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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Meanwhile ahead of the CON conference Ken Clarke goes on th

SystemSystem Posts: 11,710
edited September 2016 in General

imagepoliticalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Meanwhile ahead of the CON conference Ken Clarke goes on the attack over BREXIT

Next in line this conference season are the Conservatives who are in their traditional final place slot. Inevitably BREXIT, what it actually means and the timetable, will dominate and you can expect all sides to be vocal.

Read the full story here


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Comments

  • Options
    GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,926
    Yesterdays man...
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    JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,913
    "Quite what influence Ken still has is hard to say but he’s important because he get media attention and he’s highly articulate..."

    And he is right.
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    Politician of the past starts talking about the past.

    Surprise.
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    The Tories chose IDS over Clarke, silly mistake.
  • Options
    TonyETonyE Posts: 938
    GIN1138 said:

    Yesterdays man...

    Fighting yesterday's battles
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    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Trump has just been talking tough about Cuba, that's what makes the newsweek story damaging rather than just old news.
  • Options
    GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,926
    edited September 2016
    I suppose the weekend will see further "interventions" from Heseltine and Chris Patten so by Monday morning the media will be screaming blue murder about Tory "splits".

    These three (Clarke, Heseltine and Patten, sometimes aided by John Major) have been playing this game for 25 years. I guess it was too much to hope that leaving the EU might actually shut them up for a bit...
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    Man who wanted us to join the eurozone unhappy we're leaving* the EU shock.

    *Assuming we do leave.
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    DjayMDjayM Posts: 21
    Yessterdays man & still on the wrong side of the argument.
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,632
    IanB2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leave voters: old and stupid. Remain voters: bright and intelligent.

    Heard it all before, but very convenient for rationalising your vote based on what you perceive to be your direct economic interest if you don't give a toss about politics.

    Come on Mr Royale! All Mr B2 is saying is that there is no special "multicultural, pro-European" gene that gets switched on with a Shoreditch postcode. It's simply that those demographic groups that broke heavily for remain, are heavily over-represented in Inner London areas.
    Indeed, like it or not Remain voters were on the whole far better educated than Leave.
    But it doesn't follow that the smarter and more highly educated you are the more likely you are to appreciate the glorious benefits of the EU.

    Most Remainers I met were pig ignorant about the EU.
    A better explanation, if still crude, is that people with degrees are more likely to see themselves as having opportunities arising from 'globalisation' (whatever we take that to mean), and/or are more likely to have travelled widely, whereas people without might well see globalisation (with a strong immigration dimension) as principally a threat. Very clearly, younger people nowadays have travelled much more than older people (on average). But it was statistical analysis so can only identify the pattern, not explain it.
    I think that's a fair assessment, obviously it doesn't fit for everyone. Most of the leave voters on this board are graduates with well paid jobs that live in and around London and I know quite a few remain voters that didn't go to university and have lower paid jobs and don't live in London who voted to remain for pretty spurious reasons, one of whom did so as not to feel racist.

    I think the characterisation that all remain voters were consciencious and weighed up all the pros and cons or had a huge internal struggle while all leave voters are reactionary bigots is pretty condescending. The truth, as ever, is much more grey.
  • Options
    Mr. M, welcome to PB.com.
  • Options
    CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    DjayM said:

    Yessterdays man & still on the wrong side of the argument.

    Worse than that he doesn't think the little people should have the right to a say
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,300
    edited September 2016
    Alistair said:

    Trump has just been talking tough about Cuba, that's what makes the newsweek story damaging rather than just old news.

    He also needs to win Florida, which home to a massive Cuban population who fled castro & traditionally more likely to vote republican than other Hispanic groups. So if he did try to do deals with the devil it will go down like a bucket of cold sick.
  • Options
    619619 Posts: 1,784
    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43
  • Options
    619619 Posts: 1,784
    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Voters say Trump is not prepared to be President- : is trump presidential 34/60 in CO, 40/55 in FL, 35/60 in NC, 37/56 in PA, 36/59 in VA:
  • Options
    IndigoIndigo Posts: 9,966
    FPT:

    Interesting article attempting to explain Trump and BrExit in terms of the Ultimatum Game, but in reality his second diagram says all that needs to be said.
    image
  • Options
    JobabobJobabob Posts: 3,807
    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
  • Options
    JobabobJobabob Posts: 3,807
    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43


    Is Clinton the greater number in all of these polls @619??
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,300
    edited September 2016
    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
    Give it a rest.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,515
    edited September 2016
    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leave voters: old and stupid. Remain voters: bright and intelligent.

    Heard it all before, but very convenient for rationalising your vote based on what you perceive to be your direct economic interest if you don't give a toss about politics.

    Come on Mr Royale! All Mr B2 is saying is that there is no special "multicultural, pro-European" gene that gets switched on with a Shoreditch postcode. It's simply that those demographic groups that broke heavily for remain, are heavily over-represented in Inner London areas.
    Indeed, like it or not Remain voters were on the whole far better educated than Leave.
    But it doesn't follow that the smarter and more highly educated you are the more likely you are to appreciate the glorious benefits of the EU.

    Most Remainers I met were pig ignorant about the EU.
    A better explanation, if still crude, is that people with degrees are more likely to see themselves as having opportunities arising from 'globalisation' (whatever we take that to mean), and/or are more likely to have travelled widely, whereas people without might well see globalisation (with a strong immigration dimension) as principally a threat. Very clearly, younger people nowadays have travelled much more than older people (on average). But it was statistical analysis so can only identify the pattern, not explain it.
    I think that's a fair assessment, obviously it doesn't fit for everyone. Most of the leave voters on this board are graduates with well paid jobs that live in and around London and I know quite a few remain voters that didn't go to university and have lower paid jobs and don't live in London who voted to remain for pretty spurious reasons, one of whom did so as not to feel racist.

    I think the characterisation that all remain voters were consciencious and weighed up all the pros and cons or had a huge internal struggle while all leave voters are reactionary bigots is pretty condescending. The truth, as ever, is much more grey.
    Fair comment. The only people trying to make that last connection - as a straw person to then knock down - appear to be a few leave voters like Mr CR. And of course a strong correlation between, say, age and the vote does not mean that every older person voted leave and every younger person remain: correlation is not causation.

    Bottom line is that pretty much everyone posting here is better educated and informed, since regular participation in political online forums is likely to be well down the leisure pursuits of most C2DE voters. So none of us can really reflect how many of the population feel, except through anecdote.
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    glwglw Posts: 9,554
    Charles said:

    DjayM said:

    Yessterdays man & still on the wrong side of the argument.

    Worse than that he doesn't think the little people should have the right to a say
    Indeed this line sums it up:

    “He will go down in history as the man who made the mistake of taking us out of the European Union, by mistake,” he says.”

    Cameron didn't take us out, we voted to leave, and May might get around to it one day. I think it's fair to say Clarke is exhibiting a typical Remainer reaction that we are all too familiar with here.
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    IndigoIndigo Posts: 9,966
    MaxPB said:

    I think the characterisation that all remain voters were consciencious and weighed up all the pros and cons or had a huge internal struggle while all leave voters are reactionary bigots is pretty condescending. The truth, as ever, is much more grey.

    Indeed, considering a proportion of Leavers are "proper" internationalists, who while not advocating open borders, want everyone from whatever country and with whatever skin colour to have a fair chance of entering the UK, purely on the basis of what they can contribute and how likely they are to integrate.
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    Ishmael_XIshmael_X Posts: 3,664
    SlateStarCodex - conservative American blog - on why one should vote Hillary. The whole thing is excellent; here is an excerpt:

    "When I talk to Trump supporters, it’s not usually about doubting climate change, or thinking Trump will take the conservative movement in the right direction, or even immigration. It’s about the feeling that a group of arrogant, intolerant, sanctimonious elites have seized control of a lot of national culture and are using it mostly to spread falsehood and belittle anybody different than them. And Trump is both uniquely separate from these elites and uniquely repugnant to them – which makes him look pretty good to everyone else.

