Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The last years of the Major government are the parallel. The economy doing well, but on a background of cachectic public services, and a government that spends all its time banging on about internal conflicts over Europe.
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".
Actually in my view Corbyn may well be another Kinnock who will allow the Tories a historic 4th term they may well have lost against any other leader because he thinks the British people will back him on his second attempt despite losing first time.
In which case is Chuka Umunna Tony Blair?
What on earth do people see in Chuka Umunna? Always struck me as an empty suit. Does he have the ability to appeal to anyone outside EC2?
< Leavers thought the UK could do trade deals with individual EU member states. They claimed German car manufacturers would be telling Merkel to sign a trade agreement with us the day after Brexit. They claimed the UK held all the negotiating cards. They were, in short, utterly deluded.
I don't find any evidence that the Leave campaign said that we can do trade deals with individual states, unless you think Trump was part of Vote Leave. German car manufacturers have told Merkel to get a deal done, but she (as always) is passive to events and somehow thinks that what Barnier is doing will get her a deal. Merkel has misjudged almost every major crisis so i suppose we should have assumed that she would do so again - our bad. We hold all the negotiating cards that we need, because we were always happy with WTO as a backup and CETA as an objective.
As I recall, the Government has been following YOUR advice. Concede here, concede there, agree the Brexit bill, bend over on NI and finally go for Soft Brexit. I can't actually think of anything that May has done that you didn't support. And IT HAS NOT WORKED. Obsessed with trying to re-create the EU membership that we voted to leave, your plan has failed. There is only Brexit or No Brexit, as we told you all along.
Now, sit back, relax and wait for No Deal. And (after some short term chaos caused by the fact that Remainers kept telling us that we should not prepare for No Deal) you will find out the horrible truth - the great and powerful Oz is a fraud.
The first calling point of the UK's negotiator immediately after #Brexit will not be Brussels, it will be Berlin, to strike a deal 2:50 AM - 26 May 2016
There aren't the votes for "Singapore-on-Sea". The 2017 GE should have showm that. Even if this current shower could outline and legislate for it, they'd be swimming against the tide of public opinion. The Leave voters of Stoke and Sunderland weren't stampeding to the polls for tax and spending cuts, removal of employment rights and de-regulation. Would be electoral suicide.
Not citing it because of personal preference or because I thought it would sell electorally, merely as one possible example - and I picked that one because I think it's the closest the current cabinet have got to endorsing an alternative, when Hammond gave a "warning" to the EU that the UK would feel compelled to respond to a no-deal scenario by focusing on competitiveness.
To be fair, it isn't voters in Sunderland that the Tories 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.
Yes hard Brexit, out of the single market and socialism. That would be Britain under Corbyn and McDonnell
But might it not be possible that people might prefer competent Socialism over incompetent rabid Toryism? Personally, I prefer neither, but politics these days do seem to be expressed as a binary choice.
Except Corbyn will not be Attlee or Wilson who were the only 2 competent socialist leaders the British have ever voted for and given a majority to (and in the case of Wilson that is stretching competent somewhat) but most likely an incompetent socialist leader which British voters have never voted for.
Whatever you think of May she is hardly a Thatcherite, headline Brexiteer rabid Tory either and neither is Hammond unlike the rabid socialists Corbyn and McDonnell
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The last years of the Major government are the parallel. The economy doing well, but on a background of cachectic public services, and a government that spends all its time banging on about internal conflicts over Europe.
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".
Actually in my view Corbyn may well be another Kinnock who will allow the Tories a historic 4th term they may well have lost against any other leader because he thinks the British people will back him on his second attempt despite losing first time.
In which case is Chuka Umunna Tony Blair?
What on earth do people see in Chuka Umunna? Always struck me as an empty suit. Does he have the ability to appeal to anyone outside EC2?
After 5 terms of Tory government highly likely but Umunna is a centrist economically unlike the socialist Corbyn and is pro single market and a soft Brexiteer unlike Corbyn who essentially backs May's Brexit in all but name bar a vague promise to stay in 'a' customs union but not 'the' customs union.
Umunna also has a higher net Yougov approval rating than May, Corbyn, McDonnell or Boris.
Indeed only Ruth Davidson of prominent Tories has a higher net approval rating than Umunna with Yougov and only Creasy, Burnham, Field and Rayner of prominent Labour figures, so if not Umunna maybe Creasy or Rayner would be Labour's saviour
< Leavers thought the UK could do trade deals with individual EU member states. They claimed German car manufacturers would be telling Merkel to sign a trade agreement with us the day after Brexit. They claimed the UK held all the negotiating cards. They were, in short, utterly deluded.
I don't find any evidence that the Leave campaign said that we can do trade deals with individual states, unless you think Trump was part of Vote Leave. German car manufacturers have told Merkel to get a deal done, but she (as always) is passive to events and somehow thinks that what Barnier is doing will get her a deal. Merkel has misjudged almost every major crisis so i suppose we should have assumed that she would do so again - our bad. We hold all the negotiating cards that we need, because we were always happy with WTO as a backup and CETA as an objective.
As I recall, the Government has been following YOUR advice. Concede here, concede there, agree the Brexit bill, bend over on NI and finally go for Soft Brexit. I can't actually think of anything that May has done that you didn't support. And IT HAS NOT WORKED. Obsessed with trying to re-create the EU membership that we voted to leave, your plan has failed. There is only Brexit or No Brexit, as we told you all along.
Now, sit back, relax and wait for No Deal. And (after some short term chaos caused by the fact that Remainers kept telling us that we should not prepare for No Deal) you will find out the horrible truth - the great and powerful Oz is a fraud.
The idea I am an unequivocal supporter of Mrs May is an intriguing one, I must say. :-D
The first calling point of the UK's negotiator immediately after #Brexit will not be Brussels, it will be Berlin, to strike a deal 2:50 AM - 26 May 2016
Sigh, he was talking about doing a deal with the EU, not with Germany individually. But yes, we should have refused to negotiate with the Commission. We should have insisted on our A50 rights to negotiate the heads of agreement with the Council and then get the details filled in by the Commission once the deal was done. DD argued this at the time (along with the talks schedule) and was overruled by May and the Remainers. Another mistake. We should have just prepared for No Deal and said we are ready to talk to the Council if and when they want to talk to us.
If a deal is ever done, it will be done by the Council, not the Commission. I am on record way back in 2017 saying that Barnier was aiming for No Deal.
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The last years of the Major government are the parallel. The economy doing well, but on a background of cachectic public services, and a government that spends all its time banging on about internal conflicts over Europe.
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".
Yes, that was a bad time with very high unemployment and a government struggling to reduce it except by cheating or statistical sleights of hand. But Major had panicked about a £40bn deficit that arose from the 1991 recession (ah, the naive innocence of those days) and starved the public sector of spending to a completely excessive level. Now we celebrate the deficit coming down to £40bn. And he also did not have anyone to steer his government for him, certainly after he fell out with Norman Lamont.
In fairness, £40 bn was a much bigger share of national income, then.
IMO low unemployment has done a lot to maintain support for the government.
Do we get the wrong sort of leaders or do we deserve them?
The problem is we elect those who are striving for the top. I'd start by disallowing all those who want to be leader. Who does the leave? The modest with much to be modest about, but the occasional nugget. Who would I trust?
I was surprised to see, in a survey a few months ago, one Frank Field rating very highly. . He's too old now, but he never wanted to be leader so that makes him ideal. Taking a realistic plan for benefits to Gordon was not a plan of an ambitious man, but as the UK's favourite poem (except for snowflakes in Manchester) says … "If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools" by Mrs Rochester, you'll do.
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The last years of the Major government are the parallel. The economy doing well, but on a background of cachectic public services, and a government that spends all its time banging on about internal conflicts over Europe.
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".
Actually in my view Corbyn may well be another Kinnock who will allow the Tories a historic 4th term they may well have lost against any other leader because he thinks the British people will back him on his second attempt despite losing first time.
In which case is Chuka Umunna Tony Blair?
What on earth do people see in Chuka Umunna? Always struck me as an empty suit. Does he have the ability to appeal to anyone outside EC2?
I used to think that he was an empty suit, but he has rather grown on me since the curious business of his withdrawal from the 2015 Labour Leadership contest. He is articulate, intelligent, and at ease with modern Britain in a way that few other front line politicians are.
Not my first choice as Leader, but not a duffer either.
< Leavers thought the UK could do trade deals with individual EU member states. They claimed German car manufacturers would be telling Merkel to sign a trade agreement with us the day after Brexit. They claimed the UK held all the negotiating cards. They were, in short, utterly deluded.
I don't find any evidence that the Leave campaign said that we can do trade deals with individual states, unless you think Trump was part of Vote Leave. German car manufacturers have told Merkel to get a deal done, but she (as always) is passive to events and somehow thinks that what Barnier is doing will get her a deal. Merkel has misjudged almost every major crisis so i suppose we should have assumed that she would do so again - our bad. We hold all the negotiating cards that we need, because we were always happy with WTO as a backup and CETA as an objective.
As I recall, the Government has been following YOUR advice. Concede here, concede there, agree the Brexit bill, bend over on NI and finally go for Soft Brexit. I can't actually think of anything that May has done that you didn't support. And IT HAS NOT WORKED. Obsessed with trying to re-create the EU membership that we voted to leave, your plan has failed. There is only Brexit or No Brexit, as we told you all along.
Now, sit back, relax and wait for No Deal. And (after some short term chaos caused by the fact that Remainers kept telling us that we should not prepare for No Deal) you will find out the horrible truth - the great and powerful Oz is a fraud.
The idea I am an unequivocal supporter of Mrs May is an intriguing one, I must say. :-D
Oh, you were totally against her, when you thought she was promising Hard Brexit. Constantly predicting her demise as I recall. Then, when you realised she was a turncoat, you have been a great supporter.
But the point remains - if you look at what May has done, rather than what she said, it all came straight out of your playbook. You agreed with the Brexit Bill, the December agreement, the transition, the backstop, Chequers. And yet it has been a total failure. Take responsibility. Remainers have driven Brexit off a cliff!
I have always found the business case difficult because it depends on changes in consumer behaviour - ie that users will monitor the in home display, see they are using lots of energy, and change behaviour. I had an early energy use monitor that wrapped around the incoming electricity supply. It was interesting to look at it for a day or two, then it ended up in the drawer. If people generally do this then there won't be reductions in usage. There are interesting technology challenges in getting the last few % of consumers collected (isolated sites, foil back plasterboard, Cornish walls, etc) and any big programme has problems with timescales - I wonder whether accepting a delay would be cheaper in the long term, but there are a lot of factors to trade off.
Having said which, having a smart infrastructure allows for more intelligence in the system, time of use tariffs, reduction of peak load on the grid by smart appliances (eg fridges reducing usage at periods of peak demand), use of electric car batteries for grid storage, better monitoring of network health, etc, which do provide real benefits, just not very costable ones. If something like this doesn't happen the national infrastructure would be looking very obsolete by the middle of the century.
And at least it gives something other than Brexit to talk about...
