I don't see any chance of Turkish accession within five years. I do think it possible within ten.
No chance, given the direction in which Erdogan has taken the country. It looked possible in the long term in 2010, but not any more.
The failed coup (And crackdown) occurred after the leave vote though. It's important to remember the world as it was then, and not as it is now. I'd have been inclined to agree with Herdson at that point.
94-year old man on trial in Germany, accused of complicity in mass murder at a Nazi death camp during World War Two.
A justified trial, and/or trial of the last man standing?
Pointless. There could have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of these trials in the late 1940s and 1950s. There weren't because the decision was sensibly taken that in order to move on, society had to change and that providing it did, justice only required tackling the worst and/or most senior offenders. Let the lesser fry live with their consciences. If this man is brought to trial, it won't be because he did anything unusual in the era when the offences took place; it will be because he has had the temerity not to die.
I don't see any chance of Turkish accession within five years. I do think it possible within ten.
No chance, given the direction in which Erdogan has taken the country. It looked possible in the long term in 2010, but not any more.
The failed coup (And crackdown) occurred after the leave vote though. It's important to remember the world as it was then, and not as it is now. I'd have been inclined to agree with Herdson at that point.
I don't see any chance of Turkish accession within five years. I do think it possible within ten.
No chance, given the direction in which Erdogan has taken the country. It looked possible in the long term in 2010, but not any more.
You say 'no chance'. I say 'Turkey post-Edogan'. These things can easily go in cycles. There has already been one attempted coup against him and there remains a strong secularist strain of thought in the country and particularly in parts of the military and government.
I'm sure you find that waffle comforting, but the fact is Cameron was a clear and loud advocate for Turkish membership, saying it should and could happen as soon as possible - he said it in London, Brussels and Ankara.
Then when the referendum came along, and the polls turned whiffy, he suddenly came out with crap like this:
You cannot announce both of these opinions without looking like a bullshitter and a chancer, and someone who takes the public for fools. That's what happened to Cameron during the campaign and it is a significant reason Remain lost.
People stopped trusting the prime minister, even as you continue to adore him.
I don't why you're obsessed with Cameron. I didn't mention him, since he is irrelevant to the point I was making about the Leave campaign's lies on Turkey, the most egregious of which was the one about visa-free travel..
Because you're focussing on the minutiae of the debate, not the overall picture. Leave brought up Turkey because they knew Cameron was a liar about Turkish accession (though doubtless he would call it realpolitik). They knew the voters would notice this prime ministerial mendacity, and not focus on the nuance (same goes for the £350m claim, as you admit).
When the leader of a referendum campaign, who is also the prime minister, looks like an untrustworthy liar, hoping to hoodwink you, then that campaign is in trouble. As we saw.
Ah, that's a different point. I agree that they exploited the fact that Cameron was in a difficult position, given that the UK government position for many years has been in favour of eventual accession by Turkey, and that for diplomatic reasons the UK and the EU were politely maintaining the fiction that accession might eventually happen. It was smart campaigning by them. None of that invalidates what I said.
This is a good threader from the Estimable Meeks, but it misses one clear and obvious point: we had a referendum in 1975 on our embryonic EU Membership - whether to stay in, or abort.
And that was when referendums were EXTREMELY rare.
That plebiscite established the principle that EU membership was such an important constitutional issue, it had to be put to directly to the voters. So, morally and politically we were obliged to have another referendum, when the time came for us to see if we wanted to quit.
The tragedy is that we should have been bolder, and had a referendum earlier, over Maastricht or Lisbon (as promised, then denied). We would have voted down these Treaties, integration (at least for Britain) would have halted, as we stayed in a looser EU - and then Brexit wouldn't even exist as a word.
I agree. Remainers, not Leavers, have been the ones who doomed our membership of the Common Market/European Community/European Union. A no vote on Maastricht, if it led to a looser European body, or else a two-track EU, would have kept us in. Blair's commitment to unrestricted immigration is another milestone in our route out. And finally, the Brown/Cameron betrayal on the EU Constitution/Lisbon.
The only time the pro-EU establishment showed any real sense was when they agreed we wouldn't join the Euro without a referendum. At least they had learned something from the ERM.
I don't see any chance of Turkish accession within five years. I do think it possible within ten.
No chance, given the direction in which Erdogan has taken the country. It looked possible in the long term in 2010, but not any more.
You say 'no chance'. I say 'Turkey post-Edogan'. These things can easily go in cycles. There has already been one attempted coup against him and there remains a strong secularist strain of thought in the country and particularly in parts of the military and government.
Once bitten twice shy. It would have to be a post-Erdogan Turkey which was clearly and irrevocably reformed so there couldn't be a repeat. Never say never, but I can't see that happening within 10 years.
This is a good threader from the Estimable Meeks, but it misses one clear and obvious point: we had a referendum in 1975 on our embryonic EU Membership - whether to stay in, or abort.
And that was when referendums were EXTREMELY rare.
That plebiscite established the principle that EU membership was such an important constitutional issue, it had to be put to directly to the voters. So, morally and politically we were obliged to have another referendum, when the time came for us to see if we wanted to quit.
The tragedy is that we should have been bolder, and had a referendum earlier, over Maastricht or Lisbon (as promised, then denied). We would have voted down these Treaties, integration (at least for Britain) would have halted, as we stayed in a looser EU - and then Brexit wouldn't even exist as a word.
Excellent point about the EU being an issue deserving of a referendum. If it was the case in 1975 then it certainly was worthy of being put to the public again in 2016.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies.
On a basic political level, he was a loser: he lost a vote he should have won at a canter.
How, exactly, should he have won at a canter against a campaign that "out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies" ?
You are claiming he lost to a better campaign, and you hate him for it?
When the leader of a referendum campaign, who is also the prime minister, looks like an untrustworthy liar, hoping to hoodwink you, then that campaign is in trouble. As we saw.
Ah, that's a different point. I agree that they exploited the fact that Cameron was in a difficult position, given that the UK government position for many years has been in favour of eventual accession by Turkey, and that for diplomatic reasons the UK and the EU were politely maintaining the fiction that accession might eventually happen. It was smart campaigning by them. None of that invalidates what I said.
Then we are in agreement. Play the flutes of concord.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied.
Doesn't this terrible failure by Remain (which, after all, had the entire Establishment on its side, plus business, Labour, Obama, and Jeremy Clarkson) make you question your esteem for Cameron, as a politician?
He fucked up the referendum, calamitously. On a basic political level, he was a loser: he lost a vote he should have won at a canter. How can you still maintain he is "the best PM since Alfred the Great" or whatever it is?