    This is definitely true. Please vote Hillary anyway.

    Aside from the fact that getting back at annoying people isn’t worth eroding the foundations of civil society – do you really think a Trump election is going to hurt these people at all? Make them question anything? “Oh, 51% of the American people disagree with me, I guess that means I’ve got a lot of self-reflecting to do.” Of course not. A Trump election would just confirm for them exactly what they already believe – that the average American is a stupid racist who needs to be kept as far away from public life as possible. If Trump gets elected, sure, the editorial pages will be full of howls of despair the next day, but underneath the howls will be quiet satisfaction that the world is exactly the way they believed it to be."

    http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-johnson-or-stein/
  • Options
    Mr. glw, it's a fascinating psychological approach, treating a referendum result as if it's something done to the people rather than by the electorate, whilst claiming democracy in Clarke's desire to thwart the vote of the British people.
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    Indigo said:

    FPT:

    Interesting article attempting to explain Trump and BrExit in terms of the Ultimatum Game, but in reality his second diagram says all that needs to be said.
    image

    Is there a chart for post-2007?

    Perhaps the greatest amount of blame for Brexit and Trump should fall on the Federal Reserve.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,419
    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.
  • Options

    Mr. glw, it's a fascinating psychological approach, treating a referendum result as if it's something done to the people rather than by the electorate, whilst claiming democracy in Clarke's desire to thwart the vote of the British people.

    Democracy can be a weapon against the people's interests. Just ask McDonnell and Momentum.
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    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 36,005
    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    The problem with Ken Clarke as leader is that he regarded being at the heart of the EU as being more important than the future of the Conservative Party.
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    Alistair said:

    Trump has just been talking tough about Cuba, that's what makes the newsweek story damaging rather than just old news.

    He also needs to win Florida, which home to a massive Cuban population who fled castro & traditionally more likely to vote republican than other Hispanic groups. So if he did try to do deals with the devil it will go down like a bucket of cold sick.
    My wife's parents fled Castro and are delighted at the thawing of relations with Cuba. I think your stereotype is about 30 years out of date.
  • Options
    glwglw Posts: 9,554

    Mr. glw, it's a fascinating psychological approach, treating a referendum result as if it's something done to the people rather than by the electorate, whilst claiming democracy in Clarke's desire to thwart the vote of the British people.

    I'd say that he exhibits a typically Europhile view of government. A very top down approach, where the "clever" people decide what the public need, rather than carry out the wishes of the public. He can shove his views where the Sun doesn't shine.
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    MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,956
    Tory MPs and members preventing Clarke winning the leadership twice were, as ever, bang on the money.
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    kle4kle4 Posts: 92,079
    edited September 2016
    Nothing wrong with Ken's comments as far as I can see. Few will be as bold as to follow him even if they get the chance, but his views are well known, apparently his constituents are in line with his views, he's not rest adding anyway, and technically he doesn't have to respect any referendum result. And while as has been pointed out it is a little unfair to say Cameron took us out of the EU, because all he did was give the people the opportunity to have their say on if we should, Clarke is right in that is how he will probably be remembered, and it will overshadow that he was decent enough as PMs go otherwise.

    Since there probably won't be a vote, and it would not be lost if there is one, stuff like this can be an amusing aside. Hell, it's more likely to ensure A50 is triggered sooner to make sure no one can prevent exit (ignoring for the moment the talk of A50 able to be halted by some EU fudge, as that's a whole other unlikely political question), whereas, in theory, without open talk of voting against maybe the pressure to imminently declare would be less and thus more opportunity for some game changer that would actually lead to a reverse in position (not that any seem remotely probable) to occur.
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    GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,926
    edited September 2016
    glw said:

    Charles said:

    DjayM said:

    Yessterdays man & still on the wrong side of the argument.

    Worse than that he doesn't think the little people should have the right to a say
    Indeed this line sums it up:

    “He will go down in history as the man who made the mistake of taking us out of the European Union, by mistake,” he says.”

    Cameron didn't take us out, we voted to leave, and May might get around to it one day. I think it's fair to say Clarke is exhibiting a typical Remainer reaction that we are all too familiar with here.
    We now know that over half the country was dissatisfied with our relationship with the EU, yet people like Ken Clarke seem to think the political class could just go on ignoring these peoples views and wishes.

    OK, David Cameron didn't *NEED* to have a referendum on 23rd June 2016 but a referendum was coming sooner or later. The situation as it was clearly wasn't sustainable.
  • Options
    JobabobJobabob Posts: 3,807

    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
    Give it a rest.
    Nope. I note Plato has posted a SC poll on the previous thread.

    Of course, SC is not a DEM target, so utterly irrelevant to anything much at all, other than the fact it has Trump in the lead.
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    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,806
    The problem with the referendum is that Leave isn't a policy. Remain equaled continued membership of the EU and that was a policy. Leave perhaps was a desired outcome but you need a policy to get there. Policy was left deliberately vague during the campaign to avoid startling the horses. May needs one now. She can't keep repeating, I am not going to talk about it. She is also making a tactical error in preventing Parliament having a say. She needs a clear policy to bind her MPs into. So when it all gets a bit crap and they start complaining she can tell them, you voted for it.

    I am beginning to think Theresa May is out of her depth.
  • Options
    IndigoIndigo Posts: 9,966
    edited September 2016

    Indigo said:

    FPT:

    Interesting article attempting to explain Trump and BrExit in terms of the Ultimatum Game, but in reality his second diagram says all that needs to be said.
    image

    Is there a chart for post-2007?

    Perhaps the greatest amount of blame for Brexit and Trump should fall on the Federal Reserve.
    This report seems to cover 1967-2015.

    https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/u-s-household-incomes-a-49-year-perspective

    The bottom line is
    image
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    Ken Clarke, the greatest PM we never had.

    He's right on Mrs May and the three Brexiteers.

    She couldn't find two better Brexiteers than David Davis and Liam phuqing Fox?
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    HurstLlamaHurstLlama Posts: 9,098
    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    I am not sure, thinking back, that anyone actually wanted IDS. What they didn't want was Clarke because of his Europhile views.
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    HHemmeligHHemmelig Posts: 617
    edited September 2016
    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    The problem with Ken Clarke as leader is that he regarded being at the heart of the EU as being more important than the future of the Conservative Party.
    Clarke would have been as poor a Tory leader as IDS and probably been deposed at least as quickly, for the reason Sean states. At multiple hustings in the leadership election Clarke showed no interest in accommodating the majority Eurosceptic wing of the party, indeed spent a large proportion of his speaking time pointlessly needling them and making jokes at their expense. He could have been a good leader post 97 or 01 had he compromised a bit on Europe but he would never have done so.
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    JobabobJobabob Posts: 3,807
    Ishmael_X said:

    SlateStarCodex - conservative American blog - on why one should vote Hillary. The whole thing is excellent; here is an excerpt:

    "When I talk to Trump supporters, it’s not usually about doubting climate change, or thinking Trump will take the conservative movement in the right direction, or even immigration. It’s about the feeling that a group of arrogant, intolerant, sanctimonious elites have seized control of a lot of national culture and are using it mostly to spread falsehood and belittle anybody different than them. And Trump is both uniquely separate from these elites and uniquely repugnant to them – which makes him look pretty good to everyone else.

