I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed around immigration it can be used without outright rejection. Why are Leave taking about hypothetical Turks rather than real Poles ? Because Turks are Muslims. What have we all seen on TV over the last 2 years ? About 2 million largely Muslim and entirely unplanned immigrants who appeared to have just ' walked in '. It seems to me finally mentioning on a poster what this is all about 7 days from polling day is just like a good composer coming towards the end of a symphony. As for it being Farage... well it offers Leave plausible deniability with no real reduction in press coverage for it. I'm not convinced it's a mistake for Leave at all. It seems completely consistent with their strategy. The polls say the strategy is working so far.
I think you are wrong. I think the Out campaign up to now has successfully exploited our innate racism. It is in us all.....we are tribal mammals. It is in our DNA to occupy a space and then protect it from others taking it from us. Farage's comment that he would prefer his next door house to be occupied by christian whites rather than Roma resonates too- we can accept people better who look like us.
But this poster, the iconography of the 30's, Farage's megalomania at the centre, is just too much. It is so obviously racist- it'll make people baulk at who they are associating with, and make them feel bad about themselves about supporting this cause.
Pure Cant. It's about a criminal-terrorist network trying to flood the European Continent with as many able-bodied sympathisers as possible. It's a state of emergency unknown in Europe for centuries.
And your answer is:- "Submit. It's waycist otherwise..."
It's not that that odd when you consider that what the EU is trying to do fundamentally challenges the concept of a universal right to asylum as previously conceived.
Merkel deserves much more credit than she's given for having foresight on the migration issue and trying to address things with a long-term strategy in mind.
In spite of what has happened over the past 24 hours and completely separate from the referendum issue I will repeat what I have said on here before. Merkel is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people who have been encouraged to attempt dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean by her promise to give them asylum.
Cameron's far more practical and far safer policy should have been the blueprint for the European response to the refugee crisis and he is the one European leader who has come out of this whole episode with his reputation enhanced in my view. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Merkel has built a motorway.
That doesn't make sense. These people knew they risked their lives and those of their families by trying to flee. That tells you that their lives there must have been so precarious that they thought the risk worth taking. If that was the case humanity and the laws of asylum demanded that she behaved as she did.
No. She has provided a pull factor that was not there before. She has made the prize worth the risk for economic migration. The Syria situation is very different and we should be taking refugees directly from the camps as Cameron has started to do. Merkel could still have had her hundreds of thousands of new citizens (and we should be taking far more than we are) but it would have removed a pull factor and shown the refugees they did have a way to get a new life without risking their actual lives.
I signed up to help the Stronger In campaign with telephone canvassing and data entry. However I found the telephone canvassing was to encourage known supporters to help with street stalls and leafleting rather than identify supporters for GOTV. I think the former is much more important than the latter and I have stopped helping. I have been asked to help on the day by encouraging people to go out and vote. But I'll only do that if there is data on Remain supporters. I've got a bad feeling about the Remain ground game compared to the Leave ground game. And it is going to be critical.
Barnesian I live in Thanet South-if any constituency should have a decent data base for Leave it would be here. So far no-one has contacted me-or my friends!!
Like most on here I was utterly appalled and shocked at the news yesterday. To see that a mother had been murdered in cold blue in such a brutal manner is heartbreaking. A period of reflection is certainly appropriate.
Trying to look at the bigger picture, I'm wondering what it means for democracy in this country. Clearly, some immediate practical steps may be needed to tighten up security for individual MPs whether that be through the use of security guards at constituency offices (if there aren't already?) or a pre-screening process for appointments. But neither of these interventions would have had an impact on this situation. It was on the street outside of where security could have feasibly been provided.
The wider issue is whether this murder should have an impact on the current political landscape and the referendum. I think cancelling events yesterday was entirely appropriate but I'm hearing that other events today and perhaps tomorrow are starting to be cancelled also. Whether that is appropriate is for each individual to decide but I worry what the implications are if this does shut down the referendum debate and the process of political discourse.
'We can't let the terrorists win'; 'keep calm and carry on'; 'the Blitz spirit'; all these sayings are predicated on the idea that when hateful people act, we must keep going with our daily routines otherwise 'they' have won. By shutting down the discussions and the campaigning I wonder whether that places MPs and our democracy even further in danger. The message goes out that attacking one MP can have such an impact on the nation that the risk-reward ratio for an extremist suddenly looks a lot more favorable. MPs are not remote, even the likes of Boris and Cameron can be got at. By shutting down our system I would argue we make future attacks more, not less, likely. I also worry what that says about the strength of democracy in this country.
It's unfortunate timing for Farage/UKIP but I think that perhaps the target audience is materially different to those opining on here. It may not be liked here, but that's immaterial.
It's not immaterial at all. In this referendum, either side needs 50%+1. And, as UKIP found out at the General Election, 15-20% everywhere doesn't get you far. It's no good being loved by a minority while the majority find you increasingly unattractive, and there will be many people with some sympathy for Farage's arguments on Europe, immigration etc who find this sort of thing terribly jarring and off-putting.
No. Boris wants a Leave win. He thinks he'd then become Prime Minister.
I think that was true when the campaign started, but I'm not so sure now.
Tory MPs will, under the rules, choose two candidates to go to the membership. One will be a loyalist (perhaps Osborne, though I personally think Osborne will do a deal with someone). Another will be a Brexiteer. A few months ago, that would certainly have been Boris, but he's been perceived to have had a poor campaign personally and now it's probably Gove.
If Remain win, Cameron continues and Boris may be able to regroup. As it stands, I'm not sure a Leave win is great for him.
Disagree. Boris has been front and centre of the campaign, including in the debates. If Leave wins he is in a very good position. But the leadership process might not start in earnest until Tory party conference.
I just hope enough Tory MPs think differently because I think if he does get into the final two the members will go for him.
My hope is Cameron stays for three months, Andrea gets a big promotion and then hugely impresses with a platform speech in October and gets through into the final two instead.
I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed around immigration it can be used without outright rejection. Why are Leave taking about hypothetical Turks rather than real Poles ? Because Turks are Muslims. What have we all seen on TV over the last 2 years ? About 2 million largely Muslim and entirely unplanned immigrants who appeared to have just ' walked in '. It seems to me finally mentioning on a poster what this is all about 7 days from polling day is just like a good composer coming towards the end of a symphony. As for it being Farage... well it offers Leave plausible deniability with no real reduction in press coverage for it. I'm not convinced it's a mistake for Leave at all. It seems completely consistent with their strategy. The polls say the strategy is working so far.
Of course it's not a mistake in terms of winning the campaign. It's exactly what you say. It's the Moslems are coming to get us if we don't vote Leave.
Yes, but, for the very first time it made LEAVERS like me pause and go, Ugh.
They could seal the deal with the WWC (but haven't they done that already?) - yet lose liberal LEAVERS like me (they probably won't, but- hmmm)
That's what he WANTS you to do.
I'm *not* going to let our campaign to restore democratic control to Britain to be defined by Farage and let him win, so he can continue to be front and centre of our politics and suck at the teat of Brussels.
Vote Leave. Let the sensible leavers like Gove, Leadsom and sceptical Remainers like May take over. Kill off Farage for good.
A narrow REMAIN win would certainly be the best outcome for Farage and UKIP.
Someone needs to lock him in a cupboard until 24th June.
I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed around immigration it can be used without outright rejection. Why are Leave taking about hypothetical Turks rather than real Poles ? Because Turks are Muslims. What have we all seen on TV over the last 2 years ? About 2 million largely Muslim and entirely unplanned immigrants who appeared to have just ' walked in '. It seems to me finally mentioning on a poster what this is all about 7 days from polling day is just like a good composer coming towards the end of a symphony. As for it being Farage... well it offers Leave plausible deniability with no real reduction in press coverage for it. I'm not convinced it's a mistake for Leave at all. It seems completely consistent with their strategy. The polls say the strategy is working so far.
Of course it's not a mistake in terms of winning the campaign. It's exactly what you say. It's the Moslems are coming to get us if we don't vote Leave.
Yes, but, for the very first time it made LEAVERS like me pause and go, Ugh.
They could seal the deal with the WWC (but haven't they done that already?) - yet lose liberal LEAVERS like me (they probably won't, but- hmmm)
That's what he WANTS you to do.
I'm *not* going to let our campaign to restore democratic control to Britain to be defined by Farage and let him win, so he can continue to be front and centre of our politics and suck at the teat of Brussels.
Vote Leave. Let the sensible leavers like Gove, Leadsom and sceptical Remainers like May take over. Kill off Farage for good.
There is a case for Leave based on sovereignity but on its own it would end up with Remain winning comfortably perhaps by as much as 70/30 . Farage is an unabashed xenophobe , Gove is not but he is an even more despicable creature , happy to pander to and encourage the xenophobes with outright lies re Turkey . Does he himself believe the lies he is spouting , certainly not but the fact that he says them shows that he is unfit for any office in government let alone that of Prime Minister .
Casino: "I think Osborne needs to go for the good of the body politik. He is a disgrace."
I agree - he's finished anyway. Six years at the Treasury was at least one year too long, as we've seen in the past.
He has united the nation.
Against him. The attacks against him by his own side have only confirmed what the rest of us have been saying for ages - he's a chancer making it up as he goes along. One brilliant political tactic in 2007 doesn't make you a brilliant tactician.
#1 If Leave wins will the Conservative Party be angry enough to make Boris PM ? #2 If Leave wins and the next PM has a gargantuan renegotiation to complete will the Conservatives risk Boris ? It's always seemed to me Boris needs a narrow Remain win to enrage the Tory base and reduce the need for a safe pair of hands as PM. That said I suspect the situation is now so dynamic and chaotic that initial calculation is a bit fried.
No. Boris wants a Leave win. He thinks he'd then become Prime Minister.
I think he'd want to use it as a mandate for a further round of negotiations of our EU membership.
Exactly this - he thinks (and I agree) that a Vote Leave would kick of an existential crisis in the EU prompting some significant rethinking of how they operate. And apart from the EU Happy Clappers and the libertarian sovereignty group, I think most people on both sides believe that a rethink is needed, the debate is how we get there.