I can see he had some fine qualities (like Tony Blair). He's a better politician than most on the front bench now. But still. He will mainly be remembered for losing that vote that he called on his terms and on his timing. Tsk.
[Nearly] All political careers end in failure. Some of those failures (hello, Neville, Antony) are so calamitous as to outweigh a previously stellar career. Others - Thatcher, Churchill, Attlee, Chatham - achieve great things and then go off a bit after hanging around too long. Others again do a decent job then screw something up, which is the group Cameron sits in.
Cameron will undoubtedly be remembered as the inadvertent midwife of Brexit but that baby had been cooking well before 2010 or even 2005 and while he failed to avert it coming on his watch, that doesn't alter his first, coalition, ministry, which was one of the more successful goverments of recent decades.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
I don't see any chance of Turkish accession within five years. I do think it possible within ten.
No chance, given the direction in which Erdogan has taken the country. It looked possible in the long term in 2010, but not any more.
You say 'no chance'. I say 'Turkey post-Edogan'. These things can easily go in cycles. There has already been one attempted coup against him and there remains a strong secularist strain of thought in the country and particularly in parts of the military and government.
Once bitten twice shy. It would have to be a post-Erdogan Turkey which was clearly and irrevocably reformed so there couldn't be a repeat. Never say never, but I can't see that happening within 10 years.
I'm not saying I expect it at all but I do think it's possible. After all, Greece, Spain and Portugal all went from dictatorship to EEC membership within about 12 years. The Eastern / Central European states achieved the same in 15 years. If both the EU and a new Turkish leadership were determined on its accession being implemented, I think ten years is just about the fastest it could go.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
He got himself into the mess in the first place. Not able to counter the rise of UKIP / Farage and then his inability to get any sort of deal from the EU. If he had come back with some sensible concessions from the EU, he would have won the referendum, bus or no bus.
The way I always think of Cameron time as PM as akin to a very solid CEO of an established company. The wheels keep turning, things are orderly, very agreeable etc. The problem is people wanted change on our relationship with the EU, and that required some something more.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
He got himself into the mess in the first place. Not able to counter the rise of UKIP / Farage and then his inability to get any sort of deal from the EU. If he had come back with some sensible concessions from the EU, he would have won the referendum, bus or no bus.
He got the best deal possible, as we are now finding. It's one of the ironies of the whole affair that we decided to leave just at the point where we'd got as good a settlement with the EU as it would ever have been possible to get, and now we'll have to settle for something worse.
So now it's about damage limitation. I'm moderately confident on that: with luck we can ensure it turns out to be, as Cameron said in that off-the-record remark, a mistake but not a disaster.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
He got himself into the mess in the first place. Not able to counter the rise of UKIP / Farage and then his inability to get any sort of deal from the EU. If he had come back with some sensible concessions from the EU, he would have won the referendum, bus or no bus.
He got the best deal possible, as we are now finding. It's one of the ironies of the whole affair that we decided to leave just at the point where we'd got as good a settlement with the EU as it would ever have been possible to get, and now we'll have to settle for something worse.
So now it's about damage limitation. I'm moderately confident on that: with luck we can ensure it turns out to be, as Cameron said in that off-the-record remark, a mistake but not a disaster.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
"A leader who could not lead" will be Cameron's epitaph.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
I'm sure you find that waffle comforting, but the fact is Cameron was a clear and loud advocate for Turkish membership, saying it should and could happen as soon as possible - he said it in London, Brussels and Ankara.
Because you'r.
When the leader of a referendum campaign, who is also the prime minister, looks like an untrustworthy liar, hoping to hoodwink you, then that campaign is in trouble. As we saw.
Ah, that's a different point. I agree that they exploited the fact that Cameron was in a difficult position, given that the UK government position for many years has been in favour of eventual accession by Turkey, and that for diplomatic reasons the UK and the EU were politely maintaining the fiction that accession might eventually happen. It was smart campaigning by them. None of that invalidates what I said.
Then we are in agreement. Play the flutes of concord.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied.
Doesn't this terrible failure by Remain (which, after all, had the entire Establishment on its side, plus business, Labour, Obama, and Jeremy Clarkson) make you question your esteem for Cameron, as a politician?
He fucked up the referendum, calamitously. On a basic political level, he was a loser: he lost a vote he should have won at a canter. How can you still maintain he is "the best PM since Alfred the Great" or whatever it is?
I can see he had some fine qualities (like Tony Blair). He's a better politician than most on the front bench now. But still. He will mainly be remembered for losing that vote that he called on his terms and on his timing. Tsk.
Almost up till the end, I thought that the Remain campaign was far better than that of Leave. I really did think we would be frightened into voting Remain.
Also, my experience of the Leave campaign on the ground was that until late in the day, it was shambolic.
When the leader of a referendum campaign, who is also the prime minister, looks like an untrustworthy liar, hoping to hoodwink you, then that campaign is in trouble. As we saw.
Ah, that's a different point. I agree that they exploited the fact that Cameron was in a difficult position, given that the UK government position for many years has been in favour of eventual accession by Turkey, and that for diplomatic reasons the UK and the EU were politely maintaining the fiction that accession might eventually happen. It was smart campaigning by them. None of that invalidates what I said.
Then we are in agreement. Play the flutes of concord.
Leave outcampaigned for losing that vote that he called on his terms and on his timing. Tsk.
[Nearly] All political careers end in failure. Some of those failures (hello, Neville, Antony) are so calamitous as to outweigh a previously stellar career. Others - Thatcher, Churchill, Attlee, Chatham - achieve great things and then go off a bit after hanging around too long. Others again do a decent job then screw something up, which is the group Cameron sits in.
Cameron will undoubtedly be remembered as the inadvertent midwife of Brexit but that baby had been cooking well before 2010 or even 2005 and while he failed to avert it coming on his watch, that doesn't alter his first, coalition, ministry, which was one of the more successful goverments of recent decades.
I think Brexit is regarded by many (surely including Cameron) as a bit more than a "screw up".
I agree he was a pretty decent PM up til then.
I think the best comparison is none of the historical characters you mention, it is his immediate predecessor. Blair was a charismatic election winner who did good things in his early years (like Dave), but will now always be remembered for one monumental error, which (perhaps unfairly) overshadows all else. For Tony it was Iraq, of course.
The problem is that Cameron and his crew were too far detached from the voters mindset. The loss of a referendum came as a baffling shock - that in itself is a failure of a PM.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
"A leader who could not lead" will be Cameron's epitaph.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
Mr Nabavi made quite a revealing comment a few weeks ago: in his view, Cameron only supported an EU referendum because he made a blithe assumption that Labour would cheerlead for the Remain campaign and win the referendum for him. That is not exactly great leadership skills.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
"A leader who could not lead" will be Cameron's epitaph.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
Cameron will be remembered as a very good Coalition PM.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
For a very smart guy you are weirdly idiotic about Cameron. Losing a hugely important referendum you call yourself, on your own terms, and on your own timing, and with all advantages on your side, is nothing like losing an election. It is a massive massive error which taints an entire career.