    This is definitely true. Please vote Hillary anyway.

    Aside from the fact that getting back at annoying people isn’t worth eroding the foundations of civil society – do you really think a Trump election is going to hurt these people at all? Make them question anything? “Oh, 51% of the American people disagree with me, I guess that means I’ve got a lot of self-reflecting to do.” Of course not. A Trump election would just confirm for them exactly what they already believe – that the average American is a stupid racist who needs to be kept as far away from public life as possible. If Trump gets elected, sure, the editorial pages will be full of howls of despair the next day, but underneath the howls will be quiet satisfaction that the world is exactly the way they believed it to be."

    http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-johnson-or-stein/

    Good piece – reflects the views of the nutters on here who want to see a straight-up unstable racist in control of the world's most powerful nation, because they'd enjoy the "wailing from the liberal media".

    These are ostensibly intelligent people.
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    The Tories chose IDS over Clarke, silly mistake.

    These comments show just why Ken Clarke could never have been leader.

    He would have split the party.
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    Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    edited September 2016
    Ken Clarke is great, and always says what he thinks. He is also very funny. He just happens to disagree with Leavers. That's fair enough. His views are not exactly a secret, and it would be completely absurd for him to suddenly change his mind. Why on earth would anyone be surprised that he thinks leaving the EU is a catastrophic mistake?

    As for how much influence he has: very little in the Conservative Party nowadays.
  • Options
    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
    Give it a rest.
    Nope. I note Plato has posted a SC poll on the previous thread.

    Of course, SC is not a DEM target, so utterly irrelevant to anything much at all, other than the fact it has Trump in the lead.
    By that logic nobody should post anything about the UK that isn't a marginal. People regularly post Scottish polling where the SNP are miles ahead. Voodoo internet polls is another matter.
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 36,005
    glw said:

    Mr. glw, it's a fascinating psychological approach, treating a referendum result as if it's something done to the people rather than by the electorate, whilst claiming democracy in Clarke's desire to thwart the vote of the British people.

    I'd say that he exhibits a typically Europhile view of government. A very top down approach, where the "clever" people decide what the public need, rather than carry out the wishes of the public. He can shove his views where the Sun doesn't shine.
    I think it's not so much a Europhile approach, as a belief that the World would best be run by a liberal bureaucracy, all of whom believe in the free movement of people and capital. The public would be allowed to ratify their decisions, but not to challenge them.
  • Options
    GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,926
    edited September 2016
    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    The problem with Ken Clarke as leader is that he regarded being at the heart of the EU as being more important than the future of the Conservative Party.
    Indeed. As I remember it, the reason the Tory members went for IDS is because they believed Ken Clarke's europhillia would destroy what was left of the smoking ruins of the Conservative Party after Tony Blair has beaten it (twice)

    IDS was only ever designed to be a "stop gap" until something better emerged but they thought that was a better strategy than a complete split of the party under Ken Clarke.

    And you could say the strategy worked as IDS lead to Michael Howard which lead to David Cameron which lead to renewal and government.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 92,079
    edited September 2016

    Ken Clarke, the greatest PM we never had.

    He's right on Mrs May and the three Brexiteers.

    She couldn't find two better Brexiteers than David Davis and Liam phuqing Fox?

    That, at least, even some Tory Leavers might agree on.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,515
    edited September 2016
    Our Ken is saying:

    - the hardline Brexiters wont be happy with the outcome, whatever it is
    - the PM faces particularly challenging times (and colleagues)
    - the Government has not yet worked out its approach to Brexit
    - Boris and Gove gave credibility to Farage
    - leaving the EU will be a mistake

    The fifth we have debated at length; he is however entitled to his view notwithstanding the vote, as are we all. The other four assertions appear difficult to contest, to me?
  • Options
    glwglw Posts: 9,554

    Democracy can be a weapon against the people's interests. Just ask McDonnell and Momentum.

    That's true, unfortunately nobody has come up with anything better, until then lets stick with it.
  • Options
    MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,956
    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
    Give it a rest.
    Nope. I note Plato has posted a SC poll on the previous thread.

    Of course, SC is not a DEM target, so utterly irrelevant to anything much at all, other than the fact it has Trump in the lead.
    Given the amount of tosh posted about Labour's prospects before 2015 - EICIPM anyone? - this ranks amongst the least self aware posts I've ever see.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,515
    GIN1138 said:

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    The problem with Ken Clarke as leader is that he regarded being at the heart of the EU as being more important than the future of the Conservative Party.
    Indeed. As I remember it, the reason the Tory members went for IDS is because they believed Ken Clarke's europhillia would destroy what was left of the smoking ruins of the Conservative Party after Tony Blair has beaten it (twice)

    IDS was only ever designed to be a "stop gap" until something better emerged but they thought that was a better strategy than a complete split of the party under Ken Clarke.

    And you could say the strategy worked as IDS lead to Michael Howard which lead to David Cameron which lead to renewal and government.
    Give me a politician more concerned about the future of the country than of his/her party, every time.
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,632
    IanB2 said:

    Fair comment. The only people trying to make that last connection - as a straw person to then knock down - appear to be a few leave voters like Mr CR. And of course a strong correlation between, say, age and the vote does not mean that every older person voted leave and every younger person remain: correlation is not causation.

    Bottom line is that pretty much everyone posting here is better educated and informed, since regular participation in political online forums is likely to be well down the leisure pursuits of most C2DE voters. So none of us can really reflect how many of the population feel, except through anecdote.

    I don't think that's fair, we've had plenty of people try and claim exactly that scenario and call people like us (those who voted leave for reasons other than immigration) "useful idiots" and other such contemptuous insults.

    As for how people feel, I think the leave side had a better handle on it that the remain side. Read Robert's paper on working class people and the effects globalisation has had on their incomes, clearly he understands why there is so much anger within the CDE social groups, this whole being one of nations top investment managers. I have enough contact through my friends and family to see first hand what stagnant incomes are doing and how the housing market, especially in London, is driving people into the arms of Corbyn and other reactionaries. One doesn't have to be living through it to understand it. One of the reasons I want the Tories to get tough on landlords and overseas "investors" in property is because housing presents a long term issue for the party and opens the door to someone like Corbyn in the future. I'd rather they lose a few hundred thousand landlord votes today and force them all to sell up to owner occupiers than have 40% of the country in private rentals looking for a solution and being presented with rent controls by Corbyn.
  • Options
    JobabobJobabob Posts: 3,807

    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
    Give it a rest.
    Nope. I note Plato has posted a SC poll on the previous thread.

    Of course, SC is not a DEM target, so utterly irrelevant to anything much at all, other than the fact it has Trump in the lead.
    By that logic nobody should post anything about the UK that isn't a marginal. People regularly post Scottish polling where the SNP are miles ahead. Voodoo internet polls is another matter.
    Scottish subsampling and (as of yesterday) voodoo polling lead to PB bans, and quite right too. This is a betting site, not a fanzine for deranged Britain First Trumpers to laud their hero.
  • Options
    CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    TBF they weren't given a second chance to demonstrate their wisdom!
  • Options
    IndigoIndigo Posts: 9,966
    FF43 said:

    The problem with the referendum is that Leave isn't a policy. Remain equaled continued membership of the EU and that was a policy. Leave perhaps was a desired outcome but you need a policy to get there. Policy was left deliberately vague during the campaign to avoid startling the horses. May needs one now. She can't keep repeating, I am not going to talk about it. She is also making a tactical error in preventing Parliament having a say. She needs a clear policy to bind her MPs into. So when it all gets a bit crap and they start complaining she can tell them, you voted for it.