< Leavers thought the UK could do trade deals with individual EU member states. They claimed German car manufacturers would be telling Merkel to sign a trade agreement with us the day after Brexit. They claimed the UK held all the negotiating cards. They were, in short, utterly deluded.
I don't find any evidence that the Leave campaign said that we can do trade deals with individual states, unless you think Trump was part of Vote Leave. German car manufacturers have told Merkel to get a deal done, but she (as always) is passive to events and somehow thinks that what Barnier is doing will get her a deal. Merkel has misjudged almost every major crisis so i suppose we should have assumed that she would do so again - our bad. We hold all the negotiating cards that we need, because we were always happy with WTO as a backup and CETA as an objective.
As I recall, the Government has been following YOUR advice. Concede here, concede there, agree the Brexit bill, bend over on NI and finally go for Soft Brexit. I can't actually think of anything that May has done that you didn't support. And IT HAS NOT WORKED. Obsessed with trying to re-create the EU membership that we voted to leave, your plan has failed. There is only Brexit or No Brexit, as we told you all along.
Now, sit back, relax and wait for No Deal. And (after some short term chaos caused by the fact that Remainers kept telling us that we should not prepare for No Deal) you will find out the horrible truth - the great and powerful Oz is a fraud.
The idea I am an unequivocal supporter of Mrs May is an intriguing one, I must say. :-D
Oh, you were totally against her, when you thought she was promising Hard Brexit. Constantly predicting her demise as I recall. Then, when you realised she was a turncoat, you have been a great supporter.
But the point remains - if you look at what May has done, rather than what she said, it all came straight out of your playbook. You agreed with the Brexit Bill, the December agreement, the transition, the backstop, Chequers. And yet it has been a total failure. Take responsibility. Remainers have driven Brexit off a cliff!
Nope, I never predicted her demise.
I was opposed to triggering A50 without any planning. I remain opposed to her red lines. She has not pursued the Brexit I would have pursued. Sorry.
There aren't the votes for "Singapore-on-Sea". The 2017 GE should have showm that. Even if this current shower could outline and legislate for it, they'd be swimming against the tide of public opinion. The Leave voters of Stoke and Sunderland weren't stampeding to the polls for tax and spending cuts, removal of employment rights and de-regulation. Would be electoral suicide.
Not citing it because of personal preference or because I thought it would sell electorally, merely as one possible example - and I picked that one because I think it's the closest the current cabinet have got to endorsing an alternative, when Hammond gave a "warning" to the EU that the UK would feel compelled to respond to a no-deal scenario by focusing on competitiveness.
To be fair, it isn't voters in Sunderland that the Tories 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.
Yes hard Brexit, out of the single market and socialism. That would be Britain under Corbyn and McDonnell
But might it not be possible that people might prefer competent Socialism over incompetent rabid Toryism? Personally, I prefer neither, but politics these days do seem to be expressed as a binary choice.
Except Corbyn will not be Attlee or Wilson who were the only 2 competent socialist leaders the British have ever voted for and given a majority to (and in the case of Wilson that is stretching competent somewhat) but most likely an incompetent socialist leader which British voters have never voted for.
Whatever you think of May she is hardly a Thatcherite, headline Brexiteer rabid Tory either and neither is Hammond unlike the rabid socialists Corbyn and McDonnell
I would not be surprised if Corbyn had been railing against Wilson for selling out socialism from the late 1960s onwards.
@Corporeal thanks for making me smile, particularly the last paragraph.
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.
On that note, it was interesting to see Vlad's meeting notes (clearly written, and obviously intended to be seen) on display after his meeting with the Donald:
Except Corbyn will not be Attlee or Wilson who were the only 2 competent socialist leaders the British have ever voted for and given a majority to (and in the case of Wilson that is stretching competent somewhat) but most likely an incompetent socialist leader which British voters have never voted for.
Whatever you think of May she is hardly a Thatcherite, headline Brexiteer rabid Tory either and neither is Hammond unlike the rabid socialists Corbyn and McDonnell
And still 40% of the electorate voted for Corbyn Labour last year.
That's why a no deal Brexit is the best of the limited options available. Whatever the economic damage caused by it (and it would behove us not to take every report of looming catastrophe at face value, given what we've learned about the not entirely accurate predictions of Project Fear,) that would be as nothing compared to the threat of a disastrous political realignment if the betrayal narrative is allowed to take root: an extremist Ukip raised from the dead, quite possibly an actual break-up of the Tory party, and the far-Left coming to power.
Compared to the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street, with the Conservative Party in ruins and the far-Right gunning to take its place as the Opposition, Britain's relationship with Europe is a matter of trifling importance. And besides, we are probably living through the twilight years of the EU - and, in turn, the rupture of which so many people are afraid is something we're most likely going to have to live through at some point, anyway.
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The economy is not doing *that* well. Wages growth is only marginally above inflation, and this comes after an awful period of declining real incomes. Home ownership has declined. The economy still has its structural imbalances. We import too much and export too little. We have sold off so many of our national assets that we now remit more in dividends abroad then we receive from our foreign investments.
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.
Sure, there is still work to do, especially on the trade balance which in turn requires us to reduce our excessive consumption and to invest more, but when I was younger there was something called the Misery index which involved adding the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. It was reported regularly on the news. I doubt it has ever been as low as it is right now. Lower unemployment in the mid 1970s was combined with substantial inflation.
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.
The boom following the bust. It's as simple as that. Booms shouldn't be painful. No-one heads to the barricades to complain about the structural deficit not being addressed. But Brexit definitely makes it worse. Brexit damage is long term and permanent.
The political ground is ripe for a new party, or even more than one, but Labour MPs had no compunction about campaigning for Corbyn to be PM at the last election. Will they next time? Hard to see.
Dr. Foxy, historically, yes. But if history were a perfect guide to the future we'd currently be discussing the new Roman Emperor's policies towards Parthia.
If the far left rewrite the rule book then a Continuity Corbyn candidate will get on the short list, then win the Socialist Worker's Party membership vote with ease. Maybe it'll flit between Stalinist and Trotskyite, but that'll be about as far as variance in far left lunacy goes.
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The last years of the Major government are the parallel. The economy doing well, but on a background of cachectic public services, and a government that spends all its time banging on about internal conflicts over Europe.
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".
Actually in my view Corbyn may well be another Kinnock who will allow the Tories a historic 4th term they may well have lost against any other leader because he thinks the British people will back him on his second attempt despite losing first time.
In which case is Chuka Umunna Tony Blair?
What on earth do people see in Chuka Umunna? Always struck me as an empty suit. Does he have the ability to appeal to anyone outside EC2?
I used to think that he was an empty suit, but he has rather grown on me since the curious business of his withdrawal from the 2015 Labour Leadership contest. He is articulate, intelligent, and at ease with modern Britain in a way that few other front line politicians are.
Not my first choice as Leader, but not a duffer either.
In a decade after we have likely had hard Brexit for a few years and maybe even Corbyn socialism too Umunna may reflect the change the country wants with his centrist and pro single market views but not now. He is still only in his thirties so would still be a contender then
I think his point is that it’s pretty obvious you’re Australian because you’ve got everything upside down.
Britain has had a Brexit-implementing government for two years, with such talents as Leave possesses contributing to their limited abilities. It has been a complete car crash, just as those of us who voted Remain said it would be (the cluelessness of Leavers was abundantly clear well before the referendum). In that period Leavers have failed to come up with any workable proposals, preferring to paint themselves in woad and cry betrayal.
The negotiating strategy of the civil service was rejected and its chief advocate dismissed. This is a hole of Leavers’ making and they are singularly lacking in workable suggestions as to how to get out of it except shout louder and slower at Brussels.
Brexit is failing and dimwits like you are to blame. As could be and was predicted well before the referendum.
The first calling point of the UK's negotiator immediately after #Brexit will not be Brussels, it will be Berlin, to strike a deal 2:50 AM - 26 May 2016
Berlin is the de facto capital of the EU - it directs the Brussels Eurocrats.
Mr. Meeks, woad was worn by the Picts. Who no longer exist.
Davis' white paper was ignored by May, who preferred her own. Even that has been dismissed by the EU.
The EU's idea of a workable proposal is the regulatory annexation of Northern Ireland.
May has been dire, prevaricating and capitulating, but the EU has been wilfully intransigent to the point of wishing harm not only on the UK but itself. Who benefits if UK and EU intelligence agencies stop co-operating?
The political ground is ripe for a new party, or even more than one, but Labour MPs had no compunction about campaigning for Corbyn to be PM at the last election. Will they next time? Hard to see.
Dr. Foxy, historically, yes. But if history were a perfect guide to the future we'd currently be discussing the new Roman Emperor's policies towards Parthia.
If the far left rewrite the rule book then a Continuity Corbyn candidate will get on the short list, then win the Socialist Worker's Party membership vote with ease. Maybe it'll flit between Stalinist and Trotskyite, but that'll be about as far as variance in far left lunacy goes.
Don't forget in 2017 Macron after one term of a disastrous Socialist President Macron became President as a centrist liberal beating both the incumbent established socialist and conservative parties and his new party came from nowhere to win a majority in the National Assembly.
Before you say that is impossible under FPTP, Macron and En Marche came first tin the first rounds too of France's second ballot system (which is in any case not PR)
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The last years of the Major government are the parallel. The economy doing well, but on a background of cachectic public services, and a government that spends all its time banging on about internal conflicts over Europe.
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".
Actually in my view Corbyn may well be another Kinnock who will allow the Tories a historic 4th term they may well have lost against any other leader because he thinks the British people will back him on his second attempt despite losing first time.
In which case is Chuka Umunna Tony Blair?
I agree. I struggle to see Corbyn winning. Since he's been leader there haven't been any surprising by election victories or anything that suggests a groundswell of support that doesn't relate to Tory unpopularity. A strange scenario when neither May nor Corbyn look like they can possibly win
Mr. Meeks, woad was worn by the Picts. Who no longer exist.
Davis' white paper was ignored by May, who preferred her own. Even that has been dismissed by the EU.
The EU's idea of a workable proposal is the regulatory annexation of Northern Ireland.
May has been dire, prevaricating and capitulating, but the EU has been wilfully intransigent to the point of wishing harm not only on the UK but itself. Who benefits if UK and EU intelligence agencies stop co-operating?
If only Leavers no longer existed. Another ten years and no one will admit to ever having been one though.
Complaining that the EU is being unreasonable is infantile. This is a negotiation that Leavers sought. They should have been prepared for all likely reactions. They believed they held all he cards. They didn’t.
Except Corbyn will not be Attlee or Wilson who were the only 2 competent socialist leaders the British have ever voted for and given a majority to (and in the case of Wilson that is stretching competent somewhat) but most likely an incompetent socialist leader which British voters have never voted for.
Whatever you think of May she is hardly a Thatcherite, headline Brexiteer rabid Tory either and neither is Hammond unlike the rabid socialists Corbyn and McDonnell
And still 40% of the electorate voted for Corbyn Labour last year.