But I am not going to persuade you, and perhaps you should be commended for your loyalty. So let us end the debate
Here's an interesting counterfactual: if Osborne had been PM and had run the negotiation and the campaign, would Leave have still prevailed? I think not. Osborne seems wilier than Cameron, and lacks the fatal arrogance. I suspect Osborne would have won it for Remain, even though he was a less popular politician.
Dunno, to be honest. Osborne might have been more ruthless, for example more willing to kick Boris in the goolies. But neither of them were sufficiently sensitive to the culture-war aspect of the issue, they both saw the problem in economic terms. That would probably have been enough, if Labour hadn't gone AWOL, but not as things turned out.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
Seemed to work ok pre-Lisbon with 15 members that often had competing interests. Perhaps the federalists were unhappy with the speed of integration?
This case is about whether gifts to UKIP are exempt from inheritance tax.
The legislation (section 24 IHTA 1984) requires MPs to have been elected to the House of Commons at the last General election for a gift to be exempt. As UKIP had no MPs elected at the 2010 election then the gifts in the run up to the 2015 election would not fall within the s24 exemption.
Arron Banks was claiming on Human Rights grounds (EHCR) that s24 was discriminatory (which he won see paragraph 115-117) but the Tribunal was unable to provide any effective remedies. This included under the relevant EU treaties.
When the leader of a referendum campaign, who is also the prime minister, looks like an untrustworthy liar, hoping to hoodwink you, then that campaign is in trouble. As we saw.
Ah, that's a different point. I agree that they exploited the fact that Cameron was in a difficult position, given that the UK government position for many years has been in favour of eventual accession by Turkey, and that for diplomatic reasons the UK and the EU were politely maintaining the fiction that accession might eventually happen. It was smart campaigning by them. None of that invalidates what I said.
Then we are in agreement. Play the flutes of concord.
Leave outcampaigned for losing that vote that he called on his terms and on his timing. Tsk.
[Nearly] All political careers end in failure. Some of those failures (hello, Neville, Antony) are so calamitous as to outweigh a previously stellar career. Others - Thatcher, Churchill, Attlee, Chatham - achieve great things and then go off a bit after hanging around too long. Others again do a decent job then screw something up, which is the group Cameron sits in.
Cameron will undoubtedly be remembered as the inadvertent midwife of Brexit but that baby had been cooking well before 2010 or even 2005 and while he failed to avert it coming on his watch, that doesn't alter his first, coalition, ministry, which was one of the more successful goverments of recent decades.
I think Brexit is regarded by many (surely including Cameron) as a bit more than a "screw up".
I agree he was a pretty decent PM up til then.
I think the best comparison is none of the historical characters you mention, it is his immediate predecessor. Blair was a charismatic election winner who did good things in his early years (like Dave), but will now always be remembered for one monumental error, which (perhaps unfairly) overshadows all else. For Tony it was Iraq, of course.
In political terms, losing the Brexit referendum was an almighty screw-up, though not on the scale of Iraq (nor on the scale of losing the SIndyRef, which he didn't). How bad a screw-up it turns out to be in practice remains an unknown. It might all be a bit of a damp squib, with a Soft Brexit deal which satisfies 80% of the population and where life carries on more-or-less as before. Or we could end up with a bloody big recession, Scottish independence, renewed violence in N Ireland, a Corbyn government, unemployment, riots and the rest, which really would put him in Lord North territory.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
"A leader who could not lead" will be Cameron's epitaph.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
Mr Nabavi made quite a revealing comment a few weeks ago: in his view, Cameron only supported an EU referendum because he made a blithe assumption that Labour would cheerlead for the Remain campaign and win the referendum for him. That is not exactly great leadership skills.
Err, that's not quite what I said! But yes, he was originally expecting Labour to play its part in getting the vote out, as they would have done under any other leader. No-one predicted that Corbyn and Seumas Milne would be running things, and deliberately obstructing the Labour Remain campaign. It was a black-swan factor which really screwed up the risk/reward calculation.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
"A leader who could not lead" will be Cameron's epitaph.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
If you kick a can, it shouldn't catch up with you; you should catch up with it.
After four years at Sky as political editor, Faisal Islam is off to the BBC to become their economics editor.
A certain regular poster on here from North Wales isn't going to be happy.....
I'm amazed that he's got the job. Presume he'll have to tone down his anti Brexit rhetoric. In fairness when Paul Mason worked for the beeb I had no idea what lied beneath so it's possible to put personal views to one side (Jon Sopel take note!).
After four years at Sky as political editor, Faisal Islam is off to the BBC to become their economics editor.
A certain regular poster on here from North Wales isn't going to be happy.....
I'm amazed that he's got the job. Presume he'll have to tone down his anti Brexit rhetoric. In fairness when Paul Mason worked for the beeb I had no idea what lied beneath so it's possible to put personal views to one side (Jon Sopel take note!).
Yeah, Mason was particularly good in that respect. Whether that can be repeated is another matter...
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
So they'd be forced to do less, and stop dreaming up ever more grandiose schemes. Bliss.
I think this wisdom-of-crowds streak is going to be coming to an end (especially with the D+11 generic!), but it's an interesting finding anyhow. Is it fatalism or fear of corruption/suppression? https://twitter.com/williamjordann/status/1059813211145412609
Err, that's not quite what I said! But yes, he was originally expecting Labour to play its part in getting the vote out, as they would have done under any other leader. No-one predicted that Corbyn and Seumas Milne would be running things, and deliberately obstructing the Labour Remain campaign. It was a black-swan factor which really screwed up the risk/reward calculation.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
But again, I really don't know where you get the idea that Labour were shaping up to play a big part in the Remain campaign, even before Corbyn. Ed Miliband had shown little interest in Europe one way or the other throughout his leadership, and the two betting favourites for next Labour leader at that time (Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper) were both already talking about how freedom of movement was a bad thing. And, maybe more to the point, it was already obvious back then that Labour were losing votes to UKIP. There was never any reason to think Labour would be enthusiastically campaigning for Remain, Corbyn or no Corbyn.
As for the last paragraph, I'll defer to your greater judgement on what the mood of Tory members would've been in the event of a Remain vote, but, as an outsider, it doesn't seem to me that they would've given up on their "obsession" with Europe all that easily!
