I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
I fear such a threat because it would mean rich people would move elsewhere, thereby leaving the rest of us to pick up the bill.
Although Hamas's figures are almost certainly wrong, television pictures of devastation wreaked in Gaza render them moot.
Israel may or may not be targeting women and children - but we KNOW that the Palestinians are doing so. They raped their corpses. They took babies hostage. Israel, if they work really hard at it, might manage to be just as bad as the Palestinians. But it's hard to see how they could be worse.
Let's not conflate Palestinians with Hamas, just as we can distinguish between Israel's government and its people, not to mention British Jews.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
My point is that leaving the EU claiming it would expand overall trade when it has had the opposite effect in relative terms, as it predictably would do, is a bullshit reason to leave the EU.
Leaving the EU because you don't like the institution and what it does to the UK and you're willing to take the hit to trade and investment is reasonable, and ultimately protectionist.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
“Displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit”.
Er, what? You don’t think people should be interested in the provenance of their food?
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Yes, I am not a fan of IFAs unless you really don't know about financial stuff. I have twice used them in the days when they earned their money on commission and I only did so to get a cut of the commission. That is I made my own decision, signed a waiver and split a commission with them that was not available to me as an individual.
Agree re hiding assets overseas or giving to a family member or friend is a very very bad idea.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
This is fantasy mate. Globalization is stone dead. Regionalization and great power competition is everything. Our neighbours are overwhelmingly important as trade partners. Global freight is expensive, precarious and inefficient. This is why stuff like our ctppt deal is nothing more than a gimmick. Any major corporation in britain with interests there already has embedded local HQs and infrastructures... because you need local knowledge, the efficiency of FLEXIBLY INTERACTING WITH NEIGHBOURS.... Small and medium sized companies don't have the capacity to operate at that distance. Brexit might (sic) have made sense in 1993. Now it is a dangerous anachronism. There are three economic operators in the world now: China, EU and the US. It doesn't matter if you are nr 6 or 60... you follow them. And if you don't have protection of one of the big three, you are weak prey separate from the herd. You seriously think a market of 65 million people on the Atlantic fringe adds up to anything in a world where leaders count in the scale of hundreds of millions and billions? It is so naive. This is all the right has had to offer: wishful thinking totally detached from reality. There is no place for Britain in this world beyond cooperation with our neighbours. That is just a brutal face.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
Bart you are arguing against someone who runs a food import business for a living - just find a different argument to use.
It would be like arguing with me on an income payment - where last year we had to correct 5 different payroll providers because their pension calculations didn't correctly cover an edge case...
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
It really does encapsulate the total incompetence of the current government that they still are not able to implement the Brexit agreement they made more than 4 years ago. This is despite it being their signature policy.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
It is not protectionist bullshit. It is providing customers with information they find of value so they can shop accordingly. You may not care where your food comes from, what standards it is produced under or who you are giving your money to, but many of us do. A growing number in fact.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
“Displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit”.
Er, what? You don’t think people should be interested in the provenance of their food?
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I for one would prefer to eat locally sourced fresh meat that I am confident was raised and slaughtered humanely.
I appreciate the trade deals with Australia don't stop me doing that so in that sense I have no argument with you. But I feel the tide has turned against global sourcing being a panacea.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
“Displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit”.
Er, what? You don’t think people should be interested in the provenance of their food?
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
This is fantasy mate. Globalization is stone dead. Regionalization and great power competition is everything. Our neighbours are overwhelmingly important as trade partners. Global freight is expensive, precarious and inefficient. This is why stuff like our ctppt deal is nothing more than a gimmick. Any major corporation in britain with interests there already has embedded local HQs and infrastructures... because you need local knowledge, the efficiency of FLEXIBLY INTERACTING WITH NEIGHBOURS.... Small and medium sized companies don't have the capacity to operate at that distance. Brexit might (sic) have made sense in 1993. Now it is a dangerous anachronism. There are three economic operators in the world now: China, EU and the US. It doesn't matter if you are nr 6 or 60... you follow them. And if you don't have protection of one of the big three, you are weak prey separate from the herd. You seriously think a market of 65 million people on the Atlantic fringe adds up to anything in a world where leaders count in the scale of hundreds of millions and billions? It is so naive. This is all the right has had to offer: wishful thinking totally detached from reality. There is no place for Britain in this world beyond cooperation with our neighbours. That is just a brutal face.
That's quite strongly put but I agree with the nub of it. The world has changed dramatically, Barty is behind the curve here.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
It really does encapsulate the total incompetence of the current government that they still are not able to implement the Brexit agreement they made more than 4 years ago. This is despite it being their signature policy.
I know I am but that doesn't mean what he's saying isn't wrong, and that he doesn't know he's wrong too, he's just looking to win an argument.
Globally, a significant proportion of meat and seafood etc is frozen and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Importing frozen meat and seafood etc that's either frozen or been previously frozen, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that either.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
I fear such a threat because it would mean rich people would move elsewhere, thereby leaving the rest of us to pick up the bill.
The Richard Murphy, High Fearnley-Whittingstall and Greenpeace support wealth taxes makes me think they are a poor,idea. Of course charities and NGOs will support wealth taxes as they expect to be a net gainer from them. They have not been very effective when tried.
The Lib Dems are proposing a tax on share buybacks to raise a few billion a year to fund whatever touchy freely stuff they think the voters like. Again this is not likely to work as it is very easy to avoid.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
1. Duh. I've literally just described the process to you 2. Consumers don't want to eat meat of indeterminate sourcing. You do, most don't. Your "protectionist bullshit" is what most people who aren't you want 3. We do import frozen meat. And its fine! But most meat products aren't frozen. Again, what you want isn't what everyone wants.
A free market would be free. Import *and export* whatever we want. What you advocate are one sided deals which actively stop consumers having what they want. Which is odd for a libertarian.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
“Displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit”.
Er, what? You don’t think people should be interested in the provenance of their food?
No. Why should they?
Other than protectionist bullshit?
Because not all meat is produced to the same animal welfare standards. Because there are some countries in the world I do not want to support by buying their produce. Because balance of trade numbers matter to our economy. Because I want to support local farmers and food producers. Because I believe globalisation has, in the main, been good for big multinationals and bad for individuals.
You may think this is all bullshit but to be honest considering most of the ignorant bollocks you come out with these days your opinion is not worth much round here.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
My point is that leaving the EU claiming it would expand overall trade when it has had the opposite effect in relative terms, as it predictably would do, is a bullshit reason to leave the EU.
Leaving the EU because you don't like the institution and what it does to the UK and you're willing to take the hit to trade and investment is reasonable, and ultimately protectionist.
I always said there'd be a hockey stick effect as leaving creates frictions with our neighbours immediately but the potential gains come over time and not immediately.
However there is a reason you slipped the word relative in there, because the facts aren't on your side. Since 2019 or since 2016 whichever baseline you prefer, UK trade has increased not fallen.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
This is fantasy mate. Globalization is stone dead. Regionalization and great power competition is everything. Our neighbours are overwhelmingly important as trade partners. Global freight is expensive, precarious and inefficient. This is why stuff like our ctppt deal is nothing more than a gimmick. Any major corporation in britain with interests there already has embedded local HQs and infrastructures... because you need local knowledge, the efficiency of FLEXIBLY INTERACTING WITH NEIGHBOURS.... Small and medium sized companies don't have the capacity to operate at that distance. Brexit might (sic) have made sense in 1993. Now it is a dangerous anachronism. There are three economic operators in the world now: China, EU and the US. It doesn't matter if you are nr 6 or 60... you follow them. And if you don't have protection of one of the big three, you are weak prey separate from the herd. You seriously think a market of 65 million people on the Atlantic fringe adds up to anything in a world where leaders count in the scale of hundreds of millions and billions? It is so naive. This is all the right has had to offer: wishful thinking totally detached from reality. There is no place for Britain in this world beyond cooperation with our neighbours. That is just a brutal face.
I wouldn’t say globalisation is stone dead. Businesses are still setting up on low cost economies. However I would say it is very much in retreat and I think it’s death is only a matter of time.
I think everything else you say is correct and is something we need to wake up to.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
“Displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit”.
Er, what? You don’t think people should be interested in the provenance of their food?
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Highest tax take under the Conservatives but you're worried about reds under Kier Starmer's bed?
On which note, here is Mark Lawrenson on Liverpool players' joy when Mrs Thatcher's government cut the top rate of income tax to 60 per cent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wHSydJu_zg
I'm worried about private pensions and ISA investments being confiscated and annual wealth taxes on ordinary property.
The Conservatives freezing tax allowances to deal with the fallout from Covid, Ukraine and interest rates going back to normal doesn't come close.
The only way to avoid that would be to move abroad. Sadly with Brexit your options are going to be Australia and New Zealand because Europe probably isn't an option anymore...
However on the first point - got to say you are completely and utterly cuckoo. The last one is more plausible but it needs to be implemented anyway because currently council tax is a completely unfair lottery....
Not "sadly with Brexit": Europe was never an option. This is just a values thing.
The EU doesn't 'do' professional services, and it's nigh-on impossible to get a job there in them anyway. The work is in MENA, Hong Kong, Australia, NZ, Canada and the US.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
“Displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit”.
Er, what? You don’t think people should be interested in the provenance of their food?
No. Why should they?
Other than protectionist bullshit?
Because not all meat is produced to the same animal welfare standards. Because there are some countries in the world I do not want to support by buying their produce. Because balance of trade numbers matter to our economy. Because I want to support local farmers and food producers. Because I believe globalisation has, in the main, been good for big multinationals and bad for individuals.
You may think this is all bullshit but to be honest considering most of the ignorant bollocks you come out with these days your opinion is not worth much round here.
He's saying that instead of eating air-cured Chorizo from Spain, we should eat defrosted meat from dunno.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
“Displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit”.
Er, what? You don’t think people should be interested in the provenance of their food?
No. Why should they?
Other than protectionist bullshit?
