeal to rationality; we all have things we think we know, but do not, or know incorrectly.
    But some acknowledge that; others deny it.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 49,123

    The Tories are all about divide and rule - it's howa corrupt oligarchy that has nothing in common with most of the population and is actively undermining their interests sustains itself in office. Hating on foreigners is a core plank of that strategy, Stop the Boats the latest iteration.

    I think that’s true. The people who bankroll the Tory Party don’t really care about immigration, they just knew it was a useful lever to pull to get us out of the EU. They created the hysteria with their newspapers and fed it and nurtured it in order to ultimately remove us from a supranational organisation that wasn’t afraid to curtail their power.

    I was in a McDonalds yesterday and the number of Asian males shuttling in and out, picking up orders for delivery, was striking. Here in Yvette Cooper’s constituency, where we’ve a lot of warehouses and logistics and stuff cos we’re where the A1 and M62 cross, the rise since Brexit of non-white faces in the streets and supermarkets is extremely noticeable. Whereas before immigrants were generally white Europeans. Poles, etc.

    I welcome it, it’s about time we caught up with the diversity of Leeds, for example. But it isn’t what most Brexit voters round here anticipated as a result of their Leave vote.
    Indeed. Though as I have pointed out endlessly the people who wanted the foreign to go home didn’t actually want to do the jobs the foreigners were doing. That’s why we need migration.

    Our society has decided that we all need the ability to click on our phone and have anything we like delivered quickly. That means we need an army of workers doing shitty jobs. So we want people delivering McDonalds but “I’m not getting a job delivering McDonalds”. So we have migrants but “how do we stop all these foreigners coming here and delivering my McDonalds”

    We can’t blame Covid for making people stupid. Many people pre-date Covid in that regard
    This isn't something unique to Britain.

    Britain is fairly average now for percentage of immigrants in the developed world, with about 14% of us born abroad. Canada, Australia, Switzerland are notably higher, as are Saudi and the UAE. We see this politically too, with migration being the hot topic in nearly all our countries. The exceptions are places like South Korea and Japan where the population pyramid is dangerously upside down.

    In a globalised world people want to move around, seeking out economic and social opportunity. There are many on here who have benefited from living abroad including posters who still do, and many more have friends or family from abroad. My own ancestors migrated to Australia in the 19th Century and back to England in the 1930's for example.

    Why should we deny such opportunity to others?

    The failure of migration policy is not so much the numbers but rather the failure to plan for such arrivals, and not just the PB obsession with housing, but also with programmes of integration and cultural assimilation.





  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 28,417
    malcolmg said:

    Assume just insomnia for you being on the prowl so early John.
    Cheltenham has wrecked my sleep cycle. Days of overnight form study led to collapsing in front of the computer last night, and waking to find this new thread, and having completely missed Comic Relief.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,909
    I don't buy the central premise of the article that voters concerned about immigration are concerned primarily about the potential to exercise immigration control, rather than actually exercising that control to reduce immigration numbers.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,458

    ..

    Ghedebrav said:

    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s

    I appalled myself recently when I realised that it is quite possible that the second best PM since Blair may well be Boris.

    He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.


    *Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
    I just don't see Johnson anywhere except at the bottom of the heap. I don't like Cameron, however like Blair he is characterised by starkly misjudged foreign policy, but beyond that there was competence and levity. Johnson was punctuated by such a series of egregious scandals, but more than that his time in office was all about being seen through smoke and mirrors, claiming world beating competence out of his incompetence; "I got all the big calls right" (did you, bollocks!).

    However Johnson's malignancy is best borne out by the culture he brought with him and stamped on the Party and the Country. His legacy is a damaged party and "broken Britain".
    David Cameron is the Conservative Prime Minister from central casting. Smooth, personable, even handsome in a certain light; Eton and Oxford; socially liberal. You could imagine him played by Hugh Grant in a hit romcom.

    Leaving foreign policy to one side, Cameron's shadow cabinet spent five years preparing for government, yet gave us a health policy (Lansley's reforms) that was disowned and reversed by Cameron, a social policy, Universal Credit, whose introduction was a shambles, and which was undermined by the Chancellor, an economic policy that killed the recovery inherited from Labour and destroyed any prospect of growth, and that left debt at record levels. Local government was starved of funds. Traditional Tory values were thrown to the wolves as police and defence were cut.