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
"A leader who could not lead" will be Cameron's epitaph.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
If you kick a can, it shouldn't catch up with you; you should catch up with it.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
"A leader who could not lead" will be Cameron's epitaph.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
Mr Nabavi made quite a revealing comment a few weeks ago: in his view, Cameron only supported an EU referendum because he made a blithe assumption that Labour would cheerlead for the Remain campaign and win the referendum for him. That is not exactly great leadership skills.
Err, that's not quite what I said! But yes, he was originally expecting Labour to play its part in getting the vote out, as they would have done under any other leader. No-one predicted that Corbyn and Seumas Milne would be running things, and deliberately obstructing the Labour Remain campaign. It was a black-swan factor which really screwed up the risk/reward calculation.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
It wouldn't have ended the Tory obsession with Europe. Even a 60-40 result would have kept UKIP and the Tory right very much in the game (and 52-48 the other way would definitely have been merely the end of the latest round before the start of the next).
If Britain had voted Remain, the fundamental problems of the EU wanting to be a different thing from that which British voters want it to be, of immigration from the eastern countries, of apparently silly and/or interfering regulations from Brussels or rulings from the ECJ, and of billions of pounds being passed in contributions, would have remained live and valid, so the reckoning would just have been delayed.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Crazy wishful thinking. Cameron's entire European strategy failed, and even if Remain had scraped over the line it still would have failed and he would have been consumed by the same forces unleashed by the referendum.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
So they'd be forced to do less, and stop dreaming up ever more grandiose schemes. Bliss.
Not sure what the grandiose parts of the EU budget are but no, if they managed to pass anything it would be by splurging out pork for all the little countries.
News from the Noo Yawk ‘burbs: Strong Democratic presence at the station this morning from their state senate and town council campaigns (both currently R). Placards, leafleting etc. Prolly not entirely legal on MTA property but I’m not calling the cops.
I live in hope, but not expectation, that Pete King will lose his seat.
Please do the right thing New York.
Not my district (we have Nita Howey (D) who is so safe that the GOP aren't even running against her (still a ballot though as there is a third-party candidate)), but agreed. I'm also hoping that IA will ditch the even worse Steve King too.
Leave outcampaigned Remain, day after day. They out-thought them, outfoxed them, outplayed them - and the Leave lies were that bit cleverer than the Remain lies. And both sides lied. ...
Point of order: Leave didn't outcampaign Remain to start with. They were unbelievably chaotic for a while - if you read All Out War, Tim Shipman lays it out very clearly, culminating in the farcical scene when they tried the sack Dominic Cummings but were reduced to asking his advice on how to do, and then deciding it was too difficult. But once Cummings had got full control, and after Steve Baker and some other MPs had stared imposing some discipline, they roared ahead on the campaigning, ruthlessly using immigration as the trump card. It was a brilliant campaign, if you are prepared to overlook the dishonesty.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
"A leader who could not lead" will be Cameron's epitaph.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
Mr Nabavi made quite a revealing comment a few weeks ago: in his view, Cameron only supported an EU referendum because he made a blithe assumption that Labour would cheerlead for the Remain campaign and win the referendum for him. That is not exactly great leadership skills.
After Labour had just killed themselves in Scotland doing exactly that in 2014 it was the acme of foolishness to expect them to do the same in England for the EURef.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
So they'd be forced to do less, and stop dreaming up ever more grandiose schemes. Bliss.
Not sure what the grandiose parts of the EU budget are but no, if they managed to pass anything it would be by splurging out pork for all the little countries.
I think this wisdom-of-crowds streak is going to be coming to an end (especially with the D+11 generic!), but it's an interesting finding anyhow. Is it fatalism or fear of corruption/suppression? https://twitter.com/williamjordann/status/1059813211145412609
Is this meaningful? Isn't it the case of most/all the previous ones that the outcome was obvious so the crowd got it right. There really only is the potential to get it wrong if it is close. This only has meaning if the crowd gets it right this time. If you are right and the crowd gets it wrong this chaps analysis is just worthless.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
So they'd be forced to do less, and stop dreaming up ever more grandiose schemes. Bliss.
From Ivan Rogers' speech:
First, the ceiling on spending Cameron agreed in 2013 was actually lower as a percentage of EU GDP, despite the Union containing 28 members, many of which had been impoverished by over 40 years behind the Iron Curtain, than it had been when John Major concluded the Budget negotiations of 1992 for a solely western prosperous Community of 12.
Mr. Herdson, Superman would be able to kick a can hard enough it caught up with him.
On the other hand, he also wouldn't care very much if a can smacked him in the head...
if the point of kicking the can is to stop it from being an issue to deal with, then it's poor tactics to kick it so hard (no least because - magnetic effects aside - no matter which direction you kick it in, it'll come back to you via a Great Circle route)
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
So they'd be forced to do less, and stop dreaming up ever more grandiose schemes. Bliss.
Not sure what the grandiose parts of the EU budget are but no, if they managed to pass anything it would be by splurging out pork for all the little countries.
IMO, if Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper had been leader, the Labour Remain campaign would've looked very similar to Corbyn's: it would've still been a very low-key "Remain, but...." affair. Their reasons would've been born out of political calculation, as opposed to Eurosceptic conviction in Corbyn's case, but the end result would've still been the same.
IMO, if Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper had been leader, the Labour Remain campaign would've looked very similar to Corbyn's: it would've still been a very low-key "Remain, but...." affair. Their reasons would've been born out of political calculation, as opposed to Eurosceptic conviction in Corbyn's case, but the end result would've still been the same.
I take your point to some extent, but Corbyn's office didn't just keep things low-key, they actively sabotaged the Labour side of the Remain campaign - it's all documented in good detail in All Out War.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
So they'd be forced to do less, and stop dreaming up ever more grandiose schemes. Bliss.
From Ivan Rogers' speech:
First, the ceiling on spending Cameron agreed in 2013 was actually lower as a percentage of EU GDP, despite the Union containing 28 members, many of which had been impoverished by over 40 years behind the Iron Curtain, than it had been when John Major concluded the Budget negotiations of 1992 for a solely western prosperous Community of 12.
IMO, if Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper had been leader, the Labour Remain campaign would've looked very similar to Corbyn's: it would've still been a very low-key "Remain, but...." affair. Their reasons would've been born out of political calculation, as opposed to Eurosceptic conviction in Corbyn's case, but the end result would've still been the same.
I take your point to some extent, but Corbyn's office didn't just keep things low-key, they actively sabotaged the Labour side of the Remain campaign - it's all documented in good detail in All Out War.
And yet Labour voters still voted Remain in large numbers. Were you banking on Labour to deliver Tory Remainers?