That's why a no deal Brexit is the best of the limited options available. Whatever the economic damage caused by it (and it would behove us not to take every report of looming catastrophe at face value, given what we've learned about the not entirely accurate predictions of Project Fear,) that would be as nothing compared to the threat of a disastrous political realignment if the betrayal narrative is allowed to take root: an extremist Ukip raised from the dead, quite possibly an actual break-up of the Tory party, and the far-Left coming to power.
Compared to the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street, with the Conservative Party in ruins and the far-Right gunning to take its place as the Opposition, Britain's relationship with Europe is a matter of trifling importance. And besides, we are probably living through the twilight years of the EU - and, in turn, the rupture of which so many people are afraid is something we're most likely going to have to live through at some point, anyway.
It is true the Tories only beat Corbyn as their hard Brexit platform in 2017 got them to 42% thanks to ex UKIP voters as Cummings said.
Now the Tories are only on 36% with a softer Brexit platform and UKIP are up in the polls so inevitably the Tories may have no choice but to have Boris as leader next time
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The last years of the Major government are the parallel. The economy doing well, but on a background of cachectic public services, and a government that spends all its time banging on about internal conflicts over Europe.
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".
Actually in my view Corbyn may well be another Kinnock who will allow the Tories a historic 4th term they may well have lost against any other leader because he thinks the British people will back him on his second attempt despite losing first time.
In which case is Chuka Umunna Tony Blair?
I agree. I struggle to see Corbyn winning. Since he's been leader there haven't been any surprising by election victories or anything that suggests a groundswell of support that doesn't relate to Tory unpopularity. A strange scenario when neither May nor Corbyn look like they can possibly win
Corbyn's ceiling may well turn out to be the 40% he got in 2017, the only reason he now leads on 40% while he trailed on 40% last year is Tory defections to UKIP
Mr. HYUFD, Macron's victory was through the same means as May's. His opponents imploded. There was a right winger who should've stepped down and didn't, a far left lunatic, and the far right. Macron won by virtue of being neither a maniac not (allegedly) a crook.
Mr. Meeks, the EU is comprised (mostly) of Western democracies. Expecting them not to collectively self-harm in order to try and punish a country which has had the temerity to vote to leave an organisation which pro-Remain types insisted didn't have excessive power (although now they're suggesting we won't be able to fly and butter will become a luxury outside the EU) is not unreasonable.
Infantile is not being surprised by the sheer extent of the EU's intransigence, it's being willing to compromise intelligence sharing about terrorism because one is so besotted with The Project that risking the deaths of innocent people is worth it to try and hit the UK and make a political point. It's insane. It'll almost certainly hurt the EU more than the UK.
It’s gonna get worse before it gets better. We will look back on May and Corbyn with wistful fondness. A kinder , more sensible age.
I am deeply pessimistic. Corbyn's time hasn't come yet. Brexit will almost certainly be hard, and a hammer blow to British industry. The Tories will own Brexit, just as Labour owned the Iraq war, and will be punished for it at the next election. Corbyn will ride to power and complete the destruction of British industry with his well-meaning but economically suicidal policies. Heaven knows what comes next.
New Statesman this week reports that focus groups are coming back loud and clear: Brexit is seen as totally owned by the Tories.
They will live or die by the end result.
Conservatives could be out of power for a generation.
It took the Tories just one year of governing alone to create the chaos they promised to save us from. That’s impressive.
Umunna as leader does presuppose that the far left hasn't rewritten the leadership rule book and that the PLP isn't infested with socialists.
The general rule of leadership contests is that incoming leaders offer something different to the outgoing ones, indeed are quite a sharp contrast.
Jezza and #Edstone
#Edstone and Brown
Brown and Blair
May and Cameron
Cameron and Howard
Howard and IDS
Or to go back a bit further:
Maggie and Heath, Foot and Callaghan.
Ideological purity takes second place to a fresh approach, so Jezza and May are unlikely to be replaced by photocopies of themselves.
Or Blair and Smith and Kinnock or Hague and IDS and Major
Indeed, or Cable and Farron, Farron and Clegg etc.
Party leaders rarely choose or are aligned with their successors. A change of leader usually is because a party feels a change in direction is desired and needed. I expect a new Labour Leader to be Soft Left rather than Hard Left, and I think that the Trotskyite influence in such a contest would be small. NickP shows how members realign with a leadership when that new leader has a sense of zietgeist. After all, Blair himself was first elected in 1983 on Michael Foot's manifesto of nationalisation, EU withdrawal, NATO withdrawal and unilateral nuclear disarmament. The wind can change direction very quickly at times.
@Corporeal thanks for making me smile, particularly the last paragraph.
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.
On that note, it was interesting to see Vlad's meeting notes (clearly written, and obviously intended to be seen) on display after his meeting with the Donald:
Mr. HYUFD, Macron's victory was through the same means as May's. His opponents imploded. There was a right winger who should've stepped down and didn't, a far left lunatic, and the far right. Macron won by virtue of being neither a maniac not (allegedly) a crook.
Mr. Meeks, the EU is comprised (mostly) of Western democracies. Expecting them not to collectively self-harm in order to try and punish a country which has had the temerity to vote to leave an organisation which pro-Remain types insisted didn't have excessive power (although now they're suggesting we won't be able to fly and butter will become a luxury outside the EU) is not unreasonable.
Infantile is not being surprised by the sheer extent of the EU's intransigence, it's being willing to compromise intelligence sharing about terrorism because one is so besotted with The Project that risking the deaths of innocent people is worth it to try and hit the UK and make a political point. It's insane. It'll almost certainly hurt the EU more than the UK.
And that's the organisation you're defending.
I’m not defending the EU. I have written thread headers about the poor negotiating approach it has followed. But complaining about the other party’s negotiating stance is nuts when it is a negotiation you have sought.
As far as I can tell, Theresa May genuinely thinks Chequers (as amended by Rees Mogg) is a workable proposal and is miffed the EU isn't buying into it.
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 think that's right, though I'm naturally biased. Objectively I think the Conservatives are both literally and politically exhausted. When it's not a sackable offence in a Tory Government to say "fuck business", when policy on the most important decisions in our generation are driven entirely by which group of obsessive backbenchers most needs to be squared, and when virtually nobody seems to be giving any thought to what they will stand for after Brexit, they desperately need a period out of office to work out what they're for. Nationalism? Competence? Moderate pragmatism? Singapore? Who knows?
British politics tend to make parties cling on to government for one election too many, as the electorate is wary of change. It's natural to fight, and natural to want to keep the other lot out. But in the end it causes lasting damage. In retrospect, the Tories would have been better off losing in 1992, and Labour would have been better off losing in 2005. The parties can't deliver the change, since no party really gives up, but the voters will.
At some point the public are going to try the left Labour model, whether under Corbyn or someone else, and maybe it'll prove unworkable (in which case it'll be Labour's turn to need a "what-now?" period in opposition) or maybe it'll prove successful, but in the meantime we will need a Conservative alternative in British politics that goes beyond squeezing through the next vote.
May like Brown in not having a full contest for leadership Has not helped . It would surely have improved her contact with voters as she would have had to debate with differing parts of the conservative party membership. It would also have made her think more clearly about policy including Brexit.
A lesson should be learnt for both main parties, that a quick fix is not a good way to test a new leader.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
You want something. But complaining someone else won’t give it to you just because you ask for it is infantile. The EU is entitled to say no unless it sees saying yes as being in its interest. Leavers have done a heroically bad job of persuading them.
Umunna as leader does presuppose that the far left hasn't rewritten the leadership rule book and that the PLP isn't infested with socialists.
The general rule of leadership contests is that incoming leaders offer something different to the outgoing ones, indeed are quite a sharp contrast.
Jezza and #Edstone
#Edstone and Brown
Brown and Blair
May and Cameron
Cameron and Howard
Howard and IDS
Or to go back a bit further:
Maggie and Heath, Foot and Callaghan.
Ideological purity takes second place to a fresh approach, so Jezza and May are unlikely to be replaced by photocopies of themselves.
Or Blair and Smith and Kinnock or Hague and IDS and Major
Indeed, or Cable and Farron, Farron and Clegg etc.
Party leaders rarely choose or are aligned with their successors. A change of leader usually is because a party feels a change in direction is desired and needed. I expect a new Labour Leader to be Soft Left rather than Hard Left, and I think that the Trotskyite influence in such a contest would be small. NickP shows how members realign with a leadership when that new leader has a sense of zietgeist. After all, Blair himself was first elected in 1983 on Michael Foot's manifesto of nationalisation, EU withdrawal, NATO withdrawal and unilateral nuclear disarmament. The wind can change direction very quickly at times.
If Corbyn loses the next general election or even if he wins and proves a disaster a centrist is likely to be the next Labour leader or start a new centrist party if the Labour membership insist on another Corbynite.
May is likely to be followed by a hard Brexiteer as Tory leader by contrast
Mr. Meeks, woad was worn by the Picts. Who no longer exist.
Davis' white paper was ignored by May, who preferred her own. Even that has been dismissed by the EU.
The EU's idea of a workable proposal is the regulatory annexation of Northern Ireland.
May has been dire, prevaricating and capitulating, but the EU has been wilfully intransigent to the point of wishing harm not only on the UK but itself. Who benefits if UK and EU intelligence agencies stop co-operating?
If only Leavers no longer existed. Another ten years and no one will admit to ever having been one though.
Complaining that the EU is being unreasonable is infantile. This is a negotiation that Leavers sought. They should have been prepared for all likely reactions. They believed they held all he cards. They didn’t.
Exactly so. The only card the UK held was the timing of the Article 50 letter. It should have taken all the time in the world before sending that letter in and used that time to prepare carefully for all possible options so that when negotiations started it was properly and fully prepared and the country was prepared too. It did not do this. It sent the letter in when it was still woefully unprepared. And from that (and much else besides) the mess we are now in follows.
Still, it is a lovely day. I'm off for a swim followed by a trip to the revamped RAF Museum in Colindale with my other half, lunch and then an afternoon snoozing and reading in the garden. Agreeable drinks will be consumed.
Yes hard Brexit, out of the single market and socialism. That would be Britain under Corbyn and McDonnell
But might it not be possible that people might prefer competent Socialism over incompetent rabid Toryism? Personally, I prefer neither, but politics these days do seem to be expressed as a binary choice.
Except Corbyn will not be Attlee or Wilson who were the only 2 competent socialist leaders the British have ever voted for and given a majority to (and in the case of Wilson that is stretching competent somewhat) but most likely an incompetent socialist leader which British voters have never voted for.
Whatever you think of May she is hardly a Thatcherite, headline Brexiteer rabid Tory either and neither is Hammond unlike the rabid socialists Corbyn and McDonnell
Not quite what I was saying, Mr HYUFD, so not really an answer. We have no idea whether Corbyn would be competent or not, since he has never actually run anything. So the country lives in hopes.
I didn`t mention Mrs May by name - she is just one element in the unhealthy mess that has come to the top of the Conservative Party in its latter days. But Conservative incompetence has been all too clearly demonstrated. They have nobody who would manage any better.
If only Leavers no longer existed. Another ten years and no one will admit to ever having been one though.