    I am beginning to think Theresa May is out of her depth.

    Leave had to be vague because of the idiotic process which ensures that we have no idea what is on offer until after Article 50 is enacted. Cameron could have proposed a policy for Leave, as could anyone else, but since no one will negotiate substantively until after A50 it could have fallen at the first hurdle. The only policy that Leave could guarantee to deliver is the least acceptable, vis repealing the European Communities Act and walking away from all the treaties, anything else is the product of negotiations that can't start until after A50.
  • Options
    JobabobJobabob Posts: 3,807

    Ken Clarke is great, and always says what he thinks. He is also very funny. He just happens to disagree with Leavers. That's fair enough. His views are not exactly a secret, and it would be completely absurd for him to suddenly change his mind. Why on earth would anyone be surprised that he thinks leaving the EU is a catastrophic mistake?

    As for how much influence he has: very little in the Conservative Party nowadays.


    Yes, it's not immediately clear what the Leavers on here would have expected Clarke to say. It's almost the definition of a non-news story insofar as it is a dog biting a man rather than vice versa.
  • Options
    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Ppppolls state pollinbhas a pretty impeccable record and when they were showing Trump leads in battleground sates Clinton was in serious trouble.

    Dems (and clever people who are long Clinton) will be happy with those numbers.
  • Options
    mattmatt Posts: 3,789
    GIN1138 said:

    I suppose the weekend will see further "interventions" from Heseltine and Chris Patten so by Monday morning the media will be screaming blue murder about Tory "splits".

    These three (Clarke, Heseltine and Patten, sometimes aided by John Major) have been playing this game for 25 years. I guess it was too much to hope that leaving the EU might actually shut them up for a bit...

    Equally the right on the Conservative party has been "playing this game" and has actively voted against the government and sought to defeat Conservative administrations. But that's good because they have a moral certainty.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 92,079
    edited September 2016
    IanB2 said:

    Our Ken is saying:

    - the hardline Brexiters wont be happy with the outcome, whatever it is
    - the PM faces particularly challenging times
    - the Government has not yet worked out its approach to Brexit
    - Boris and Gove gave credibility to Farage
    - leaving the EU will be a mistake

    The fifth we have debated at length; he is however entitled to his view notwithstanding the vote, as are we all. The other four assertions appear difficult to contest, to me?

    As summed up that way, that would be reasonable. It's all just tied up with questions of if parliament should have a vote (or must), and whether referenda should be binding or not, and the actual role of MPs vs what people think the role should be. As summed up those points are reasonable, but since some who are unreasonable only see it through the prism of thwarting a vote, it undermines the reasonableness as abstract points.

    The role of MPs and the binding (or not, as in our system) nature of referenda are really the sticking points. Most people would probably agree MPs are there to represent their constituents, and that the role is about them exercising their judgement as they see fit, and the people judge if they think they did a good job at the next election. But applied to the EU vote, that would mean theoretically, though improbably, a majority of MPs would be within their rights to ignore the referendum, even if their own areas voted Leave. And that would lead to a lot of awkwardness people most people also probably think with such evidence of national and/or local will, MPs should not go against that lightly.

    It's all an interesting debate, except for the emotional investment we all have, the fear of Leave or the fear of Leave being taken away, making it far less fun.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,515
    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    Fair comment. The only people trying to make that last connection - as a straw person to then knock down - appear to be a few leave voters like Mr CR. And of course a strong correlation between, say, age and the vote does not mean that every older person voted leave and every younger person remain: correlation is not causation.

    Bottom line is that pretty much everyone posting here is better educated and informed, since regular participation in political online forums is likely to be well down the leisure pursuits of most C2DE voters. So none of us can really reflect how many of the population feel, except through anecdote.

    .. we've had plenty of people try and claim exactly that scenario and call people like us (those who voted leave for reasons other than immigration) "useful idiots" and other such contemptuous insults..

    Not in this thread we haven't. Are people so sensitive that they have to return to such defensiveness even when such points aren't being made?

    The rest of your post is fair comment IMHO.
  • Options
    HHemmelig said:

    Alistair said:

    Trump has just been talking tough about Cuba, that's what makes the newsweek story damaging rather than just old news.

    He also needs to win Florida, which home to a massive Cuban population who fled castro & traditionally more likely to vote republican than other Hispanic groups. So if he did try to do deals with the devil it will go down like a bucket of cold sick.
    My wife's parents fled Castro and are delighted at the thawing of relations with Cuba. I think your stereotype is about 30 years out of date.
    Engagement today us different than doing deals with Fidel. I have to dash but there is polling that shows that yes younger Cubans in Florida are more open to thawing of relations it is because Fidel isn't in charge.
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,419
    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    The problem with Ken Clarke as leader is that he regarded being at the heart of the EU as being more important than the future of the Conservative Party.
    No he didn't. He just strongly believed that being an active participant in the EU was very much in the national interest. I disagreed with him about that then and even more so now but he is of a different generation who remembers the incompetence with which this country conducted its affairs in the 60s and the 70s, all that really stupid class based trade union/incompetent management stuff. I think we are more confident now.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,300
    edited September 2016
    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
    Give it a rest.
    Nope. I note Plato has posted a SC poll on the previous thread.

    Of course, SC is not a DEM target, so utterly irrelevant to anything much at all, other than the fact it has Trump in the lead.
    By that logic nobody should post anything about the UK that isn't a marginal. People regularly post Scottish polling where the SNP are miles ahead. Voodoo internet polls is another matter.
    Scottish subsampling and (as of yesterday) voodoo polling lead to PB bans, and quite right too. This is a betting site, not a fanzine for deranged Britain First Trumpers to laud their hero.
    I didn't say Scottish subsampling. I said polling.

    I have no problem with people posting any legit polling from us from any state. One thing I ask posters, It would be nice to have the 538 rating with it.
  • Options
    JobabobJobabob Posts: 3,807
    glw said:

    Mr. glw, it's a fascinating psychological approach, treating a referendum result as if it's something done to the people rather than by the electorate, whilst claiming democracy in Clarke's desire to thwart the vote of the British people.

    I'd say that he exhibits a typically Europhile view of government. A very top down approach, where the "clever" people decide what the public need, rather than carry out the wishes of the public. He can shove his views where the Sun doesn't shine.

    AKA representative democracy. If we let public opinion directly determine policy we'd have limitless public spending, public hangings and zero taxes.
  • Options
    Sean_F said:

    glw said:

    Mr. glw, it's a fascinating psychological approach, treating a referendum result as if it's something done to the people rather than by the electorate, whilst claiming democracy in Clarke's desire to thwart the vote of the British people.

    I'd say that he exhibits a typically Europhile view of government. A very top down approach, where the "clever" people decide what the public need, rather than carry out the wishes of the public. He can shove his views where the Sun doesn't shine.
    I think it's not so much a Europhile approach, as a belief that the World would best be run by a liberal bureaucracy, all of whom believe in the free movement of people and capital. The public would be allowed to ratify their decisions, but not to challenge them.
    No, Europhiles believe that Europe would best be run along those lines (I'm avoiding commenting on your negative characterisation). What they think about the way the rest of the world should be run is beside the point.
  • Options
    619619 Posts: 1,784

    HHemmelig said:

    Alistair said:

    Trump has just been talking tough about Cuba, that's what makes the newsweek story damaging rather than just old news.