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
"A leader who could not lead" will be Cameron's epitaph.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
Mr Nabavi made quite a revealing comment a few weeks ago: in his view, Cameron only supported an EU referendum because he made a blithe assumption that Labour would cheerlead for the Remain campaign and win the referendum for him. That is not exactly great leadership skills.
Err, that's not quite what I said! But yes, he was originally expecting Labour to play its part in getting the vote out, as they would have done under any other leader. No-one predicted that Corbyn and Seumas Milne would be running things, and deliberately obstructing the Labour Remain campaign. It was a black-swan factor which really screwed up the risk/reward calculation.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
It wouldn't have ended the Tory obsession with Europe. Even a 60-40 result would have kept UKIP and the Tory right very much in the game (and 52-48 the other way would definitely have been merely the end of the latest round before the start of the next).
If Britain had voted Remain, the fundamental problems of the EU wanting to be a different thing from that which British voters want it to be, of immigration from the eastern countries, of apparently silly and/or interfering regulations from Brussels or rulings from the ECJ, and of billions of pounds being passed in contributions, would have remained live and valid, so the reckoning would just have been delayed.
52-48 would have unquestionably meant ‘One More Heave’ and the like campaigns.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
"A leader who could not lead" will be Cameron's epitaph.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
Mr Nabavi made quite a revealing comment a few weeks ago: in his view, Cameron only supported an EU referendum because he made a blithe assumption that Labour would cheerlead for the Remain campaign and win the referendum for him. That is not exactly great leadership skills.
Err, that's not quite what I said! But yes, he was originally expecting Labour to play its part in getting the vote out, as they would have done under any other leader. No-one predicted that Corbyn and Seumas Milne would be running things, and deliberately obstructing the Labour Remain campaign. It was a black-swan factor which really screwed up the risk/reward calculation.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
It wouldn't have ended the Tory obsession with Europe. Even a 60-40 result would have kept UKIP and the Tory right very much in the game (and 52-48 the other way would definitely have been merely the end of the latest round before the start of the next).
If Britain had voted Remain, the fundamental problems of the EU wanting to be a different thing from that which British voters want it to be, of immigration from the eastern countries, of apparently silly and/or interfering regulations from Brussels or rulings from the ECJ, and of billions of pounds being passed in contributions, would have remained live and valid, so the reckoning would just have been delayed.
52-48 would have unquestionably meant ‘One More Heave’ and the like campaigns.
Which would have been legitimate at the next treaty change.
IMO, if Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper had been leader, the Labour Remain campaign would've looked very similar to Corbyn's: it would've still been a very low-key "Remain, but...." affair. Their reasons would've been born out of political calculation, as opposed to Eurosceptic conviction in Corbyn's case, but the end result would've still been the same.
I take your point to some extent, but Corbyn's office didn't just keep things low-key, they actively sabotaged the Labour side of the Remain campaign - it's all documented in good detail in All Out War.
And yet Labour voters still voted Remain in large numbers. Were you banking on Labour to deliver Tory Remainers?
35% of Labour voters voted Leave, but also it was about turnout.
Also the lack of engagement by Labour made it seem less risky for some non-Labour voters and people who hadn't voted in 2015. Labour going AWOL wasn't the only factor (Angela Merkel's mad opening of borders was another), but it was I think the single most important.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Consider if my aunt had balls.... Fact was, he was doomed as soon as he made it known to the EU that he would be recommending Remain - regardless of the deal they gave him. He couldn't negotiate his way out a paper bag.
Consider if he had warned the EU that if they gave him a shite deal, he would be recommending Leave. He would have either been given a meaningful deal he could have sold to the country as resetting our relationship - winning the Referendum for Remain by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down at a point of his choosing
Or...he would have been given the same old shite "renegotiation" package he had for the Referendum. But he would have followed through and recommended Leave - winning the Referendum for Leave by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down once the Brexit deal was sorted out. And who knows, a chastened EU might - just might - have taken that Brexit deal more seriously. Because they would know we don't bluff and bluster - we follow through on what we've told them we'd do.
It wasn't "politics" that sank Cameron. It was bad politics.
IMO, if Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper had been leader, the Labour Remain campaign would've looked very similar to Corbyn's: it would've still been a very low-key "Remain, but...." affair. Their reasons would've been born out of political calculation, as opposed to Eurosceptic conviction in Corbyn's case, but the end result would've still been the same.
I take your point to some extent, but Corbyn's office didn't just keep things low-key, they actively sabotaged the Labour side of the Remain campaign - it's all documented in good detail in All Out War.
And yet Labour voters still voted Remain in large numbers. Were you banking on Labour to deliver Tory Remainers?
35% of Labour voters voted Leave, but also it was about turnout.
Also the lack of engagement by Labour made it seem less risky for some non-Labour voters and people who hadn't voted in 2015. Labour going AWOL wasn't the only factor (Angela Merkel's mad opening of borders was another), but it was I think the single most important.
Merkel's decision to allow refugees to be processed in Germany was August 2015, well before the referendum date had been announced. If you think the referendum was held too close to that event, it's all on Cameron's head.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Consider if my aunt had balls.... Fact was, he was doomed as soon as he made it known to the EU that he would be recommending Remain - regardless of the deal they gave him. He couldn't negotiate his way out a paper bag.
Consider if he had warned the EU that if they gave him a shite deal, he would be recommending Leave. He would have either been given a meaningful deal he could have sold to the country as resetting our relationship - winning the Referendum for Remain by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down at a point of his choosing
Or...he would have been given the same old shite "renegotiation" package he had for the Referendum. But he would have followed through and recommended Leave - winning the Referendum for Leave by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down once the Brexit deal was sorted out. And who knows, a chastened EU might - just might - have taken that Brexit deal more seriously. Because they would know we don't bluff and bluster - we follow through on what we've told them we'd do.
It wasn't "politics" that sank Cameron. It was bad politics.
Whatever. The main point is that we're extremely unlikely to see another PM as good as him in my lifetime and yours. We've already seen one worse and we're at not insignificant risk of seeing one so bad that everything else will pale into insignificance, with no obvious pool of better talent available in either main party. Better get used to it - the UK is going to be worse governed for the next decade or two than it was 2010-2016, and probably even worse than 1997-2010.
IMO, if Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper had been leader, the Labour Remain campaign would've looked very similar to Corbyn's: it would've still been a very low-key "Remain, but...." affair. Their reasons would've been born out of political calculation, as opposed to Eurosceptic conviction in Corbyn's case, but the end result would've still been the same.
I take your point to some extent, but Corbyn's office didn't just keep things low-key, they actively sabotaged the Labour side of the Remain campaign - it's all documented in good detail in All Out War.
And yet Labour voters still voted Remain in large numbers. Were you banking on Labour to deliver Tory Remainers?