Lots of reasons. Some people don't want the carbon emissions associated with long distance shipping or air freight. Lots of people want to make sure the food comes from somewhere with decent animal welfare standards. Some people don't want to support certain political regimes. These are all things that consumers have a valid interest in and should be free to make an informed choice. Personally I check country of origin. I don't buy non UK meat. I don't buy stuff that's obviously been air freighted in. I don't buy Israeli stuff. If no country of origin is shown I won't buy it. I'm surprised that you oppose informed consumer choice, being a free market guy.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
Sending it abroad won't work - HMRC get the information nowadays...
Trusted relatives - trust me when money is involved your may discover you shouldn't have trusted them....
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like?
What do you think is really a possibility at, shall we say, a >5% chance?
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
My point is that leaving the EU claiming it would expand overall trade when it has had the opposite effect in relative terms, as it predictably would do, is a bullshit reason to leave the EU.
Leaving the EU because you don't like the institution and what it does to the UK and you're willing to take the hit to trade and investment is reasonable, and ultimately protectionist.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
My point is that leaving the EU claiming it would expand overall trade when it has had the opposite effect in relative terms, as it predictably would do, is a bullshit reason to leave the EU.
Leaving the EU because you don't like the institution and what it does to the UK and you're willing to take the hit to trade and investment is reasonable, and ultimately protectionist.
I always said there'd be a hockey stick effect as leaving creates frictions with our neighbours immediately but the potential gains come over time and not immediately.
However there is a reason you slipped the word relative in there, because the facts aren't on your side. Since 2019 or since 2016 whichever baseline you prefer, UK trade has increased not fallen.
Indeed, relative. There has been a temporary world trade boom since COVID that the UK hasn't participated in as our peers have done. A rising tide lifts all ships but our ship is rising slowest and in any case the tide is going out now. The facts are very much on my side
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
Bart you are arguing against someone who runs a food import business for a living - just find a different argument to use.
It would be like arguing with me on an income payment - where last year we had to correct 5 different payroll providers because their pension calculations didn't correctly cover an edge case...
Bart i s100% stupid , he will not grasp what you are saying , his only mantra is cheap cheap cheap
a) do absolutely nothing much different and have no meaningful policies except to preside over the continuing decline of the UK for five miserable years? b) confiscate private pensions and ISAs, tax wealthy property owners until the pips squeak, open all our borders, and make wokeness mandatory? c) or, perhaps, something in between a) and b)?
Morning. A grey pre-dawn light over Bolivar’s City of Death
Doesn't Instagram still exist?
On a completely unrelated note, have you heard of narcissistic personality disorder?
Yes you’re right. Thanks for asking
For the last 3 months solid (2 brief Feb days in London excepted) I’ve woken up to warm dry tropical sun. In Thailand, Cambodia or Colombia. Even when it’s too hot the mornings are always lovely - and yes you’re right, I get up and stroll naked into the morning sun on the balcony
That is how humans are meant to wake and rise. Your spirits lift at once: the world is kind. The coffee charges the brain, and off you go
London next week is going to be a horrible shock
Without that bitter and damp chill to compare it to, would you be able to enjoy that tropical sun quite so much?
The sun is shining in Yorkshire today. This is spring. It lifts the spirits. No need for a tropical miasma.
Nature coming back to life in the new year is always a delight - snowdrops, daffodils, blossom, bluebells - every week there's something new to see.
The magnolias are very impressive at the moment.
What is odd is that I don't remember noticing them until a few years ago.
Might I also suggest that all those people claiming to have mental health problems turn off social media and go for a walk.
They'll be able to see the new ducklings, goslings, calves and lambs together with the new plant life.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
Bart you are arguing against someone who runs a food import business for a living - just find a different argument to use.
It would be like arguing with me on an income payment - where last year we had to correct 5 different payroll providers because their pension calculations didn't correctly cover an edge case...
Bart i s100% stupid , he will not grasp what you are saying , his only mantra is cheap cheap cheap
He's not stupid but he is trapped in a neolib globalist time-warp.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
1. Duh. I've literally just described the process to you 2. Consumers don't want to eat meat of indeterminate sourcing. You do, most don't. Your "protectionist bullshit" is what most people who aren't you want 3. We do import frozen meat. And its fine! But most meat products aren't frozen. Again, what you want isn't what everyone wants.
A free market would be free. Import *and export* whatever we want. What you advocate are one sided deals which actively stop consumers having what they want. Which is odd for a libertarian.
Eh? No I don't, I support letting people decide.
If some people want to buy British, then British producers should be able to slap a union jack on and say its from the UK and appeal to that demographic and that's their choice. If people want to be even more insular they should be able to say it's from that county or town or whatever and appeal to an even narrower PoV
If other people like myself don't give a damn, we should be able to make our choice too.
Either way, let people decide.
You shouldn't be able to lie on any marketing claims. If you say your meat is from Cumbria and it's from Devon, that's a lie and its not OK. If you say your meat is from England and it's from Argentina, that's a lie and it's not OK. If you don't say, then so what?
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
The problem is that taxation is 'progressive' - and not in the way you or I normally mean. What starts with a tax just on assets over 1 million quickly becomes a tax on 500K, then 200K and then on all assets over a nominal value including your family home. This is what we see in many places which do have wealth taxes and is sure to be the way things progress here. Much like authoritarian laws, once you have put them in place not only is it very difficult toget rid of them but they are pernicious and spread to areas you never intended.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Highest tax take under the Conservatives but you're worried about reds under Kier Starmer's bed?
On which note, here is Mark Lawrenson on Liverpool players' joy when Mrs Thatcher's government cut the top rate of income tax to 60 per cent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wHSydJu_zg
I'm worried about private pensions and ISA investments being confiscated and annual wealth taxes on ordinary property.
The Conservatives freezing tax allowances to deal with the fallout from Covid, Ukraine and interest rates going back to normal doesn't come close.
The only way to avoid that would be to move abroad. Sadly with Brexit your options are going to be Australia and New Zealand because Europe probably isn't an option anymore...
However on the first point - got to say you are completely and utterly cuckoo. The last one is more plausible but it needs to be implemented anyway because currently council tax is a completely unfair lottery....
Not "sadly with Brexit": Europe was never an option. This is just a values thing.
The EU doesn't 'do' professional services, and it's nigh-on impossible to get a job there in them anyway. The work is in MENA, Hong Kong, Australia, NZ, Canada and the US.
That's it.
Personally, I love my country; I've never visited anywhere else I would rather live.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
Many, many decades ago my grandfather died and his house was sold and the proceeds split between the 4 children. One of the children and his wife lived with my grandfather and would now be homeless and his inheritance would not be enough to go elsewhere. So the other 3 children chipped in so that he and his wife could buy a small flat. That was on the understanding that when they died the proceeds would go to the grandchildren of my grandfather (the couple did not have children of their own and were too old to have them). I was an executor of the will. He (my uncle) died and then later his wife died. I contacted the solicitors to say I was an executor only to have one of those embarrassing conversations to be told I was not. His wife changed her will immediately on the death of my uncle.
My advice is don't involve friends and family with money issues unless you don't care if it goes pearshaped. It didn't bother me (or I think my other cousins) but my father, uncle and aunt were very hurt by it.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
This is fantasy mate. Globalization is stone dead. Regionalization and great power competition is everything. Our neighbours are overwhelmingly important as trade partners. Global freight is expensive, precarious and inefficient. This is why stuff like our ctppt deal is nothing more than a gimmick. Any major corporation in britain with interests there already has embedded local HQs and infrastructures... because you need local knowledge, the efficiency of FLEXIBLY INTERACTING WITH NEIGHBOURS.... Small and medium sized companies don't have the capacity to operate at that distance. Brexit might (sic) have made sense in 1993. Now it is a dangerous anachronism. There are three economic operators in the world now: China, EU and the US. It doesn't matter if you are nr 6 or 60... you follow them. And if you don't have protection of one of the big three, you are weak prey separate from the herd. You seriously think a market of 65 million people on the Atlantic fringe adds up to anything in a world where leaders count in the scale of hundreds of millions and billions? It is so naive. This is all the right has had to offer: wishful thinking totally detached from reality. There is no place for Britain in this world beyond cooperation with our neighbours. That is just a brutal face.
Globalisation is alive and kicking. Trade is increasing not decreasing and quite rightly so.
Regionalisation is a 1950s solution. To 2020s problems. It's a terrible idea.
And as for claims global shipping is expensive, nothing could be further from the truth. Economies of scale mean that shipping costs are so ridiculously miniscule it's hard for people like you to fathom how small they are.
The world is more globalised than ever before and modern technology means that's ratcheting ever further in that direction.
Morning. A grey pre-dawn light over Bolivar’s City of Death
Doesn't Instagram still exist?
On a completely unrelated note, have you heard of narcissistic personality disorder?
Yes you’re right. Thanks for asking
For the last 3 months solid (2 brief Feb days in London excepted) I’ve woken up to warm dry tropical sun. In Thailand, Cambodia or Colombia. Even when it’s too hot the mornings are always lovely - and yes you’re right, I get up and stroll naked into the morning sun on the balcony
That is how humans are meant to wake and rise. Your spirits lift at once: the world is kind. The coffee charges the brain, and off you go
London next week is going to be a horrible shock
Without that bitter and damp chill to compare it to, would you be able to enjoy that tropical sun quite so much?
The sun is shining in Yorkshire today. This is spring. It lifts the spirits. No need for a tropical miasma.
Nature coming back to life in the new year is always a delight - snowdrops, daffodils, blossom, bluebells - every week there's something new to see.
The magnolias are very impressive at the moment.
What is odd is that I don't remember noticing them until a few years ago.
Might I also suggest that all those people claiming to have mental health problems turn off social media and go for a walk.
They'll be able to see the new ducklings, goslings, calves and lambs together with the new plant life.
It's a bit early in the year (*), but going for an early-morning dawn walk can be a superb experience. Even in our semi-rural area, I see deer, rabbits, foxes and bats, very occasionally on the same walk or run. It's also a great way of starting the day.
(*) Dawn is a little late atm, so a fair few people are about.
Good header from TSE. The perception that drives Tory election wins (their economic competence) is gone and without this they can never win from the centre against a non-scary Labour party. So they have two options after the coming big defeat in October. (1) Knuckle down and try to reclaim the mantle of serious centre-right alternative to Labour. (2) Become a right wing National Populist party seeking to return to power on a "getting our country back" ticket. Although it's really not my business I hope they take the first option. The second would be a dreadful spectacle and I dislike the Tory Party enough to start with without seeing them morph into that.