    Cameron was also bad at retail politics, at which he was supposed to shine. His relentlessly negative campaign style converted healthy leads over Labour into a hung parliament, almost lost Scotland and did lose Europe. (And before anyone points to 2015, that Conservative victory was due to the SNP driving Labour out of Scotland, not Cameron.)

    Worst of all is Cameron's gerrymandering, tampering with the electoral system for partisan advantage. Ironically, it would probably cause Brexit and the end of Cameron's ministry.

    David Cameron was our worst prime minister since Lord North.
    LOL, no. He was head and shoulders over his predecessor. Many of Labour's problems post-2010 were down to the civil war Brown instigated within the party to undermine Blair. And the effects of the crisis that helped do him in, the GFC, was made far worse by his earlier actions as chancellor. "No more boom and bust!" And the tactics Brown's minions used were downright dirty. Of course, Brown's fans say that he had nothing to do with that...

    Cameron, on the other hand, had to work in a coalition; and he did that well.

    I'll even give Cameron praise for one thing that will be controversial on here: the EU referendum. It was needed. It's a shame that remain lost, but some of the blame for that can be put on the head of Corbyn.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,950
    King Cole, I do agree on cutting court funds (something which has long continued and gets little attention).

    That said, the country was in a dire state economically after the financial crisis and massive recession and the Coalition did a pretty good job. The shortsightedness on nuclear was another downside.

    We'll see how Labour does when their chief challenge isn't, as in 1997, how to spend all the lovely money.
  • GhedebravGhedebrav Posts: 3,860

    King Cole, I do agree on cutting court funds (something which has long continued and gets little attention).

    That said, the country was in a dire state economically after the financial crisis and massive recession and the Coalition did a pretty good job. The shortsightedness on nuclear was another downside.

    We'll see how Labour does when their chief challenge isn't, as in 1997, how to spend all the lovely money.

    How is your D&D campaign going, Morris? I’m just setting up a new one - a departure for me, I’m going for a noir-horror urban adventure (usually go for a more pulp swashbuckling thing).
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,498
    Foxy said:

    The Tories are all about divide and rule - it's howa corrupt oligarchy that has nothing in common with most of the population and is actively undermining their interests sustains itself in office. Hating on foreigners is a core plank of that strategy, Stop the Boats the latest iteration.

    I think that’s true. The people who bankroll the Tory Party don’t really care about immigration, they just knew it was a useful lever to pull to get us out of the EU. They created the hysteria with their newspapers and fed it and nurtured it in order to ultimately remove us from a supranational organisation that wasn’t afraid to curtail their power.

    I was in a McDonalds yesterday and the number of Asian males shuttling in and out, picking up orders for delivery, was striking. Here in Yvette Cooper’s constituency, where we’ve a lot of warehouses and logistics and stuff cos we’re where the A1 and M62 cross, the rise since Brexit of non-white faces in the streets and supermarkets is extremely noticeable. Whereas before immigrants were generally white Europeans. Poles, etc.

    I welcome it, it’s about time we caught up with the diversity of Leeds, for example. But it isn’t what most Brexit voters round here anticipated as a result of their Leave vote.
    Indeed. Though as I have pointed out endlessly the people who wanted the foreign to go home didn’t actually want to do the jobs the foreigners were doing. That’s why we need migration.

    Our society has decided that we all need the ability to click on our phone and have anything we like delivered quickly. That means we need an army of workers doing shitty jobs. So we want people delivering McDonalds but “I’m not getting a job delivering McDonalds”. So we have migrants but “how do we stop all these foreigners coming here and delivering my McDonalds”

    We can’t blame Covid for making people stupid. Many people pre-date Covid in that regard
    This isn't something unique to Britain.

    Britain is fairly average now for percentage of immigrants in the developed world, with about 14% of us born abroad. Canada, Australia, Switzerland are notably higher, as are Saudi and the UAE. We see this politically too, with migration being the hot topic in nearly all our countries. The exceptions are places like South Korea and Japan where the population pyramid is dangerously upside down.