    He also needs to win Florida, which home to a massive Cuban population who fled castro & traditionally more likely to vote republican than other Hispanic groups. So if he did try to do deals with the devil it will go down like a bucket of cold sick.
    My wife's parents fled Castro and are delighted at the thawing of relations with Cuba. I think your stereotype is about 30 years out of date.
    Engagement today us different than doing deals with Fidel. I have to dash but there is polling that shows that yes younger Cubans in Florida are more open to thawing of relations it is because Fidel isn't in charge.
    it shows he broke the law and did deals with a country who was very much at the time an enemy of the USA. It shows him to be a hypocrite only out for himself.
  • Options
    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    I think selecting IDS was the right decision. Yes, he wasn't up to it, but the right man for the time was in place 2 years later and then Cameron 2 years after that.

    People forget this was peak Euro time, in 2001, and with Clarke as leader Blair might well have gone for it. It's always been pretty clear Clarke can't keep his mouth shut when it comes to Europe. Clarke's campaign material was also pompous, and self-entitled, whilst IDS at least paid members some respect and made a good case for focussing on social problems.

    Our entry into the Euro would have been a national disaster, and I wanted to keep the party intact, so I voted IDS.

    I have no regrets.
  • Options
    mattmatt Posts: 3,789
    HHemmelig said:

    Alistair said:

    Trump has just been talking tough about Cuba, that's what makes the newsweek story damaging rather than just old news.

    He also needs to win Florida, which home to a massive Cuban population who fled castro & traditionally more likely to vote republican than other Hispanic groups. So if he did try to do deals with the devil it will go down like a bucket of cold sick.
    My wife's parents fled Castro and are delighted at the thawing of relations with Cuba. I think your stereotype is about 30 years out of date.
    15 perhaps. The number of flights that AA is planning to operate/already operates from Miami to Cuba suggests that the demand for easy travel is there.
  • Options
    Ishmael_XIshmael_X Posts: 3,664
    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
    Give it a rest.
    Nope. I note Plato has posted a SC poll on the previous thread.

    Of course, SC is not a DEM target, so utterly irrelevant to anything much at all, other than the fact it has Trump in the lead.
    By that logic nobody should post anything about the UK that isn't a marginal. People regularly post Scottish polling where the SNP are miles ahead. Voodoo internet polls is another matter.
    Scottish subsampling and (as of yesterday) voodoo polling lead to PB bans, and quite right too. This is a betting site, not a fanzine for deranged Britain First Trumpers to laud their hero.
    I am absolutely certain that no one in the history of the site has ever placed a bet on the basis of an unverified report on here of a subsample or a voodoo poll. If they did, serve them right. DYOR is one of the better acronyms the internet has given rise to.
  • Options
    GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,926
    edited September 2016
    matt said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I suppose the weekend will see further "interventions" from Heseltine and Chris Patten so by Monday morning the media will be screaming blue murder about Tory "splits".

    These three (Clarke, Heseltine and Patten, sometimes aided by John Major) have been playing this game for 25 years. I guess it was too much to hope that leaving the EU might actually shut them up for a bit...

    Equally the right on the Conservative party has been "playing this game" and has actively voted against the government and sought to defeat Conservative administrations. But that's good because they have a moral certainty.
    In many ways these arguments are now irrelevant. The public has voted and the politicians have got to get on with it.

    Instead of Ken Clarke lamenting what's happened and ranting and raving about Cameron giving people the referendum wouldn't it be more constructive to lay out what his vision of "Brexit" is? (I assume Single Market membership, continuation of free movement, etc.)

    Even the Labour Party is (very slowly) starting to come to terms with what's happened and beginning to put forward a few ideas for what they'd like to see happen next...
  • Options
    619619 Posts: 1,784
    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43


    Is Clinton the greater number in all of these polls @619??
    yup. sorry should be clearer! the numbers lower below are even worse for trump. He made his 'not presidential' flaws even worse
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,515
    Indigo said:

    FF43 said:

    The problem with the referendum is that Leave isn't a policy. Remain equaled continued membership of the EU and that was a policy. Leave perhaps was a desired outcome but you need a policy to get there. Policy was left deliberately vague during the campaign to avoid startling the horses. May needs one now. She can't keep repeating, I am not going to talk about it. She is also making a tactical error in preventing Parliament having a say. She needs a clear policy to bind her MPs into. So when it all gets a bit crap and they start complaining she can tell them, you voted for it.

    I am beginning to think Theresa May is out of her depth.

    Leave had to be vague because of the idiotic process which ensures that we have no idea what is on offer until after Article 50 is enacted. Cameron could have proposed a policy for Leave, as could anyone else, but since no one will negotiate substantively until after A50 it could have fallen at the first hurdle. The only policy that Leave could guarantee to deliver is the least acceptable, vis repealing the European Communities Act and walking away from all the treaties, anything else is the product of negotiations that can't start until after A50.
    I rather think that Leave had to be vague to keep the tent big enough to win a majority; there was never going to be a majority for 'hard Brexit'. Which is fair enough, as being in their self interest in a yes/no referendum.

    In theory at least (if sadly not in practice) it would have been better to have worked out four or five possible futures for the UK - for example full EU involvement, semi-detached EU (as before), continental Brexit (Norway etc.), and full English Brexit. And then put these to a Referendum using the Alternative Vote mechanism, whose fame in being the best way to choose which from a list of options has the support of the majority is of course legendary.

    Now that would have been fun (at least for us here on PB)!
  • Options
    619619 Posts: 1,784
    619 said:

    HHemmelig said:

    Alistair said:

    Trump has just been talking tough about Cuba, that's what makes the newsweek story damaging rather than just old news.

    He also needs to win Florida, which home to a massive Cuban population who fled castro & traditionally more likely to vote republican than other Hispanic groups. So if he did try to do deals with the devil it will go down like a bucket of cold sick.
    My wife's parents fled Castro and are delighted at the thawing of relations with Cuba. I think your stereotype is about 30 years out of date.
    Engagement today us different than doing deals with Fidel. I have to dash but there is polling that shows that yes younger Cubans in Florida are more open to thawing of relations it is because Fidel isn't in charge.
    it shows he broke the law and did deals with a country who was very much at the time an enemy of the USA. It shows him to be a hypocrite only out for himself.
    oh. and when he was in miami recently. he said he would never do deals with such a corrupt regime.
  • Options
    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    The problem with Ken Clarke as leader is that he regarded being at the heart of the EU as being more important than the future of the Conservative Party.
    With Clarke as leader all three main leaders of the UK political parties would have been very pro EU and Europe, and the centre of gravity would have been decidedly centre/centre-left.

    IMHO this would have led to a huge chasm on the Right, and the rise of UKIP much earlier. Possibly enough to stop the Conservatives from even getting near power under FPTP when the time eventually came.
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,632
    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    Fair comment. The only people trying to make that last connection - as a straw person to then knock down - appear to be a few leave voters like Mr CR. And of course a strong correlation between, say, age and the vote does not mean that every older person voted leave and every younger person remain: correlation is not causation.

    Bottom line is that pretty much everyone posting here is better educated and informed, since regular participation in political online forums is likely to be well down the leisure pursuits of most C2DE voters. So none of us can really reflect how many of the population feel, except through anecdote.

    .. we've had plenty of people try and claim exactly that scenario and call people like us (those who voted leave for reasons other than immigration) "useful idiots" and other such contemptuous insults..

    Not in this thread we haven't. Are people so sensitive that they have to return to such defensiveness even when such points aren't being made?

    The rest of your post is fair comment IMHO.
    It's been said often enough since the result that it is beginning to become the default arguing position of the remaim side, even on more thoughtful places like here.