Might be an idea to eat our own beef, and support British farming, rather than ship meat from the other side of the world.
Just an idea.
And, as a consumer, you absolutely have that choice. Buy British.
Unfortunately, meat-shaming is a massive thing in Met circles now. It's probably the thing, alongside "Diversity™", that comes up most often.
What a weird part of London I must live in where people talk about work, family, holidays, football, dating, hobbies rather than meat shaming and diversity. Fortunately we have people who don't live in cities to keep us up to date about how terrible our lives are, otherwise we might never have realised.
Morning. A grey pre-dawn light over Bolivar’s City of Death
Doesn't Instagram still exist?
On a completely unrelated note, have you heard of narcissistic personality disorder?
Yes you’re right. Thanks for asking
For the last 3 months solid (2 brief Feb days in London excepted) I’ve woken up to warm dry tropical sun. In Thailand, Cambodia or Colombia. Even when it’s too hot the mornings are always lovely - and yes you’re right, I get up and stroll naked into the morning sun on the balcony
That is how humans are meant to wake and rise. Your spirits lift at once: the world is kind. The coffee charges the brain, and off you go
London next week is going to be a horrible shock
Without that bitter and damp chill to compare it to, would you be able to enjoy that tropical sun quite so much?
The sun is shining in Yorkshire today. This is spring. It lifts the spirits. No need for a tropical miasma.
Nature coming back to life in the new year is always a delight - snowdrops, daffodils, blossom, bluebells - every week there's something new to see.
The magnolias are very impressive at the moment.
What is odd is that I don't remember noticing them until a few years ago.
Might I also suggest that all those people claiming to have mental health problems turn off social media and go for a walk.
They'll be able to see the new ducklings, goslings, calves and lambs together with the new plant life.
It’s been a very good magnolia season. I don’t know for sure why but I would hazard it’s because cool weather held them back until early March and we’ve not had a frost since they opened. Ours has been flowering for a fortnight now.
Blue Wall = affluent oldies, well paid finance workers
Red Wall = affluent oldies, well paid tradesmen
Common features = high levels of home ownership, few students, above average age, below average ethnic minorities
They're actually pretty similar.
What has damaged the Conservatives is the same as what damaged them before 1997:
Do as I say not as I do hypocrisy Financial and sexual sleaze Having an economic strategy fall apart - ERM / Dizzy Lizzy and Krazi Kwarzi Self-obsessed internal arguments Time for a change fatigue
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
This is fantasy mate. Globalization is stone dead. Regionalization and great power competition is everything. Our neighbours are overwhelmingly important as trade partners. Global freight is expensive, precarious and inefficient. This is why stuff like our ctppt deal is nothing more than a gimmick. Any major corporation in britain with interests there already has embedded local HQs and infrastructures... because you need local knowledge, the efficiency of FLEXIBLY INTERACTING WITH NEIGHBOURS.... Small and medium sized companies don't have the capacity to operate at that distance. Brexit might (sic) have made sense in 1993. Now it is a dangerous anachronism. There are three economic operators in the world now: China, EU and the US. It doesn't matter if you are nr 6 or 60... you follow them. And if you don't have protection of one of the big three, you are weak prey separate from the herd. You seriously think a market of 65 million people on the Atlantic fringe adds up to anything in a world where leaders count in the scale of hundreds of millions and billions? It is so naive. This is all the right has had to offer: wishful thinking totally detached from reality. There is no place for Britain in this world beyond cooperation with our neighbours. That is just a brutal face.
Globalisation is alive and kicking. Trade is increasing not decreasing and quite rightly so.
Regionalisation is a 1950s solution. To 2020s problems. It's a terrible idea.
And as for claims global shipping is expensive, nothing could be further from the truth. Economies of scale mean that shipping costs are so ridiculously miniscule it's hard for people like you to fathom how small they are.
The world is more globalised than ever before and modern technology means that's ratcheting ever further in that direction.
Whether you like it, or not.
Not sure that recent events of Covid, the Ever Given and the Houthis are doing much for your arguments in favour of global trade over local.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
This is fantasy mate. Globalization is stone dead. Regionalization and great power competition is everything. Our neighbours are overwhelmingly important as trade partners. Global freight is expensive, precarious and inefficient. This is why stuff like our ctppt deal is nothing more than a gimmick. Any major corporation in britain with interests there already has embedded local HQs and infrastructures... because you need local knowledge, the efficiency of FLEXIBLY INTERACTING WITH NEIGHBOURS.... Small and medium sized companies don't have the capacity to operate at that distance. Brexit might (sic) have made sense in 1993. Now it is a dangerous anachronism. There are three economic operators in the world now: China, EU and the US. It doesn't matter if you are nr 6 or 60... you follow them. And if you don't have protection of one of the big three, you are weak prey separate from the herd. You seriously think a market of 65 million people on the Atlantic fringe adds up to anything in a world where leaders count in the scale of hundreds of millions and billions? It is so naive. This is all the right has had to offer: wishful thinking totally detached from reality. There is no place for Britain in this world beyond cooperation with our neighbours. That is just a brutal face.
Globalisation is alive and kicking. Trade is increasing not decreasing and quite rightly so.
Regionalisation is a 1950s solution. To 2020s problems. It's a terrible idea.
And as for claims global shipping is expensive, nothing could be further from the truth. Economies of scale mean that shipping costs are so ridiculously miniscule it's hard for people like you to fathom how small they are.
The world is more globalised than ever before and modern technology means that's ratcheting ever further in that direction.
Whether you like it, or not.
Try correct your trade numbers for inflation and you will see that trade is at best flat.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
The problem is that taxation is 'progressive' - and not in the way you or I normally mean. What starts with a tax just on assets over 1 million quickly becomes a tax on 500K, then 200K and then on all assets over a nominal value including your family home. This is what we see in many places which do have wealth taxes and is sure to be the way things progress here. Much like authoritarian laws, once you have put them in place not only is it very difficult toget rid of them but they are pernicious and spread to areas you never intended.
Wouldn't the same argument have applied when Income Tax was first introduced? And yet we have a personal allowance with no ICT and various other exemptions.
With a wealth tax, the reasons why it would be impossible to introduce it an all assets are a) the administrative overheads would be impossibly high, and b) it would be politically unacceptable.
The exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible. Beyond that, yes I could see the personal allowance could come down in time but each time it's reduced the government will take a popularity hit, as they would if they reduced the ICT personal allowance to say £5k.
Even so, it's got to come. If not now, in the next decade. Rising pension and social care costs make it inevitable.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
The key, as land taxation advocates in the Lib Dems have said for decades, is to combine land tax with reductions to income tax at the same time. It should be a swap rather than a pure tax raising measure.
And introduce it at a very low level initially. Then, like with VAT, you can raise the level over time, ideally combined with income tax cuts.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
I should have said, as I did in my next post, 'the exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible.'
Blue Wall = affluent oldies, well paid finance workers
Red Wall = affluent oldies, well paid tradesmen
Common features = high levels of home ownership, few students, above average age, below average ethnic minorities
They're actually pretty similar.
What has damaged the Conservatives is the same as what damaged them before 1997:
Do as I say not as I do hypocrisy Financial and sexual sleaze Having an economic strategy fall apart - ERM / Dizzy Lizzy and Krazi Kwarzi Self-obsessed internal arguments Time for a change fatigue
The self obsessed internal arguments have worn everyone’s patience thin, which is why I think another leadership challenge would just be met with oh FFS.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
The problem is that taxation is 'progressive' - and not in the way you or I normally mean. What starts with a tax just on assets over 1 million quickly becomes a tax on 500K, then 200K and then on all assets over a nominal value including your family home. This is what we see in many places which do have wealth taxes and is sure to be the way things progress here. Much like authoritarian laws, once you have put them in place not only is it very difficult toget rid of them but they are pernicious and spread to areas you never intended.
Wouldn't the same argument have applied when Income Tax was first introduced? And yet we have a personal allowance with no ICT and various other exemptions.
With a wealth tax, the reasons why it would be impossible to introduce it an all assets are a) the administrative overheads would be impossibly high, and b) it would be politically unacceptable.
The exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible. Beyond that, yes I could see the personal allowance could come down in time but each time it's reduced the government will take a popularity hit, as they would if they reduced the ICT personal allowance to say £5k.
Even so, it's got to come. If not now, in the next decade. Rising pension and social care costs make it inevitable.
You say it has to come and yet the movement is in the other direction. Most of the countries that had wealth taxes in the past have now dropped them and of those whch do still have them two - Norway and Switzerland - do so for purely ideological reasons rather than because they need the revenue.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
I fear such a threat because it would mean rich people would move elsewhere, thereby leaving the rest of us to pick up the bill.
The Richard Murphy, High Fearnley-Whittingstall and Greenpeace support wealth taxes makes me think they are a poor,idea. Of course charities and NGOs will support wealth taxes as they expect to be a net gainer from them. They have not been very effective when tried.
The Lib Dems are proposing a tax on share buybacks to raise a few billion a year to fund whatever touchy freely stuff they think the voters like. Again this is not likely to work as it is very easy to avoid.
If you have a government you have to have taxes. We tried public-private partnerships and they worked but the bill is in now in. We tried issuing debt but the bill is now in. We tried quantitative easing but the bill is now in. We tried...but you get the point.
We can't tax the poor because they haven't got money. We can't tax business because we need it for growth. Static wealth is the only oilfield left, so to speak. People can move out, money can be used to buy property abroad, but you can't move a building or a mansion. Taxing the mansion is the only option left.
This is why I get so annoyed with the Conservatives. By indulging in culture-war or current-thing topics, they have lost track of the problems, and given their wealth they have no need to learn them. Removing them from Government is the only way I can get them to focus.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
The key, as land taxation advocates in the Lib Dems have said for decades, is to combine land tax with reductions to income tax at the same time. It should be a swap rather than a pure tax raising measure.