35% of Labour voters voted Leave, but also it was about turnout.
Also the lack of engagement by Labour made it seem less risky for some non-Labour voters and people who hadn't voted in 2015. Labour going AWOL wasn't the only factor (Angela Merkel's mad opening of borders was another), but it was I think the single most important.
Merkel's decision to allow refugees to be processed in Germany was August 2015, well before the referendum date had been announced. If you think the referendum was held too close to that event, it's all on Cameron's head.
They didn’t all arrive in one day, and its not an event that’s easy to dismiss/forget about.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
So they'd be forced to do less, and stop dreaming up ever more grandiose schemes. Bliss.
Slightly bizarrely, it's actually worked the other way. When unanimity was required, so were prizes for all. Since Lisbon, the pace of EU budget growth has collapsed.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Consider if my aunt had balls.... Fact was, he was doomed as soon as he made it known to the EU that he would be recommending Remain - regardless of the deal they gave him. He couldn't negotiate his way out a paper bag.
Consider if he had warned the EU that if they gave him a shite deal, he would be recommending Leave. He would have either been given a meaningful deal he could have sold to the country as resetting our relationship - winning the Referendum for Remain by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down at a point of his choosing
Or...he would have been given the same old shite "renegotiation" package he had for the Referendum. But he would have followed through and recommended Leave - winning the Referendum for Leave by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down once the Brexit deal was sorted out. And who knows, a chastened EU might - just might - have taken that Brexit deal more seriously. Because they would know we don't bluff and bluster - we follow through on what we've told them we'd do.
It wasn't "politics" that sank Cameron. It was bad politics.
I've no idea what actually happened and maybe the EU were naive as to the the consequences of not being helpful to Cameron, or maybe he was just rubbish, but I don't think he even had to say he would recommend leave. He just had to convince them, that although he wanted to remain, unless they were helpful all sorts of forces could be let loose and there might be a vote to leave that neither he nor the EU wanted.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Consider if my aunt had balls.... Fact was, he was doomed as soon as he made it known to the EU that he would be recommending Remain - regardless of the deal they gave him. He couldn't negotiate his way out a paper bag.
Consider if he had warned the EU that if they gave him a shite deal, he would be recommending Leave. He would have either been given a meaningful deal he could have sold to the country as resetting our relationship - winning the Referendum for Remain by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down at a point of his choosing
Or...he would have been given the same old shite "renegotiation" package he had for the Referendum. But he would have followed through and recommended Leave - winning the Referendum for Leave by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down once the Brexit deal was sorted out. And who knows, a chastened EU might - just might - have taken that Brexit deal more seriously. Because they would know we don't bluff and bluster - we follow through on what we've told them we'd do.
It wasn't "politics" that sank Cameron. It was bad politics.
Whatever. The main point is that we're extremely unlikely to see another PM as good as him in my lifetime and yours. We've already seen one worse and we're at not insignificant risk of seeing one so bad that everything else will pale into insignificance, with no obvious pool of better talent available in either main party. Better get used to it - the UK is going to be worse governed for the next decade or two than it was 2010-2016, and probably even worse than 1997-2010.
Cameron was style over substance, as evidenced by his total strategic defeat. He might have made a good multinational CEO, but went into the wrong field.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Consider if my aunt had balls.... Fact was, he was doomed as soon as he made it known to the EU that he would be recommending Remain - regardless of the deal they gave him. He couldn't negotiate his way out a paper bag.
Consider if he had warned the EU that if they gave him a shite deal, he would be recommending Leave. He would have either been given a meaningful deal he could have sold to the country as resetting our relationship - winning the Referendum for Remain by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down at a point of his choosing
Or...he would have been given the same old shite "renegotiation" package he had for the Referendum. But he would have followed through and recommended Leave - winning the Referendum for Leave by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down once the Brexit deal was sorted out. And who knows, a chastened EU might - just might - have taken that Brexit deal more seriously. Because they would know we don't bluff and bluster - we follow through on what we've told them we'd do.
It wasn't "politics" that sank Cameron. It was bad politics.
Whatever. The main point is that we're extremely unlikely to see another PM as good as him in my lifetime and yours. We've already seen one worse and we're at not insignificant risk of seeing one so bad that everything else will pale into insignificance, with no obvious pool of better talent available in either main party. Better get used to it - the UK is going to be worse governed for the next decade or two than it was 2010-2016, and probably even worse than 1997-2010.
Cameron was style over substance, as evidenced by his total strategic defeat. He might have made a good multinational CEO, but went into the wrong field.
Mr. Herdson, Superman would be able to kick a can hard enough it caught up with him.
On the other hand, he also wouldn't care very much if a can smacked him in the head...
if the point of kicking the can is to stop it from being an issue to deal with, then it's poor tactics to kick it so hard (no least because - magnetic effects aside - no matter which direction you kick it in, it'll come back to you via a Great Circle route)
However, if you kick it just over 40% harder than that, it'll never come back, having reached escape velocity
Nabavi fighting a fine rearguard action for Cameron (is he being paid?), but I fear the PB Consensus is in. Cameron, for all his qualities, was in the end a bit rubbish. And will be remembered for one huge strategic mistake.
So you're conceding Brexit is a mistake?
We'll have you campaigning for a People's Vote within hours at this rate.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Consider if my aunt had balls.... Fact was, he was doomed as soon as he made it known to the EU that he would be recommending Remain - regardless of the deal they gave him. He couldn't negotiate his way out a paper bag.
Consider if he had warned the EU that if they gave him a shite deal, he would be recommending Leave. He would have either been given a meaningful deal he could have sold to the country as resetting our relationship - winning the Referendum for Remain by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down at a point of his choosing
Or...he would have been given the same old shite "renegotiation" package he had for the Referendum. But he would have followed through and recommended Leave - winning the Referendum for Leave by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down once the Brexit deal was sorted out. And who knows, a chastened EU might - just might - have taken that Brexit deal more seriously. Because they would know we don't bluff and bluster - we follow through on what we've told them we'd do.
It wasn't "politics" that sank Cameron. It was bad politics.
I've no idea what actually happened and maybe the EU were naive as to the the consequences of not being helpful to Cameron, or maybe he was just rubbish, but I don't think he even had to say he would recommend leave. He just had to convince them, that although he wanted to remain, unless they were helpful all sorts of forces could be let loose and there might be a vote to leave that neither he nor the EU wanted.
My point is, he could have owned the outcome. He didn't own the vote for Brexit, and so had to go. Believing that his "renegotiation" was enough proved a fundamental misreading of the electorate. Mr. Nabavi bravely went in to bat to defend it at the time it was revealed - he was the only one, as I recall. The rest of us said it wasn't anywhere near enough.