/blockquote>
Just as likely that you will find few Remainers admitting to their previous hysterical prophecies of doom...many of which have already proven to be nonsense.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The UK wants a trade deal with the EU. The EU has stated the parameters within such a deal can be done. We can get a Canada-style deal that will allow us the level of control we want, or we can have a Norway-style deal that will give us the economic benefits we want. We need to decide which it will be. We have yet to do so.
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 e things.
I think that's right, though I'm naturally biased. Objectively I think the Conservatives are both literally and politically exhausted. When it's not a sackable offence in a Tory Government to say "fuck business", when policy on the most important decisions in our generation are driven entirely by which group of obsessive backbenchers most needs to be squared, and when virtually nobody seems to be giving any thought to what they will stand for after Brexit, they desperately need a period out of office to work out what they're for. Nationalism? Competence? Moderate pragmatism? Singapore? Who knows?
British politics tend to make parties cling on to government for one election too many, as the electorate is wary of change. It's natural to fight, and natural to want to keep the other lot out. But in the end it causes lasting damage. In retrospect, the Tories would have been better off losing in 1992, and Labour would have been better off losing in 2005. The parties can't deliver the change, since no party really gives up, but the voters will.
At some point the public are going to try the left Labour model, whether under Corbyn or someone else, and maybe it'll prove unworkable (in which case it'll be Labour's turn to need a "what-now?" period in opposition) or maybe it'll prove successful, but in the meantime we will need a Conservative alternative in British politics that goes beyond squeezing through the next vote.
I agree on the second paragraph. The 1992 and 2005 general elections were really rejections of Kinnock and Howard rather than endorsements of the Tories or Labour. If the Tories do win again it will likely be on a similar anti Corbyn vote
I think his point is that it’s pretty obvious you’re Australian because you’ve got everything upside down.
Britain has had a Brexit-implementing government for two years, with such talents as Leave possesses contributing to their limited abilities. It has been a complete car crash, just as those of us who voted Remain said it would be (the cluelessness of Leavers was abundantly clear well before the referendum). In that period Leavers have failed to come up with any workable proposals, preferring to paint themselves in woad and cry betrayal.
The negotiating strategy of the civil service was rejected and its chief advocate dismissed. This is a hole of Leavers’ making and they are singularly lacking in workable suggestions as to how to get out of it except shout louder and slower at Brussels.
Brexit is failing and dimwits like you are to blame. As could be and was predicted well before the referendum.
I am not Australian, I am British.
What is clear and on the record is that the Remainers have been running the negotiation and that the Leavers were sidelined, ignored and then deliberately misled by May. But hey, don't let facts stop you.
Leavers simply want a CETA agreement. Remainers want to somehow re-create EU membership from the outside. As Boris and DD made clear, we have refused to follow the first strategy and have followed the second. This has been an abject failure. For which Remainers such as yourself are responsible, because you refused to allow the referendum result to be implemented and spent two years whining about Soft Brexit, which it is now clear does not exist.
But no matter - we will get our Brexit in the end, via No Deal. Could have been a better outcome but in a few years time the FTA with the EU will be in place. As soon as A50 expires, the EU have no hold over us whatsoever and at that point they will come to the table and deal. The NI backstop issue will go away for good on 31 March 2019 because there will be a soft border, as we always said. Barnier will be out of the picture. Nobody will care about Varadkar or what Ireland want. Then we can sit back and laugh as the EU slowly implodes.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The UK wants a trade deal with the EU. The EU has stated the parameters within such a deal can be done. We can get a Canada-style deal that will allow us the level of control we want, or we can have a Norway-style deal that will give us the economic benefits we want. We need to decide which it will be. We have yet to do so.
Sometimes you just show that you don't have a clue.
The CETA deal is only available if we agree to the NI backstop and basically allow NI to remain under EU control. So it is not actually available since there is no way this could ever pass Parliament. Which is why May has resorted to the Chequers nonsense.
If CETA was available, the deal would be done and we could all get on with life.
It’s gonna get worse before it gets better. We will look back on May and Corbyn with wistful fondness. A kinder , more sensible age.
I am deeply pessimistic. Corbyn's time hasn't come yet. Brexit will almost certainly be hard, and a hammer blow to British industry. The Tories will own Brexit, just as Labour owned the Iraq war, and will be punished for it at the next election. Corbyn will ride to power and complete the destruction of British industry with his well-meaning but economically suicidal policies. Heaven knows what comes next.
New Statesman this week reports that focus groups are coming back loud and clear: Brexit is seen as totally owned by the Tories.
They will live or die by the end result.
Conservatives could be out of power for a generation.
It took the Tories just one year of governing alone to create the chaos they promised to save us from. That’s impressive.
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."
When I was PPS to Malcolm Wicks in Energy he looked hard at compulsory energy meters, and concluded that they simply wouldn't deliver adequate benefits in reasonable time, because most people wouldn't bother to study them. He decided that encouraging their use without compulsion struck the right balance, since the sort of people who opted to take one would tend to be the sort of people who might read them and change their energy use as a result.
I miss Malcolm - leftish but always with a cool eye to what actually works. (I'm voting for Ann Black in the NEC election as an exception to otherwise going with Momentum's slate, for just the same reason.)
Except Corbyn will not be Attlee or Wilson who were the only 2 competent socialist leaders the British have ever voted for and given a majority to (and in the case of Wilson that is stretching competent somewhat) but most likely an incompetent socialist leader which British voters have never voted for.
Whatever you think of May she is hardly a Thatcherite, headline Brexiteer rabid Tory either and neither is Hammond unlike the rabid socialists Corbyn and McDonnell
And still 40% of the electorate voted for Corbyn Labour last year.
That's why a no deal Brexit is the best of the limited options available. Whatever the economic damage caused by it (and it would behove us not to take every report of looming catastrophe at face value, given what we've learned about the not entirely accurate predictions of Project Fear,) that would be as nothing compared to the threat of a disastrous political realignment if the betrayal narrative is allowed to take root: an extremist Ukip raised from the dead, quite possibly an actual break-up of the Tory party, and the far-Left coming to power.
Compared to the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street, with the Conservative Party in ruins and the far-Right gunning to take its place as the Opposition, Britain's relationship with Europe is a matter of trifling importance. And besides, we are probably living through the twilight years of the EU - and, in turn, the rupture of which so many people are afraid is something we're most likely going to have to live through at some point, anyway.
No Deal isn't a choice. It's the absence of a choice. It's an unsustainable situation of ad-hoc case by case decisions where we have to get the EU to allow us stuff on a temporary basis. Brexit will be humbling for the UK under every scenario, but No Deal is by far the most humiliating. The EU is somewhat unstable, but maybe not more than the United Kingdom, but while it exists it is powerful and the only show in town in Europe. We have to deal with it and it's in our interest to deal with it.
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The economy is not doing *that* well. Wages growth is only marginally above inflation, and this comes after an awful period of declining real incomes. Home ownership has declined. The economy still has its structural imbalances. We import too much and export too little. We have sold off so many of our national assets that we now remit more in dividends abroad then we receive from our foreign investments.
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.
Sure, there is still work to do, especially on the trade balance which in turn requires us to reduce our excessive consumption and to invest more, but when I was younger there was something called the Misery index which involved adding the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. It was reported regularly on the news. I doubt it has ever been as low as it is right now. Lower unemployment in the mid 1970s was combined with substantial inflation.
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.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The important thing for us to realise in all of this is that there was *never* any prospect of the EU offering anything other than exactly what the European Commission wants, i.e. either EEA plus EUCU, or nothing. This, I freely admit, is a mistake I have made myself in the past, and nowadays I try to check myself whenever I'm tempted to accuse the EU of being intransigent. It isn't.
The EU consists of a collection of member states that are unable to agree on almost anything of importance, save for the fact that all bar one of them wants to stay put. For now, anyway. It's not that such an incoherent rabble is unwilling to offer flexibility, so much as it's unable to do so.
Without the ability to decide on any significant change for themselves (just look at the slow death of Macron's proposals for Eurozone reform, for example,) the Commission is in sole charge of the negotiations, and its one and only priority is the survival of the Project at all costs. Concerns about anything as peripheral as people being slaughtered in terrorist atrocities are irrelevant to this calculus.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The UK wants a trade deal with the EU. The EU has stated the parameters within such a deal can be done. We can get a Canada-style deal that will allow us the level of control we want, or we can have a Norway-style deal that will give us the economic benefits we want. We need to decide which it will be. We have yet to do so.
Sometimes you just show that you don't have a clue.
The CETA deal is only available if we agree to the NI backstop and basically allow NI to remain under EU control. So it is not actually available since there is no way this could ever pass Parliament. Which is why May has resorted to the Chequers nonsense.
If CETA was available, the deal would be done and we could all get on with life.
As I said, the EU has defined the parameters within which deals will be done. It's not brain surgery.
Ideological purity takes second place to a fresh approach, so Jezza and May are unlikely to be replaced by photocopies of themselves.
If Jezza fell under a bus, I think the party would pick someone equally left-wing but less scrupulous about personal attacks and low cunning. Members aren't longing for a centrist, but they'd mostly like a more cut-throat approach which included savaging hapless Ministers and adopting stances for popular effect. Corbyn seems curiously fastidious in today's world: he thinks that one should simply say what one believes in without abuse or theatrics and in due course the electorate may come round. I like it, but I'm old-fashioned.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The UK wants a trade deal with the EU. The EU has stated the parameters within such a deal can be done. We can get a Canada-style deal that will allow us the level of control we want, or we can have a Norway-style deal that will give us the economic benefits we want. We need to decide which it will be. We have yet to do so.
Sometimes you just show that you don't have a clue.
The CETA deal is only available if we agree to the NI backstop and basically allow NI to remain under EU control. So it is not actually available since there is no way this could ever pass Parliament. Which is why May has resorted to the Chequers nonsense.
If CETA was available, the deal would be done and we could all get on with life.
As I said, the EU has defined the parameters within which deals will be done. It's not brain surgery.
Then there is No Deal. The EU do not get to define what the UK must accept. We have a trade deficit with the EU. If they cannot offer an FTA on terms which are actually possible, then we trade without one.
But, in fact, if May had not listened to Remainers, and had walked rather than even discuss the NI backstop, the EU would have backed down and we would have CETA. It is the obvious weakness in May's position which have led them to go for broke and it is Remainers who must take the responsibility for that outcome because they constantly agreed that we had no choice but to cave in on every matter. No Deal is the result. Own it.
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The economy is not doing *that* well. Wages growth is only marginally above inflation, and this comes after an awful period of declining real incomes. Home ownership has declined. The economy still has its structural imbalances. We import too much and export too little. We have sold off so many of our national assets that we now remit more in dividends abroad then we receive from our foreign investments.
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.
In reality unemployment is not that low - paricularly in respect of male full time work. Remove all the 'adjustments' of the 1980s & 1990s , and we have figures a good deal higher than the 1970s on a like for like basis - and MUCH higher than the 1950s & 1960s.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The UK wants a trade deal with the EU. The EU has stated the parameters within such a deal can be done. We can get a Canada-style deal that will allow us the level of control we want, or we can have a Norway-style deal that will give us the economic benefits we want. We need to decide which it will be. We have yet to do so.