I don't think he needs a Leave vote to become PM though. A narrow remain win remains their best case scenario. And whilst yesterday has forced a pause for thought, the civil war in the Tory party has torn them apart and both sides still want to defeat the other. There is no gluing this back together, I don't see how Cameron is PM for longer than a few months after this.
Lots to digest there but I don't agree on the Tories apart thing.
I still feel an affinity with the likes of Richard Nabavi, Big G, JohnO and Topping (even though they all are royally annoying me by voting Remain!) and can see us working together afterwards.
I think Osborne needs to go for the good of the body politik. He is a disgrace.
Cameron [and Osborne] may not survive but that is a very different thing from Boris becoming PM.
Rochdale I agree with a lot of what you say. I think part of the problem is that true (laissez-faire) capitalism has been replaced by crony capitalism. In the 19th century entrepreneurs would often make a fortune and lose it again. Now it is heads I win, tails I get bailed out. I think the key error was bailing out the banks. If you look at Iceland their banks were too big to bail out so they let them fail. This caused a serious recession but within a few years Iceland was growing again. On the contrary we haven't fixed our problems and just seem to be putting sticking plasters on them.
I know how bad "the north" is suffering as my grandmother lives in one of the Welsh Valleys and the high street seems to be becoming sadder and sadder each time I visit. In the south, we have different problems around the cost of living. My partner and I rent a 2 bed flat in Maidenhead and the cost to buy this flat would be nearly 300k. Crazy money.
If we vote to remain, nothing will change. That is why a leave vote is the only sign of hope for some people.
I am both a socialist and a capitalist. I've made a very good career and comfy living from directly generating profits for the businesses I have represented. Profit from commerce is a good thing, an important thing - we want to create well paid secure jobs and that means profit. Where my red streak comes in is the recognition that capitalism is a caged beast and we need to properly maintain the cage.
A large part of the problem we have now is that capitalism has sold its cage for scrap. On one hand we try and commercialise things that shouldn't be commercial. It is immoral to make a profit from providing palliative care for dying children at the lowest possible cost. On the other hand we have scrapped capitalism and replaced it with bankism. No risk. No return. No investment - gamble today, take the profit tomorrow no concern for next week never mind the long term.
I think bankism is a really good description of what we have now. For example, the ECB and BOE are now saying they will underwrite the markets if we vote for Brexit with potentially more bank bailouts if necessary. It seems that no bank should ever be allowed to lose money.
I cannot see how that Farage poster yesterday is doing anything other than pandering to racism and xenophobia. And given that the Tory Leave camp know that Turkey is a long, long way from becoming an EU member state, I don't see how their warnings of the country's impending membership is any different.
The vast majority of people voting Leave are not racists or xenophobes, but it is pretty clear that the Leave campaigns think there is mileage in appealing to those who are.
The Turkey issue has been one of the stranger things about this referendum. I was surprised when I saw it mentioned by Leave as I thought it was off the table. What I hadn't anticipated was for the Remain campaign to handle it so badly. Why hasn't Cameron come out and said "as long as I'm PM, Turkey will not be joining the EU"? During his interview with Andrew Neil, George Osborne looked decidedly shifty when asked about Turkey. I wonder if some of the Leavers have got an idea of what's coming up over the next few months and know that Cameron and Osborne aren't in a position to make firm commitments.
Cameron has said precisely that to the extent that he is able to diplomatically. The Tory Leave ministers know what the situation is. Gove said explicitly on the TV earlier this week that he did not think the government would veto Turkish EU membership. That is just a lie. But it is a lie with a purpose. And that purpose is to scare people into thinking that millions of Turks will soon be flooding into the country. It's more subtle than Farage's open racism, but it has exactly the same aim.
Why would we veto Turkish membership if we didn't veto Romanian & Bulgarian membership? Their GDPs are pretty similar. Of course they first need to meet the admission criteria, which is a lot further off than Leave imply.
I don't believe that Turkey will join in my lifetime. They have to meet accession criteria that they manifestly fail, and will continue to fail as long as Erdogan rules. Cyprus will have none of it (though they can and will be leant on if necessary). But France will veto accession.
However, it's undeniable that it's a candidate, that it is in accession talks, that it does receive pre-accession funding. It's a typical EU fudge and muddle. By that, it's a typical large organisation fudge and muddle as opposed to 'EU is teh evilz'.
If a pro-Brexit MP had been murdered by a man suffering from mental illness, I'm sure there would be people on my side of the debate saying "You can't demonise 50% of the population as bigots, Little Englanders, and racists, you can't threaten the population with economic Armageddon, and then not expect someone to act on these threats." And, it would be just as much bullshit as people trying to blame Jo Cox's death on the Leave campaign. Nobody on either side has incited violence against their opponents, implied that violence is justified, or even hinted that it might be necessary.
I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed around immigration it can be used without outright rejection. Why are Leave taking about hypothetical Turks rather than real Poles ? Because Turks are Muslims. What have we all seen on TV over the last 2 years ? About 2 million largely Muslim and entirely unplanned immigrants who appeared to have just ' walked in '. It seems to me finally mentioning on a poster what this is all about 7 days from polling day is just like a good composer coming towards the end of a symphony. As for it being Farage... well it offers Leave plausible deniability with no real reduction in press coverage for it. I'm not convinced it's a mistake for Leave at all. It seems completely consistent with their strategy. The polls say the strategy is working so far.
Of course it's not a mistake in terms of winning the campaign. It's exactly what you say. It's the Moslems are coming to get us if we don't vote Leave.
Yes, but, for the very first time it made LEAVERS like me pause and go, Ugh.
What is driving this drift? I haven't seen any new polling.
That was supposed to be a poll out at 1am, which they delayed because of the tragedy yesterday...perhaps somebody has had that info lying around and decided to make use of it...I believe it will now be published at 1am Saturday.
Perhaps. I expect the poll to reflect the others though (small to strong Leave lead). Presumably its fieldwork was done before the killing in any case.
Disagree. Boris has been front and centre of the campaign, including in the debates. If Leave wins he is in a very good position. But the leadership process might not start in earnest until Tory party conference.
I just hope enough Tory MPs think differently because I think if he does get into the final two the members will go for him.
My hope is Cameron stays for three months, Andrea gets a big promotion and then hugely impresses with a platform speech in October and gets through into the final two instead.
He's been prominent, and I agree if he's on the ballot he'll win. But we're not looking at getting his face on the telly - we're talking about MPs here.
Amongst them, they feel his Brexit position was too coldly calculated (the conventional wisdom is he's Brexit purely because it's good for Boris); that he's made bad mis-steps (the Obama nonsense in particular) which don't bode well for him as a PM; that he's too easily caught out by contradictory past statements because he's never given great thought to consistency (e.g. on Turkey); and that Gove has been as sure-footed as Johnson has been clumsy.
I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed around immigration it can be used without outright rejection. Why are Leave taking about hypothetical Turks rather than real Poles ? Because Turks are Muslims. What have we all seen on TV over the last 2 years ? About 2 million largely Muslim and entirely unplanned immigrants who appeared to have just ' walked in '. It seems to me finally mentioning on a poster what this is all about 7 days from polling day is just like a good composer coming towards the end of a symphony. As for it being Farage... well it offers Leave plausible deniability with no real reduction in press coverage for it. I'm not convinced it's a mistake for Leave at all. It seems completely consistent with their strategy. The polls say the strategy is working so far.
Of course it's not a mistake in terms of winning the campaign. It's exactly what you say. It's the Moslems are coming to get us if we don't vote Leave.
Yes, but, for the very first time it made LEAVERS like me pause and go, Ugh.
They could seal the deal with the WWC (but haven't they done that already?) - yet lose liberal LEAVERS like me (they probably won't, but- hmmm)
That's what he WANTS you to do.
I'm *not* going to let our campaign to restore democratic control to Britain to be defined by Farage and let him win, so he can continue to be front and centre of our politics and suck at the teat of Brussels.
Vote Leave. Let the sensible leavers like Gove, Leadsom and sceptical Remainers like May take over. Kill off Farage for good.
A narrow REMAIN win would certainly be the best outcome for Farage and UKIP.
Someone needs to lock him in a cupboard until 24th June.
What is driving this drift? I haven't seen any new polling.
People realising that this awful tragedy is bad news for Leave - if nothing else their fizz and building sense of momentum has been completely dissipated.
#1 If Leave wins will the Conservative Party be angry enough to make Boris PM ? #2 If Leave wins and the next PM has a gargantuan renegotiation to complete will the Conservatives risk Boris ? It's always seemed to me Boris needs a narrow Remain win to enrage the Tory base and reduce the need for a safe pair of hands as PM. That said I suspect the situation is now so dynamic and chaotic that initial calculation is a bit fried.
No, and no. Under those circumstances I think Theresa May would win and be PM.
It's not that that odd when you consider that what the EU is trying to do fundamentally challenges the concept of a universal right to asylum as previously conceived.
Merkel deserves much more credit than she's given for having foresight on the migration issue and trying to address things with a long-term strategy in mind.
In spite of what has happened over the past 24 hours and completely separate from the referendum issue I will repeat what I have said on here before. Merkel is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people who have been encouraged to attempt dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean by her promise to give them asylum.
Cameron's far more practical and far safer policy should have been the blueprint for the European response to the refugee crisis and he is the one European leader who has come out of this whole episode with his reputation enhanced in my view. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Merkel has built a motorway.
That doesn't make sense. These people knew they risked their lives and those of their families by trying to flee. That tells you that their lives there must have been so precarious that they thought the risk worth taking. If that was the case humanity and the laws of asylum demanded that she behaved as she did.
Utterly wrong - most paid quite large sums of money to secure their passage and leave Turkey, where they were safe, for better options in Europe. Most made it and probably made no realistic risk assessment. 'Humanity' demanded a more sensible and measured response than Frau Merkel gave. Cameron got it right.
What is the meaning of this deliberate misspelling of racist (waycist) I often see on here? It's only used by the hard-right posters.
It's slightly sinister. Can someone explain?
It's because accusations of racism are a standard way of shutting down an argument. It's like most things, if you overuse the term, it loses its potency and people just take the piss out of the people that deploy it reflexively.