    In a globalised world people want to move around, seeking out economic and social opportunity. There are many on here who have benefited from living abroad including posters who still do, and many more have friends or family from abroad. My own ancestors migrated to Australia in the 19th Century and back to England in the 1930's for example.

    Why should we deny such opportunity to others?

    The failure of migration policy is not so much the numbers but rather the failure to plan for such arrivals, and not just the PB obsession with housing, but also with programmes of integration and cultural assimilation.





    Agree apart from the fact that they have allowed far too many far too quickly and knackered everything. If done at a manageable rate it may have been ok but now people feel overrun in many areas and the services, housing , facilities have went to rat shit due to no planning and just opening the floodgates to any Tom , Dick or Harry regardless. Add the fact that many immigrants all crowd together and we see why we have so many issues.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,498

    malcolmg said:

    Assume just insomnia for you being on the prowl so early John.
    Cheltenham has wrecked my sleep cycle. Days of overnight form study led to collapsing in front of the computer last night, and waking to find this new thread, and having completely missed Comic Relief.
    LOL, was it worth it, are you significantly richer.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,177
    Foxy said:

    The Tories are all about divide and rule - it's howa corrupt oligarchy that has nothing in common with most of the population and is actively undermining their interests sustains itself in office. Hating on foreigners is a core plank of that strategy, Stop the Boats the latest iteration.

    I think that’s true. The people who bankroll the Tory Party don’t really care about immigration, they just knew it was a useful lever to pull to get us out of the EU. They created the hysteria with their newspapers and fed it and nurtured it in order to ultimately remove us from a supranational organisation that wasn’t afraid to curtail their power.

    I was in a McDonalds yesterday and the number of Asian males shuttling in and out, picking up orders for delivery, was striking. Here in Yvette Cooper’s constituency, where we’ve a lot of warehouses and logistics and stuff cos we’re where the A1 and M62 cross, the rise since Brexit of non-white faces in the streets and supermarkets is extremely noticeable. Whereas before immigrants were generally white Europeans. Poles, etc.

    I welcome it, it’s about time we caught up with the diversity of Leeds, for example. But it isn’t what most Brexit voters round here anticipated as a result of their Leave vote.
    Indeed. Though as I have pointed out endlessly the people who wanted the foreign to go home didn’t actually want to do the jobs the foreigners were doing. That’s why we need migration.

    Our society has decided that we all need the ability to click on our phone and have anything we like delivered quickly. That means we need an army of workers doing shitty jobs. So we want people delivering McDonalds but “I’m not getting a job delivering McDonalds”. So we have migrants but “how do we stop all these foreigners coming here and delivering my McDonalds”

    We can’t blame Covid for making people stupid. Many people pre-date Covid in that regard
    This isn't something unique to Britain.

    Britain is fairly average now for percentage of immigrants in the developed world, with about 14% of us born abroad. Canada, Australia, Switzerland are notably higher, as are Saudi and the UAE. We see this politically too, with migration being the hot topic in nearly all our countries. The exceptions are places like South Korea and Japan where the population pyramid is dangerously upside down.

    In a globalised world people want to move around, seeking out economic and social opportunity. There are many on here who have benefited from living abroad including posters who still do, and many more have friends or family from abroad. My own ancestors migrated to Australia in the 19th Century and back to England in the 1930's for example.

    Why should we deny such opportunity to others?

    The failure of migration policy is not so much the numbers but rather the failure to plan for such arrivals, and not just the PB obsession with housing, but also with programmes of integration and cultural assimilation.

    Both Japan and S Korea are making tentative steps towards embracing immigration.

    And they'll possibly do the integration/assimilation thing better.

  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 43,046
    edited March 16

    I know we disagree on a lot of things but I think this is an excellent thread header from @Topping.

    I would add that the one thing it misses is that there are a significant number of people who want to see the boats stopped because it is such a desperately unsafe way for those in need to get the the UK.