Sometimes you just show that you don't have a clue.
The CETA deal is only available if we agree to the NI backstop and basically allow NI to remain under EU control. So it is not actually available since there is no way this could ever pass Parliament. Which is why May has resorted to the Chequers nonsense.
If CETA was available, the deal would be done and we could all get on with life.
As I said, the EU has defined the parameters within which deals will be done. It's not brain surgery.
Then there is No Deal. The EU do not get to define what the UK must accept. We have a trade deficit with the EU. If they cannot offer an FTA on terms which are actually possible, then we trade without one.
But, in fact, if May had not listened to Remainers, and had walked rather than even discuss the NI backstop, the EU would have backed down and we would have CETA. It is the obvious weakness in May's position which have led them to go for broke and it is Remainers who must take the responsibility for that outcome because they constantly agreed that we had no choice but to cave in on every matter. No Deal is the result. Own it.
No deal is the consequence of a Conservative party that puts itself before the good of the country and a group of very wealthy nostalgists and profiteers who are happy for millions of ordinary Britons to bear the consequences of their delusions and greed. Like you in Australia, they will be absolutely fine whatever happens.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The important thing for us to realise in all of this is that there was *never* any prospect of the EU offering anything other than exactly what the European Commission wants, i.e. either EEA plus EUCU, or nothing. This, I freely admit, is a mistake I have made myself in the past, and nowadays I try to check myself whenever I'm tempted to accuse the EU of being intransigent. It isn't.
The EU consists of a collection of member states that are unable to agree on almost anything of importance, save for the fact that all bar one of them wants to stay put. For now, anyway. It's not that such an incoherent rabble is unwilling to offer flexibility, so much as it's unable to do so.
Without the ability to decide on any significant change for themselves (just look at the slow death of Macron's proposals for Eurozone reform, for example,) the Commission is in sole charge of the negotiations, and its one and only priority is the survival of the Project at all costs. Concerns about anything as peripheral as people being slaughtered in terrorist atrocities are irrelevant to this calculus.
Predictions of the immenent demise of the EZ and/or the EU have been commonplace throughout the years of PB, and consistently wrong.
The EU has a consensual system of policymaking that can be frustratingly slow at times, but the strength of such an approach is that (until Brexit) gradualism and evolution of structures has been the norm. This keeps support strong, albeit with some frustrations from both those who want faster or slower movement. There once was a time in Britain where we favoured such an approach internally too, with a suspiciion of revolutionaries and ideologues.
Ideological purity takes second place to a fresh approach, so Jezza and May are unlikely to be replaced by photocopies of themselves.
If Jezza fell under a bus, I think the party would pick someone equally left-wing but less scrupulous about personal attacks and low cunning. Members aren't longing for a centrist, but they'd mostly like a more cut-throat approach which included savaging hapless Ministers and adopting stances for popular effect. Corbyn seems curiously fastidious in today's world: he thinks that one should simply say what one believes in without abuse or theatrics and in due course the electorate may come round. I like it, but I'm old-fashioned.
Ideological purity takes second place to a fresh approach, so Jezza and May are unlikely to be replaced by photocopies of themselves.
If Jezza fell under a bus, I think the party would pick someone equally left-wing but less scrupulous about personal attacks and low cunning. Members aren't longing for a centrist, but they'd mostly like a more cut-throat approach which included savaging hapless Ministers and adopting stances for popular effect. Corbyn seems curiously fastidious in today's world: he thinks that one should simply say what one believes in without abuse or theatrics and in due course the electorate may come round. I like it, but I'm old-fashioned.
If Jezza fell under a bus, Tom Watson would be leader. It would be fascinating to see how long that would last - and who would stand for the leadership in an eventual contest. I am not sure that there is anyone equally as left-wing as Corbyn with the ability to harvest the support that Corbyn does. That's why he has not resigned and will lead labour into the next election.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The UK wants a trade deal with the EU. The EU has stated the parameters within such a deal can be done. We can get a Canada-style deal that will allow us the level of control we want, or we can have a Norway-style deal that will give us the economic benefits we want. We need to decide which it will be. We have yet to do so.
Sometimes you just show that you don't have a clue.
The CETA deal is only available if we agree to the NI backstop and basically allow NI to remain under EU control. So it is not actually available since there is no way this could ever pass Parliament. Which is why May has resorted to the Chequers nonsense.
If CETA was available, the deal would be done and we could all get on with life.
As I said, the EU has defined the parameters within which deals will be done. It's not brain surgery.
Then there is No Deal. The EU do not get to define what the UK must accept. We have a trade deficit with the EU. If they cannot offer an FTA on terms which are actually possible, then we trade without one.
But, in fact, if May had not listened to Remainers, and had walked rather than even discuss the NI backstop, the EU would have backed down and we would have CETA. It is the obvious weakness in May's position which have led them to go for broke and it is Remainers who must take the responsibility for that outcome because they constantly agreed that we had no choice but to cave in on every matter. No Deal is the result. Own it.
No deal is the consequence of a Conservative party that puts itself before the good of the country and a group of very wealthy nostalgists and profiteers who are happy for millions of ordinary Britons to bear the consequences of their delusions and greed. Like you in Australia, they will be absolutely fine whatever happens.
LOL. It is not the establishment and 'profiteers' who want Brexit. It was the ordinary people. If only we could just ignore them.....
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The UK wants a trade deal with the EU. The EU has stated the parameters within such a deal can be done. We can get a Canada-style deal that will allow us the level of control we want, or we can have a Norway-style deal that will give us the economic benefits we want. We need to decide which it will be. We have yet to do so.
Sometimes you just show that you don't have a clue.
The CETA deal is only available if we agree to the NI backstop and basically allow NI to remain under EU control. So it is not actually available since there is no way this could ever pass Parliament. Which is why May has resorted to the Chequers nonsense.
If CETA was available, the deal would be done and we could all get on with life.
As I said, the EU has defined the parameters within which deals will be done. It's not brain surgery.
Then there is No Deal. The EU do not get to define what the UK must accept. We have a trade deficit with the EU. If they cannot offer an FTA on terms which are actually possible, then we trade without one.
But, in fact, if May had not listened to Remainers, and had walked rather than even discuss the NI backstop, the EU would have backed down and we would have CETA. It is the obvious weakness in May's position which have led them to go for broke and it is Remainers who must take the responsibility for that outcome because they constantly agreed that we had no choice but to cave in on every matter. No Deal is the result. Own it.
No deal is the consequence of a Conservative party that puts itself before the good of the country and a group of very wealthy nostalgists and profiteers who are happy for millions of ordinary Britons to bear the consequences of their delusions and greed. Like you in Australia, they will be absolutely fine whatever happens.
LOL. It is not the establishment and 'profiteers' who want Brexit. It was the ordinary people. If only we could just ignore them.....
absolutely. All of us involved in politics have come across non voters who went out and voted leave.
Ideological purity takes second place to a fresh approach, so Jezza and May are unlikely to be replaced by photocopies of themselves.
If Jezza fell under a bus, I think the party would pick someone equally left-wing but less scrupulous about personal attacks and low cunning. Members aren't longing for a centrist, but they'd mostly like a more cut-throat approach which included savaging hapless Ministers and adopting stances for popular effect. Corbyn seems curiously fastidious in today's world: he thinks that one should simply say what one believes in without abuse or theatrics and in due course the electorate may come round. I like it, but I'm old-fashioned.
John McDonnell fits your description.
McDonnell would be interesting. He is certainly a lot more pragmatic than Corbyn and may well open the front bench up to a much wider range of people. I think he would also ensure the anti-Semitism stuff was put to bed very quickly: no more Seamas Milne, for starters.
No Deal isn't a choice. It's the absence of a choice. It's an unsustainable situation of ad-hoc case by case decisions where we have to get the EU to allow us stuff on a temporary basis. Brexit will be humbling for the UK under every scenario, but No Deal is by far the most humiliating. The EU is somewhat unstable, but maybe not more than the United Kingdom, but while it exists it is powerful and the only show in town in Europe. We have to deal with it and it's in our interest to deal with it.
You can't do anything that might meaningfully be described as a deal with something that isn't capable of doing deals, but that's beside the point. We, as a nation, are much better off being in a state of ongoing tension with the EU than we are being at daggers drawn with each other.
Leaving the EU properly, whatever problems this creates, will draw a line under the whole wretched hokey-cokey catfight for everyone (except for the most fanatical EU-enthusiasts, whose arguments for re-joining are liable to gain as much traction as those for republicanism,) shore up the Tories, and keep Ukip in its grave. Leaving the EU technically, only to sign up to something that looks and feels to most of the population like an inferior copy, will leave our battered democracy in worse shape than ever.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The UK wants a trade deal with the EU. The EU has stated the parameters within such a deal can be done. We can get a Canada-style deal that will allow us the level of control we want, or we can have a Norway-style deal that will give us the economic benefits we want. We need to decide which it will be. We have yet to do so.
Sometimes you just show that you don't have a clue.
The CETA deal is only available if we agree to the NI backstop and basically allow NI to remain under EU control. So it is not actually available since there is no way this could ever pass Parliament. Which is why May has resorted to the Chequers nonsense.
If CETA was available, the deal would be done and we could all get on with life.
As I said, the EU has defined the parameters within which deals will be done. It's not brain surgery.
Then there is No Deal. The EU do not get to define what the UK must accept. We have a trade deficit with the EU. If they cannot offer an FTA on terms which are actually possible, then we trade without one.
But, in fact, if May had not listened to Remainers, and had walked rather than even discuss the NI backstop, the EU would have backed down and we would have CETA. It is the obvious weakness in May's position which have led them to go for broke and it is Remainers who must take the responsibility for that outcome because they constantly agreed that we had no choice but to cave in on every matter. No Deal is the result. Own it.
No deal is the consequence of a Conservative party that puts itself before the good of the country and a group of very wealthy nostalgists and profiteers who are happy for millions of ordinary Britons to bear the consequences of their delusions and greed. Like you in Australia, they will be absolutely fine whatever happens.
LOL. It is not the establishment and 'profiteers' who want Brexit. It was the ordinary people. If only we could just ignore them.....
It is the nostalgists and profiteers who want the Brexit you want and who would be negotiating it if you got your way.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The important thing for us to realise in all of this is that there was *never* any prospect of the EU offering anything other than exactly what the European Commission wants, i.e. either EEA plus EUCU, or nothing. This, I freely admit, is a mistake I have made myself in the past, and nowadays I try to check myself whenever I'm tempted to accuse the EU of being intransigent. It isn't.
The EU consists of a collection of member states that are unable to agree on almost anything of importance, save for the fact that all bar one of them wants to stay put. For now, anyway. It's not that such an incoherent rabble is unwilling to offer flexibility, so much as it's unable to do so.