I use it all the time. If you consider me hard-right, then I suggest you need your political antennae re-calibrated.
It's not that that odd when you consider that what the EU is trying to do fundamentally challenges the concept of a universal right to asylum as previously conceived.
Merkel deserves much more credit than she's given for having foresight on the migration issue and trying to address things with a long-term strategy in mind.
In spite of what has happened over the past 24 hours and completely separate from the referendum issue I will repeat what I have said on here before. Merkel is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people who have been encouraged to attempt dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean by her promise to give them asylum.
Cameron's far more practical and far safer policy should have been the blueprint for the European response to the refugee crisis and he is the one European leader who has come out of this whole episode with his reputation enhanced in my view. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Merkel has built a motorway.
That doesn't make sense. These people knew they risked their lives and those of their families by trying to flee. That tells you that their lives there must have been so precarious that they thought the risk worth taking. If that was the case humanity and the laws of asylum demanded that she behaved as she did.
No. She has provided a pull factor that was not there before. She has made the prize worth the risk for economic migration. The Syria situation is very different and we should be taking refugees directly from the camps as Cameron has started to do. Merkel could still have had her hundreds of thousands of new citizens (and we should be taking far more than we are) but it would have removed a pull factor and shown the refugees they did have a way to get a new life without risking their actual lives.
It's impossible to separate the impact of Merkel's decisions from the irresponsible reporting of them as being an 'open door policy'.
If a pro-Brexit MP had been murdered by a man suffering from mental illness, I'm sure there would be people on my side of the debate saying "You can't demonise 50% of the population as bigots, Little Englanders, and racists, you can't threaten the population with economic Armageddon, and then not expect someone to act on these threats." And, it would be just as much bullshit as people trying to blame Jo Cox's death on the Leave campaign. Nobody on either side has incited violence against their opponents, implied that violence is justified, or even hinted that it might be necessary.
I disagree, I think there are plenty of people on the left of politics who demonise the right, who physically threaten them (remember the Tory conference last year?), and who create a climate where treating right wing politicians as figures of abuse is acceptable (e.g. http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/crime/cllr-donna-jones-i-ve-had-threats-to-cut-my-throat-1-7436073). I think the level of political discourse in this country has declined rapidly over the last few years on both sides and whilst I wasn't expecting an MP to be shot dead, I'm not surprised some nutter has crossed the line into direct action, it's been coming for a while now.
Rochdale I agree with a lot of what you say. I think part of the problem is that true (laissez-faire) capitalism has been replaced by crony capitalism. In the 19th century entrepreneurs would often make a fortune and lose it again. Now it is heads I win, tails I get bailed out. I think the key error was bailing out the banks. If you look at Iceland their banks were too big to bail out so they let them fail. This caused a serious recession but within a few years Iceland was growing again. On the contrary we haven't fixed our problems and just seem to be putting sticking plasters on them.
I know how bad "the north" is suffering as my grandmother lives in one of the Welsh Valleys and the high street seems to be becoming sadder and sadder each time I visit. In the south, we have different problems around the cost of living. My partner and I rent a 2 bed flat in Maidenhead and the cost to buy this flat would be nearly 300k. Crazy money.
If we vote to remain, nothing will change. That is why a leave vote is the only sign of hope for some people.
I am both a socialist and a capitalist. I've made a very good career and comfy living from directly generating profits for the businesses I have represented. Profit from commerce is a good thing, an important thing - we want to create well paid secure jobs and that means profit. Where my red streak comes in is the recognition that capitalism is a caged beast and we need to properly maintain the cage.
A large part of the problem we have now is that capitalism has sold its cage for scrap. On one hand we try and commercialise things that shouldn't be commercial. It is immoral to make a profit from providing palliative care for dying children at the lowest possible cost. On the other hand we have scrapped capitalism and replaced it with bankism. No risk. No return. No investment - gamble today, take the profit tomorrow no concern for next week never mind the long term.
I think bankism is a really good description of what we have now. For example, the ECB and BOE are now saying they will underwrite the markets if we vote for Brexit with potentially more bank bailouts if necessary. It seems that no bank should ever be allowed to lose money.
As I understand it under Mervyn King the BOE's position was that it would buy government bonds and not anything else. I quite like that in principle but if you have a government that is hostile to borrowing (at least in it's public statements) there's an impasse.
Unfortunately the claim about war with our continental neighbours is rather misleading. It is 71 years since we were at war with Germany.
But if, as your posting mentions, one went back 200 years that would put you to 1816. That is one year into a 99 year long period where we were not at war with France, Germany or Spain. So really the attempt to describe our current lack of war with our neighbours as exceptional and further to equate it with our EU membership fails even on the most basic historical level.
EH? In 1816 we'd been at war on and off with France, and at times other European countries, for nearly twenty years. And then spent the rest of the century fearing war - so much so in the 1860s that the Government launched what remains, in real terms, the biggest ever public spending project, covering the south of England in fortifications in readiness for a French invasion that never came, France ending up at war with Germany (Prussia) instead. And by the end of the century we'd be building battleships like there's no tomorrow in an arms race against Germany....
Very few predicting a LEAVE win on here this morning, in fact absolutely no one, despite all that recent polling evidence.
I am. I think Leave will win. I don't think the murder yesterday will affect anything and neither should it. I'd like to think the vile Farage poster will get some people thinking, but I imagine minds are mostly made up now. We're voting to pull out.
It will shut down the immigration debate completely, at least for the next week. And Leave are a one-trick pony with little else to campaign on that resonates with the public. A good 10-20% of the voters remain undecided. Of course it'll have an effect.
How does it shut down the immigration debate?
It will be claimed it is inciting hatred.
With respect, that's a very middle class view of what might happen. One of the reasons that metropolitan Labour has such a challenge is that a large chunk of their base are pretty rough and ready. They tell sick jokes. They take the piss out of everything, all the time. They're quite coarse and enjoy getting pissed and thowing up and getting tats. Some of them go to football tournaments and chant "Fuck off Europe, we're voting out."
"There are many decent people involved in the campaign to secure Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, many who respect the referendum as the exercise in democracy that it is. But there are others whose recklessness has been open and shocking. I believe they bear responsibility, not for the attack itself, but for the current mood: for the inflammatory language, for the finger-jabbing, the dogwhistling and the overt racism."
"This campaign has stirred up anti-migrant sentiment that used to be confined to outbursts from the far fringes of British politics. The justice minister, Michael Gove, and the leader of the house, Chris Grayling – together with former London mayor Boris Johnson – have allied themselves to divisive anti-foreigner sentiment ramped up to a level unprecedented in our lifetime. "
Polly Toynbee only provides anecdotal evidence for her claims that the tone of the referendum campaign is all LEAVE's fault. She does not attribute any blame to the REMAIN campaign for the confrontational nature of the referendum campaign despite their strategy of personal attacks on Boris Johnson.
I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed around immigration it can be used without outright rejection. Why are Leave taking about hypothetical Turks rather than real Poles ? Because Turks are Muslims. What have we all seen on TV over the last 2 years ? About 2 million largely Muslim and entirely unplanned immigrants who appeared to have just ' walked in '. It seems to me finally mentioning on a poster what this is all about 7 days from polling day is just like a good composer coming towards the end of a symphony. As for it being Farage... well it offers Leave plausible deniability with no real reduction in press coverage for it. I'm not convinced it's a mistake for Leave at all. It seems completely consistent with their strategy. The polls say the strategy is working so far.
I think you are wrong. I think the Out campaign up to now has successfully exploited our innate racism. It is in us all.....we are tribal mammals. It is in our DNA to occupy a space and then protect it from others taking it from us. Farage's comment that he would prefer his next door house to be occupied by christian whites rather than Roma resonates too- we can accept people better who look like us.
But this poster, the iconography of the 30's, Farage's megalomania at the centre, is just too much. It is so obviously racist- it'll make people baulk at who they are associating with, and make them feel bad about themselves about supporting this cause.
Pure Cant. It's about a criminal-terrorist network trying to flood the European Continent with as many able-bodied sympathisers as possible. It's a state of emergency unknown in Europe for centuries.
And your answer is:- "Submit. It's waycist otherwise..."
Has an alien taken over the brain of PB's favourite analyst and replaced it with Plato's?
Mr. Sandpit, cheers for those comments (not watching it live, as you may've gathered).
It sounds like a stupid place for a race, beyond the standard tedium of street circuits.
Daniel Ricciardo has just hit a barrier on the exit of turn 15, and there's no way to get his stranded car back. Red flag for 10 mins allowed them to drag it back 100 yards to the corner with a big tractor, something that wouldn't be allowed in the race under a safety car. If you can find odds on a red flag in the race I'd take them above evens.
This is not Monaco, with lots of cranes and marshals, although there's a few British of the latter there helping with training.
Casino: "I think Osborne needs to go for the good of the body politik. He is a disgrace."
I agree - he's finished anyway. Six years at the Treasury was at least one year too long, as we've seen in the past.
He has united the nation.
One of the nastier features on PB has been the disembowellig of Osborne. I consider he has mostly been a good chancellor and loyal to the PM. His motives for being in politics are little different if at all from most MPs, like Jo Cox. It's pathetic that withing 24 hours posters on here are happy to be so unpleasant about another MP.
Very few predicting a LEAVE win on here this morning, in fact absolutely no one, despite all that recent polling evidence.
I am. I think Leave will win. I don't think the murder yesterday will affect anything and neither should it. I'd like to think the vile Farage poster will get some people thinking, but I imagine minds are mostly made up now. We're voting to pull out.
It will shut down the immigration debate completely, at least for the next week. And Leave are a one-trick pony with little else to campaign on that resonates with the public. A good 10-20% of the voters remain undecided. Of course it'll have an effect.
"There are many decent people involved in the campaign to secure Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, many who respect the referendum as the exercise in democracy that it is. But there are others whose recklessness has been open and shocking. I believe they bear responsibility, not for the attack itself, but for the current mood: for the inflammatory language, for the finger-jabbing, the dogwhistling and the overt racism."