    Which is why I hope you understand that voting to stay in the EU would just have continued to store up problems and eventually resulted in a very large and very bitter reaction from those who have lost out from globalisation and specifically the EU. The EU is a badly designed political union that needs huge reform or to just call it a day. We're seeing a rise in reactionary parties across the EU, much of it is being fuelled by anti-EU feeling, eventually one of those parties will break through in Western Europe, or takeover a mainstream party. The EU is the cause of too much personal suffering in the European nations, until that stops being the case I think our vote to leave will be vindicated, economy be damned.
  • Options
    JobabobJobabob Posts: 3,807
    619 said:

    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43


    Is Clinton the greater number in all of these polls @619??
    yup. sorry should be clearer! the numbers lower below are even worse for trump. He made his 'not presidential' flaws even worse
    No worries. Thanks for posting. It is the two 'pink' states on the eastern seaboard – FL and NC – that will terrify the GOP. If Hillary rolls over FL, it's game over – an early night for everyone.
  • Options
    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,806
    Indigo said:

    FF43 said:

    The problem with the referendum is that Leave isn't a policy. Remain equaled continued membership of the EU and that was a policy. Leave perhaps was a desired outcome but you need a policy to get there. Policy was left deliberately vague during the campaign to avoid startling the horses. May needs one now. She can't keep repeating, I am not going to talk about it. She is also making a tactical error in preventing Parliament having a say. She needs a clear policy to bind her MPs into. So when it all gets a bit crap and they start complaining she can tell them, you voted for it.

    I am beginning to think Theresa May is out of her depth.

    Leave had to be vague because of the idiotic process which ensures that we have no idea what is on offer until after Article 50 is enacted. Cameron could have proposed a policy for Leave, as could anyone else, but since no one will negotiate substantively until after A50 it could have fallen at the first hurdle. The only policy that Leave could guarantee to deliver is the least acceptable, vis repealing the European Communities Act and walking away from all the treaties, anything else is the product of negotiations that can't start until after A50.
    I am not sure I agree that the Leave campaign was constrained that way. I never thought I would feel sorry for the SNP but they did produce a document detailing how they envisaged independence being achieved. Based on "heroic" assumptions, to be sure, but it was a serious attempt to answer the questions. They lost. The Leave campaign put up a blank piece of paper to project any old nonsense onto, and believe me it was nonsense of the highest order. They won.

    Whatever. The referendum has been decided and Theresa May needs a policy now
  • Options

    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    The problem with Ken Clarke as leader is that he regarded being at the heart of the EU as being more important than the future of the Conservative Party.
    With Clarke as leader all three main leaders of the UK political parties would have been very pro EU and Europe, and the centre of gravity would have been decidedly centre/centre-left.

    IMHO this would have led to a huge chasm on the Right, and the rise of UKIP much earlier. Possibly enough to stop the Conservatives from even getting near power under FPTP when the time eventually came.
    The time would have come much sooner. Who would have provided better opposition to Blair on issues like public spending or Iraq, IDS or Clarke? There's every reason to believe that Clarke would have been a formidable opponent to New Labour.
  • Options
    HHemmeligHHemmelig Posts: 617
    edited September 2016
    matt said:

    HHemmelig said:

    Alistair said:

    Trump has just been talking tough about Cuba, that's what makes the newsweek story damaging rather than just old news.

    He also needs to win Florida, which home to a massive Cuban population who fled castro & traditionally more likely to vote republican than other Hispanic groups. So if he did try to do deals with the devil it will go down like a bucket of cold sick.
    My wife's parents fled Castro and are delighted at the thawing of relations with Cuba. I think your stereotype is about 30 years out of date.
    15 perhaps. The number of flights that AA is planning to operate/already operates from Miami to Cuba suggests that the demand for easy travel is there.
    Indeed. The other point is that many/most of the emigres fled in the 50s/60s and are now either pretty old or dead. At least going by my wife's family as an example, their children inherited little if any hostility their parents had to Cuba, nor did they inherit their parents' propensity to vote Republican.
  • Options
    IndigoIndigo Posts: 9,966
    IanB2 said:

    Indigo said:

    FF43 said:

    The problem with the referendum is that Leave isn't a policy. Remain equaled continued membership of the EU and that was a policy. Leave perhaps was a desired outcome but you need a policy to get there. Policy was left deliberately vague during the campaign to avoid startling the horses. May needs one now. She can't keep repeating, I am not going to talk about it. She is also making a tactical error in preventing Parliament having a say. She needs a clear policy to bind her MPs into. So when it all gets a bit crap and they start complaining she can tell them, you voted for it.

    I am beginning to think Theresa May is out of her depth.

    Leave had to be vague because of the idiotic process which ensures that we have no idea what is on offer until after Article 50 is enacted. Cameron could have proposed a policy for Leave, as could anyone else, but since no one will negotiate substantively until after A50 it could have fallen at the first hurdle. The only policy that Leave could guarantee to deliver is the least acceptable, vis repealing the European Communities Act and walking away from all the treaties, anything else is the product of negotiations that can't start until after A50.
    I rather think that Leave had to be vague to keep the tent big enough to win a majority; there was never going to be a majority for 'hard Brexit'. Which is fair enough, as being in their self interest in a yes/no referendum.

    In theory at least (if sadly not in practice) it would have been better to have worked out four or five possible futures for the UK - for example full EU involvement, semi-detached EU (as before), continental Brexit (Norway etc.), and full English Brexit. And then put these to a Referendum using the Alternative Vote mechanism, whose fame in being the best way to choose which from a list of options has the support of the majority is of course legendary.

    Now that would have been fun (at least for us here on PB)!
    The last is definitely true, the rest I am more sceptical about. Suppose we had a referendum on that basis and the Norway position won, and then we found after A50 that is was not on the table as far as exit negotiations were concerned.
  • Options
    geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,177
    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn.
    . . .

    Maybe but today Ken reminds us why.
  • Options
    JackWJackW Posts: 14,787
    All the swing state PPP polls are post debate.
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    JobabobJobabob Posts: 3,807
    Ishmael_X said:

    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
    Give it a rest.
    Nope. I note Plato has posted a SC poll on the previous thread.

    Of course, SC is not a DEM target, so utterly irrelevant to anything much at all, other than the fact it has Trump in the lead.
    By that logic nobody should post anything about the UK that isn't a marginal. People regularly post Scottish polling where the SNP are miles ahead. Voodoo internet polls is another matter.
    Scottish subsampling and (as of yesterday) voodoo polling lead to PB bans, and quite right too. This is a betting site, not a fanzine for deranged Britain First Trumpers to laud their hero.
    I am absolutely certain that no one in the history of the site has ever placed a bet on the basis of an unverified report on here of a subsample or a voodoo poll. If they did, serve them right. DYOR is one of the better acronyms the internet has given rise to.
    Yes but many of us have limited time. Trawling through the PB Morning Shift's Trump propaganda presented as scientific polling is just a waste of it.
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    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,869

    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    I think selecting IDS was the right decision. Yes, he wasn't up to it, but the right man for the time was in place 2 years later and then Cameron 2 years after that.

    People forget this was peak Euro time, in 2001, and with Clarke as leader Blair might well have gone for it. It's always been pretty clear Clarke can't keep his mouth shut when it comes to Europe. Clarke's campaign material was also pompous, and self-entitled, whilst IDS at least paid members some respect and made a good case for focussing on social problems.

    Our entry into the Euro would have been a national disaster, and I wanted to keep the party intact, so I voted IDS.

    I have no regrets.

    While I voted remain, and regard Clarke as the best Chancellor of my lifetime - so good that his legacy even made Gordon Brown look good for a number of years - I have to agree that there was realistically no way that his uncompromising views on Europe would have allowed him to become leader at that time.
    And our joining the euro with his backing would have ruined his legacy.
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    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,869
    The liberal media....

    http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/editorial/2016/09/27/hillary-clinton-endorsement/91198668/

    Since The Arizona Republic began publication in 1890, we have never endorsed a Democrat over a Republican for president. Never. This reflects a deep philosophical appreciation for conservative ideals and Republican principles.