And introduce it at a very low level initially. Then, like with VAT, you can raise the level over time, ideally combined with income tax cuts.
O/T I seem to remember seeing an on-line tool that allowed you to play out possible tax changes and their projected effect on UK finances. Does that ring a bell with anyone and does anyone have a link?
Morning. A grey pre-dawn light over Bolivar’s City of Death
Doesn't Instagram still exist?
On a completely unrelated note, have you heard of narcissistic personality disorder?
Yes you’re right. Thanks for asking
For the last 3 months solid (2 brief Feb days in London excepted) I’ve woken up to warm dry tropical sun. In Thailand, Cambodia or Colombia. Even when it’s too hot the mornings are always lovely - and yes you’re right, I get up and stroll naked into the morning sun on the balcony
That is how humans are meant to wake and rise. Your spirits lift at once: the world is kind. The coffee charges the brain, and off you go
London next week is going to be a horrible shock
Without that bitter and damp chill to compare it to, would you be able to enjoy that tropical sun quite so much?
The sun is shining in Yorkshire today. This is spring. It lifts the spirits. No need for a tropical miasma.
Nature coming back to life in the new year is always a delight - snowdrops, daffodils, blossom, bluebells - every week there's something new to see.
The magnolias are very impressive at the moment.
What is odd is that I don't remember noticing them until a few years ago.
Might I also suggest that all those people claiming to have mental health problems turn off social media and go for a walk.
They'll be able to see the new ducklings, goslings, calves and lambs together with the new plant life.
It's a bit early in the year (*), but going for an early-morning dawn walk can be a superb experience. Even in our semi-rural area, I see deer, rabbits, foxes and bats, very occasionally on the same walk or run. It's also a great way of starting the day.
(*) Dawn is a little late atm, so a fair few people are about.
I find giving apple and pear cores to cattle and rabbits very life affirming.
As well as an encouragement to eat fruit and go for a walk.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
I should have said, as I did in my next post, 'the exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible.'
Most of our country’s wealth is in PPRs, so that would be self defeating.
“Wealth” is hard to tax. Real estate is easy. Make it a land value tax. We already pay something akin to this in our council tax and business rates. Reform council tax, give LAs or regions more tax raising powers and autonomy, and over time the new rebranded council tax can take up more of the national revenue base.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
The problem is that taxation is 'progressive' - and not in the way you or I normally mean. What starts with a tax just on assets over 1 million quickly becomes a tax on 500K, then 200K and then on all assets over a nominal value including your family home. This is what we see in many places which do have wealth taxes and is sure to be the way things progress here. Much like authoritarian laws, once you have put them in place not only is it very difficult toget rid of them but they are pernicious and spread to areas you never intended.
Wouldn't the same argument have applied when Income Tax was first introduced? And yet we have a personal allowance with no ICT and various other exemptions.
With a wealth tax, the reasons why it would be impossible to introduce it an all assets are a) the administrative overheads would be impossibly high, and b) it would be politically unacceptable.
The exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible. Beyond that, yes I could see the personal allowance could come down in time but each time it's reduced the government will take a popularity hit, as they would if they reduced the ICT personal allowance to say £5k.
Even so, it's got to come. If not now, in the next decade. Rising pension and social care costs make it inevitable.
You say it has to come and yet the movement is in the other direction. Most of the countries that had wealth taxes in the past have now dropped them and of those whch do still have them two - Norway and Switzerland - do so for purely ideological reasons rather than because they need the revenue.
I think net wealth tax is a dead end because of the behavioural effects. Hence the much stronger arguments for property taxation, where many of the behavioural effects are desirable ones.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
“Displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit”.
Er, what? You don’t think people should be interested in the provenance of their food?
No. Why should they?
Other than protectionist bullshit?
Lots of reasons. Some people don't want the carbon emissions associated with long distance shipping or air freight. Lots of people want to make sure the food comes from somewhere with decent animal welfare standards. Some people don't want to support certain political regimes. These are all things that consumers have a valid interest in and should be free to make an informed choice. Personally I check country of origin. I don't buy non UK meat. I don't buy stuff that's obviously been air freighted in. I don't buy Israeli stuff. If no country of origin is shown I won't buy it. I'm surprised that you oppose informed consumer choice, being a free market guy.
A free market requires informed choice by the consumer. Proper food labelling in terms of content and origin is key to that.
Consumers want information, and be suspicious of those who want to hide it from us, they are up to no good.
Might be an idea to eat our own beef, and support British farming, rather than ship meat from the other side of the world.
Just an idea.
And, as a consumer, you absolutely have that choice. Buy British.
Unfortunately, meat-shaming is a massive thing in Met circles now. It's probably the thing, alongside "Diversity™", that comes up most often.
What a weird part of London I must live in where people talk about work, family, holidays, football, dating, hobbies rather than meat shaming and diversity. Fortunately we have people who don't live in cities to keep us up to date about how terrible our lives are, otherwise we might never have realised.
It must be quite exhausting imagining what people in London are thinking about all the time, I wonder if there is any time left over for thoughts of their own?
"In a week in which the nation’s eyeballs have been fixed on the wonky sleeve of a royal cardigan, the news of the effective bankruptcy of Britain’s second city and Europe’s largest council area has passed largely unremarked.
That seems to be the case even in my home city of Birmingham itself. When the council was voting in unprecedented £149m cuts to its budget, slashing children’s services and adult social care and libraries, completely removing arts funding, a protest was planned outside the city council house, once the stage for Britain’s greatest-ever civic reformer, Joseph Chamberlain. Fewer than a hundred people turned up."
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
The problem is that taxation is 'progressive' - and not in the way you or I normally mean. What starts with a tax just on assets over 1 million quickly becomes a tax on 500K, then 200K and then on all assets over a nominal value including your family home. This is what we see in many places which do have wealth taxes and is sure to be the way things progress here. Much like authoritarian laws, once you have put them in place not only is it very difficult toget rid of them but they are pernicious and spread to areas you never intended.
Wouldn't the same argument have applied when Income Tax was first introduced? And yet we have a personal allowance with no ICT and various other exemptions.
With a wealth tax, the reasons why it would be impossible to introduce it an all assets are a) the administrative overheads would be impossibly high, and b) it would be politically unacceptable.
The exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible. Beyond that, yes I could see the personal allowance could come down in time but each time it's reduced the government will take a popularity hit, as they would if they reduced the ICT personal allowance to say £5k.
Even so, it's got to come. If not now, in the next decade. Rising pension and social care costs make it inevitable.
When I come tax was introduced, the promise was only the rich would pay.
Some years ago, a carpenter doing some work for me asked if I could make sense of his tax. He thought the extra money he was earning should end up as more in his pocket.
Yes, he’d become a higher rate tax payer.
Good to see we are hammering the rich bastard chippies.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
I should have said, as I did in my next post, 'the exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible.'
Most of our country’s wealth is in PPRs, so that would be self defeating.
“Wealth” is hard to tax. Real estate is easy. Make it a land value tax. We already pay something akin to this in our council tax and business rates. Reform council tax, give LAs or regions more tax raising powers and autonomy, and over time the new rebranded council tax can take up more of the national revenue base.
No, it would be limiting but not self-defeating.
Anyway, this was all in response to Casino's fear of a Labour government confiscating all his assets, a fear which I think is unfounded.
In many ways the difficulties others have raised with my idle-Sunday-morning-Wealth-Tax meanderings only reinforce the weirdness of Casino's confiscation fears. (I hesitate to use the word paranoia but... oh, I just have.)
I'm actually currently involved in trying to import stock from the UK to Australia for a small business.I have no useful insights other than the Houthis are a pain in the arse. Our stuff is floating about in the Med.
Generally, it does seem a bit mad to import beef (bad for emissions) around the world (bad for emissions) from Australia (very bad for emissions). From a UK perspective, cattle can be quite good for the local environment, chewing up the ground, eating a variety of veg, better than sheep for wetland development. The RSPB use them on their reserves for this reason, IIRC.
It's not like the UK sustains itself on beef though, so there isn't much of a national security angle on this.
Blue Wall = affluent oldies, well paid finance workers
Red Wall = affluent oldies, well paid tradesmen
Common features = high levels of home ownership, few students, above average age, below average ethnic minorities
They're actually pretty similar.
What has damaged the Conservatives is the same as what damaged them before 1997:
Do as I say not as I do hypocrisy Financial and sexual sleaze Having an economic strategy fall apart - ERM / Dizzy Lizzy and Krazi Kwarzi Self-obsessed internal arguments Time for a change fatigue
And a decade long retreat from governing the country.
For reasons both self-inflicted and "events" there has been little to no evidence of "the business of government" going on. Policies proposed and enacted and the impact felt.
You can get away with it for a while, but eventually it plays to the mood that they aren't "doing anything for me/my family" especially when the things they *are* doing don't seem to positively affect any/many of your top issues.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
The problem is that taxation is 'progressive' - and not in the way you or I normally mean. What starts with a tax just on assets over 1 million quickly becomes a tax on 500K, then 200K and then on all assets over a nominal value including your family home. This is what we see in many places which do have wealth taxes and is sure to be the way things progress here. Much like authoritarian laws, once you have put them in place not only is it very difficult toget rid of them but they are pernicious and spread to areas you never intended.
Wouldn't the same argument have applied when Income Tax was first introduced? And yet we have a personal allowance with no ICT and various other exemptions.
With a wealth tax, the reasons why it would be impossible to introduce it an all assets are a) the administrative overheads would be impossibly high, and b) it would be politically unacceptable.
The exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible. Beyond that, yes I could see the personal allowance could come down in time but each time it's reduced the government will take a popularity hit, as they would if they reduced the ICT personal allowance to say £5k.
Even so, it's got to come. If not now, in the next decade. Rising pension and social care costs make it inevitable.
You say it has to come and yet the movement is in the other direction. Most of the countries that had wealth taxes in the past have now dropped them and of those whch do still have them two - Norway and Switzerland - do so for purely ideological reasons rather than because they need the revenue.
I think net wealth tax is a dead end because of the behavioural effects. Hence the much stronger arguments for property taxation, where many of the behavioural effects are desirable ones.