Suffice it to say, we were right. The Remain team was told not to mention the renegotiation at all in the campaign, so badly was it received.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
So they'd be forced to do less, and stop dreaming up ever more grandiose schemes. Bliss.
Slightly bizarrely, it's actually worked the other way. When unanimity was required, so were prizes for all. Since Lisbon, the pace of EU budget growth has collapsed.
He didn't get any sort of deal, because he made it clear from the get go he wouldn't turn anything they offered him down nor campaign for us to leave.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
Ah, Maggie. Yes, she handbagged them.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
If 28 member states all had a veto on the budget nobody would ever get anything.
So they'd be forced to do less, and stop dreaming up ever more grandiose schemes. Bliss.
From Ivan Rogers' speech:
First, the ceiling on spending Cameron agreed in 2013 was actually lower as a percentage of EU GDP, despite the Union containing 28 members, many of which had been impoverished by over 40 years behind the Iron Curtain, than it had been when John Major concluded the Budget negotiations of 1992 for a solely western prosperous Community of 12.
Well binning CAP would be a start. You know the one that was going to be reformed in exchange for Blair giving up half the rebate. Funny we're still waiting for any hint of that after all these years. As indeed we are for a set of accounts.
Power over the purse strings is vital. As Charles I found out in the 1640's. The more power you cede over that to others the more you are in trouble. Berlaymont as the Versailles of the 21st Century?
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Consid
It wasn't "politics" that sank Cameron. It was bad politics.
Whatever. The main point is that we're extremely unlikely to see another PM as good as him in my lifetime and yours. We've already seen one worse and we're at not insignificant risk of seeing one so bad that everything else will pale into insignificance, with no obvious pool of better talent available in either main party. Better get used to it - the UK is going to be worse governed for the next decade or two than it was 2010-2016, and probably even worse than 1997-2010.
Actually, as a rightwinger, I am happy to concede that the New Labour government was pretty good (by today's standards) from about 1997 til 2003 (and Iraq). The country grew, debt was contained.
After that it all went pear shaped, especially in Iraq. Then came over-borrowing and the Crash. But that government was definitely a tale of two halves, and the first half was quite successful.
Yes, I agree, with the proviso that the bungled restructuring of financial regulation in 1997 was a really major blunder, as we discovered when it was tested in 2008/9. Of course, for the first few years they were following Ken Clarke's economic plans quite closely.
The EU wanting to make it impossible for the UK to leave the backstop means the backstop is harder to leave than the EU, and has no say over the rules, no veto power. It's a retrograde step, even without considering the reprehensible desire to commit a regulatory annexation of UK territory, imposing a customs barrier within a non-EU country.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Consid
It wasn't "politics" that sank Cameron. It was bad politics.
Whatever. The main point is that we're extremely unlikely to see another PM as good as him in my lifetime and yours. We've already seen one worse and we're at not insignificant risk of seeing one so bad that everything else will pale into insignificance, with no obvious pool of better talent available in either main party. Better get used to it - the UK is going to be worse governed for the next decade or two than it was 2010-2016, and probably even worse than 1997-2010.
Actually, as a rightwinger, I am happy to concede that the New Labour government was pretty good (by today's standards) from about 1997 til 2003 (and Iraq). The country grew, debt was contained.
After that it all went pear shaped, especially in Iraq. Then came over-borrowing and the Crash. But that government was definitely a tale of two halves, and the first half was quite successful.
Yes, I agree, with the proviso that the bungled restructuring of financial regulation in 1997 was a really major blunder, as we discovered when it was tested in 2008/9. Of course, for the first few years they were following Ken Clarke's economic plans quite closely.
IIRC, they followed them more closely than he himself intended to do.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
Consid
It wasn't "politics" that sank Cameron. It was bad politics.
Whatever. The main point is that we're extremely unlikely to see another PM as good as him in my lifetime and yours. We've already seen one worse and we're at not insignificant risk of seeing one so bad that everything else will pale into insignificance, with no obvious pool of better talent available in either main party. Better get used to it - the UK is going to be worse governed for the next decade or two than it was 2010-2016, and probably even worse than 1997-2010.
Actually, as a rightwinger, I am happy to concede that the New Labour government was pretty good (by today's standards) from about 1997 til 2003 (and Iraq). The country grew, debt was contained.
After that it all went pear shaped, especially in Iraq. Then came over-borrowing and the Crash. But that government was definitely a tale of two halves, and the first half was quite successful.
Yes, I agree, with the proviso that the bungled restructuring of financial regulation in 1997 was a really major blunder, as we discovered when it was tested in 2008/9. Of course, for the first few years they were following Ken Clarke's economic plans quite closely.
Labour government was good, when it was, in effect, a Liberal frontispiece on Tory economic policy.
The Coalition was good, as it was, in effect, a Liberal frontispiece on Tory economic policy.
The shiteness of the Deal was also the factor that pushed me over to Leave, never to return. I would have voted Remain, with a heavy heart, if he'd got one solid and truly significant concession.
You, me - and I suspect enough to have thwarted Brexit.
The EU wanting to make it impossible for the UK to leave the backstop means the backstop is harder to leave than the EU, and has no say over the rules, no veto power. It's a retrograde step, even without considering the reprehensible desire to commit a regulatory annexation of UK territory, imposing a customs barrier within a non-EU country.
The shiteness of the Deal was also the factor that pushed me over to Leave, never to return. I would have voted Remain, with a heavy heart, if he'd got one solid and truly significant concession.
You, me - and I suspect enough to have thwarted Brexit.
Let's rerun it without Cameron's deal. Sounds like it will be in the bag for Remain.
The EU wanting to make it impossible for the UK to leave the backstop means the backstop is harder to leave than the EU, and has no say over the rules, no veto power. It's a retrograde step, even without considering the reprehensible desire to commit a regulatory annexation of UK territory, imposing a customs barrier within a non-EU country.
The UK can leave the backstop any time it wants to. It would be just like a hard Brexit. What we can't do is unilaterally leave the backstop and declare "all is well" and retain the other benefits of the deal.
The shiteness of the Deal was also the factor that pushed me over to Leave, never to return. I would have voted Remain, with a heavy heart, if he'd got one solid and truly significant concession.
You, me - and I suspect enough to have thwarted Brexit.
Let's rerun it without Cameron's deal. Sounds like it will be in the bag for Remain.
He's just repeating himself, and the obvious. The compromise - according to Twitter - is WHO will decide when the backstop is no longer needed. It might be some "independent" arbitrator. That's how they will try and fudge it. Whether it will pass the Commons is another matter.