    Going all the way back to Cameron in 2014/2015, if the rest of the EU had picked up on his ideas about transporting the vulnerable directly from the camps around Syria to member states rather than making them undertake hazardous and difficult journeys that favoured the fittest and those least in need of help, then we might have seen a very different reaction across Europe to the migrant crisis.

    If Sunak really wanted to solve the migrant situation in the Channel then he could go a long way towards doing that by having safe, legal methods of asylum/immigration for the desperate people in France.

    Thanks Richard and absolutely yes - and this was picked up (amongst others) by Tim Laughton (a Cons MP) last year when no one could answer his question as to what safe route currently existed for a genuine asylum seeker. I'm not sure there is one (an answer or a safe route) now.

    A quick google showed that govt advice continues to be to claim asylum in the first country people arrive in.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 72,177
    NEW POLL - Westminster voting intention:

    LAB: 44%
    CON: 20%
    REFORM: 14%
    LIB: 9%
    GREEN: 7%
    SNP: 3%
    PLAID: 1%
    OTHER: 2%

    via @YouGov, 12-13 Mar

    https://twitter.com/PollingReportUK/status/1768649716818923985

  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 28,963

    The Tories are all about divide and rule - it's howa corrupt oligarchy that has nothing in common with most of the population and is actively undermining their interests sustains itself in office. Hating on foreigners is a core plank of that strategy, Stop the Boats the latest iteration.

    I think that’s true. The people who bankroll the Tory Party don’t really care about immigration, they just knew it was a useful lever to pull to get us out of the EU. They created the hysteria with their newspapers and fed it and nurtured it in order to ultimately remove us from a supranational organisation that wasn’t afraid to curtail their power.

    I was in a McDonalds yesterday and the number of Asian males shuttling in and out, picking up orders for delivery, was striking. Here in Yvette Cooper’s constituency, where we’ve a lot of warehouses and logistics and stuff cos we’re where the A1 and M62 cross, the rise since Brexit of non-white faces in the streets and supermarkets is extremely noticeable. Whereas before immigrants were generally white Europeans. Poles, etc.

    I welcome it, it’s about time we caught up with the diversity of Leeds, for example. But it isn’t what most Brexit voters round here anticipated as a result of their Leave vote.
    Indeed. Though as I have pointed out endlessly the people who wanted the foreign to go home didn’t actually want to do the jobs the foreigners were doing. That’s why we need migration.

    Our society has decided that we all need the ability to click on our phone and have anything we like delivered quickly. That means we need an army of workers doing shitty jobs. So we want people delivering McDonalds but “I’m not getting a job delivering McDonalds”. So we have migrants but “how do we stop all these foreigners coming here and delivering my McDonalds”

    We can’t blame Covid for making people stupid. Many people pre-date Covid in that regard
    Yet again, I'll point out that we're *all* stupid in some regards. We all have things where our beliefs outweigh any appeal to rationality; we all have things we think we know, but do not, or know incorrectly.
    Absolutely! I am ignorant about a lot of things! But there is this basic and obvious contradiction between not wanting to do a job and not wanting a migrant to do the job whilst demanding that the job is done. Whole swathes of jobs where Brits have decided that the work is both beneath us to do but economically critical.
  • ydoethur said:

    Ghedebrav said:

    Rory and Alastair rank post-war Prime Ministers on The Rest is Politics (for five minutes)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxKFyJoze8&t=680s

    I appalled myself recently when I realised that it is quite possible that the second best PM since Blair may well be Boris.

    He did less damage (somehow) than Cameron*, and certainly was better (somehow) than Truss or Sunak. I’m just not sure where to rank him round May or Brown - difficult as I feel like the latter two are people I feel personally warmer to, whereas Spaffer revolts me.


    *Cameron I see as the worst PM in my lifetime, just ahead of Thatcher and Liz ‘History’s Most Expensive Asterisk’ Truss.
    David Cameron is Britain's worst prime minister since Lord North.
    Poor old Lord Goderich, always overlooked.
    Goderich was a notably politically ill-starred and unsuccessful PM. But I took the point about Cameron and North as being about largely self-inflicted policy disasters with major consequences for the country. Goderich can't really be accused of that, and was a pretty decent bloke, prominent abolitionist etc.
This discussion has been closed.