"This campaign has stirred up anti-migrant sentiment that used to be confined to outbursts from the far fringes of British politics. The justice minister, Michael Gove, and the leader of the house, Chris Grayling – together with former London mayor Boris Johnson – have allied themselves to divisive anti-foreigner sentiment ramped up to a level unprecedented in our lifetime. "
Polly Toynbee only provides anecdotal evidence for her claims that the tone of the referendum campaign is all LEAVE's fault. She does not attribute any blame to the REMAIN campaign for the confrontational nature of the referendum campaign despite their strategy of personal attacks on Boris Johnson.
I think it will be persuasive to people who think of Brexit supporters as knuckle-dragging scum, but, their votes are in the bag already.
I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed
Of course it's not a mistake in terms of winning the campaign. It's exactly what you say. It's the Moslems are coming to get us if we don't vote Leave.
Yes, but, for the very first time it made LEAVERS like me pause and go, Ugh.
They could seal the deal with the WWC (but haven't they done that already?) - yet lose liberal LEAVERS like me (they probably won't, but- hmmm)
Yep. I know some on here cannot see the likeness to Nazi propaganda, but it is there as plain as day.
People see [ or not] what it suits them to see.
I assume the Farage poster was loosely based on the famous "Labour isn't working " one. Until SeanT posted the Nazi propaganda images, I had never seen those particular pictures before - and I strongly doubt many of the population had, either.
Didn't a certain David Cameron refer to "swarms of migrants" last summer?
No. Boris wants a Leave win. He thinks he'd then become Prime Minister.
I think that was true when the campaign started, but I'm not so sure now.
Tory MPs will, under the rules, choose two candidates to go to the membership. One will be a loyalist (perhaps Osborne, though I personally think Osborne will do a deal with someone). Another will be a Brexiteer. A few months ago, that would certainly have been Boris, but he's been perceived to have had a poor campaign personally and now it's probably Gove.
If Remain win, Cameron continues and Boris may be able to regroup. As it stands, I'm not sure a Leave win is great for him.
Disagree. Boris has been front and centre of the campaign, including in the debates. If Leave wins he is in a very good position. But the leadership process might not start in earnest until Tory party conference.
I just hope enough Tory MPs think differently because I think if he does get into the final two the members will go for him.
My hope is Cameron stays for three months, Andrea gets a big promotion and then hugely impresses with a platform speech in October and gets through into the final two instead.
Boris has performed excellently in the last two or three weeks, after a very faltering start. He's been measured, clever, eloquent and persuasive. Also Gove.
Both completely outperformed their opponents in the debates.
This is another reason LEAVE is winning. Cameron has been surprisingly poor and tin-eared, really bad at basic campaign politics ("Little Englander"??), whereas the main LEAVE campaigners have just been better. Simply the case.
REMAIN should still be 10 points ahead. The uselessness of their campaign and the utter uselessness of Cameron must be partly to blame. Whatever the result, those in charge of REMAIN should never get a job in electoral politics again. Woeful.
The director of strategy for Remain is Ryan Coetzee. He was the director of the Lib Dem 2015 campaign.....
If a pro-Brexit MP had been murdered by a man suffering from mental illness, I'm sure there would be people on my side of the debate saying "You can't demonise 50% of the population as bigots, Little Englanders, and racists, you can't threaten the population with economic Armageddon, and then not expect someone to act on these threats." And, it would be just as much bullshit as people trying to blame Jo Cox's death on the Leave campaign. Nobody on either side has incited violence against their opponents, implied that violence is justified, or even hinted that it might be necessary.
I do think that's simplistic. Of course nobody in mainstream politics would dream of inciting such awful things. But actions still have consequences. Saying your opponents aren't just wrong but are bad people with bad motives, or talking darkly of being at a "breaking point", does add fuel to the fires of already disturbed people. It isn't meant to - it's meant to get the core vote out - but it does do that.
I'm not limiting it to one side. I saw a lady on the train today reading an Owen Jones book called "The Establishment and how they get away with it" featuring a silhouette of a sinister fellow in a bowler hat with a highwayman's mask. It jarred with me today. Now I doubt Owen Jones thinks the Governor of the Bank of England or whoever are monstrous criminals - it's all a bit of hyperbole, a bit of fun to drive sales. But there are plenty of people in the market who aren't in on the joke, and are a bit silly or even a bit ill.
Mr. Sandpit, there aren't usually red flag markets.
That could impact strategy or perhaps the winning margin markets, though. Perez often goes long on tyres (unsure of how badly they're degrading) which could give him a free pit stop.
I did think Baku would be poor, but I didn't think the circuit would be unsafe/incompetently arranged.
I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed around immigration it can be used without outright rejection. Why are Leave taking about hypothetical Turks rather than real Poles ? Because Turks are Muslims. What have we all seen on TV over the last 2 years ? About 2 million largely Muslim and entirely unplanned immigrants who appeared to have just ' walked in '. It seems to me finally mentioning on a poster what this is all about 7 days from polling day is just like a good composer coming towards the end of a symphony. As for it being Farage... well it offers Leave plausible deniability with no real reduction in press coverage for it. I'm not convinced it's a mistake for Leave at all. It seems completely consistent with their strategy. The polls say the strategy is working so far.
I think you are wrong. I think the Out campaign up to now has successfully exploited our innate racism. It is in us all.....we are tribal mammals. It is in our DNA to occupy a space and then protect it from others taking it from us. Farage's comment that he would prefer his next door house to be occupied by christian whites rather than Roma resonates too- we can accept people better who look like us.
But this poster, the iconography of the 30's, Farage's megalomania at the centre, is just too much. It is so obviously racist- it'll make people baulk at who they are associating with, and make them feel bad about themselves about supporting this cause.
Pure Cant. It's about a criminal-terrorist network trying to flood the European Continent with as many able-bodied sympathisers as possible. It's a state of emergency unknown in Europe for centuries.
And your answer is:- "Submit. It's waycist otherwise..."
Has an alien taken over the brain of PB's favourite analyst and replaced it with Plato's?
Sadly, Rod is seldom wrong and you are seldom right.
It's not that that odd when you consider that what the EU is trying to do fundamentally challenges the concept of a universal right to asylum as previously conceived.
Merkel deserves much more credit than she's given for having foresight on the migration issue and trying to address things with a long-term strategy in mind.
In spite of what has happened over the past 24 hours and completely separate from the referendum issue I will repeat what I have said on here before. Merkel is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people who have been encouraged to attempt dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean by her promise to give them asylum.
Cameron's far more practical and far safer policy should have been the blueprint for the European response to the refugee crisis and he is the one European leader who has come out of this whole episode with his reputation enhanced in my view. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Merkel has built a motorway.
That doesn't make sense. These people knew they risked their lives and those of their families by trying to flee. That tells you that their lives there must have been so precarious that they thought the risk worth taking. If that was the case humanity and the laws of asylum demanded that she behaved as she did.
Utterly wrong - most paid quite large sums of money to secure their passage and leave Turkey, where they were safe, for better options in Europe. Most made it and probably made no realistic risk assessment. 'Humanity' demanded a more sensible and measured response than Frau Merkel gave. Cameron got it right.
@Pulpstar there's another northern Irish poll in the field for Lucid Talk, I believe.
I'll have to take an average of the two . I'm totally intrigued as to how TSE gets a 1.2% change to the result from ex pats + NI though ^^;
Wishful thinking?
He must be assuming something like a 70-30 'remain' vote from all 1.3 million ex pats or some such. It seems to be too favourable a view to "remain" for me.
What is driving this drift? I haven't seen any new polling.
That was supposed to be a poll out at 1am, which they delayed because of the tragedy yesterday...perhaps somebody has had that info lying around and decided to make use of it...I believe it will now be published at 1am Saturday.
Perhaps. I expect the poll to reflect the others though (small to strong Leave lead). Presumably its fieldwork was done before the killing in any case.
Yes - it's old news. How the tragic events will pan out is anyone's guess. Certainly many on the left were twittering on about violent Leavers (and then deleting their tweets as they realised they were twatting) - whether there is a significant gain for Remain is anyone's guess as Vote Leave were quick to call a halt to campaigning.
Casino: "I think Osborne needs to go for the good of the body politik. He is a disgrace."
I agree - he's finished anyway. Six years at the Treasury was at least one year too long, as we've seen in the past.
He has united the nation.
One of the nastier features on PB has been the disembowellig of Osborne. I consider he has mostly been a good chancellor and loyal to the PM. His motives for being in politics are little different if at all from most MPs, like Jo Cox. It's pathetic that withing 24 hours posters on here are happy to be so unpleasant about another MP.
Jo Cox's tragic death is completely tangential to any comments about any other politician. Your view is symbolism run mad.
Osborne has made objectively poor decisions in this campaign, his quasi-budget being the most egregious. He's been a decent chancellor for the most part, if not as fiscally dry as many would like. That does not mean he gets a free pass on his flaws; a love of complexity, tactical maneuvering and an inability to put country over party. His remarks have contributed to the market turmoil, which is the antitheses of his role.
A question for Conservative Party members here: If the two leadership choices offered turn out to be Boris vs Theresa, which would you choose, and would your choice depend on the referendum outcome?
[In practice I'm doubtful that Boris will make it to the final two, but let's assume he does].
If a pro-Brexit MP had been murdered by a man suffering from mental illness, I'm sure there would be people on my side of the debate saying "You can't demonise 50% of the population as bigots, Little Englanders, and racists, you can't threaten the population with economic Armageddon, and then not expect someone to act on these threats." And, it would be just as much bullshit as people trying to blame Jo Cox's death on the Leave campaign. Nobody on either side has incited violence against their opponents, implied that violence is justified, or even hinted that it might be necessary.
I do think that's simplistic. Of course nobody in mainstream politics would dream of inciting such awful things. But actions still have consequences. Saying your opponents aren't just wrong but are bad people with bad motives, or talking darkly of being at a "breaking point", does add fuel to the fires of already disturbed people. It isn't meant to - it's meant to get the core vote out - but it does do that.
I'm not limiting it to one side. I saw a lady on the train today reading an Owen Jones book called "The Establishment and how they get away with it" featuring a silhouette of a sinister fellow in a bowler hat with a highwayman's mask. It jarred with me today. Now I doubt Owen Jones thinks the Governor of the Bank of England or whoever are monstrous criminals - it's all a bit of hyperbole, a bit of fun to drive sales. But there are plenty of people in the market who aren't in on the joke, and are a bit silly or even a bit ill.