But the Irish/EU position is that the backstop is always required up until such point as they agree that it isn't. The simple question is "can the UK and Ireland go separate ways in terms of trade policy and regulation of goods and services". London believes that it should be able to. Dublin and Brussels believe that it cannot*. No deal is possible unless at least one side shifts its position on that question.
* Technically, not quite true but as long as they believe that an open NI/RoI border is a sine qua non, and that an open border is incompatible with Britain diverging from Ireland on trade and regulations, and as long as London will not countenance an intra-UK regulatory border, it amounts to the same thing.
Comments
'Brexit withdrawal agreement '95% complete', Theresa May to tell MPs'
https://tinyurl.com/y7xfmbfl
I'd have been inclined to agree with Herdson at that point.
The only time the pro-EU establishment showed any real sense was when they agreed we wouldn't join the Euro without a referendum. At least they had learned something from the ERM.
Or as Donald would phrase it
Americans vote for Trump in key Elections
You are claiming he lost to a better campaign, and you hate him for it?
Cameron will undoubtedly be remembered as the inadvertent midwife of Brexit but that baby had been cooking well before 2010 or even 2005 and while he failed to avert it coming on his watch, that doesn't alter his first, coalition, ministry, which was one of the more successful goverments of recent decades.
As for Cameron, yes he was the best PM for half a century, bar Maggie. Losing a vote doesn't make him a bad PM any more than Attlee losing an election made Attlee a bad PM*. You have to distinguish between what he did as PM, and what voters did. It's bizarre to blame Cameron for being right; voters chose to disagree with him. More fool them.
* Although I think Attlee was a bad PM for other reasons.
Very erudite, balanced and informative thread by Anthony Wells of UKPR.
Doesn’t he post on here under the nom de plume of ‘SeanT’ ?
The way I always think of Cameron time as PM as akin to a very solid CEO of an established company. The wheels keep turning, things are orderly, very agreeable etc. The problem is people wanted change on our relationship with the EU, and that required some something more.
So now it's about damage limitation. I'm moderately confident on that: with luck we can ensure it turns out to be, as Cameron said in that off-the-record remark, a mistake but not a disaster.
I somehow think Maggie would have got us more.
That makes him bad as a PM.
Genuinely terrible PM more concerned about party unity than putting the country first. Unwilling to make any hard decisions just the easy can kick every time until it caught up with him.
May suffers from the same fate.
Do you know how? Because she had a veto on the budget.
Unfortunately, thanks to Lisbon and some of the earlier treaty concessions by Cameron's less talented predecessors, virtually all of our negotiating leverage had been thrown away. That was why I was so depressed by Lisbon: it was obvious that it was going to be incredibly hard to claw anything back. In the circumstances, Cameron did rather well.
And a very poor Conservative one.
A certain regular poster on here from North Wales isn't going to be happy.....
Arron Banks v HMRC http://financeandtax.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk//judgmentfiles/j10730/TC06768.pdf
This case is about whether gifts to UKIP are exempt from inheritance tax.
The legislation (section 24 IHTA 1984) requires MPs to have been elected to the House of Commons at the last General election for a gift to be exempt. As UKIP had no MPs elected at the 2010 election then the gifts in the run up to the 2015 election would not fall within the s24 exemption.
Arron Banks was claiming on Human Rights grounds (EHCR) that s24 was discriminatory (which he won see paragraph 115-117) but the Tribunal was unable to provide any effective remedies. This included under the relevant EU treaties.
As for leadership skills: consider if he had won. Having done exactly the same as he did, he'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader, taking the Conservative Party out of its obsession with Europe and achieving a new settlement. Wasn't to be, but that's politics.
On the other hand, he also wouldn't care very much if a can smacked him in the head...
https://twitter.com/williamjordann/status/1059813211145412609
As for the last paragraph, I'll defer to your greater judgement on what the mood of Tory members would've been in the event of a Remain vote, but, as an outsider, it doesn't seem to me that they would've given up on their "obsession" with Europe all that easily!
If Britain had voted Remain, the fundamental problems of the EU wanting to be a different thing from that which British voters want it to be, of immigration from the eastern countries, of apparently silly and/or interfering regulations from Brussels or rulings from the ECJ, and of billions of pounds being passed in contributions, would have remained live and valid, so the reckoning would just have been delayed.
First, the ceiling on spending Cameron agreed in 2013 was actually lower as a percentage of EU GDP, despite the Union containing 28 members, many of which had been impoverished by over 40 years behind the Iron Curtain, than it had been when John Major concluded the Budget negotiations of 1992 for a solely western prosperous Community of 12.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ivan-rogers-david-cameron-speech-transcript-brexit-referendum/
http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2018/11/06/01016-20181106ARTFIG00171-six-personnes-liees-a-l-ultradroite-arretees-pour-un-projet-d-action-violente-contre-macron.php
Also the lack of engagement by Labour made it seem less risky for some non-Labour voters and people who hadn't voted in 2015. Labour going AWOL wasn't the only factor (Angela Merkel's mad opening of borders was another), but it was I think the single most important.
Consider if he had warned the EU that if they gave him a shite deal, he would be recommending Leave. He would have either been given a meaningful deal he could have sold to the country as resetting our relationship - winning the Referendum for Remain by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down at a point of his choosing
Or...he would have been given the same old shite "renegotiation" package he had for the Referendum. But he would have followed through and recommended Leave - winning the Referendum for Leave by at least 60:40. He'd have been lauded as a great politician and brilliant leader. And still be PM, until stepping down once the Brexit deal was sorted out. And who knows, a chastened EU might - just might - have taken that Brexit deal more seriously. Because they would know we don't bluff and bluster - we follow through on what we've told them we'd do.
It wasn't "politics" that sank Cameron. It was bad politics.
https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article183349088/Bedrohung-durch-Russland-Macron-fordert-Bildung-einer-wahren-europaeischen-Armee.html
presumably thats the army that was never on the EU radar
We'll have you campaigning for a People's Vote within hours at this rate.
Suffice it to say, we were right. The Remain team was told not to mention the renegotiation at all in the campaign, so badly was it received.
Well I wouldn't be fighting for it. I fact I'd do everything in my power to undermine the bloody thing.
https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1059828606375989248
Power over the purse strings is vital. As Charles I found out in the 1640's. The more power you cede over that to others the more you are in trouble. Berlaymont as the Versailles of the 21st Century?
The Coalition was good, as it was, in effect, a Liberal frontispiece on Tory economic policy.
* Technically, not quite true but as long as they believe that an open NI/RoI border is a sine qua non, and that an open border is incompatible with Britain diverging from Ireland on trade and regulations, and as long as London will not countenance an intra-UK regulatory border, it amounts to the same thing.