    This year is different.

    The 2016 Republican candidate is not conservative and he is not qualified
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    FF43 said:

    The problem with the referendum is that Leave isn't a policy. Remain equaled continued membership of the EU and that was a policy. Leave perhaps was a desired outcome but you need a policy to get there. Policy was left deliberately vague during the campaign to avoid startling the horses. May needs one now. She can't keep repeating, I am not going to talk about it. She is also making a tactical error in preventing Parliament having a say. She needs a clear policy to bind her MPs into. So when it all gets a bit crap and they start complaining she can tell them, you voted for it.

    I am beginning to think Theresa May is out of her depth.

    I have never found her very impressive. On the face of it, having strong-willed mediocrities like Liam Fox, David Davis and Boris Johnson anywhere near the Brexit negotiations is a recipe for trouble. Hammond gives me some hope, but I fear his role will be to make the best of a bad job.
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    mattmatt Posts: 3,789
    GIN1138 said:

    matt said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I suppose the weekend will see further "interventions" from Heseltine and Chris Patten so by Monday morning the media will be screaming blue murder about Tory "splits".

    These three (Clarke, Heseltine and Patten, sometimes aided by John Major) have been playing this game for 25 years. I guess it was too much to hope that leaving the EU might actually shut them up for a bit...

    Equally the right on the Conservative party has been "playing this game" and has actively voted against the government and sought to defeat Conservative administrations. But that's good because they have a moral certainty.
    In many ways these arguments are now irrelevant. The public has voted and the politicians have got to get on with it.

    Instead of Ken Clarke lamenting what's happened and ranting and raving about Cameron giving people the referendum wouldn't it be more constructive to lay out what his vision of "Brexit" is? (I assume Single Market membership, continuation of free movement, etc.)

    Even the Labour Party is (very slowly) starting to come to terms with what's happened and beginning to put forward a few ideas for what they'd like to see happen next...
    Oh I agree with that in practice. It's just that only some people appear to be permitted to have principles.
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    GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,926

    There's every reason to believe that Clarke would have been a formidable opponent to New Labour.

    When not joining them every second day to try and get the UK into the Euro...

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    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,445
    GIN1138 said:

    matt said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I suppose the weekend will see further "interventions" from Heseltine and Chris Patten so by Monday morning the media will be screaming blue murder about Tory "splits".

    These three (Clarke, Heseltine and Patten, sometimes aided by John Major) have been playing this game for 25 years. I guess it was too much to hope that leaving the EU might actually shut them up for a bit...

    Equally the right on the Conservative party has been "playing this game" and has actively voted against the government and sought to defeat Conservative administrations. But that's good because they have a moral certainty.
    In many ways these arguments are now irrelevant. The public has voted and the politicians have got to get on with it.

    Instead of Ken Clarke lamenting what's happened and ranting and raving about Cameron giving people the referendum wouldn't it be more constructive to lay out what his vision of "Brexit" is? (I assume Single Market membership, continuation of free movement, etc.)

    Even the Labour Party is (very slowly) starting to come to terms with what's happened and beginning to put forward a few ideas for what they'd like to see happen next...
    There is no reason to think that the extreme eurosceptic wing of the Cons won't be just as bloody in regard to hard vs soft Brexit as they were generally anti-EU previously.

    We are likely in for a Hard Brexit because our opening negotiating position will be no free movement of people. At that point, it is up to the EU27 to decide amongst themselves how much of a fudge if any to give us.
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    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,005
    Ishmael_X said:

    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
    Give it a rest.
    Nope. I note Plato has posted a SC poll on the previous thread.

    Of course, SC is not a DEM target, so utterly irrelevant to anything much at all, other than the fact it has Trump in the lead.
    By that logic nobody should post anything about the UK that isn't a marginal. People regularly post Scottish polling where the SNP are miles ahead. Voodoo internet polls is another matter.
    Scottish subsampling and (as of yesterday) voodoo polling lead to PB bans, and quite right too. This is a betting site, not a fanzine for deranged Britain First Trumpers to laud their hero.
    I am absolutely certain that no one in the history of the site has ever placed a bet on the basis of an unverified report on here of a subsample or a voodoo poll. If they did, serve them right. DYOR is one of the better acronyms the internet has given rise to.
    Or on overspun thread headers...
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    taffystaffys Posts: 9,753
    edited September 2016
    ''Ken Clarke is great, and always says what he thinks.''

    He was a brilliant chancellor, who picked up from the debacle of EMU and gave Gordon Brown a golden legacy.

    If he'd pre-empted his own success, and slashed taxes in 1996, the tories might have lost by a good deal less.
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    GIN1138 said:

    matt said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I suppose the weekend will see further "interventions" from Heseltine and Chris Patten so by Monday morning the media will be screaming blue murder about Tory "splits".

    These three (Clarke, Heseltine and Patten, sometimes aided by John Major) have been playing this game for 25 years. I guess it was too much to hope that leaving the EU might actually shut them up for a bit...

    Equally the right on the Conservative party has been "playing this game" and has actively voted against the government and sought to defeat Conservative administrations. But that's good because they have a moral certainty.
    In many ways these arguments are now irrelevant. The public has voted and the politicians have got to get on with it.

    Instead of Ken Clarke lamenting what's happened and ranting and raving about Cameron giving people the referendum wouldn't it be more constructive to lay out what his vision of "Brexit" is? (I assume Single Market membership, continuation of free movement, etc.)

    Even the Labour Party is (very slowly) starting to come to terms with what's happened and beginning to put forward a few ideas for what they'd like to see happen next...
    14 years ago it would have concerned me.

    Today, Ken Clarke is no threat whatsoever so I look on at his arguments with wry amusement.

    He can say what he likes, as far as I'm concerned.
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    GIN1138 said:

    There's every reason to believe that Clarke would have been a formidable opponent to New Labour.

    When not joining them every second day to try and get the UK into the Euro...

    In other words, co-opting the government to do his bidding. That's smart opposition.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,515
    edited September 2016
    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    Fair comment. . And of course a strong correlation between, say, age and the vote does not mean that every older person voted leave and every younger person remain: correlation is not causation.

    Bottom line is that pretty much everyone posting here is better educated and informed, since regular participation in political online forums is likely to be well down the leisure pursuits of most C2DE voters. So none of us can really reflect how many of the population feel, except through anecdote.

    .. we've had plenty of people try and claim exactly that scenario and call people like us (those who voted leave for reasons other than immigration) "useful idiots" and other such contemptuous insults..

    Not in this thread we haven't. Are people so sensitive that they have to return to such defensiveness even when such points aren't being made?

    The rest of your post is fair comment IMHO.
    It's been said often enough since the result that it is beginning to become the default arguing position of the remaim side, even on more thoughtful places like here.

    Which is why I hope you understand that voting to stay in the EU would just have continued to store up problems and eventually resulted in a very large and very bitter reaction from those who have lost out from globalisation and specifically the EU. The EU is a badly designed political union that needs huge reform or to just call it a day. We're seeing a rise in reactionary parties across the EU, much of it is being fuelled by anti-EU feeling, eventually one of those parties will break through in Western Europe, or takeover a mainstream party. The EU is the cause of too much personal suffering in the European nations, until that stops being the case I think our vote to leave will be vindicated, economy be damned.
    I don't see the EU like that. Some of your points may have a little validity as regards the Euro, in relation to Greece etc., but the Euro isn't the EU.

