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History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Then after that, and if we are being punished for some serious crimes committed in a previous life, it descends into whatever this is.
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Quibble. It was Hodge not Beckett as the Margaret in question.
But sadly, possibly correct.
They will live or die by the end result.
Conservatives could be out of power for a generation.
https://twitter.com/david_cameron/status/595112367358406656?s=21
But it seems to me it would take a MIRACLE for the Tories to come out of this not looking terrible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0usmMfs5IY
Hello? May and DUP?
The campaign was perfunctory (contrast with Indyref), so the question of what kind of Leave was never aired properly, and it was treated by the Media as a battle between 2 Tory tribes, with contrasting voices getting little air time.
No Leave position was therefore on the ballot. Just a theoretical "Leave". The same could be said for Remain.
These were Dave's decisions.
They were poor, and on him.
And for the "big issue" - if that does happen, do they have the vision and unity that would be required to re-orient Britain's place in the world? There are viable alternatives to the EU/EEA - not saying cost-free, but an option like "Singapore-on-Sea" or some other model that makes the position rather more workable. Yet that would require a kind of radical reshaping I don't see the current Tory party as having the courage of conviction to carry through.
The only point of a referendum is to provide democratic legitimacy - if Leave denied the ability to get such legitimacy by not taking part it would be pointless.
People need to forget about it. There won’t be a second referendum.
Not a theoretical alternative history one.
I, for one, am ucomfortable with that.
It would have been interesting if Brexit actually forced them to reflect a little, and even perhaps become the kind of organisation that, ironically, people in the UK would not want to have left in the first place, but when you read the comments from people who act like the EU is the source of all decency and culture in the world, and that the EU commission believes it as well, and the comments from the more militant pro EU people who don't even pretend it is a good organisation (the comments about how ruthless they will be, how inevitable it is, how they don't give a damn about large countries on their doorsteps), we know that won't happen.
And yet somehow the Tories by their inability to arrive at a position to try to sell to the public in the first place, that's still not looking that bad.
Night all
Would be electoral suicide.
Allying with someone else is not automatically a bad thing. Obviously in our system where it is rarely needed nobody wants to admit in advance it can work, so they say working with someone else is bad. But it doesn't have to be, so surely has to bejudged on merit each time. Would working with the SNP have been bad? Some will say no, clearly the Tories thought it a winning line back then.
Is working with the DUP bad? Well, how much influence have the DUP had which is negative is the question. The extra money is not much in the grand scheme of things, what else have they had influence on? Not the hard border in the Irish sea thing, since we know not just they care about that.
But no-one voted for JRM and his Merrie Persons to set policy.
day one would take in Penzance and St Ives
day two Falmouth and Newquay
the final day Looe (plus Gunnislake).
To be fair, it isn't voters in Sunderland that the Tories will be worried of. But my point was precisely that even if Hammond started arguing that now is the time to start aping Singapore (I'm not sure that he would, he didn't seem to have much conviction in his threat - or any hint of follow-up in terms of contingency preparations) then I don't know whether he'd even be able to sell it to the current cabinet, let alone the good denizens of Sunderland, and I would rate it as extremely unlikely he could sway his own backbenchers. On the other hand, I'm not sure I can see any other model that the whole Tory party would swing behind either.
If Labour took office in an election after no-deal, it is not beyond belief that they will do so on the back of selling a "big picture" of how they are going to transform Britain to make its new situation work out. Again, not saying the plan would actually work and am sure plenty of PBers would see any Corbynite plan as incredibly destructive, but my point is simply that one can imagine Labour coming up with an alternative vision, largely uniting around it, and actually selling it. Maybe even making an honest attempt to implement it. It's rather harder to imagine the Tory party in its current state accomplishing any of those things.
I would suggest that is somewhat sophistic. Right now we are in the pocket of an ERG/DUP axis.
Not a theoretical alternative history one.
I, for one, am ucomfortable with that.
And that is ne elses
Is it fine to be in the ERG's pocket? 'Cos the DUP fine. I don't like it, but it was the GE result, I will accept it.
But no-one voted for JRM and his Merrie Persons to set policy.
Well that is something we always have to live with. Since when do we the voters get to dictate how internal party politics will play out over the course of a parliament? When Turnball replaced Abbott, or Gillard replaced Rudd, due to party machinations did Australian voters really get to weigh in on the internal battles that were causing all that ruckus? When we vote for our MP we probably have no idea which party faction they belong to, and certainly no idea how they might shift depending on developments over time. I don't like that the ERG lot seem to be driving the show, but party drama is not something we have much influence on. If parties could not shift around with their factions no one could ever rebel from the manifesto all were elected on, and yet we know for a fact some people get elected on such without even supporting their own party position.
Fair enough. Am begining to believe ihat multi-member STV may be an option, then we can at least rank those preferences.
Used to be we voted Labour or Tory with some idea of the consequences.
Soubry/JRM and Corbyn/Ummuna seem light years apart,
And now I must wish you good night.
The Leave vote was undoubtedly for Change. Continuity Remain offers minimal to no change
If the best the Tories can come up with is more Singapore, then it will have to be a different kind of change.
Corbyn it will be then.
A job well done.
(for the pedants, you might try changing "lead" to "led" while you're at it!)
As predicted:
Smart meters to cut energy bills by just £11, say MPs
"Customers have financed the smart meter programme by paying a levy on their energy bills, while suppliers have frequently blamed the levy for rising costs.
However the report claimed most of the eventual savings would be made by energy firms, rather than consumers."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44903471
It was a marginal idea, poorly implemented; in fact, it's hard to see how it cost so much technology-wise: the 'costs' must be on installation and operation.