I think a feature of the internet has been the rise of arguments along the line of "Are Conservatives/Socialists/Liberals evil, or are they merely stupid?" And, then like-minded people argue with themselves as to whether there are opponents are evil or stupid. But, I don't think it's really fuelled political violence.
To your first point, somebody sent me a link to this. It's a blog by someone else. I agree with the sentiments, and I post it here so others can read it and judge for themselves. I don't expect to shift any votes. If you went back in time 200 years and told people living in Britain that not only would we not be at war with either France or Germany or Spain in 2016 but they would actually be our allies, they would be amazed.
I understand that for some older people the idea of going back to the 1950s appeals.
But part of the reason the 1950s appeal is that you were young then, and it’s always better when you are young. And the 1950s were always going to look better because of what came before – rationing, bombs falling onto your neighbourhoods, a war in Europe.
The problem with the blogger's argument that old people are romanticising the 1950s is that you can turn it round the other way and it would make just as much sense. If that cohort were strongly pro-remain, commentators and journalists would say that of course people who lived through the war welcome the EU uniting the continental powers; they might even remember Churchill advocating it.
No. Boris wants a Leave win. He thinks he'd then become Prime Minister.
I think that was true when the campaign started, but I'm not so sure now.
Tory MPs will, under the rules, choose two candidates to go to the membership. One will be a loyalist (perhaps Osborne, though I personally think Osborne will do a deal with someone). Another will be a Brexiteer. A few months ago, that would certainly have been Boris, but he's been perceived to have had a poor campaign personally and now it's probably Gove.
If Remain win, Cameron continues and Boris may be able to regroup. As it stands, I'm not sure a Leave win is great for him.
Disagree. Boris has been front and centre of the campaign, including in the debates. If Leave wins he is in a very good position. But the leadership process might not start in earnest until Tory party conference.
I just hope enough Tory MPs think differently because I think if he does get into the final two the members will go for him.
My hope is Cameron stays for three months, Andrea gets a big promotion and then hugely impresses with a platform speech in October and gets through into the final two instead.
Boris has performed excellently in the last two or three weeks, after a very faltering start. He's been measured, clever, eloquent and persuasive. Also Gove.
Both completely outperformed their opponents in the debates.
This is another reason LEAVE is winning. Cameron has been surprisingly poor and tin-eared, really bad at basic campaign politics ("Little Englander"??), whereas the main LEAVE campaigners have just been better. Simply the case.
REMAIN should still be 10 points ahead. The uselessness of their campaign and the utter uselessness of Cameron must be partly to blame. Whatever the result, those in charge of REMAIN should never get a job in electoral politics again. Woeful.
The director of strategy for Remain is Ryan Coetzee. He was the director of the Lib Dem 2015 campaign.....
There are a lot of Lib Dem activists glad to see the back of him after those major defeats of MPs in 2015. (Have had to avoid many other terms for loss etc)
Boris has performed excellently in the last two or three weeks, after a very faltering start. He's been measured, clever, eloquent and persuasive. Also Gove.
The "anyone but Boris" brigade need to Stop and Think. Boris is a character, we all know that. But for whatever his failings he is photogenic, funny, populist. He won twice in a Labour city with cross-party personal support. Combine him with Gove who always comes across as measured and well considered and you could have a powerful platform to appeal to the country.
As someone who will start planning my CLP's snap election plan once we get next week out of the way I'd rather you didn't. Keep that anus Cameron or better still put that pop-eyed loon May in his place if you want me to have a good result...
' Gove is not but he is an even more despicable creature , happy to pander to and encourage the xenophobes with outright lies re Turkey . Does he himself believe the lies he is spouting , certainly not but the fact that he says them shows that he is unfit for any office in government let alone that of Prime Minister .'
Can't remember your outrage & calls that Nick Clegg was unfit for office following the lies he spouted about tuition fees at the 2010 General Election.
A question for Conservative Party members here: If the two leadership choices offered turn out to be Boris vs Theresa, which would you choose, and would your choice depend on the referendum outcome?
[In practice I'm doubtful that Boris will make it to the final two, but let's assume he does].
Of these two, Mrs. May every time, although given a free choice she wouldn't be anywhere near my preferred candidate.
TBH, publishing that in the Guardian is doing little more than preaching to the converted (much like the ever predictable and tedious Steve Bell). If it were published in the Express, there might be a different impact.
Casino: "I think Osborne needs to go for the good of the body politik. He is a disgrace."
I agree - he's finished anyway. Six years at the Treasury was at least one year too long, as we've seen in the past.
He has united the nation.
One of the nastier features on PB has been the disembowellig of Osborne. I consider he has mostly been a good chancellor and loyal to the PM. His motives for being in politics are little different if at all from most MPs, like Jo Cox. It's pathetic that withing 24 hours posters on here are happy to be so unpleasant about another MP.
Jo Cox's tragic death is completely tangential to any comments about any other politician. Your view is symbolism run mad.
Osborne has made objectively poor decisions in this campaign, his quasi-budget being the most egregious. He's been a decent chancellor for the most part, if not as fiscally dry as many would like. That does not mean he gets a free pass on his flaws; a love of complexity, tactical maneuvering and an inability to put country over party. His remarks have contributed to the market turmoil, which is the antitheses of his role.
The language by many otherwise sensible people about Osborne has been extreme to the point of offensive.
Mr. F, a problem is the echo-chamber nature of social media. That and the more concise nature of debate (there is, I gather, some long-form blogging, but mostly it's concise) means things get simplified, often more than they really ought to be (that's one reason I rarely do politics on Twitter).
whilst I wasn't expecting an MP to be shot dead, I'm not surprised some nutter has crossed the line into direct action, it's been coming for a while now.
Here is a Tweet that I think is relevant to your point. Although I do think the wording is deliberately inflammatory, the substance remains.
@junayed_: Last month Nigel Farage said that violence on the streets was the “next step”. Today, he got his wish. https://t.co/CFHq34GDlb
Very few predicting a LEAVE win on here this morning, in fact absolutely no one, despite all that recent polling evidence.
I am. I think Leave will win. I don't think the murder yesterday will affect anything and neither should it. I'd like to think the vile Farage poster will get some people thinking, but I imagine minds are mostly made up now. We're voting to pull out.
It will shut down the immigration debate completely, at least for the next week. And Leave are a one-trick pony with little else to campaign on that resonates with the public. A good 10-20% of the voters remain undecided. Of course it'll have an effect.
"There are many decent people involved in the campaign to secure Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, many who respect the referendum as the exercise in democracy that it is. But there are others whose recklessness has been open and shocking. I believe they bear responsibility, not for the attack itself, but for the current mood: for the inflammatory language, for the finger-jabbing, the dogwhistling and the overt racism."
"This campaign has stirred up anti-migrant sentiment that used to be confined to outbursts from the far fringes of British politics. The justice minister, Michael Gove, and the leader of the house, Chris Grayling – together with former London mayor Boris Johnson – have allied themselves to divisive anti-foreigner sentiment ramped up to a level unprecedented in our lifetime. "
Polly Toynbee only provides anecdotal evidence for her claims that the tone of the referendum campaign is all LEAVE's fault. She does not attribute any blame to the REMAIN campaign for the confrontational nature of the referendum campaign despite their strategy of personal attacks on Boris Johnson.
I think it will be persuasive to people who think of Brexit supporters as knuckle-dragging scum, but, their votes are in the bag already.
I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed around immigration it can be used without outright rejection. Why are Leave taking about hypothetical Turks rather than real Poles ? Because Turks are Muslims. What have we all seen on TV over the last 2 years ? About 2 million largely Muslim and entirely unplanned immigrants who appeared to have just ' walked in '. It seems to me finally mentioning on a poster what this is all about 7 days from polling day is just like a good composer coming towards the end of a symphony. As for it being Farage... well it offers Leave plausible deniability with no real reduction in press coverage for it. I'm not convinced it's a mistake for Leave at all. It seems completely consistent with their strategy. The polls say the strategy is working so far.
Of course it's not a mistake in terms of winning the campaign. It's exactly what you say. It's the Moslems are coming to get us if we don't vote Leave.
Yes, but, for the very first time it made LEAVERS like me pause and go, Ugh.
whilst I wasn't expecting an MP to be shot dead, I'm not surprised some nutter has crossed the line into direct action, it's been coming for a while now.
Here is a Tweet that I think is relevant to your point. Although I do think the wording is deliberately inflammatory, the substance remains.
@junayed_: Last month Nigel Farage said that violence on the streets was the “next step”. Today, he got his wish. https://t.co/CFHq34GDlb
A question for Conservative Party members here: If the two leadership choices offered turn out to be Boris vs Theresa, which would you choose, and would your choice depend on the referendum outcome?
[In practice I'm doubtful that Boris will make it to the final two, but let's assume he does].
I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed
Of course it's not a mistake in terms of winning the campaign. It's exactly what you say. It's the Moslems are coming to get us if we don't vote Leave.
Yes, but, for the very first time it made LEAVERS like me pause and go, Ugh.
They could seal the deal with the WWC (but haven't they done that already?) - yet lose liberal LEAVERS like me (they probably won't, but- hmmm)
Yep. I know some on here cannot see the likeness to Nazi propaganda, but it is there as plain as day.
People see [ or not] what it suits them to see.
I assume the Farage poster was loosely based on the famous "Labour isn't working " one. Until SeanT posted the Nazi propaganda images, I had never seen those particular pictures before - and I strongly doubt many of the population had, either.
Didn't a certain David Cameron refer to "swarms of migrants" last summer?
Precisely. It's an absurd dollop of wishful thinking wankery to compare it to Nazi photos.
The language by many otherwise sensible people about Osborne has been extreme to the point of offensive.
All the more bizarre because, by any even remotely sane objective standard, he has been an excellent Chancellor, taking the UK from the worst position of any major developed economy to one of the best.
@Pulpstar there's another northern Irish poll in the field for Lucid Talk, I believe.