Without the ability to decide on any significant change for themselves (just look at the slow death of Macron's proposals for Eurozone reform, for example,) the Commission is in sole charge of the negotiations, and its one and only priority is the survival of the Project at all costs. Concerns about anything as peripheral as people being slaughtered in terrorist atrocities are irrelevant to this calculus.
Yeah, you are spot on. If Leaver campaign did make an mistake, it was thinking that the Council runs the EU and that they would end up negotiating with people who had at least some interest in the mutual economic outcome. But the Commission is always in charge, the idea that Merkel actually has any real control over anything is a joke.
It is analogous to the UK having the civil service and no ministers, and the Cabinet just meets a few times a year to check in on what is happening. There is no way to control the Commission when the Council is not permanent.
But, of course, this realisation just provides further justification for voting Leave.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The important thing for us to realise in all of this is that there was *never* any prospect of the EU offering anything other than exactly what the European Commission wants, i.e. either EEA plus EUCU, or nothing. This, I freely admit, is a mistake I have made myself in the past, and nowadays I try to check myself whenever I'm tempted to accuse the EU of being intransigent. It isn't.
The EU consists of a collection of member states that are unable to agree on almost anything of importance, save for the fact that all bar one of them wants to stay put. For now, anyway. It's not that such an incoherent rabble is unwilling to offer flexibility, so much as it's unable to do so.
Without the ability to decide on any significant change for themselves (just look at the slow death of Macron's proposals for Eurozone reform, for example,) the Commission is in sole charge of the negotiations, and its one and only priority is the survival of the Project at all costs. Concerns about anything as peripheral as people being slaughtered in terrorist atrocities are irrelevant to this calculus.
What’s terrorism got to do with it? Your arguments are as flimsy as the wobbly set of Acorn Antiques (great username btw).
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The UK wants a trade deal with the EU. The EU has stated the parameters within such a deal can be done. We can get a Canada-style deal that will allow us the level of control we want, or we can have a Norway-style deal that will give us the economic benefits we want. We need to decide which it will be. We have yet to do so.
Sometimes you just show that you don't have a clue.
The CETA deal is only available if we agree to the NI backstop and basically allow NI to remain under EU control. So it is not actually available since there is no way this could ever pass Parliament. Which is why May has resorted to the Chequers nonsense.
If CETA was available, the deal would be done and we could all get on with life.
As I said, the EU has defined the parameters within which deals will be done. It's not brain surgery.
Then there is No Deal. The EU do not get to define what the UK must accept. We have a trade deficit with the EU. If they cannot offer an FTA on terms which are actually possible, then we trade without one.
But, in fact, if May had not listened to Remainers, and had walked rather than even discuss the NI backstop, the EU would have backed down and we would have CETA. It is the obvious weakness in May's position which have led them to go for broke and it is Remainers who must take the responsibility for that outcome because they constantly agreed that we had no choice but to cave in on every matter. No Deal is the result. Own it.
No deal is the consequence of a Conservative party that puts itself before the good of the country and a group of very wealthy nostalgists and profiteers who are happy for millions of ordinary Britons to bear the consequences of their delusions and greed. Like you in Australia, they will be absolutely fine whatever happens.
LOL. It is not the establishment and 'profiteers' who want Brexit. It was the ordinary people. If only we could just ignore them.....
absolutely. All of us involved in politics have come across non voters who went out and voted leave.
Except Corbyn will not be Attlee or Wilson who were the only 2 competent socialist leaders the British have ever voted for and given a majority to (and in the case of Wilson that is stretching competent somewhat) but most likely an incompetent socialist leader which British voters have never voted for.
Whatever you think of May she is hardly a Thatcherite, headline Brexiteer rabid Tory either and neither is Hammond unlike the rabid socialists Corbyn and McDonnell
And still 40% of the electorate voted for Corbyn Labour last year.
That's why a no deal Brexit is the best of the limited options available. Whatever the economic damage caused by it (and it would behove us not to take every report of looming catastrophe at face value, given what we've learned about the not entirely accurate predictions of Project Fear,) that would be as nothing compared to the threat of a disastrous political realignment if the betrayal narrative is allowed to take root: an extremist Ukip raised from the dead, quite possibly an actual break-up of the Tory party, and the far-Left coming to power.
Compared to the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street, with the Conservative Party in ruins and the far-Right gunning to take its place as the Opposition, Britain's relationship with Europe is a matter of trifling importance. And besides, we are probably living through the twilight years of the EU - and, in turn, the rupture of which so many people are afraid is something we're most likely going to have to live through at some point, anyway.
It is true the Tories only beat Corbyn as their hard Brexit platform in 2017 got them to 42% thanks to ex UKIP voters as Cummings said.
Now the Tories are only on 36% with a softer Brexit platform and UKIP are up in the polls so inevitably the Tories may have no choice but to have Boris as leader next time
If 2017 saw May hoover up all UKIP’s voters and still fail to get a majority, moving even further right doesn’t seem a sensible strategy for electoral success.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The important thing for us to realise in all of this is that there was *never* any prospect of the EU offering anything other than exactly what the European Commission wants, i.e. either EEA plus EUCU, or nothing. This, I freely admit, is a mistake I have made myself in the past, and nowadays I try to check myself whenever I'm tempted to accuse the EU of being intransigent. It isn't.
The EU consists of a collection of member states that are unable to agree on almost anything of importance, save for the fact that all bar one of them wants to stay put. For now, anyway. It's not that such an incoherent rabble is unwilling to offer flexibility, so much as it's unable to do so.
Without the ability to decide on any significant change for themselves (just look at the slow death of Macron's proposals for Eurozone reform, for example,) the Commission is in sole charge of the negotiations, and its one and only priority is the survival of the Project at all costs. Concerns about anything as peripheral as people being slaughtered in terrorist atrocities are irrelevant to this calculus.
Yeah, you are spot on. If Leaver campaign did make an mistake, it was thinking that the Council runs the EU and that they would end up negotiating with people who had at least some interest in the mutual economic outcome. But the Commission is always in charge, the idea that Merkel actually has any real control over anything is a joke.
It is analogous to the UK having the civil service and no ministers, and the Cabinet just meets a few times a year to check in on what is happening. There is no way to control the Commission when the Council is not permanent.
But, of course, this realisation just provides further justification for voting Leave.
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The economy is not doing *that* well. Wages growth is only marginally above inflation, and this comes after an awful period of declining real incomes. Home ownership has declined. The economy still has its structural imbalances. We import too much and export too little. We have sold off so many of our national assets that we now remit more in dividends abroad then we receive from our foreign investments.
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.
In reality unemployment is not that low - paricularly in respect of male full time work. Remove all the 'adjustments' of the 1980s & 1990s , and we have figures a good deal higher than the 1970s on a like for like basis - and MUCH higher than the 1950s & 1960s.
It might make you feel better to believe that but its not true. Unemployment is now measured through the ILO. A standardised measure that all EU member states *must* use. And it has been on that measure since about 1998. The changes we have seen since the crash are real. We really now do have Full Employment. Things can always be better, but lets not try and deny the 'Jobs Miracle'.
That is what we will call it in a few years time when something goes wrong and we will look on 4% unemployment as something only possible in a universe inhabited by unicorns on rainbows.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The UK wants a trade deal with the EU. The EU has stated the parameters within such a deal can be done. We can get a Canada-style deal that will allow us the level of control we want, or we can have a Norway-style deal that will give us the economic benefits we want. We need to decide which it will be. We have yet to do so.
Sometimes you just show that you don't have a clue.
The CETA deal is only available if we agree to the NI backstop and basically allow NI to remain under EU control. So it is not actually available since there is no way this could ever pass Parliament. Which is why May has resorted to the Chequers nonsense.
If CETA was available, the deal would be done and we could all get on with life.
As I said, the EU has defined the parameters within which deals will be done. It's not brain surgery.
To Deal is the result. Own it.
No deal is the consequence of a Conservative party that puts itself before the good of the country and a group of very wealthy nostalgists and profiteers who are happy for millions of ordinary Britons to bear the consequences of their delusions and greed. Like you in Australia, they will be absolutely fine whatever happens.
LOL. It is not the establishment and 'profiteers' who want Brexit. It was the ordinary people. If only we could just ignore them.....
absolutely. All of us involved in politics have come across non voters who went out and voted leave.
Did they vote for a No Deal Leave?
Of course not. They did vote to leave. And leave we will do. It seems by a combination of intransigence and incompetence on both sides, in different measures we are now hurtling towards a no deal which will hurt both sides, clearly the UK more than the EU. A no deal will no create a harmonious post relationship agreement. It will be a bitter and twisted deal. Without good will on each side a lot of damage can be done to each other.
Ideological purity takes second place to a fresh approach, so Jezza and May are unlikely to be replaced by photocopies of themselves.
If Jezza fell under a bus, I think the party would pick someone equally left-wing but less scrupulous about personal attacks and low cunning. Members aren't longing for a centrist, but they'd mostly like a more cut-throat approach which included savaging hapless Ministers and adopting stances for popular effect. Corbyn seems curiously fastidious in today's world: he thinks that one should simply say what one believes in without abuse or theatrics and in due course the electorate may come round. I like it, but I'm old-fashioned.
John McDonnell fits your description.
Yes, he does. He's also pretty uninterested in the politics of the Middle East, like 99% of the electorate - it's not that he feels the urge to be protective of Israel, more that he feels it's not a priority to get into Israeli-Palestinian arguments. He was once nice about the IRA, but I think most people feel that's yesterday's issue. His joke that "Jeremy is teaching me to be a nicer person but I'm only halfway through the course" is dangerously near the truth, though.
He says he doesn't want it, and I'm quite sure he won't move against Jeremy. But in an "under the bus" scenario? I wonder.
Yeah, but apart from all that aren't things going well? Unemployment the lowest since 1975, public borrowing the lowest since 2007 and continuing to fall sharply, growth apparently picking up, inflation low?
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.
The economy is not doing *that* well. Wages growth is only marginally above inflation, and this comes after an awful period of declining real incomes. Home ownership has declined. The economy still has its structural imbalances. We import too much and export too little. We have sold off so many of our national assets that we now remit more in dividends abroad then we receive from our foreign investments.
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.
In reality unemployment is not that low - paricularly in respect of male full time work. Remove all the 'adjustments' of the 1980s & 1990s , and we have figures a good deal higher than the 1970s on a like for like basis - and MUCH higher than the 1950s & 1960s.
It might make you feel better to believe that but its not true. Unemployment is now measured through the ILO. A standardised measure that all EU member states *must* use. And it has been on that measure since about 1998. The changes we have seen since the crash are real. We really now do have Full Employment. Things can always be better, but lets not try and deny the 'Jobs Miracle'.
That is what we will call it in a few years time when something goes wrong and we will look on 4% unemployment as something only possible in a universe inhabited by unicorns on rainbows.
To be fair Justin has a point with the changes in Unemployment from the recording of it in the 70s and 80s.