Except we need to work out how you don't bankrupt workers in West London without revealing how much of a lottery they've won compared to those outside the Blue Wall...
Longshot but... Has anyone used the Austrian Rail (OBB) Nightjet sleeper service?
Looking to book the Paris - Vienna sleeper for September but tickets only seem bookable until May, although their website says they open six months in advance.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
You only have to look at the very careful labelling that Lidl do to see that a fair bit of meat is being imported from Australia / New Zealand now.
Problem is their farms are so efficient compared to ours we aren't in a position to export there because anything we sold there would be insanely expensive compared to local costs.
And that's an absolutely good thing for consumers.
And the economy.
David Ricardo is rolling in his grave from this protectionist bullshit.
Talking of protectionist bullshit, I forget, are you in favour of freedom of movement, trade and capital, the Single Market and the Customs Union?
No, I support free trade with the entire planet, not a tiny fraction of it.
I support allowing migrants on equal terms from the entire planet, not discriminating in favour of one tiny fraction of it.
You actually support a meaningless deal with Australia while rejecting the biggest chunk of free trade available to the UK? Sounds like protectionist bullshit to me.
Quite the opposite, I support free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
We have a free trade agreement with Europe. We don't need to be in the EU to have that.
Its time to broaden your horizons. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world make up more of the global economy and more of our trade than our minor neighbours do.
This is fantasy mate. Globalization is stone dead. Regionalization and great power competition is everything. Our neighbours are overwhelmingly important as trade partners. Global freight is expensive, precarious and inefficient. This is why stuff like our ctppt deal is nothing more than a gimmick. Any major corporation in britain with interests there already has embedded local HQs and infrastructures... because you need local knowledge, the efficiency of FLEXIBLY INTERACTING WITH NEIGHBOURS.... Small and medium sized companies don't have the capacity to operate at that distance. Brexit might (sic) have made sense in 1993. Now it is a dangerous anachronism. There are three economic operators in the world now: China, EU and the US. It doesn't matter if you are nr 6 or 60... you follow them. And if you don't have protection of one of the big three, you are weak prey separate from the herd. You seriously think a market of 65 million people on the Atlantic fringe adds up to anything in a world where leaders count in the scale of hundreds of millions and billions? It is so naive. This is all the right has had to offer: wishful thinking totally detached from reality. There is no place for Britain in this world beyond cooperation with our neighbours. That is just a brutal face.
I wouldn’t say globalisation is stone dead. Businesses are still setting up on low cost economies. However I would say it is very much in retreat and I think it’s death is only a matter of time.
I think everything else you say is correct and is something we need to wake up to.
"In a week in which the nation’s eyeballs have been fixed on the wonky sleeve of a royal cardigan, the news of the effective bankruptcy of Britain’s second city and Europe’s largest council area has passed largely unremarked.
That seems to be the case even in my home city of Birmingham itself. When the council was voting in unprecedented £149m cuts to its budget, slashing children’s services and adult social care and libraries, completely removing arts funding, a protest was planned outside the city council house, once the stage for Britain’s greatest-ever civic reformer, Joseph Chamberlain. Fewer than a hundred people turned up."
"In a week in which the nation’s eyeballs have been fixed on the wonky sleeve of a royal cardigan, the news of the effective bankruptcy of Britain’s second city and Europe’s largest council area has passed largely unremarked.
That seems to be the case even in my home city of Birmingham itself. When the council was voting in unprecedented £149m cuts to its budget, slashing children’s services and adult social care and libraries, completely removing arts funding, a protest was planned outside the city council house, once the stage for Britain’s greatest-ever civic reformer, Joseph Chamberlain. Fewer than a hundred people turned up."
Birmingham was bankrupt in 2012 - the problem is everyone kicked the can down the road for 12 years so when the inevitable was unavoidable and so finally faced up to the impact is far far greater than it previously was.
The all important phrase is "bankruptcy is slow followed by sudden" as someone finally twigs and pulls the plug...
I'm actually currently involved in trying to import stock from the UK to Australia for a small business.I have no useful insights other than the Houthis are a pain in the arse. Our stuff is floating about in the Med.
Generally, it does seem a bit mad to import beef (bad for emissions) around the world (bad for emissions) from Australia (very bad for emissions). From a UK perspective, cattle can be quite good for the local environment, chewing up the ground, eating a variety of veg, better than sheep for wetland development. The RSPB use them on their reserves for this reason, IIRC.
It's not like the UK sustains itself on beef though, so there isn't much of a national security angle on this.
If the yeoman don’t eat lots of beef, they aren’t going to make good longbow archers. Which means the French might win.
Laura K repeats the untruth that NI is not allocated for pensions and so on.
NI goes into a separate fund used to pay for pensions.
"The National Insurance Fund (NIF) holds National Insurance Contributions (NICs), paid by employees, employers, and the self-employed. Voluntary contributions are also paid into the Fund. Receipts paid into the NIF are kept separate from all other revenue raised by national taxes and are used to pay social security benefits such as contributory benefits and the State Pension."
Might be an idea to eat our own beef, and support British farming, rather than ship meat from the other side of the world.
Just an idea.
And, as a consumer, you absolutely have that choice. Buy British.
Unfortunately, meat-shaming is a massive thing in Met circles now. It's probably the thing, alongside "Diversity™", that comes up most often.
What a weird part of London I must live in where people talk about work, family, holidays, football, dating, hobbies rather than meat shaming and diversity. Fortunately we have people who don't live in cities to keep us up to date about how terrible our lives are, otherwise we might never have realised.
It must be quite exhausting imagining what people in London are thinking about all the time, I wonder if there is any time left over for thoughts of their own?
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
The problem is that taxation is 'progressive' - and not in the way you or I normally mean. What starts with a tax just on assets over 1 million quickly becomes a tax on 500K, then 200K and then on all assets over a nominal value including your family home. This is what we see in many places which do have wealth taxes and is sure to be the way things progress here. Much like authoritarian laws, once you have put them in place not only is it very difficult toget rid of them but they are pernicious and spread to areas you never intended.
Wouldn't the same argument have applied when Income Tax was first introduced? And yet we have a personal allowance with no ICT and various other exemptions.
With a wealth tax, the reasons why it would be impossible to introduce it an all assets are a) the administrative overheads would be impossibly high, and b) it would be politically unacceptable.
The exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible. Beyond that, yes I could see the personal allowance could come down in time but each time it's reduced the government will take a popularity hit, as they would if they reduced the ICT personal allowance to say £5k.
Even so, it's got to come. If not now, in the next decade. Rising pension and social care costs make it inevitable.
When I come tax was introduced, the promise was only the rich would pay.
Some years ago, a carpenter doing some work for me asked if I could make sense of his tax. He thought the extra money he was earning should end up as more in his pocket.
Yes, he’d become a higher rate tax payer.
Good to see we are hammering the rich bastard chippies.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
I should have said, as I did in my next post, 'the exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible.'
The problem then is that putting money into property becomes, even more, the way to store wealth.
"In a week in which the nation’s eyeballs have been fixed on the wonky sleeve of a royal cardigan, the news of the effective bankruptcy of Britain’s second city and Europe’s largest council area has passed largely unremarked.
That seems to be the case even in my home city of Birmingham itself. When the council was voting in unprecedented £149m cuts to its budget, slashing children’s services and adult social care and libraries, completely removing arts funding, a protest was planned outside the city council house, once the stage for Britain’s greatest-ever civic reformer, Joseph Chamberlain. Fewer than a hundred people turned up."
Birmingham was bankrupt in 2012 - the problem is everyone kicked the can down the road for 12 years so when the inevitable was unavoidable and so finally faced up to the impact is far far greater than it previously was.
The all important phrase is "bankruptcy is slow followed by sudden" as someone finally twigs and pulls the plug...
His point though is nobody seems to be bothered enough to protest at the cuts and there are effectively no local newspapers to champion objections or debate.
"In a week in which the nation’s eyeballs have been fixed on the wonky sleeve of a royal cardigan, the news of the effective bankruptcy of Britain’s second city and Europe’s largest council area has passed largely unremarked.
That seems to be the case even in my home city of Birmingham itself. When the council was voting in unprecedented £149m cuts to its budget, slashing children’s services and adult social care and libraries, completely removing arts funding, a protest was planned outside the city council house, once the stage for Britain’s greatest-ever civic reformer, Joseph Chamberlain. Fewer than a hundred people turned up."
Might be an idea to eat our own beef, and support British farming, rather than ship meat from the other side of the world.
Just an idea.
And, as a consumer, you absolutely have that choice. Buy British.
Unfortunately, meat-shaming is a massive thing in Met circles now. It's probably the thing, alongside "Diversity™", that comes up most often.
What a weird part of London I must live in where people talk about work, family, holidays, football, dating, hobbies rather than meat shaming and diversity. Fortunately we have people who don't live in cities to keep us up to date about how terrible our lives are, otherwise we might never have realised.
I'm surrounded by vegans and vegetarians and I have not once been lectured at for my love of chicken. It's usually me doing the piss taking.
Caving ceilings and plummeting lifts: inside our NHS hospitals ... The ceiling of an intensive care ward [Harlow] collapsed onto a patient on life support and hours later a falling lift broke a doctor’s leg [Royal London] in a 24-hour snapshot of Britain’s crumbling NHS hospitals last week. ... ... the government’s delayed programme for 40 new hospitals. The scheme, announced in 2020, has faced significant problems and the National Audit Office warned that it would not be delivered by the planned date of 2030. ... Capital budgets — spending on hospitals and equipment — were slashed during the 2010s or raided to plug gaps in day-to-day spending, leaving Britain with one of the lowest capital healthcare spends in the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries. In that time the NHS maintenance bill to repair hospitals to an acceptable, safe standard has soared to an estimated £11.6 billion, up from £4.1 billion in 2010, according to NHS Digital. About £2.4 billion of that is for “high-risk” repairs, meaning urgent work is needed to avoid significant disruption, injury or catastrophic failure of service. ... Although Labour has promised to fund 700,000 extra GP appointments, the party has not pledged any new capital commitments. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/falling-ceilings-and-plummeting-lifts-inside-our-crumbling-nhs-hospitals-s9vb2fx7n (£££)
Tractor stats from governments of whatever colour cannot hide the truth from patients, their relatives and their relatives friends who struggle to see GPs or visit hospitals.