I'll have to take an average of the two . I'm totally intrigued as to how TSE gets a 1.2% change to the result from ex pats + NI though ^^;
Wishful thinking?
He must be assuming something like a 70-30 'remain' vote from all 1.3 million ex pats or some such. It seems to be too favourable a view to "remain" for me.
I cannot see how that Farage poster yesterday is doing anything other than pandering to racism and xenophobia. And given that the Tory Leave camp know that Turkey is a long, long way from becoming an EU member state, I don't see how their warnings of the country's impending membership is any different.
The vast majority of people voting Leave are not racists or xenophobes, but it is pretty clear that the Leave campaigns think there is mileage in appealing to those who are.
The Turkey issue has been one of the stranger things about this referendum. I was surprised when I saw it mentioned by Leave as I thought it was off the table. What I hadn't anticipated was for the Remain campaign to handle it so badly. Why hasn't Cameron come out and said "as long as I'm PM, Turkey will not be joining the EU"? During his interview with Andrew Neil, George Osborne looked decidedly shifty when asked about Turkey. I wonder if some of the Leavers have got an idea of what's coming up over the next few months and know that Cameron and Osborne aren't in a position to make firm commitments.
Cameron has said precisely that to the extent that he is able to diplomatically. The Tory Leave ministers know what the situation is. Gove said explicitly on the TV earlier this week that he did not think the government would veto Turkish EU membership. That is just a lie. But it is a lie with a purpose. And that purpose is to scare people into thinking that millions of Turks will soon be flooding into the country. It's more subtle than Farage's open racism, but it has exactly the same aim.
Why would we veto Turkish membership if we didn't veto Romanian & Bulgarian membership? Their GDPs are pretty similar. Of course they first need to meet the admission criteria, which is a lot further off than Leave imply.
Thing is that it is a self fulfilling prophecy type thing (okay I am sure that is the wrong phrase but hopefully people will see what I mean).
There is no need to veto Turkey entering because the reasons we don't want Turkey in the EU at the moment are exactly the same reasons why they will not get in. The EU has strict rules on human rights, freedom of the press, religious freedom, political freedom and treatment of minorities. Not only is Turkey nowhere near meeting any of these, it is not even trying and is actually moving purposefully in the other direction.
Whatever deals the EU does with Turkey on special passports or payments to take back refugees makes no impact at all on these basic core issues. That is why Turkish membership is off the table for the foreseeable future.
FPT. Despite all calls for reticence and pause for mourning, the Remain Campaign and its many MSM supporters are going to rub Jo Cox' murder in Leavers faces; one way or another.
I posted the above around 6 am this morning.
I was right, The BBC for one, can't leave the subject alone.
Bloody BBC, giving extensive coverage to the first political assassination in this country for 26 years, and the first of a woman ever. Total bias. Sickening.
It was a murder. We don't know whether it was a political assassination i.e. to make some political point. It could - as I mentioned below - simply be a random act of violence. We don't frankly know any more facts than yesterday and won't for a while. And endless speculation is just noise, tiresome and in the end rather diminishing. Sometimes silence in the face of a horrible event like this is more powerful, more dignified and more respectful than empty noise.
I realise the press has to fill space. But when there is nothing new to say maybe best say nothing. Working ourselves up into a frenzy is neither useful nor edifying. There are other things happening in the world we could usefully be told about.
#1 If Leave wins will the Conservative Party be angry enough to make Boris PM ? #2 If Leave wins and the next PM has a gargantuan renegotiation to complete will the Conservatives risk Boris ? It's always seemed to me Boris needs a narrow Remain win to enrage the Tory base and reduce the need for a safe pair of hands as PM. That said I suspect the situation is now so dynamic and chaotic that initial calculation is a bit fried.
No, and no. Under those circumstances I think Theresa May would win and be PM.
We're not crazy.
I think that Mrs May's only chance is if REMAIN win. If we LEAVE it is going to have to be a LEAVEr as PM.
@Pulpstar there's another northern Irish poll in the field for Lucid Talk, I believe.
I'll have to take an average of the two . I'm totally intrigued as to how TSE gets a 1.2% change to the result from ex pats + NI though ^^;
Wishful thinking?
He must be assuming something like a 70-30 'remain' vote from all 1.3 million ex pats or some such. It seems to be too favourable a view to "remain" for me.
To your first point, somebody sent me a link to this. It's a blog by someone else. I agree with the sentiments, and I post it here so others can read it and judge for themselves. I don't expect to shift any votes. If you went back in time 200 years and told people living in Britain that not only would we not be at war with either France or Germany or Spain in 2016 but they would actually be our allies, they would be amazed.
I understand that for some older people the idea of going back to the 1950s appeals.
But part of the reason the 1950s appeal is that you were young then, and it’s always better when you are young. And the 1950s were always going to look better because of what came before – rationing, bombs falling onto your neighbourhoods, a war in Europe.
The problem with the blogger's argument that old people are romanticising the 1950s is that you can turn it round the other way and it would make just as much sense. If that cohort were strongly pro-remain, commentators and journalists would say that of course people who lived through the war welcome the EU uniting the continental powers; they might even remember Churchill advocating it.
Growing up, no one had a good word for the fifties. I was born five years after rationing was ended. The 1950s were shit, so I'm sorry if I don't buy the argument.
We've had discussions on here before about life in the olden days (primarily the 70s as that's probably the median demographic for posters here). It was, in many ways, rubbish. However:
- free university education. - single income families could realistically own a home & raise a family - high cultural cohesion (a trivial example: everyone watched Morecambe & Wise) - free sport on telly - high inflation (great for making debts go away) - decent social mobility
So, not entirely devoid of merit.
I was too young to vote in 1975. I'm grateful for the opportunity to vote now.
Boris has performed excellently in the last two or three weeks, after a very faltering start. He's been measured, clever, eloquent and persuasive. Also Gove.
That is the crux of the debate here this morning; to what end?
If the aim of the campaign is to elect Boris for PM, yes, he has been brilliant.
If the aim has been to corrode public trust in politicians, he has been ruthlessly effective, but I am not sure brilliant is the right adjective there.
He has fronted an entirely dishonest campaign with vigour, in shameless pursuit of personal advancement.
I think a feature of the internet has been the rise of arguments along the line of "Are Conservatives/Socialists/Liberals evil, or are they merely stupid?" And, then like-minded people argue with themselves as to whether there are opponents are evil or stupid. But, I don't think it's really fuelled political violence.
Really? Is that because you think the often really aggressive language employed acts as a pressure valve? Or simply that disturbed people are in some way insulated from the outside world such that whatever happens in it doesn't influence them?
I'm genuinely interested and perhaps you're right - it mirrors the TV/film violence debate in many ways.
Personally, though, I think it desensitises people and you really do get all sorts of people (and I've probably been one such person) saying the most vicious things about public figures they disagree with; and they are rarely challenged. I find it terribly unsettling.
With less than a week to go and with Lead ahead in the polls, these final few days were suppose to be focused relentlessly on the economic risks of leaving. That is Remains only card worth playing. Yet this week we have only had the chaotic intervention of Osborne, which seemed to fizzle out in half a day and then radio silence. Tragic events in this country and abroad have ensured that no one is talking about the economic risks of leaving the EU. This was the week for the big Remain push, led by non-Tory figures, that might have hauled back Leaves lead. It hasn't happened.
I thought it was a brilliant poster. A clear visual reference to the " Labour isn't working " classic and moving towards closing the deal. The deal being that the migrant crisis is what this is really all about. If the poster had been used 3 months ago people would have wretched. But now the campaign has been successfully framed
Of course it's not a mistake in terms of winning the campaign. It's exactly what you say. It's the Moslems are coming to get us if we don't vote Leave.
Yes, but, for the very first time it made LEAVERS like me pause and go, Ugh.
They could seal the deal with the WWC (but haven't they done that already?) - yet lose liberal LEAVERS like me (they probably won't, but- hmmm)
Yep. I know some on here cannot see the likeness to Nazi propaganda, but it is there as plain as day.
People see [ or not] what it suits them to see.
I assume the Farage poster was loosely based on the famous "Labour isn't working " one. Until SeanT posted the Nazi propaganda images, I had never seen those particular pictures before - and I strongly doubt many of the population had, either.
Didn't a certain David Cameron refer to "swarms of migrants" last summer?
Precisely. It's an absurd dollop of wishful thinking wankery to compare it to Nazi photos.
There is no need to veto Turkey entering because the reasons we don't want Turkey in the EU at the moment are exactly the same reasons why they will not get in. The EU has strict rules on human rights, freedom of the press, religious freedom, political freedom and treatment of minorities. Not only is Turkey nowhere near meeting any of these, it is not even trying and is actually moving purposefully in the other direction.
If the Leave campaign were as honest as this I doubt Brexit would be close to winning.
I think a feature of the internet has been the rise of arguments along the line of "Are Conservatives/Socialists/Liberals evil, or are they merely stupid?" And, then like-minded people argue with themselves as to whether there are opponents are evil or stupid. But, I don't think it's really fuelled political violence.
Really? Is that because you think the often really aggressive language employed acts as a pressure valve? Or simply that disturbed people are in some way insulated from the outside world such that whatever happens in it doesn't influence them?
I'm genuinely interested and perhaps you're right - it mirrors the TV/film violence debate in many ways.
Personally, though, I think it desensitises people and you really do get all sorts of people (and I've probably been one such person) saying the most vicious things about public figures they disagree with; and they are rarely challenged. I find it terribly unsettling.
In general, I'd say political violence was much worse in the 1970's than it is now. Not just the terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland, but also the actions of groups like the Red Brigades, ETA, and Baader Meinhoff.
Boris has performed excellently in the last two or three weeks, after a very faltering start. He's been measured, clever, eloquent and persuasive. Also Gove.
That is the crux of the debate here this morning; to what end?
If the aim of the campaign is to elect Boris for PM, yes, he has been brilliant.
If the aim has been to corrode public trust in politicians, he has been ruthlessly effective, but I am not sure brilliant is the right adjective there.
He has fronted an entirely dishonest campaign with vigour, in shameless pursuit of personal advancement.
Brilliant.
The future is not knowable.
Both sides in the referendum have exploited this to make claims about the future which will prove to be untrue.