    The same discontent and reaction is being seen outside the EU, Trump and the US being the obvious case. So surely it is the management of the global economy particularly since the crash: ZIRP & QE boosting the assets of the wealthy; the long trend towards oligarchic capitalism; the small elite of super-powerful/super-rich; the threat from cheap labour as the economy becomes more global - that is fuelling it. None of which is down to the EU (indeed aspects of the EU tend to act as a brake on the trend towards Anglo-American capitalism).

    Further, I am yet to be convinced that our leaving the EU will do anything whatsoever to assuage the discontent; indeed it is probable that the discontented may find themselves worse off still.
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    Sean_F said:

    DavidL said:

    Choosing IDS instead of Ken Clarke as leader was a ridiculous act of self harm by the Conservative party entirely analogous to Labour choosing Corbyn. All that can be said in favour of the membership is that they were only that stupid once.

    There is enough truth in what he says for it to sting a bit but Ken is no longer a player in the party or the country. Mrs May has a lot of work to do this week in showing that she genuinely has a grip and a vision of where her premiership is going. It is very much in not just the party's interest but the national interest that she succeeds in this.

    The problem with Ken Clarke as leader is that he regarded being at the heart of the EU as being more important than the future of the Conservative Party.
    With Clarke as leader all three main leaders of the UK political parties would have been very pro EU and Europe, and the centre of gravity would have been decidedly centre/centre-left.

    IMHO this would have led to a huge chasm on the Right, and the rise of UKIP much earlier. Possibly enough to stop the Conservatives from even getting near power under FPTP when the time eventually came.
    The time would have come much sooner. Who would have provided better opposition to Blair on issues like public spending or Iraq, IDS or Clarke? There's every reason to believe that Clarke would have been a formidable opponent to New Labour.
    Oh, he's pretty sound on the money. But a Conservative leader is about so much more to me than just the level of income tax.

    As for Iraq, he'd have been competing with Charles Kennedy and probably would have split his own party over that too.

    If he'd brought down Blair with it, we'd have had Brown 4 years earlier.
  • Options
    IndigoIndigo Posts: 9,966
    TOPPING said:

    We are likely in for a Hard Brexit because our opening negotiating position will be no free movement of people. At that point, it is up to the EU27 to decide amongst themselves how much of a fudge if any to give us.

    That appears to be what the public at large want (we can argue about how well they understand the implications of that), the polling showing the clear preference for end of freedom of movement over being in the single market was clear cut.

  • Options
    Ishmael_XIshmael_X Posts: 3,664
    FF43 said:

    Indigo said:

    FF43 said:

    The problem with the referendum is that Leave isn't a policy. Remain equaled continued membership of the EU and that was a policy. Leave perhaps was a desired outcome but you need a policy to get there. Policy was left deliberately vague during the campaign to avoid startling the horses. May needs one now. She can't keep repeating, I am not going to talk about it. She is also making a tactical error in preventing Parliament having a say. She needs a clear policy to bind her MPs into. So when it all gets a bit crap and they start complaining she can tell them, you voted for it.

    I am beginning to think Theresa May is out of her depth.

    Leave had to be vague because of the idiotic process which ensures that we have no idea what is on offer until after Article 50 is enacted. Cameron could have proposed a policy for Leave, as could anyone else, but since no one will negotiate substantively until after A50 it could have fallen at the first hurdle. The only policy that Leave could guarantee to deliver is the least acceptable, vis repealing the European Communities Act and walking away from all the treaties, anything else is the product of negotiations that can't start until after A50.
    I am not sure I agree that the Leave campaign was constrained that way. I never thought I would feel sorry for the SNP but they did produce a document detailing how they envisaged independence being achieved. Based on "heroic" assumptions, to be sure, but it was a serious attempt to answer the questions. They lost. The Leave campaign put up a blank piece of paper to project any old nonsense onto, and believe me it was nonsense of the highest order. They won.

    Whatever. The referendum has been decided and Theresa May needs a policy now
    The difference is that the SNP is a party, whereas the Leave campaign was just a campaign which ceased to exist on 24 June, so no one has ownership of the result. This is why referenda are a bad idea.
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    PlatoSaidPlatoSaid Posts: 10,383
    Telegraph
    Philip Hammond has announced the end of George Osborne's flagship 'Help to Buy' scheme
    https://t.co/WA6k0SaU9e
  • Options


    If he'd brought down Blair with it, we'd have had Brown 4 years earlier.

    So Brown out of 11 Downing Street 4 years earlier. Brown fully exposed to public opinion 4 years earlier. Brown out on his ear much earlier.

    What about this scenario is possibly bad from a Conservative perspective?
  • Options
    Ishmael_XIshmael_X Posts: 3,664
    Jobabob said:

    Ishmael_X said:

    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    Jobabob said:

    619 said:

    oh dear. bad polls for trump, esp florida

    public policy polling
    Colorado 46-40
    Florida 48-45
    NC 49-45
    Pennsylvania 49-44
    Virginia 49-43

    Will all be widely ignored on here
    Give it a rest.
    Nope. I note Plato has posted a SC poll on the previous thread.

    Of course, SC is not a DEM target, so utterly irrelevant to anything much at all, other than the fact it has Trump in the lead.
    By that logic nobody should post anything about the UK that isn't a marginal. People regularly post Scottish polling where the SNP are miles ahead. Voodoo internet polls is another matter.
    Scottish subsampling and (as of yesterday) voodoo polling lead to PB bans, and quite right too. This is a betting site, not a fanzine for deranged Britain First Trumpers to laud their hero.
    I am absolutely certain that no one in the history of the site has ever placed a bet on the basis of an unverified report on here of a subsample or a voodoo poll. If they did, serve them right. DYOR is one of the better acronyms the internet has given rise to.
    Yes but many of us have limited time. Trawling through the PB Morning Shift's Trump propaganda presented as scientific polling is just a waste of it.
    So put Plato on ignore. Problem 95% solved (from your point of view).
  • Options
    TOPPING said:

    GIN1138 said:

    matt said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I suppose the weekend will see further "interventions" from Heseltine and Chris Patten so by Monday morning the media will be screaming blue murder about Tory "splits".

    These three (Clarke, Heseltine and Patten, sometimes aided by John Major) have been playing this game for 25 years. I guess it was too much to hope that leaving the EU might actually shut them up for a bit...

    Equally the right on the Conservative party has been "playing this game" and has actively voted against the government and sought to defeat Conservative administrations. But that's good because they have a moral certainty.
    In many ways these arguments are now irrelevant. The public has voted and the politicians have got to get on with it.

    Instead of Ken Clarke lamenting what's happened and ranting and raving about Cameron giving people the referendum wouldn't it be more constructive to lay out what his vision of "Brexit" is? (I assume Single Market membership, continuation of free movement, etc.)

    Even the Labour Party is (very slowly) starting to come to terms with what's happened and beginning to put forward a few ideas for what they'd like to see happen next...
    There is no reason to think that the extreme eurosceptic wing of the Cons won't be just as bloody in regard to hard vs soft Brexit as they were generally anti-EU previously.

    We are likely in for a Hard Brexit because our opening negotiating position will be no free movement of people. At that point, it is up to the EU27 to decide amongst themselves how much of a fudge if any to give us.
    May is savvy enough not to table a proposal to the EU they will have no choice but to refuse.

    She will propose maintenance of free movement for high-income workers in services, together with those with job offers above a certain income level, but demand an end to absolute free movement of citizens and limits/quotas for low-income workers.

    All the language has been about how you can't have your cake and eat it, not that you can't have some of the cake if you are willing to share some of it.
This discussion has been closed.