Brexit is nothing like as big a deal as both sides wanted to pretend for different reasons. It is done now and unlikely to be a sticking point going forward.
What we really need is a government that is willing to address our underlying problems
Brexit is not nearly "done", and it solved exactly none of our underlying problems, while exacerbating many of them.
Apart from that...
Indeed. They're still sorting out UK customs after many, many postponements.
That is not a state in control of its destiny, though this time it's the Brexiteers who are the government.
Let me give you a specific example - meat imports. We delayed repeatedly the introduction of our post-Brexit border model. At one point the minister for Brexit Opportunities described the implementation of our demanded model as an act of "national self-harm"
So at the end of January we belatedly imposed checks on imports, albeit not checks where we actually check either the paperwork or the goods. We still do not have the physical infrastructure or the staff or the computer systems to do so.
Our EU neighbours though, they are treaty-bound to implement our deal. And they have. In full. Where the French were struggling to get enough paperwork generated quickly enough, their own government started paying to clear them. The Spanish government are very clear on export to UK rules and have simply and completely implemented it.
We remain functionally incompetent when it comes to the border. Never mind Take Back Control, despite years of delay we still have to wave stuff through because we haven't bothered to invest in the set-up to do our own checks.
My conclusion is that for mist Tory Brexiteers the gains were all slogan and no detail. they didn't actually want the act of "national self-harm", they just wanted to pretend that we could tell the foreign what to do.
What other explanation is there?
Alternative explanation: Not being aligned with the EU allows us to make agreements with other countries like Australia which we can import meat from.
Implementing checks on EU meat is not necessary to achieve that gain.
The world is a bigger place than Europe. If you only look at France and Spain, of course it won't make sense.
If only Australia was close enough to make that possible.
Can I refer you back to the word "slogan"
We have a HUGELY competitive market. We already import some meat and fish from all kinds of places. Chicken from Brazil and Thailand as an example. If you want cheapo crap meat. But replace our closest most aligned marketplace with ones on the other side of the globe? If it was viable it would have been done already.
Australia is close enough to make that possible. Its on Planet Earth, everywhere on Planet Earth is close enough to make that possible.
For fresh veg you may have a point, but for meat? You can ship meat all over the planet. I have beef right now in my freezer from Argentina, what bloody difference does the country of origin make?
The alignment with the EU put tariff and non-tariff barriers against non-European meat. Barriers we can and absolutely should remove, but no reason for us to replace those with new barriers against European meat. All we need to do to look after consumers is remove the barriers, if the Europeans want to put barriers against us, that's their consumers problem, not ours.
"freezer"
Yes, what's wrong with that?
Most meat is frozen in transportation, are you not aware of that?
No wonder you were so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters.
I can talk you through the process of blast freezing, frozen import, uptemper, datecode, pack and ship if you like. And how to make a profit doing it.
Can you?
"Most meat is frozen" / "so ignorant that you thought country of origin matters"
Go round the chilled section of any supermarket. Look at the products. What they are called. How prominent the country of origin is.
Then try again.
Many chilled products in the supermarket were previously frozen. They're labelled so too.
Prominently displaying country of origin is protectionist bullshit, but if people want to pay attention to that they're free to do so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with freezing meat. Or importing frozen meat.
1. Duh. I've literally just described the process to you 2. Consumers don't want to eat meat of indeterminate sourcing. You do, most don't. Your "protectionist bullshit" is what most people who aren't you want 3. We do import frozen meat. And its fine! But most meat products aren't frozen. Again, what you want isn't what everyone wants.
A free market would be free. Import *and export* whatever we want. What you advocate are one sided deals which actively stop consumers having what they want. Which is odd for a libertarian.
Eh? No I don't, I support letting people decide.
If some people want to buy British, then British producers should be able to slap a union jack on and say its from the UK and appeal to that demographic and that's their choice. If people want to be even more insular they should be able to say it's from that county or town or whatever and appeal to an even narrower PoV
If other people like myself don't give a damn, we should be able to make our choice too.
Either way, let people decide.
You shouldn't be able to lie on any marketing claims. If you say your meat is from Cumbria and it's from Devon, that's a lie and its not OK. If you say your meat is from England and it's from Argentina, that's a lie and it's not OK. If you don't say, then so what?
I’m now completely lost. Weren’t you calling for the abolition of origin labelling just half an hour ago?
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
I should have said, as I did in my next post, 'the exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible.'
The problem then is that putting money into property becomes, even more, the way to store wealth.
And round we go.
That won't drive up house prices though - lack of supply does that.
Build more houses and it won't matter if people want to put more money into their private residence, the value will be dictated by supply and demand.
Too many people are getting worked up by the idea that the vapid but presentable Penny Mordaunt will straddle the Tories and give them a bounce. It’s. Not. Going. To. Happen.
Gee thanks for that bizarre and totally unnecessary mental image.
The mental image of a "bouncing", "straddling" Penny Mordaunt makes an older male voter reach for the ballot paper and pencil.
So she's an intellectual vacuum, but she looks like Catherine Deneuve. That's enough for some of us.
She looks like Deneuve sponsored by Greggs. The idea that YET AGAIN we’re going to have another Tory ideological tussle between her and the scourge of cat identifiers Badenoch imposed on us raises the cry of ‘what the fuck has this got to do with me?’ all over the country. Of course if that country is Scotland the cry has been going on for 65+ years.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
I should have said, as I did in my next post, 'the exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible.'
The problem then is that putting money into property becomes, even more, the way to store wealth.
And round we go.
That won't drive up house prices though - lack of supply does that.
Build more houses and it won't matter if people want to put more money into their private residence, the value will be dictated by supply and demand.
I look forward to the U.K. building a million properties a year.
It will probably have to wait for my unDictatorship, though.
“Support British infrastructure. Or be a foundational element.”
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
I should have said, as I did in my next post, 'the exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible.'
The problem then is that putting money into property becomes, even more, the way to store wealth.
And round we go.
That won't drive up house prices though - lack of supply does that.
Build more houses and it won't matter if people want to put more money into their private residence, the value will be dictated by supply and demand.
I’ve begun to despair about house building. Nimbyism appears to unite the country in a way little else does. Rich and poor, Brexit and remain, left and right. All have this same muscle reflex to object to any proposed development. Even the relatively young are at it round here.
The thing is so all pervading that I hide my quiet yimbyism from the neighbours for fear of being considered a traitor.
"In a week in which the nation’s eyeballs have been fixed on the wonky sleeve of a royal cardigan, the news of the effective bankruptcy of Britain’s second city and Europe’s largest council area has passed largely unremarked.
That seems to be the case even in my home city of Birmingham itself. When the council was voting in unprecedented £149m cuts to its budget, slashing children’s services and adult social care and libraries, completely removing arts funding, a protest was planned outside the city council house, once the stage for Britain’s greatest-ever civic reformer, Joseph Chamberlain. Fewer than a hundred people turned up."
Birmingham was bankrupt in 2012 - the problem is everyone kicked the can down the road for 12 years so when the inevitable was unavoidable and so finally faced up to the impact is far far greater than it previously was.
The all important phrase is "bankruptcy is slow followed by sudden" as someone finally twigs and pulls the plug...
His point though is nobody seems to be bothered enough to protest at the cuts and there are effectively no local newspapers to champion objections or debate.
There are no local newspapers anywhere because all of the newspaper companies have destroyed their business over the past 15 years seeking clicks..
It's got to the extent now that there is a blogger in Edinburgh making a living with a morning newsletter that consolidates all the news into a single place
And elsewhere (I can't remember where) another blogger is reporting on council stories because no-one else is doing it.
"In a week in which the nation’s eyeballs have been fixed on the wonky sleeve of a royal cardigan, the news of the effective bankruptcy of Britain’s second city and Europe’s largest council area has passed largely unremarked.
That seems to be the case even in my home city of Birmingham itself. When the council was voting in unprecedented £149m cuts to its budget, slashing children’s services and adult social care and libraries, completely removing arts funding, a protest was planned outside the city council house, once the stage for Britain’s greatest-ever civic reformer, Joseph Chamberlain. Fewer than a hundred people turned up."
It will vary from council to council but nationally its reported to be 39% adult social care and 22% child social care:
Councils provide hundreds of services in your area, but funding cuts and growing service demand means that council spend is increasingly focused on social care. In 2023/24 less than 40 per cent of councils’ total spend was left for services such as street cleaning, waste collection and leisure centres.
Might be an idea to eat our own beef, and support British farming, rather than ship meat from the other side of the world.
Just an idea.
And, as a consumer, you absolutely have that choice. Buy British.
Unfortunately, meat-shaming is a massive thing in Met circles now. It's probably the thing, alongside "Diversity™", that comes up most often.
What a weird part of London I must live in where people talk about work, family, holidays, football, dating, hobbies rather than meat shaming and diversity. Fortunately we have people who don't live in cities to keep us up to date about how terrible our lives are, otherwise we might never have realised.
Mamchester City Council last year hung banners from its lampposts urging people to eat less meat. Seemed an odd use of public funds.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
I should have said, as I did in my next post, 'the exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible.'
The problem then is that putting money into property becomes, even more, the way to store wealth.
And round we go.
That won't drive up house prices though - lack of supply does that.
Build more houses and it won't matter if people want to put more money into their private residence, the value will be dictated by supply and demand.
I’ve begun to despair about house building. Nimbyism appears to unite the country in a way little else does. Rich and poor, Brexit and remain, left and right. All have this same muscle reflex to object to any proposed development. Even the relatively young are at it round here.
The thing is so all pervading that I hide my quiet yimbyism from the neighbours for fear of being considered a traitor.
1) monetise it - “for every house in the new development done the road, you get £500” 2) build better than Poundbry. If a man who has an employee to load toothpaste onto his toothbrush is more in touch with hoi poloi than the architects, fire the architects. From trebuchets.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
I should have said, as I did in my next post, 'the exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible.'
The problem then is that putting money into property becomes, even more, the way to store wealth.