To this extent the REMAIN and LEAVE campaigns are equally culpable of dishonesty.
With less than a week to go and with Lead ahead in the polls, these final few days were suppose to be focused relentlessly on the economic risks of leaving. That is Remains only card worth playing. Yet this week we have only had the chaotic intervention of Osborne, which seemed to fizzle out in half a day and then radio silence. Tragic events in this country and abroad have ensured that no one is talking about the economic risks of leaving the EU. This was the week for the big Remain push, led by non-Tory figures, that might have hauled back Leaves lead. It hasn't happened.
Hold up. Osborne will be using today to plan a massive coordinated 96 hour long choreographed clusterfuck for Leave starting at 5am on Monday, with the full tacit support of the BBC.
He will conclude that since it was purdah that led to Leave getting a hearing they simply must be crowded out 100%.
He will also do his best to totally spook the markets, perhaps by contacting firms and traders through intermediaries directly.
There really is no low to which this man would not sink.
Casino: "I think Osborne needs to go for the good of the body politik. He is a disgrace."
I agree - he's finished anyway. Six years at the Treasury was at least one year too long, as we've seen in the past.
He has united the nation.
One of the nastier features on PB has been the disembowellig of Osborne. I consider he has mostly been a good chancellor and loyal to the PM. His motives for being in politics are little different if at all from most MPs, like Jo Cox. It's pathetic that withing 24 hours posters on here are happy to be so unpleasant about another MP.
Jo Cox's tragic death is completely tangential to any comments about any other politician. Your view is symbolism run mad.
Osborne has made objectively poor decisions in this campaign, his quasi-budget being the most egregious. He's been a decent chancellor for the most part, if not as fiscally dry as many would like. That does not mean he gets a free pass on his flaws; a love of complexity, tactical maneuvering and an inability to put country over party. His remarks have contributed to the market turmoil, which is the antitheses of his role.
The language by many otherwise sensible people about Osborne has been extreme to the point of offensive.
The last time I looked, people in this country still have the right to be offensive, so I'm afraid I still don't understand your point.
Boris has performed excellently in the last two or three weeks, after a very faltering start. He's been measured, clever, eloquent and persuasive. Also Gove.
That is the crux of the debate here this morning; to what end?
If the aim of the campaign is to elect Boris for PM, yes, he has been brilliant.
If the aim has been to corrode public trust in politicians, he has been ruthlessly effective, but I am not sure brilliant is the right adjective there.
He has fronted an entirely dishonest campaign with vigour, in shameless pursuit of personal advancement.
Brilliant.
It's hard to see how Boris won't replace Dave. I have always thought he would. And I have always thought that he would be a complete disaster. The idea of him negotiating a Brexit deal is not a happy one, especially now that he has done so much to alienate the people he will be negotiating with.
Judging as an interested observer, the entire campaign by both sides has been characterised by exaggeration and lies. If politicians are trying to convince the public they are not to be trusted, they would score an "A Star" for performance.
I have concluded that UK politicians are so used to lying and getting away with it, it has become a habit.
The outlook for whichever side wins is bleak. They will inevitably disappoint those who vote for them.
Prepare for a proper anti establishment move post referendum - not Momentum who are amateurs - but someone serious is likely to arise and if semi appealing win a lot of supporters.
It's not that that odd when you consider that what the EU is trying to do fundamentally challenges the concept of a universal right to asylum as previously conceived.
Merkel deserves much more credit than she's given for having foresight on the migration issue and trying to address things with a long-term strategy in mind.
In spite of what has happened over the past 24 hours and completely separate from the referendum issue I will repeat what I have said on here before. Merkel is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people who have been encouraged to attempt dangerous crossings of the Mediterranean by her promise to give them asylum.
Cameron's far more practical and far safer policy should have been the blueprint for the European response to the refugee crisis and he is the one European leader who has come out of this whole episode with his reputation enhanced in my view. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Merkel has built a motorway.
That doesn't make sense. These people knew they risked their lives and those of their families by trying to flee. That tells you that their lives there must have been so precarious that they thought the risk worth taking. If that was the case humanity and the laws of asylum demanded that she behaved as she did.
No. She has provided a pull factor that was not there before. She has made the prize worth the risk for economic migration. The Syria situation is very different and we should be taking refugees directly from the camps as Cameron has started to do. Merkel could still have had her hundreds of thousands of new citizens (and we should be taking far more than we are) but it would have removed a pull factor and shown the refugees they did have a way to get a new life without risking their actual lives.
It's impossible to separate the impact of Merkel's decisions from the irresponsible reporting of them as being an 'open door policy'.
They were an open door policy. Not only did they say they would accommodate anyone who was able to reach Germany but they also attacked any country who dared to try and enforce the EU rules and process the migrants at the first EU country they entered. Look at how Hungary was vilified for trying to follow the rules.
To this extent the REMAIN and LEAVE campaigns are equally culpable of dishonesty.
But the question was whether Boris has been more effective at selling his lies than Cameron.
I said it upthread, I would like to see a head to head debate between them, not on the lies the campaigns have used to date, but on the nature of debate, on the use of lies as a political tool to win a vote and their long term effect on the body politic, on debasement of politics as a profession.
I would rather have the truth, than my side winning
If a pro-Brexit MP had been murdered by a man suffering from mental illness, I'm sure there would be people on my side of the debate saying "You can't demonise 50% of the population as bigots, Little Englanders, and racists, you can't threaten the population with economic Armageddon, and then not expect someone to act on these threats." And, it would be just as much bullshit as people trying to blame Jo Cox's death on the Leave campaign. Nobody on either side has incited violence against their opponents, implied that violence is justified, or even hinted that it might be necessary.
I do think that's simplistic. Of course nobody in mainstream politics would dream of inciting such awful things. But actions still have consequences. Saying your opponents aren't just wrong but are bad people with bad motives, or talking darkly of being at a "breaking point", does add fuel to the fires of already disturbed people. It isn't meant to - it's meant to get the core vote out - but it does do that.
I'm not limiting it to one side. I saw a lady on the train today reading an Owen Jones book called "The Establishment and how they get away with it" featuring a silhouette of a sinister fellow in a bowler hat with a highwayman's mask. It jarred with me today. Now I doubt Owen Jones thinks the Governor of the Bank of England or whoever are monstrous criminals - it's all a bit of hyperbole, a bit of fun to drive sales. But there are plenty of people in the market who aren't in on the joke, and are a bit silly or even a bit ill.
I think a feature of the internet has been the rise of arguments along the line of "Are Conservatives/Socialists/Liberals evil, or are they merely stupid?" And, then like-minded people argue with themselves as to whether there are opponents are evil or stupid. But, I don't think it's really fuelled political violence.
RIP Jo Cox MP, prayers to her family. As you suggest, you have to distinguish these phenomena of so-called "extremism". Political violence in Europe is way down from the 70s (when there was a hostile power handing out weapons in Italy and Germany and communal violence in NI with strong political overtones). In fact, Manchester 1996 and London 2005 were separated by less than a decade, so there was no golden age for the absence of political violence in the UK. The currently peaceful situation has of course been associated with much heavier anti-terrorist policing in London and GB than in the 90s; as a visitor to the capital you can't miss the difference. However, "extreme" parties definitely do better when the internet can amplify their message. Unlike mainstream media, the internet does not allocate coverage based on levels of popular support, propriety or the perceived duty of journalism to protect liberal democracy from hostiles.
A question for Conservative Party members here: If the two leadership choices offered turn out to be Boris vs Theresa, which would you choose, and would your choice depend on the referendum outcome?
[In practice I'm doubtful that Boris will make it to the final two, but let's assume he does].
Theresa.
Not a tory member but would join to stop Boris I would vote Theresa.
I think a feature of the internet has been the rise of arguments along the line of "Are Conservatives/Socialists/Liberals evil, or are they merely stupid?" And, then like-minded people argue with themselves as to whether there are opponents are evil or stupid. But, I don't think it's really fuelled political violence.
Really? Is that because you think the often really aggressive language employed acts as a pressure valve? Or simply that disturbed people are in some way insulated from the outside world such that whatever happens in it doesn't influence them?
I'm genuinely interested and perhaps you're right - it mirrors the TV/film violence debate in many ways.
Personally, though, I think it desensitises people and you really do get all sorts of people (and I've probably been one such person) saying the most vicious things about public figures they disagree with; and they are rarely challenged. I find it terribly unsettling.
For me it's fairly simple. If you can communicate with people at a distance, all the social norms are diluted.
Before the Internet the only way you could really do that was by a stiffly worded letter to the newspapers (which is hardly interactive) or ringing random people (doesn't scale well).
Now, you can shriek abuse via Twitter, fairly certain that someone isn't going to turn around and punch your lights out.
Comments
There is that BMG poll knocking about... Was supposed to be released 1am this morning but will be released 1am Saturday morning?
And your answer is:- "Submit. It's waycist otherwise..."
I live in Thanet South-if any constituency should have a decent data base for Leave it would be here.
So far no-one has contacted me-or my friends!!
Trying to look at the bigger picture, I'm wondering what it means for democracy in this country. Clearly, some immediate practical steps may be needed to tighten up security for individual MPs whether that be through the use of security guards at constituency offices (if there aren't already?) or a pre-screening process for appointments. But neither of these interventions would have had an impact on this situation. It was on the street outside of where security could have feasibly been provided.
The wider issue is whether this murder should have an impact on the current political landscape and the referendum. I think cancelling events yesterday was entirely appropriate but I'm hearing that other events today and perhaps tomorrow are starting to be cancelled also. Whether that is appropriate is for each individual to decide but I worry what the implications are if this does shut down the referendum debate and the process of political discourse.
'We can't let the terrorists win'; 'keep calm and carry on'; 'the Blitz spirit'; all these sayings are predicated on the idea that when hateful people act, we must keep going with our daily routines otherwise 'they' have won. By shutting down the discussions and the campaigning I wonder whether that places MPs and our democracy even further in danger. The message goes out that attacking one MP can have such an impact on the nation that the risk-reward ratio for an extremist suddenly looks a lot more favorable. MPs are not remote, even the likes of Boris and Cameron can be got at. By shutting down our system I would argue we make future attacks more, not less, likely. I also worry what that says about the strength of democracy in this country.