For example if you are made redundant in your mid to late 50s , with a small pension. You are seeking work, but are unable to claim .So do not show up on any official figures.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
The important thing for us to realise in all of this is that there was *never* any prospect of the EU offering anything other than exactly what the European Commission wants, i.e. either EEA plus EUCU, or nothing. This, I freely admit, is a mistake I have made myself in the past, and nowadays I try to check myself whenever I'm tempted to accuse the EU of being intransigent. It isn't.
The EU consists of a collection of member states that are unable to agree on almost anything of importance, save for the fact that all bar one of them wants to stay put. For now, anyway. It's not that such an incoherent rabble is unwilling to offer flexibility, so much as it's unable to do so.
Without the ability to decide on any significant change for themselves (just look at the slow death of Macron's proposals for Eurozone reform, for example,) the Commission is in sole charge of the negotiations, and its one and only priority is the survival of the Project at all costs. Concerns about anything as peripheral as people being slaughtered in terrorist atrocities are irrelevant to this calculus.
What’s terrorism got to do with it? Your arguments are as flimsy as the wobbly set of Acorn Antiques (great username btw).
Response to previous poster's remarks about security co-operation, which appears as unlikely to be resolved as anything else in this business.
My arguments are sound. I'd be fascinated to know how any end point other than Norway+CU or no deal is meant to be reached, given the circumstances.
(User name was first thing that came into my head, BTW. Make of that what you will...)
Seamlessly the death cult moves from “we hold all the cards” to “no deal is for the best”.
We moved from 'we hold plenty of cards in the negotiation to get a CETA FTA' to 'well it is a shame the Remainers running this negotiation threw all the cards away trying to get a BINO deal, but we voted leave and that is what we are going to do.'
No deal has always been better than a bad deal. Since the only deal remotely on offer that fulfils the referendum result is CETA with NI handed over to EU control, we are being perfectly consistent - No Deal is a better outcome than the bad deal on offer.
Ideological purity takes second place to a fresh approach, so Jezza and May are unlikely to be replaced by photocopies of themselves.
If Jezza fell under a bus, I think the party would pick someone equally left-wing but less scrupulous about personal attacks and low cunning. Members aren't longing for a centrist, but they'd mostly like a more cut-throat approach which included savaging hapless Ministers and adopting stances for popular effect. Corbyn seems curiously fastidious in today's world: he thinks that one should simply say what one believes in without abuse or theatrics and in due course the electorate may come round. I like it, but I'm old-fashioned.
Corbyn doesnt need to be abusive, he can stand back knowing that he has an army of acolytes who do this on his behalf and willingly in his name.
Not sure how much of a Game of Thrones follower you are, but Corbyn is much more the High Sparrow. Preaches worthy sentiments about being good and decent to each other. But has an collection of fanatics who then go and enforce his will.
We also have stagnating wages, the lowest growth rate in the EU, low productivity, and housing assets consume a truly wasteful percentage of investment while pricing a whole generation out of the property ladder.
PB Tories economic masturbation looks scarily provincial as soon as you leave Dover.
No Deal isn't a choice. It's the absence of a choice. It's an unsustainable situation of ad-hoc case by case decisions where we have to get the EU to allow us stuff on a temporary basis. Brexit will be humbling for the UK under every scenario, but No Deal is by far the most humiliating. The EU is somewhat unstable, but maybe not more than the United Kingdom, but while it exists it is powerful and the only show in town in Europe. We have to deal with it and it's in our interest to deal with it.
You can't do anything that might meaningfully be described as a deal with something that isn't capable of doing deals, but that's beside the point. We, as a nation, are much better off being in a state of ongoing tension with the EU than we are being at daggers drawn with each other.
Leaving the EU properly, whatever problems this creates, will draw a line under the whole wretched hokey-cokey catfight for everyone (except for the most fanatical EU-enthusiasts, whose arguments for re-joining are liable to gain as much traction as those for republicanism,) shore up the Tories, and keep Ukip in its grave. Leaving the EU technically, only to sign up to something that looks and feels to most of the population like an inferior copy, will leave our battered democracy in worse shape than ever.
We agree on the last point. The inferior copy is, as it says, inferior. We have to.do what we are told and we get less. I don't think it has fully sunk in with people that all our options are bad. That includes forgetting about the whole thing.
I disagree with you that No Deal is even a sustainable option. You want aeroplanes to fly? Ok, we'll give a list of permissions for the next fortnight. You need to do this and that for us and there's the small matter of €40 billion that you owe us. Want to avoid turning Kent into a lorry park and actually export Just in Time? And so on. At some point we will want rules, consistency and objectivity. That depends on agreement and us fitting into the EU system.
Seamlessly the death cult moves from “we hold all the cards” to “no deal is for the best”.
We moved from 'we hold plenty of cards in the negotiation to get a CETA FTA' to 'well it is a shame the Remainers running this negotiation threw all the cards away trying to get a BINO deal, but we voted leave and that is what we are going to do.'
No deal has always been better than a bad deal. Since the only deal remotely on offer that fulfils the referendum result is CETA with NI handed over to EU control, we are being perfectly consistent - No Deal is a better outcome than the bad deal on offer.
The only deal that fulfils the referendum result is one that sees us cease to be a member of the European Union.
Seamlessly the death cult moves from “we hold all the cards” to “no deal is for the best”.
We moved from 'we hold plenty of cards in the negotiation to get a CETA FTA' to 'well it is a shame the Remainers running this negotiation threw all the cards away trying to get a BINO deal, but we voted leave and that is what we are going to do.'
No deal has always been better than a bad deal. Since the only deal remotely on offer that fulfils the referendum result is CETA with NI handed over to EU control, we are being perfectly consistent - No Deal is a better outcome than the bad deal on offer.
How is having the promised “all the benefits of EU membership with none of the downsides” compatible with a CETA-style deal?
Seamlessly the death cult moves from “we hold all the cards” to “no deal is for the best”.
We moved from 'we hold plenty of cards in the negotiation to get a CETA FTA' to 'well it is a shame the Remainers running this negotiation threw all the cards away trying to get a BINO deal, but we voted leave and that is what we are going to do.'
No deal has always been better than a bad deal. Since the only deal remotely on offer that fulfils the referendum result is CETA with NI handed over to EU control, we are being perfectly consistent - No Deal is a better outcome than the bad deal on offer.
The only deal that fulfils the referendum result is one that sees us cease to be a member of the European Union.
Leavers are queuing up this morning to claim to be able to read the invisible ink on the referendum ballot paper.
We also have stagnating wages, the lowest growth rate in the EU, low productivity, and housing assets consume a truly wasteful percentage of investment while pricing a whole generation out of the property ladder.
PB Tories economic masturbation looks scarily provincial as soon as you leave Dover.
Aaaaaarggh, there's a video by @rcs1000 you need to watch!
Ideological purity takes second place to a fresh approach, so Jezza and May are unlikely to be replaced by photocopies of themselves.
If Jezza fell under a bus, I think the party would pick someone equally left-wing but less scrupulous about personal attacks and low cunning. Members aren't longing for a centrist, but they'd mostly like a more cut-throat approach which included savaging hapless Ministers and adopting stances for popular effect. Corbyn seems curiously fastidious in today's world: he thinks that one should simply say what one believes in without abuse or theatrics and in due course the electorate may come round. I like it, but I'm old-fashioned.
If Jezza fell under a bus, Tom Watson would be leader. It would be fascinating to see how long that would last - and who would stand for the leadership in an eventual contest. I am not sure that there is anyone equally as left-wing as Corbyn with the ability to harvest the support that Corbyn does. That's why he has not resigned and will lead labour into the next election.
Comments
As I recall, the Government has been following YOUR advice. Concede here, concede there, agree the Brexit bill, bend over on NI and finally go for Soft Brexit. I can't actually think of anything that May has done that you didn't support. And IT HAS NOT WORKED. Obsessed with trying to re-create the EU membership that we voted to leave, your plan has failed. There is only Brexit or No Brexit, as we told you all along.
Now, sit back, relax and wait for No Deal. And (after some short term chaos caused by the fact that Remainers kept telling us that we should not prepare for No Deal) you will find out the horrible truth - the great and powerful Oz is a fraud.
David Davis
Verified account @DavidDavisMP
The first calling point of the UK's negotiator immediately after #Brexit will not be Brussels, it will be Berlin, to strike a deal
2:50 AM - 26 May 2016
Whatever you think of May she is hardly a Thatcherite, headline Brexiteer rabid Tory either and neither is Hammond unlike the rabid socialists Corbyn and McDonnell
Umunna also has a higher net Yougov approval rating than May, Corbyn, McDonnell or Boris.
Indeed only Ruth Davidson of prominent Tories has a higher net approval rating than Umunna with Yougov and only Creasy, Burnham, Field and Rayner of prominent Labour figures, so if not Umunna maybe Creasy or Rayner would be Labour's saviour
If a deal is ever done, it will be done by the Council, not the Commission. I am on record way back in 2017 saying that Barnier was aiming for No Deal.
IMO low unemployment has done a lot to maintain support for the government.
The problem is we elect those who are striving for the top. I'd start by disallowing all those who want to be leader. Who does the leave? The modest with much to be modest about, but the occasional nugget. Who would I trust?
I was surprised to see, in a survey a few months ago, one Frank Field rating very highly. . He's too old now, but he never wanted to be leader so that makes him ideal. Taking a realistic plan for benefits to Gordon was not a plan of an ambitious man, but as the UK's favourite poem (except for snowflakes in Manchester) says … "If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools" by Mrs Rochester, you'll do.
That's the Catch 22, isn't it?
Not my first choice as Leader, but not a duffer either.
But the point remains - if you look at what May has done, rather than what she said, it all came straight out of your playbook. You agreed with the Brexit Bill, the December agreement, the transition, the backstop, Chequers. And yet it has been a total failure. Take responsibility. Remainers have driven Brexit off a cliff!
I have always found the business case difficult because it depends on changes in consumer behaviour - ie that users will monitor the in home display, see they are using lots of energy, and change behaviour. I had an early energy use monitor that wrapped around the incoming electricity supply. It was interesting to look at it for a day or two, then it ended up in the drawer. If people generally do this then there won't be reductions in usage. There are interesting technology challenges in getting the last few % of consumers collected (isolated sites, foil back plasterboard, Cornish walls, etc) and any big programme has problems with timescales - I wonder whether accepting a delay would be cheaper in the long term, but there are a lot of factors to trade off.
Having said which, having a smart infrastructure allows for more intelligence in the system, time of use tariffs, reduction of peak load on the grid by smart appliances (eg fridges reducing usage at periods of peak demand), use of electric car batteries for grid storage, better monitoring of network health, etc, which do provide real benefits, just not very costable ones. If something like this doesn't happen the national infrastructure would be looking very obsolete by the middle of the century.
And at least it gives something other than Brexit to talk about...
And after this, I think he has relatively little chance of winning with the current Labour membership:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-is-behaving-like-a-petulant-child-chuka-umunna-hits-out-10395856.html
He might be keen to stay in the single market now - but it wasn't always so:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/chuka-umunna-single-market-free-movement-brexit_uk_57e3e201e4b0db20a6e8b057
He's a good communicator. But I wouldn't bet on him becoming leader after Corbyn.