And round we go.
That won't drive up house prices though - lack of supply does that.
Build more houses and it won't matter if people want to put more money into their private residence, the value will be dictated by supply and demand.
I look forward to the U.K. building a million properties a year.
It will probably have to wait for my unDictatorship, though.
“Support British infrastructure. Or be a foundational element.”
I'm actually struggling to see how we keep building numbers at current levels let alone higher ones.
It's worth reading the Barratts rational for merging with Redrow and weeping...
"In a week in which the nation’s eyeballs have been fixed on the wonky sleeve of a royal cardigan, the news of the effective bankruptcy of Britain’s second city and Europe’s largest council area has passed largely unremarked.
That seems to be the case even in my home city of Birmingham itself. When the council was voting in unprecedented £149m cuts to its budget, slashing children’s services and adult social care and libraries, completely removing arts funding, a protest was planned outside the city council house, once the stage for Britain’s greatest-ever civic reformer, Joseph Chamberlain. Fewer than a hundred people turned up."
Birmingham was bankrupt in 2012 - the problem is everyone kicked the can down the road for 12 years so when the inevitable was unavoidable and so finally faced up to the impact is far far greater than it previously was.
The all important phrase is "bankruptcy is slow followed by sudden" as someone finally twigs and pulls the plug...
His point though is nobody seems to be bothered enough to protest at the cuts and there are effectively no local newspapers to champion objections or debate.
There are no local newspapers anywhere because all of the newspaper companies have destroyed their business over the past 15 years seeking clicks..
It's got to the extent now that there is a blogger in Edinburgh making a living with a morning newsletter that consolidates all the news into a single place
And elsewhere (I can't remember where) another blogger is reporting on council stories because no-one else is doing it.
Our local freesheet, which was actually very good, gave up printing about 5 years ago and went online because they couldn't cover their costs. A few months later a near replica started to be produced on a fortnightly basis and is now on issue 91. It's so near-identical, I'm surprised the owners of the original didn't try to sue (maybe they did).
Anyway the current publishers seem to be thriving.
I think it's a bit strange that people should be so quick to say the red and blue walls cannot ever be reconciled, when this was achieved just over four years ago at GE 2019. If the polls are anywhere like accurate, then Labour are poised to reconcile three major groups in the electorate - metropolitan liberals, blue labour and conservative swing voters.
These groups are not reconciled due to the oratorical brilliance of Keir-Ends-In-R Starmer, but due to Starmer's success in blandifying the Labour party so as not to put any of the groups off, and the categorical imperative of finding a means for these groups to punish the Tories.
Achieving something in reverse for the Tories requires only a bit of experience of Labour in government, and a Tory leader who isn't trying to actively alienate one part of the voter coalition.
I like your counter to this, with the 2019 evidence to back up your point.
However … those cracks were in the Party for a long time and we kid ourselves to think otherwise. That divide is really what brought down John Major and it didn’t do Margaret Thatcher much good in the end either. It all boiled to the surface when @TSE ’s beloved Davey boy idiotically called the Brexit referendum, thinking in his Old Etonian arrogance that he would pull off the same stunt as indyref.
(If you want to see what a shit Cameron really is then DO read the finale to Suzanne Heywood’s What Does Jeremy Think?)
I still maintain that 2019 was unique. Even I, a remainer, was utterly exasperated at the antics of that Remainer Parliament and at just the right moment along came Boris, someone uniquely gifted at deception to hoodwink the British people. With mellifluous honey-coated lies he pulled in blue and red wall voters. My Surrey tory friend, totally disillusioned now with the Party, STILL ADORES Boris and would vote for him like a shot.
Assuming Boris doesn’t make a Lazarite comeback, there’s no one else of his ilk. Once in a century.
Yes, it's true to say that the splits had been in the Tory party for a long time - but then that is true of any governing party in Britain. There is no single cohesive group of voters that is large enough to win a majority on its own. So it's normal for a governing party to be sustained by a coalition of voters divided amongst itself, and those divisions will obviously come to the fore when the party is generally unpopular.
I don't see anything unusual with what is happening to the Tories now, and so I don't think it requires anything extraordinary to fix the situation.
Indeed, what seems to be a more volatile electorate means that there is potential for the fractured Tory coalition to come back together (very temporarily) more quickly than currently appears possible. The situation facing an incoming Labour government is much more difficult than that encountered in 1997.
Although the Tories have been in government for nearly 14 years now, I think that is misleading. They have had several reinventions in that time, and so the last 14 years have been a lot more like the 1970s, than the long periods of Thatcherite/Blairite rule in the 80s/90s/00s.
Whatever Starmerism turns out to be I would not bet on it lasting that long. It's quite likely to be overturned by something very different, either from within the Labour party, or without, by the end of the decade.
A good response but your last paragraph is a fig leaf I’ve noticed some Conservatives clinging onto i.e. the assumption that Starmer is going to fail.
Whilst I don’t underestimate the magnitude of problems facing this country, and I’m no longer convinced Labour will fix them, I suspect many people will look back on the last 5 years as a horror show they never want to go near again in their lifetime.
I’m beginning to think Labour will be in power for 20 years.
I'm not a Conservative.
We'll see what Starmerism turns out to be - it's really hard to predict because he's shown so little indication of what his approach will be - but I included the possibility of Starmerism being overturned from within the Labour party. Whether Labour is in office for two decades, or not, I do not think Britain is in for a period of stable politics. There are large problems, that are difficult to solve, and a lot of rootless discontent sloshing about the political system as a result.
It could be that the Tory brand, and all the politicians associated with it, is so damaged that the voters won't go near it for a long time, but in that case the voter's discontent will manifest itself through other parties, or through factions within the Labour party. Cameron was PM for 6 years and 64 days. He wasn't brought down because the voters were ready to give Labour another go. I doubt very much that Starmer will have so long, but I don't see the Tories returning so soon either (thank God).
I'm instructing my financial advisor to advise me on protecting my assets against a potential confiscatory very left-wing Labour government.
It's perfectly possible Starmer gets dethroned, in office, for a Left-wing alternative like you say, and they utterly abuse the MP base they have in Parliament.
Well don't put it under your mattress, there appear to a lot of Reds under your bed.
Seriously, I wonder what legal options your financial adviser might suggest? Whatever they are, I'll warrant said IFA will be the only one to profit.
Who knows. One idea is to send some out the country and/or put it in a trusted relatives name.
But that holds risks in itself.
I could see (would vote for) a wealth tax of say 1-2% per annum on assets over say £1m. If that's what you class as 'confiscatory' it would likely cost you a larger percentage to avoid that.
I am genuinely intrigued that you fear such a threat.
No, much worse than that.
Go on - what does 'much worse than that' look like? What do you think is really a possibility at shall we say a >5% chance?
In West London, this level of property tax would push out anyone who wasn’t poor or on over £100k. Including those renting.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
I should have said, as I did in my next post, 'the exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible.'
The problem then is that putting money into property becomes, even more, the way to store wealth.
And round we go.
That won't drive up house prices though - lack of supply does that.
Build more houses and it won't matter if people want to put more money into their private residence, the value will be dictated by supply and demand.
I’ve begun to despair about house building. Nimbyism appears to unite the country in a way little else does. Rich and poor, Brexit and remain, left and right. All have this same muscle reflex to object to any proposed development. Even the relatively young are at it round here.
The thing is so all pervading that I hide my quiet yimbyism from the neighbours for fear of being considered a traitor.
I think the NIMBYism is exacerbated by the lack of public services. It's hard to argue for more housing when you can't even provide an NHS dentist for the existing population.
Even LTNs are a reaction to more housing, as previously quiet neighbourhoods become ratruns for new ones.
Might be an idea to eat our own beef, and support British farming, rather than ship meat from the other side of the world.
Just an idea.
And, as a consumer, you absolutely have that choice. Buy British.
Unfortunately, meat-shaming is a massive thing in Met circles now. It's probably the thing, alongside "Diversity™", that comes up most often.
What a weird part of London I must live in where people talk about work, family, holidays, football, dating, hobbies rather than meat shaming and diversity. Fortunately we have people who don't live in cities to keep us up to date about how terrible our lives are, otherwise we might never have realised.
Mamchester City Council last year hung banners from its lampposts urging people to eat less meat. Seemed an odd use of public funds.
Comments
Leaving the EU because you don't like the institution and what it does to the UK and you're willing to take the hit to trade and investment is reasonable, and ultimately protectionist.
Er, what? You don’t think people should be interested in the provenance of their food?
Agree re hiding assets overseas or giving to a family member or friend is a very very bad idea.
It would be like arguing with me on an income payment - where last year we had to correct 5 different payroll providers because their pension calculations didn't correctly cover an edge case...
Other than protectionist bullshit?
I appreciate the trade deals with Australia don't stop me doing that so in that sense I have no argument with you. But I feel the tide has turned against global sourcing being a panacea.
Annoyingly the French were right after all.
Globally, a significant proportion of meat and seafood etc is frozen and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Importing frozen meat and seafood etc that's either frozen or been previously frozen, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that either.
The Lib Dems are proposing a tax on share buybacks to raise a few billion a year to fund whatever touchy freely stuff they think the voters like. Again this is not likely to work as it is very easy to avoid.
2. Consumers don't want to eat meat of indeterminate sourcing. You do, most don't. Your "protectionist bullshit" is what most people who aren't you want
3. We do import frozen meat. And its fine! But most meat products aren't frozen. Again, what you want isn't what everyone wants.
A free market would be free. Import *and export* whatever we want. What you advocate are one sided deals which actively stop consumers having what they want. Which is odd for a libertarian.
Because there are some countries in the world I do not want to support by buying their produce.
Because balance of trade numbers matter to our economy.
Because I want to support local farmers and food producers.
Because I believe globalisation has, in the main, been good for big multinationals and bad for individuals.
You may think this is all bullshit but to be honest considering most of the ignorant bollocks you come out with these days your opinion is not worth much round here.
However there is a reason you slipped the word relative in there, because the facts aren't on your side. Since 2019 or since 2016 whichever baseline you prefer, UK trade has increased not fallen.
I think everything else you say is correct and is something we need to wake up to.