I just hope enough Tory MPs think differently because I think if he does get into the final two the members will go for him.
My hope is Cameron stays for three months, Andrea gets a big promotion and then hugely impresses with a platform speech in October and gets through into the final two instead.
Someone needs to lock him in a cupboard until 24th June.
https://twitter.com/guardian/status/743564108960792576
However, it's undeniable that it's a candidate, that it is in accession talks, that it does receive pre-accession funding. It's a typical EU fudge and muddle. By that, it's a typical large organisation fudge and muddle as opposed to 'EU is teh evilz'.
Cite: http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/countries/check-current-status/index_en.htm
As long as the middle east is aflame, then Merkel needs Turkey onside. Afterwards, Erdogan can bugger off. That's how I read it.
It's slightly sinister. Can someone explain?
Amongst them, they feel his Brexit position was too coldly calculated (the conventional wisdom is he's Brexit purely because it's good for Boris); that he's made bad mis-steps (the Obama nonsense in particular) which don't bode well for him as a PM; that he's too easily caught out by contradictory past statements because he's never given great thought to consistency (e.g. on Turkey); and that Gove has been as sure-footed as Johnson has been clumsy.
We're not crazy.
I use it all the time. If you consider me hard-right, then I suggest you need your political antennae re-calibrated.
'What is the meaning of this deliberate misspelling of racist (waycist) I often see on here? It's only used by the hard-right posters.
It's slightly sinister. Can someone explain? '
Oh dear yet another drama in the life of bobajob.,
Polly Toynbee in the Guardian today is specifically blaming the LEAVE campaign for increasing racial hatred. Some people will be persuaded by this view. See
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/16/mood-ugly-mp-dead-jo-cox
For example she says
"There are many decent people involved in the campaign to secure Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, many who respect the referendum as the exercise in democracy that it is. But there are others whose recklessness has been open and shocking. I believe they bear responsibility, not for the attack itself, but for the current mood: for the inflammatory language, for the finger-jabbing, the dogwhistling and the overt racism."
"This campaign has stirred up anti-migrant sentiment that used to be confined to outbursts from the far fringes of British politics. The justice minister, Michael Gove, and the leader of the house, Chris Grayling – together with former London mayor Boris Johnson – have allied themselves to divisive anti-foreigner sentiment ramped up to a level unprecedented in our lifetime. "
Polly Toynbee only provides anecdotal evidence for her claims that the tone of the referendum campaign is all LEAVE's fault. She does not attribute any blame to the REMAIN campaign for the confrontational nature of the referendum campaign despite their strategy of personal attacks on Boris Johnson.
This is not Monaco, with lots of cranes and marshals, although there's a few British of the latter there helping with training.
I hope the murder has no impact on the referendum.
Didn't a certain David Cameron refer to "swarms of migrants" last summer?
I'm not limiting it to one side. I saw a lady on the train today reading an Owen Jones book called "The Establishment and how they get away with it" featuring a silhouette of a sinister fellow in a bowler hat with a highwayman's mask. It jarred with me today. Now I doubt Owen Jones thinks the Governor of the Bank of England or whoever are monstrous criminals - it's all a bit of hyperbole, a bit of fun to drive sales. But there are plenty of people in the market who aren't in on the joke, and are a bit silly or even a bit ill.
That could impact strategy or perhaps the winning margin markets, though. Perez often goes long on tyres (unsure of how badly they're degrading) which could give him a free pit stop.
I did think Baku would be poor, but I didn't think the circuit would be unsafe/incompetently arranged.
The people with money to bet are largely rich people who want REMAIN to win and so have a bias to REMAIN when betting.
some will not vote, some will vote leave
edit, there are 5m ex-pats btw
Osborne has made objectively poor decisions in this campaign, his quasi-budget being the most egregious. He's been a decent chancellor for the most part, if not as fiscally dry as many would like. That does not mean he gets a free pass on his flaws; a love of complexity, tactical maneuvering and an inability to put country over party. His remarks have contributed to the market turmoil, which is the antitheses of his role.
[In practice I'm doubtful that Boris will make it to the final two, but let's assume he does].
As someone who will start planning my CLP's snap election plan once we get next week out of the way I'd rather you didn't. Keep that anus Cameron or better still put that pop-eyed loon May in his place if you want me to have a good result...
The mood of people will have changed following the murder of Jo Cox.
The interest will now be on polls after her murder.
' Gove is not but he is an even more despicable creature , happy to pander to and encourage the xenophobes with outright lies re Turkey . Does he himself believe the lies he is spouting , certainly not but the fact that he says them shows that he is unfit for any office in government let alone that of Prime Minister .'
Can't remember your outrage & calls that Nick Clegg was unfit for office following the lies he spouted about tuition fees at the 2010 General Election.
TBH, publishing that in the Guardian is doing little more than preaching to the converted (much like the ever predictable and tedious Steve Bell). If it were published in the Express, there might be a different impact.
@junayed_: Last month Nigel Farage said that violence on the streets was the “next step”. Today, he got his wish.
https://t.co/CFHq34GDlb
class="Quote" rel="SeanT"> Yes, but, for the very first time it made LEAVERS like me pause and go, Ugh.
Because
https://twitter.com/zcbeaton/status/743397112923230212
They could seal the deal with the WWC (but haven't they done that already?) - yet lose liberal LEAVERS like me (they probably won't, but- hmmm)
Yep. I know some on here cannot see the likeness to Nazi propaganda, but it is there as plain as day.
https://twitter.com/petefrasermusic/status/666585744232812544/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
https://www.gov.uk/performance/register-to-vote
There is no need to veto Turkey entering because the reasons we don't want Turkey in the EU at the moment are exactly the same reasons why they will not get in. The EU has strict rules on human rights, freedom of the press, religious freedom, political freedom and treatment of minorities. Not only is Turkey nowhere near meeting any of these, it is not even trying and is actually moving purposefully in the other direction.
Whatever deals the EU does with Turkey on special passports or payments to take back refugees makes no impact at all on these basic core issues. That is why Turkish membership is off the table for the foreseeable future.
It was a murder. We don't know whether it was a political assassination i.e. to make some political point. It could - as I mentioned below - simply be a random act of violence. We don't frankly know any more facts than yesterday and won't for a while. And endless speculation is just noise, tiresome and in the end rather diminishing. Sometimes silence in the face of a horrible event like this is more powerful, more dignified and more respectful than empty noise.
I realise the press has to fill space. But when there is nothing new to say maybe best say nothing. Working ourselves up into a frenzy is neither useful nor edifying. There are other things happening in the world we could usefully be told about.
If the polling is correct and my model is right we're at 79% chance of Brexit as of the fieldwork done finishing yesterday.
We've had discussions on here before about life in the olden days (primarily the 70s as that's probably the median demographic for posters here). It was, in many ways, rubbish. However:
- free university education.
- single income families could realistically own a home & raise a family
- high cultural cohesion (a trivial example: everyone watched Morecambe & Wise)
- free sport on telly
- high inflation (great for making debts go away)
- decent social mobility
So, not entirely devoid of merit.
I was too young to vote in 1975. I'm grateful for the opportunity to vote now.
If the aim of the campaign is to elect Boris for PM, yes, he has been brilliant.
If the aim has been to corrode public trust in politicians, he has been ruthlessly effective, but I am not sure brilliant is the right adjective there.
He has fronted an entirely dishonest campaign with vigour, in shameless pursuit of personal advancement.
Brilliant.
I'm genuinely interested and perhaps you're right - it mirrors the TV/film violence debate in many ways.
Personally, though, I think it desensitises people and you really do get all sorts of people (and I've probably been one such person) saying the most vicious things about public figures they disagree with; and they are rarely challenged. I find it terribly unsettling.
That is Remains only card worth playing.
Yet this week we have only had the chaotic intervention of Osborne, which seemed to fizzle out in half a day and then radio silence.
Tragic events in this country and abroad have ensured that no one is talking about the economic risks of leaving the EU.
This was the week for the big Remain push, led by non-Tory figures, that might have hauled back Leaves lead. It hasn't happened.
https://twitter.com/zcbeaton/status/743397112923230212/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
http://www.newstatesman.com/2016/06/our-hatred-mps-has-gone-too-far
Both sides in the referendum have exploited this to make claims about the future which will prove to be untrue.
To this extent the REMAIN and LEAVE campaigns are equally culpable of dishonesty.
He will conclude that since it was purdah that led to Leave getting a hearing they simply must be crowded out 100%.
He will also do his best to totally spook the markets, perhaps by contacting firms and traders through intermediaries directly.
There really is no low to which this man would not sink.
I have concluded that UK politicians are so used to lying and getting away with it, it has become a habit.
The outlook for whichever side wins is bleak. They will inevitably disappoint those who vote for them.
Prepare for a proper anti establishment move post referendum - not Momentum who are amateurs - but someone serious is likely to arise and if semi appealing win a lot of supporters.
I said it upthread, I would like to see a head to head debate between them, not on the lies the campaigns have used to date, but on the nature of debate, on the use of lies as a political tool to win a vote and their long term effect on the body politic, on debasement of politics as a profession.
I would rather have the truth, than my side winning
As you suggest, you have to distinguish these phenomena of so-called "extremism".
Political violence in Europe is way down from the 70s (when there was a hostile power handing out weapons in Italy and Germany and communal violence in NI with strong political overtones). In fact, Manchester 1996 and London 2005 were separated by less than a decade, so there was no golden age for the absence of political violence in the UK. The currently peaceful situation has of course been associated with much heavier anti-terrorist policing in London and GB than in the 90s; as a visitor to the capital you can't miss the difference.
However, "extreme" parties definitely do better when the internet can amplify their message. Unlike mainstream media, the internet does not allocate coverage based on levels of popular support, propriety or the perceived duty of journalism to protect liberal democracy from hostiles.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-36557134
It has no place here.
Before the Internet the only way you could really do that was by a stiffly worded letter to the newspapers (which is hardly interactive) or ringing random people (doesn't scale well).
Now, you can shriek abuse via Twitter, fairly certain that someone isn't going to turn around and punch your lights out.