ROFLMAO
PMSL
I was opposed to triggering A50 without any planning. I remain opposed to her red lines. She has not pursued the Brexit I would have pursued. Sorry.
Jezza and #Edstone
#Edstone and Brown
Brown and Blair
May and Cameron
Cameron and Howard
Howard and IDS
Or to go back a bit further:
Maggie and Heath, Foot and Callaghan.
Ideological purity takes second place to a fresh approach, so Jezza and May are unlikely to be replaced by photocopies of themselves.
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1018917143059058688?s=19
That's why a no deal Brexit is the best of the limited options available. Whatever the economic damage caused by it (and it would behove us not to take every report of looming catastrophe at face value, given what we've learned about the not entirely accurate predictions of Project Fear,) that would be as nothing compared to the threat of a disastrous political realignment if the betrayal narrative is allowed to take root: an extremist Ukip raised from the dead, quite possibly an actual break-up of the Tory party, and the far-Left coming to power.
Compared to the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street, with the Conservative Party in ruins and the far-Right gunning to take its place as the Opposition, Britain's relationship with Europe is a matter of trifling importance. And besides, we are probably living through the twilight years of the EU - and, in turn, the rupture of which so many people are afraid is something we're most likely going to have to live through at some point, anyway.
The political ground is ripe for a new party, or even more than one, but Labour MPs had no compunction about campaigning for Corbyn to be PM at the last election. Will they next time? Hard to see.
Dr. Foxy, historically, yes. But if history were a perfect guide to the future we'd currently be discussing the new Roman Emperor's policies towards Parthia.
If the far left rewrite the rule book then a Continuity Corbyn candidate will get on the short list, then win the Socialist Worker's Party membership vote with ease. Maybe it'll flit between Stalinist and Trotskyite, but that'll be about as far as variance in far left lunacy goes.
Britain has had a Brexit-implementing government for two years, with such talents as Leave possesses contributing to their limited abilities. It has been a complete car crash, just as those of us who voted Remain said it would be (the cluelessness of Leavers was abundantly clear well before the referendum). In that period Leavers have failed to come up with any workable proposals, preferring to paint themselves in woad and cry betrayal.
The negotiating strategy of the civil service was rejected and its chief advocate dismissed. This is a hole of Leavers’ making and they are singularly lacking in workable suggestions as to how to get out of it except shout louder and slower at Brussels.
Brexit is failing and dimwits like you are to blame. As could be and was predicted well before the referendum.
Davis' white paper was ignored by May, who preferred her own. Even that has been dismissed by the EU.
The EU's idea of a workable proposal is the regulatory annexation of Northern Ireland.
May has been dire, prevaricating and capitulating, but the EU has been wilfully intransigent to the point of wishing harm not only on the UK but itself. Who benefits if UK and EU intelligence agencies stop co-operating?
Before you say that is impossible under FPTP, Macron and En Marche came first tin the first rounds too of France's second ballot system (which is in any case not PR)
Complaining that the EU is being unreasonable is infantile. This is a negotiation that Leavers sought. They should have been prepared for all likely reactions. They believed they held all he cards. They didn’t.
Now the Tories are only on 36% with a softer Brexit platform and UKIP are up in the polls so inevitably the Tories may have no choice but to have Boris as leader next time
Mr. Meeks, the EU is comprised (mostly) of Western democracies. Expecting them not to collectively self-harm in order to try and punish a country which has had the temerity to vote to leave an organisation which pro-Remain types insisted didn't have excessive power (although now they're suggesting we won't be able to fly and butter will become a luxury outside the EU) is not unreasonable.
Infantile is not being surprised by the sheer extent of the EU's intransigence, it's being willing to compromise intelligence sharing about terrorism because one is so besotted with The Project that risking the deaths of innocent people is worth it to try and hit the UK and make a political point. It's insane. It'll almost certainly hurt the EU more than the UK.
And that's the organisation you're defending.
Party leaders rarely choose or are aligned with their successors. A change of leader usually is because a party feels a change in direction is desired and needed. I expect a new Labour Leader to be Soft Left rather than Hard Left, and I think that the Trotskyite influence in such a contest would be small. NickP shows how members realign with a leadership when that new leader has a sense of zietgeist. After all, Blair himself was first elected in 1983 on Michael Foot's manifesto of nationalisation, EU withdrawal, NATO withdrawal and unilateral nuclear disarmament. The wind can change direction very quickly at times.
Will he win is a different question, but of course he can win.
British politics tend to make parties cling on to government for one election too many, as the electorate is wary of change. It's natural to fight, and natural to want to keep the other lot out. But in the end it causes lasting damage. In retrospect, the Tories would have been better off losing in 1992, and Labour would have been better off losing in 2005. The parties can't deliver the change, since no party really gives up, but the voters will.
At some point the public are going to try the left Labour model, whether under Corbyn or someone else, and maybe it'll prove unworkable (in which case it'll be Labour's turn to need a "what-now?" period in opposition) or maybe it'll prove successful, but in the meantime we will need a Conservative alternative in British politics that goes beyond squeezing through the next vote.
It would surely have improved her contact with voters as she would have had to debate with differing parts of the conservative party membership.
It would also have made her think more clearly about policy including Brexit.
A lesson should be learnt for both main parties, that a quick fix is not a good way to test a new leader.
The EU's 'negotiating stance' is to reject everything that isn't perfect for it and try to impose a customs barrier within a nation-state which won't even be a member of the EU any more. It's completely unacceptable.
Just because we want to leave doesn't validate the EU acting, collectively, like an absolute dick.
May is likely to be followed by a hard Brexiteer as Tory leader by contrast
Still, it is a lovely day. I'm off for a swim followed by a trip to the revamped RAF Museum in Colindale with my other half, lunch and then an afternoon snoozing and reading in the garden. Agreeable drinks will be consumed.
Have fun all.
I didn`t mention Mrs May by name - she is just one element in the unhealthy mess that has come to the top of the Conservative Party in its latter days. But Conservative incompetence has been all too clearly demonstrated. They have nobody who would manage any better.
What is clear and on the record is that the Remainers have been running the negotiation and that the Leavers were sidelined, ignored and then deliberately misled by May. But hey, don't let facts stop you.
Leavers simply want a CETA agreement. Remainers want to somehow re-create EU membership from the outside. As Boris and DD made clear, we have refused to follow the first strategy and have followed the second. This has been an abject failure. For which Remainers such as yourself are responsible, because you refused to allow the referendum result to be implemented and spent two years whining about Soft Brexit, which it is now clear does not exist.
But no matter - we will get our Brexit in the end, via No Deal. Could have been a better outcome but in a few years time the FTA with the EU will be in place. As soon as A50 expires, the EU have no hold over us whatsoever and at that point they will come to the table and deal. The NI backstop issue will go away for good on 31 March 2019 because there will be a soft border, as we always said. Barnier will be out of the picture. Nobody will care about Varadkar or what Ireland want. Then we can sit back and laugh as the EU slowly implodes.
The CETA deal is only available if we agree to the NI backstop and basically allow NI to remain under EU control. So it is not actually available since there is no way this could ever pass Parliament. Which is why May has resorted to the Chequers nonsense.
If CETA was available, the deal would be done and we could all get on with life.
It's possible the Lib Dems would have started advocating an in/out referendum again, as the best way to settle the issue for a generation.
I miss Malcolm - leftish but always with a cool eye to what actually works. (I'm voting for Ann Black in the NEC election as an exception to otherwise going with Momentum's slate, for just the same reason.)
The EU consists of a collection of member states that are unable to agree on almost anything of importance, save for the fact that all bar one of them wants to stay put. For now, anyway. It's not that such an incoherent rabble is unwilling to offer flexibility, so much as it's unable to do so.
Without the ability to decide on any significant change for themselves (just look at the slow death of Macron's proposals for Eurozone reform, for example,) the Commission is in sole charge of the negotiations, and its one and only priority is the survival of the Project at all costs. Concerns about anything as peripheral as people being slaughtered in terrorist atrocities are irrelevant to this calculus.
But, in fact, if May had not listened to Remainers, and had walked rather than even discuss the NI backstop, the EU would have backed down and we would have CETA. It is the obvious weakness in May's position which have led them to go for broke and it is Remainers who must take the responsibility for that outcome because they constantly agreed that we had no choice but to cave in on every matter. No Deal is the result. Own it.
The EU has a consensual system of policymaking that can be frustratingly slow at times, but the strength of such an approach is that (until Brexit) gradualism and evolution of structures has been the norm. This keeps support strong, albeit with some frustrations from both those who want faster or slower movement. There once was a time in Britain where we favoured such an approach internally too, with a suspiciion of revolutionaries and ideologues.
Leaving the EU properly, whatever problems this creates, will draw a line under the whole wretched hokey-cokey catfight for everyone (except for the most fanatical EU-enthusiasts, whose arguments for re-joining are liable to gain as much traction as those for republicanism,) shore up the Tories, and keep Ukip in its grave. Leaving the EU technically, only to sign up to something that looks and feels to most of the population like an inferior copy, will leave our battered democracy in worse shape than ever.
It is analogous to the UK having the civil service and no ministers, and the Cabinet just meets a few times a year to check in on what is happening. There is no way to control the Commission when the Council is not permanent.
But, of course, this realisation just provides further justification for voting Leave.
Your arguments are as flimsy as the wobbly set of Acorn Antiques (great username btw).
That is what we will call it in a few years time when something goes wrong and we will look on 4% unemployment as something only possible in a universe inhabited by unicorns on rainbows.
He says he doesn't want it, and I'm quite sure he won't move against Jeremy. But in an "under the bus" scenario? I wonder.
I described Brexitism as a cult in 2016 and was accused of hyperbole.
For example if you are made redundant in your mid to late 50s , with a small pension.
You are seeking work, but are unable to claim .So do not show up on any official figures.
My arguments are sound. I'd be fascinated to know how any end point other than Norway+CU or no deal is meant to be reached, given the circumstances.
(User name was first thing that came into my head, BTW. Make of that what you will...)
No deal has always been better than a bad deal. Since the only deal remotely on offer that fulfils the referendum result is CETA with NI handed over to EU control, we are being perfectly consistent - No Deal is a better outcome than the bad deal on offer.
Not sure how much of a Game of Thrones follower you are, but Corbyn is much more the High Sparrow. Preaches worthy sentiments about being good and decent to each other. But has an collection of fanatics who then go and enforce his will.
We also have stagnating wages, the lowest growth rate in the EU, low productivity, and housing assets consume a truly wasteful percentage of investment while pricing a whole generation out of the property ladder.
PB Tories economic masturbation looks scarily provincial as soon as you leave Dover.
I disagree with you that No Deal is even a sustainable option. You want aeroplanes to fly? Ok, we'll give a list of permissions for the next fortnight. You need to do this and that for us and there's the small matter of €40 billion that you owe us. Want to avoid turning Kent into a lorry park and actually export Just in Time? And so on. At some point we will want rules, consistency and objectivity. That depends on agreement and us fitting into the EU system.
https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1020362298416746496