The EU doesn't 'do' professional services, and it's nigh-on impossible to get a job there in them anyway. The work is in MENA, Hong Kong, Australia, NZ, Canada and the US.
That's it.
Soylent Green!
Unfortunately, meat-shaming is a massive thing in Met circles now. It's probably the thing, alongside "Diversity™", that comes up most often.
What do you think is really a possibility at, shall we say, a >5% chance?
In the real world, voters look at the price of food and their wages after record taxes, and want to change the government.
a) do absolutely nothing much different and have no meaningful policies except to preside over the continuing decline of the UK for five miserable years?
b) confiscate private pensions and ISAs, tax wealthy property owners until the pips squeak, open all our borders, and make wokeness mandatory?
c) or, perhaps, something in between a) and b)?
What is odd is that I don't remember noticing them until a few years ago.
Might I also suggest that all those people claiming to have mental health problems turn off social media and go for a walk.
They'll be able to see the new ducklings, goslings, calves and lambs together with the new plant life.
If some people want to buy British, then British producers should be able to slap a union jack on and say its from the UK and appeal to that demographic and that's their choice. If people want to be even more insular they should be able to say it's from that county or town or whatever and appeal to an even narrower PoV
If other people like myself don't give a damn, we should be able to make our choice too.
Either way, let people decide.
You shouldn't be able to lie on any marketing claims. If you say your meat is from Cumbria and it's from Devon, that's a lie and its not OK. If you say your meat is from England and it's from Argentina, that's a lie and it's not OK. If you don't say, then so what?
My advice is don't involve friends and family with money issues unless you don't care if it goes pearshaped. It didn't bother me (or I think my other cousins) but my father, uncle and aunt were very hurt by it.
There are huge numbers of people who live there from the times before property went mad. Hence the interesting patch work of the redone houses with the expensive cars next to the down at heel looking places with the hatchback.
Increasing people’s bills by £1k a month would make the poll tax riots look tame.
Regionalisation is a 1950s solution. To 2020s problems. It's a terrible idea.
And as for claims global shipping is expensive, nothing could be further from the truth. Economies of scale mean that shipping costs are so ridiculously miniscule it's hard for people like you to fathom how small they are.
The world is more globalised than ever before and modern technology means that's ratcheting ever further in that direction.
Whether you like it, or not.
(*) Dawn is a little late atm, so a fair few people are about.
Red Wall = affluent oldies, well paid tradesmen
Common features = high levels of home ownership, few students, above average age, below average ethnic minorities
They're actually pretty similar.
What has damaged the Conservatives is the same as what damaged them before 1997:
Do as I say not as I do hypocrisy
Financial and sexual sleaze
Having an economic strategy fall apart - ERM / Dizzy Lizzy and Krazi Kwarzi
Self-obsessed internal arguments
Time for a change fatigue
With a wealth tax, the reasons why it would be impossible to introduce it an all assets are a) the administrative overheads would be impossibly high, and b) it would be politically unacceptable.
The exclusion of a principal private residence would be sensible. Beyond that, yes I could see the personal allowance could come down in time but each time it's reduced the government will take a popularity hit, as they would if they reduced the ICT personal allowance to say £5k.
Even so, it's got to come. If not now, in the next decade. Rising pension and social care costs make it inevitable.
And introduce it at a very low level initially.
Then, like with VAT, you can raise the level over time, ideally combined with income tax cuts.
We can't tax the poor because they haven't got money. We can't tax business because we need it for growth. Static wealth is the only oilfield left, so to speak. People can move out, money can be used to buy property abroad, but you can't move a building or a mansion. Taxing the mansion is the only option left.
This is why I get so annoyed with the Conservatives. By indulging in culture-war or current-thing topics, they have lost track of the problems, and given their wealth they have no need to learn them. Removing them from Government is the only way I can get them to focus.
As well as an encouragement to eat fruit and go for a walk.
“Wealth” is hard to tax. Real estate is easy. Make it a land value tax. We already pay something akin to this in our council tax and business rates. Reform council tax, give LAs or regions more tax raising powers and autonomy, and over time the new rebranded council tax can take up more of the national revenue base.
Consumers want information, and be suspicious of those who want to hide it from us, they are up to no good.
That seems to be the case even in my home city of Birmingham itself. When the council was voting in unprecedented £149m cuts to its budget, slashing children’s services and adult social care and libraries, completely removing arts funding, a protest was planned outside the city council house, once the stage for Britain’s greatest-ever civic reformer, Joseph Chamberlain. Fewer than a hundred people turned up."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/16/birmingham-council-has-just-cut-services-to-the-bone-but-its-citizens-cant-read-all-about-it
Some years ago, a carpenter doing some work for me asked if I could make sense of his tax. He thought the extra money he was earning should end up as more in his pocket.
Yes, he’d become a higher rate tax payer.
Good to see we are hammering the rich bastard chippies.
Anyway, this was all in response to Casino's fear of a Labour government confiscating all his assets, a fear which I think is unfounded.
In many ways the difficulties others have raised with my idle-Sunday-morning-Wealth-Tax meanderings only reinforce the weirdness of Casino's confiscation fears. (I hesitate to use the word paranoia but... oh, I just have.)
Generally, it does seem a bit mad to import beef (bad for emissions) around the world (bad for emissions) from Australia (very bad for emissions). From a UK perspective, cattle can be quite good for the local environment, chewing up the ground, eating a variety of veg, better than sheep for wetland development. The RSPB use them on their reserves for this reason, IIRC.
It's not like the UK sustains itself on beef though, so there isn't much of a national security angle on this.
For reasons both self-inflicted and "events" there has been little to no evidence of "the business of government" going on. Policies proposed and enacted and the impact felt.
You can get away with it for a while, but eventually it plays to the mood that they aren't "doing anything for me/my family" especially when the things they *are* doing don't seem to positively affect any/many of your top issues.
Looking to book the Paris - Vienna sleeper for September but tickets only seem bookable until May, although their website says they open six months in advance.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2023/06/21/onshoring-for-a-more-sustainable-and-secure-future/?sh=58e6c62f847f
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/the-rise-of-discriminatory-regionalism-michele-ruta
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/navigating-great-power-competition-a-serious-planning-start/
If that doesn't affect you then you're likely to have minimal dealings with local council services beyond your bin collection.
The all important phrase is "bankruptcy is slow followed by sudden" as someone finally twigs and pulls the plug...
NI goes into a separate fund used to pay for pensions.
"The National Insurance Fund (NIF) holds National Insurance Contributions (NICs), paid by employees, employers, and the self-employed. Voluntary contributions are also paid into the Fund. Receipts paid into the NIF are kept separate from all other revenue raised by national taxes and are used to pay social security benefits such as contributory benefits and the State Pension."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-insurance-fund-accounts/great-britain-national-insurance-fund-account-for-the-year-ended-31-march-2023
“Thinking thoughts of your own is selfish”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oncDrbLA0zo
And round we go.
But it does seem bizarre that 40% of a tax housing is spent on social care.
Maybe I'm the arsehole.
...
The ceiling of an intensive care ward [Harlow] collapsed onto a patient on life support and hours later a falling lift broke a doctor’s leg [Royal London] in a 24-hour snapshot of Britain’s crumbling NHS hospitals last week.
...
... the government’s delayed programme for 40 new hospitals. The scheme, announced in 2020, has faced significant problems and the National Audit Office warned that it would not be delivered by the planned date of 2030.
...
Capital budgets — spending on hospitals and equipment — were slashed during the 2010s or raided to plug gaps in day-to-day spending, leaving Britain with one of the lowest capital healthcare spends in the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries.
In that time the NHS maintenance bill to repair hospitals to an acceptable, safe standard has soared to an estimated £11.6 billion, up from £4.1 billion in 2010, according to NHS Digital. About £2.4 billion of that is for “high-risk” repairs, meaning urgent work is needed to avoid significant disruption, injury or catastrophic failure of service.
...
Although Labour has promised to fund 700,000 extra GP appointments, the party has not pledged any new capital commitments.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/falling-ceilings-and-plummeting-lifts-inside-our-crumbling-nhs-hospitals-s9vb2fx7n (£££)
Tractor stats from governments of whatever colour cannot hide the truth from patients, their relatives and their relatives friends who struggle to see GPs or visit hospitals.
Build more houses and it won't matter if people want to put more money into their private residence, the value will be dictated by supply and demand.
The idea that YET AGAIN we’re going to have another Tory ideological tussle between her and the scourge of cat identifiers Badenoch imposed on us raises the cry of ‘what the fuck has this got to do with me?’ all over the country. Of course if that country is Scotland the cry has been going on for 65+ years.
Or do you mean composting?
It will probably have to wait for my unDictatorship, though.
“Support British infrastructure. Or be a foundational element.”
The thing is so all pervading that I hide my quiet yimbyism from the neighbours for fear of being considered a traitor.
It's got to the extent now that there is a blogger in Edinburgh making a living with a morning newsletter that consolidates all the news into a single place
And elsewhere (I can't remember where) another blogger is reporting on council stories because no-one else is doing it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-68590805
https://www.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/-/our-budget-explained
It will vary from council to council but nationally its reported to be 39% adult social care and 22% child social care:
Councils provide hundreds of services in your area, but funding cuts and growing service demand means that council spend is increasingly focused on social care. In 2023/24 less than 40 per cent of councils’ total spend was left for services such as street cleaning, waste collection and leisure centres.
https://www.local.gov.uk/about/campaigns/save-local-services/save-local-services-how-ps1-council-funding-spent
2) build better than Poundbry. If a man who has an employee to load toothpaste onto his toothbrush is more in touch with hoi poloi than the architects, fire the architects. From trebuchets.
The government is doing badly because it has proved sleazy, incompetent, and divided. And, the calibre of its MP's is pretty awful.
I think too, Reform is a chimera. It's poll ratings match those of UKIP, but unlike UKIP, it's not winning council seats or big votes in by-elections.
It's worth reading the Barratts rational for merging with Redrow and weeping...
Anyway the current publishers seem to be thriving.
Even LTNs are a reaction to more housing, as previously quiet neighbourhoods become ratruns for new ones.