(For the purposes of clarity, many moons ago Mrs J spent a couple of years developing a chip for this sort of apparatus.)
The problem is not the ERG or the DUP. The problem is, as I have been pointing out for months, that there is no such thing as Soft Brexit and May has just proven it. There is BINO (eg EEA plus CU) or Hard Brexit (CETA or No Deal).
The remainers have been whining for two years about the 'headbangers' and how we could have Soft Brexit of only the 'grown ups' could take charge and 'compromise' with the EU. And now, as we told you all along, it doesn't work. And that is somehow the fault of the Leavers. SMH.
I'll get a lot of grief for this but I actually quite like Barnier. I think he's been as straight with us as we might have been able to expect.
Enjoyed the article, not least the concluding implied support for the principle of Enormo-Haddock Voting
However, he was also the French Minister of Agriculture who flatly refused to pay the €1.5 billion in fines for a highly illegal ban imposed on our beef, at which point the spineless EU legal system caved in and waived the fine.
I don't think I'd call him straight. More honest and more sober than Juncker, perhaps, but that's like saying someone is less murderous than Idi Amin.
But you can guarantee that the costs of this wizard wheeze will be paid by the consumers. And people such as yourself will pay for it and not get any of the (marginal) advantages ...
I struggle in my adult lifetime to recall a time when there was such a mismatch between an economy doing remarkably well and a government that gives chaos a bad name. Normally governments fall into chaos because they are struggling to cope with adverse economic events.
Here, of course, it is Brexit. May's determination to avoid making decisions for the last 2 years has come home to roost. Will she find a way through to a vaguely credible if suboptimal deal? Who knows? It is a toss of a coin, it really is. We can only hope.
They encourage us and the utility companies to fit them, and they encourage us to switch suppliers to get the best deal.
They are incompatible. My smart meter was installed in March and in May, I switched suppliers for a better deal. Result ... the smart meter no longer works. The old company were using this as a reason not to switch.
Newer, more modern meters are coming in gradually, but never let politicians loose with science; they never understand it. It's like letting children loose with fireworks. And it's your money they're wasting.
PS, they are compatible with solar panels. Another example of a politician's enthusiasm running away with him. Mine were fitted when Miliband had been let loose. I'm almost embarrassed to take all the money. Especially as it's the green tariff that is paying for it.
Unemployment is low, but with poor wages and high living costs we have high levels of in-work poverty.
The economy could certainly be doing a lot worse, but let's not fool ourselves that it's doing all that well.
May has no Machiavelli plotting to help her. She had the completely anonymous and pointless Damien Green who, despite having almost nothing to do still managed to screw up, then the even more anonymous David Lidington. Neither were or are even close to the legendary Willie Whitelaw who helped Maggie through so many difficult episodes. She cannot bring herself to work with her Chancellor who is boring and politically inept but despite that has some idea what he is doing. It is a government without a centre. Drift and apparent incompetence is inevitable.
It's almost as if being locked up in the fortress of the Home Office where the main priority is always to avoid responsibility for a decision and to say as little as possible is not ideal training for a PM, isn't it?
They were rubbish
We do hold some significant negotiating cards. We could have achieved CETA plus services, which is perfect for the UK, if we had played them and linked the Brexit bill discussion to the outcome. We should also have withdrawn from negotiations immediately if the EU had refused to stop playing games with NI.
But, the problem is, the proof is now out that the Leavers were not running the show and the Remainers were in charge, and they have completely, utterly failed. You, in particular, have gone on about Soft Brexit and how the 'grown ups' need to take control. Your people did exactly what you proposed, and it doesn't work. And your solution is to blame the Leavers who told you that this plan was not viable. Ridiculous.
Why not let the people who actually voted Leave take over?
I did note that last year our government had a surplus on current spending. It spent roughly £41bn on capital investment but only ran a £39.7bn deficit. It is astonishing how comparatively painless the reduction in the deficit has been.
Trouble is too many of the politicians think that carrying their papers upside down in a transparent folder is a responsible way of conducting themselves.
Sit back and demand the UK produces a plan. When it does, accept the bits you want anyway and reject the rest. Stick strictly to the EU guidelines and compromise on nothing. By doing so, you become a hero of the arch-Remainers in the UK for being firm.
Stand WELL above the army of Eurocrats pretending to negotiate, but deign to have a few lavish dinners where you snigger about the deluded British.
Yep, I reckon that's easily do-able.
It's ten years since the last recession started. We're overdue the next one, and Donald Trump seems to be doing all he can to hurry it along.
The Euro system probably won't survive another major economic downturn, and the end of the common currency would, given both the febrile political atmosphere on the continent and the fact that the EU has already, of course, begun to break up, finish the EU itself off.
It is by no means impossible that Theresa May - for whom, it seems, the Tories are incapable of finding a successor they can all agree on - will still be Prime Minister of the UK after the EU has disintegrated. As ever, it seems, we're so obsessed with our own problems that we don't stop to think about the state in which everybody else finds themselves.
Blair and Jezza are different people, and I cannot see Jezza getting a 197 majority, but that is the way the wind is blowing. The economy will not save a Tory party that says "F*** Business".
I'd say that you could argue the mismatch is the other way around. The government is in some ways lucky to have the crisis of Brexit to distract attention from everything else that is going wrong.
“I must tell you, my friends, you who have waited faithfully for the punchline of this speech, that having consulted colleagues and in view of the circumstances in parliament, I have concluded that person cannot be me,” Johnson said at the close of his speech at a London luxury hotel.
In which case is Chuka Umunna Tony Blair?
Boris probably put a cross in the wrong box.
JRM probably got his nanny to do it.
David Davis probably resigned from the polling booth in a huff.
Fox probably shot the paper with crosses.